Optimizing for AI Overviews
Back in May, at the Google I/O ‘24, Sundar Pichai, Google and Alphabet’s CEO, talked about how AI has been and will continue to be transformative in the way we search. Yes, it has! With this, he announced that Google would be rolling out AI Overviews first in the U.S. and rolling out in other countries in the near future.
Well, Google rolled them out, they rolled them back, and now they’re rolling out a little more gradually.
In this blog post, we’ll cover the basics of AI Overviews and how you can optimize and leverage them as part of your SEO strategy. Let’s get started.
What are AI Overviews?
Originally called Search Generative Experiences, and now known as AI Overviews, these summaries were created to give users answers to their questions immediately, without going to additional websites.
AI Overviews are positioned at the very top of the search results pages. The screenshot below shows an AI Overview for the query marketing strategies.
What Does this Mean for Search?
AI Overviews may result in more zero-click searches. Have I lost you? A zero-click search is when a result (like the one above) answers the user’s question on the search results page, and the user doesn’t need to click a link for further information.
Sound familiar? This is one way that AI Overviews are similar to what happened when Featured Snippets were rolled out years ago. Some websites saw a decrease in organic traffic. If, on the other hand, you were lucky (and smart, there’s a strategy) to secure featured snippets positions, you likely saw a big payoff and significant increase in organic traffic. There’s a similar opportunity with AI Overviews.
For example, look at this search result for “How to Start a Nonprofit.” After the initial AI-generated results, there are some links to additional resources.
So, if you think about it, users may even be more primed to take action once they click on your site, because they’ve already read through basic information, and are in way more “qualified” and ready to take action.
How Are AI Overviews Generated?
You’ve probably noticed that AI Overviews aren’t generated for every query. According to BrightEdge, the healthcare and B2B tech industries generate the most AI Overviews because the queries are typically more informational and less personalized like, for example, a query about making travel plans.
The content is generated using generative AI technology powered by Google’s Gemini language model. This means that since the Overviews rely on generative AI, some of the results may be inaccurate, biased, or even, dare I say, wrong. Google is working to remedy this.
Optimizing for AI
According to Google, AI Overviews appear in Google Search results when they determine that generative responses will be helpful, and there’s no action needed for content creators and publishers to benefit from AI Overviews.
If your website is properly optimized following SEO best practices, you’re headed in the right direction.
Not sure if your website is up to the AI Overview challenge?
Here are some critical steps.
Ensure Your Website is Crawlable and Indexed
Make sure your website is crawlable and indexed. If your website can’t be crawled, you’ve got bigger problems. Google discovers websites by crawling them. Once they’re crawled they’re indexed.
If you find that your website isn’t crawlable, it’s likely due to one of the following.
- Your website’s robots.txt file is blocking Google from crawling the page.
- If your website is in WordPress, there’s a chance that you need to make a tiny update. Navigate to Settings > Reading > Site Visibility, and you’ll see a toggle box that says, “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. Make sure this box is unchecked to make your site visible to search engine crawlers.
- Users encounter the dreaded page not found, 404 error when they try to navigate to your website.
Give Long-tail Keywords a Little Love
Our search behaviors continue to evolve. We’re more conversational and our search queries are getting longer and longer.
Long-tail keywords are more specific search queries that tend to be longer in length (usually four or more words), and have less volume than broad keywords.
Women’s red running shoe arch support vs. women’s shoes
And, while long-tail keywords garner fewer searches, the searches they do get tend to be better quality because users are looking for something specific.
Create Good Content
Duh. Of course. Without good content, why would anyone want to read what’s on your website? But, what exactly does Google deem “good?”
Is your content helpful, relevant, accurate, knowledgeable on the particular topic? If so, you’re in good shape here.
Don’t Ignore On-Page SEO
On-page SEO relates to optimizing parts of your website pages so they show up in the search results.
Some on-page factors include page title tags, meta descriptions, page headings (H1, H2, H3, and so on), URLs and slugs, image attributes, and more.
Following on-page SEO helps Google (and users!) understand your content more clearly.
Offer a Good User Experience
Nothing kills UX like a slow website. We’ve all visited a website where images slowly paint in and take what seems like forever to load. Chances are, users will bounce away from your site, in a couple seconds. At ArcStone, we’re amazed at the speediness of websites designed using the WordPress Kadence framework.
With mobile users surpassing desktop users, it goes without saying that you need to offer a good mobile experience.
It’s fair to say that if your site fails to offer a good user experience, you’ll be unlikely to gain traction in AI overviews.
How can you AI-proof your SEO?
If your organization has typically seen a lot of organic traffic coming from an informational “top of the funnel” query, you’ll likely see a decrease in your organic traffic because users no longer need to click-through to your website. It’s a little like featured snippets on steroids.
Focus on your bottom of the funnel. In other words, what is your unique value proposition, and what is the query people will use to actually take action? These types of queries will likely be safe from AI because they tend to result in brands, organizations, and companies, and if Google starts generating AI Overviews that mention brands, that’s very biased.
Obviously, there’s much more to come when it comes to AI. In the meantime, contact us if you need help with your SEO strategy.
