SEO Then and Now – A Conversation with Sara Taher

SEO has changed dramatically over the past decade. What was once seen as a discipline focused on keywords and rankings has evolved into a field that blends technical expertise, content strategy, user experience, automation, AI, and business thinking.

Few people have witnessed that transformation as closely as Sara Taher. With more than a decade of experience across enterprise, SaaS, and ecommerce, Sara has built a reputation for turning SEO into a measurable growth strategy rather than a collection of tactics. As a consultant, educator, speaker, and creator of SEO tools, she also champions the next generation of SEO professionals by encouraging them to embrace automation, data, and AI instead of fearing them.

In this edition of The Better Web Dialogues, we talk to Sara about how SEO has evolved, the skills modern SEOs need, the impact of AI, and where search is headed next. If you enjoy her insights, be sure to explore the free resources, courses, and tools available on her website.

The journey

Q. You’ve been working in SEO for over a decade. Looking back, how did your journey into SEO begin?

I learned about SEO by chance back in 2014, when I built an online magazine and was managing a team of editors. Most of my audience came from Facebook at that point, and I thought what other ways can I bring traffic, and this is where I learned about SEO and started taking courses and bootcamps.

Q. When you first started, what did the role of an SEO look like compared to today?

SEO was not as appreciated as it is today. In the past, you used to be this SEO person who no one understood needed to do SEO. Today there’s more awareness in general and a valuing of the role of SEO.

How SEO has changed

Q. If you had to explain the biggest evolution in SEO over the last ten years, what would it be?

SEO changed from a set of standard tactics we used to apply and used to work consistently to a more strategic approach. Of course, over the years the understanding of how search engines work evolved, and therefore the playbook changed from a checklist to a custom-made plan that varies based on the business at hand. Tech innovation also played a major role in changes to the web ecosystem and impacted everything, and SEO was part of that; there was mobile, for example, and the increase of mobile users; today we have AI and LLMs.

Q. Which SEO practices have stood the test of time, and which ones have become obsolete?

Most technical SEO work remains the same. You need to make your website accessible to bots. Also, creating something people want should’ve always been the goal, but in the past you could churn out low-quality generic content and rank and get the click; today we understand and consider more the value we are providing and the overall user experience. It was till just few years ago that some industry figures were refusing to accept that user behavior impacts your performance in search. Today, it’s a given.

Q. Today’s SEO often overlaps with UX, accessibility, content strategy, analytics, and development. Has the role become more exciting or simply more demanding?

I would say both. The SEO skillset has expanded massively, and I don’t think we are adapting yet. People who work on the agency side will stick to the basics, while people who want to grow their SEO careers need to consider way more than traditional SEO recommendations.

Q. Do you think businesses now have a better understanding of SEO, or do old misconceptions still exist?

Misconceptions will always exist; it’s part of the web 🙂 unfortunately. However, I’m seeing businesses being more realistic in their hiring requirements when it comes to skills needed for new platforms like ChatGPT. 

AI and the future of SEO

Q. AI has changed the conversation around search almost overnight. How do you see it reshaping SEO?

When I talk about how search is not multiplatform, people think this is outside the scope of SEO work. This is the biggest mind shift: other platforms impact your performance in search… in all search surfaces, Google and LLMs, so you need to incorporate them into your plan. Things like Reddit, when you say we need to have a Reddit plan for SEO, it’s considered outside the scope of SEO, even YouTube strategies. SEO is now what the word actually says: you are optimizing literally for  “search engines,” not just Google.

Q. There’s a lot of discussion around AI-generated content. Where do you think it genuinely adds value, and where should marketers be cautious?

I think using AI to supplement your writing or help you polish your writing is a blessing. Not everyone is good with words or neatly explaining their ideas. I see AI writing tools as a great support for content writers, the same as spell check and grammar check tools are. The problem is when people try to outsource the entire writing to those tools. These tools cannot think for themselves, experience things in real life, and create unique, original content; they can only build on what’s out there, and that’s just not good enough anymore.

Let’s not forget that Google had the technology before OpenAI. In fact, Google invented the transformers, which are the engine behind all modern Large Language Models; they just didn’t release it first because they didn’t think it was good enough 🙂. Turns out people tolerate low quality if it gives them the impression of a job done.

Q. AI Overviews are expanding and are definitely here to stay. There are reports of them showing up for branded queries and top stories even. How has it impacted your work and how are you adapting?

Before AIO, there were rich snippets, and we also had concerns. Today is no different; the concern is that AIO is showing up way more. I think we need to adapt and focus on what we can control, make sure that every click that comes to our website counts, look at other surfaces like Google Discover, and make the best use of the great content we create to get the most ROI.

Q. You’ve spoken about automation and building SEO tools; you have a Chrome extension of your own. How important do you think these skills will become for SEO professionals over the next few years?

I think they are important today and will become an expectation in a few years. Like Google Sheets, for example,  there’s an expectation that you can create your own formulas and do whatever is needed there to get a task done. It’s going to be the same as we have now with AI, and I don’t know how this is done. It is not going to make you very competitive in the job market anymore, in my opinion.

Q. What skills should someone entering SEO today start learning that weren’t necessary five years ago? For example, in your course ‘Python for SEO’ do you think they are still needed for an SEO today?

Double down on data analysis and automation. This was nice to have/not a solid requirement; today I think they are a requirement.

Strategy over tactics

Q. If a company wants to build a sustainable SEO strategy in today’s search climate, where should it begin?

Define business goals and understand the assets (content) they have. Build on their strengths and find ways to work around their weaknesses.

Q. What metrics do you think businesses should pay more attention to instead of obsessing over rankings?

I don’t report on rankings anymore. I use rankings for diagnosis. Ranking is very old school when ranking higher means more clicks; that’s not the case today, and results show ranking lower, or not ranking at all, may get more clicks under certain conditions if they are cited, for example.

I focus on the traffic we are getting from search, where this traffic is going, and how we are making each click count if the business is offering a product or a service.

Q. Have you noticed any common mistakes companies continue to make despite all the resources available today?

The biggest mistakes companies are making are not SEO. The biggest mistakes I see are not optimizing internal processes and culture. While these are not SEO problems, they will reflect on all teams, including SEO.

Looking ahead

Q. What excites you most about the future of search?

The future of search is diverse platforms; that excites me!

Q. Is there an emerging trend in SEO that you think isn’t getting enough attention yet?

Yes, holding onto old narratives that are just not right in today’s SEO world. That’s something not getting enough attention and causing a lot of misinformation.

Q. Five years from now, what do you think the role of an SEO specialist will look like?

Probably the same goal: get more traffic from search. But the meaning of search would be different.

Closing questions

Q. You have a newsletter, ‘SEO Riddler’. Would you like to tell our audience about it?

Yes! My newsletter is where I try to share new ideas, my two cents on trends, and I generally try to focus on offering actionable advice based on the learnings or my thoughts on something new that happened or a new study that showed up, or my personal observations. If you’re looking for new angles, this is the newsletter for you.

Q. If you could give one piece of advice to someone starting a career in SEO today, what would it be?

Invest time in developing critical thinking to be able to process the amount of misinformation you’ll read online about SEO.

Q. The theme of this series is The Better Web Dialogues. What does a “better web” mean to you, and how can SEO contribute to building it?

Yes! A better web means better information. And I think SEOs can create that by creating ethical content that is not aimed at manipulating or misinforming people, but to add something helpful to what feels like a sea of all sorts of things.