Acronyms used in this article:
SGE – Search Generative Experience
SERP – Search Engine Results Page
E-E-A-T – experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness
What is SGE?
SGE is Google’s version of using AI (Artificial Intelligence) to generate answers for the queries that searchers enter into Google.
Predecessors of this experience would be asking Google a specific question – such as “how old is Beyonce”. Rather than being provided with websites to visit to obtain the answer, you get the answer right in Google (42 years old for the record!)
What Problem Does SGE Pose to Website Owners?
Google provides the answers to a searchers question directly within the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), making it unnecessary to visit an external website (owned by a small business potentially). This will decrease traffic to your website.
Is SEO Still Relevant?
Yes – SGE is just the latest aspect of SEO – just like page speed, shorter page titles, and the myriad of other changes that have taken place in the SEO industry over the years. If you’ve been adhering to changes in SEO over the past couple of years (such as ensuring your content answers potential questions), you are on the right path!
How Can I Remain Competitive in Google with SGE?
For starters, SGE is not applied to all industries equally, theoretically because the risks are greater in industries such as investing, finance and legal.
Stats taken from video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhxWRmkVvkg. Note that these numbers change by the day as SGE is so incredibly new and not fully rolled out yet.
To determine if SGE impacts your industry and your website, enter some queries relevant to a specific page of your website into Google and see what the results are like. Are you encouraged to stay on the SERP as opposed to click through to an external website such as your own?
How to Prepare for SGE
Whether you are impacted today or not, it’s time to start making changes. Recommendations fall into 2 categories plus there are other recommendations specific to ecommerce sites.
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Technical SEO
- Ensure Mobile Responsiveness: Your site needs be fully responsive on mobile devices.
- Page Loading Speed: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to check and improve the loading speed for both mobile and desktop
- Structured Data: Implement Schema.org markup for products to help search engines understand the content of your product page better. Add popular types of schema
Content Optimization:
- Ensure your content is ripe with E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness). Content that follows E-E-A-T frameworks will be more likely to be featured with SGE. Ask yourself: is your content providing the answers that your visitors are looking for?
- Keyword Usage: Ensure your target keywords are used effectively in the title, meta description, alt attributes and throughout the page content – avoiding keyword stuffing of course.
- Meta Description: Craft a compelling meta description that includes the targeted keyword, to improve click-through rates from search results. It is thought that at this point, meta description is more meaningful in SGE than the page title! This can change as SGE is in it’s infancy (you’ll hear this often!)
- Navigation and Internal Linking: Ensure easy navigation to important sections of your site to enhance user experience and site authority.
- Get more backlinks – domain authority plays a big role in determining which content is displayed during the SGE
- Build a stronger brand that more people recognize – this can be done with author bios, social media and getting published on websites other than your own
Specific to Ecommerce Sites
- Shopping Ads appear before SGE in the SERPs therefore you really should consider a Google Ads Shopping Campaign
- Focus on your Product Description Pages (PDPs or specific products) first, then your Product Listing Pages (PLPs or category pages). There are a couple of reasons for this:
- Google tends to generate their own product listing page from multiple sites as part of their Search Generative Experience (try searching for a piece of clothing in Google; you may need to switch to shopping at the top; along the left you will see filtering options such as by brand, colour, store, etc.)
- When users search for broader category items (e.g. Product Listing Pages), Google may feature a carousel; when a searcher clicks on an item in the carousel, they are taken to a more granular snapshot of products that match this category. Clicking on a specific product will showcase retailers selling this product → there no longer is a need for the searcher to scroll further down the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) to search for more specific items
Your Individual SGE Optimization Plan
Let’s create a process and break this into small, repeatable steps:
- Pick a page or blog post from your site that is driving traffic (and maybe even leads). This is the lowest hanging fruit and represents the fastest opportunity to get a new client or customer.
- Identify the keywords associated with this page using Google Search Console for example. Try to focus on bottom of funnel keywords (those that indicate the searcher’s intention is to do business or make a purchase) as opposed to top (searcher is in the early days of their research and not likely ready to purchase). In the case of DriveTraffic we would focus on queries such as “outsource Google Ads” vs “What is Google Ads”
- Get a better understanding of what your audience wants to know by using Google’s People Also Ask. Here is an example of a recipe website that has built all kinds of content around the recipe – content that answers questions that readers are likely to have (yes all of this additional content on a website is annoying but it helps the site rank well in Google so you can’t fault the business for that!)
- Link to other related content on your site (and ensure older content is updated to link to the content you are creating)
- If this is a blog post make sure that people can read more posts in this category and/or can click on the author name to read more; can they follow the author on LinkedIn or Instagram for example?
- Add an image with alt attributes
- Add a call to action (not limited to bottom of page)
Add social proof (reviews, testimonials, etc)
Set your meta data (title and description)
- Make sure your content demonstrates E-E-A-T – if not, edit the content so it does
Done is better than perfect. Put this content live and add a note to your calendar to revisit this page in a month or three (depending upon your traffic volume) to follow the same process.
If you are interested, here is how I stumbled across my first instance of SGE in Canada:
- I searched for salon marketing ideas
- I scrolled past the Sponsored links
- Just above your normal listings that look like this:
Was this:
If you click on Loyalty programs, more content opens up (still on Google), showing results from 3 websites – this is the kind of location that business owners will need to focus on appearing in with the new SGE! For another query I saw Wikipedia, a digital marketing company, Podium (courses) and videos – all of these provide ideas of how a business might increase their visibility across the web.
- About the Author
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Darlene is a search marketer, analyst, speaker, trainer, and owner of DriveTraffic Digital Marketing. She has been working in the digital marketing industry since the mid 90s and has narrowed her specialty to SEO, Google Ads and Google Analytics. She is especially interested in Google’s new Search Generative Experience and how businesses will need to adapt to remain visible. Want to see how DriveTraffic can help? Let’s chat!
