Here’s something that should stop every freelancer in their tracks: the way your next client is going to find you has fundamentally changed—and most freelancers have no idea it’s happening.
Not long ago, if you wanted to be discovered as a freelancer, the playbook was pretty simple. Write some blog posts, optimize your website for a handful of keywords, maybe snag a few backlinks, and wait for Google to send traffic your way. It worked. Not always perfectly, but it worked.
That playbook is getting torn up in real time.
AI search—think ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, Gemini—is no longer a novelty. It’s becoming the default way millions of people look for answers, including the answers to questions like “Who’s the best freelance web designer for my startup?” or “Where do I find a reliable freelance copywriter who specializes in SaaS?”
If your name, your brand, or your services don’t show up in those AI-generated answers, you’re invisible to a fast-growing segment of potential clients. And unlike traditional search rankings—where you at least know if you’re on page one or page five—most freelancers don’t even know how to check whether AI is recommending them or ignoring them entirely.
That’s what this article is about. Not hype. Not vague predictions. Practical clarity on what’s actually changing, why it matters specifically for freelancers and agencies, and what to do about it before it’s too late to catch up.
Traditional Search vs. AI Search: What’s Actually Different
Let’s make sure we’re talking about the same things before we go further, because the distinction matters.
Traditional search is what you’ve been doing for decades. You type a query into Google or Bing, a list of links appears ranked by relevance and authority, and you click one (or several) to find what you need. SEO—search engine optimization—has always been about engineering your way to the top of that list.
AI search works differently. Instead of returning a list of links, AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews synthesize information from across the web and deliver a direct answer. Sometimes they cite sources. Sometimes they don’t. But the key thing is this: the user often gets what they need without ever clicking a single link.
That shift—from “here are ten links that might help” to “here is your answer”—changes everything for anyone who depends on search traffic to get found and get clients.
The Current State of Search: Don’t Panic, But Don’t Sleep on This Either
Traditional Search Still Dominates—For Now
Here’s the honest truth: Google isn’t dead. Not even close. Traditional search engines still receive roughly 24 times more daily visits than AI chatbots. If you’ve built up solid SEO over the years, that work still matters. It’s still paying off. Don’t abandon it.
But here’s what keeps forward-thinking freelancers up at night: the growth trajectory of AI search is steep and it’s accelerating. The users who are adopting AI search tools aren’t replacing traditional search occasionally—they’re replacing it habitually. Once someone gets comfortable asking ChatGPT a question instead of Googling it, they rarely go back.
The Numbers Tell a Story Worth Paying Attention To
According to Semrush, approximately 13% of Google queries now trigger AI-generated summaries—and that number has nearly doubled in a short window of time. ChatGPT alone processes hundreds of millions of conversational queries every day. Perplexity is growing at a pace that’s turning heads in the SEO world.
Semrush
Semrush One is the ultimate traditional SEO + AI search solution that combines the AI Visibility Toolkit with the SEO Toolkit plan at a discounted price. It’s built to give you everything you need to manage and grow your visibility across both search and AI platforms in one unified solution.
Why we like Semrush ‣
Semrush has earned its reputation as one of the most comprehensive all-in-one digital marketing platforms available, and for good reason. At its core, it excels at the things SEO practitioners care about most: deep keyword research, competitive analysis, backlink auditing, rank tracking, and full site health audits — all under one roof. The Keyword Magic Tool is a standout, surfacing thousands of related keyword ideas with difficulty scores, search intent labels, and even AI-powered “personalized difficulty” scores tailored to your specific domain’s topical authority, a feature not yet found in competing tools. The site audit and on-page SEO checker are genuinely best-in-class, not just flagging issues but explaining why each matters and how to fix it — making it surprisingly educational for newer users. The link building toolset goes further than any competitor, offering a CRM-style outreach workflow that lets you manage prospects, connect your mailbox, and send emails directly from the platform. Semrush has also leaned meaningfully into the AI era, with AI visibility tracking tools that monitor how your brand surfaces in tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews — a forward-looking addition that sets it apart from most rivals. For any established blogger, marketer, or agency that’s serious about growing organic visibility, Semrush is hard to beat as a centralized command center.
Semrush Pros & Cons ‣
Pros:
- Exceptional keyword research tools. The Keyword Magic Tool, paired with personalized keyword difficulty scores based on your site’s topical authority, gives you more actionable and context-aware data than nearly any competing platform.
- Best-in-class site auditing. Semrush crawls your entire site, prioritizes issues by severity, and provides plain-English explanations for every recommendation — making it useful for both technical SEOs and content-focused marketers.
- CRM-style link building. The link prospecting and outreach toolset is a genuine differentiator, letting you find targets, send emails, and track the progress of each campaign without leaving the platform.
- Generous reporting limits. Even on entry-level plans, Semrush allows up to 3,000 domain analysis reports per day — far more generous than many competitors, including Ahrefs’ entry-level cap.
- AI visibility tracking. Tools for monitoring how your brand appears across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini give Semrush a meaningful edge as AI-driven search continues to reshape how users discover content.
- Strong competitive intelligence. The Domain Overview, Keyword Gap, and Backlink Gap tools make it easy to reverse-engineer what competitors are doing and identify opportunities you’re missing.
- Integrations with Google Analytics and Search Console. Syncing real data from your own properties makes tracking and optimization more accurate and grounded in what’s actually happening on your site.
- Multiple customer support channels. Phone, email, and live chat support puts Semrush ahead of rivals like Ahrefs and Moz, which don’t offer all three.
Cons:
- Expensive, especially at scale. Plans start around $140–$199/month, and costs climb quickly once you factor in add-ons for content, advertising, local SEO, and competitive intelligence — which can each run $60–$289/month on top.
- Only one user seat per plan. Every pricing tier comes with just one account, and adding additional users costs between $45 and $100 each — a significant pain point for agencies or larger teams.
- Steep learning curve. The sheer volume of tools and data can be overwhelming for newcomers; it takes meaningful time to feel comfortable navigating the platform efficiently.
- Traffic estimates can be inaccurate. Semrush’s traffic figures are estimates, and they tend to be notably unreliable for smaller sites with under 5,000 monthly organic visits.
- Google-only keyword data. Keyword research metrics are limited to Google, with no support for Bing or other search engines — a limitation for teams operating in markets where Google’s share is lower.
- AI visibility toolkit has gaps. Despite the investment in AI tracking, major platforms like Claude, Perplexity, and Meta AI are not currently monitored.
- Not mobile-friendly. The interface isn’t responsive, and using Semrush on a smartphone is a frustrating experience; the iOS position-tracking app is limited and poorly rated (2.1/5 on the App Store).
- Backlink tools trail Ahrefs slightly. Broken link building workflows are more cumbersome in Semrush than in Ahrefs, and the backlink gap tool caps competitor comparisons at just four domains.
Gartner has gone on record predicting that by 2028, 50% of all search activity will involve AI assistants in some form. That’s not a fringe prediction. That’s one of the most respected research firms in the world telling you that half of search—within just a few years—will look nothing like it does today.
For freelancers who rely on inbound leads from search, this is the kind of trend you either get ahead of or get left behind by. There’s not a lot of middle ground.
How AI Search Is Actually Changing the Way People Look for Freelancers
From Click-First to Answer-First
Think about the old user journey. Someone needs a freelance designer, so they Google “freelance logo designer” and get a page full of links. They open five tabs, compare portfolios, read a few reviews, and eventually reach out to someone. That whole process depended on them clicking—and clicking multiple times.
AI search collapses that journey. The same person now types “who’s a great freelance logo designer for a small food brand?” into Perplexity or ChatGPT and gets a synthesized recommendation. Maybe a name. Maybe a platform. Maybe a type of freelancer to look for. They might not click anything at all before they’ve already decided what to do next.
The data backs this up. When AI-generated summaries appear in search results, click-through rates can drop from around 15% down to 8% or lower. That’s a significant chunk of traffic that used to flow to websites and portfolios—gone, because the AI answered the question before anyone needed to click.
Queries Are Getting Longer and More Conversational
Traditional keyword searches were short and blunt. “Freelance writer rates.” “Hire graphic designer.” “UX designer portfolio.”
AI search queries are longer, more nuanced, and more conversational. People are asking things like: “I’m a bootstrapped SaaS founder and I need a freelance content writer who understands B2B marketing and can write case studies—where should I look and what should I expect to pay?”
That’s not a keyword. That’s a conversation. And it means the content that gets cited by AI has to actually answer those nuanced, specific, real-world questions—not just target a keyword cluster.
For freelancers, this is actually good news buried inside a challenge. The more specifically you can articulate who you help, how you help them, and what results you deliver, the more likely an AI is to recognize you as a relevant answer to a specific, qualified question. Generic positioning gets lost. Specific, clear positioning gets cited.
Zero-Click Behavior Is Becoming the Norm
Perhaps the most unsettling trend for anyone who has built a business on inbound search traffic: AI searches frequently end without a single click to an external website. In some studies, zero-click rates for AI-assisted queries exceed 90%.
That doesn’t mean people aren’t finding answers. It means they’re finding answers without visiting your website. If your positioning, your expertise, and your name aren’t embedded in those AI-generated answers, you simply don’t exist for that user.
What This Means for SEO: Welcome to the GEO Era
Traditional SEO Metrics Are Losing Their Grip
Rankings. Backlinks. Domain authority. Page speed scores. These metrics aren’t worthless—they’re still relevant and they still influence AI systems to some degree. But they were designed for a world where getting to the top of a SERP was the goal. In an AI-driven world, the goal is being cited inside an answer.
That’s a fundamentally different optimization target. You’re not trying to rank above ten other websites. You’re trying to be the source an AI trusts when it assembles an answer to a specific question. Those require different strategies.
Enter Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
GEO—Generative Engine Optimization—is the emerging discipline of making your content understandable, credible, and citable by AI systems. It’s less about gaming an algorithm and more about being genuinely useful in a format that machines can parse and trust.
The core principles of GEO aren’t complicated, but they do require a real shift in how you think about content.
Structured, Answer-Ready Content Wins
AI systems love content that’s organized around clear questions and direct answers. FAQs, step-by-step explanations, well-labeled sections, comparison tables, definition blocks—these aren’t just user-friendly. They’re machine-friendly. When an AI is synthesizing an answer about, say, how much to charge for freelance web design, it’s going to pull from sources that answer that question directly and clearly. Not sources that bury the answer in five paragraphs of preamble.
If you write articles or maintain a blog as part of your content marketing, go back through your best-performing pieces and ask: if someone asked this question directly, does my content answer it within the first two paragraphs? If not, restructure it. That simple change can meaningfully improve how often AI cites your content.
Brand and Entity Presence Matters More Than You Think
AI systems build understanding of the world through entities—recognizable people, brands, businesses, and concepts. The more consistently your name or your brand appears in credible, topically-relevant contexts across the web, the more “real” you become to AI systems.
This means that guest posts, podcast appearances, mentions in industry roundups, being quoted in relevant articles, having a Google Business Profile, and maintaining consistent social presence all feed into how visible you are to AI. It’s not just about your own website anymore. It’s about your entire digital footprint.
Semantic Clarity Over Keyword Stuffing
AI doesn’t reward keyword density. It rewards semantic clarity. That means using natural language that clearly communicates what you do, who you do it for, and why it matters. Write for humans first. The AI will follow.
Practically speaking, this means your About page, your services pages, and any content you publish should be unmistakably clear about your niche. Don’t be the freelancer who says they “help brands tell their story.” Be the freelancer who “writes long-form case studies and thought leadership articles for B2B SaaS companies with 10–100 employees.” One of those gets cited. One doesn’t.
How Freelancers and Agencies Can Get Clients in This New Landscape
Audit Your Visibility in AI Answers Right Now
The first step is knowing where you stand. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. Start asking the questions your ideal clients would ask. “Who are the best freelance UX designers for healthcare apps?” “Where can I find a reliable freelance copywriter for email sequences?” “What’s the best platform to hire a freelance video editor?”
Are you showing up? Is your website being cited? Are platforms you’re listed on appearing in those answers?
If the answer is no, you have a clear gap to address. If the answer is yes, pay attention to why—what content, what platform, what positioning got you there—and double down on it.
Optimize Your Online Presence for AI Citation
Beyond your own website, think carefully about where your name and work appear online. Platforms that already have high authority in AI systems—like LinkedIn, industry-specific directories, reputable blogs in your niche—are valuable real estate. Being featured, quoted, or listed on those platforms increases the likelihood that an AI pulls you into a relevant answer.
If you haven’t already, invest time in building a genuinely strong LinkedIn profile that clearly communicates your specialty. LinkedIn is a platform that AI systems frequently cite. A well-optimized profile there can show up in AI answers even when your personal website doesn’t.
Create Content That Answers the Questions Your Clients Are Actually Asking AI
Here’s where content strategy and AI visibility intersect in a really practical way. Your clients are asking AI platforms questions every day—about hiring freelancers, about what things should cost, about what to look for in a specialist, about how to manage freelance relationships. If your website has clear, well-structured articles that answer those specific questions, AI systems are more likely to cite you.
Think about the questions in your niche. If you’re a freelance accountant, write a definitive guide to what freelancers should expect to pay for accounting services. If you’re a brand strategist, publish a detailed breakdown of what goes into a brand strategy engagement. Create content that earns citations by being genuinely the best answer available for a specific question.
Shift How You Report Results to Clients—and How You Pitch New Ones
If you offer any kind of digital marketing, content, or SEO services to clients, you’re going to need to evolve how you talk about results. Clients who are paying attention are starting to ask new questions. “Why doesn’t my company show up when I ask ChatGPT about [topic]?” is a question that’s becoming more common.
Being the freelancer who can answer that question—and who can actually improve that visibility—is a significant differentiator right now. The market for AI visibility audits and GEO-focused content strategy is still early. Getting there first isn’t just smart; it’s a real competitive advantage.
In terms of new KPIs to track and report: start paying attention to AI answer citations, branded mention frequency across the web, and whether your clients’ content is appearing in AI-generated summaries for relevant queries. These aren’t fully standardized yet, but tools are emerging to track them. Getting comfortable with this reporting now puts you miles ahead of most agencies and freelancers who are still stuck in 2019’s metrics dashboard.
AI Search Visitors Convert at Higher Rates—That’s Worth Understanding
Here’s a nuance that often gets lost in the panic about zero-click rates: the people who do click through from AI search tend to convert at significantly higher rates than average organic visitors. Why? Because they’ve already received a synthesized answer. They’re not browsing—they’re deciding. When someone clicks your link after an AI has already explained what you do and why you’re relevant, they arrive warm. They’ve been pre-sold by the AI itself.
This means that even as overall traffic volumes may shift, the quality of AI-referred traffic is often higher. Fewer visitors, but more of them becoming clients. For freelancers who are focused on getting clients rather than accumulating page views, that’s actually a compelling trade-off—if you can get into those AI answers in the first place.
The Pitfalls: What to Watch Out For
Don’t Abandon Traditional SEO Entirely
This needs to be said plainly because the pendulum in marketing tends to swing hard. Traditional search still accounts for the vast majority of search activity. The freelancers and agencies who throw out everything they’ve built in traditional SEO to chase GEO are making a mistake. The smart play is to evolve, not to start over.
Strong traditional SEO—good content, solid backlinks, fast websites, clear structure—actually contributes to AI visibility as well. These aren’t competing disciplines. GEO builds on a foundation of good SEO. If your traditional SEO is weak, fix that first. Then layer in GEO-specific strategies on top.
Watch Out for Snake Oil
Any time a new marketing concept emerges, an entire cottage industry of people selling questionable services follows close behind. “We’ll get you ranking in AI search” is going to become the new “we’ll get you to page one of Google.” Some of those people will know what they’re doing. Many won’t.
Be skeptical of anyone who promises specific, guaranteed AI visibility results. The space is too new and too fluid for those promises to be credible. Look instead for practitioners who can explain the underlying principles clearly, show you where you currently stand, and outline a logical strategy for improving—with honest expectations attached.
Where This Is All Headed
Nobody has a perfect crystal ball here, but the directional signals are clear enough to act on. AI search is growing fast. It’s becoming embedded in how browsers work, how operating systems function, how devices respond to voice queries. The integration is only going to deepen.
Within a few years—some analysts say less—AI-assisted search could surpass traditional organic traffic as the primary discovery mechanism for many types of queries. The freelancers who have established their visibility, their credibility, and their authority inside AI systems by then will have a meaningful head start. The ones who waited will be playing catch-up from a standing start.
The professionals who thrive in this environment won’t be SEO specialists or AI specialists exclusively—they’ll be both. The job is evolving from “rank for keywords” to “be the trusted source AI turns to when your ideal client is asking your question.” That’s a broader, richer, more interesting challenge. And it’s an opportunity for the freelancers who are paying attention right now.
The Bottom Line
SEO hasn’t died. But it has fundamentally changed—and the change is accelerating faster than most freelancers realize.
The shift is this: you’re no longer just competing for ranking positions on a search results page. You’re competing to become a trusted, citable source inside AI-generated answers. That requires structured, answer-ready content. It requires clear, specific positioning. It requires a broader digital footprint beyond just your own website. And it requires a new set of metrics that most freelancers aren’t tracking yet.
The good news is that the fundamentals of being genuinely helpful, clearly positioned, and credibly visible still apply. They just apply in a new arena. If you’ve been doing good work and communicating it clearly, you’re closer than you think to making the transition. You just have to understand where the game is being played now—and start showing up there.
Start today. Do the audit. Ask AI the questions your clients are asking. Find your gaps. And close them before your competitors do.
You’ve got this.
Keep the conversation going…
Over 10,000 of us are having daily conversations over in our free Facebook group and we’d love to see you there. Join us!
