AI-Powered SEO: What It Can and Can't Do For Your Business
I keep seeing the same post go viral every few weeks:"BREAKING: Claude can now do $10,000/month SEO (for free)."
None of these "prompt bros" share results or case studies. They don’t exist. It’s all just clickbait, and I’m going to explain exactly why.
I’ve been doing SEO full-time since 2013. That is 12 years of actual campaigns, actual clients, and actual results. So when I see the same recycled post promising that AI has replaced professional SEO, I know exactly where the argument falls apart.
The Fantasy They’re Selling
The viral posts all follow the same formula. They list a stack of free or cheap tools:
- Claude: $20/month
- WordPress: Cheap
- Canva: Free
- Google Search Console: Free
"Total cost: under $100/month." Then they say, "People used to pay agencies $1k–3k/month for this."
As if SEO was just publishing pages.
That’s like saying a gym membership replaces a physio because they both involve exercise. The tool isn’t the skill. It never was. They compare it to buying Bitcoin at $100 — as if the two are remotely similar. Bitcoin didn’t require you to understand search intent, site architecture, crawl budgets, or why Google just tanked your rankings overnight.
What AI Actually Can’t Do
Here’s where the fantasy breaks down. AI cannot:
- Look at a 40% traffic drop and know if it’s a core update, cannibalisation, or a crawl issue.
- Decide which of 200 technical issues to fix first based on commercial impact.
- Interpret your competitors’ strategy and reverse-engineer what’s actually working.
- Sit in a client call and translate data into a strategic decision.
It can produce. It can prioritise. It just can’t do either without a decent chance of making fatal mistakes. And producing more content faster without strategy is just building a bigger mess, quicker.
The Google December 2025 core update specifically targeted mass-produced AI content without expert oversight — proving that more content without quality control actively hurts your rankings.
What AI Can Do (When Used Properly)
Can AI speed up execution? Absolutely. I use it every day. It’s brilliant for drafts, outlines, and scaling content workflows. But it’s a power tool, not a tradesperson. You still need someone who knows where to cut.
Google’s own E-E-A-T guidelines (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) exist for a reason. AI doesn’t have experience. It doesn’t have expertise in your specific industry. And it certainly can’t demonstrate trustworthiness without a human behind the wheel.
The Data Problem Nobody Talks About
There’s another risk that these viral posts conveniently ignore: data privacy.
Many freelancers and small agencies using ChatGPT Free or Plus plans don’t realise that OpenAI uses consumer conversations for model training by default. That means every time they paste your GSC data, analytics reports, or client credentials into a free account, that data could be contributing to model training.
The enterprise and business tiers don’t train on your data, but most freelancers aren’t on those plans.
For business owners who use Google Workspace, Gemini within paid Workspace accounts is actually the safest option. Google explicitly states that your data isn’t used for model training and it inherits all your existing Workspace security controls.
Two questions worth asking your SEO provider:
- What tools are you using to handle my data?
- Are you on a consumer plan or a business plan?
Why These Posts Go Viral
The "prompt bro" posts get engagement because they sell a fantasy: the fantasy that expertise is now obsolete. That 12 years of pattern recognition can be replaced by a $20 subscription.
It can’t.
The Real Competitive Edge
The businesses winning with AI right now aren’t replacing expertise. They’re combining it with execution speed. That’s the actual edge.
AI amplifies skill. It doesn’t replace it. The sooner business owners understand this, the better decisions they’ll make about who manages their search visibility.