Search is changing quickly, and the uncertainty around AI search, answer engines, citations, and zero-click searches has left some companies questioning how much they should continue investing in SEO.
Freezing budgets or taking a “wait and see” approach might feel prudent. But organic trust and authority take time to build, and putting SEO on hold can create a momentum deficit that becomes increasingly expensive to recover.
Why pausing SEO carries its own risks
I have friends who own or lead search agencies or brand search functions who have seriously questioned whether they want to stick around for where this is all going. I understand where they’re coming from. There’s a lot to track and adapt to.
On the flip side, I know plenty of firms and agencies that are meeting the uncertainty with a glass-half-full mentality (including my team). We’ve accepted that unknowns are part of the territory in search, and we’re nerding out over tests, new learnings, and where it’s all going.
SEO and AI visibility don’t have an on-and-off switch. A colleague recently compared them to a vending machine: You can’t put a dollar in and expect a predictable number of dollars to come back out. Organic trust and authority compound over time. When you pause your efforts, you create an opportunity for others to fill the gap.
Be patient with expectations, knowing that organic growth takes time, without becoming paralyzed in execution. If the dust eventually settles, stopping now could mean spending considerably more time and money to regain your baseline authority than you would have spent maintaining it, testing, learning, and building advantages along the way.
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How to maintain SEO momentum amid uncertainty
You need to find the balance between sacrificing your search foundation and falling into operational paralysis.
1. Measure the true cost of lost momentum
Traditional search results, newer AI search features, and emerging AI models all rely on consistent signals of trust and authority.
If you stop updating content, auditing technical aspects of your site, or engaging in ways that build and earn authority signals, your site becomes stale and less attractive to bots and your target audience.
These soft costs may not show up clearly on a dashboard. They include:
- Loss of market share or share of voice.
- Longer recovery times or greater investment in the future.
- The overall impact on sales or sales pipelines if you don’t stay current and adapt as you go.
You don’t want to be talking about an empty funnel months from now and what you wish you’d done. You need to find ways to estimate the difference in cost and time between doing less or nothing and continuing to invest in the short and long term.
2. Shift from chasing tactics to maintaining foundations
I was just asked in a large boardroom about the unknowns around AI optimization. We discussed whether to keep investing or pause until we know the definitive tactics that work.
There are a lot of articles and news when new data comes out or tactics are discovered through testing in the search community, much of it exciting and warranted. We don’t need to know every tactic or “trick” or exactly how AI algorithms or answer engines work.
We need to stay focused on the fundamentals that support visibility across AI and search engines: original content, data, E-E-A-T, and content that fills the funnel. We should budget time and resources for testing and experimentation while monitoring where others are seeing success. But we can’t abandon the foundations and fundamentals as we do so.
Dig deeper: Stop optimizing. Start orchestrating. That’s SEO now.
3. Use ‘trigger events’ instead of a full stop
If your budget has already been reduced or reallocated, or you’ve been told to prioritize efforts elsewhere, factor what I call trigger events into your overall search strategy.
Keep the lights on as much as possible while watching for trigger events. These can range from shifts in internal priorities (products, services, audiences, and goals) to competitor changes in the marketplace and major changes in algorithms and LLMs.
A trigger event is any force or friction that can significantly impact the ROI of your efforts, at whatever level or baseline you’re operating. These events should prompt you to look at your current tactics, revisit your overall strategy, and evaluate what should change. Sometimes you stay the course. Other times, you make changes through a strategic lens, revisiting expectations, goals, and the overall tactical plan.
You can’t ignore these events even if you’re scaling other efforts up or down or changing your strategy because of AI search.
I unpack the concept of trigger events further in my book, “The Digital Marketing Success Plan.”
4. Run controlled experiments
I’ve already noted experimentation, but it deserves more attention. Even in more “stable” SEO days, we should have been testing and experimenting. It’s as important as ever now.
That means having trusted sources, monitoring what others report is working (as long as it fits your company’s risk tolerance and approach to white-, gray-, or black-hat tactics), and even testing your own theories to nurture your inner search nerd.
When you’re testing and reporting on results, something that works may not last forever. One highly acclaimed industry thought leader might have data that directly contradicts another, and they might both be right.
Lily Ray shared data suggesting that popular listicle strategies may be backfiring, with some authors being left out of their own industry lists. However, I’m annoyed because I’m still seeing one show up prominently for one of my clients’ competitors.
Dedicate even a small amount of time or money to experiments and tests when you can. Don’t make the tests your overall strategy, but don’t cut them either if you’re tempted to.
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Keep moving while search evolves
Waiting for the search landscape to settle could be riskier than staying the course in uncharted waters. That can be hard to quantify and share with others in marketing, broader corporate leadership, and other stakeholder groups.
Waiting can lead to lost momentum and falling behind. If you can quantify that risk, you can make the case for continuing to invest, keeping up with competitors who aren’t pausing, and optimizing for AI systems that aren’t standing still either.
If you’re tempted to pause or slow down search efforts, understand the risk and ensure that the decision is strategic and won’t lead to unintended consequences.
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