Yeah, even though it was a Bot that started this thread (nice SEO work, buddy haha)... I'll chime in because this stuff really excites me.
IMO gone are the days of charging a monthly SEO service fee and creating on page articles and content for longtail keywords. Like what Greg was saying, kiss that traffic goodbye, it didn't provide much anyways.
What I'm shifting too is more along the lines of:
Step 1 remains the same -- Creating a professional, SEO optimized site with all of the key ranking factors taken care of.
Step 2 is not pump the site full of content like -- "How to change a windshield wiper on a Honda Accord in Charlotte"
For me, step 2 is now everything outside of the website; creating a pristine Google Business Profile, making sure citations are all there, Optimize for Bing since OpenAI uses Bing, start looking more into Instgram posts now that Google indexes them, engaging on Reddit, youtube content, finding local sponsorship opportunities (with logo/links!!), better trained chatbots, sourcing other local directories, newsletters, creating onpage free widgets/tools with AI....
So still putting in the hours and optimizing the
business, just not doing the same ole 'content is king' style of optimizing directly on the site and saying I'll create 2 new blog posts a week.
Instead it's "I'll spend all my time doing all the other things" like Neil Patel calls it 'search everywhere optimization'