Danny Goodwin, Editorial Director of Search Engine Land, interviewed Mike King, CEO and Chief Relevance Engineer at iPullRank. As a leading expert in the SEO field, King shared insights on how artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally transforming search engines and SEO practices. He emphasized that “Relevance Engineering” will become the cornerstone of SEO moving forward.
King pointed out that current SEO tools lag significantly behind Google’s search capabilities. Over a decade ago, Google moved beyond simple keyword matching to embrace advanced AI models and semantic understanding. In contrast, mainstream SEO tools still rely heavily on traditional metrics like keyword frequency and link graphs, making it difficult for SEO professionals to adapt to Google’s AI-driven query expansion and answer synthesis processes.
He explained Google’s use of “query fan-out” technology, which breaks down user queries into multiple sub-queries combined with knowledge graph data to generate AI-powered responses. Traditional keyword ranking tools fail to capture these nuanced expansions and weighting schemes, often leading to misinterpretation of actual search dynamics by SEO practitioners.
To address these challenges, King introduced the concept of “Relevance Engineering,” advocating for an engineering approach to content design and optimization rather than relying solely on conventional ranking and keyword tools. His team employs content embedding techniques to evaluate the relevance of individual pages within the broader website context, regularly pruning content that lacks sufficient relevance to improve overall performance.
Unfortunately, automated tools capable of performing such content audits and optimizations remain scarce. While companies like Screaming Frog have started integrating similar features, industry-wide progress remains slow.
In the AI-driven search landscape, user behavior is undergoing a fundamental shift. Increasingly, users obtain answers directly from AI-generated summaries without clicking through to websites, resulting in lower click-through rates but not necessarily lower conversion rates—in some cases, conversions may even improve. King stressed that SEO’s value must evolve beyond merely driving rankings and traffic to focus on brand influence and capturing users’ “share of mind.” SEO should be integrated into broader brand strategies to help clients navigate the evolving relationships between traffic, impressions, and conversions.
Despite some uncertainty among SEO professionals about the future, King remains optimistic. He sees new technologies as opportunities to redefine SEO, which will increasingly blend technology, data, and engineering design while paying closer attention to user context and multimodal content such as video and multilingual translations.
King also expressed concern about Google’s lack of transparency regarding user behavior changes, which hampers the industry’s ability to adjust strategies effectively. He recommended that Google provide clearer information on how AI-generated summaries impact click behavior to better inform the community and clients.
In summary, Mike King asserts that traditional keyword-centric SEO is giving way to an AI and relevance-driven era. SEO professionals must embrace “Relevance Engineering,” leveraging advanced technologies and engineering mindsets to redesign content and strategies while focusing more on brand building and evolving user behavior to remain competitive in the new search landscape.
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