Is SEO Still Useful?

2026-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

The majority of search engine optimization (SEO) experts continue to say that original content is the most impactful in moving your website up in search engine rankings.¹ For years, writing for SEO has involved artificially jamming as many search keywords as possible into web copy, creating some truly terrible writing that only a search engine could love. But as AI takes over more and more search results, chasing SEO keywords becomes less and less impactful, and now it finally seems that natural, human writing produces better results than copy packed with keywords.²

This raises a number of important questions for small businesses. Is SEO still worth it? How can a small business use a website for relevance and visibility? If it is still possible for a small business website to be a viable marketing tool, SEO must remain a viable option.

A Well-Structured Website

This is possibly the most technical part of SEO, as it deals with the code behind the presentation of the website. A website should have well-structured code. Most static website generators and CMS websites will do a lot of this work for you, but any time you are writing your own content, you need to be conscious of the structure of your content.

Search engines are software, and software works best when its input is predictable and easy to understand. This means that a website needs to follow the rules of HTML and it needs to simplify its overall structure. It should be easy to index, have minimal navigational depth, and have plenty of internal links. It is probably also important for the website to load quickly and be available on mobile devices.

Pages should use a hierarchy of headings that categorize their content. Use your H1, H2, and H3 headers wisely. Give your headings useful copy and try to make the structure sensible. That will add a good amount of SEO while also making it easier for human users to utilize your site.

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust

Google Search ranks results based on EEAT, or Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. If you include critical information like author profiles, citations, case studies, and original data in your content, it will rank better. Basically, cite your work. EEAT also seems to indicate that well made, well structured content is going to rank better than copy that tries to include as many search keywords as possible.

The thing is, producing this sort of content is a lot of work. Many SEO firms produce checklists that web developers and copywriters can follow, but they tend to be pretty simple compared to Google’s Creating Helpful Content checklist. For example, here are the top items from Google’s checklist:

Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?
Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?
Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious?
If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources, and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?

It seems like it would be difficult for software to determine a website’s EEAT score. One element that seems to be a contributing factor are backlinks, or inbound links from another website. These can be the most time consuming part of working on SEO.

Avoid AI Slop

Many studies show that people have a lot of difficulty detecting AI-generated copy. False positives are very common. The chances of detecting AI copy will only get worse as LLMs become more sophisticated. I have experimented with using both Claude and ChatGPT to write copy for websites, and it still takes some human intervention to produce useful, well-written text. Otherwise, the output seems generic, with a style similar to all other LLM-generated content.

In addition, unless you are very careful with your AI usage, I think it is tough to get an LLM to produce good, original content with new ideas in it. New ideas come from people, not machines. I think it is worth the additional effort to avoid AI slop, even if it can be tough for humans to detect. But lots of writers are using AI, even if it is just a helper. Jim VandeHei of Axios writes, “Anyone lazily letting AI do their thinking or writing is playing with fire.” He uses AI for much of his writing, and has shared many tips about how to do it wisely.

Writing takes a lot of time and effort. It can be prohibitively expensive for a small business to hire a freelance writer to regularly update a website. Small business owners who are trying to increase their search ranking should consider alternate approaches. One example could be a workflow where the business owner mocks up a new blog post with bullet points and general concepts, then uses an LLM to flesh out the topic. Finally, the business owner could hire a freelance writer to clean up the output and make sure it has the necessary human touch.

A freelance writer should also be proficient in fleshing out the EEAT elements of a blog post by cleaning up citations, including information about the business owner as a trusted authority, and making sure that any research and analysis in the new content passes a sniff test.

Small Business SEO

This all seems pretty overwhelming for a small business. SEO can be tough to do, and measuring its effectiveness is a challenge. I have worked on some small business websites in an attempt to improve their search result rankings, and it is hard to know what works when you take them from zero inbound traffic from search engines to 75 hits per week. Is that a lot? Is it success?

My advice is to write your web copy honestly, provide value, and keep up-to-date, accurate contact information on your website. Link to your Google Business profile and perhaps see if you can get some backlinks from other businesses you know. Without a huge budget, it is hard to rely entirely on SEO for generating business; it may be wiser to spend your marketing money on more traditional advertising.

However, there comes a time for many small businesses when SEO seems like the right thing to do. When that is the case, contact a web developer with SEO experience and tell them what you are after. You should be able to find one who can make adjustments to your website and then provide you with a personalized plan that you can use to continue building your website content and improving your SEO.

Footnotes

¹ Katie Morton, State of SEO 2026 (Search Engine Journal, 2026), 5–6.