Far from being obsolete, the SEO begins a deep mutation. Faced with the boom in conversational engines and generative intelligence, brands must expand their field of action. Interview with Alban Renard, Expertise & Innovation Director at Cybercité, to decipher the transformations in progress.
“SEO still exists,” said Alban Renard immediately. But provided you no longer reduce it to a technical lever or an isolated optimization strategy. “If we want to do it in the best way and have the best impact possible, we must broaden these subjects. »»
For several months, new acronyms have emerged in specialized conferences: GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), Keo (Knowledge Engine Optimization), or Eeat, this reading grid defined by Google around theExperiencefrom theExpertisefrom theAuthority and Reliability (Trustworthiness). All aim to qualify the content and its transmitter at a time when the engines are no longer satisfied with indexing, they synthesize, interpret and suggest.
A logic of ecosystem, more than channel.
“SEO becomes a lever of performance only if it is articulated with other levers: branding, brand perception, social networks, RP …” For Alban Renard, the SEO is no longer thinking as a segment, but as a global imprint on audience crossroads.
Google remains ultra-dominant today in terms of market share. But “it is used more and more as a gateway to other platforms. »The brand’s requests are overrepresented there. In this context, the arrival of generative AI as Chatgpt,, GeminiOr Perplexity upsets uses. “It is not direct competition in Google. It is an evolution of the interaction modes. »»
A new challenge: to understand what AI see.
One of the major dead angles of the moment lies in The absence of monitoring tools dedicated to LLM. “No LLM really provides tools for webmasters, as Google does with its Search Console,” notes Alban Renard. The responses generated by AIs often come from opaque corpus, difficult to traceable, mixing structured data and content from UGC (User Generated Content) such as Reddit or Quora.
Hence the importance, according to him, ofIdentify “information crossroads” really read by AIto understand their logic of implicit indexing, and to treat the structuring of its content – whatever the format: HTML, PDF, Image or Enriched text.
EEAT’s strategic role.
One of the stable benchmarks remains the EEAT model, which Renard describes as “a reading grid which makes it possible to validate the quality of content, and especially the quality of the capacity of the content”. He insists on the importance of attach content to an identifiable authority. The example of universities seems to him speaking: their contents are disseminated via teachers, alumnis, researchers – so many ambassadors whose expertise is attached to an institution.
For brands, the parallel is immediate: it is necessary make your own experts visibleCreate coherent links between the brand, its authors and its speaking. “If I apply this reasoning, today I record a podcast with you. My name must be associated with cybercitus and expertise. »»
Test, integrate, decompartmentalize.
Faced with the proliferation of “all-in-one” tools in SEO, Renard remains cautious: “They often want to do everything, but rarely hold their promises in the field test. ” At the house of Cybercitya logic of POC (Proof of Concept) is privileged: progressive tests, data crossing, integration of relevant signals in broader decision -making chains.
More broadly, he pleads for A convergence of expertise. “The best performances are obtained when the brands give us part of the reins of their organization. One of the identified brakes remains the fragmentation of internal teams, especially between performance and branding. “Except that without strong branding, performance will not have this locomotive which will allow to highlight operational excellence. »»
The product, an anchoring of any strategy.
To those who want to get started, Alban Renard recalls a fundamental principle: “The heart of the subject is the product and the service. Do we believe in it? He still observes too many actors paralyzed by their own internal flaws: bad positioning, insufficient quality, lack of confidence in their offer.
However, as the LLM becomes filters between brands and audiences, customer feedback and their treatment become structuring. “We must speak on the difficulties and say how we answer it. It is this authentic discourse, nourished by concrete experiences, which today structures a sustainable imprint and interpretable by AI.
A method: move forward before it moves.
The maxim that Alban Renard defends today in Cybercity holds in four words: “Move before it moves.” To refuse the status quo is to mobilize the right expertise at the right time, not to wait for the transformations to become emergencies. “SEO can no longer function in isolation. It may have been true 20 years ago. Today, it has become critical. »»
