What’s Happening?
Google’s AI Overview feature is busy reshaping how search results appear. Instead of a simple list of website links, a user is now presented with an AI-generated summary. This provides an answer to their query, directly within the search results. While this is very convenient for the person searching, it is potentially bad news for your website traffic.
The very early data (past 12 months), that we are seeing, indicates that some websites may be experiencing a drop in organic traffic in the order of 18 – 36% (some of our research partner sites claim higher stats).
What Does This Mean for You?
If your content isn’t picked up the AIO summaries, then potentially you may no longer be appearing as prominently are before. Traditional SEO tactics alone may not be enough. We are entering a world of Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), which means that we are needing to craft content that demonstrates that your content is credible, well structured, and most importantly recognised by the search engine AI as being authoritative.
How We’re Responding
At Brandesign, we’ve launched Project AUTHOR, this is our dedicated internal rollout where we are updating our client websites, that are part of our maintenance process, to include:
- Verified Author Profiles (To create authority, which is preferred by AIO’s)
- Advising on content structure and tone, to answer real world questions
- Improved metadata, schema and FAQs
How You Can Stay Ahead
While most of our clients have not been impacted yet, this is likely due to the slower rollout of the AIO’s as a phenomenon within the South African landscape, this is changing as we speak. We are working to ensure your content gets recognised by Google’s AI. But it’s a shared journey — here’s what we recommend:
Position key team members as experts
Identify internal authors whose credibility can boost visibility, let us have their LinkedIn Profiles and an image of them so we can create the authors page.
Avoid low-quality AI content
Google and other search engines will be cracking down on pure AI-written pieces, they are able to detect when a piece has only be generated by AI, so avoid this. Edit your content, if you are not part of our content creation service, yourself and make sure to demonstrate your expertise in the field you are writing about.
What’s Next?
Over the coming weeks our clients on our dedicated: website updates and maintenance service, will be receiving a call to set up a content discussion session, as part of Project A.U.T.H.O.R.
Let’s Talk
If you’d like a short consult to assess your site’s readiness or discuss adding authorship to your content strategy, we’re here. No hard sell. Just clarity.
Book a 15-minute strategy slot with Mike Taberner here