Welcome to another edition of The SEOs Diner's Club! Each week, I bring you a digest of the latest SEO updates and AI-driven insights, all crafted to fit into just a few minutes of your time. With over a decade of experience in SEO, my goal is to break down the week’s most important developments into a quick, insightful read. This way, you stay ahead of the curve in less than seven minutes. Let's jump into what matters this week!

The SEO Expert's 2025 Toolkit: Are You Ready for Change?

Significant changes are coming in the digital world in 2025! Guiding content awaits you for SEO professionals who want to improve themselves and prepare for the future!

The world of SEO is changing faster than ever. Artificial intelligence, big language models (LLMs), and alternative platforms are reshaping the search experience. Ranking on Google is no longer enough; you must understand user intent, establish brands as authorities, and be visible across platforms.

As we prepare for 2025, I have prepared a roadmap for you to keep up with this change. Let's get ready for the future together.

1. Artificial Intelligence: Your Partner, Not a Competitor

Artificial intelligence is a tool that makes SEO more accessible and faster. However, many experts still don't fully utilize these tools' opportunities. From keyword research to understanding user intent, artificial intelligence can make our work more accessible in many areas.

A Practical Application Suggestion

Screaming Frog's OpenAI API integration allows you to analyze your content at scale to identify relevant pages on your site. Try this tool to optimize your internal links and improve the user experience. Using the same integration, you can also enable AI to generate components such as page title, description, image alt, etc., while crawling a site.

2. Large Language Models (LLMs): The New Playing Field

Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity AI and Google Gemini are reshaping SEO strategies. We need to keep up with search engines and advanced tools.

Why is it Important for SEO Professionals?

LLMs are changing the way users access information. Users are now turning not only to Google but also to platforms like Perplexity. As SEO experts, increasing visibility on these platforms has become one of the new areas of expertise. Prepare your SEO strategies for the future by developing yourself in this field.

3. Content Generation with Artificial Intelligence: Be Balanced and Authentic

Artificial intelligence is enabling great speed and efficiency in content production. However, it is essential to manage this process correctly because content produced solely by AI is often superficial and mediocre.

My Favorite AI-Powered Content Creation Tools

• Jasper AI: Ideal for producing quality content by creating a unique writing style for brands with its “brand voice” feature.

• ChatGPT Canvas: This relatively new model allows us to produce quality content with the proper prompts and edits.

• SurferSEO: An excellent tool for producing and optimizing SEO-friendly content. Thanks to its natural language processing capability, it allows for entity and topic-based analysis rather than keyword-based.

• Grammarly: A must-have for both grammar editing and content strategy.

• NotebookLM: Google NotebookLM works like an assistant to process your data and provide you with the most effective information. Using AI in this way allows you to manage your time more efficiently and draw creative conclusions from existing resources. If you haven't tried a tool like this, now is the time!

A Practical Application Suggestion

Create a custom GPT for the brand for which you will produce content with ChatGPT. To get better-quality content, upload the spelling and spelling rules of the language you will produce content in as a PDF file. Ensure that the created content is uploaded to the site after being reviewed by your customer.

Google's Official Position on AI-Generated Content

Google has a clear stance on AI content: “Authentic, high-quality content that adds value to the user will be recognized, even if AI generates it.” You can read Google's statement for more information.

3. Online PR: The Hidden Power of SEO

Brand authority has become one of the most essential elements of SEO. However, creating a strong brand is not only possible through the efforts of SEO experts; you need to convince your customers of this investment.

How to Convince Your Customers?

• Talk with Examples and Data: Provide concrete data such as “Brands increase brand searches by 30% with online PR efforts”.

• Share Success Stories: For example, tell how a brand experienced increased organic traffic after being featured on news sites.

• Get Professional Support: Consult an agency that specialises in Online PR.

They can help you identify the right publications to target and create compelling content that will resonate with your audience.

LLMs and Online PR

LLMs pull information from trusted sources. Media coverage through online PR efforts will ensure that these tools reference your brand.

4. SEO on Alternative Platforms

SEO is no longer limited to Google. Users now get information from YouTube, TikTok, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and social media platforms.

What Can You Do?

• Bing Webmaster Tools: If you haven't already, you can create a Bing Webmaster Tools account for your websites and submit XML Sitemap files. Some serious studies show that ChatGPT is fed from the Bing search engine pool. The better you introduce your sites to Bing, the more your visibility on ChatGPT can increase.

• YouTube SEO: Optimize your video titles, descriptions and tags. Check out our YouTube SEO guide.

• ChatGPT and Perplexity: Create content optimized for these platforms by analyzing users' frequently asked questions.

• LinkedIn: Increase your visibility by sharing regular content.

5. Face Change and Stay Motivated

Change is not always easy, but it is essential for growth. To cope with changes in the SEO world, you need to improve your technical skills and your emotional resilience.

Tips to Beat Imposter Syndrome

Imposter Syndrome is a psychological condition that leads a person to believe that his or her achievements are due to incompetence or luck. People with this syndrome think that they did not get where they are because of their talent or intelligence and that one day, everyone will realize this “truth”. SEOs suffer from this syndrome more than once in their professional lives. The following may help you at this point;

• Take Small Steps: Try a new tool or take a course every week. Small steps lead to significant results. If you haven't already, read the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. It successfully explains how small daily steps can have a substantial cumulative effect over time. For almost 150 weeks (roughly 5 years!), this book is one of my main motivations for writing a newsletter; the other is to prove to the younger generations how dedication and perseverance can lead to success. If I am lucky and survive, I plan to continue this newsletter until 2044 🙂 

• Get Support from Communities: Attend SEO events and be active in digital marketing communities. You can contact me to chat.

• Remember Your Story: Review your successes in this industry. Everyone has a different learning process.

• Don't Compare Yourself with Others: Remember that many shared SEO success stories do not benefit the brand. SEO experts who say they have succeeded in every project may generally not reflect the truth. Do not feel inadequate in the face of such stories. It's important to remember that these individuals' most outstanding achievement lies in their ability to manipulate and convince other SEO experts and companies of their fabricated success. Don't fall into this trap.

• Be prepared: You will face an SEO experience in which rankings in search results will lose their importance. Are you ready? Prepare yourself and your customers for it now.

6. Keep Learning: Weekly Newsletters and YouTube Channels

To stay up-to-date in the SEO world, you must keep learning. In my weekly newsletter, I cover a wide range of topics, from the latest SEO trends to the use of artificial intelligence. Barring any setbacks, my newsletter and videos will continue throughout 2025.

Weekly Content You Can Follow:

• SEOs Diners Club: Don't miss my latest SEO and digital marketing notes.

• The AI Journal: A newsletter I subscribe to for tracking developments in artificial intelligence.

• Marketing Against the Grain: A YouTube channel hosted by the CMOs of Hubspot and Zapier that I find very useful. Each week, they review a new AI tool or method.

• Kevin Indig, Eli Schwartz, Mark Williams Cook, Will Reynolds, Mike King, and Rand Fishkin are marketing professionals whose newsletters and posts I regularly follow. Even though their disciplines differ, I benefit from their creative thoughts. This is precisely what we will need in 2025; we must approach SEO and Digital Marketing from different perspectives, not just technically.

Resources to Improve Yourself

1. ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers: An accessible starting point. Learn to analyze more effectively with ChatGPT.

2. Fundamentals of Generative AI: I attended this great course last June, which is for those who want to learn the fundamentals of artificial intelligence.

3. Coursera—AI for Everyone: Andrew Ng's course helps you understand artificial intelligence from a broader perspective.

4. Deep Thought: I just finished reading this book by Garry Kasparov, which examines the relationship between artificial intelligence and humans. It is a very useful book for realizing what we can achieve together with artificial intelligence rather than seeing it as our competitor. I recommend it.

5. DeepLearning.AI — NLP Specialization: An excellent course to understand the basics of NLP and LLMs.

6. Actionable AI for Marketers: Launching in January 2025, this course will provide in-depth knowledge of marketing and AI.

7. The Art of Prompt Engineering: A valuable resource for learning prompt writing and creating more effective LLM content.

Prepare for the Future Today!

In 2025, SEO will become more strategic and creative! Fields like artificial intelligence, LLMs, and Online PR will be critical to standing out in this world. Take action now, improve yourself, and turn this transformation into an advantage! Remember: Change is not something to fear, but a great opportunity!

Could Your SEO and PPC Strategies Be Sabotaging Each Other?

Ahrefs' 2.3 million keyword study reveals PPC and SEO conflicts. Are you using your advertising budget efficiently?

Ahrefs’ study titled “Do SEO and PPC Strategies Conflict?” raises a problem I often encounter: Your advertising budget conflicts with your SEO strategy.

By examining 2.3 million keywords and 5 million ads, the research reveals that 37.9% of businesses are repeat advertising on keywords they already rank for organically. What’s more, 40.66% of advertised pages rank #1 organically.

I know from experience that a lack of coordination between PPC and SEO teams can cause this. Ahrefs’ findings show that PPC can lead to unnecessary spending, especially on branded keywords. I suspect you’ve experienced this dilemma as well.

Of course, if you have a large budget, you may have the luxury of saying, “The more visibility, the better.” However, from talking to my clients, I know that most companies do not have that budget and are finding it more challenging as the economy gets tougher.

Search Console “Recommendations” Feature Has Been Activated on All Sites

Google’s Search Console recommendations feature is live for all users, but the suggestions are limited and offer little useful information.

Google Search Console's new recommendations feature has been rolled out to all users after a lengthy trial period. However, the feature's functionality does not yet fully meet expectations.

According to Google, you will only see suggestions if your site has a real optimization opportunity. This means that not every user will benefit from this feature. Furthermore, the tips are limited and usually focus on the basics experienced SEO experts already know.

Let's not forget that Google has stated that it will update the recommendations regularly and make improvements over time. However, for now, it is difficult to say that this feature seriously contributes to SEO experts.

Once fully operational, these automated systems will offer you suggestions such as:

• Structured data improvements

• Adding sitemaps

• Trending queries and pages

• Conformity to rich results

• Video indexing

• Data limitations

Instead of blindly trusting the suggestions, it is important to proceed by correctly analyzing your site's needs. For those who want to try the new feature, it may be useful to review Google's support documents.

Weekly Tool Recommendations for SEO Experts

Every week, I share the SEO tools I use and newly discovered in this section. Don't miss out on the analysis and optimization tools you need to enhance your strategy!

• Want to gather all the links on a web page quickly? Thruuu's free Link Extractor tool offers a great solution. You simply paste the URL, and within seconds, you get a clear list of all the links on that page—whether internal or external. I often use it in SEO audits and content analyses. It's a time-saving tool, especially when I need to conduct quick research. If you also want to check your links regularly, I'd recommend giving it a try.

• The new version of the Free Google Search Console Report Tool is out, offering awe-inspiring features. It can perform multi-domain reporting for situations like website transitions. Additionally, it allows for detailed analyses such as keyword and page clustering, keyword opportunities, and cluster comparisons. The best part is it provides unlimited data export options! If you want to explore this fantastic tool, visit MyDomain.dev here.

This Week in the World of AI: Tools, Services, and Tips

I've put together this week's agenda focused on AI for you. It highlights critical topics exploring the latest advancements in artificial intelligence, discussions on ethical considerations, and innovative applications across various industries. Get ready for an engaging week of learning and collaboration!

• This week, Metehan Yesilyurt announced AI-powered, highly creative analysis tools that caught my interest. I strongly recommend checking out the Google Discover analysis tool.

• Mike King published a blog post on the Moz blog titled “The 13 Best AI Automation Tools to Boost Productivity and Efficiency”.

• Anthropic announced the integration of Claude and Google Docs on X! This exciting development enables users to effortlessly integrate Google Docs into Claude’s chat interface, offering a tremendous tool for document analysis. This integration lets users obtain summaries and insights from their documents, extracting valuable information from extensive texts. Don’t miss this step, pushing the boundaries of innovation!

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Best,

Mert Erkal