Goodbye, Last SEO Project, Hello, Tomorrow's Project

Yesterday, I went out for drinks with a writer I've worked with for several years. We had sake while snacking on sashimi and tempura. It was because a regular project we had been handling together ended last month.

I wrote that with a touch of sentimentality, but the mood at our table was far from gloomy. We talked about editorial production, ZINE festivals, and all sorts of things, and before I knew it, we were only talking about what comes next. Subcontracted work is something that eventually arrives and eventually disappears. I know that. I know it, but still, an end is an end, so I sent it off with some delicious food.

What disappeared was an SEO project.

No interviews. No field trips. No videos or audio. It was the kind of work where you wander the internet, gather information, and organize it. That kind of work had been gradually decreasing since around 2024. And last month, a regular project that had lasted for several years finally vanished.

To be honest, I was never very good at this type of work. I would leave the SEO-related specifications to the consultants and focus on creating the articles myself. Creating the articles themselves is a dialogue with the reader, and it's fun and rewarding... so that was the division of labor we had.

The techniques for hacking search results seemed very popular with the generation younger than me—people who have used the internet for work alongside the growth of Google. Since the results lead to sales, it's easy to understand, right? It's different from opaque old media.

I'm an old guy who has been creating articles since before the internet. I've only ever learned how to create, so I couldn't keep up with the SEO cycle of improving based on results... that's the story. Even Google was originally a system for people. It was probably my own fault for looking at it sideways and running away, thinking, 'This isn't for me.'

However, it's ironic.

That very 'technique for optimizing for Google' was one of the areas where generative AI excelled. So, clients stopped outsourcing and started doing it in-house. The work that was most optimized was the first to melt away.

An editorial production company is a business that helps with the creation of articles and publications. So, having an entire category disappear is naturally painful.

But it reminds me of something. In the 1990s and 2000s, magazines and MOOKs (magazine books) played a similar role. Those, too, were wiped out without a trace by the internet and smartphones. The people I help always disappear first. Magazines disappeared, MOOKs disappeared, and now SEO has disappeared.

What disappears every time is a 'category.' It's not the root of 'creating articles and publications.' That's why editorial production companies must always sense the next seeds and go around making proposals.

So, I can't just sit around feeling hurt.

That said, I haven't just been watching. Over the past six years, I've been helped a lot by AI. At first, it was transcription and translation. Then, it was teaching it the quirks of my own writing. And now, I'm even using something like an AI editorial department OS divided by roles. I might sound arrogant, but in short, while keeping an eye on the work that's about to disappear, I've also been desperately looking for tools. All while feeling keenly that my own livelihood was becoming thinner.

So what do I do? Instead of someone else's SEO project disappearing, I've started strengthening my own output, which I hadn't done at all until now. I've even submitted to several categories for the note Creative Awards. Business, work-related novels, horror, essays. If you call me fickle, you'd be right, but for me, they are all experiments in finding the next seed. It's like taking practice swings in baseball. It's not that I have more free time because work has decreased, but rather that AI has created room in my schedule, and I have more time to use myself as a test subject. That's how it feels.

I've seen it before, too. When MOOKs were disappearing, publishing-related editorial production companies were folding one after another, and web-based ones were springing up to take their place. It's the same as it was back then. So, what kind of editorial production company will remain in the age of AI? The role will probably change significantly.

Wandering the internet to organize information—machines will do that entire process. What will remain is the place where machines cannot go. Meeting people and talking. Going to trade fairs. Having rare experiences. Gathering primary information from the field, organizing it, and disseminating it.

Well, that's something that's been said for a long time.

However, the situation is different now. With the development of AI tools, the friction in the process of disseminating information has become terrifyingly low. You can put it out with low calories. If so, you just have to keep putting it out. And then AI will consume what you've put out and become even smarter. People, in turn, can keep looking for new material and going outside. That's the cycle.

But eventually, robots and drones will go to places people can't reach and report back. Even these hard-won fortresses will eventually melt away.

That is why I am currently focusing on physical AI.

Online work is dissolving, and the physical site is becoming the fortress. But eventually, machines will enter that fortress too. If that is the case, rather than making machines my enemy, it is better to make them an extension of my own body.

And eventually, I want to become a cyborg old man who can freely move between the internet and the physical site. I might already be a fossil, but I want to burn what I have seen as fuel and use the waste heat to accelerate even further.

—Thinking such grand thoughts, I finished off my night with a bowl of chicken porridge before heading home. I hope to team up with the writer I drank with again, in a different way of burning.

Subcontracted work arrives before you know it and disappears before you know it. But the next seed is probably already rolling around somewhere.

I will do my best.