We’re seeing so many changes in the world of digital marketing at the moment and I’m often being asked:
“Is SEO dead?”
The short answer is “No.”
But like everything else in digital, search engines like Google are evolving, and leveraging the power of AI to provide a seamless experience for their users.
It’s called SGE, or Search Generative Experience.
Here’s what we’re seeing:
Google has begun rolling out AI overviews for around 7% of searches. This is set to increase dramatically over the coming months. It’s moving at a phenomenal pace.
At the moment, most of those searches have what is known as Informational intent, i.e. people searching for information on Google like: ‘How to’ ‘What is’
This is how search results are starting to be displayed. The example below is based on the query: ‘good bike for a 5 mile commute with hills’
Previously, Google would rank the relevant websites for the search query and the user had to click through to a website to find out the information, but now Google is displaying the information the user wants directly in the search results.
Not only that, but Google’s AI’s learning model is understanding more about the user context and is trying to personalise the results depending on who is searching. For example, using the bike search above, Google will know whether the user has previously searched for electric bikes, whether they are male or female and even where they prefer to shop – and therefore the results will be personalised for each user according to their search habits.
In theory, this looks all well and good for the user, but what does this mean us, the content creators? We just want the user to click through to our website, not Google taking all the glory!
Google won’t be able to offer everything the user needs without having to click through to a website to read more, buy or engage further, BUT we are seeing websites suffering from less traffic. Almost 37% of searches in Google happen without anyone clicking on ANY search results.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop creating content, that’s never been more important, but we do need to PIVOT and ADAPT the way we do things.
Here’s how:
- Google’s focus is still to drive attention and traffic to the BEST and MOST RELEVANT web content, so creating content that aligns with E-EAT has never been more important.
- Create different content for different types of user intent – Informational, Consideration and Purchase. Each one is important for targeting the different stages of the buying cycle.
- If you are an e-commerce website, ensure you have your product listings optimised for high purchase intent keywords with clear keyword-rich product descriptions.
- Write in conversational style to capture readers’ attention and appeal to Google’s AI language model.
- Add schema markup to your content to help search engines understand your content better and boost your chances of appearing in Google’s rich snippets.
- Use quotes and statistics as Google SGE is likely to prioritise sources who use original data.
Google’s SGE does create more challenges, but it presents a HUGE opportunity as long as you adapt and use it to your advantage.
SEO is definitely NOT dead. What has died is creating content for content’s sake, or just to rank on the first page of Google.
Search is changing. If you really think about your audience and continue to create first-hand experience content that covers a topic holistically, you will win in our evolving search landscape.
If you want to make sure that you are adapting in the right way, and have a clear content plan that appeals to your audience and ranks well in Google, book in a free consultation with me.