Google’s AI Overviews - How They Should Impact Your SEO Strategies Moving Forward
The last time you typed something into Google, you may have noticed that things are starting to look a bit different. While you may already be used to having to comb through various search results pages after entering in a query, you’ll now see a new feature above the fold that summarizes results for you.
This new AI-driven tool, known as Google AI Overviews, has made it much easier to find the information you’re looking for when using a search engine. However, the caveat for businesses is that this new change is making it less likely for users to stumble across their brand using traditional SEO methods.
Because of this, it’s important to understand how these new AI-powered solutions work and how you can adapt your strategies moving forward to still see positive marketing results.
What Exactly Are Google AI Overviews?
Most of the time when entering search queries into Google, you’ll now see an AI-powered summary of the response that shows above the fold on the first page of SERPs. These excerpts are known as AI Overviews and are created by Google’s proprietary generative AI software, Gemini.
After you enter a question in Google, the tool uses AI algorithms to search through the top results on your behalf and pieces together helpful information found from different websites, articles, or case studies. This information is then presented in an organized way to help you minimize the amount of additional searching you need to do to find an answer to your question.
How are AI Overviews Impacting SEO?
While the introduction of this new AI feature hasn’t made traditional SEO tactics obsolete, they are definitely impacting businesses that advertise their brands online in a few critical ways. These include:
Lower Click-Through Rates - The primary goal of AI Overviews is to help users find the information they need in fewer steps. However, one of those critical steps is clicking on company links. Because of this, AI Overviews are causing lower click-through rates than businesses are used to seeing for their top-performing pages.
Less Impactful Keyword Strategies - AI-powered search focuses more on a user’s search intent rather than the keywords they reference. This means that traditional SEO campaigns centered around keyword relevancy will become less impactful moving forward.
Increased Importance on E-E-A-T - As Google continues to focus on providing its users with highly valuable information, its AI algorithms place more trust on content that comes from reliable sources. This selection is often dictated by organizations that prove they’re meeting Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines - showcasing their experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Relevant SEO Strategies You Should Follow Moving Forward
With AI Overviews changing how search engine results pages look, it’s important for business to place their SEO priorities on areas that will make the most impact moving forward. Some of these key strategies include:
1. Refocusing Your Content Generation Efforts
AI Overviews are designed to give users quick, accurate responses to their inquiries. To do this, they look at reference website content that achieves the same goal.
Now is a good time to start refocusing your content generation efforts in the right areas. It’s important that you show you’re an expert on specific niches, not trying to be something to everyone. It’s often better to publish less content that’s higher quality and really valuable, than publish more pieces that only scratch the surface of topics and don’t provide enough helpful information to a casual reader.
2. Creating Better User Experiences
The user experience on-site is still a primary ranking factor for website content. You want to make sure your content is structured in a way that is easy to understand and navigate.
While the structure of your content is important for improving your website UX, it’s also essential to track your technical SEO initiatives. Make sure your web pages load quickly, you have a responsive, mobile-friendly site design, and that you’re following best SEO practices.
3. Improving Brand Building Initiatives
When AI Overviews piece together content from different websites, they’re looking for credible source references. The credibility of your business is evaluated on more than one piece of criteria.
Although the quality of your content is important, you also want to make sure you have good social signals pointing to your site. This includes having more reputable websites linking to your site, having a wide range of positive product or service reviews, and maintaining a strong social media presence.
4. Optimizing For Voice Search
Most smartphones and virtual home assistants now leverage AI to help answer questions they receive. Because of this, there has been a surge in voice searches that connect with Google using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and conversational AI.
To make sure your business makes it into the results that these tools provide to customers, it’s important to optimize your content to support how these tools source new information. This means incorporating FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) on your site to mimic human language interactions and simplifying brand messaging to make it easy to read, interpret, and relay back to users.
Keep Your Business Flexible
With AI technology continuing to evolve, it’s possible that, over time, businesses will need to regularly adapt their SEO tactics to make sure they’re still aligned with ongoing growth objectives.
By following the strategies discussed and keeping up-to-date with new developments in AI-powered search, you’ll help to keep your business more agile while leveraging AI Overviews to bring you increased brand visibility and web traffic.
