With the rise of AI-driven content creation and the rapid evolution of search engines, Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) is transforming how users find information. Unlike traditional search, SGE taps into the power of generative AI to craft more comprehensive, conversational responses, making it essential for website owners, content creators, and digital marketers to adapt their strategies in order to stay competitive.

What Is the Google Search Generative Experience (SGE)?

You may have noticed that at the top of some Google SERPs, there is now a section at the top where generative AI can provide an answer to the search before the ranked web pages. Users can ask additional questions with the generative AI without leaving the SERP. While the SGE offers searchers a more conversational search experience, for those trying to rank for the top spots on the SERP, it means that the top spot now means less as it’s been pushed further down the page.

This doesn’t mean that SEO is now useless. It is, however, a good opportunity to take a look at your SEO strategies and make sure that they’re taking the SGE into account.

#1: Prioritize High-Quality, Factual Content

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: EEAT is possibly the most important factor in modern SEO. Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness are the qualities that Google is looking for in content that is eligible to rank highly. If your content doesn’t follow the EEAT guidelines, then it’s unlikely to rank on the first page of the search results at all, let alone in the top spot or in the SGE.

#2: Optimize for Conversational and Long-Tail Queries

Generative AI is designed to interact in a conversational way with users. This means that keywords should be framed in a conversational way. Long tail keywords, which are longer key phrases instead of individual words, are good examples of this. In many cases, users are asking questions, so wording a key phrase as a question can be a good way to keep your SEO more competitive in the generative AI landscape.

#3: Don’t Rely Only on Written Content

The AI powering SGE is not limited to text. It considers multimedia content like videos, podcasts, and images. Including diverse content formats will give your brand more opportunities to be featured. YouTube videos in particular can rank very highly in the SGE. YouTube is owned by Google and is a search engine in its own right, which means that YouTube videos have two opportunities to rank: first on YouTube and then again on the Google SERP. YouTube videos can be very valuable additions to any SEO strategy because videos don’t rank below the SGE, they rank within it at the top of the page.

#4: User Experience Still Matters

If a user isn’t getting the answers they’re looking for in the SGE, they may scroll down until they do. This means that user experience, which drives the metrics Google is using to rank pages, such as click-through rate, bounce rate, and dwell time, still matter. As the SERP landscape adjusts, it’s important to make sure that no matter how the Google search results shake out you’re still providing users with a good experience on your site in addition to good content because this ultimately is in line with Google’s own goal of providing a good user experience and the content that best answers their question.

Creating your content users in mind over the search engines can have the added benefit of helping to future-proof your SEO as much as possible, even in a search engine landscape that is constantly changing.