With major search engines like Google and Bing deploying generative AI search tools, marketers need to take note. AI, fueled by the ability to explore and analyze many sources, can provide more accurate search results and mark a shift in consumer search behaviors.
Long gone are the days of solely focusing on well-placed keywords. Today’s marketers need to optimize content for large language models with enough power and intelligence to access and analyze everything to provide the user with the best and most relevant answers—from global trends, demographics, and consumer preferences to location, browsing history and previous purchases.
Here’s what you should know about these advancements and how you can improve your content and websites to adapt to the age of generative AI search.
Focus on creating valuable content
Generative AI language models look for high-quality, useful content that’s original, trustworthy, and authoritative (accurate and knowledgeable).
For marketers, this translates to prioritizing helpful information that offers insights readers may not be able to find anywhere else. Rather than just stuffing articles and web copy with high-ranking keywords, leverage your company’s expertise and experience in the industry to differentiate your content from your competition.
Need an example? A Google search for “Why is raw food better for my dog?” provides not only an AI overview of the benefits of raw dog food but also several non-sponsored business sources determined to have valuable information, including these three results:
- “Top 10 Reasons to Feed Your Dog Raw” from Iron Will Raw Pet Food
- “10 benefits of raw diets for dogs and cats” from Wild Coast Raw
- “Surprising ways a raw diet will change your dog” from Fitdog
It’s worth noting that while the first two organic results are pet food companies, Fitdog is a full-service dog care company that offers daycare, boarding, grooming, enrichment classes, and day training programs.
Incorporate more long-tail keywords into your content
Before generative AI helped turn search engines into virtual assistants, a quest for the answer to “the square root of 121” would simply crank out a list of math-related websites. Today you’ll get the answer displayed in an online calculator, which can be used to continue performing math equations.
By providing a direct answer to the searcher’s question rather than sources to dig through, the user experience is vastly improved. For marketers, the focus should be on providing answers to specific questions with long-tail keywords in your content to show up in queries organically.
As users become more familiar with generative AI, they learn that longer queries provide better results, increasing the SEO value of long-tail keywords. Marketers can’t outsmart AI by filling your homepage with popular words.
Invest in tools that can generate long-tail keywords and track important metrics, such as rank value, search volume, and cost-per-click bids, to improve your chances of being discovered and displayed.
Here’s a sample of the first three non-sponsored results that Google shows when searching for “best shoes for nurses with sciatica”:
- “Best Shoes for Sciatica: 9 Podiatrist-Approved Pairs for 2024” from Well+Good
- “Sciatica Shoes” from Amazon
- “The Best Shoes for Nurses with Back Pain (2024)” from Respiratory Therapy Zon
How did Respiratory Therapy Zone rank so high in the results — right after the world’s largest online retailer?
- It’s full of long-tail keywords.
- It’s rich for authority. (The article was written by a registered respiratory therapist with a degree in kinesiology)
- It’s trustworthy. (The article cites references and clearly states that it is evidence-based.)
Optimize your website for GEO
High-quality content is great, but it’s not enough for generative search optimization (GEO). These super-intelligent systems also examine the structure, speed, links, images, videos, and user engagement tied to a website. Marketers should invest efforts in the following:
Structure
Ensure your site’s content structure is fluent and organized so users can navigate it naturally.
Speed
Check for slow-loading pages and optimize the speed to decrease your bounce rate and increase engagement.
Schema markup
Search engines can pull more data from your pages with microdata.
Test and improve links
Check your content to ensure that all links are relevant and working. Use expert quotes or cite credible sources to validate your claims and connect your content with links to establish research.
Images and videos
Your website’s visuals should be high-quality and optimized for all media types. Check for large images that may need to be compressed or removed completely.
User engagement
Keep your site updated with fresh content to attract new and returning users and regularly respond to comments or questions to avoid positioning your site as stagnant or disengaged.
Social proof
Post user reviews and other user-generated content to demonstrate authenticity, trustworthiness and engagement.
Optimize for voice search
Identify common questions in voice searches and optimize your content with similar wording, such as FAQs.
With a little effort, marketers can benefit from the advanced technology powering searches. Your search engine strategy really boils down to providing valuable content, optimizing long-tail keywords, and ensuring that your sites are optimized for discovery.
