You're Interviewing Your SEOs Wrong
One group of SEO talent is becoming dramatically more valuable. The other is watching their skill set become a commodity.
This week’s #SEOForLunch sponsors are Profound and North Star Inbound.
The search industry is experiencing something many of us have never seen before.
The supply of search talent now exceeds the demand for search talent.
Blame artificial intelligence. Blame the economy. Blame years of checkbox SEO execution becoming increasingly commoditized.
Whatever the reason, the result is the same.
Search layoffs are up. Job openings are down. The market is more competitive than at any point in my 15+ year career.
The uncomfortable reality is that many of the skills that once made an SEO valuable are becoming easier to automate, outsource, or generate with AI.
Pull up a chair.
Let's talk about why this is happening, what skills are becoming table stakes, and what employers should actually be looking for when hiring SEO talent in 2026.
Thank you to Profound for sponsoring this week’s #SEOForLunch
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The First SEO Jobs AI Comes For
One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding AI is that it’s coming for SEO jobs.
I don’t believe that’s what’s happening.
What I do believe is happening is that AI is changing which SEO skills employers are willing to pay a premium for.
Historically, a significant portion of SEO work revolved around gathering information and generating recommendations. Technical audits, content briefs, keyword clustering, schema markup, metadata recommendations, and competitive analyses all required time, experience, and effort.
Those activities still matter today.
The difference is that they are becoming dramatically easier to produce.
An SEO can now use AI to generate a first-pass audit, content brief, or optimization recommendation in minutes. What once took hours can often be accomplished in seconds.
This doesn’t make the output worthless. It simply changes where the value resides.
For years, many organizations treated recommendations as the deliverable. The audit was the deliverable. The roadmap was the deliverable. The deck was the deliverable.
But recommendations were never the end goal.
Recommendations only create value when they lead to prioritization, implementation, and measurable business outcomes.
AI helps solve the problem of idea generation.
It does very little to solve the implementation problem.
That’s why I believe the first SEO jobs AI comes for are those centered around producing recommendations rather than driving outcomes.
As the cost of generating recommendations approaches zero, employers naturally place greater value on the people who can determine which recommendations matter and implement them.
In other words, AI is commoditizing parts of SEO execution.
It is not commoditizing judgment.
What AI Still Struggles To Do
As AI becomes better at generating recommendations, the value of SEO talent shifts elsewhere.
Prioritization. Testing. Communication. Influence. Judgment.
These aren’t new skills. They’ve always mattered.
The difference is that they are quickly becoming the primary differentiators.
Most organizations don’t suffer from a shortage of ideas. They suffer from a shortage of alignment, execution, and good decision-making.
Finally, there is judgment.
A few weeks ago, I found myself disagreeing with Gemini about a topic I know extremely well. The answer sounded reasonable. The explanation was polished. The problem was that it was wrong.
As AI becomes more capable, the ability to identify when it is confidently wrong becomes a skill in itself.
The future SEO isn’t the person who can generate the most recommendations.
It’s the person who knows which recommendations actually matter.
The New SEO Career Framework
For years, the career progression of an SEO was fairly straightforward.
Learn more about SEO. Get promoted.
Learn technical SEO. Get promoted.
Learn content strategy. Get promoted.
Learn analytics. Get promoted.
While those skills are still important, AI is rapidly reducing the value of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. The ability to produce SEO recommendations is becoming more accessible every day.
That doesn’t mean expertise no longer matters. It means the skills layered on top of that expertise matter more.
Today’s most valuable search professionals understand search. They understand AI. They understand how businesses operate. Most importantly, they know how to align people, priorities, and resources around a common objective.
The higher you climb within an organization, the less your success depends on your ability to identify problems and the more it depends on your ability to get those problems solved.
AI scales execution. People scale vision.
Nick’s Weekly “This Doesn’t Suck” List
A short list of things that stood out to me this week. No affiliate links, hidden angles, and certainly no way to buy your way in. If it’s here, it was earned.
What I’d Look For If I Were Hiring Today
If I were hiring an SEO in 2026, I wouldn’t spend much time asking about canonical tags, title tags, or XML sitemaps.
Not because those topics are unimportant, but because I can quickly determine whether someone understands the fundamentals.
What I’d really want to understand is how that person operates when things become messy.
I’d ask them to share a recommendation nobody agreed with.
Years ago, I argued that H1 tags provided virtually no ranking benefit. People laughed. Some openly disagreed. Eventually, John Mueller echoed a similar position, and Bill Slawski had been discussing the concept for years.
I don’t care whether the candidate was right.
I care whether they had the conviction to challenge assumptions and the communication skills to navigate disagreement.
I’d ask about a failed test.
Every experienced SEO has watched a seemingly great initiative die somewhere between recommendation and implementation. The difference is what happened next. Did they move on to the next project, or did they find a way to remove blockers and maintain momentum?
I’d ask about a project that stalled.
Every experienced SEO has watched a seemingly great initiative die somewhere between recommendation and implementation. The difference is what happened next. Did they move on to the next project, or did they find a way to remove blockers and keep the momentum going?
I’d also ask where AI gave them bad advice.
The common theme across all of these questions is simple.
I’m not looking for someone who knows SEO.
I’m looking for someone who can turn SEO knowledge into outcomes.
The easiest part of SEO has always been knowing what to do.
The hard part is getting it done, generating tangible results.
AI Won’t Replace SEOs. But The Lazy Ones Are Toast
~Nick
Thank you to North Star Inbound for sponsoring this week’s #SEOForLunch
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