The SEO landscape has fundamentally shifted, and professionals who cling to outdated playbooks are getting left behind. This reality became crystal clear during a recent conversation with Ryan Jones, Marketing Manager at SEO Testing, on the Unscripted SEO Podcast. What emerged was a roadmap for how modern SEO professionals must evolve beyond traditional boundaries to survive and thrive.
The Death of the Linear Content Strategy
“A lot of SEOs just kind of look at the keyword research and say, ‘This is the market size and this is all it really is,’ and try to find the highest value keywords to target,” explains Jeremy Rivera, host of the podcast and founder of SEO Arcade. “But it leaves aside the fact that there are so many opportunities now to create demand.”
The traditional SEO playbook was beautifully simple: create a blog post, then create another blog post, then create another blog post. Rinse and repeat until you dominated your niche. But that vertical approach is dying, replaced by what Rivera calls “horizontal” content distribution.
“It seems to me that it’s actually now like horizontal versus vertical,” Rivera continues. “So instead of creating one blog post after another, I’m going to create a blog post, a version of it for LinkedIn Pulse, a version for my Substack, a version for my email newsletter followers, maybe turn it into a slide deck, save that on SlideShare, take the video and post it to YouTube, Vidler, Vimeo… take one piece of content through these multiple hoops.”
This content distribution strategy has proven particularly effective for Rivera’s clients. “I am actively experimenting with this for a photo booth rental client, and have seen pretty good success in getting these ‘barnacle’ URLs and sites to show up, surprisingly sometimes easier than blog posts.”
The Multi-Disciplinary SEO Professional
Ryan Jones has witnessed this evolution firsthand at SEO Testing. “I completely agree with that point in the sense that I think SEO is becoming now and it will become more multi-disciplined,” Jones explains. “We know that people are eventually gonna start using LLMs to search for what they need. We’re starting to see that now – if we look at our analytics data, we are getting new trials from people who found us using ChatGPT.”
This shift requires comprehensive SEO testing methodologies to validate new approaches. Jones describes how SEO Testing has adapted: “In terms of creating demand, we’re now looking at it from the point of creating demand via social media, but it’s all still linking back into SEO.”
The results speak for themselves. “We are still creating new content and trying to create as many clicks as we can through organic search because it’s still our primary acquisition channel. But the way we create content has changed,” Jones reveals. “Whereas before we were doing keyword research, finding the potential, creating the content and distributing – now we’re using social media as a gauge of interest. If one of my posts really does well on LinkedIn, that might signify this is something people are generally interested in, and then we’ll create a piece of content for search around that and promote it that way.”
From Traffic Volume to Traffic Quality
One of the most significant discoveries has been the superior quality of traffic from non-traditional sources. “The traffic that we do get from LLMs seems to be really high intent and is actually converting at a much higher rate than the organic traffic,” Jones explains. “We see more people clicking on guides that we class as key events in GA4 and clicking on the free trial button to sign up.”
This insight is driving fundamental changes in how SEO professionals approach client content strategies. Rather than chasing high-volume keywords, the focus is shifting toward creating touchpoints across multiple channels that attract genuinely interested prospects.
Advanced SEO testing platforms are becoming essential for validating these multi-channel approaches. As Jones notes, “Testing is a way to inform strategy going forward. You can use it to avoid any costly mistakes, especially for big sites where making a risky change could tank traffic.”
The Social Media Testing Ground
Perhaps the most practical evolution in modern SEO is using social media platforms as content validation tools. Jones has become “all over LinkedIn, Blue Sky, Threads, and any social media that exists” specifically to test content concepts before investing in full SEO-focused pieces.
“We’ve focused more on social media, which is why I’ve started having a more active focus on trying to grow my social media presence,” Jones explains. This approach allows for rapid testing of content ideas and audience interest before committing resources to comprehensive content creation.
This strategy aligns perfectly with the podcast content marketing approaches that Rivera advocates for clients. By testing content themes across multiple channels, brands can identify winning concepts before scaling them across their entire content ecosystem.
The Technical Evolution: Beyond Basic SEO
Modern SEO professionals must also expand their technical capabilities. Jones shares a concrete example: “From our own internal tests, one of our standard processes was having a video created for every blog post that was published on YouTube, and then putting that at the top of the blog. We found that having that video on the blog posts increased the blog post performance in search. Then we did a split test and adding video schema markup to those videos increased it even further by about 300%.”
This kind of structured data optimization represents the technical sophistication required in modern SEO. “Whether schema is a ranking factor or not, or whether it just helps Google decide that this brand is good at this thing… Whether it’s direct or indirect, I don’t know, but from test data, it is one of the most important things you can do,” Jones concludes.
Breaking Free from Traditional Boundaries
The conversation reveals a fundamental truth: SEO professionals who remain confined to traditional boundaries will struggle. “Now it kind of feels like we’re being called beyond the boundaries of just straight up SEO,” Rivera observes.
This evolution requires embracing new measurement methodologies for SEO success and understanding that modern search optimization extends far beyond Google’s organic results. As Jones explains, “We’re having to find a replacement for that lost traffic and that will come from other search engines, social media, and even more traditional marketing as well.”
The shift also demands new approaches to client education and expectation management. When working with clients in ultra-niche markets, Jones recalls having to explain: “Eventually if you stop doing the SEO work, someone will overtake you. It becomes a communication issue of having to explain to them that now you’re kind of having to pay to stay at the top of the market.”
The Horizontalization Imperative
“That horizontalization for each content piece is something that is kind of anathema to a lot of SEO specific marketing people because they’ve been used to just hiring content writers to publish blog posts,” Rivera notes. This resistance to change is understandable but ultimately counterproductive.
The new reality requires comprehensive content workflow systems that can efficiently distribute and optimize content across multiple channels. Jones emphasizes the importance of this approach: “This approach aligns well with SEO Testing’s process of creating effective SEO workflows for content success.”
For agencies and in-house teams, this means developing scalable content distribution processes that can maintain quality while expanding reach. The goal isn’t just to create more content, but to create content that can effectively serve multiple purposes across various platforms.
Learning from Multi-Channel Success Stories
The practical application of these principles can be seen in real client results. Rivera shares his experience: “I was discussing with Matt Brooks of SEOTeric, how can we leverage our footholds elsewhere? Or really it’s almost like Ross Simmons and kind of create once and redistribute forever.”
This “create once, redistribute forever” mentality represents a fundamental shift in resource allocation and strategic thinking. Rather than viewing each piece of content as a standalone asset, successful SEO professionals are treating content as raw material that can be adapted and optimized for multiple channels and use cases.
The Testing Imperative
Central to this evolution is the need for rigorous testing. “One of the common myths about testing is that if one thing works, then it will NOT work for everyone,” Jones emphasizes. “For us, content refreshes have been a great source of success… But for another website, content refreshes might not work as well or might not work at all.”
This reality makes systematic testing approaches essential for modern SEO success. Without proper testing infrastructure, it’s impossible to determine which multi-channel strategies will work for specific brands and audiences.
Looking Forward: The New SEO Professional
The conversation between Rivera and Jones paints a picture of the modern SEO professional as a multi-disciplinary marketer who understands technical implementation, content strategy, social media dynamics, and testing methodologies. This isn’t just about adding new skills—it’s about fundamentally reimagining the role of SEO within the broader marketing ecosystem.
For those ready to embrace this evolution, the opportunities are significant. As Jones concludes, “We are still creating new content and trying to create as many clicks as we can through organic search because it’s still our primary acquisition channel.” The difference is that successful SEO professionals are no longer limiting themselves to traditional organic search as their only channel for success.
The future belongs to those who can seamlessly integrate traditional SEO wisdom with modern multi-channel marketing realities. The question isn’t whether this evolution will continue—it’s whether individual professionals and agencies will adapt quickly enough to thrive in this new landscape.
Listen to more insights from industry leaders on the Unscripted SEO Podcast, and explore how SEO Arcade can help implement these multi-channel strategies for your brand.