Every year brings a flood of SEO trend articles full of the same buzzwords and vague predictions. AI search, voice search, zero-click results. Most of it is either obvious or irrelevant to Melbourne businesses trying to rank and generate leads.

This piece cuts through that. Here are the SEO shifts that are actually affecting Melbourne businesses in 2025, with practical implications for what you should be doing differently.

AI Overviews Are Reshaping Click Behaviour

Google’s AI Overviews (the AI-generated summaries at the top of some search results) have reduced click-through rates on certain informational queries. If someone searches “how does GST work” and Google answers it directly, fewer people click through to articles.

For Melbourne businesses, the practical response is to focus less on pure informational content and more on content that connects to commercial intent. Someone searching “GST obligations for Melbourne tradies” is much closer to needing a professional, so that content still drives traffic and leads even with AI Overviews present.

E-E-A-T Has Real Ranking Impact

Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness is no longer just a quality guideline. Google’s systems now actively reward content that demonstrates genuine first-hand experience. Generic content written to target keywords without demonstrating real expertise is underperforming across the board.

Melbourne businesses that feature their actual team, publish content with named authors, and include credentials and genuine experience are seeing better results than those publishing anonymous or outsourced content.

Local SEO Signals Are More Granular

Google is getting better at understanding hyper-local intent. Searching “electrician Richmond” and “electrician Collingwood” can now return different results, even though those suburbs are two kilometres apart. Melbourne businesses need suburb-level content strategies, not just city-level ones.

What This Means Practically

• Create individual suburb landing pages where you genuinely service those areas
• Build Google Business Profile posts that mention specific suburbs
• Get reviews that mention specific locations within Melbourne

Page Speed Is a Baseline, Not a Differentiator

Core Web Vitals and page speed are no longer competitive advantages. They are table stakes. If your Melbourne business website loads slowly on mobile, you are not just missing a ranking factor, you are actively being penalised relative to competitors who have sorted this out.

A performance audit should be among the first things any Melbourne business does before investing in content or link building.

Link Building Still Works, But Quality Trumps Volume

Despite predictions of link building’s death every year for the past decade, links remain one of Google’s strongest ranking signals. What has changed is that Melbourne businesses with a handful of genuinely relevant, high-authority links outperform those with hundreds of low-quality directory links.

Think industry associations, local media coverage, supplier directories, and genuine partnerships. Quality and relevance beat volume every time now.

Start With the Fundamentals

None of these trends matter if the basics are broken. Technical health, quality content, relevant links, and a properly optimised Google Business Profile. The Melbourne businesses winning in 2025 are not chasing every new development. They are executing the fundamentals consistently and well.

For Melbourne-specific SEO strategy, take a look at our Melbourne SEO services page to see how we approach it.