When it comes to raising your website’s visibility in search, blogs are as important now as ever.

Despite what some might say.

Over the years, every cry of “Search engine optimization is dead!” has turned out to be wrong.

In 2025, people are saying “search engine optimization is dead” because of AI. But the truth is, publishing a high quality blog on your website is still the most effective way to appear prominently in Google results. And the vast majority of people are still using Google for searching, not ChatGPT.

What has changed is the methodology that enables certain blogs to excel.

Here are the facts on writing blogs for search engine optimization in 2025:

1. Questions Are Now as Important as Keywords

Even though most people are not using ChatGPT as a search alternative in 2025, almost everyone interested in what your business can do has interacted with AI at least a little. Combined with “smart assistants” like Alexa, this has changed the way people frame queries when they go online.

Instead of typing a short phrase, many people craft their search queries as questions. Each can be quite long, flipping the script on old-fashioned search engine optimization techniques involving keywords. The advice to look for a “long-tail keyword phrase” of 5-8 words no longer applies in all cases.

Instead, companies should usually think in terms of questions customers are most likely to ask on their way to solving their problems. Working with a marketing agency gives you a distinct advantage: top-level marketers recognize the situations where long-tail keywords are still the best way to go.

2. Length Is No Longer a Leading Factor

A few years ago, research came to light suggesting high-performing results within many keyword groups were articles of 3,000 words or more. This led to a predictable situation: websites published a slurry of articles all characterized by ridiculously long, irrelevant digressions, burying the desired information in the middle.

If you’ve ever looked at a page that gave you the whole history of algebra when all you wanted was the value of pi, you’ve seen the result of a fixation on length. Many Google updates later, signs now point to the conclusion that length is no longer the winning consideration it used to be.

Mid-sized and even short articles can now compete effectively with longer ones when:

• They are properly optimized, including technical SEO that accelerates speed and improves security.
• They are appropriately connected to a full range of useful resources, including quality external links.
• They provide adequate, accurate, and engaging information on the topic in a highly readable form.

3. Videos Make Blogs More Effective

If you’ve been researching digital marketing, you’ve probably already read that video makes up the majority of “online traffic.” But that statement is deceiving: The average video contains tens of thousands of times more data than a text-only blog post, so it’s only natural that videos require more traffic than text or audio.

For practical purposes, text is still the backbone of online communication.

What is true is that video has consistently become more and more influential in making text content effective. A video anywhere on a blog page makes a user much more likely to follow a call to action or make a purchase. At the same time, video increases search engine visibility in two ways:

• Pages with video are much more likely than those without to appear in the top five Google results.
• Videos hosted directly on YouTube provide you with a secondary opportunity to appear in results.

4. There Are Ominous Signs for the Long-Term Viability of AI Content

Google registers dozens of patents every year, and the pace of its innovation has only increased as it’s become one of the biggest players in artificial intelligence. However, just because Google is involved in AI doesn’t mean that it wants AI to make up the majority of organic search results from third-party websites.

A quick review of its recent patents tells the opposite story. In fact, it appears Google is developing new ways to a) detect AI content on the one hand and b) identify novel information from online content on the other. That will put it in a position to be an arbiter of whether or not AI content succeeds online.

Our prediction: Just like low-quality content from the “content farms” of days past, AI content will become a problem for website owners. Google is crafting the technology to ID and exclude low-effort AI from results.

In the long term, this suggests Google will turn against AI in search – and if it doesn’t, it might only give its blessing to content generated through its own AI tools. Either way, using AI-generated content in 2025 may plant the seeds of your own destruction in 2026 and beyond.

5. Unique Blog Content May Finally Become a Strategic Differentiator

What’s the opposite of AI-generated content?

Today’s Large Language Models use statistical pattern recognition to guess the most common next word in a sequence, a little bit like autocomplete on your phone. With that in mind, there’s really no way for them to push the envelope or expand human knowledge – they can only repeat the data they were trained on.

Google’s patents reveal an interest in the opposite: emerging methods of recognizing when written content provides a high level of “information gain.” Google has always wanted unique content, but now it’s building frameworks that allow it to recognize and prioritize that content in ways that were never possible before.

By the end of 2025, first-to-market innovations and unique insights will start to define which blogs are most successful. Thought leadership will become an even more important part of the content marketing mix, and businesses will need to partner with marketing agencies capable of representing their brand brilliantly in text.

6. The Pace of Blog Updates Still Matters

In the midst of all these more cerebral considerations, one obvious thing hasn’t changed:

It’s still important to update your blog on a regular basis.

Back in the old days, when it took much longer for Google to “crawl” websites, updating frequently was one way to get more attention from its bots. These days, Google’s information processing is advanced enough that it doesn’t need to rely on this signal, but updating at least once a week is still a best practice.

Publishing new content frequently enables you to compete across more keyword groups. What’s more, it gives new visitors to your website the impression that you’re active, engaged, and constantly involved in defining the best ways to serve them. That makes a difference compared to a dormant-looking website.

Want Modern, Effective Blogs? Use a Full-Service Marketing Agency

Crafting a well-written, effective blog with your in-house team is more demanding than before. But with the right help, it can be simple. New York Ave will develop and execute your content marketing strategy so you can focus on what you do best. Contact us for Marketing by humans, not robots.™