AI has disrupted online search to such an extent that you might be wondering how you can make your website work in the age of AI? Us too. The answers are layered and intriguing.
AI squashes search?
Solid advice until just recently was to make sure your website answered all the questions your clients were asking. Answer their questions, use the language and search terms your buyers use, provide helpful advice and valuable content, and your website will start to climb up the search rankings. The better and more exhaustively you answered client questions, the higher you would rank, and the more leads your business would pull in.
AI has upended that. Put any question into the search bar today and you’ll be served up an AI generated answer. No need to trawl through individual websites looking for the response that best meets your challenge, AI does it for you. Scooping up, collating and contextualising the information from thousands of websites and serving it up to you instantly.
You’ll have noticed that when you ask Google a question that strays beyond instant gratification (prices, places, people), it serves you with an AI-generated summary of the answer you’re hoping to find. A curated narrative, with some references to its sources, right at the top of Page 1. Those references are for highly ranked sites, and promoted sites too. What are the chances they are for your site?
A solution, looking for a problem?
It used to be the case – in long tail search anyway – that Google liked and rewarded sites that answered the questions people were asking. But it no longer automatically rewards individual websites for doing a good job. Your carefully crafted website copy might well make it into the answer that the AI search engine serves up, but you won’t necessarily be part of that conversation, and in that case Google won’t be sending any potential clients your way.
This marks the shift from SEO to SGE – Search Generative Experience – which other search engines are mirroring. If you don’t need more than the summary answer, how likely are you to visit the referenced sites? So what’s the plan, Stan?
Turns out, your instincts are still right
What’s the point of a website – and valuable content – if people aren’t going to find it? If organic search is squashed, how should you think about your digital presence?
With search engines like Google now acting as content aggregators and interpreters, you need to aim for inclusion and citation within the AI narrative. The long and short of that is the value of content that adds true depth and authority is rising. While the value of content designed only to rank is eroding. The other side of the equation is brand recognition and trust. When people need the source, not just a quick answer, you want to be the source they trust.
The answer is to focus even more tightly on the clients you know and understand. You’re unlikely to get any casual passing trade because of the convenient bypass that AI has built around the digital high street. Forget appealing to potential passers by – make the site the best possible experience for your ideal clients.
It’s worth contrasting how Google SGE and true generative AIs like ChatGPT operate. Google crawls the web to index content, and creates rankings based on page and domain authority, just as it always has. So some sources will always dominate.
ChatGPT doesn’t crawl and rank ( at least not yet ). It might cite forums, research papers, blog posts and niche sites equally. It doesn’t always favour legacy brands, unless quality is clearly better.
The implication is that niche expertise can punch above its weight when it comes to inclusion in ChatGPT (and other LLMs)
That means more focused, more specific, more helpful. AI search has made us even more impatient web users. We all want answers immediately, we won’t wait around. In design terms, that means thinking carefully about all the reasons your ideal clients might want to use your website, and creating logical journeys through the site for each of them.
Specific, simple, self-directed
Visitors want a straightforward experience that feels like it was designed just for them. But designing simple is not so easy, so behind the scenes, websites become more complex, multi-layered affairs.
Here are 3 key differences between Google SGE and Chat GPT (plus other LLMs) It’s a nuanced picture. On one hand, if you have real domain expertise and a dedicated following, LLMs might offer a more level playing field in the game of getting your content surfaced. On the other hand, citation is not just about authority but the model (web browsing must be enabled) and the user’s query (ie asking for sources and citations as part of the response).
Imagine your website is marketing a platform that improves collaboration, project tracking and team resource management within an enterprise. Traditionally your site might talk about the platform and its features, reference customers, pricing, a resources section of How To’s and FAQs, an About Us.
Let’s start outside-in, by imagining you’re in the market for such a platform. What would inspire you to engage with and trust one platform over another? There are more than a few out there, after all.
How about if the website and its content could show that it had your role’s very specific needs at its heart? What if it could demonstrate how to solve not some bunch of generic challenges, but yours particularly? Mould itself to you, your skillsets, your mindset.
Feels like a positive start point – and from there you can move in multiple directions. Maybe you have a follow-on question that an FAQ could answer, or maybe it’ll take a web chat with an expert. Or a look at pricing. Or you’re in the mood to consume a short and relevant case study. Or – holy grail – ask for a live demo, a trial. You build your own highly relevant experience, one step at a time. And after each step, you have fresh choices to make. There are no cul-de-sacs. You move in a direction and at a pace that lets you soak up confidence and trust. This is the design philosophy of the non-linear visitor journey.
Can you also see that by being both very granular and very specific, the website is providing the exact kind of content most likely to be valued by Google SGE, or ChatGPT?
Community matters more than ever
But in the age of AI search and GenAI, you definitely can’t start and stop at the website. Building a community becomes even more important. A newsletter that links to the website, giving people genuine reasons to visit it, is crucial. A tightly focused blog or podcast offering genuine insight and experience is likely to perform well on its own terms in ChatGPT and other LLMs
And let’s not forget that developing relationships with the clients you do have, powering old school marketing methods like referral strategies and in person events, are becoming more relevant again.
What do you think?