Navigating the AI shift in the world of SEO has sparked both excitement and concerns among professionals. The rapid development of artificial intelligence is transforming industries, including search engine optimization, far beyond what many of us could have anticipated. Over the years, I’ve led teams across Europe, built startups, and explored new technologies through my own ventures. One thing that’s clear to me is that navigating this transition successfully requires strategy, creativity, and adaptability.
Recently, Travis Tallent, the VP of SEO at Brainlabs, shared a comprehensive framework designed to help SEO professionals and their teams keep pace with AI-driven changes. His SOAR framework, standing for "Streamline, Orchestrate, Automate, Reposition", is not only practical but also highly relevant to entrepreneurs, startup founders, and business owners looking to build scalable strategies amidst these changes.
Breaking Down the SOAR Framework
1. Simplify your processes and cut the fluff
No matter the industry, efficiency matters, and SEO is no exception. Travis advises teams to revisit their workflows and focus on simplifying their basic processes. He emphasizes aligning SEO metrics with broader business goals, like revenue or customer retention, rather than just rankings or impressions. By improving communication rhythms (weekly updates, monthly check-ins), decision-making becomes easier. When everyone is clear on their priorities, the risk of doing busywork for the sake of doing something decreases.
For instance, at CADChain, my blockchain startup, we struggled early on with managing fragmented SEO tasks across various teams. Simple quarterly roadmaps helped bring clarity to cross-department communication and provided clear trajectories for SEO campaigns.
2. Bring your team together, SEO isn’t a solo act
Travis notes that SEO cannot function in isolation within an organization. Connect your efforts with content, PR, and data teams to forge a consistent and aligned strategy. SEO audits, keyword playbooks, and discovery calls involving different departments help build shared ownership. If your team doesn’t see the big picture, chances are your results will reflect that disconnect.
When I ran Fe/male Switch, an incubator platform built upon genuine cross-team collaboration, we thrived because everyone, from marketers to developers, worked off a shared SEO map. It’s not rocket science: when teams pull together, they build better results.
3. Let AI handle the boring stuff
Automation is the buzzword we’ve all heard countless times, but how you apply it differentiates a great team from an average one. Travis highlights that AI systems can take over repetitive tasks like reporting, basic keyword research, or even content drafting, freeing leaders to pursue creative, high-impact work.
At CadChain, we integrated automation in non-creative areas, from identifying competitive keyword gaps to analyzing user intent. This helped reduce manual hours while allowing the team to focus on translating these insights into actionable strategies.
Remember, though, blindly automating everything can add complexity rather than solving problems. Begin by examining which tasks consume excess time but return little value, these should go first.
4. Rethink and reshape your priorities
Quite possibly the most challenging point of the SOAR framework, "Repositioning" your team’s focus, requires both boldness and flexibility. As Travis puts it, humans are excellent at innovation while AI thrives on historical data. Merging the two is where the magic happens. If AI gives you data on user behavior or campaign performance, your role is to explore fresh strategies based on that input.
For example, by analyzing heatmaps generated by AI tools tracking our website traffic, we realized the potential of shifting focus toward community-building content. That pivot allowed us to engage our user base deeply, proving that creativity layered on data leads to stronger outcomes.
A Guide to Growing Your SEO Career with AI
If you’re looking to future-proof your SEO career or build a team fit for the AI era, here are a few steps I recommend:
- Stay curious: Familiarize yourself with the capabilities of relevant AI tools like Google’s SGE or ChatGPT plugins.
- Learn to collaborate across roles: Get comfortable speaking the languages of marketers, designers, and engineers.
- Focus on impact metrics: Shift away from vanity indicators and instead prove bottom-line changes such as conversion improvement or customer acquisition.
- Be proactive about skill evolution: Courses in machine learning or certifications in platforms relevant to SEO can give you a competitive edge.
- View AI as enrichment, not replacement: Develop the ability to refine and add value to automated outputs instead of letting them dictate final results.
Mistakes to Avoid
From my own lessons and observations, here’s what I’ve seen holding professionals back:
- Resisting AI tools entirely: Denying their relevance means you’re falling behind. Simple experimentation can be low cost and high learning.
- Confusion about KPIs: If your team focuses narrowly on click rates or individual rankings, you’re missing broader opportunities.
- Neglecting people skills: Many SEO professionals see their role primarily as technical. But to orchestrate efforts effectively or reposition strategies, stakeholder alignment is essential.
What This Means Moving Forward
Organizations that manage to integrate AI systems thoughtfully, guided by people-focused approaches, will not just survive this period of change but position themselves to lead their industries. Tools don’t replace people; they enhance human potential when used correctly. And leaders who adapt their teams toward seeing these opportunities can ensure sustained relevance.
If you’re interested in delving deeper into Travis Tallent’s work on SOAR or wish to see practical examples of this methodology, you can view his detailed insights on Moz’s official breakdown of "Elevating Your SEO Career and Team in the AI Era."
Shifting how we approach problems, embracing both traditional expertise and technological advancements, is a challenge worth embracing. It starts with taking small, deliberate steps and maintaining focus on what matters most: creating something meaningful for the long term.
FAQ on Elevating Your SEO Career and Team in the AI Era
1. What is the SOAR framework in SEO?
SOAR stands for Streamline, Orchestrate, Automate, and Reposition. It is a strategic framework by Travis Tallent designed to help SEO professionals adapt to the AI era to enhance efficiency and innovation. Read about the SOAR framework
2. How can teams automate tasks in SEO using AI?
Teams can automate repetitive processes like reporting and keyword research using AI tools, freeing them to focus on more creative and high-value tasks. Discover automation strategies in SEO
3. Why should SEO efforts be connected across departments?
SEO thrives on collaboration. By involving teams like content, PR, and data, you ensure alignment in campaigns and overall strategy for better results. Learn about team collaboration in SEO
4. What key metrics should SEO professionals focus on in the AI era?
SEO metrics should align with broader business objectives, such as revenue, customer retention, and conversion improvement, rather than vanity metrics like impressions alone. Check out the role of metrics in SEO
5. How can AI improve content creation in SEO?
AI helps in optimizing content creation by analyzing user intent and generating data-based recommendations, saving time and providing more targeted outcomes. Learn more about AI in content creation
6. What skills should SEO professionals develop for the AI era?
Key skills include understanding AI tools, collaborating across roles, focusing on impact metrics like conversions, and adapting through machine-learning certifications. Explore SEO skill recommendations
7. What are some common mistakes SEO professionals should avoid?
Resisting AI tools, focusing on irrelevant KPIs, and neglecting interpersonal skills are major mistakes that hinder progress in the evolving SEO landscape. Avoid common SEO pitfalls
8. How does repositioning priorities benefit SEO professionals in the AI era?
Prioritization allows teams to use AI insights for innovating strategies, merging human creativity with precise data for enhanced outcomes. Learn more about repositioning strategies
9. Why shouldn't SEO be siloed within an organization?
Working in isolation limits SEO effectiveness. Involving multiple departments encourages shared ownership and aligns goals across the organization. Discover why collaboration matters
10. What opportunities does AI provide for SEO leaders?
AI enables leaders to identify user behaviors, refine strategies, streamline workflows, and focus on impactful, creative decision-making processes. See opportunities in AI-driven SEO
About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
Violetta Bonenkamp's expertise in CAD sector, IP protection and blockchain
Violetta Bonenkamp is recognized as a multidisciplinary expert with significant achievements in the CAD sector, intellectual property (IP) protection, and blockchain technology.
CAD Sector:
- Violetta is the CEO and co-founder of CADChain, a deep tech startup focused on developing IP management software specifically for CAD (Computer-Aided Design) data. CADChain addresses the lack of industry standards for CAD data protection and sharing, using innovative technology to secure and manage design data.
- She has led the company since its inception in 2018, overseeing R&D, PR, and business development, and driving the creation of products for platforms such as Autodesk Inventor, Blender, and SolidWorks.
- Her leadership has been instrumental in scaling CADChain from a small team to a significant player in the deeptech space, with a diverse, international team.
IP Protection:
- Violetta has built deep expertise in intellectual property, combining academic training with practical startup experience. She has taken specialized courses in IP from institutions like WIPO and the EU IPO.
- She is known for sharing actionable strategies for startup IP protection, leveraging both legal and technological approaches, and has published guides and content on this topic for the entrepreneurial community.
- Her work at CADChain directly addresses the need for robust IP protection in the engineering and design industries, integrating cybersecurity and compliance measures to safeguard digital assets.
Blockchain:
- Violetta’s entry into the blockchain sector began with the founding of CADChain, which uses blockchain as a core technology for securing and managing CAD data.
- She holds several certifications in blockchain and has participated in major hackathons and policy forums, such as the OECD Global Blockchain Policy Forum.
- Her expertise extends to applying blockchain for IP management, ensuring data integrity, traceability, and secure sharing in the CAD industry.
Violetta is a true multiple specialist who has built expertise in Linguistics, Education, Business Management, Blockchain, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, Game Design, AI, SEO, Digital Marketing, cyber security and zero code automations. Her extensive educational journey includes a Master of Arts in Linguistics and Education, an Advanced Master in Linguistics from Belgium (2006-2007), an MBA from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden (2006-2008), and an Erasmus Mundus joint program European Master of Higher Education from universities in Norway, Finland, and Portugal (2009).
She is the founder of Fe/male Switch, a startup game that encourages women to enter STEM fields, and also leads CADChain, and multiple other projects like the Directory of 1,000 Startup Cities with a proprietary MeanCEO Index that ranks cities for female entrepreneurs. Violetta created the "gamepreneurship" methodology, which forms the scientific basis of her startup game. She also builds a lot of SEO tools for startups. Her achievements include being named one of the top 100 women in Europe by EU Startups in 2022 and being nominated for Impact Person of the year at the Dutch Blockchain Week. She is an author with Sifted and a speaker at different Universities. Recently she published a book on Startup Idea Validation the right way: from zero to first customers and beyond, launched a Directory of 1,500+ websites for startups to list themselves in order to gain traction and build backlinks and is building MELA AI to help local restaurants in Malta get more visibility online.
For the past several years Violetta has been living between the Netherlands and Malta, while also regularly traveling to different destinations around the globe, usually due to her entrepreneurial activities. This has led her to start writing about different locations and amenities from the POV of an entrepreneur. Here’s her recent article about the best hotels in Italy to work from.