Table of Contents
- Is SEO still worth it in 2025?
- Organic Traffic in Ireland Research
- The Quality of Organic Traffic
- How do the Key Events Compare?
- SEO Tips for 2025 onwards
- What I’m Telling My Clients in Ireland Right Now
- Conclusion
Is SEO still worth it in 2025?
As an SEO expert in Ireland, I often wonder if my efforts make any difference, if SEO really works, and whether I am contributing to and increasing the revenue of my clients. Is SEO still worthwhile?
With over 1.1 billion websites on the internet today, it has become a much more competitive environment. Click-through rates have been dropping, so the need for a top-ranking position in Google’s search results has become even more important.
Google’s recent introduction of AI Overviews has taken clicks, or visitors, away from websites by directly providing answers to search queries, so they have negatively impacted one of SEO’s traditional KPI’s – Clicks.
However, Google claims that the total number of searches it handles continues to grow and is projected to handle 13.6 billion searches per day in 2025, which equates to 5 trillion annual Google searches in 2025.
There is a lot of research into this exact topic, but it’s predominantly based in the USA and for the bigger companies, but what about the smaller companies in Ireland? What effect have all the recent changes had on Google Organic traffic here in Ireland?
The only way to find out is to perform my own research.
Organic Traffic in Ireland Research
I took a collection of 30 different local companies that represent both B2B and B2C, with about a third being eCommerce. The website traffic ranges from under 200 monthly visitors to almost 30,000, with the average being just under 4000. This is a big enough sample size to obtain meaningful comparisons from 2024 to 2025.
Looking at Google Analytics, there was an overall drop in website traffic of 9.3% from 2024 to 2025, which could be due to Cookies being blocked and GA4 not being able to track a percentage of visitors on some sites. However, during the same time, GA4 reported a much smaller drop in Organic traffic to these websites at 6.1%, meaning that Organic sources are now responsible for a greater percentage of traffic.
In 2024, 59% of the total traffic to these websites was generated via Organic Searches. A year later, in 2025, this had risen to 61% so SEO is playing a larger role.
Given the limitations placed upon GA4 by various privacy laws, I decided to also look at the data from Google Search Console. This data is not affected by the blocking of Cookies or other privacy laws and will therefore give more accurate year-on-year comparisons.
Although we are limiting the research to one search engine, Google does handle 95% of Ireland’s search traffic, so I consider it sufficiently meaningful.
This data tells a slightly different picture in that there was a small increase, 0.2% in Google Search traffic to the sites from 2024 to 2025.
The above data is hardly impressive and possibly indicates that Organic traffic has flatlined, if not decreased slightly, but this is just a part of the picture. We also need to look at the quality of the Organic Traffic.
The Quality of Organic Traffic
In the last year, Google made 3200 changes to its search algorithms, most were quite small, some were larger Core Updates, and now and again, Google introduces a monumental change, such as the inclusion of AI Overviews.
Google is continually working towards providing the searcher with better quality results in the Search Results Pages, but how do we know if Google is providing better results? Until now, we tracked Clicks through to the websites, but as we’ve seen above, the number of Clicks has flatlined over the last year with the increase in “Zero Click Results” provided by AI Overviews.
We do know that companies track certain events called Key Events, these are important actions that the company wants the website visitors to take, such as make a purchase, fill in a contact form or download a document, etc.
How do the Key Events Compare?
In 2024, Organic traffic generated 44% of the Key Events these companies tracked (2691 out of 6116 key events); by 2025, this had increased to 54% (4097 out of 7554), which equates to a 52% increase in the number of Key Events generated by Organic Traffic in just one year.
Also, looking at 2025, Organic traffic generated more than half of all Key Events, making it the single largest source driving conversions, more so than all the other channels put together. That’s a very impressive improvement.
SEO Tips for 2025 onwards
The old-school tactics of keyword stuffing and backlink chasing are long gone. Today, SEO is about being AI-visible, not just Google-visible.
Here’s what that means in practice:
1. Write for Humans and Machines
AI tools like Google’s Overviews, ChatGPT, and Bing AI pull from structured, clear, and authoritative content. That means your content needs to:
- Answer real questions clearly
- Use natural language
- Be structured with headings, bullet points, and schema markup
2. Focus on E-E-A-T
Google’s December 2024 update doubled down on rewarding content that demonstrates Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) . This is especially important in sectors like finance, health, and legal, but it applies across the board.
3. Local SEO Is More Valuable Than Ever
For Irish businesses, local SEO is a goldmine. With Google showing more map-based results and “Find results on” panels linking to platforms like Reddit and Quora, having a strong Google Business Profile, local reviews, and location-specific content is crucial.
4. Diversify Your Visibility
Google is no longer the only gatekeeper. AI tools are pulling content from forums, newsletters, and niche communities. That means your brand needs to be active beyond your website—on LinkedIn, Reddit, and even YouTube
What I’m Telling My Clients in Ireland Right Now
If you’re running a business in Dublin, Cork, or Galway, SEO is still one of the best long-term investments you can make. But it needs to be done right.
Here’s what I recommend:
- Invest in content that solves problems, not just sells.
- Use schema markup to help AI understand your content.
- Track more than just rankings—track conversions, leads, and engagement.
- Stay active on third-party platforms where your audience is researching.
- Combine SEO with PPC and social media for full-funnel visibility.
Conclusion
Looking at the above data, when tracking Organic Clicks, flat is the new up. If the number of organic visitors to your website is flat, then you are actually growing;
While we can see a drop in clicks from Google as a result of Zero Click Results, Google does not yet report on the number of clicks to your website coming from AI Overviews. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see this data soon.
There is no denying the value of Organic Traffic when it comes to the truly meaningful results – and that’s Conversions, which are up an incredible 52% year on year
SEO and Organic Search Traffic may be changing, but it remains arguably the most important source of website traffic for most companies, but as we have mentioned in previous articles there is a strong correlation between SEO and Paid Advertising with companies benefitting the most from making effective use of multiple channels and platforms to both drive and attract website visitors.
In my opinion, SEO has become more important in the last year, not less so, but we cannot continue to track and measure it as we always have. We need to shift our focus away from the big numbers, such as Impressions, Rankings and Clicks and look deeper at Engagement and Conversions. It makes sense that we should be generating content that appeals to and answers our customers’ questions, and not simply generating content that produces impressive stats. SEO is still worthwhile!
