If you’re an organic search marketer, you know the industry has been fundamentally disrupted over the last two years. As a community, we continue to debate short-term tactics rather than pivot toward a holistic strategy aligned with general marketing principles. Despite the frustrating landscape, we must stop focusing on outdated hacks and shift our thinking toward becoming a trust-first channel. The traditional organic search funnel has evolved from a journey of discovery to a journey of trust. AI-generated answers didn’t create this shift, but they drastically accelerated it. Google has long told us to “create the best content,” and many of us — myself included — missed what that truly meant. ## The real metric of success: trust For most of my career, organic search was straightforward. I could pull keywords for a domain and its competitors to create a gap report that prioritized opportunities.…