What do u think would be the future of SEO amidst Google I/O Update, SGE & ChatGPT stuff is around?

I think companies like https://backlinker.ai will change the game

SEO will have to go through a major change for sure, but I don't see it becoming obsolete. As sophisticated as AI is, I feel like it's still trying to catch up with SEO.

I think Google is trying to prevent getting ChatGPT-optimized content from getting ranked above by putting generative AI results on top. It will be their generative AI results not OpenAI's.

Fully AI written content will likely get punished, but they probably won't punish content that used AI in the writing process.

SEO's not going anywhere, just evolving. With Google's Core Web Vitals and AI like ChatGPT, it's more about user experience and quality content. It’s becoming less about keyword stuffing and more about conversational search.

My opinion on this is even if people transition to something like OpenAI for search (unlikely), more likely Google + an LLM, there will be less competition for snippet placements from SEO. However, my hunch is that Google will always look for supporting evidence to back their generated answers. Hence SEO should be focused on taking expertise a layer deeper so that you end up being the referred link. Google is already surfacing multiple snippets, so I can see these being a combination of generative + surfaced content.

I believe even the search engines would get smarter and identify LLM generated content, thereby ranking it lower.

The process of making your site better for search engines. Also the job title of a person who does SEO this for a living: We just hired a new SEO to improve our presence on the web.