Despite designing and building websites for nearly 20 years, I’ve often outsourced the world of content marketing and search engine optimization. My brain gets overwhelmed by analyzing, strategizing, and tracking rankings and clicks and keywords.
That said, I recently finished a workshop by Sarah Moon about the evolving landscape of search discovery in today’s world of AI-driven summaries and chatbot queries. And, I have to say that, despite all my resistance to the world of AI being foisted upon us, search discovery seems to be becoming a bit more clear.
It also appears to be an area where small businesses currently have opportunity to carve out their corner of the discoverable web.
I’m sharing a few notes and doodles from class below, as well as my two cents. (These notes from class are all relatively common knowledge, not the teacher’s unique process or approach. I recommend checking out Sarah Moon’s website, services, and workshops for much more information.)
AI has disrupted the field of SEO over the past two years.
Click through rates (how often someone clicks on your result in a search engine) have significantly declined due to generative AI summaries. But your visibility in AI summaries and in the ‘normal’ results below are of course still important in marketing your business. The more someone sees you referenced online, the more brand recognition you have, and the more likely they will be to do business with you… it’s just that this type of engagement is impossible to precisely measure.
Your website should be a knowledge hub for your areas of expertise.
Search is evolving from a focus on keywords to an understanding of entities (people, places, or things)— and websites are cornerstones for understanding entities.
To establish your authority about your subject(s), your website’s content should be structured with comprehensive topic clusters that show depth, breadth, and interconnectedness (pillar pages with related and interconnected articles).
Sarah Moon gave the excellent example of King Arthur’s sourdough guide, which provides comprehensive information about all aspects of sourdough on interlinked pages.
Website text should be citation-ready.
This means that text should be clear and concise, structured well, include conversational questions or Q&A formats, and be easily scannable (with headers, bullets, bolds, pull quotes, etc.).
Insights are valuable.
Data you’ve gathered, your unique opinions as an authority, and your specific approach (case studies showing how you did it) are all value-added information that AI can use to establish you as an authority.
Author credibility is critical.
AI’s pattern-recognition and holistic view make a strong case for a thorough About page that proves you are worth citing. Adding your years/projects/clients of experience, your relevant degrees/certifications/affiliations, and any links helps too.
High quality original visuals are important.
Both AI and search engines seem to love visual frameworks and information graphics. Just be sure you’re using thorough alt text.
My two cents:
I believe the act of structuring and crafting our website’s content to address the above is not only helpful for AI+search engine queries and educating prospective clients, but it also helps us solidify our own knowledge and thinking about our field. Writing is thinking… and designing is too.
I also believe that our website content shouldn’t just be created by AI to push information at AI, it should draw real live humans in. Once an actual live human is viewing a website, it will be the human peculiarity in what we create that will keep them looking — especially as AI-generated content becomes even more widespread.
From this actual live human to you,
Sarah
One Response
Wonderful as always.