Women in Tech SEO was first founded in 2015 by Areej AbuAli to bring together women in SEO and digital marketing who were looking to connect and thrive within a like-minded online community space. Last week, StudioHawk were proud to be the headline sponsor for the first Australian edition of the Women in Tech SEO Festival, hosted right here in Melbourne.
With 15 of our Hawks attending the main event in Melbourne, it felt only natural to share some of the insights we gathered from the sessions throughout the day. Themes came out around AI, brand-building, representation, leadership and more. It’s certainly clear that search is evolving faster than ever, and thus, so are the people shaping the industry.
Narrowing these takeaways down wasn’t easy! Every speaker brought something valuable to the table, but these are the seven insights that really stood out and the ideas our team will be taking back to our desks this week.
1. AI Agents Are Becoming the New Gatekeepers of Search
One of the biggest themes of the day was the shift from search engines to search agents. Jes Scholz showed how AI agents are no longer assistants on the periphery; they’re becoming active decision-makers. Instead of simply retrieving results, these agents now filter options, shape recommendations, and influence decisions before a user ever reaches a webpage.
Her session illustrated how AI agents “filter options, make purchase decisions, reshape customer engagement” while deep conversational behaviour is changing the way people discover information.
An AI agent learns from a user’s preferences over time, stays with them throughout their online and offline worlds, and ultimately determines which brands deserve visibility.
So, what does this mean for brands? It means that being “search-ready” is no longer just about ranking; it’s about ensuring your site structure, content quality, and brand signals are clear enough for AI to interpret. If your content isn’t crawlable or your narrative isn’t consistent, AI won’t choose you, and you run the risk of losing authority altogether.
2. SEO Fundamentals Matter More Than Ever
With the rise of AI-generated answers, it may seem like traditional SEO principles are becoming less important; however, as our industry continually emphasises, SEO is not dead. If anything, the fundamentals matter more than ever. AI systems can only understand, cite, and recommend what they can interpret, which means technical excellence, strong crawlability, user-friendly architecture, and clear topical depth remain essential.
Georgia Tan’s approach to Search Experience Optimisation (SXO) reinforces this point. In her model, SEO, UX, and CRO sit together as equal partners in creating a great brand experience. SEO ensures people can discover you, UX ensures the experience is enjoyable, and CRO ensures there’s a clear path to conversion. These pillars support one another, and without strong technical and content fundamentals, your brand can’t be interpreted correctly by search engines or AI.
The next stage of SEO isn’t about abandoning the fundamentals, but expanding how we use them. Instead of optimising purely for rankings, we now optimise for clarity, structure, and experience, the exact elements AI relies on.
3. The Funnel Isn’t Dead, AI is rewriting it
A lot of marketers argue that the funnel is outdated in a world of instant results, but the sessions at WTSFest showed a different perspective: the funnel isn’t dead, it’s just evolving (seeing a pattern here?). Jes Scholz explained how AI is now interwoven throughout the customer journey, from the earliest stages of exploration all the way to decision-making.
Her session showed that users no longer take a linear path. They ask deeper questions, explore different angles through conversational search, and rely on chatbots that remember their preferences. AI also stays with the user, weaving into their daily lives, which means today’s journey is far more fluid, looped, and personalised than ever before. Instead of top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel moments being distinctly separate, AI blends them.
Brands must now show up consistently across every stage, in every format, and on every platform. The modern funnel is no longer a step-by-step process; it’s a series of interconnected moments influenced by AI-driven prompts, summaries, and recommendations.
4. Brand Familiarity Is Becoming a Search Signal
A recurring message was that brand is no longer just a marketing function; it’s increasingly becoming a ranking factor. As generative AI produces more “sameness” in results, distinctiveness is what helps brands stand out. Georgia Tan highlighted that “Your brand is your best strategy in 2025” and that AI will increasingly rely on brand strength, clarity, and consistency to decide what to cite or recommend.
This means brand familiarity, how recognisable you are, how consistent your messaging is, and how clearly your values show up across touchpoints, directly impacts how AI systems perceive and surface your content. Her message, “Define your brand before AI does,” couldn’t be more relevant for SEO and AI Search today. The stronger your brand signals, the more confidently AI can represent you.
5. Yesterday’s KPIs Won’t Guide Tomorrow’s SEO
One of the most important shifts happening is the need to rethink how we measure success. Jes Scholz highlighted that the industry is still relying on outdated metrics built for a 2015 search experience, even though user behaviour has changed dramatically. Organic clicks are declining, AI answers are increasing, and user journeys are happening across private, conversational interfaces.
Measuring SEO purely by traffic isn’t enough anymore. We need visibility metrics, influence metrics, brand familiarity metrics, and AI citation presence. We need to track how often AI refers to us, how often we appear in conversational search, and how effectively users engage with our content across different surfaces. The future of SEO measurement is multi-layered, and it demands more sophistication than ever before.
6. SEO Can’t Work in Isolation Anymore
A reminder from Navah Hopkins’ session, which focused on the relationship between SEO and PPC. She noted that historical reporting and budgeting practices often pitted SEOs and paid teams against one another, but in an AI-driven landscape, these channels are far more interconnected.
Navah demonstrated how impressions now hold significant value, especially as users discover brands visually and across multiple surfaces. She also showed how auto-generated creative, increasingly shaped by AI, is directly influenced by the content on your website. At the same time, PPC remains one of the few channels where marketers can still access clear search term data, which can feed invaluable insights back into SEO.
In other words, SEO strengthens paid performance, PPC strengthens organic understanding, and AI blends both. To succeed in 2025 and beyond, brands must treat SEO, PPC, UX, content, and brand as interconnected tactics, rather than separate teams.
7. Community & Representation Matter, And Bravery Drives Meaningful Change
To close out the day, Sheila Vijeyarasa delivered a session that stepped outside the technical realm and into the human impact of the industry. She spoke openly about representation, leadership, and the courage it takes to show up in tech as a woman.
Her session reminded us that representation gaps remain significant, with only 27% of roles in technology held by women and just 17% of CEO positions. Nearly every woman in tech, according to her data, has experienced a major life disruption that shaped their career journey.
Sheila’s Brave Method — Start Brave, Stay Brave, Share Brave — emphasised that change doesn’t come from one large action, but from repeated small acts of courage. She described “Little Brave Acts” as the everyday momentum builders that push representation forward. It could be asking a question in a meeting, sharing that LinkedIn post you’ve been sitting on, nominating yourself for an opportunity, or supporting someone whose voice isn’t heard.
Erin Simmons, Managing Director of Women in Tech, explains the broader vision perfectly: the goal is not to forever need communities like WTS. The goal is a world where underrepresented groups feel safe, supported, and welcomed by default. Until that day comes, maybe it’s these small, brave acts that can help bridge the gap.
Final Thoughts
Phew, that was a lot to digest. On the day, there was certainly a lot to take in, and now that we’re back at our desks for a new week, it’s about reflecting on these insights and deciding which actions will make the biggest impact for our own brand and for our clients.
Yes, AI is transforming search at every level, but it’s also reinforcing what we’ve always known: brand consistency and user experience matter more than ever. And the future of search will belong to the brands that show up clearly, consistently and confidently.
At StudioHawk, events like WTSFest remind us that search is far from shrinking, especially not with so many intelligent and forward-thinking women leading the charge in this space.
And that’s something we’re incredibly proud to be part of :)
If you're interested in learning more about the WTS community, check their LinkedIn page for more information.
