The arrival and rocketing popularity of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significantly changed how people use the internet. Shifts and changes in SEO are nothing new – it’s something that we’ve had to deal with since we first Asked Jeeves a question. But it’s important to keep on top of developments and changing user behaviour so that our businesses can succeed in a forever-changing search landscape.
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What Are AI Overviews?
When you search on Google – or a number of other search engines – you will now often see an AI-generated section at the top of the results. This is an AI Overview. It uses information from several sources to provide a comprehensive answer to a search query, with links to the quoted sources in case the user wants to explore more.
AI Overviews now appear in over 50% of Google Searches, most notably for informational content.
How to Update Your SEO for AI Overview Success
Find Other Ways of Measuring Success
If your site has lots of informational pages – blogs and guides, for example – then you’ve likely seen a significant drop in traffic since the dawn of AI Overviews. That’s because searchers are getting all their information from the summary and they no longer need to click through to your website to find answers to their questions.
This has been a frustration for many business owners who have spent years carefully curating helpful content that is now being – in some opinions – stolen by Google and other search engines through AI Overviews. I’m not going to dive into the morals of this, but I am going to tell you how you can overcome the problem.
The truth is that Click-Through-Rate (CTR) may always have been overestimated in terms of its value. After all, more clicks to your website doesn’t necessarily mean more sales. Instead, look more closely at other measures: conversions, retention rate, on-site behaviour, and so on. Your measures of success will depend on your business goals, but volume of traffic alone is generally not a real marker for anyone. For example, a 5% conversion rate from 500 visitors is better than a 1% conversion rate from 1,000 visitors.
Informational Content Still Has Value
With click-through rates plummeting and informational queries more commonly answered natively on search platforms, it can seem like some forms of content development is a waste of time. But it’s not. With AI Overviews taking up large areas of a screen, having them cite your content is a real win in modern-day SEO. And to be cited, you need to create the content.
When developing content, try to offer a balanced perspective on a topic. Add author biographies to demonstrate the expertise of the content creator, and include new information and personal experiences if you can. In fact, this is all advice that has been relevant to SEO for years, it’s just even more important now.
For more tips, read my guide on 5 ways to quickly improve your blog content.
Video is More Important Than Ever
When it comes to creating content, don’t stick with the written word. Video has been important to SEO for years but, again, it’s even more important when it comes to AI Overviews. If an existing blog can be repurposed as a video, this can really help boost your visibility in overviews because the whole video – or a relevant part of it – can be shown within the snippet.
When developing videos, optimise even further by breaking it down into chapters, choosing a helpful title and a comprehensive description, and adding captions. My beginner’s guide to SEO for YouTube will help.
“Fan-Out” Content
AI search is all about personalisation and making the user experience as smooth as possible. In reality, that often means trying to read the mind of your users.
There is evidence that suggests fan-out queries can help your content rank in AI Overviews. That means taking the original query, thinking about the next questions the user might ask, and answering them, too.
For example, a searcher might ask how to hang a picture on a brick wall. Fan-out queries might be what drill bit do I need for brick or where can I buy anchors for brick walls. Answering these follow-up questions makes your content more comprehensive, more useful to the user, and more likely to be ranked in AI Overviews.
Ranking Number One Is No Longer The Ultimate Goal
In traditional search, ranking in the number one position for key search terms was often a primary goal for website owners. And, while it’s still beneficial to appear at the top of traditional search results, you may not even be seen if an AI Overview sits above you.
If you struggle to rank in the highest positions though, there’s good news: AI Overviews will often use slightly lower-ranking sites as their sources. So if you’re on page 1 of search, but towards the bottom, this might actually work to your advantage in AI Overviews.
Multi-Platform Visibility Helps
AI Overviews use sources from all over the web, so increased visibility can help your chance of being featured. So, while traditional advice was to focus on one or two platforms and do them well, the advantage now may be to do as much as you can – though to still do it well. That means not only do you need to keep your website up-to-date, you should also post frequently on multiple social platforms, keep your Google business profile up to date, try and get more press mentions, add your business to relevant business directories, and try to get pieces published or linked in established publications.
Of course, there’s always a balance to be found between your available resources and the SEO benefits. You need to be clear on what that is for your business.
AI Overview Sources Constantly Change
In traditional SEO, you’ll often find that the top results for a given search query remain the same for long periods of time. It can be hard to knock your competitors off the top spots.
However, AI overviews change their sources regularly. On the one hand, smaller businesses have more chances of being referenced. On the other hand, even if you have really great content, you can no longer dominate the top spot as you may have done in traditional search.
Conclusion
AI Overviews have changed the way searchers use search engines and how they browse the web. While they have resulted in website traffic drops for many businesses, they also provide opportunities, especially for smaller businesses that have historically struggled to rank in the top positions. To increase your chances of success with AI Overviews, create comprehensive content in multiple formats, increase visibility across the web, and continue to follow SEO best practices.