Introducing Reddit SEO Intelligence: discover insights from SEO subreddits

SEO has never moved faster or felt messier.

AI Overviews, core updates with little warning and broad impact, zero-click SERPs, sudden traffic cliffs, tool fatigue, and “best practices” that change by the week. If you’re an in-house SEO, consultant, or founder, the ground under your SEO strategy can feel like it’s always shifting. Wins are harder to attribute. Forecasts feel like fiction. And the playbooks that worked in 2022 don’t cleanly map to 2025.

Meanwhile, SEO teams are being asked to do more with less. You’re juggling research, copywriting, technical SEO, and now “optimize for AI”. You open Search Console and see impressions up, clicks down. You open LinkedIn/X and get hot takes. What you really want is signal, the real-world experiments, failures, and workarounds SEOs are actually using right now.

That’s why Reddit has become the industry’s watercooler. In r/SEO and sister subs such as r/bigseo, r/seogrowth, and r/TechSEO, people share what worked, what broke, what recovered, what clients actually approved, and which tools saved a week of work (or lit budget on fire).

The problem? Reddit is a firehose. Great insights are buried under endless threads, repeated questions, and one-off anecdotes.

This is why I built Reddit SEO Intelligence, a free, simple way to turn that firehose into usable intelligence for SEO. It continuously listens to leading SEO subreddits and transforms the conversation into trends, topics, tools, sentiment, and linkable examples you can act on. Think of it as a living research layer for SEO: real data, real discussions, structured for decisions.

It's 100% free, no sign-ups, no catches, just open data.

In this post, I'll cover how Reddit SEO Intelligence works and then share various insights on what SEOs have been talking about in the last 12 months.

Let's get started!

⚒️ How Reddit SEO Intelligence Works?

#1 Listen to the right subreddits (near real-time)

We monitor 13 SEO-focused subreddits and gather new threads and comments in near real-time: r/SEO, r/bigseo, r/seogrowth, r/TechSEO, r/SEO_Digital_Marketing, r/localseo, r/linkbuilding, r/YouTubeSEO, r/eCommerceSEO, r/ShopifySEO, r/blackhatseo, r/SEMrush and r/ahrefs.

#2 Understand the conversation

New threads and comments are parsed and analyzed so you can see:

• Topics: what the community is actually discussing (AI & SEO, Link Building, Keyword Research, Technical SEO, etc.).
• Tools: which tools are being mentioned (Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, GSC, and beyond).
• Sentiment: how people feel (positive, neutral, negative, or mixed).
• Keywords: the words and expressions that keeps surfacing.
• Links: what gets shared and cited.
• Authors: who’s shaping the discussion.

#3 Surface insights you can use

The data can be visualized through interactive charts and graphs to help you extract actionable insights from the Reddit conversation about SEO. Useful filters let you dial in by date range, topic, tools, sentiment, keywords, links, authors, and subreddit—so you can answer specific questions fast.

#4 Trend detection on demand

The SEO Trends feature uses AI to summarize everything that matches your filters, surfacing emerging patterns and key takeaways without the manual slog.

#5 Ask like a human

Use the integrated AI Assistant to ask plain-English questions (it respects your current filters), then jump straight to the source threads and comments.

Coverage & access

We’ve ingested 200,000+ threads and comments since 11/01/2022, and we keep adding more. Explore it all in the Reddit SEO Intelligence dashboard and tell us what you uncover!

🕵 What SEOs have been talking about in the last 12 months?

Curious what’s truly top-of-mind right now in SEO world? We filtered the dashboard for September 1, 2024 – August 31, 2025 and analyzed 100,000+ threads and comments across the monitored subreddits:

We zoomed through the charts, applied different filters, and read into the underlying discussions.

Here are the big trends that emerged:

1. 🤖 AI is the central paradox in SEO: the same tech that 10×’s workflows also threatens clicks via AI Overviews and zero-click SERPs.
2. 😡 A sharp trust rift with Google: frustration over opaque updates, volatility, and perceived “content siphoning.”
3. 💔 A crisis of confidence in agencies and talent: buyers report high fees, thin deliverables, and difficulty vetting real expertise.
4. 🔗 Link building shifts from volume to credibility: fewer cheap inserts, more relevance, digital PR, and curated content.
5. 🔙 A strong pull back to fundamentals: technical health, architecture, intent-aligned content, and brand resilience.

In the sections that follow, we’ll dig into:

• 🧵 Most popular threads
• ⭐️ Topics analysis
• 🛠️ Tools breakdown
• 🔗 Most shared links
• 👑 Top contributors
• 🔥 SEO trends deep dive

Let’s unpack what the Reddit SEO community has shared over the past 12 months so you can learn what worked, what didn’t, and apply those lessons faster.

🧵 Most Popular Threads In The Last Year

As a first step into our analysis, we looked at which threads actually captured attention across the SEO subreddits. What the upvotes say? Outrage at Google, practical AI, quality-first link building, tool consolidation, and local wins.

Here are the five most popular threads ranked by upvotes:

1. An Open Letter to the Google Executives Who Killed My Business - r/SEO, 1381 upvotes, 452 comments
2. I made an awesome ChatGPT prompt for internal linking - r/SEO, 721 upvotes, 148 comments
3. Link Building in 2025 - Strategies for success, and what's changed? - (r/SEO, 690 upvotes, 78 comments)
4. SEOwallet - 200+ SEO Features, 600+ Downloads, and Chrome Store Featured! - r/SEO, 632 upvotes, 10 comments)
5. Got hired to "fix" the online presence of a small medical practice. Where the hell do I start? - r/SEO, 610 upvotes, 87 comments

⭐️ Topics Analysis

What did SEOs actually talk about in the last 12 months (100k+ posts across 13 subreddits)? The charts point to a pragmatic mix of classic tactics, platform changes, and an AI undercurrent that’s growing fast.

🏆 Most Discussed Topics

The results of the most talked topics were surprising:

• Link Building led the conversation by a clear margin.
• Technical SEO and On-page SEO followed, rounding out a fundamentals-heavy top three.
• Despite dominating headlines elsewhere, AI and SEO ranked near the bottom by volume (fourth least-tagged overall).
• Copywriting and Design were the least talked about topics.

Read: day-to-day SEO talk on Reddit still centers on SEO execution basics: links, authority, site health, and page-level optimization.

🔥 Trending Topics: what’s rising?

Next, I looked at momentum for each topic. In the "Trending & Falling" section, the system splits the last 12 months into two equal halves and counted topic mentions in each. If a topic’s recent mentions jumped, it’s “trending.” If they dropped, it’s “falling.”

Topics trending now includes:

1. Local SEO (↑ 196%)
2. AI and SEO (↑ 99%)
3. Link Building (↑ 86%)

Read: conversation volume is rising across the board, with the sharpest acceleration in Local SEO and AI & SEO, both historically smaller but heating up quickly.

🎭 Sentiment Analysis of Topics

Each thread and comment was tagged as positive, negative, neutral, or mixed:

• Highest share of positive discussion: Tools (23.4%), Content Marketing (20.7%), Copywriting (18.2%).
• Most negative-skewed: Algorithm Updates (only 3.9% positive), reflecting frustration with volatility.
• Across topics, neutral dominates. Most threads share observations, tests, or questions rather than praise or blame.

Read: tools and practical tips for crafting content earn the warmest reception; algorithm change chatter remains the lightning rod.

🤖 Spotlight: “AI and SEO”

Threads and comments tagged as AI is relatively low in terms of volume versus traditional SEO topics but second-fastest growth (+99%).

When filtering “topics over time” chart by just "AI and SEO", it shows visible spikes in June and August 2025, with August the year’s high point:

Curious about August’s spike, we set the dashboard filters to 08/01/2025–08/31/2025, kept the "AI and SEO" topic filter, and hit the "Update Dashboard" button.

Then we used the AI Assistant to ask: “What were people talking about under ‘AI and SEO’ in these threads and comments?”. It's answer makes reference to the dual impact of AI: threat and opportunity:

Top threads mirror the community’s split view on AI’s impact:

• WTF !!! This website just went from 190k to 5.7M monthly visitors in 10 weeks - r/SEO, 161 upvotes, 207 comments
• Lost the Motivation for SEO - r/SEO, 147 upvotes, 101 comments
• Is SEO Becoming a Game of Moving Goalposts? - r/SEO, 73 upvotes, 54 comments
• GPT-5 Just Leveled Up SEO – Try This Keyword List Prompt - r/SEOGrowth, 74 upvotes, 24 comments.

Read: AI isn’t yet the largest topic by volume, but it’s the fastest-rising conversation with clear, time-bound surges tied to news, launches, and notable case studies.

🛠️ Tool Breakdown

Besides topics, we wanted to see how people were talking about the various SEOs tools in the last 12 months.

🥇 Most Mentioned Tools

Semrush and GSC are effectively neck-and-neck, with Ahrefs a clear third:

• Semrush: 3,500 mentions (3.11% of all posts)
• Google Search Console: 3,448 mentions (3.06%)
• Ahrefs: 2,481 mentions (2.20%)

Read: Conversation volume is concentrated in the two main SEO tools (Semrush and Ahrefs), the historical tools provided by Google and Moz + Screaming Frog. The rest of the market is a long tail.

🔥 Trending Tools: what’s rising?

Recent momentum shows Botify, MarketMuse, and SparkToro climbing in mentions, while Conductor, Searchmetrics, and Ryte are trending down:

Read: Purpose specific tools (SparkToro, MarketMuse), tied to day-to-day workflows (Sheets, GSC, GA) are gaining mindshare alongside crawlers (Botify, OnCrawl, Deepcrawl). Several legacy suites saw steep drop-offs in discussion.

🎭 Sentiment Analysis of Tools

Here’s where it gets spicy. We examined how tools are discussed, not just how often.

Highest positive share:

• Botify, Serpstat, Clearscope — ~30% positive

Highest negative share

• Conductor: 38.2% negative
• Searchmetrics: 30.0% negative
• BrightEdge: 28.6% negative

⚠️ Note on sample sizes: these six tools have lower mention counts (e.g., Conductor appears in only 18 posts), so treat extremes cautiously.

Among the “big three” Moz skews most positive (18.9% positive), while Semrush draws the most negative share (14.8% negative):

🤼 Semrush vs Ahrefs

Curious to find out insights about this two classic SEO tools, we compared sentiment head-to-head by filtering for “Ahrefs” or “Semrush” and then isolating strictly positive and strictly negative mentions. For each slice, we asked the AI Assistant to summarize what users praised or criticized and share representative threads and comments.

🕵️‍♂️ Zooming in on Semrush

Filters: Tool = Semrush; Sentiment = strictly positive; Date = 09/01/2024–08/31/2025

Result: 56 threads, 512 comments

What people praise about Semrush:

• Comprehensive Tool Suite (representative comment)
• Advanced Keyword Insights (representative comment)
• Innovative Features (representative thread)

Filters: Tool = Semrush; Sentiment = strictly negative; Date = 09/01/2024–08/31/2025

Result: 149 threads, 369 comments

Top complaints about Semrush:

• Aggressive Billing & Difficult Cancellations (thread example),
• Unreliable Data & Features (thread example)
• Poor Support & Account Issues (thread example):

🕵️‍♂️ Zooming in on Ahrefs

Filters: Tool = Ahrefs; Sentiment = strictly positive; Date = 09/01/2024–08/31/2025

Result: 40 threads, 418 comments

What people praise about Ahrefs:

• Superior backlink data (comment example)
• User-Friendly Interface (comment example)
• Valuable Site Audits (thread example)

Filters: Tool = Ahrefs; Sentiment = strictly negative; Date = 09/01/2024–08/31/2025

Result: 149 threads, 369 comments

Top complaints about Ahrefs:

1. Inaccurate Data (thread example)
2. High Price (thread example)
3. Data Privacy Concerns (thread example)

Read: The Semrush vs Ahrefs rivalry is intensifying, fueled by user dissatisfaction with business practices, not just features. The rivalry isn’t just about features; commercial posture (pricing, plan changes, billing) is now a key driver of negative sentiment. Switching intent is visible, and brand loyalty looks fragile.

🔗 Most Shared Links

To see which sources shaped the SEO conversation, we tallied outbound URLs shared inside threads and comments by at least 5 upvotes (to de-noise spam). The five most-cited links over the last 12 months:

1. Google Confirms You Can't Add EEAT To Your Web Pages: an article on Search Engine Journal covering that Google's John Mueller explained at Search Central Live NYC that EEAT isn't something that can be added to websites
2. GetMoreBacklinks: a useful tool for listing a startup on 200+ platforms with one click.
3. Schema.org: a collaborative, community activity with a mission to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet
4. LearningSEO.io: offers free SEO resources, tools and tips.
5. Google Search Status Dashboard: a page that provides status information as about the March 2025 core update

Read: In a year heavy on speculation, Redditors anchored debates to primary or canonical sources (Google’s own status page, Schema.org) and credible summaries (SEJ) while still circulating practical workflow helpers (directory aggregators) and learning hubs. The mix skews toward verification and fundamentals rather than vendor content, suggesting that, when stakes are high, the community reaches for sources that settle definitions, confirm incidents, or teach basics.

👑 Top Contributors

Next, we wanted to find out what users are driving the SEO conversation on Reddit.

To surface influence and not just volume, we ranked authors by upvotes score: the sum of upvotes on their threads and comments with ≥10 upvotes during the last 12 months:

WebLinkr a mod in r/SEO made some highly impactful threads and comments in this subreddit. Some of his top threads includes Google March 2025 core update rolling out now (130 upvotes, 93 comments), Google Confirms You Can't Add EEAT To Your Web Pages (113 upvotes, 194 comments) and Google AI Overviews rank below Position 1 in 12.4% of cases: Study (80 upvotes, 40 comments). Some of his top comments includes this comment on the thread "Should I try to learn SEO or just hired someone? (66 upvotes) and his other comment on the thread "Google telling us backlinks are not important?".

SEOPub most upvoted contributions are not his threads but his comments. For example, his comment "ignoring the 60 character limit bs for title tags and writing title tags that are 150-250 characters" in the thread "What’s your most underrated SEO tip that actually brought real results or traffic?".

The tetonpassboarder makes the top 5 contributors with just 1 thread and 1 comment. He is the author of the most popular thread in the last 12 months: An Open Letter to the Google Executives Who Killed My Business

In contrast to the user SEOPub, mayu-tch most impactful contributions where threads, mainly in the r/SEO_Digital_Marketing. Interestingly, this user was suspended by Reddit for an unknown reason.

darrenshaw_ completes the top 5 contributors with highly upvoted threads such as I made an awesome ChatGPT prompt for internal linking (725 upvotes and 148 comments), Cool ChatGPT prompt for content gaps (82 upvotes, 16 comments) and Google will win the AI search race (45 upvotes, 31 comments).

Read: Influence in Reddit’s SEO conversation isn’t just about posting often. Sustained presence wins (WebLinkr), but comment-first experts can punch above their weight (SEOPub). Virality can vault newcomers into the top tier (tetonpassboarder’s single open-letter). Tactical, ready-to-use assets (prompts, how-tos, live update threads) also attract outsized engagement (darrenshaw_).

🔥 SEO Trends Deep Dive

To cut through the noise of the last 12 months, we leaned on the SEO Trends feature inside the Reddit SEO Intelligence dashboard . It scanned 100,000+ threads and comments and surfaced five trends that consistently dominated the conversation:

• 🤖 AI is the central paradox in SEO
• 😡 A profound sentiment of betrayal and hostility towards Google
• 💔 A crisis of confidence in SEO agencies and talent
• 🔗 The link building conversation focus on quality over raw volume
• 🔙 A strong pull back to fundamentals

From there, the Deep Dive feature and targeted filters let us break down each trend, pull representative examples from Reddit, and translate them into actionable recommendations.

Let's explore what we found about these 5 trends!

🤖 AI is the central paradox in SEO

In the last 12 months, SEOs have been heavily adopting AI to automate tedious tasks, refine strategy and level up their execution.

But in this same period, SEOs have also been expressing deep anxiety over Google's AI Overviews and zero-click searches decimating traffic.

This creates a dual focus: leveraging AI as a powerful tool for efficiency while also trying to build a defense against it as an existential threat to organic clicks.

The AI Toolbox is Exploding

It's clear from the discussions that AI isn't just a novelty; it's rapidly becoming a core part of the modern SEO toolkit. SEOs are moving beyond basic AI-generated content and are building sophisticated workflows to save time and uncover new opportunities.

• For Automating Tedious Tasks: The most popular use of AI is to automate the kind of high-volume, repetitive work that used to be a major time sink. A perfect example is the thread, I made an awesome ChatGPT prompt for internal linking (r/SEO, 725 upvotes, 148 comments). The user shares a detailed prompt that turns ChatGPT into an "SEO expert" that crawls a site, finds 20+ contextually relevant internal linking opportunities, and even suggests the exact sentence and anchor text to use.
  
• For High-Level Strategy & Content Gaps: Another user shared a Cool ChatGPT prompt for content gaps (r/SEO, 82 upvotes, 16 comments) where they ask the AI to analyze an entire website and suggest missing topics for new pages. This moves AI from a simple content generator to a strategic consultant.
  
• For Technical SEO & Automation: We see a user who automated meta description generation with Screaming Frog + OpenAI (r/SEO, 79 upvotes, 40 comments) saving a friend 11 hours of "soul-crushing work." This highlights a sophisticated use case where AI is integrated with classic SEO tools to automate repetitive but necessary tasks.
  
• For creating content outlines: SEOs are using AI to build content outlines in a way that's faster, more data-driven, and more competitive than ever before. For example, this user mentions explains how they use AI to expand a brief idea into a detailed outline (r/SEO, 9 upvotes), which they then use as a blueprint for their own writing. It's a perfect example of AI as a strategic assistant.
  
• For Building New Tools: The community isn't just using AI tools; they're building them. Threads like Building a Competitor Tracking Tool (r/SEO, 127 upvotes, 109 comments) and I built an AI-powered link building tool (r/SEO, 49 upvotes, 21 commetns) show that SEOs are leveraging AI to solve their own unique problems, creating bespoke solutions that commercial tools might not offer.

For many SEOs, AI has become an indispensable assistant. It's being used to brainstorm, strategize, automate technical tasks, and even build new software. This side of the paradox is all about empowerment and efficiency.

The anxiety over AI Overviews is palpable and personal

While SEOs are adopting AI as a tool, they're also expressing deep, existential dread about how Google is using it. The fear isn't just about a dip in metrics; it's about the very real possibility of their businesses or careers being rendered obsolete. The language here is often emotional and raw.

• The "Zero-Click" SERP is Here: Users are documenting the frustrating reality of the new search results page. In a thread titled What's even the point in trying anymore? (r/SEO, 174 upvotes, 122 comments) a user breaks down a SERP where their #2 organic result is buried under an AI Overview, videos, "People Also Ask," and business listings. Their impressions are up 66%, but clicks are down 50%. This is the core of the anxiety: even when you "win" at traditional SEO, you can still lose the click.
  
• Widespread Despair and Demotivation: The emotional toll is evident in threads like Lost the Motivation for SEO (r/SEO, 146 upvotes) and SEO was my obsession, now it’s all over (r/SEO, 84 upvotes, 107 comments). SEOs who have loved and thrived in this industry for years are now questioning its future. One user laments:

'Google pushes more and more AI content, and we all know it's only going to get worse. Most people don't even click pages anymore, they simply read the "AI Summary"' .

The threat isn't just about lower traffic; it's about a fundamental loss of control and predictability.

A two-pronged defense strategy is emerging: adapt to AI and build beyond it

Faced with this paradox, the SEO community isn't just giving up. Instead, they're developing new strategies to survive and thrive. This involves both using AI as a weapon in their own arsenal while simultaneously building defenses against its disruptive power.

• Offensive Move: Optimizing for AI Engines (AEO/GEO): Instead of just focusing on Google, some SEOs are looking to get their content cited by AI models directly. In How I got my site into ChatGPT (and why you should too) (r/BigSEO, 140 upvotes, 53 comments) a user details their strategy of optimizing for Bing to appear in ChatGPT's responses, which resulted in a direct business prospect. This is a proactive pivot, treating AI not as a threat but as a new acquisition channel. The significant rise of terms like "AEO" (Answer Engine Optimization) and "GEO" (Generative Engine Optimization) in discussions shows this is a growing area of focus.
  
• Defensive Move: Doubling Down on Brand and Channel Diversification: Many recognize that relying solely on Google Search is no longer a viable strategy. In the thread Is SEO Even Worth It for Small Local Businesses Anymore? (r/SEO, 43 upvotes, 114 comments), a frustrated business owner details spending tens of thousands on SEO with multiple agencies, only to see minimal results. Their conclusion is a clear pivot: "The only marketing effort that’s actually shown any results for us this year has been PPC". Beyond just finding new channels, there's a strong push to build a brand that people seek out directly. A highly-rated comment in the thread "Are Informational Blogs/Sites Dead In The Water Now?" captures this perfectly:

"Most sites that provide actual products and services have been fine and steady. Most importantly, sites with real offerings that have strong brands have weathered the storm and are well-positioned for the future... focus on building a real brand".

• The Grounded Approach - Sticking to Fundamentals: Amidst the chaos, there's a strong counter-narrative that the fundamentals of good SEO are more important than ever. A popular thread Google confirms normal SEO works for AI Overviews (r/SEO, 204 upvotes, 127 comments) shares that a Google representative stated that "Normal SEO is all you need". Discussions like this suggests that quality content, optimization, and authority building are still the best defense, as they make content more likely to be trusted and cited by AI Overviews.

In short, SEOs are in a high-stakes, love-hate relationship with AI.

They're using it to work smarter and faster, while simultaneously watching it threaten the very ecosystem they depend on. The path forward seems to be a hybrid approach: embrace AI as a powerful assistant, but focus on building the kind of authority and brand resilience that can withstand the zero-click future.

😡 A profound sentiment of betrayal and hostility towards Google

SEOs feel their businesses are being arbitrarily destroyed by opaque algorithm updates (like HCU) and the rise of AI Overviews.

This isn't just frustration; it's a fundamental trust breakdown, fueling discussions on antitrust action, diversification away from Google, and a search for survival tactics in what many perceive as a hostile ecosystem.

"Google...Killed My Business"

The most powerful driver of this trend is the real, devastating impact on people's livelihoods. This isn't just about losing a few rankings; it's about businesses being wiped out overnight with no explanation or recourse.

The highest-scoring thread on this topic, An Open Letter to the Google Executives Who Killed My Business (r/SEO, 1,400+ upvotes, 452 comments) captures this perfectly. The author tells a gut-wrenching story:

"A mysterious algorithm update that completely wiped out my $250k/year business, forced me to fire my employees, and has me eating at a food bank."

This isn't an isolated incident. We see this echoed in numerous other posts:

In Why has Google become so wild (r/SEO, 155 upvotes, 184 comments) a publisher who built a site over five years and created jobs for six people saw their traffic drop to almost zero. They lament

"I worked day and night, but now I can’t even pay my office rent."

Another user in Googled killed my $1,000/mo blog (r/SEO, 213 upvotes, 1222 comments, now deleted) described losing 90% of their traffic overnight from a site that was their steady side income.

The language here is crucial. People don't feel "penalized" for breaking rules; they feel arbitrarily "killed", "destroyed" and "wiped out" by Google. This sense of injustice is the primary fuel for the hostility.

Opaque Updates and Useless Advice

A major source of anger is the disconnect between Google's public advice and the reality SEOs experience. The feeling is that Google's algorithm updates, particularly the Helpful Content Update (HCU), are opaque black boxes, and the advice to simply "make better content" feels like gaslighting.

• The author of the An Open Letter to the Google Executives Who Killed My Business (r/SEO, 1,400+ upvotes, 452 comments) points this out directly, saying Google tells publishers to "make better content" while their own engineers privately admit to using Bing for better results.
  
• In Has Google Lost Control of Its Search Algorithm? (r/SEO, 63 upvotes, 136 comments) a user questions the very definition of "helpful," noting how their site is deemed helpful one month and unhelpful the next, suggesting the algorithm is "broken or out of control".
  
• One user with a site full of authoritative backlinks from sources like The New York Times, BBC, and NASA still lost 80% of their traffic, leading them to conclude in Backlinks mean absolutely nothing to Google (r/SEO, 154 upvotes, 221 comments) that even following best practices is no guarantee of safety.

The trust breakdown is severe. SEOs feel they are playing a game where the rules are secret and constantly changing. When they follow the official advice and still lose, it creates a profound sense of unfairness and suspicion about Google's true motives.

The Existential Threat: AI Overviews and "Zero-Click" Searches

The rollout of AI Overviews (AIO) and AI Mode has poured gasoline on the fire. SEOs and publishers see it as Google outright stealing their content to provide answers directly on the SERP, eliminating the need for users to click through to their sites.

• In SEO is already DEAD Thanks To Google (r/SEO_Digital_Marketing, 238 upvotes, 134 comments) a user states, "I'm convinced we are entering the era of zero-click searches".
  
• Another user in What's even the point in trying anymore? (r/SEO, 174 upvotes, 122 comments) provides a perfect example of a SERP where an AI Overview, videos, and other features push the first organic result far down the page, leading to a 50% drop in clicks despite a 66% increase in impressions.
  
• The sentiment is that Google is becoming a "content stealer" as one commenter put it (r/SEO, 45 upvotes). Another thread, Google AI Overviews (r/SEO, 43 upvotes, 51 comments) asks if this makes Google a direct competitor to the very publishers and bloggers it relies on, questioning if it's grounds for legal action.

What we're seeing in these Reddit discussions is more than just frustration. It's a fundamental breakdown of the relationship between Google and the creators who populate its search results. They feel that the implicit agreement—"we create great content, you send us traffic", has been violated.

💔 A crisis of confidence in SEO agencies and talent

In the past year, we have also seen business owners express frustration over high fees with no ROI, a lack of transparency, and fear-mongering tactics from providers.

Threads like Rant time - SEO (r/SEO, 172 upvotes, 233 comments) and “Its impossible to find a good SEO Agency...Help!” (r/SEO, 82 upvotes, 112 comments) highlight the difficulty in finding competent professionals and agencies.

This widespread distrust damages the industry's reputation and creates a challenging environment for both clients and legitimate experts.

"I'm Paying a Fortune for... What Exactly?"

This is the most common and painful theme. Business owners are shelling out significant cash (often thousands of dollars a month) and seeing no measurable impact on their bottom line. The data is filled with cautionary tales.

• The Ultimate Horror Story: The thread Spent $60k on SEO over a year — no return, no cash left — need advice on what to do next (r/SEO, 161 upvotes, 326 comments) is a gut-wrenching example. A small family painting business invested its entire $60k marketing budget with a "highly reputable" agency, only to get zero return. To add insult to injury, when the owner left a negative review, the agency’s CEO threatened legal action.
  
• The "Is This a Rip-Off?" Question: We see this with smaller budgets, too. In the thread Google Business SEO..... I'm paying $500 a month for these services (r/SEO, 127 upvotes, 161 comments, now deleted by the author), a new plumbing company listed out the services they're receiving, which include things like "3,000 Google Maps Citations." This immediately raises red flags for experienced users on Reddit, who recognize these as low-value, easily automated tasks that sound impressive but often do very little.

The Transparency Problem

Closely related to the lack of ROI is a lack of transparency. Clients feel like they're paying a monthly retainer for a service they can't see, understand, or verify.

• "Just Trust Us, It's Working": The thread Asking SEO Company to Justify Monthly Fee (r/SEO, 99 upvotes, 189 comments) is a perfect example. A client paying $3,500/month asks their agency for specific examples of the work being done and gets vague answers about "on-page optimization" and "backlinking strategies". The agency's defense is to focus on "results, not minutia," but when the results aren't there, that answer feels like a dodge.
  
• Are They Doing Anything at All? This suspicion is echoed in SEO Company doing anything at all??? (r/SEO, 53 upvotes, 137 comments) where a developer working for a company paying thousands per month to an agency to help with their rankings can't find any evidence of the agency's work. They haven't touched the code, built new backlinks, or written blogs. It’s this kind of experience that makes clients feel like they're just funding an agency's payroll with no actual work being done.

Scare Tactics

This is one of the more predatory trends we're seeing. Some providers use fear-mongering or shady contract terms to lock clients in, making it difficult or costly to leave.

• The Threat of Losing Everything: In SEO company said we would lose everything (r/SEO, 162 upvotes, 174 comments) a remodeling company was told that if they stopped paying their SEO provider, they would "lose their place" and have to "start from the beginning". The Reddit community immediately called this out for what it is: a scare tactic. As one top comment put it "you 100% need a new SEO company if they said this".
  
• Renting Your Own Content: An even more shocking example is the thread SEO Company saying I'm 'renting' content and website from them (r/SEO, 78 upvotes, 138 comments, now deleted by author) . The agency's contract stated that all work (including the website and content) was owned by them, and the client would have to buy it all back if they left. The community response was swift and unanimous: "Don't sign that" and "Run. They'll take down any work they done if you decide to end the contract." This practice essentially holds a client's digital assets hostage.

The Talent Gap

Underpinning all of this is the simple fact that it's incredibly hard to find and vet competent SEO professionals. The barrier to entry is low, and many providers are just reselling low-quality services or following outdated playbooks.

• Even Agencies Can't Find Talent: The thread Rant time - SEO (r/SEO, 1712 upvotes, 233 comments) comes from a 7-figure marketing agency owner who is "seriously blown away by how hard it is to find solid SEO help". He’s hired people for $70-90k who can't even handle basic technical tasks like redirecting links or fixing 404 errors. This shows that the talent shortage is a real problem, even for those who know the industry.
  
• The Client's Dilemma: This is perfectly captured in Its impossible to find a good SEO Agency... Help! (r/SEO, 82 upvotes, 112 comments). An e-commerce business owner is struggling to find a partner who isn't using "black-hat signals" or buying "spammy" backlinks from places like Fiverr. This is the core of the trust crisis: how do you tell a real expert from someone just outsourcing to the cheapest gig worker?
  
• The Flood of Questions: The sheer volume of threads like How to Determine if a SEO Specialist is Good (r/SEO, 98 upvotes, 64 comments), What to look for when hiring a SEO company? (r/SEO, 38 upvotes, 90 comments) and Is there such thing as honest SEO companies? (r/SEO, 101 upvotes, 229 comments, now deleted by author) proves how widespread this confusion is. Business owners are desperate for a reliable way to vet providers but are met with a confusing and often deceptive marketplace.

This isn't just a few disgruntled clients; it's a systemic issue. The widespread distrust erodes the value of legitimate SEO work and creates a toxic environment. Good agencies and freelancers have to fight through a wall of skepticism, while business owners are either paralyzed by fear of getting scammed or get burned and swear off SEO for good.

The silver lining? This crisis is forcing a necessary conversation about value, transparency, and ethics. The agencies and freelancers who will thrive are the ones who can clearly communicate their process, set realistic expectations, and tie their efforts directly to a client's business goals, not just vanity metrics.

🔗 The link building conversation focus on quality over raw volume

Many experienced and successful voices on Reddit are treating link building less like a numbers game and more like a strategic PR campaign. Now more than ever, it’s all about earning high-quality, relevant placements that make logical sense.

Link Inserts Are Out, Curated Content Is In

The days of just buying a cheap link placement in an old, irrelevant article are numbered. The conversation has shifted to creating valuable content specifically for the site you want a link from. The thread Link Building in 2025 - Strategies for success, and what's changed? (r/SEO, 689 upvotes, 78 comments) is a masterclass on this. The author details how they stopped using cheap link inserts for a B2B machinery client because they "just weren’t working." Instead, they pivoted to "content curation", where they write articles for the target website that are designed to perfectly support the link. As the author puts it, with a new post:

"...you can completely control the breadth of content that sits around the link, allowing you to get the best from it entirely".

This is a huge shift from just slotting a link into pre-existing, often low quality, content.

Niche Relevance Over Generic Authority

There's a growing understanding that a link from a smaller, highly relevant site is often more powerful than a link from a massive, generic news site. Context is king.

The thread Backlinks Are Vital For Google (r/SEO, 63 upvotes, 60 comments) gives a fantastic hypothetical: for a children's clothing store, a link from a "mom blog that talks about kids fashion... with like 2k traffic" is preferable to a link from a massive news site that ranks for everything under the sun. It’s about creating a "believable link profile" that Google sees as natural and trustworthy.

Digital PR and Creative Outreach Are the New Frontier

Instead of just buying links, savvy SEOs are finding creative ways to earn them through digital PR and relationship-building.

In Tried an expert roundup for a stuck local SEO client (r/localSEO, 38 upvotes, 23 comments) a user describes how they created an article featuring tips from 18 different experts. After publishing, they reached out to those featured, and 10 of them linked back to the article. This single, creative effort helped their client jump from position #5 to #2 in the local map pack. It’s a perfect example of creating a valuable, linkable asset.

Another user, in Proud of my results as a non expert (r/SEO, 202 upvotes, 94 comments) shares a similar strategy:

"Asking other video production companies around the country to take meetings with me... If we think we're a good partner... we will both write a really detailed blog about one another for backlinks."

This is relationship-based link building in its purest form.

SEOs are playing the long game, focusing on building genuine authority through high-quality content and relationships. They see link building as an extension of marketing and PR.

🔙 A Strong Pull Back to Fundamentals

Amidst the chaos of AI and algorithm updates, there's a strong pull back to fundamentals. SEOs are emphasizing that core SEO practices such as technical health, quality content, and authority are what drive results, even for AI Overviews.

Google Confirms Fundamentals Work

One of the most powerful drivers of this trend is direct confirmation from Google itself. This isn't just a theory from the community; it's a validated strategy.

A popular thread, Google confirms normal SEO works for AI Overviews (r/SEO, 205 upvotes, 127 comments), captures this sentiment perfectly. The poster shares that Google's Gary Illyes stated, "Normal SEO is all you need", to appear in AI Overviews. This was a huge moment of validation for many who felt pressured by the hype around new, complex strategies.

As the author of this thread put it:

"Sometimes the boring answer is the right answer"

This is the heart of the trend. SEOs are realizing that mastering the fundamentals (quality content, technical optimization, and authority building) is the most reliable path to success, even in the age of AI.

The "What Actually Works" Playbook is All About the Basics

When SEOs get together to ask what's really moving the needle, the answers consistently point back to the fundamentals.

A user who was hired to "fix the online presence of a small medical practice"  (r/SEO, 609 upvotes, 87 comments) with a "website straight out of 2010" is starting their journey from square one. The community's advice overwhelmingly points them toward to core practices: structured content, a reviews strategy, and local rankings.

Similarly, a thread titled SEO vets - what actually works for ranking nowadays? (r/SEO, 139 upvotes, 132 comments) sparked a massive discussion, and the top-voted comment (176 upvotes) laid out a playbook that is a masterclass in core SEO:

The Reddit community also emphasizes creating pages for target keyword groups and supporting them with topic clusters. This is classic, fundamental SEO strategy. We see this in action in threads like Here is How I find Zero Search Volume, low competition but high traffic potential (r/SEO, 473 upvotes, 92 comments), where a user shares a meticulous keyword research process that focuses on finding overlooked user queries.

The importance of a good site deliberate, well thought site architecture is a recurring theme in these Reddit discussions. It’s not just about having links, but about creating a structure that guides both users and search engines. A user in the thread Started seeing my first results after diving into SEO (r/SEO_Digital_Marketing, 139 upvotes, 47 comments) shared the specific actions that led to their success. A key part of their strategy was creating a pillar page and strong internal links, showing how this foundational tactic delivers real results.

Similarly, in the thread Proud of my results as a non expert and want to share and say thanks! (r/SEO, 202 upvotes, 94 comments) a business owner attributes their recent success in booking jobs directly to their SEO efforts, mentioning"Internally linking like a maniac" as a core activity.

Local SEO success stories are almost entirely built on core principles. The post What 78 days of proper Local SEO can do (r/localSEO, 70 upvotes, 50 comments) lists a simple but powerful strategy:

"GBP optimization, Localized content + internal links, Citations + Backlinks, Review generation strategy, A site built to rank and convert"

There are no secret tricks here, just consistent execution of the basics.

In essence, the "strong pull back to fundamentals" is a response to the noise and chaos of the current SEO landscape.

While AI and SERP features create turbulence, SEOs are finding that a well-built ship (one with a solid technical foundation, high-quality content that serves user intent, and genuine authority) is what ultimately weathers the storm.

🧑‍🔬 Explore the Data Yourself

We dug into the last 12 months, but you can go further. The Reddit SEO Intelligence dashboard covers 200,000+ threads and comments since 2022, ready for you to slice, filter, and interrogate.

What you can do in seconds:

• Filter by date ranges, topics, tools, sentiment, keywords, authors
• Analyze specific subreddits
• Ask the AI assistant custom questions about filtered data

Why it’s worth exploring:

1. Stay up to date with latest SEO chatter across Reddit.
2. Spot proven tactics, real outcomes and success stories directly from active SEO communities.
3. Gauge sentiment toward tools, AI content, or Google updates in seconds.
4. Rapidly identify new industry questions or emerging trends while they're still hot.

👋 Parting Words

Over 100,000 threads and comments later, the picture is sharp: AI is the industry’s double-edged sword: supercharging workflows while siphoning clicks via zero-click SERPs and AI Overviews.

The trust rift with Google widened, agencies faced a crisis of credibility, and yet the threads that actually moved people were relentlessly practical: prompts that save hours, playbooks that ship, and field notes from wins and wipeouts.

We also saw the center of gravity shift back to fundamentals. Link building is less “spray and pray” and more “credible PR with context”. Local SEO and AI & SEO spiked in momentum. Tool talk polarized—Semrush vs. Ahrefs isn’t just features, it’s billing, data, and support. And the most-shared links weren’t hype, they were canonical sources, status dashboards, and hands-on tutorials you can cite.

Take one thing with you: build moats that compound (authority, brand, site architecture, intent coverage), treat links as relationships not transactions, and experiment where attention is flowing (AI answer engines, new SERP surfaces) without abandoning the boring SEO stuff that still wins.

If you’d like this same lens on your market, Reddit Intelligence by WordCrafter can spin up a custom dashboard for your niche: tracking sentiment shifts, surfacing feature requests, mapping influential voices, and revealing the exact language your customers and audience uses.

Want to see it on your niche? Ping me at feco@wordcrafter.ai. I'd love to show you what insights are hiding in your audience’s conversations 🚀