Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an essential tool for businesses that are looking to drive web traffic and boost their online visibility. However, in 2025, it is not just about keywords anymore. With the March 2025 Core Update, Google is now favouring sites that genuinely understand user’s intent and deliver meaningful and trustworthy content.
Here is what’s changed and how you can adapt your SEO strategy:
1. Semantic Search
Google now relies on more than just keywords; it wants to fully understand topics. This means that search engines are analysing intent behind questions rather than just matching exact keywords. This means within your content you should be using semantic keywords and internal linking to show topic depth. You should create content that answers real users’ questions, instead of just relying on keywords, and you should structure your content using subheadings and bullet points.
2. Human-Edited AI Content
AI has become an incredibly handy tool for creating content, but when it comes to SEO, human-edited content is still required. AI often creates keyword-dense but shallow content that can lack any ability to engage readers and therefore wont hook your audience. Human-written content builds trust and offers creativity and real-world value. AI content can be very helpful, but it is important to ensure you’re using human input to create quality and trust. It’s important to find the balance between automation and human edits.
3. E-E-A-T – Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust
Google rewards content that follows its E-E-A-T guidelines. To ensure your content ranks well, it should be helpful and written by credible experts. To improve on E-E-A-T, you should include credentials, experience or first-hand insights in your content.
To make sure your content ranks well, you should take into consideration these factors:
Expertise: To add expertise, you should make sure your information is accurate, up-to-date and that you are highlighting credentials and experiences. Thought leadership and diving deeper into a subject matter is also a great way to position yourself as a leader in the topic.
Experience – To build experience you should show your first-hand experience with the topic you’re writing about.
Authority – To build authority, create a digital PR campaign for your content and site by including backlinks and network with other experts.
Trustworthiness – The best way to gain trust is to be transparent and offer secure and user-friendly websites for both mobile and desktop.
By following E-E-A-T, you can boost organic impressions, organic clicks, create new backlinks to your website and increase the number of keywords that you rank for.
4. Zero-click search results
A zero click result is when a customer can find out the complete answer to their question without ever having to even click on a link through AI overviews at the top of the SERP (search engine results page).
To ensure you are still driving clicks to your website with this you should:
- Target featured snippets by using question-based headings and concise answers.
- Create content that addresses users search intent with clear answers to increase your visibility.
- Use shore paragraphs, bullet points and visuals to improve readability and make it easier for search engines to understand your content.
By using these tips, you can increase your websites chances of being included within the AI overview and therefore push the competition down.
5. Topical Authority
Topical authority is where a website aims to become the go-to authority on one or more topics. To rank for a topic, your site should aim to own the conversation and fully cover a topic rather than just focusing on keywords.
How to build topical authority:
- Have a lot of content about a specific topic as this allows for more relevant internal links and allows google and users to find your content easier. This could also land you more natural backlinks.
- By creating content around one subject and interlinking them, your topical authority increases as it shows that you’re a trusted source and have a lot of information on the
6. Core Web vitals
User experience is a key part of SEO, and Google continues to use Core Web Vitals as ranking factors. The better a page performs with these certain metrics, the better experience it provides as a whole as it ensures an experience that is smooth, fast and stable.
Core web vitals:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Measures how long it takes for the largest content element on the page to load. This should be under 2.5 seconds.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Measures how much the page layout moves around unexpectedly as it loads. Should be under 0.1 seconds)
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): Measures how much time it takes from when a user initiates any interaction to when the next visual update is displayed. Should be under 200ms.
- To improve your scores, you should compress your images and use modern formats and upgrade your web hosting.
By improving these scores, this can lead to lower bounce rates, better engagement, higher conversions and better search rankings,
Google’s latest algorithm changes reinforce that quality content, relevant content and user experience are all incredibly important when it comes to SEO. By using smarter content, focusing on one topic or ensuring your website is performing to its best ability, the best way to future proof your SEO is to align with what users and search engines value. If you would like to have a chat about our SEO services, we would be more than happy to discuss this with you so give us a call at 0141 227 0727 or email maria@fatbuzz.com and we can arrange a meeting.