SEO trends: What changed in 2025 vs what continues to matter

As we head into the final quarter of the year, I’m taking a look at some of the dominant SEO trends of 2025, the ones that have been consistently highlighted, the insights I’ve observed myself, and which trends are set to continue growing or worth keeping an eye on. With optimisation tips to help you adapt to the trends.

1. Cross-platform search: Users now search across AI answer engines, YouTube, forums, review sites, and social media, which can also appear in SERPs.
2. Zero-click searches & AI Overviews: As zero-click searches rise, CTRs drop, and AI-generated summaries are expanding across industries and niches.
3. Content refresh & upcycling for AI summaries: Updating and restructuring existing content helps maintain relevance and rank not just in organic search results but also in AI summaries.
4. Accessibility EU enforcement: Accessibility has always mattered, but the EU Accessibility Act (June 2025) now gives it regulatory weight, influencing UX and SEO performance.
5. Backlinks shift focus on brand authority: High-quality, relevant links, brand mentions, and topical authority are more important than link volume for SEO.
6. Search beyond text (voice, visual, video): Optimising for voice prompts, visual search (Google Lens), and video across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok is increasingly critical for discoverability.

The way users search is now rapidly taking a multi-touch approach, journeying from one platform to another, particularly for searches with commercial intent, gone are the days where Google was the primary, sole platform users would stick to, and this shift is not likely to slow down.

Users can compare results between chatGPT, Youtube, Reddit, Trustpilot and more. (1)

Social media content can now rank in Google

For years TikTok, YouTube and even more recently as of July 2025 – Google and other search engines began indexing public posts from as far back as 2020 onward from Instagram, restricted to professional (creator/business) accounts. (7)

This trend is likely to become the new normal, therefore you optimise your social media content so that it is visible in the SERPs and make sure your website is up to date with best practices so it isn’t getting pushed down by not only competitor websites but also competitor’s social media rankings.

To stay competitive, grow your online presence beyond your website with a multi-platform approach, enabling users more ways to learn about your brand.

How to rank your instagram content on Google

Use keywords on post descriptions, profile name and alt text. Hashtags now have a more nuanced effect on search than before, it may help inside instagram for discovering within the platform, and could help keyword signals somewhat.

For more tips read: How Get Your Instagram on Google 2025

Moreover, cross reference your social media alongside your website and link them together though a Google Business Profile.

Since the launch of Google’s AI overview and answer engine, zero click searches have become the new mainstay. For some searches, this can make your visibility (or click through rates) appear reduced in organic search results as snippets and summaries are shown directly in SERPs, driving away the need to click on a website to give users the answer they are searching for. (2)

According to Semrush data, appearance of Google AI overviews rose from 6.5% in Jan to around 13% in Mar 2025 (US).

A staggering “58.5% of Google searches in the U.S. result in zero clicks” is being reported in recent analyses. (5)

Note: zero click rates vary by country and query type.

• To optimise for AI overviews, create concise, quality, content in an answer-first structure for search engines that provide answers to questions related to popular search queries in your niche.
• If users want to read more, your content will be available for clicks in the sources.
• Higher authority sites more likely to appear in AI overviews.
• The counter balance is that AIO gives visibility but may reduce clickthrough traffic.

Prioritise:

• Research: what’s currently being featured for the questions or topics you want to target, using free tools such as Google Trends and Answer the Public
• Readability: text that is easy to read, scannable and in plain natural language. Short, simple sentences take priority over long blocks of text. Make use white space to break up the content.
• Schema Markup: These snippets of code on your webpages to help search engines understand and present your content.
  Prioritise FAQ, HowTo, and Article schema, and test it using Google’s Rich Results Test to make sure it’s working correctly.
• Optimise for Featured Snippets: these are a piece of content at the top of Google’s SERP that provides a direct answer to the user’s search query from one of the top-ranking web pages. It usually appears in the form of a paragraph, listicle, table, or video.

Even if users don’t click, these offer prime SERP positions. The more trust you build through visibility, the more likely users are to remember you and interact with you when they’re ready. (1)

Further reading: Featured Snippet Optimisation Tips

Regularly refreshing and updating your old blog posts is a known approach to maintaining relevance and rankings. However, with content life cycles shortening, there is also a need to consider how we refresh to compete with AI generated summaries. (5)

• Ensure your content continues to align with user intent, adheres to SEO best practices, and competes effectively with newer material on the same topic.
• Start by rewriting and restructure one of your existing blog posts to improve clarity, formatting, and an answer-first structure (refer to How to optimise for AI overviews). Ideally, you’re aiming for your article to be featured in the AI Overview for your target keyword, which can be a question or long-tail query.
• This applies not just to website copy, but also to social media, where old instagram content can now be refreshed and may resurface through the SERPs.

Digital accessibility has always mattered, but the EU Accessibility Act (June 2025) gives it regulatory weight. The EU Accessibility Act imposes strict compliance requirements for hardware and services provided to EU consumers, including e-commerce offers, (4)

Making websites accessible can make a world of difference for users with disabilities, improves UX and may positively influence search performance.

While generating a volume of backlinks is still important, especially for ranking for high-value keywords, Google seems to be shifting to favouring brand authority. This means quality off-site signals of trust, brand rep and topical authority increasingly carries more weight for backlinks beyond just link volume.

The more links you can build to your site that are in the context of relevant discussions in your niche, the better.

This will make it easier for Google (and users) to associate your site with the topics you’re trying to rank for.

Brand mentions without a link still help. The mention alone is likely to suggest to Google and readers that your brand is a reputable source in its niche. (2)

Voice search is a “market that is forecast to reach over £26bn value by 2032 (US stat)”. (Nautilus Marketing, 6)
With rising sales of smart speakers and voice activated devices, many are integrated with virtual assistants including Siri, Echo and Google Assistant that perform searches through vocal cues. Faster voice assistants, accuracy, higher adoption means we really shouldn’t ignore tapping into voice search’s full potential.
As for visual search, Google Lens is Google’s image recognition tool enabling searches to be made from visual cues.

Creating video content presents a huge marketing opportunity.

89% of users want to see more videos from the brands they follow

82% of people say watching a video has convinced them to buy a product or service (Wyzowl’s Video Marketing Statistics 2024 report) (1)

While YouTube videos have long been present in search, Instagram and TikTok videos are also now competing being integrated into search engines.

• Build topic authority in your industry by making use of conversational questions in your content (long-tail question keywords).

Examples:
What do dermatologists recommend for anti-aging skin care?
What is the best running shoe for beginners?

• For location-focused businesses, it’s best to work “near me” into your Local SEO strategy in a natural way, not by forcing ‘near me’ into your page copy. Instead, use FAQs, blog posts, and meta descriptions.

Examples:

FAQ:
“Where can I find a dentist open near me on Saturday?”
Blog post:
“How to choose the best Reformer Pilates Class near you in South London?”
Meta title/descriptions:
“Wedding photographer near you | 24/7 in Sutton”

Add clear keyword-rich human readable file names and alt tags that describe the subject of the image reinforces relevance.

Use YouTube keyword research tools to find and implement target relevant keywords in the video title, description, and tags to enhance discoverability.

After getting your target keywords, work on your video production and distribution with the following tips:

• Design compelling and relevant thumbnails to increase click-through rates (CTRs)
• Include transcripts to make your videos accessible and implement checkpoints for separate ideas for a remarkable user experience (UX)
• Add metadata and descriptions with your target keywords to allow search engines to understand your video content faster and rank your site higher. (3)

Online presence is now multi-touch, social media content can be ranked on search engines, generative AI is available on the rise alongside zero click searches. The increasing pace of content velocity affects content life cycles, making online presence ever more competitive.

There are huge marketing opportunities for brand expansion to repurposing content to stay visible in the SERPs and configured to appear in AI overviews.

EU Accessibility Act (2025) enforcement, means accessibility is more than just best practice, it now holds more regulatory weight, where websites focusing on good user experience tend to be favoured by search engines.

You don’t have to do SEO perfectly to see positive results, perhaps it’s more key to be flexible in your SEO approach and sharpen your ability to adapt to new technology, tools, to focus on what your audience needs and make it easy for them to get what they want – your brand and services!

If you can’t do SEO all alone, don’t worry, request a website SEO strategy audit and I’ll walk you through with simple, personalised tips to help you get started setting your business up for success, and a future-ready strategy to help you gain visibility and navigate your business to its next level.

Take the first step with our custom SEO packages, designed to enhance your site’s visibility and performance. Let’s work together to create a website that attracts, engages, and converts.

1. 7 Critical SEO Trends in 2025 (and How to Master Them), Exposure Ninja
2. 5 Crucial SEO Trends (and How to Adapt), Backlinko
3. What Is the Future of SEO in 2025? 9 Critical SEO Trends to Know, Semrush
4. The EU Accessibility Act – Two Months to Go!, Osbourne Clarke
5. AI SEO Statistics: How AI Is Changing SEO (Backed by Real Data), Break The Web
6. Smart Speakers Market – Market Outlook 2025 – 2032, Intel Market Research
7. Instagram Posts Are Now Google Searchable, Torro Media