Writing for Search Engine Land, Casey Markee argues that the traditional SEO playbook is already outdated in an AI-reshaped search landscape. The core shift: the question Google is asking has changed.
It used to ask, "which page should rank." Now it asks, "what answer can be assembled, and what sources support it." Markee puts it bluntly: write so that "a toddler, a drunk adult, and an LLM" can all follow along. Clarity in AI search means clarity for machines and humans at once.
Behind this is Google's concept of "query fan-out" — a single search expands into many related sub-questions, and the system stitches the pieces into a complete answer. A search for "easy chicken enchiladas" fans out into cook time, ingredient substitutions, and whether it freezes well. LLMs need content with clear structure, context, entities, and relationships to parse correctly — vague, bloated content loses ground, especially in competitive niches.
Markee names several habits to drop immediately: obsessing over word count (a useful 900 words beats a watered-down 3,000); keyword-stuffed titles; repetitive content produced with no real differentiation; image overload stacked before the actual answer; long intros and ads that delay the payoff; perfunctory FAQs answering questions nobody asked; and mistaking an SEO score for an actual strategy. His verdict: stop producing content that looks like it exists to satisfy a plugin, a keyword tool, or an ad network. Faking freshness by backdating a post doesn't count either — a real update means better notes, a clearer process, or genuinely updated information.
Three priorities: first, improve existing content that already has traction — use Search Console to find pages with traffic history, seasonality, or rankings sitting near the visibility threshold. Second, build direct channels that reduce dependence on Google, such as email lists, YouTube, Pinterest, and community. Third, raise the clarity of the content itself: place a summary at the top explaining what it covers, why it matters, how long it takes, and what's different; use descriptive anchor text instead of "click here"; write headings as signposts for readers, not keyword bins; make sure schema matches only what's actually visible on the page; and strip out friction like excessive ads, pop-ups, and repeated images. His final test is simple: is this easier to understand than what's already ranking, and would a tired reader at 5:30pm say it actually helped?
Even though the piece uses recipe blogging as its example, the lesson applies across content marketing. As AI search and generative answers erode referral traffic, a marketer's KPI needs to move from "how many posts did we publish" to "how clearly can our content be cited by AI." Structuring content around clear entities and relationships, top-of-page summaries, accurate schema, and descriptive internal links is no longer a nice-to-have UX detail — it now determines visibility.
The other piece is building assets you own outside of Google's algorithm: an email list, a community, a direct channel. As the article puts it, do less random work and more useful work — make your best content easier to understand, more trustworthy, and worth coming back to.
For help auditing content clarity and building a search strategy for the AI era, explore Best Partner's services or get in touch.
It's Google's concept where a single search expands into many related sub-questions, and the system assembles answer fragments across sources into a complete response. 'Easy chicken enchiladas' fans out into cook time, substitutions, and freezing.
Not on its own. A genuinely useful 900-word article outperforms a padded 3,000-word one — length was never a proxy for helpfulness, and AI search rewards clarity over volume.
It means content structured with clear entities, definitions, and relationships: a top summary of what the page covers and why it matters, descriptive internal links instead of 'click here', headings that guide rather than stuff keywords, and schema that matches what's visible.
Prioritize improving pages with existing traction, build owned channels like email and community to reduce Google dependence, and redesign content around clarity so it's more likely to be cited in AI-generated answers.
To apply what you just read to your own site, start with a free audit of where things are now.
A strategist replies within 24 hours on business days.
An E-E-A-T checker was never automatable because there is no API for it. Here is how an AI coding agent read Google's quality guidance, crawled a page sample, and produced a scored audit — plus where it stops.
A GEO audit is not checking whether your brand appears in an AI answer. Here is a nine-point GEO checklist split into four on-site items, four off-site, and one measurement layer.
LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok are building systems to identify low-value AI content. Here are the limits of watermarking and what content still gets distributed.