For decades, SEO has been the cleanup crew—called in post-launch to fix structural issues in content, code, and architecture. But the AI-first search era demands something radically different: SEO leaders must evolve from inspectors to commissioning authorities—strategic leaders involved from blueprint to execution.
At Serpfactor, we believe the future of SEO isn’t reactive—it’s engineered.
From Building Inspectors to Commissioning Authorities
Historically, SEO teams were looped in too late. After wireframes were finished and dev was underway, they’d fix indexability, patch broken links, and retrofit keywords. While that worked in traditional search environments, AI-powered systems don’t just crawl—they synthesize.
Modern SEO needs to become a system-wide commissioning authority (CxA)—one that ensures the entire stack (content, code, speed, semantics) performs together to deliver value.
The SEO Stack Today: More Than Just Optimization
Today’s websites are multi-layered systems:
- Content strategy & CMS structure
- Schema & entity markup
- Core Web Vitals & speed
- AI snippets & answer summaries
- Localization, design, accessibility
And SEO must make all of it machine-readable, semantically clear, and AI-discoverable.
That’s what a Commissioning Authority does.
The Rise of the Relevance Engineer
Coined by SEO expert Mike King, the Relevance Engineer is a role laser-focused on:
- Structuring content for generative AI
- Optimizing for layered intent (info to transaction)
- Chunking content for LLM retrieval
- Mapping entity associations with schema
In essence, this role ensures content is not only readable—but usable by LLMs.
At Serpfactor, our platform enables Relevance Engineering at scale. From structured auditing to semantic entity tracking, we make your site ready for AI-first visibility.
How the Role of SEO Has Shifted
| SEO Function | Old Role: Inspector | New Role: Commissioning Authority |
| Indexability | Crawl fixes post-launch | Design with rendering in mind |
| Relevance | Post-launch keyword patches | Intent-based planning upfront |
| Authority | Reactive link-building | Structured reputation building |
| Clickability | Tweak metadata | Design for AI previews/snippets |
| UX | Flag after testing | Embed clarity from day one |
What the AI Era Demands From SEO
The evolution of search means your site must:
✅ Be extractable in real time by LLMs
✅ Surface content that answers nuanced queries
✅ Have AI-ready markup, content blocks, and architecture
✅ Be semantically structured, not just visually pretty
Serpfactor helps you lead this transformation.
Final Thoughts: Don’t Wait for AI to Break Your SEO
We’ve spent 30 years retrofitting websites to please search engines. That era is over.
AI-first visibility is earned upfront. It’s planned, commissioned, and structured.
The brands that dominate future SERPs aren’t just optimizing content—they’re architecting relevance.
Start commissioning your AI-ready SEO strategy with Serpfactor today.
📩 Have questions? Reach out at business@serpfactor.com