Summary
- I believe in keeping up with the big shifts happening in organic search. AI is influencing search behavior, and platforms like Google and TikTok are changing where people look for information.
- Even with AI affecting search, Google's search traffic continues to grow with over 13 billion daily searches, more than ChatGPT gets in a month.
- Organic traffic isn't dead yet, though predictions suggest changes. Quality content is key. If your content isn't amazing, you're likely to struggle.
- Focus on driving revenue rather than just increasing traffic. It's more beneficial to target keywords that lead to conversions instead of just high-traffic terms.
- Brand recognition is crucial in today’s digital world, with 44% of Google searches being branded in 2024. Building a trustworthy and strong brand is essential for driving organic traffic.
- Google places value on community-based content. Leveraging platforms like Reddit can be an opportunity to enhance your brand's sentiment and narrative.
- Responding to customer reviews, both positive and negative, can improve public perception and affect organic traffic positively.
- Dominate your branded keywords to control your brand's narrative. Optimize your site through strong, up-to-date content and FAQs addressing common user queries.
- Engage audiences outside your website through newsletters and private communities for building long-term relationships.
- Prioritize a keyword strategy focusing on long-tail keywords, which comprise 70% of search traffic. These keywords attract qualified traffic and are easier to rank for.
- Visual search, with platforms like Google Lens, presents a huge opportunity, especially for e-commerce. Optimize images for visual search to capture this potential.
- Creating high-quality content that abides by Google's guidelines (EAT: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust) helps avoid penalties and boosts rankings.
- Adapt your content strategy due to 60% of Google searches resulting in zero clicks by focusing on branding opportunities and optimizing for featured snippets.
- Embrace social media platforms not just for engagement but also for being memorable. This could lead to branded searches and improved recognition for your brand.
- Digital PR, like getting published on third-party sites, boosts credibility and trust, expanding your brand's reach beyond your own content.
- As search becomes more universal, optimize for discovery on all platforms your audience uses, like YouTube and social media sites.
- Make AI your ally by optimizing for generative AI platforms since they are increasingly popular for information discovery.
- Collecting first-party data maximizes marketing results. Tools like calculators and quizzes are effective in gathering this data.
- Both organic and paid strategies complement each other. Investing in both makes for a more well-rounded marketing strategy.
- Focus on every visitor’s experience by improving conversion rates and using tools to understand user behavior on your site.
- The future of SEO includes maintaining relevant and updated content. Content become outdated and ineffective if not refreshed regularly.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest keeping an eye on the changes in search behavior because of AI and different platforms like TikTok. It's important to occasionally check how people are searching for stuff related to your business.
Even though AI affects search behavior, Google is still super important. Keep making awesome content for your website because it really helps you get noticed.
Focus on using keywords that attract people who will actually buy from you instead of just trying to get high website traffic. Making more money is better than just getting visitors to your site.
Building a strong brand is so important! Lots of people search using brand names. Make sure your brand is trustworthy and takes charge of how people see it online. Answering questions and having a strong FAQ can really help with that.
Engage your audience outside your website by sending newsletters and creating private communities. This can build stronger relationships with your audience.
Use long-tail keywords because people are searching with longer and more specific phrases. These keywords can bring more valuable and easier-to-get traffic to your site.
Make sure to optimize your images for visual searches, like Google Lens. This is especially great if you're selling products.
Continually update and improve your content. Google values high-quality and trusted content.
Lastly, use social media not just for chatting, but to make people remember your brand. It might lead to more branded searches. And if you have the chance, get published on other sites to boost your credibility.
Quotes by Author
"Is organic traffic dead?"
"There's more Google searches over time."
"Content marketing is not a new game."
"You don't necessarily have to optimize for traffic."
"SEO isn't a zero sum game."
Full Transcript
oh he hello everyone thank you guys for attending uh today we're going to be talking about the future or organic search one of my favorite topics I started my career in SEO but organic search as you guys have known now has changed quite a bit since then and we're going to talk about all of that plus what's happening with zero clicks what's happening with AI and how you need to adapt so let's Dive Right In my name is Neil Patel I'm the co-founder of NP digital we're a global Ad Agency and today I have Lindsay and Nikki with me um Lindsay would you uh introduce yourself if you don't mind and then Nikki you can go right after yeah absolutely so thank you everyone for taking the time to be here today I'm Lindsay shr the associate SEO director here at NPD so I'm part of the division that focuses on small to medium-sized businesses so over the past 11 years I've had the privilege of diving deep into SEO and helping businesses just like yours so excited to be here today and talk to you um about key insights and strategies and I'm Nikki brandart I'm a senior SEO strategist and I lead strategy and campaign development for a lot of our Enterprise clients here at MP digital and I'm super excited to be here today and talk about the future of organic traffic and really how businesses can start to adapt their strategies to better navigate these massive shifts that we're seeing within the digital landscape especially given the impacts of AI on both search and user Behavior at NPD we work with a lot of Brands and we see a lot of data on what's working and what's not especially with Organic search and we're going to be bringing that to you today um if you are interested isn't working with us you can just scan that QR code and it'll take you to NP digital or you can just go to NPD digital.com as well so the big question the elephant in the room is organic traffic dead according to Gardner by 2028 Brand's organic search traffic will decrease by 50% and more people will leverage aib search now this is what Gartner is saying is it the truth time will tell in 2028 but that's not the data that we're seeing just being quite Frank Google recently put out numbers and they said that they get over five trillion searches a year over five trillion okay and the reason I believe they put out the numbers is because chat gbt and open AI have been putting out numbers being like we get over three billion prompts on a monthly basis to put it in perspective Chad GPT is getting three billion per month okay Google if you look at on a daily basis is getting more than 13 billion they're getting multiples more in a day than what Chad GPT gets in a month the last numbers they put out on their quote unquote search traffic on a daily basis I believe was 2016 where they said they had roughly 8.5 billion searches a day 13 billion is a lot and seeing that number go up because of AI and the quality of Google's results and how they're trying to improve it and give people more what they're looking for without having to click through on a website I get that can affect traffic to sites and we'll get in that in a bit but overall the trend we're seeing is there are more Google searches over time and people are searching more on a daily basis than they were previously because Google can do quite a bit more but of course there's Ai and AI is affecting Google results it's also affecting the results on a lot of platforms like social which a lot of people are using even Google said when Gen Z does a search for a restaurant or place to eat a lot of times they're just going to Tik Tok and Instagram before they even go to Google which is affecting search to happen not just on Google but it's happening everywhere when it comes to zero clicks if you look at before the AI roll outs and after the AI roll outs we did an analysis and what we're seeing is yes overall there are less clicks taking places on websites but one big thing is keep in mind there's more Google searches over time which is increasing the traffic overall to websites so even those zero clicks are going up but at the same time the usage of Google is going up which affects the total number of traffic and here's a study from Seer they compared with AI overviews and no a overviews for the organic traffic and look at the results as you can see with the a overview people are seeing less Clicks in general and with no a overviews they're seeing more clicks with the paid results they're actually seeing a decrease on both ends I don't think in the long run Google's going to make changes that that is going to screw up their ad Revenue if you look at their earnings um they're generating more revenue from ads than they ever have before so I don't see a multi-trillion dollar company just turning off the faucet and really screwing up their market cap and here's the overview of aw's disruption for informational searches right if you look at it it's mainly for informational based searches with informational based searches there's not really as much monetization opportunity as let's say commercial or transactional or navigational and when you look at Commercial and transactional there's not as many AI overviews that are showing up it's mainly happening on informational keywords the other thing you have to ask yourself is bad content affecting your clicks people's expectations of the quality of content have increased more than ever before content marketing is not a new game it's an old game it's been around for so long people expect amazingly high quality content if you haven't checked it out go to our YouTube page youtube.com/ neilpatel you'll see the new type of content that we're pushing out on YouTube we've been doing it for roughly more than a month the traffic has increased quite a bit I think our YouTube page is getting roughly not exactly double but close to double than it was the previous uh call it 60-ish days right and what we're seeing is the traffic going up because the quality of the content is just much higher in quality and that's what people are expecting if your content quality isn't a not just average or above average but amazing you're not going to do well um search engine Journal released a number a while ago I believe the number was either 4.6 or 4.8 billion it was one or the other that's the number of pieces of content that are being created on a daily basis and now that number must be much much higher because of AI and because of that yet think about it let's say there's five and a half or six billion pieces a day well people are getting bombarded with information they expect the quality to be amazing but SEO isn't a zero sum game it's not just Google there's chat gbt there's perplexity there's ways to get visitors from a lot of platforms there's even ways to get visitors from YouTube which which is one of the most popular search engines or Instagram or Tik Tok right all these platforms can drive visitors to you You' be like in Tik Tok What are they going to do click the bio link sure but that's something there's different ways to get traffic and not all traffic is qualified or equal the reason I say that is if you look at chat GPT a lot of people are using chat GPT for quote unquote unknown purposes and it's for just a lot of Random task or it's for um you know computations or things that are not related to you know what they would typically use Google for so although there's a lot of usage on chat GPT we're seeing the usage be for different things versus quote unquote traditional search even though they have search GPT and what about social search it's upand coming it's extremely popular when you look at what consumers are us using Tik Tok as a search engine for a lot of for things like recipes music fashion advice you know if you're a company like Chanel or Louis Vuitton if someone types in handbags you'd want to show up because it's branding and that can cause indirect conversions social search is going through the roof and especially with uh them turning into Discovery networks where they're showcasing new products that you can just buy or tools that you can end up buying you're going to start seeing search on social media really increase at a rapid Pace especially because they've drastically increased the quality of their search results but Google Still Remains dominant when it comes to people looking for information online it is the number one player out there by far the number two player for people looking for information is YouTube which is owned by Google I know there's also Buu but if you look at Buu and their market cap it's a fraction of what Google's is so is it Revenue um it hasn't really taken off like the way Google has taken off and what we're seeing this was the analysis that we did with over 35,000 websites we need to release the data for 2024 in this chart as well we're seeing growth in overall traffic we're not seeing declines yet again there are more zero clicks but because the number of people using Google is much higher than the increase in zero clicks we're still seeing more traffic to websites than ever before and this has been consistent before even AI so what does this mean for you you don't necessarily have to optimize for traffic I used to optimize for traffic and what I found was traffic doesn't mean everything you should focus on revenue and I have a great slide that showcases this either in a bit or towards the end but our overall traffic for Neil Patel has gone down and it's been intentional because a lot of the keywords like how to get more Instagram followers would never relate to someone coming to our you know website and paying our Ad Agency a multi-million dollar contract so we sto focusing on keywords that drive traffic and we started focusing on keywords that drive revenue and here's actually the slide as you can see even though the traffic's gone down a bit our revenue's gone up over 3x why because we stopped trying to rank on Google for terms like Discord literally we used to rank on Google really high for the term Discord what did it do it drove traffic and zero Revenue we started focusing more on the keywords that are driving Enterprise clients for us as well as SNB clients for us so how do you make this work for any business because if you look at our model it's all about getting the right type of traffic even when you're counteracting all these things and growing your Revenue awesome thank you Neil so let's start out with a really powerful statistic in that 44% of all Google searches in 2024 were branded so it's a clear indicator of the importance of brand recognition in today's Digital World what does this tell us it means that people are looking for Solutions they're increasingly searching for a specific brand they trust so building a stronger brand is no longer nice to have um it's very important for organic traffic success so we need to focus shift our Focus towards creating a brand that resonates builds loyalty and it's something that people are actively searching for um because strengthening your brand directly translates into increased organic traffic and it's your first line of defense in this everchanging algorithm so now let's talk about a growing challenge so the rise of third-party content we're seeing a significant shift in Google search results with this user generated content from platforms like Reddit and they're gaining really prominent positions so we see that Google is increasing the value in these Community given discussions so even if you have a really well optimized website a Reddit thread can outrate your content so this presents a challenge and an opportunity the challenge is that you're competing with these user this user generated content that sometimes for users it can almost seem more real because they're hearing from other people right um the opportunity is that you can leverage these platforms to have some control over that sentiment or narrative about your brand so in that sentiment of controlling your brand image one of those aspects is customer reviews so in today's world negative reviews can impact the Brand's reputation and then in turn impact organic traffic so the first thing is really simple right we need to respond to these negative reviews so if negative reviews are left unanswered it can project maybe a lack of that company caring and it can deter potential customers more than that original complaint but on the flip side if you are responding are responding to reviews it's showing active listening that you have a commitment to feedback and you could even take that negative review in some cases and turn it into a positive experience for that customer and even potential customers um next we need to counter negative review so you can counter negative reviews by publishing positive reviews directly on your website so you could have a page that's fully dedicated to customer reviews um I also highly recommend adding reviews to your service and product pages um and adding reviews that are directly for that service or product so this can help build your social proof um and build trust with potential customers um next just ask for reviews from Happy customers on third parties so create a really simple process um to asking for reviews making it easy for them um next we'll move on to owning your narrative so ultimately what I'm talking about here is owning your Brand's narrative this means that you're controlling the information that appears when people are searching for your brand so step one rank for your branded keywords so this establishes you as that Authority and ensures your website is that primary source of information so ranking number one is crucial but to truly own the narrative um leverage the fact that AI polls directly from your site so make sure your copy is up to date have a strong about us page U make sure it's accurate and compelling um so that you're controlling that information and search results also create a robust FAQ section so think about common questions or concerns you get from customers and address them directly on the website um so finally remember your website's The Hub of your Brands online present so by providing clear accurate information you can ensure that your Brand's narrative is consistent and compelling um next let's shift our Focus to engaging your your audience outside of your website right so building a community and engaging with your audience so we're moving beyond simply just broadcasting information and we're entering an era where Brands build meaningful relationships with their audiences so some ways that you can do this newsletters are direct line to your audience's inbox they provide a space for you to provide content um and nurture relationships so think of them as a personalized confirmation not just a promotional marketing blast of information next private communities so these are spaces um whether on platforms like like slack or Discord um where you can have your own proprietary platform and you can foster um that sense of belonging and engagement with your community and it's a place for your loyal customers to connect and you can also get some great feedback out of it and then um brand Le content hubs so these are dedicated spaces on your site or even a separate platform where you create valuable content um that speaks directly to your audience so think of things like blog posts videos podcasts or even interactive tools so by implementing these strategies you're building an audience and a community and you're creating a space where people feel valued connected and engaged with your brand um and now let's dive into the core of organic traffic right your keyword strategy so on average 69% of clicks go to the top five organic search results so that's a massive concentration of traffic um so that means ranking outside the top five can impact your visibility and your traffic potential so it's crucial to prioritize keywords with high potential and develop a strategy to make sure you're climbing in the rankings and earning that traffic so some things to think about with your keyword strategy um is how search behavior is evolving so users are getting increasingly specific with their queries longtail keywords um those longer more descriptive phrases now make up 70% of all search traffic so it means that relying on the the broad generic keywords is no longer effective so more than half of all search queries are now more than key four words or longer so this is showing us that there's a shift towards more conversational and precise searches so by targeting these longtail keywords you're attracting High qualified traffic that's more likely to convert and it's also less competition and it makes you easier to rank for them so you can get more traffic with less effort if you're focusing on these longer tail keywords so with the rise of voice search and advancements in natural language processing users are asking more questions in a conversation right like we're seeing keywords go four greater um that's part of this conversational search so your keyword strategy needs to adapt to the style um Google is getting better at understanding the intent behind queries not just the individual keywords so this means that your content needs to answer those audien's underlying questions um it means you need to understand the context of the search so what are users trying to achieve what problems are they trying to solve with this query and then by understanding the intent you can create really valuable content and then next let's explore a growing area of opportunity visual search so 25% of visual searches have commercial potential this means people are using visual search to find and purchase products so platforms like Google Lens are making it easier for users to discover pro products through visual search so it's a game changer for e-commerce um and what does this mean for you so this means your product images need to be optimized for visual search and you can do this by making sure that you have high quality images descriptive alt text and that your product pages are appealing and Google lens is one of those opportunities that's just so underlooked or underleveraged and most people don't consider it they don't look at it as businesses there's just so much revenue potential and you should consider leveraging Google Lens from a lot of the data that we've seen it's one of the fastest growing segments of Google that no one really talks about as a marketer it's not sexy or anything like that but it's transactional and we showcased this earlier on the searches on Google very small portion of them are actually transactional searches most searches are informational they're not you know someone ready to buy a lot of the Google Trends I mean Google Lens searches percentage wise are much more transactional hence you should really start optimizing for it because they're pushing it and it's going to become more and more popular just wait a few more years people like oh we should optimized for this years ago absolutely agree with the terms of um the importance of visual search especially with all the different updates that Google's making with the circle to search feature I feel like they keep releasing new things and so that's a clear indicator that it's important to Google so it should be important to you and that kind of leads nicely into this next section of giving Google what it wants and so building off some of the things that both Neil and lindsy had mentioned we want to be really breaking it down and giving Google what it wants in terms of following Google's quality radar guidelines so those are terms that they've laid out in the beginning to help users and website owners understand what works in terms of building your organic visibility so really prioritizing creating high quality and authoritative content that's going to add value and is actually helpful to your target audience and this is going to be one of the best ways to protect yourself from any future algorithm changes and so this typically begins by addressing any SEO issues that could be holding your site back so for example 301 redirects having a slow page load speed having a ton of broken links or duplicate content these are just a few of the top critical issues that we've identified during some of our content audits for our clients and so you really want to be making sure that you're going back and regularly updating and auditing your site for any technical issues that could potentially impact user experience and then hold you back from a ranking standpoint so Google is constantly updating its algorithms to combat spam and lowquality content and one of their latest algorithm updates in January really cracked down on the growing use and presence of AI generated content and so it really prioritized content quality user engagement and overall user experience so as Neil mentioned earlier AI content is really impacting the overall quality of search results in general so we did see a lot of business owners really like clamoring to a lot of these AI tools and just producing Mass amounts of AI generated content and Publishing it thinking that it would be a way to quickly build up their topical Authority but we're quickly seeing Google you know catch on to this trend and penalize these sites and so we're going to go through two specific spammy or manipulative tactics that Google did crack down on with this latest January update so the first of which was Google's Crackdown on scaled content abuse and this basically refers to Genera large amounts of unoriginal content with little to no value primarily intended to again manipulate search rankings and the best example of this is like I mentioned using generative AI to produce a large amount of generic content around a specific topic and this can also include scraping content from other sources without adding any real type of Information Gain or unique insights it's going to add value to users or just following the traditional SEO advice of really creating overly keyword stuffed content and trying to meet like a specific keyword count so these types of tactics are no longer going to work in today's search landscape and instead I would caution website owners to go back and prioritize creating quality content over quantity so really going back and looking at if you have a lot of existing Pages really pruning your content or auditing your existing content and looking for opportunities to refresh that content with new insights rather than just essentially chasing the next big keyword Trend or creating another generic form of content where you can easily get an answer in AI overviews for that specific search query or if you see a wealth of content created around a certain subject you know it gives you less room to compete if you're not going to add anything new or anything unique another tactic to avoid is this concept of expired domain of use which is essentially purchasing an expired domain that has pre-built Authority and then using it to host your content in order to hack your way basically to the top of search results and this is considered spammy because oftentimes that content that's posted on these expired domains do does fall outside of the topic area or industry that that previous site operated in so for example this would be like hosting affiliate content on a former government site or posting gambling content on a former Elementary School site so while I can see the kind of logic here in kind of leveraging the authority of another domain to like boost up your content in terms of rankings it's definitely something that's been taken to the extreme and actually ended up uh can actually end up eroding the trust within your brand and within your website and result in a lot of manual actions or removal of your site from Google altogether so instead I would advise website owners to really build your domain Authority organically over time by building up high quality and relevant content and links so while this is going to be uh kind of more of a long-term play it's definitely more beneficial in the long term than kind of this quick hack and really trying to manipulate rankings um and hack your way to the top of search results essentially so instead of trying to kind of gain the system with some of the manipulative tactics that we just covered we want to be focusing on creating high quality original and people first content that's going to again add value and really demonstrate authority to Google because this is what is prioritized both within organic results and Within These AI search tools that we're seeing pop up now more than ever and so one of the most crucial Concepts here is eat which essentially stands for experience expertise authoritativeness and trust and these are the signals that Google uses within its quality radar guidelines to determine the helpfulness of your content and it even is used to evaluate your content creators and your website as a whole so one thing that's important to call out here is that these are signals they're not essentially ranking factors however strengthening these signals has been shown to boost rankings so for example things like citing proprietary data creating in-depth content and increasing your brand mentions are all things that are going to help differentiate your website and boost your overall visibility and credibility within search results so diving into each of these Concepts in a little bit more detail when we're talking about demonstrating expertise we basically referring to the extent to which your author or your brand is knowledgeable and has skills within your given subject or topic area and you can demonstrate expertise by infusing your content with quotes from subject matter experts collaborating and getting referenced by thought leaders across the industry and really positioning your authors as experts in their field and one of the ways that you can do this is by including detailed author bios that include information around that author's education and experience in your given field and I will say that this is especially important when you're thinking about creating content that refers to anything around medical or like Financial queries because in those cases users really need to trust the advice that they're given and they need to be able to validate that the advice you're they're seeing is from an actual expert so for example if I'm kind of trying to search for maybe symptoms of cancer or something that's very you know critical to my health and wellness I want to be sure that the content and the responses that I'm getting are going to be well quality and this does have legal implications for Google too if they were to get these responses wrong I think we saw a little bit of this with the initial roll out of AI overviews where Google was getting some of those Health queries uh drastically wrong and then it caused them to do like a massive roll back so definitely very important to consider for those kind of ym yl niches next is experience so experience is referring to the extent to which your content creator has firsthand or Real World experience with the topic that they're writing about and so to Showcase your experience try writing from a firstperson perspective and incorporating real stories Andor screenshots that show again that you have experienced some of the things that you're talking about and I will say that this is one of the areas where we where AI cannot yet replicate these kind of like lived human experiences so definitely something to lean into when we as we see this growing trend of AI you know capturing a lot of organic visibility and one of the best examples that I've seen of experience and how you know AI can't get yet replicate this is if I was to say a travel blogger I could post pictures and be vlogging about my experiences um maybe on different hiking trails in a certain location that I visited or something like that so AI can't actually go out into the real world and do these things and so really leaning on your in-house experts to kind of create content or even infusing their quotes within your content can give you that kind of Unique Edge um against the comp competition and one thing to know with the experience is you don't have to be an expert to share your experience a great example of this is uh and this is a terrible example so I hope this never happens to anyone if someone has cancer and they break down what it feels like to have chemo that's experience that's very different from a doctor talking about how chemotherapy works you have people searching on both ends who are patients who are interested in learning what it's like to go through chemo and you have doctors talking about the medical side of chemotherapy right so Google does r content with experience because it provides a very unique perspective a piece of content doesn't have to have all of those elements having some of those elements drastically can help definitely and I think that that kind of um was why we saw the rise in those user generated content platforms like Reddit and search results because Google is trying to show more of that experience so when we talk about authoritativeness we're really referring to your overall credibility and reputation um within your given niche and so you can establish Authority by securing authoritative backlinks and getting mentions across the web and within news and Industry Publications so for example if you were to type in any kind of like Finance related query you would probably expect to see nerd wallet or bank rate ranking on page one so this kind of signals to you that those are authorities within that specific industry and this is because they've taken time to increase their authority over time by consistently producing high quality content and acquiring relevant links and citations so again this is more of a longer term play but it definitely goes a long way when we're thinking about how we can gain visibility within Ai and Ai overviews and certainly brand Authority is something that is beginning to play a bigger role in 2025 and then finally trust is basically referring to the degree to which you're honest transparent and reliable in in the way that you're presenting information to users and search engines and this also includes maintaining a consistent brand voice wherever your site is positioned online so some of the things that can clearly erode the trust in your site is going back to kind of the previous section where we talked about some of those like spammy or outdated or manipulative tactics that Google was cracking down on so producing a lot of just AI generated content without any human intervention that can obviously erode the trust in credibility of your website instead I would caution websites and business owners to begin building a positive reputation through things like asking for and replying to online reviews or even displaying testimonials or like industry Awards on your site to help back up your credibility let's shift our Focus to talking about zero click search opportunities so at 60% of Google searches in without a click so it's a big portion of search search results that users are getting information they need directly from the search results page so let's look at how we can turn these zero-click searches into valuable branding and influence opportunities so first let's talk about what zero click searches are so they Encompass a variety of elements that appear directly on the search results page provides information without the users required to click so these are things like featured Snippets so those concise answers that appear at the top of the page um this also includes AI overviews um and then there's Google Business profiles so providing information about your local business like your address phone number and reviews um so that's critical for local SEO um and then the map pack right another element for local businesses that showcases nearby business is on a map and then finally a knowledge panel so it provides detailed information about an entity or a person or a place um it typically draws from Wikipedia or other very authorative sources so these are all elements that give users inant answers and it reduces the need for click um to get to a website so optimizing for these elements is critical for organic visibility so next we need to think about with this is Shifting our mindset from focusing on clicks to focusing on influence so think of zero search zero click searches as a branding opportunity even if users aren't clicking on your website your brand can still benefit from appearing prominently in the search results it's building brand awareness establishing Authority and influencing future purchase decisions so how do you optimize four zero click searches is first improve the structure of your content right so make sure you have a solid heading structure subheadings um bullet points maybe even tables to make your content easy to understand and digest so this will also help Google extract relevant information for Featured Snippets and AI overviews second increase your um eat so Google values high quality trustworthy content so establish your brand as an authority by creating well researched incredible content third schema markup so this structured data helps Google understand the content of your pages um and enhances your visibility in featured Snippets knowledge panels and AI overviews finally optimize for local SEO so um this is crucial for appearing in the map pack and the Google business profile so ensure that your business information is accurate and consistent across all platforms and that you've claimed your Google business profile so we're witnessing a shift in how people discover information right Google and other search engines are rapidly integrating AI users are learning about options and possibilities directly on the Ser with no need to click so we need to expand our content marketing Horizon Beyond just our own website we need to be present where our audience is consuming information so Neil talked about YouTube earlier and about how we've seen almost 50% % growth um so think about YouTube It's powerful for engaging audiences and complex information so ensure you're creating valuable video content that addresses your audience's needs and then don't underestimate the power of social channels um I know earlier Neil said this is a focus for Gen Z right it's a direct line to your audience it allows you to build a community um and in sharing you can share engaging content and participate in conversations and build those relationships and then Next forums and online communities are another valuable source of Engagement so participate in discussions s share insights to create your established brand finally third-party Publications so getting your content featured on reputable websites and Publications can boost your brain's credibility and reach your wider audience right you have someone else vouching for you um and saying that you're you know a good brand and a brand that others should interact with so the key here is diversifying your content strategy and ensuring that your brand is present on platforms that your audience is using so kind of in the same vein there let's talk about digital PR um getting author of thirdparty websites to say positive things about your brand is important right it boost boosts your Brand's image enhances your discoverability by those large language models that helps you control the narrative so publish in data driven research and reports that provide insights about your industry um and developing some a strong thought leadership Presence by sharing your expertise um and providing helpful tools for free helps demonstrate your commitment to your audience next um Implement strategic Outreach so pitch guest posts or interviews to Publications um run campaigns that attract media attention or generate Buzz like create um a well thought through research study that's something new that media is going to latch on and don't forget to apply for industry Awards and showcase those achievements on your site finally relationship building so cultivating long-term relationships with media influencers and Outlets um and encourage customer reviews and testimonials on trusted platforms to build social proof and create trust so digital PR is all about building trust and credibility it's about getting your brand mentioned in the right places by the right people um it enhances your Brand's reputation and ensures that your positive message reaches that larger audience so we've talked about owning your narrative on your own website but your audience isn't always just on your site um so we encourage you to build on rented land and what do I mean by that it means using platforms that communicate um platforms and communities where your customers spend their time right social media industry platforms blogs it's about meeting the audience where they are don't just broadcast your message participate in conversations um and one of the areas we've talked about a few times during this webinar is um social so um leverage this powerful social to search phenomenon so um we need to understand that social media isn't just about direct engagement it's also about planting seeds for future searches so think of social media channels as like Billboards or even tv ads where the goal is to capture intention engage your audience and be memorable and you're building a Latin awareness um which means when potential customers encounter a problem your brand solves they'll think of you right um it leads to branded Google searches people will search for your brand because they remember seeing your content on social um so use social media to tell your brand story and connect with your audience on an emotional level this is how you build a strong brand presence that resonates with people um Google is increasingly showing videos from social media channels like Tik Tok and Instagram directly in the results I know we talked about that earlier um but it just reinforces the need for video content so even if it's created for social it can now directly impact your organic visibility on on Google so think about creating short form videos that are visually appealing and informative um and these videos are perfect for capturing attention and conveying messages um and then next finally think about Pinterest so a lot of people think about it as like a recipe or a Home de cor Source but it's most it's much more than that it had 522 million active users in 2024 and that includes key decision makers and business business owners so what types of content should you think about pinning um infographics are a great way to visually display data or information um high quality visuals are great for capturing attention um think about high two howto guides um to demonstrate your expertise and even idea pins allow you to create engaging multi-page content and quotes for inspiration so think about creating content that addresses the needs of your B2B audience um think about industry Trends best practices case studies so this is a place to capture users at the beginning of their buying Journey where they're seeking that inspiration in their in that idea phase and for B2B we've tested quite a bit of ads on Pinterest it works really well most B2B companies don't leverage it it doesn't drive the volume just being super transparent but it is a great source for small amount of ads spend for B2B conversions pretty good yes so kind of continuing on this conversation let's talk about some of the ways that you can expand your reach Beyond Google by optimizing for discoverability across multiple platforms and again this is more important now than ever before because we are seeing search happen everywhere so making sure that your content is discoverable across all the different platforms that your audience is using so inherent in this shift in the way that users search for information is something that I believe Neil and Lindsay both touched on earlier but the preference in younger adults and Millennials turning more towards Visual and video content so for instance YouTube is the second largest search engine I believe with over two billion monthly active users and so we're seeing Google prioritize this video content directly within Google search and so we should be making sure that Google can find and understand your videos in order to boost discoverability and some of the ways that we can do this include optimizing the way that that content is hosted on your site by creating dedicated watch pages and using supported file types and providing high quality and engaging thumbnails and then ensuring that your metadata is optimized by incorporating relevant keywords into your titles and descriptions and also always the best practice to include transcripts Andor captions in order order to enhance your discoverability and accessibility of that video content so another opportunity to boost cross channel discoverability is really leaning into this concept of adapting a social first approach so creating content that's optimized for social platforms where your audience is in order to drive traffic engagement and build up that initial brand awareness so I would encourage business owners and website owners to experience to experiment with different content formats across these different social sites so things like short form videos stories or live streams can help to cater to the different learning preferences of your audience and also really paying attention to what's trending across these different social platforms and trying to incorporate these keywords within your captions or hashtags or even getting you ideas for new content by looking at the different Trends across social media and then understand understanding what type of content works best across different social networks so something that works well on one platform isn't necessarily going to translate to the same engagement rate um on a different platform so for example short form videos work very well on Tik Tok and Instagram but not so much on Facebook or LinkedIn again because that's kind of a different audience you also want to be leaning into Community sites like Reddit I feel like Reddit is a great opportunity for brands and specifically you know with the clients that I've worked on I've seen them build up a lot of uh lot of great engagement and really in increase their credibility by leaning into Reddit so for example some of the tactics you can use on Reddit include hosting in ama which is kind of like an ask me anything kind of thread where you just ask for maybe feedback on one of your latest product launches or address something that's been concerning your users so it kind of gives you that like direct line of of conversation to your audience um something else that I feel like is very beneficial on Reddit is just asking your community for feedback or recommendations on new kinds of features they would love to see in your product um this is something that one of my clients has leaned into and I've seen it really enhance just The credibility and the overall feel um and sentiment of conversations around their brand because that helps users again feel more connected to you helps them feel like their their feedback is heard and then the last tip here is don't be afraid to repurpose the same amount uh the same piece of content multiple times so for example chopping up a video podcast into short reels that you can then post on Instagram or Tik Tok is going to give you multiple opportunities to capture that organic traffic and get in front of your audience and then lastly making AI your Ambassador so generative AI platforms are becoming increasingly popular especially in that initial information gathering phase and optimizing your content for these platforms is going to give you an opportunity to get in front of your audience and start to enhance your brand recognition and ultimately capture more of that qualified traffic so users are increasingly relying on these tools in the initial like kind of Discovery phase of their Journey so we're seeing users ask a lot more longtail and personalized informational queries to these AI tools that they wouldn't necessarily um type into Google search and so while this might result in lower clicky rates especially when we think about the impact that AI overviews is having on organic traffic I believe it's ultimately a positive for business owners because the traffic that you are going to see coming to your site is going to be much more qualified and have a very high purchase intent and we've seen this example um work for MP digital we've actually gotten uh leads and business from chat gbt referrals and so what this means is that us as marketers or business owners we really need to be focusing in on that bottom of funnel content and intent related queries making sure that we're conducting you know conversion rate optimization and that we really have a strong kind of lead funnel in place on our website to capture those users when they are at the point in which they want to convert or you know sign up for a free trial for your business in addition we want to be following the um SEO best practices and that's one of the best ways to really optimize for generative AI is by focusing in on building up your brand Authority and optimizing your content in terms of comprehension and readability and user experience so when we talk about building up your brand Authority things like putting um industry leaders and experts within your own company including proprietary data studies for example is another great way to get your brand kind of mentioned and build up your authority over time and then we also want to be focusing on providing comprehensive and readable content that encourage is user interaction so one of the tactics that we've seen success with for some of the clients I've worked on specifically in getting visibility within AI reviews is by adding table of contents and summarizing key points at the top of uh Long blog articles so this is something that's helped you again increase that visibility within AO reviews because summarizing key points for example at the top of your article is not only going to give you users that answer of the the answer to their query directly when they like land on your landing page but it also gives these AI tools really something specific that they can reference and extract within their answers and so ultimately we see generative engine optimization or Geo very similar to just doing and following the best practices for SEO so search rankings do appear to play some role in influencing the mentions that you're receiving in large language models so for example brands that ranked on page one of Google showed a very strong correlation with mentions in these AI tools and this also includes rankings in bang as well and I will say that bang is a search engine that you don't want to count out just because of its relationship to open II and uh chat gbt so Bing actually Powers search GPT so it's definitely important to make sure that you are submitting your site to index now to make sure that it can be indexed and found um within search gbt responses and I think that this really reinforces the fact that SEO is not dead we still are going to need SEO in order to provide that kind of high quality and solution oriented content that's really relevant to your audience and is going to drive rankings and ultimately um enhance your visibility all right so I'm going to go through this fast and that way we can get to some question answers but let's end up with uh or end off with future proofing your SEO and digital strategies so the first thing that you need to know is if you collect more first-party data this will help you maximize your marketing results not just with SEO but all channels you need to collect more first-party data and by doing that what you'll find is you'll be able to fine-tune your marketing much more than just relying on thir party data the easiest way to do this is offer value in exchange of data then of course you want to use a CDP also stands for customer data platform and then you want to follow up more with email and SMS SMS has a much higher open rate and click rate but it has a much higher unsubscribe rate as well so just keep that in mind when you're using SMS to communicate out of all the channels that we looked at if you're looking for lead generation and collecting first-party data tools and calculators work extremely well quizzes work next and then there's a lot of options from there but it's harder to collect data from anything other than quizzes surveys and tools and calculators the other stuff does work just not as well when you have that data make sure you're leveraging your email list and communicating directly with your customers if you're not you're missing out on tons of Revenue there is a guy guy met at a conference one time named John Reese he used to have a site called income.com and he did so well he had a fish tank in his house and the fish tank was so big that people would scuba dive in to clean his fish tank and I remember him saying and I was much younger at the time I was like what's the key to your marketing success he says my ATM I'm like what he says yeah my email list I'm like I thought you just said ATM he said no my email list is my ATM every time I want money I just send out an email blast and of course I know we mainly discuss organic you also want to invest in paid it works well for both search and social there's many use cases for them I won't go through all of them but paid does well too it's not about SEO it's not about paid it's leveraging all channels that are profitable when you combine both that's when you'll see full fun growth and make sure you make every website visitor account whether it's paid or organic focus on the experience don't just focus on getting traffic focus on things like conversion optimization you can use tools like crazy to see how people interact to maximize your conversions as well and through cro here are the steps but through tools like crazy it'll show you where people engage where they don't where they get stuck and then with their wizzywig editor you can click some buttons and literally run AB test and I also want you to start thinking about m multi-touch attribution in today's world a lot of the content that you're going to rank for on Google is going to be things like video content which gets your brand out there which in the long term will generate sales as well now if you need help with your marketing you can scan that badge and you know take you to NP digital you can just go to NPD digital.com um and let's get into some Q&A our next webinar is on social media Secrets uh and you can join that as well good stuff everyone uh Lots tons of very positive comments and lots of really good questions um here's one that popped up multiple times from a few different people what are the top three characteristics of amazing quality content I think there might be four characteristics one for E another for E another for a and another for but that's just me anyone want to take a stab at addressing the the the top three characteristics of amazing quality content I'll give you one make your content unique too many people create regurgitated content people are tired of reading the same stuff over and over again make it on something new and fresh and you'll get readers people liking sharing linking Etc yeah I'll I'll add to that and say relevancy right making sure that you're you're um you're answering you know what the user is after and you're speaking to your your target audience so providing that Val that value through relevancy and maybe I can get the third one in here but I would say focusing on driving engagement and providing a positive overall user experience so inserting things like videos or images within your content is going to enhance your um like or whatever message you're trying to send because a lot of users do rely on that kind of visual stuff to break down complex topics great responses um couple in here about reviews about reviews on third party sites I prefer Google Business many businesses prefer a trust pilot or even clutch any thoughts on which one to to focus on I mean I guess if we're talking about Google then maybe you start there but any any thoughts on that that question in particular yeah I I'd say 100% lean into Google right this is going to help you with local search and appearing in that local three pack and even in the search results so definitely lean into Google Business profiles um outside of that I would say figure out um where your audience is leaving reviews and and and researching um you know perspective businesses it's kind of more based on your audience outside of Google Business profiles yep uh Lindsay why we have you there were some questions about FAQs so FAQs really matter thumbs up can FAQs help to get you that position zero or you know the sort of zero click search that we've been talking about yeah um 100% because we are seeing most of those are informational a lot of FAQs or more informational in nature so yeah make sure if you're using FAQs you're directly answering your questions um you're implementing schema um and yeah you're just writing quality content that has a nice concise answer and that's going to help you show up um for that position zero AI overview or featured snippet awesome uh let's see here um this was a good one didn't think about this one so maybe Neil um do these new search criteria impact classical demand home services do you think like Plumbing hbac etc etc all the things that we're talking I mean certainly reviews do and some of this other stuff but do you think that it it matters like across the board yes I do and it's impacting all Industries not just home services but yes all this stuff is important no matter what sector or service you're in maybe it's not as important for certain sectors but it does impact all of them pretty much from what're seing yeah last last one varies so for last one Nikki um to we have a process for this but I'm going to let you answer it can old residing content on a website from let's say 2021 or 2022 which doesn't really rank at all anymore have an adverse effect on overall website SEO in future rankings of current highquality content we got a process for this the sixr process I don't know if you've got any thoughts on how to best address that question yeah in terms of having a negative impact I don't see it having a negative impact on impacting your overall rankings but I do encourage users to go back and review that content especially prioritizing content that may have gotten a lot of backlinks or referring domains and seeing ways that you can refresh that content or even using it to inspire new content ideas and kind of combining similar Pages um that Target similar terms into a newer more comprehensive page that's going to provide more value to your audience and certainly updating those dates so anytime you're referencing studies or any um data information from previous years making sure that you're leading users to the most relevant um source of that information awesome the biggest way to think about it is Wikipedia ranks for everything main reason being is the content is continually updated it's not updated because someone wants to change a word it's updated because there's things that are wrong that can be improved and expanded upon so if you have content from 2021 it was ranking but not anymore probably has backl social shares the biggest issue with that page is probably you didn't update the content awesome and with that I think we can conclude another great webinar we appreciate everyone for your time if you ever need marketing help check us out at NP digital thanks everyone and sorry we went over thanks everyone you he
