There’s a lot of noise around AI search… and very little calm.
Ahead of my talk at The Financial Services Forum, where I’ll be discussing “Optimising for the Algorithm: Preparing for AI-Driven Search” within the financial services industry, I wanted to share Tribus Digital’s current view on the state of SEO. This is aimed squarely at marketers who can’t seem to escape phrases like AI Search, GEO, LLMO, and similar acronyms in internal meetings and who are looking for reassurance that, despite the noise, they’re still on the right track.
As specialists in Digital Discovery and Development, many of our previous blogs have focused on specific SEO pillars from Navigating a Zero-Click Search Engine World, to Google Core Updates, to Adapting SEO for the Future of Search. As a long-standing technical partner to many clients, our role is often to translate this evolving landscape into something practical to help internal marketing teams understand what’s actually changing, what isn’t, and how to improve SEO strategy without chasing every headline.
With this post, I wanted to cut through the noise and share a small number of clear takeaways that any brand, in any industry, can use when discussing the future of SEO and, importantly, to help you answer AI-loaded search questions with confidence rather than concern.
The web has split into two types of content
Over time, the web has quietly evolved into two broad categories.
Commodity Content
Commodity content exists primarily to capture search demand. Historically, SEO strategies focused on identifying high-volume, seasonal, or generic keywords related to a brand, then creating content that answered “what is” or “how does” questions. Which in-turn generated traffic through to your website.
Those questions still need a home (website) where the answer exists. But increasingly, the answer is surfaced directly via AI Overviews or generated summaries, with no click required at all.
Original Content (or, as I like to call it, connoisseur content)
What is your brand's particular take on a subject? What is your brand's distinct point of view? Does your brand have a specific interpretation of a topic? This is where the human voice still matters and where brands can still turn search impressions into engaged clicks.
For example, a user searching for ‘the best cheese to have with fish’ will benefit from LLM-driven search engines that surface a clear, consolidated answer.
However
A cheese connoisseur looking for the next standout cheese entering the market needs depth. They want evidence, credibility, discovery, and context which means clicking through, exploring brands, and engaging with the industry.
That’s where strong content and a well-considered SEO strategy still win.
The Reassuring Truth
To keep this blog post short and to the point, the key message I’ll be sharing with financial services marketers at the “Optimising for the Algorithm: Preparing for AI-Driven Search” seminar is this:
Many of the tactics being touted as new are things we’ve always done - just renamed.
So what are these so-called “new” tactics?
Clear structure
Strong topical focus
Authoritative perspectives
Helpful, human-led explanations
Look familiar? They should.
No matter the platform, traditional search engines or LLM-driven answer tools, these principles remain at the core of how content is understood, selected, and surfaced.
What’s changed isn’t the fundamentals. It’s how those signals are interpreted not just by ranking algorithms, but by systems designed to answer questions directly. And that’s not something to panic about. If you continue to create genuinely good content, with intent and originality, rather than chasing the noise.
