Why the Golden Era of Content is Over: Ryan Law, Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs

Ryan Law spent 14 years building a career on the predictability of SEO. Publish good content, optimize it well, and watch the traffic compound.

Then he published the research showing AI overviews reduce clicks to top-ranking pages by 58%, and needed to find a new strategy quickly.

Ryan is the Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs, one of the most widely read SEO blogs in the industry. In this episode, he sits down to talk about what's actually breaking for content teams right now, why the way companies think about AI search is wrong, and what the next 12–18 months look like from someone sitting inside one of the industry's biggest data sets.

What you'll learn:

• Why AI overviews are the primary driver of click loss, and what the data actually shows
• How to frame the traffic conversation with leadership when the whole industry is affected
• Why Ryan believes there's an inverse relationship between attribution ease and a tactic's longevity
• The shift Ahrefs is making: more original research, more LinkedIn, more third-party distribution
• Why AI search and traditional SEO are the same channel, and why treating them separately is a mistake
• What Ryan is genuinely optimistic about in the AI era

Monday Morning Action

When someone discovers your brand through ChatGPT or Perplexity, they avoid clicking links and open a new tab directly to your site. This often shows up as direct traffic without a source, referral, or campaign data.

This week's action:

1. Pick your top 3 pages by historical organic traffic
2. Open GA4 and check the direct traffic trend over the past 6–12 months
3. If direct traffic is climbing to those pages, AI might be sending you customers without leaving a note

Found something surprising? Share it with us at prerender.io/podcast for a chance to be featured in a future episode.

Resources and links:

• Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thinkingslow/
• Ahrefs blog: https://ahrefs.com/blog/
• Cory Doctorow's "Enshittification": https://www.versobooks.com/products/3341-enshittification?srsltid=AfmBOooGMeVQbUo34yTtlwhEB1rRv_e2DzPsbF_y1IOrivL-2d-UaBXB
• Get Discovered podcast hub: https://prerender.io/podcast
• About Prerender: prerender.io

About the show:

Get Discovered is the podcast where AI and online discoverability collide. Season 2 is focused on how AI is changing where discovery happens, what actually gets surfaced, and why so many teams are realizing they don't have the visibility or control they thought they did.

New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.