Commerce Chronicles - The Future of E-commerce SEO: Where Brands Need to Double Down

Search is entering a new phase, and most brands are only beginning to realize it. As search engines update algorithms to become more useful to real people, SEO strategies are becoming more human.

For years, search engine optimization (SEO) was largely about ranking pages on Google search to capture predictable organic traffic. Today, it's about ensuring you're actually useful at the right place, right time, and in the right way.

At BlueTuskr, we see this shift happening in real time. Through our ongoing Commerce Chronicles series, we regularly analyze how e-commerce brands are adapting their strategies as digital marketing evolves.

For this edition, we asked four questions designed to uncover how brands are preparing for the future of SEO. More importantly, what exactly is the future of SEO?

By the end of this article, you’ll understand:

How companies are leveraging AI in search optimization
Which tactics are still driving organic rankings
How teams are adapting to new search behavior
And how prepared brands really are for the next wave of AI-driven search

How Brands Are Using AI for Targeted Keyword Research to Improve Organic Search

We asked e-commerce leaders a foundational question: Which best describes how your brand is using AI in SEO today?

33% said AI is central to their SEO strategy.
67% said they are actively using AI across multiple SEO workflows.

That difference is slight, but it’s important. Let us break down what it means.

Some brands are using AI to shape their SEO strategy itself. In these cases, AI analyzes search data, identifies keyword opportunities, and helps determine which topics or products should be prioritized. AI is guiding the strategic decisions behind what to optimize and why.

Other brands are using AI mainly as a productivity tool within existing SEO workflows. Their teams still decide the strategy, but AI helps execute faster by assisting with tasks like generating content drafts, analyzing search intent, or optimizing existing pages.

Think about it as AI working on or in the business. We know it’s a small, nuanced difference, but it highlights what chair operators are letting AI sit in. Is AI part of the C-suite shaping strategy, or is it a busy intern efficiently executing tasks?

Jeremy Yakel, Founder of WholesaleIQ, states, “AI plays a central role in our SEO strategy.”

His team analyzes more than 70,000 marketplace search queries, using AI-driven keyword research to rewrite product titles and descriptions so the most relevant keywords appear first. In marketplace environments such as Amazon and Faire, this type of search optimization can significantly improve search engine rankings and drive more organic traffic.

Other respondents, including Vishal Barot, Co-founder of eSeller World, and Serge Liberman, Director of E-commerce at Food Cycle Science, described AI as an operational layer across multiple SEO functions. Their teams use AI to support content creation, analyze search intent, strengthen internal linking, and refine existing content to improve its performance in organic search results.

BlueTuskr Insight…

This distinction ultimately comes down to how much strategic control brands are willing to give AI.

Some companies are treating AI like a junior team member. It drafts content, summarizes keyword data, and speeds up execution, but the strategic decisions still come from the marketing team. AI is helping the business run faster, but it is not deciding where the business should go.

Other companies are starting to place AI much closer to the strategic layer. In these organizations, AI is used to analyze massive volumes of search data, uncover patterns in search intent, and identify opportunities that would be difficult for a human team to detect on its own. The role of marketers here shifts from manually producing insights to interpreting and directing the insights AI surfaces.

Neither approach is inherently right or wrong. What matters is intentionality…

The smartest companies are not asking whether AI should control SEO (it should). They’re asking how much decision-making authority it should have. From there, they’re designing systems where AI informs strategy while humans remain responsible for judgment, positioning, and brand direction.

Which SEO Tactics Are Driving Organic Rankings and Traffic Today?

We asked respondents which SEO tactics delivered the strongest results over the past year.

33% said marketplace SEO and listing optimization were the most effective tactics.
33% said focusing on search intent and content quality drove the best results.
33% said that high-intent content, supported by AI research, delivered the strongest gains.

Those answers reflect a broader shift happening in search engine optimization. Instead of producing large volumes of new pages to target more keywords, brands are prioritizing strategies that improve intent and conversion.

It’s about quality over quantity.

For Jeremy Yakel, that opportunity exists inside marketplace search engines like Amazon and Faire. When asked, “Which SEO tactics have been most effective for your brand over the past year?” He pointed towards marketplace SEO, adding:

“Specifically optimizing product titles and descriptions for the exact keywords buyers are searching on platforms like Faire and Amazon. Most brands obsess over Google, but marketplace search is where B2B sellers leave money on the table.”

Other respondents pointed to improvements within traditional organic search strategies. Vishal Barot, for instance, emphasized that the biggest gains are coming from aligning content creation with real buyer search intent.

“Over the past year, the SEO tactics that delivered the most consistent results were those focused on search intent, content quality, and conversion alignment, rather than volume alone.”

Similarly, Serge Liberman highlighted the importance of strengthening product pages, internal linking, and the site's technical structure.

“The most effective SEO work has come from prioritizing high-intent content closely tied to commercial pages.”

Liberman also noted that refreshing existing content often produced faster gains than publishing entirely new pages. “Refreshing and upgrading existing high-performing content delivered faster and more reliable ROI than producing large volumes of net-new pages.”

BlueTuskr Insight…

Here’s how this ties into attribution and an omnichannel strategy…

First off, modern buyers rarely follow a straight path. A customer might first discover a product through a Google search, validate it on a marketplace like Amazon, compare options on a product page, and only then decide to purchase.

This is why the tactics respondents highlighted (such as marketplace optimization, intent-driven content, and strengthening high-value pages) are working so well. They ensure a brand is visible at multiple points across the discovery process, rather than relying on a single channel to drive conversion.

In an omnichannel environment, SEO is no longer just about ranking pages. What really matters today is the entire buyer journey, from the first search query to the final purchase. Brands that integrate organic search, marketplace visibility, and owned content into a unified strategy are far more likely to capture demand wherever it appears.

In many ways, the future of SEO is about ensuring consistent visibility across the ecosystem, so that when buyers move between platforms and channels, the brand remains present at every stage of evaluation. How Brands Are Adapting SEO Strategies for Google Search, Paid Traffic, and AI-Driven Results

How Brands Are Adapting SEO Strategies for Google Search, Paid Traffic, and AI-Driven Results

We asked respondents how they are adapting their SEO strategies for changes in search behavior and AI-driven search results.

67% said they are shifting their SEO strategy toward intent-driven optimization
33% said they are shifting their SEO strategy to optimize listings and content

Together, these responses point to a fundamental shift in the future of SEO. Brands are no longer optimizing solely for search engine rankings or isolated keywords. Instead, they are restructuring their strategies around 2026 attribution trends and how real customers search, evaluate, and decide.

Today, we’re in an AI-driven search environment. This means visibility increasingly depends on how well content answers real user intent, not just how effectively it targets specific keywords.

Jeremy Yakel explained that the focus is shifting from generic keywords to precise buyer intent. “The shift we're making is from generic keyword stuffing to intent-matching. AI-generated content is flooding every channel, so the winners will be brands using real search data to match buyer intent.”

That approach relies heavily on specific long-tail keywords, especially in marketplace search results. He explained this: “Long-tail keywords like ‘soy candle gift set’ outperform broad terms like ‘candle’ because competition is lower and buyer intent is higher.”

Other respondents emphasized that search visibility is expanding across new AI-driven discovery surfaces, such as ChatGPT and Google's “AI Mode”. Serge Liberman explained that his team is restructuring content to perform better across modern search engine results pages.

“We are shifting from a keyword-centric approach to optimizing for visibility across AI answers, featured snippets, and other rich SERP surfaces. Content is now structured around clear entities, questions, and concise answers so it can be easily interpreted and surfaced by AI systems.” Liberman added.

BlueTuskr Insight…

The future of SEO is less about ranking a single page for a single keyword and more about returning to the fundamentals of marketing: understanding how people think, search, and make decisions. Long before algorithms existed, great marketing was about matching a message to real human intent.

Search is now moving back in that direction. As AI reshapes discovery, success will depend less on technical tricks and more on whether a brand truly answers the questions buyers are asking.

In many ways, the future of SEO is the future of good marketing: understanding your customer better than anyone else and showing up with the right answer at exactly the right moment.

How Prepared Are Brands for AI-Driven Changes in SEO?

Finally, we asked respondents to rate how prepared they feel for AI-driven changes to e-commerce SEO on a scale from 1 to 10.

The results were cautiously optimistic. The average preparedness score among respondents was 8 out of 10.

One respondent rated their readiness a 10, while the remaining participants rated their preparedness at a 6-7. It’s clear that while brands are actively adapting, many still see room to strengthen their SEO strategy as search engines continue evolving.

This cautious optimism reflects what many e-commerce teams are experiencing today. The fact that AI is unfolding in real time and changing every day. The challenge is not whether AI will reshape SEO (it most definitely will and already has); it’s about how quickly brands can continue to stay quick on their toes as the SEO landscape continues to shift.

And a lot of businesses aren’t as agile as they thought they were.

The Next Era of SEO Is About Understanding the Buyer

If there is one theme that runs through every response in this Commerce Chronicles report, it is this: SEO is becoming less mechanical and more human again.

The leaders we spoke with aren’t abandoning the traditional pillars of SEO. Keyword research, site structure, internal linking, and technical optimization still matter. What is changing is how those tools are used. Instead of producing more pages to chase more traffic, successful brands are focusing on intent, visibility, and relevance across the entire buyer journey.

To sum it up, brands need to double down on using AI to make the experience more human, not necessarily more optimized.

In many ways, the next era of SEO is not something entirely new. It is the evolution of good marketing; showing up with the right answer, at the exact moment the customer needs it most.

Read our past Commerce Chronicles: