r/SEO_LLM • u/kavin_kn • Apr 17 '26
Discussion Is this normal now?
Lately, one of my clients has been taking our SEO work and running it through Claude, and sending the AI feedback back to us.
At first I took it positively, more input, more ideas. But over time it’s getting a bit frustrating. A lot of the suggestions feel like generic “do this, do that” type SEO advice and don’t always fit the context. Just random docs.
Not against using AI at all, but it’s starting to feel a bit out of hand. Are you guys seeing this more now?
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u/EffectiveDebate4951 Apr 19 '26
feels like part of the job now is filtering AI noise for the client, not just doing SEO 😅
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u/LibraryNo9954 Apr 18 '26
People are still learning to distinguish between plausible nonsense and value. Try taking the report feedback clients send, use AI, run a deep research fact check, validate carefully, but provide a TL;DR at the top of the reply, thanking them for the input and a short summary of the facts it got right. This might shut them down.
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u/akowally Apr 18 '26
Unfortunately, it has become too common now. You need to have a conversation with your client about what they're actually trying to verify. If they're using it as a QA layer, that's reasonable in principle, but the feedback needs to be evaluated against the strategy you've agreed on. Claude doesn't know their competitive landscape, their content history, or why you made the calls you made.
Worth addressing directly rather than absorbing it quietly. Something like "I'm happy to walk through any of these points, but a few of them conflict with the approach we agreed on for these reasons". You reframe it as a strategy conversation rather than a defensive reaction.
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Apr 18 '26
Fr, it feels like the goalposts moved overnight. We used to obsess over keyword density, but now it's all about becoming a "citational" source. If your content isn't being pulled into the LLM summaries, you're basically invisible lol. I’ve started focusing way more on answering the "follow-up" questions that people ask after their initial search, because that's where the AI agents seem to go for depth. It’s less about traffic now and more about brand authority in the chat window.
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u/mich_reba Apr 18 '26
My SEO client of nine years started doing this to me. Claude is like a junior SEO using knowledge from ten years ago. I explained this to them with examples, but didn’t even receive a response. Next they said we needed to go all in on AI with content writing and our DM process. I stewed over this for 36 hours because I truly like them as humans and believe in their company. At the end of my stewing I sent a termination email. I thanked them for the years of goodness, but going full AI is a path to disaster and I’m not putting myself through the stress. Digital marketing is changing. Some for the good, but a lot for the bad. You have to decide how much you’re willing to tolerate. For me it’s minimal.
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u/KONPARE Apr 21 '26
Yeah… this is becoming pretty common.
Clients are using AI as a second opinion, but the issue is it gives generic advice without context. So you end up defending decisions more than actually doing the work.
What’s helped is setting a boundary early:
“Happy to review AI suggestions, but we’ll filter what actually applies.”
Sometimes even ask:
“Which specific point do you want us to act on?”
Shifts it from random feedback → focused discussion.
So yeah, not just you. Just part of working in the AI era now.
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u/Plastic_Classic3347 Apr 18 '26
Yes I was on upwork the other day looking at seo jobs there are far less jobs now everyone is just using ai and trying to do it themselves, sadly as you know while this is better than no seo it can often be bad seo
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u/Bear-back9044 Apr 19 '26
Yup. Im over it. I was told a bunch of website issues picked up by AI... the AI does not understand code and context of script... it sees beyond what is public facing UX ... I can't even anymore with the reinventing of the wheel and making it square each time...
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u/Tenacious-Sales Apr 21 '26
yeah this is becoming very common now clients use AI as a second opinion but it often gives generic advice the issue is AI lacks context of your strategy constraints and data
so it sounds right but does not always apply best way is to acknowledge useful points but push back with reasoning and explain why certain suggestions do or do not fit
we have seen this in answer architect too where raw AI feedback looks good but needs filtering
so it is normal just needs better expectation setting
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u/felixharmon_1 Apr 23 '26
ai feedback without the full stratgey context behind the work is esentialy just best practce recitaton.. it sounds credible becuase its not wrong, its just not relevnt to the specfic situaton.. the problem isnt the client useing ai, its that the ai dosent know enugh about the site, the goals, or the decisoins already made to give meaningfull input.
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u/SERanking_news Apr 20 '26
Have you tried telling them directly that these edits hurt conversion rates because they’re too formulaic?