Search is changing more rapidly than ever. While the core principles of SEO keyword research, creating quality content, technical SEO, and building authority continue to hold true, the evolution of AI-driven search engines and generative platforms reshapes the way consumers access, assess, and rely on information for online search. Beyond mere visibility, businesses need to prioritize originality, credibility, expertise, and authentic value in the era of AI-generated content.

In this Fixnhour exclusive interview with a SaaS SEO and inbound marketing expert with over 5 years of experience, Stanislav Farkas, we'll discuss how SEO is evolving in this new environment. Stanislav discusses SaaS SEO strategy, search intent, technical optimization, link building and more. He also tells you why you might need to use data, creativity, automation, authenticity and human expertise in future to achieve sustainable organic growth. 

Key Takeaways

  • SEO should be used to grow your business, not just for rankings and traffic.
  • Qualified visibility, leads, trust and sustainable growth are better metrics for SEO success.
  • The advent of AI is changing the landscape of content generation and information retrieval, leaving creativity and expertise more vital than ever before.
  • Businesses can stand out from the competition through strong brand signals, quality backlinks, and human experience.
  • In the modern era of SEO, SaaS optimization involves technical optimization, search intent, semantic relevance, content strategy, authority building, AI optimization.
  • In both conventional and AI-powered search, establishing brand credibility and trust has become a top priority.
  • Though automation grows, human relation is still the value, communities are still valuable, creativity is still the value and a true expertise is still valuable.
  • Search of the future will be even more data + creativity, AI + expertise, automation + authenticity, visibility + trust. 

Who is Stanislav Farkas?

Stanislav Farkas is an SEO and AEO strategist from Slovakia with more than five years of experience, specializing in B2B SaaS. He works with with SaaS companies, helping them get found through traditional and AI search. He focuses on technical SEO, content strategy, on-page optimization, link building, and reporting. He also builds AI workflows to help teams spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on work that needs their expertise. Outside work, Stan enjoys travel, skiing, and the freedom of working remotely. Each October, he organizes Autumn Escape, a month-long gathering where digital nomad friends live, work, and spend time together.

Q1. Stanislav, how did your journey into SEO begin, and what made you decide to specialize in SaaS SEO?

Honestly, I got into SEO almost by accident. I was working in social media management and building my portfolio when someone I was helping with a side project asked if I'd also be interested in helping with SEO. I said yes, although I had no idea how to do it at the time. I wanted to learn, and she offered to ask her boss whether they could bring me in and teach me. That's how it started. What I like about SaaS is that you really need to understand the product and the people using it. What problem does it solve? Who is it a good fit for? Why would someone choose it over another tool? Working through those questions and connecting them to business growth makes the work interesting for me.

Q2. You describe organic search as a growth pipeline rather than simply a traffic channel. What does that distinction mean?

I want to know what happens after someone finds the website. Are we attracting people who could become customers? Are we helping them understand their options and make a decision? In SaaS, someone might first search for help with a problem, then compare solutions, and eventually sign up or book a demo. Your website should help them through that process. Ranking number one for a high-volume keyword can look great in a report. But if the people searching for it have little reason to use your product, the business value may be limited. A page with 500 relevant visitors can be more valuable than one with 10,000 visitors who will never need what you sell. Traffic still matters. I just like to connect it to qualified leads, pipeline, and revenue wherever we can, rather than stop at the traffic chart.

Q3. What do SaaS companies most commonly get wrong when building an SEO strategy?

They often start with keywords before they understand the customer and the product. It's easy to export a keyword list, sort it by search volume, and turn it into a content calendar. But that doesn't tell you why those people would need your product or what you want them to do after reading the content. I also think companies get too attached to publishing targets. Producing ten articles a month gives you a number to report, but those articles still need a purpose. Sometimes improving three existing pages or building a useful product page is a better use of the budget. Then there's the tendency to focus on one area and neglect the rest. You can publish plenty of content and still struggle because of technical issues, weak internal linking, or commercial pages that barely explain the product. You need to look at how those pieces work together before deciding to produce more.

Q4. You work across technical SEO, on-page optimization, content, and link building. Which one matters most?

It depends on what's holding the website back. If important pages can't be crawled or indexed, technical SEO comes first. If the site works well but the content doesn't answer the customer's questions, I'd focus on content and on-page optimization. If the pages are strong but struggling in a competitive market, relevant links and stronger brand recognition may deserve more attention. That's why I like starting with an audit. It helps us decide where the next hour or the next euro is most likely to make a difference. All four areas matter, but they don't always need equal attention. The priority should come from the problem we're trying to solve, rather than a preference for one tactic.

Q5. AI is changing how people search. What does “AI Search Optimization” mean to you?

For me, it's about helping a brand get discovered and accurately represented when people use AI tools to research a problem or choose a product. Alongside asking how to get a page to rank, we're asking: does the company appear in relevant AI answers, and is the information about it correct? I still start with the basics: accessible pages, useful content, accurate product information, and a clear explanation of who the product is for. Google's guidance also makes clear that its AI search features build on established SEO practices. But I also look beyond the website. What do independent sources say about the company? Where do potential customers research the category? Which sources are appearing in relevant AI answers? And we need to be careful with measurement. A brand mention, a citation, a referral visit, and a qualified lead each tell us something different. I see AEO as an extension of SEO, with additional questions to investigate as the way people search changes.

Q6. With AI making content creation incredibly cheap, do you think the internet is heading toward a content-quality problem?

Yes, and I think we're already seeing it. It's very easy to produce another article that says roughly the same thing as the ten articles already ranking. When almost anyone can publish at scale, being able to produce more gives you less of an advantage. You need to give people a reason to read your version. That could be first-hand experience, original research, an expert's insight, or simply a useful example that makes the topic easier to understand. Google's scaled-content policy focuses on pages produced to manipulate rankings without adding value, regardless of how they were created. Using AI doesn't remove the responsibility to make the content useful and accurate. I've also been seeing more companies look for content editors rather than full-time copywriters. I can see why. AI-assisted writing combined with good human editing could help teams scale, provided the editor has the expertise, source material, and time to do more than fix the grammar.

Q7. Link building remains one of your key areas of expertise. What does high-quality link building look like today?

I want a link to make sense for the person reading the page. It should come from a relevant, credible website and point to something that adds value to the conversation. I care more about that context and the audience than collecting a large number of referring domains. A strong domain metric alone doesn't tell me whether a placement is worthwhile. The relationship behind the link matters too. Outreach is part of the work, but sending thousands of emails doesn't automatically make it good link building. I usually come back to a simple question: why would someone want to reference this company or resource? Having a useful answer to that makes the outreach much stronger.

Q8. How do you think AI will change the role of SEO professionals over the next few years?

I expect us to spend less time on repetitive tasks. AI already helps with research, keyword clustering, content briefs, reporting, and building workflows. That leaves more room for the parts of the job that require judgment. What should we prioritize? Is the data reliable? Does the recommendation make sense for this particular business? What did we learn from the last thing we tried? Knowing how to use the tools will matter, but so will knowing when to question their output. Producing an analysis quickly is useful only if it helps us make a better decision. I think the strongest SEO professionals will be able to combine that judgment with practical systems, so their teams can work faster without losing quality.

Q9. You have managed remote teams and are also passionate about location-independent work. What has remote work taught you about leadership?

It's taught me how much depends on trust and clear expectations. When you're not sitting next to each other, people need to know what they're responsible for, what good work looks like, and when to ask for help. You can't assume those things are clear just because you had a call about them once. I care much more about whether someone is making progress and delivering good work than whether their status says they're online. People need enough freedom to own their work, along with clear communication and accountability.Remote work can make management problems obvious quite quickly. If responsibilities are unclear or communication is poor, you feel it. But when those things work well, you can build a strong team without everyone being in the same place.

Q10. You have also built communities and organized experiences such as Autumn Escape. What did community building teach you that SEO couldn't?

It gave me a different understanding of what brings people together and makes them want to stay connected. With Autumn Escape, we spend a month living and working alongside each other. The value goes beyond the destination or the activities. It's also the everyday conversations and the time people have to get to know each other. You can organize the logistics, but you also need to pay attention to how people feel. Useful information alone doesn't create a sense of belonging. People want to feel welcome and part of the experience. I've brought that into my work too, including building relationships with other link builders. Taking the time to know someone makes collaboration much easier than only getting in touch when you need something.

Q11. Do you see a connection between community building and modern SEO?

Definitely. A lot of the discovery happens before someone reaches your website. They might hear about a company in a community, on a podcast, through LinkedIn, or from someone they trust. Those conversations can lead to branded searches, referrals, links, reviews, and partnerships. They can also create useful information about the company that search engines and AI tools may surface. Communities help you understand customers too. You hear how people describe their problems, what they've already tried, and what they don't trust. That's useful context for content and messaging. This is why I think community builders deserve more attention. Their work can contribute to how people discover and perceive a brand, even when the result doesn't show up neatly in an SEO report.

Q12. What is the biggest lesson you've learned from working with different brands, teams, and communities?

Probably how much progress depends on people agreeing on what they're trying to achieve. You can have a good strategy and talented people, but if marketing, sales, product, and leadership are working toward different goals, a lot of effort gets wasted. The best results I've seen come when those teams understand the priorities and their part in delivering them. I've also learned that every company has a different problem holding it back. Something that worked for one SaaS business may be completely wrong for another. Experience helps you recognize the options. Listening and understanding the business help you choose the right one.

Q13. What advice would you give SaaS founders investing in SEO today?

Be clear about who your customers are, what your product helps them do, and which searches could bring those people to you. That should guide the keyword research. Get the technical foundations in place and make sure your product and commercial pages actually help someone evaluate the software. Then build useful content and earn relevant coverage around the problems your customers care about. Agree on how you'll measure progress early. Traffic is useful, but try to connect it to qualified leads, pipeline, and revenue wherever possible. I'd also look beyond Google. Your customers may use AI tools, communities, social platforms, and other sources during their research. I like the idea of “Search Everywhere Optimization” as a way to think about that broader journey. The practical question is where your customers look for answers and whether they can find useful, credible information about you there.

Q14. Looking five years ahead, what do you believe the future of search and digital marketing will look like?

I don't think search is disappearing. I expect people to use a wider mix of tools depending on what they need. They might ask an AI assistant to compare products, watch a video to see how something works, look for experiences in a community, and use Google to investigate further. I expect those journeys to become more common, although I wouldn't try to predict exactly which platform will dominate in five years. For marketers, that means paying attention to how the company is presented across those places. An AI answer may draw on several sources, so the information on your own website is only part of the picture. I also expect SEO, content, PR, and brand teams to work more closely together. Their work already overlaps, and it makes sense to coordinate it around the questions customers are trying to answer. The tools and interfaces will keep changing. I'd still invest in understanding customers, building a good product, and giving people useful information they can trust. Those are things I expect to remain valuable.

About Stanislav Farkas

Stanislav Farkas is a SaaS SEO and inbound marketing specialist with over 5 years of experience supporting digital-first business with a focus on improving their organic visibility and sustainable growth. His specializations are technical SEO, on page optimization, search intent modelling, link building, off page optimization, content strategy, semantic SEO, how to optimize content using AI search tools, and Saas content marketing. In addition to SEO, Stanislav has had experience of managing remote teams and building online and offline communities. He's also created international coliving trips like the digital nomad and location-independent professional's Autumn Escape.

His mission is to help companies stand out, be found, and be ranked for their efforts where it matters most, with quality-first SEO, intelligent automation and thought leadership. The philosophy of his own personal journey is captured in the following: “When you do what you love, you find no enemies.” 

Final Thoughts on the Expert

Stanislav Farkas's journey is a testament to the changes occurring within the SEO industry as a whole. The primary focus of SEO started to be website optimization for search engines. It grew to content. The technical performance became more complex. Link building evolved. The concept of user intent came to the fore. Brands started to link up to broader growth strategies and recognise the value of connecting to organic visibility. But now it's AI that is forcing another change. Google's future of SEO might not be limited to where pages rank in 10 blue links. With the growing number of search engines, AI platforms, communities, and digital experiences, companies are required to think about how they're understood, referenced, trusted, and surfaced.

The future of technical SEO and content marketing, link building, AI optimization, remote leadership, and community building can be interestingly viewed through Stanislav's combination. Because optimization can help a company become visible. Visibility is not enough for sustainable growth. Visibility needs relevance. Relevance needs authority. Authority needs credibility. Then, the final requirement for credibility is trust. The most significant possibility that AI offers to SEO professionals is not just automation, but the ability to do more work. It's a chance to spend more time understanding the individuals behind the searches, and less time just repeating the execution of the same search. Talk to our experts