Feb 21, 2024 Social Media Breakfast

Recap: What SEO Looks Like in the Age of AI

Past Event: Captivate and Convert: Harnessing Short Form Video Content

 

Google: The King of SEO

  • Ranking on Google is important because it’s where the people are! In 2024, Google holds 81.95% of the market share for desktop search engines worldwide. When you look at mobile market share, that number jumps to 96.46% worldwide (2023).
  • Not only is being on the first page important, being #1 is especially important. The Click Through Rate (CTR) for the #1 ranked position on Google is nearly 50%. That number drops to between 12-15% for the #2 and #3 spots.

 

SEO Basics: How to Do The Thing

  • Google determines rankings using three main factors: Relevance, Authority, and User Experience
  • Relevance: Titles, content, hyperlink text, and context 
  • Authority: The number of links to your domain and individual pages, as well as where those links came from. The more authoritative the page is that links to you, the more credibility it gives your site. Also, your thumbprint aka your business name, address, phone number, etc. 

“There’s this thing in academic papers where if someone cites your paper more than others, it’s probably a pretty good study. So, the founders of Google, took that idea and used it to help organize all of these websites to get people what they need.”

  • User Experience: Google analytics, site quality (bounces, slow page loading, pogo sticking), engagement on the page and website

 

How the SEO Experts Improve Your Site’s SEO

  • Do keyword research, then creating pages based on the keyword research
  • Optimize your pages for keyword phrases
  • Optimize your Google profile & earning reviews
  • Fix any technical website issues
  • Blog, create content, and earn links from other websites

 

>>>> Quick Tips + Fixes:

  • Optimize for Keyword Phrases in page title, page description, headers, paragraph content, image names, image alt attributes, embedded YouTube videos, links.
  • For Google Business Listings, verify your business, upload images/videos/posts, confirm your business category, ask happy customers to leave reviews for you + respond to those reviews. 
  • Fix technical issues so that you have page load times under 2 seconds, secure https’, mobile-friendly sites, no broken links or missing pages, and sound URL structures. 
  • Build more links to your site organically through PR and publicity, partnerships, testimonials, guest blogging or article writing, responding to reporters + bloggers, and going on podcasts
  • Create a blog to help fold in additional keywords, rank for informational queries, earn backlinks, build internal links, and demonstrate your E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust)

“This is something Google actually talks about now in their content guidelines and this comes up as we talk about what AI can do vs. what people can do. That experience and that expertise – even as we’re using AI more and more, the AI’s not going to have those pieces – so this is what you can add to the picture.” Eagan Heath

 

Get Smart with AI

  • AI has already been around and in-use by Google for years as part of their RankBrain technology. Gemini is just the latest/most public-facing application
  • People are starting to ask ChatGPT questions, which could disrupt how often people are using Google as a search engine. Currently, though, ChatGPT only has 1.6 billion visitors over a 30-day time period when compared to Google’s 84.2 billion.
  • AI makes it faster and cheaper to draft blog content – even incorporating keywords or keyword phrases into the content for you!
  • AI also makes it faster and cheaper to repurpose content

Do use AI for: 

  • Brainstorming keywords and topics
  • Creating topic clusters and content plans
  • Writing and optimizing draft blog posts
  • Prompts with audience, perspective, tone and length

Don’t use AI without: 

  • Revising and editing your drafts
  • Adding your own Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust (E-E-A-T)
  • Personalizing the content to your company/audience/experiences. If you can add in case studies or real-life examples that just makes things even more interesting to read and provides a better user experience.

 

More Resources