Well, 2025 is officially off and running, and all signs point to it being another exciting year for the SEO industry and local search.
If you tried to keep up with SEO trends over the last year, your head might be spinning by now. From big Google algorithm updates to AI everywhere, there were so many developments that it was hard to stay on top of them all!
To help you get oriented and prepared for the future of SEO this year and beyond, we wanted to take a close look at some of our favorite SEO predictions for 2025, providing some of our own insights and thoughts along the way.
How SEO Is Changing: Expert SEO Predictions for 2025
Zero-Click Search Results Will Matter More To SEO Strategies for 2025
For the last couple of decades SEO has largely revolved around getting clicks and generating direct traffic by ranking on traditional search engine results pages, but that's quickly changing.
The proliferation of alternatives to traditional SERPs, whether we're talking Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, or AI-organized search results, means that users have more ways than ever to find whatever information they're looking for.
While traditional search results aren't going away anytime soon and will certainly remain important for the foreseeable future of SEO, other types of "zero-click search results" (so-called because they don't generate click-throughs to a business's site) will play an increasingly important role in SEO strategies for 2025.
In order to remain competitive, brands will need to expand their strategies beyond traditional click-based metrics and focus more on building brand impressions and awareness to drive business.
According to a recent video posted on LinkedIn by Rand Fishkin of Moz, this will require being present in all the places your audience is present. Brands will have to find out where their customers and potential customers are already paying attention online and build a presence in those places; even if it's not going to send them traffic directly.
So, even if earning a mention for a restaurant on Reddit doesn't translate directly into click-throughs to the restaurant's website or business listing, it's a type of zero-click marketing that creates brand awareness, which can still translate into more business.
We've also recently seen with Google's AI-organized search results for restaurants how Reddit, video sites, and various online publications frequently get featured in AI-organized results, providing further opportunities for brand impressions that don't generate direct traffic.
Overall, building relationships and establishing a stronger presence outside of traditional search results will be key to the future of the SEO industry (and digital marketing as a whole) in 2025. In fact, in some circles the meaning of SEO is shifting from "search engine optimization" to "search everywhere optimization!"
Hyperlocal Service Pages: One of the Best SEO Practices for 2025, but Quality Matters
In our recent article on the top local SEO ranking factors for 2025, we mentioned that hyperlocal relevance will beat generic optimization this year.
One of the key tactics for improving a business site's hyperlocal relevance is the creation of hyperlocal service pages, or unique web pages targeting niche localized search terms relevant to specific areas a business serves.
In an end-of-year webinar from LocalU, Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky discussed the recent success she was seeing with hyperlocal service page strategies. In her words, they're crushing it! Luc Durand of Ranking Academy followed up and reaffirmed the effectiveness of hyperlocal service pages, but added a word of caution about maintaining the quality of said pages.
The key takeaway is that rather than creating a ton of low-quality, cookie-cutter service pages (which Google may view as duplicate content and penalize) to try and capture traffic for every single possible search term, it's important to focus on providing real value to the user on each hyperlocal service page.
In other words, building a handful of high-quality, hyper-locally relevant service pages for the most important areas and services, with strong keyword targeting and helpful content, will provide more SEO juice than creating dozens of generic service pages for, say, every city in your state.
Directory Dynamics Are Changing
Another consequence of the changing state of local search results is that the importance and value of certain directories will likely go up or down in the coming year.
In a recent first look at the layout of Google's AI-organized SERPs for restaurants, Mike Blumenthal of Near Media called out the fact that Yelp seemed to have taken a hit in terms of its visibility in AI-organized results, while Tripadvisor appeared to have gained some prominence.
With other search engines, like Bing, implementing their own AI-powered generative search experiences, the relevance of smaller directory sites commonly featured in traditional SERPs may decrease further.
That being said, it's important to note that these types of AI-generated search results are still very much in their experimental stages and their full impact remains to be seen, but changing directory dynamics in the SERPs is certainly one of the top local SEO trends for 2025 to keep an eye on.
Crackdowns on Fake Reviews Are Coming (They're Already Here)
It's no secret that fake reviews are one of the biggest issues in local SEO, with businesses and local SEO professionals constantly battling to get fake GBP reviews removed, while others are engaged in shady SEO practices that involve generating fake reviews.
Google has always had policies in place to recognize and remove fake reviews, but they appeared to be taking the matter more seriously towards the end of 2024.
As shown in a screenshot posted by Mike Blumenthal on LinkedIn, Google has started penalizing GBPs suspected of having suspicious high-rated reviews by removing them, disabling the option to leave a review, and slapping the profiles with a warning notification for users visiting them (a "Review Badge of Shame, as Blumenthal called it).
Google is reportedly also shutting off reviews on profiles suspected of being targeted by negative review attacks.
Q&A-Style Content: More Relevant Than Ever and One of the Top SEO Trends in 2025
In a round-up of expert SEO predictions for 2025 by Search Engine Journal, Kevin Indig of The Growth Memo highlighted the growing importance of creating structured Q&A-style content (e.g., FAQs or blog posts providing answers to common questions) to get noticed and cited more by Large Language Models (LLMs), more commonly known as generative AI.
With ChatGPT, one of the largest and most popular LLMs, launching its own search engine, ChatGPT search, we definitely agree with this sentiment. Here's an insightful quote from the announcement article:
"ChatGPT can now search the web in a much better way than before. You can get fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for."
This underlines the importance of providing direct answers to users' questions in your content. It's safe to say that the more useful the answers you provide on your site are, the more likely your content is to get featured in AI-generated search results, potentially generating brand impressions and referral traffic through alternative LLM-based search tools.
Brand Data Consistency Will Be More Important (Yes, Citations Still Matter)
There's been a big debate among SEO professionals as of late about just how important building citations is for local SEO in 2025.
Most experts agree that citations, while still beneficial, have significantly decreased in value since the early days of the local SEO industry, when getting your business information mentioned on as many different sites as possible was one of the most effective tactics for improving rankings, particularly in local search.
Nowadays, citations only really provide value if you carefully curate a selection of them on the most relevant, high-authority sites.
However, in BrightLocal's The State of Local Search 2025 webinar on SEO predictions for the year ahead, Ben Fisher of Steady Demand predicted that top-tier citations may matter even more in 2025 than they have in the previous couple of years. Why? Because of how SEO is changing due to AI and, more specifically, the way LLMs work.
LLMs pull data from so many different data points that it's very easy for them to get confused by bad information, which can come from inaccurate citations, for example. When this happens, the AI will in turn provide users with incorrect information, leading to missed opportunities for businesses.
Because of this, maintaining brand data consistency across the web, including in citations, will be one of the top local SEO trends in 2025. To avoid confusing the types of AI models that are increasingly providing users with locally relevant information, businesses will need to ensure that all mentions of their brand and business information are accurate and of high quality.
Google Wants Businesses To Upload More Photos and Videos
Looking at many of the latest SEO trends, it's easy to see that visual content is becoming more important to search engines.
For example, YouTube videos are featured prominently in both traditional and AI-organized search results, and photos uploaded to Google Business Profiles take center stage in local pack results, again in both traditional and the new AI-generated SERPs we're starting to see.
When it comes to local SEO, we know that having photos and videos on your Google Business Profile, while not a direct ranking factor in and of itself, increases dwell time on your listing, an important engagement signal contributing to better local search rankings.
There's also increasing evidence that Google wants businesses to upload more photos and videos to their GBPs.
Darren Shaw of Whitespark noticed that Google's AI is now capable of identifying what's in photos uploaded to a GBP listing and organizing them into carousel views based around certain categories.
In initial looks at Google's AI-organized search results, we've also seen that videos play automatically in image carousel views for those GBP listings that have them.
All of this shows that Google is pushing businesses in the direction of uploading more visual content to their listings, incentivizing them by providing more opportunities to engage and convert users through images and videos in different places.
AI and the Future of SEO Go Hand in Hand
If you've made it this far, you've probably noticed a common thread throughout most of the SEO predictions discussed above: AI.
AI will undoubtedly be a major driving force behind many search engine optimization trends in 2025 and long after. The reality is that AI and the future of SEO are synonymous.
AI isn't just changing the way users get information, either. AI-powered SEO tools are also revolutionizing how SEO professionals analyze and optimize, especially for local search.
David Hunter, CEO at Local Falcon, had this to say:
"In 2025, I believe the biggest shift in local SEO will be the growing emphasis on hyper-personalization and real-time updates. Businesses will need tools that not only monitor their local search performance but also provide actionable insights on how to adapt to rapidly changing conditions. AI-powered platforms like Local Falcon will play a crucial role in enabling businesses to stay competitive by analyzing complex data and delivering clear, step-by-step recommendations to improve visibility."
Building on those insights, it's clear that AI tools will be essential partners in crafting effective, hyper-personalized local SEO strategies for 2025.
AI's ability to process complex datasets in real time and at scale, understand the nuanced contexts of conversational queries, and deliver personalized, actionable insights in a matter of seconds is invaluable. It allows businesses who implement AI-powered solutions to gain a competitive edge in their local markets without being limited by resources such as budget or access to full-time SEO teams.
This democratization of search engine optimization is set to reshape what the future of the SEO industry looks like.
To capitalize on SEO trends, businesses and industry professionals should embrace AI not just as a supplementary tool, but also as a foundational element of their SEO strategies in 2025. As the future of SEO becomes increasingly intertwined with AI, those who adopt these advanced tools early will be best positioned to lead in their industries and dominate local markets!
Final Thoughts on How SEO Is Changing in 2025
2025 will be a defining year for the future of SEO, with AI advancements, hyperlocal strategies, and shifting search behaviors changing the industry at an accelerated pace.
Achieving local SEO success this year and beyond will require embracing AI-powered tools to analyze and optimize effectively, creating high-quality, hyper-localized content that provides real value to users and aligns with local search intent, and focusing on building brand visibility beyond traditional search results.
Ultimately, local SEO trends in 2025 will be all about adapting to change and meeting your audience where they are, whether through zero-click results, AI-organized search, or hyperlocal, personalized engagement.
