Zero-Click What?
It’s now been two years since Google rolled out AI Overviews for the UK, and those generative AI answers have contributed to a situation that many people long foretold: the zero-click era. It used to be that your website was competing with others in the search results for that valuable click, but now for a lot of searches there just won’t be a click to be won. Rand Fishkin at SparkToro did the research in conjunction with Similarweb in June of this year and discovered that 69.5% of the 100 million searches made every day in the UK do not result in a click, and 23.9% of those clicks don’t leave Google’s properties. In fact, compared to the largest search markets in Europe and North America, the UK has the highest proportion of zero-click searches.
This has pretty much destroyed some of the most successful SEO strategies of the past three decades, especially the “just write a blog with your keywords in it” tactic. Google will probably ignore your blogs unless they are truly exceptional - original research, expert analysis, genuine news, or anything else Google considers “non-commodity”. This has definitely put a crimp in most top-of-funnel acquisition strategies, as this is exactly the sort of traffic that an AI Overview captures.
The Content AI Can’t Replicate
With your top-of-funnel being handled by AI, you need to make sure your website handles the middle- and bottom-of-funnel users. With your customers probably better informed than ever, your website just has to close the deal. Content which still works for SEO is the same sort of content which your potential customers will love. Real insights into what you do, real-world examples which they can relate to, and genuine expert advice are the things Google wants to show people. These build trust, not only with Google, but with your potential customers.
The other type of content that AI can’t replicate is interactive tools. Quote estimators, online application forms, custom functions in a checkout process - anything that requires a user input to generate a customised response prevents AI from intercepting your users.
Leveraging the AI Itself
Working on your brand’s ability to earn mentions in AI responses can be incredibly valuable. Getting your company’s services or product recommended by an AI has a huge impact on how likely a user is to take the next step and become a customer. This involves making sure your content is readable by the AI (client-side rendering is one of the most common ways to make your website invisible to an AI tool). Properly structure your content so that it can be easily cited, and make sure you answer the questions your customers will be asking.
Off-site recommendations and reviews are vital for earning mentions. While the exact sources to get the best results vary over time and depending on the AI, getting mentions in socials and trusted third-party websites will not only get your website mentioned in AI responses, but also help with overall SEO and visibility.
Rethink What You Measure
Don’t ignore organic traffic or your position in the SERPs, just know that it’s a less valuable metric. Accept the new normal, don’t sweat the drop in organic traffic to your blog pages, and create a new baseline for your conversion rate.
I don’t know how much confidence I personally would put into third-party AI measuring tools for mentions and citations. I feel that any third-party tool that was able to measure these things with any degree of accuracy would need to run so many tests that it would be statistically significant. Google have at least given us information on the impressions your website gets from their generative AI tools.
Finally, you need to pay attention to the bottom line. How has the shift to zero-click changed your revenue? Investigate where the new bottlenecks are occurring in your customer journey. Move with the times.
