Notes from a Saigon SEO Summit: Four Strategic Shifts Every Marketing Leader Should Know About
Four takeaways from three days with SEO specialists in Ho Chi Minh City — filtered for marketing leaders who value clarity over complexity.
Staying ahead of search engine changes can feel like a full-time job itself. If you’ve been feeling the pressure to adapt to AI while still maintaining your current results, this briefing is for you.
I spent three days at the SEO Mastery Summit in Ho Chi Minh City last month. This annual event is a global gathering where top SEO practitioners share raw data and experiment results from the front lines of search. My goal in attending was simple: to filter through the technical noise and find the high-level shifts that actually matter for purpose-driven organisations.
The honest summary is this: the rules that worked in 2023 don’t work anymore, but most of what gets sold as “AI SEO” is noise. At Out-Smarts, we’re already having this conversation with clients every week, so I went to hear what the specialists doing the research are actually finding. Here’s what matters, what doesn’t, and what to do about it.
Key Takeaways
- Google search patterns are shifting, and AI search is pulling away from them. Ranking in one doesn’t mean being cited in the other.
- Schema doesn’t improve rankings, and links still work. Most of the fundamentals haven’t moved.
- Focused content beats long content. The 3,000-word pillar page era is over for AI citations.
- AI visibility follows a pattern: narrative consistency, authority, repetition, and co-occurrence. Your site alone won’t do it.
Why I Invested the Time
The search landscape has shifted faster in the last eighteen months than in the previous five years. I wanted to hear from the people running the experiments — not the people writing LinkedIn threads about them. Across two tracks and speakers from twelve countries, the focus was on data, not theory. What follows is what I think is worth your attention if you lead marketing for a purpose-driven organisation. I’ve left out the “grey-hat” material and the deep technical sessions that don’t apply to lean marketing teams who need to focus on sustainable, ethical growth.
Shift 1: The Parallel Search Universe (And Why Your Traffic Might Be Dropping)
Have you ever looked at your analytics and thought, “We’re still ranking on page one, so why are our leads down?” You’re not crazy. And you’re definitely not alone.
At the Summit, Ivanna Flynn opened day two with a session bluntly titled Google Is Broken, and she made the case with data. Hacked sites are ranking. Fake profiles are ranking. Low-quality content is pushing high-quality content off the first page. The economics behind Google search are under pressure too — every search costs Google money, and at three billion searches a day, the pressure to change the model is real.
But here is the real adventure we’re navigating right now: AI search is emerging as a parallel system.
There is now a surprisingly weak correlation between ranking at the top of Google and what gets cited in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google’s own AI Overviews.
Mahmoud Elsaid showed this from a different angle. His team tracked pages that were losing traffic. Why? Not because rankings dropped. They lost traffic because users were getting the answer directly from an AI summary and never clicking through. Same page, same ranking, fewer visitors.
Put the two together, and the picture is clear. The search engine we’ve all treated as the centre of the universe for decades is changing. A parallel discovery system is growing right alongside it.
What this means strategically for your team: traditional SEO still sends most of the traffic. So please don’t panic and pull your budget. Keep investing in the fundamentals. But we have to stop treating traditional Google search as the whole picture.
AI visibility is a parallel discipline with its own rules, its own tactics, and its own way of measuring success. Your strategy, budget, reporting, and team focus need to pivot to reflect that reality.
We break down the practical measurement side of this in our guide From SEO Reports to AI Visibility Metrics: What to Track in 2026.
Shift 2: The Good News About the Fundamentals (Schemas & Links)
Take a deep breath. A lot of the current digital panic out there is actually about things that haven’t changed.
Schema does not improve rankings. Links still work. AI-written content is not automatically penalised. Those were Kyle Roof’s headline findings, and they’re worth repeating because hearing him present these headline findings at the summit was a fantastic, grounding reminder that the sky isn’t falling.
Let’s look at schema markup. It’s simply the structured code that tells search engines what your content is about. It helps them understand your pages and can unlock those rich results. But it is not a ranking factor. Google’s John Mueller has confirmed this directly. The transparent truth? Anyone selling schema to you as a ranking solution is selling the wrong thing.
What about links? They remain one of the clearest authority signals we have. What has changed is the quality bar. Low-quality links are now easy for search engines to detect and ignore. For purpose-driven organisations doing real work in the real world, this is a huge advantage. One solid mention from a trusted source is worth more than fifty scraped citations.
And yes, AI-assisted content performs just fine when it’s accurate, reviewed by someone who knows the subject, and clearly attributed. Google’s own guidance on AI-generated content makes this explicit: the focus is on quality and whether the content genuinely helps users, not on the tools you used to draft it.
What gets penalised is thin, unreviewed content at scale — which was always a bad idea, regardless of how it was written.
What this means strategically for your budget: If your SEO plan is built around elaborate, time-consuming schema, you’re spending effort in the wrong place. If it’s built on the assumption that links are dead, you’ll miss out on building real authority. Accuracy, real human expertise, and proper sourcing are where the returns are. That’s exactly where your time and budget should go.
Shift 3: The End of the Exhausting Pillar Page (Focused Content Wins)
If your team has been stressing over churning out massive, 3,000-word “pillar pages”, I have some fantastic news. You can stop.
For AI citations, focused, concise content is now beating long-form content every time. The old way of writing—trying to cover everything in one sprawling article—is officially on its way out.
Mahmoud Elsaid’s research on this was incredibly detailed. He shared five simple rules that you can literally hand to your team tomorrow:
- Answer the question in the first sentence.
- Use short paragraphs — just one idea each.
- Don’t bury the answer at the bottom of the page
- Break wide topics into smaller, linked, dedicated pages rather than one long article.
- Structure each section so it makes sense on its own when extracted.
Key Takeaway: AI systems struggle to pull answers from massive, sprawling pillar pages. To win citations, break complex topics down into a series of smaller, interconnected pages that each answer a specific question clearly.
Just a year ago, the standard advice was to write the 3,000-word pillar page and outdo the competition. But as we’ve seen, that advice is expiring for AI visibility. We’ve written about the content side of this in Generative Search Content Strategy: How to Optimize for AI Overviews in 2026.
What this means strategically for your team bandwidth: Your content model needs to shift. The question to ask is no longer “how do we write the definitive piece on this topic?” Instead, it’s simply “how do we cover this topic in a few focused, linked pages that each answer one question well?” This changes how you brief your team, how you budget, and frankly, it makes evaluating an agency’s work a whole lot easier.
Shift 4: The New Rules of Trust (The NARC Framework)
One of the most practical things I brought back from Saigon is a simple way to look at how AI systems “think” about your organization. According to Dawood Bukhari’s research, AI visibility generally follows a four-part pattern called NARC.
Think of this as your organization’s digital reputation. It’s not just about one page on your site anymore; it’s about how the entire internet talks about you. Think of AI visibility like a background check. AI doesn’t just read your website; it interviews your references. Conflicting stories across the web will cost you trust.
- Narrative consistency. Do you tell the same story about your organisation across your website, press coverage, LinkedIn, and directory listings? AI systems constantly cross-reference. If your mission says one thing on your “About” page but your LinkedIn says another, it costs you trust.
- Authority density. Is your name associated with your topic in credible places? AI systems weigh trusted resources heavily — think recognized industry associations, official certifications, or established publications. One mention in a genuinely authoritative source beats fifty weak ones.
- Repetition. Are you mentioned in connection with your specialty across multiple independent sources, over time? One-off coverage fades. Repeated, independent mentions across the web compound your visibility.
- Co-occurrence. Does your name appear alongside the other trusted names in your field? AI systems infer relationships from context. If you’re mentioned in the same breath as industry leaders or respected community partners, the AI assumes you belong there, too.
What this means strategically for your internal silos: AI visibility isn’t only an on-page problem anymore. A perfectly structured article won’t get cited if your organisation is invisible everywhere else.
This means your digital PR, your association involvement, guest articles, social media profiles, and consistent naming across every profile belong in the same conversation as SEO.
Siloed teams—where PR is one corner, and SEO is in another—are now a strategic liability. To win in 2026, all these pieces have to work together to tell one consistent, authoritative story.
Risk Mitigation: Why the “Quick Fix” is More Dangerous Than Ever
I’ll be honest with you: several sessions at the summit covered “black-hat” tactics that were genuinely impressive. The speakers had the data and the short-term results to prove they work.
They talked about things like parasite SEO and private blog networks (PBNs): tactics often referred to as “gray-hat” because they sit in the loopholes of search engine rules, but they fall squarely into the black-hat category when it comes to risk. If you’re under pressure to show fast results, these shortcuts can look tempting. But in my twenty years in this industry, I’ve watched the same pattern repeat every single time.
A manipulative tactic works brilliantly for a while, everyone piles in, and then Google or the AI engines update their algorithms. Suddenly, the organisations that took these shortcuts find their visibility wiped out overnight. The sites that disappeared from search last year weren’t “unlucky”. They were the ones built on the previous year’s “works great” shortcut.
At Out-Smarts, our values aren’t just words on a wall; they are how we protect our clients. We do not use these tactics, and we never have. Our work is grounded in transparency and ethics. That means no PBNs, no parasite SEO, no manipulative link schemes — because when Google catches up (and it always does), our clients are still standing.
If anyone is pitching these tactics to you, that’s your answer. It’s your signal that their strategy prioritizes a temporary spike over your organization’s long-term safety.
If You’d Like a Strategic Hand
Most of our clients come to us because they’re feeling overwhelmed, not because they don’t understand the digital landscape. They know the “what”, but they lack the internal bandwidth to execute the “how” consistently. If you’d like a straight conversation about what any of this means for your organisation—and how to get it off of your “to-do” list—get in touch.
FAQ
Is traditional SEO still worth investing in?
Absolutely. Search engines still drive most traffic for organisations. The change is that traditional SEO is no longer sufficient on its own.
How do I know if AI tools are citing my content?
It’s harder to track than Google rankings, but it is trackable. We covered the measurement question in detail in our guide From SEO Reports to AI Visibility Metrics: What to Track in 2026.
Should I stop writing long-form content for generative search?
Not necessarily. If a long article is really several distinct questions answered in sequence, it will likely perform better split into focused pages. If it’s a single sustained argument, it can stay as one piece — but make sure each section stands on its own, so AI systems can easily “understand” and cite it.
What’s the one thing I should do this month to improve AI search visibility?
Pick the five questions your team answers most often in sales calls, support emails, tours, or stakeholder meetings. Make sure each has a dedicated, focused page on your site that answers it clearly in the first paragraph. That single exercise addresses the heart of what I heard in Saigon more effectively than almost anything else.
About the Author
Mhairi Petrovic (pronounced Va-ri) is the founder of Out-Smarts Marketing, a digital agency helping healthcare, senior-care, and purpose-driven organisations strengthen online visibility through ethical, transparent, and results-focused strategies. With more than two decades in SEO, advertising, and content strategy, she and the Out-Smarts team guide brands through the evolving landscape of AI-driven discovery.
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