Are You Ready for the New Search Environment? (EP23)

This episode addresses how we small business owners can survive in today’s search environment. Even with single answer search results, there’s a way to market your business to increase website traffic.

Resources

SEO in 8 Weeks

Website Marketing Starter Kit

Google search report by SE Ranking

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Mirror, mirror on the wall, how do I get my website to appear above them all? Feels a little bit like a fantasy or a fairy tale trying to rank higher in Google. Getting on the first page, there’s so much competition and with algorithm updates and updates in general and AI, oh my.

Oh, I crack myself up, but let’s get into it, shall we?

This is the text version of the Small Business Sweet Spot podcast. I’m Barb Davids, and this is the place for direct, actionable information around SEO and content marketing so that you can make informed decisions to increase your website traffic.

I will tell you, I feel like I need to walk around with a big like splat over my head, a big disclaimer asterisk.

Because things are changing at such a rapid, such a rapid pace at the moment.

When you’re doing searches one day, you may see a list like normal… you have the ads at the top, you may have some map results, depending on what your query is. But then you’ll have your listing of search results. The next day you may see a single box with just some text answering your query specifically and that box, that format of answering in just one simple answer is called a zero click environment.

And that’s what I want to talk about today.

We’ve actually been living in this environment for a little while with Google and also with like LinkedIn and Instagram and some of the platforms that don’t want you to leave their platforms with Google in particular, it’s been, it’s been known as a featured snippet is one example. There’s some other ones as well, but the featured snippet is the Answer that you get when you type in some phrases and these AI overviews that are happening are the very similar thing.

Now, this podcast is not about, or this episode is not about what the formats are and what they look like, but rather as a small business owner, how do we market to that? How do we survive in this new zero click environment?

But first I want to touch a little bit and back up on how this zero click environment works just a little bit just to give some context. Google does not just come up with this information out of thin air. And now that I say that, I realize, uh, maybe they do, or they have, or they were, but that’s really fast changing, right?

They’re doing a lot of testing. That’s a whole other ball of wax, but basically what happens is… Google is going out and looking for the information and pulling it all together and deciding which pieces to take from different websites to put inside of that search answer, that one answer environment, that zero click environment.

The short answer boxes are getting information from existing websites.

So far with some of the studies that have come out in particular, it’s still evolving. It’s ever changing, but right now it, there’s some things that, and very broadly speaking, most of the time, the information comes from already ranked results.

Now already ranked, what does that mean? That means that your website is showing up in the top 100 results. Depending on the phrase, depending on the industry, so many variables, it’s either pulling from the top 10, the top 100, it’s even pulling from websites that are outside of the top 100 results.

So, generally speaking, as a small business owner, as me, as you, there isn’t any one thing in particular that you can do to make your website show up in that, AI overview.

So what do we do? How do we roll with these changes? How do we survive the zero click environment?

The good news is, the basics of SEO, the foundation of it, is very solid. It’s very much the same as it has been before.

But we’ve got to take another look at our SEO and content marketing strategy come at it with a fresh perspective

Here are some things to consider to set yourself apart from the competitors and how to survive a zero click environment.

1. Increase your brand presence. Increasing your brand presence increases visibility and trust. And these are things like third party mentions on other websites or reviews. Those are ways that you can bring the brand or the intangibleness net. Sort of of a brand into the tangible arena
2. create shareable worthy content, make it so good that somebody’s going to want to share it with their friends or even mention it in their next newsletter.
3. If you have a local or physical presence, local SEO is a must do.
4. I saved the best for last. Diversify your marketing strategy.
   • Throw in some paid ads
   • maybe do an email newsletter list
   • engage with your audience on the social platforms
   • Publish a podcast or guest on other podcasts
   • Join and participate in networking groups
   • And finally, dive into video marketing. Personally, I think this along with your brand marketing is the golden ticket to diversifying your marketing strategy and setting yourself apart from the competitors in this zero click environment.

Here’s the thing. As business owners, we generally need to be receptive and flexible and adaptive to change.

And that’s the same for our marketing strategy.

If you’d like some support around your SEO and content marketing strategy, consider joining Grow With SEO program that is designed for small business owners.