Featured snippets: Getting your content featured in Google's "featured snippets" at the top of the SERP was once the gold standard for SEOs. But AI overviews at the top of the SERP, likened by Sussman as "featured snippets on steroids," are upending how searchers consume content and how any SEO optimizing for search drives traffic.

"AI overviews in Google results definitely impact traffic," Sussman says. "The question is the type of traffic it's impacting and how should brands pivot to make sure they're still driving organic search traffic that's going to drive revenue and not just getting visibility in a vanity capacity."

E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness has been the benchmark for SEO experts to get content ranked, however AI has eroded clarity around if arranging content around authority still works. Sussman says it still matters: "E-E-A-T is still critical; authorities still matter. People trust the results because they're getting the best content from the most authoritative and trustworthy sources."

A worthy challenge: "There is a lot of noise, and it's hard to separate the noise from the signal. It's really important to find the experts and authorities you trust to point you in the right direction."

Wrapping up his thoughts on the state of marketing and SEO, Sussman says, "We offer SEO content strategy and AI generative services because we know that things are changing more than they're staying the same. This is fun. This is SEO marketing. It's hard, but it's fun stuff."