Host: Sean Barber - https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanrbarber/ - He & Him

In this episode of Chat With Sean, I’m joined by Liv Day, Client Partner at Digitaloft, an award-winning SEO agency, and a speaker at events including BrightonSEO. Liv has a background in SEO strategy and digital PR, helping brands navigate the changing search landscape and build stronger online visibility.

We discuss how SEO is changing in the age of AI search, why brands need to rethink how they measure success, and why authority, trust and brand visibility are becoming more important than ever.

Liv shares insights from working directly with clients, including why Google is no longer always rewarding hyper-specific pages, why SEOs need to trust the SERPs over assumptions, and how AI platforms are surfacing content in ways that challenge traditional SEO thinking.

We also look at digital PR’s growing role in AI visibility, how brands can build stronger entities across the web, communicating SEO changes to stakeholders, reporting beyond traffic, and what the future of agentic commerce could look like.

Liv discusses:

- Moving from SEO Lead to Client Partner and staying close to the work

- Why staying hands-on with SEO matters

- How Google’s results are changing compared to traditional SEO thinking

- Why brands should focus on what Google actually rewards

- The growing importance of EEAT, authority and trust

- Why digital PR is becoming essential in an AI search world

- How brands can build stronger recognition across platforms

- Communicating SEO performance changes to stakeholders

- Moving beyond traffic as the main SEO metric

- The future of AI shopping and agentic commerce

Topics covered:

- Creating a role that keeps experienced SEOs close to strategy and execution

- The challenge of SEO careers becoming more management-focused

- Why practical SEO experience still matters

- Google rewarding broader pages over hyper-specific content

- When granular category pages work and when they don’t

- Trusting SERP data instead of relying on outdated SEO playbooks

- How AI search is surfacing deeper and more specific URLs

- Balancing SEO requirements with user experience needs

- Why not every page needs to exist purely for Google traffic

- Digital PR as a key strategy for AI visibility

- How ChatGPT can cite recent media coverage quickly

- Building consistent brand messaging across the internet

- Why brands need a clear understanding of who they are

- Entity building and how AI models understand brands

- Managing changing brand positioning

- Explaining traffic drops caused by AI Overviews

- Why revenue and conversions matter more than vanity metrics

- Using context and data when reporting SEO performance

- The dangers and benefits of SEO dashboards

- Creating better SEO reporting for different stakeholders

- Understanding brand competitors vs SEO competitors

- Why SERPs reveal your true online competition

- The future of agentic commerce

- How AI shopping experiences could change ecommerce

- Why AI adoption will differ by audience and industry

- Building brands across every channel, not just search

Connect With Liv - https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-day-seo/

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