Google’s AI-generated search snippets are changing dramatically. You may not even realise it yet, but it’s already having a huge impact on the amount of website traffic you’re getting. If you don’t adapt and change the way in which you create and present the content on your website, your visibility and web performance will suffer significantly.
What are Google’s AI-generated search snippets?
If you don’t know what Google’s AI-generated search snippets look like, you’ll notice that whenever you do a search now in google for “ways to dress your garden for Halloween”, you’ll see that the content is now being displayed directly in the search results like this:
It’s otherwise known as ‘ZERO CLICK’, literally meaning that you don’t even have to click into any website to get inspiring ideas like putting floating witch hats in your garden this Halloween – it’s all being displaying in the Search Results Pages.
Spooky hey?
I don’t want to freak you out too much, but this is not something that we, as business owners, should ignore.
The impact of Zero-Click on your business
As searchers receive more immediate information from these AI-generated snippets, they’re less likely to click on third-party links. This is resulting in a decrease in organic click-through rates for websites and, potentially, in overall website traffic.
Over 60 percent of searches through Google don’t lead to a single click on either a paid advertisement or an organic search result.
So where does this leave business owners who are trying to create content to drive traffic to their websites?
Adapting your content to suit Google’s AI-generated search results
I want to spend some time explaining how to adapt your content so that you have better chance of staying visible, increase your website traffic and improve your search engine rankings.
Create content using E-E-A-T framework
Google evaluates content quality using E-E-A-T framework. This stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust. Let me break each of these down for you so that you know what they mean for your business:
Experience – Making sure that the author of the content has practical knowledge or skill on the topic they are writing about, and making sure they are demonstrating direct, first-hand experience.
Expertise – Expertise is about the level of knowledge or skill in a particular area that is held by the author or brand. This can include professional credentials as well as life experiences or skills that positions you as an expert in this field.
Authoritativeness: Authoritativeness is often built through how much your content is being shared and linked to across the web. The more people talking about your brand on the web, the more Google is likely to position you as an Authority.
Trustworthiness: Trust is all about the credibility and reliability of the content. It’s based on the accuracy of information you provide and being able to demonstrate that others can trust you. Reviews, testimonials, customer stories – all these things will help position you as a reliable expert and source of information in your industry.
Google’s E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor, but creating content using these principles is likely to appeal more to your audience, make your brand more relatable and position you for being featured in Google’s AI-generated snapshots.
Focus on relevance
Building high quality backlinks has always been a major search engine ranking factor, but I would say that with the rise of Zero Click, they are even more important than ever.
Reach out to other businesses whose audience has synergies with yours to see if you can share a piece of content on their website that’s relevant to them and gets you a backlink at the same time.
Relevancy is key here.
Ask yourself:
Will a link on this website drive relevant referral traffic that converts?
Structure your content to appeal to Google’s AI
I am seeing a lot of great content on the internet, but it’s not always structured to appeal to Google’s AI language model so it’s got less chance of performing well in Google.
- Structure your content to directly answer frequently asked questions. If you can make it easy for Google algorithms to see that you are clearly answering a specific query, you’re more likely to be chosen to be featured in the AI overview.
- Use these questions as descriptive headers within your content, marking them as H1, H2, H3, and H4 header tags accordingly.
- Use short, punchy sentences in your copy that appeal to Large Language Models.
- Include user-generated content on your website to improve engagement and help signal to search engines that your content is authentic and credible.
- Implement schema markup on your website to provide clear signals to search engines about your products, prices, availability, reviews, and more. This enhances the likelihood of your information appearing in rich snippets, product carousels, and other visually appealing formats in the search results.
Address user intent
It’s crucial to understand your audience’s search intent and create content with the user in mind.
There are said to be four pillars of user intent:
- Informational: A person wants questions answered/information on a specific topic
- Navigational: A person who seeks a specific resource, page or site
- Commercial: A person knows what they want to buy and does research before making a purchase
- Transactional: A person who is looking to buy something
Many e-commerce websites for example, are great at providing Transactional content, but don’t have enough informational content to satisfy people who are at the research stage of the buying journey who are not yet ready to buy.
Creating content with a specific user intent in mind will ensure your website is discovered by users and goes hand-in-hand with ranking on Google too.
Maximising the potential of Google’s AI-generated snippets means optimising content not just for clicks, but for providing the best answer for your audience and being the source of quick, reliable answers that search engines can prioritise for these queries.
Now is NOT the time to stop creating content. It’s time to ramp up and get front and centre of where our audiences are searching.
If you want help adapting your digital strategy for this new era of Search and turn these changes into opportunities for your business, request a FREE Visibility Audit from us today.