2025: Where is SEO Headed?

Algorithm Updates, AI, and SEO: Yet Another Guide to Finding Your Way

Last updated: August 2025.
Reading time: 20 minutes
Reading Setting: During insomnia. Great remedy.

This guide is not designed to make you an SEO expert in half an hour. It gives no practical tips on how to improve your website's ranking and contains no ads or sponsored links to tools or agencies that might do it for you.

It is informational content to help anyone interested in understanding where SEO is headed in 2025 and how to catch up. To do this, we will start by looking at where it comes from. We will then trace its evolution, from its initial objectives to what it has become, how it is used now, and how it might be used tomorrow. In other words, we are going back to basics and moving forward: here is the history of SEO, its revolutions and its dramas; its innovations and its impact on today's internet. For what is the internet? What was it yesterday? What will it be tomorrow? A database? An encyclopedia? A giant global marketplace? A high-tech version of the Yellow Pages? Or, rather, the White Pages? You cannot understand SEO without understanding the internet.

Finally, we will look at the reason for this latest guide. Why do you feel you need yet another guide on SEO? Are you stuck in a perpetual technological watch that makes you feel you must urgently update yourself constantly? Caught in a frantic race against technology, rushed to deploy your SEO strategy before the next algorithmic update renders it obsolete without even having had time to complete the Test & Learn stage?

We will see that it is possible, and even desirable, to slow down the race for SEO. That there is a safe bet — a constant in this volatile world — that allows you to naturally optimize your web content for ranking, regardless of past and future updates.

So, without further ado, fasten your seatbelts, shift into fifth gear, floor the gas pedal, and join the technological revolution highway, heading towards the internet of tomorrow!

SEO Basics: Reminder of Definitions and Objectives

Let's start with the basics. This may seem superfluous, especially if you are already familiar with SEO and its challenges, but I do not recommend skipping this section. Firstly, because skipping it would hurt my metrics. Secondly, because even if you're already an SEO expert, this article takes a specific direction from the very start; don't get lost along the way. It's a guide, so follow the guide.

Definition of SEO: Search Engine and Ranking

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It is not a profession or a specific activity, but a set of techniques and practices aimed at optimizing the ranking of digital content indexed by SEs. Before going further on SEO, let's look for a moment at the terms attached to it: search engines and ranking.

Search Engines (SE)

Search engines (which we will now abbreviate to "SE" for "Search Engine") are websites that list and sort data published online to present it to the user on a SERP.

The SERP is the webpage on which the list of results found by the SE is displayed when you type a query into the search bar. It is the acronym for Search Engine Result Page. The position of content in the SERPs is a major factor in the online visibility of an entity. The more often and higher a piece of content is displayed in the SERPs, the more it is seen by users, and the more opportunities the entity has for growth.

Google is, by far, the most used SE to explore the internet, with about 81% of global market share in 2024[1]. When you publish content online, SEs will index it. Indexing consists of scanning the content to establish an identity file for it, determine what questions it is likely to answer and, therefore, in response to what query it should be displayed on the SERPs.

Ranking

Ranking consists of optimizing the identity file of web content to improve its display on the SERPs. The more accurately and precisely a site is ranked, the more relevant its display will be. In principle. This is where SEO sometimes cheats the system, but we will come back to that later.

In principle, as I was saying, ranking is a question of match between the question asked by the user and the answer provided by a piece of content. Its objective is dual; it must allow: (1) the user to find the right site and (2) the site to reach the right target. You will note that at this stage, there is no mention of visibility, commercial opportunities, or economic growth. We only have a simple and innocent principle, and practical techniques to implement it: SEO.

Primary Objectives of SEO: Relevance before Visibility

Back in the early days, or at least, at the dawn of the internet, SEO was not a catchy little marketing acronym that makes us chase after Google's incessant algorithm updates to escape death (the death of our Core Web Vitals, let's not exaggerate). It was a tool intended to optimize the functioning of search engines in order to improve the user experience. This is where we come to the nature of the internet.

The internet was initially ARPANET (in the 1960s), an innovative communication network for exchanging data between researchers. Then came the TCP/IP protocol (1983) and the World Wide Web (1989), which made the network accessible to the general public. Would you like to see the very first website in the world? The internet also has its museum.

The economic dimension only arrived later, with the famous dot-com bubble that saw investors flock to the World Wide Web, until the said bubble burst with a small audible "plop" in 2000 to cause one of the three biggest stock market crashes our era has ever known. For the moment.

A story I recommend, but which is not the subject of this article. The subject of this article is that there was a time when the internet went from a database whose only purpose was to automate the transmission of information to a gigantic marketplace, a colossal billboard - a brand new El Dorado, the scene of fierce competition.

Except that SEO wasn't designed for that.

History of SEO: The War of Algorithms and Web Marketing

Do the SERPs seem serene and silent to you, made only of vast pages of pristine white pixels, adorned with the clear blue of links? In truth, it is a battlefield where SEs, who must present relevant SERPs to users, and websites, showcases for entities seeking visibility and development opportunities there, relentlessly confront each other.

The SEs, in this story, are not just in their own camp - no one is, everyone changes sides according to their office hours; commercial by day, simple internet user by night, and so on. But SEs have a particular position, somewhere between two fires. On the one hand, they must continue to be attractive to internet users by offering them relevant SERPs. On the other hand, they must be attractive to websites, which are their main sources of revenue, notably with 77% of Google's 2023 revenue generated by ads[2].

The history of SEO is not limited to simply looking back to admire the journey; it is an analysis of the phenomena related to this war that have forced us to change direction at every turn: the updates to SE algorithms. It is a story of blue ocean and red ocean, of the globalization of competition, of economic - and even ecological - survival at the crossroads of commercial realities weighing on businesses and the future of the internet.

NOTE: This history of SEO is centered on Google's algorithm updates, as it is the most used. Moreover, the other SEs (Yahoo!, Bing, DuckDuckGo...) more or less follow in its footsteps.

Primitive SEO, Year -13 before Panda

Primitive SEO, as we have already said, was above all a question of relevance for search engines. At the time, the internet was primarily used to find information, and the challenge for search engines was therefore to send the right information to the right user, that is, to provide the right answer to the right question.

To do this, SEO mainly relied on the use of keywords. Web content was scanned, all its words indexed, and when a word appeared in an internet user's query, web content that also contained that word came up. But, as the number of websites increased, going from 23,000 in 1995 to 207 million in 2010, then to 1.2 billion in 2025[3], competition significantly intensified, and it therefore became necessary to find other ways to rank the sheer number results obtained for each query.

PageRank (1998) is, in a way, Google's first algorithm - its soul. It allowed for refining the SERP results by assigning each piece of content a popularity score based on link analysis. The more a piece of content was cited in other content, the better it was ranked. The algorithm already had flaws at its core - the choice to rank based on a popularity score rather than quality criteria is highly debatable. But its effectiveness was mainly undermined when the internet clearly became a commercial field.

Many sites then seized upon PageRank to artificially increase their position in Google search results and their visibility. These abuses materialized through external link campaigns (backlinks) unrelated to the actual popularity of the content (for example, by registering in many directories, or by spamming forums). In parallel, other SEO techniques – now disavowed – were favored: at the time, SEO mostly rhymed with keywords. The so-called "keyword stuffing" method became widespread, which consists of placing the same keyword as much as possible on a site, even if the content then makes no sense, and even if it means publishing entire pages with this single keyword repeated or writing it in invisible ink (white font on a white background) in the margins of the pages. At this stage, SEO lost its purpose of improving the relevance of SERPs; it only sought to increase a website's visibility at any cost.

These rogue methods were named Black Hat, and in 2010, SEs began deploying updates to their algorithms to counter these abuses harmful to:

• User experience by hindering access to reliable and relevant information;
• The performance of search engines by exploiting their flaws;
• The establishment of a healthy competitive environment, profitable for the user and the economic fabric;
• Ultimately, the very nature of the internet (informational internet), thus its sustainability and, consequently, the survival of SEs.

Modern SEO: From Panda to Penguin

The Panda algorithm arrived on the web in 2011 like a breath of fresh air accompanied by a gentle air of threat. With Caffeine, deployed a year earlier to speed up the indexing of updates, Panda forced a major cleanup, transforming 11.8% of SERPs in the United States[4]. With formidable effectiveness, Panda is the first algorithm to seriously tackle the evaluation of the quality of web content to put the question of relevance back on the table.

The algorithm established quality indicators allowing Google to highlight websites that met its standards. Websites that did not meet these factors were, in turn, penalized, blacklisted, until their web content was updated — or until the algorithm itself changed."

Sites that were penalized included those that:

• Lacked content;
• Published low-quality content (structure, clarity, readability);
• Presented duplicated or automatically generated content (master spins);
• Had empty or "dead" webpages;
• Hosted too many advertisements;
• Presented questionable links (artificial backlinks);
• Presented negative navigation data (bounce rate, click-through rate, visit duration, etc.).

And, while the SEO world was still struggling to recover from the blow delivered by Panda, Penguin arrived to add to the damage.

Penguin is an algorithm designed to ensure that websites comply with Google's charter, namely the best practices implemented by Panda to guarantee the quality of information and the relevance of search engine results. While Panda seeks to analyze the quality of websites, Penguin focuses on the SEO techniques used, particularly link building.

After multiple updates and adjustments, Panda and Penguin were definitively adopted by the Google algorithm in 2016. To better understand the lasting impact they had on online businesses at the time, it should be known that some sites blacklisted in 2011 for having resorted to "over-optimization," particularly with the help of Black Hat techniques, had to wait for the 2016 update to pass the filters of these algorithms and be ranked again.

The SEO of the Future*: RankBrain, Mobile-Friendly, Google Page Experience

As early as 2013, the future of SEO began to take shape with Hummingbird, which emphasized conversational search. Out with keywords, in with complete sentences. Google thus increased its precision and the relevance of its answers. RankBrain deployed in its wake, with the addition of artificial intelligence** intended to interpret abstract queries.

With Mobile-Friendly, Google gave prominence to responsive sites. The U eX (UX) took center stage in SE ranking policy with the latest update in 2021, Google Page Experience and its Core Web Vitals. Display time and delay, page stability, and site readability are now major ranking criteria.

In the meantime, the deployment of the Quality Update (2015) and BERT helped improve the evaluation of web content quality, with indicators kept secret, but which are presumed, after studying their impacts on the SERPs, to be along the lines of Panda.

* I update it from time to time, but this article was originally written in 2017. And, yes, Mobile-Friendly was futuristic at the time.
** This was the artificial intelligence of the time, before the current age of AI. Well, you get it.

SEO in the Age of AI: Helpful Content, the 2024 Core Update

The arrival of AIs, the latest major innovation to date, was accompanied by a tsunami of worthless content across the SERPs. While these tools have their place in the production of quality content, they also allow for the generation, with a single click, of a flood of paraphrased, vague, redundant, often incomplete, or even entirely false texts, and this is unfortunately the usage that first predominated when they were put on the market.

To cope with the tsunami, SEs deployed Helpful Content Updates (HCU, for short) from 2022 to 2024. The HCU takes us directly to the heart of the matter, by questioning the overall purposes of content and its adequacy with the audience of the website that publishes it. Is the content designed specifically to satisfy its target audience, or was it published to cast a wide net, generate impressions, drain clicks, without targeting a specific user and worrying about best meeting everyone's expectations? You can fault it for what it did to niche blogs and independent microsites, but HCU, so far, remains my favorite Google algorithm update. Certainly imperfect, it intended to be fair, but severe, and heavily penalized sites that used low-quality mass content production tools, with a resounding impact on the face of the SERPs[5].

Summary of SEO Evolution: The Quality Constant

The evolution of the algorithms that govern SEO best practices is symptomatic of a cat-and-mouse phenomenon that is less amusing than it seems. Websites exploit algorithm flaws to artificially increase their visibility and try to boost their commercial growth, and SEs rush to deploy corrective updates to counter these abuses that harm the user. This forces sites to seek and exploit new flaws, then SEs to publish new corrections, and so on in an endless race - the one that requires constant vigilance, the one that makes you consult yet another guide on SEO today.

In the model this history outlines, the interests of SEs and websites diverge, with both facing different short-term survival imperatives - hence the race. The survival of SEs depends on that of the internet, and the internet needs to be attractive, relevant, and useful to its users. Websites also need the internet, but only if they are seen there and generating revenue - directly or indirectly. The result is a disconnect between the objectives of SEO, created by the SEs for their own survival, and the use made of it by websites, serving their own development strategies.

Looking closer, we can discern this troubling sustainability problem that is starting to feel oppressive in every corner of our societies in the 21st century. The internet is an ecosystem whose good health we neglect: how much longer will it exist, asphyxiated by a mass of low-value added content on the one hand, maintained on artificial respiration by the SEs that depend on it on the other?

Note: This is not about passing judgment on the practices of one or the other. Businesses need online visibility, just as SEs need the internet to appeal to the user. These are two realities that coexist, however delicate their coexistence may be.

So, how do we do SEO in 2025?

The history of SEO outlines a constant. While its use has varied over time, even as its application branches out with every Google algorithm update and the world of web marketing is constantly running from tool to tool, from trick to trick, from blacklist to whitelist, the intrinsic goal of SEO has never changed.

To rank content in such a way as to provide the most qualitative answer to the user's question.

Panda tried to define quality, Core Web Vitals to measure it, and Helpful to highlight it. Whatever the updates, they only automate and improve the evaluation of quality. With more or less success – that's another debate.

So, how do you catch your breath in this frantic race for visibility? Bet on quality. The latest SEO best practices, Quick Wins, and long tails: all of that is secondary. Potentially very effective, to be seized if the opportunity arises, but to be applied to content that is qualitative first. The history of SEO suggests with some certainty that future updates will continue along the same lines. No matter the name of the update or its technical details. No matter its deployment context - the advent of AIs or the era of master spin before them. Quality is durability. It is a core principe.

Is SEO in 2025 still a free ranking method?

In the past, it was customary to oppose so-called organic SEO, which relies on optimizing a website's web content, to SEA (Search Engine Advertising) with one being presented as free, and the other as paid. In fact, there was a time when manually writing a few pieces of content was enough to gain satisfactory visibility. Organic SEO could therefore be completely free - excluding the time invested - and I say that is still somewhat the case in 2025, if you are comfortable writing.

It all depends on the context, the density of your sector, and the overall optimization of your site, but with Google Vicinity, deployed in 2021, which focuses your competition on your local neighbors in the event of local activity, handcrafted content creation can still be an effective, potentially durable, and lower-cost or no-cost ranking technique.

In a red ocean, however, or when facing with global competition, it is more delicate, and organic SEO benefits from being part of a global marketing strategy, otherwise it can quickly become an unprofitable investment - in terms of time or money.

With free AIs, can you do quality SEO?

Yes, why not. Free AIs are not as powerful as paid AIs for generating quality content, but they can help you if you struggle with writing or creativity.

In this case, to avoid poor quality content that risks penalizing you more than anything else, I only advise one thing: generate content on topics you know well, and proofread it carefully. AIs make many mistakes, especially the free versions that do not have the computational power necessary to process elaborate prompts designed to minimize their failures. Even when you provide them with sources to work from.

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, so I encourage you to do the test in image. Ask a free AI to draw you a precise picture. Most of the time, there will be errors, and if you ask the AI to correct itself, it won't do it or will do it badly. It's very revealing.

In a text, errors do not jump out at you like in an image, especially if you don't know the subject very well. However, I guarantee you they are indeed there. Invisible, because AIs paraphrase each other and propagate their errors quickly and massively, making verification difficult, even for them. Disinformation is having its best days on the internet these days.

The Final Word: A Little Philosophy

Why race against algorithm updates? Panda is not your enemy. The improvement of the customer experience on the internet concerns us all. Internet users, SEs, clients, prospects, marketing agencies... We all have a strong interest in keeping our ecosystem attractive, both for economic growth and for our personal online experience.

The question is not to dismiss Quick Wins and other potentially very efficient SEO practices, but to focus on the fundamental before moving on to optimization. Optimization is not an act of creation or transmutation. It is rather about polishing what exists to achieve the best possible performance. Starting from a solid base is a major advantage, or even essential.

Furthermore, the updates that shake the SERPs almost always relate to the deployment of new quality measurement methods, and not a revolution in HTML tags or sitemaps. In this context, focusing on quality before chasing the very latest SEO tricks is a sustainable strategy, for your ranking and for your ecosystem.