Is Answer Engine Optimization the Future of SEO?

Is Answer Engine Optimization the Future of SEO?

Jan 8, 2025

Reading Time: 3 minutes
Is Answer Engine Optimization the Future of SEO

By now you’ll have noticed the generative AI section that appears at the top of most Google SERPs. This generative AI answer has been driving search results further and further down the SERP, meaning that the top search result doesn’t mean quite as much as it used to. This doesn’t mean that your SEO efforts are useless, however. But we now have a name for the strategy of optimizing specifically for generative AI: answer engine optimization (AEO).

What Is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of optimizing digital content so that it provides quick, concise, and accurate answers to user queries—often in the form of featured snippets, knowledge panels, or other instantly visible answers on search results pages. While traditional search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on ranking as high as possible for relevant keywords, AEO goes one step further by tailoring content to directly answer the specific questions users are asking.

What Is the Difference Between AEO and SEO?

AEO is a specific strategy that falls under the umbrella of SEO. SEO seeks to optimize for all parts of the search engine through a variety of strategies, including link-building and keyword research.  AEO, on the other hand, is more focused on answering specific user queries. Although the presence of AI is relatively new, the core concept of AEO isn’t actually new. It’s very similar to strategies for the featured snippet or for voice search.

What Are Key AEO Strategies?

Fortunately, the core strategies for AEO aren’t that different from what you should already have been doing. The following are things you can do specifically for AEO but also to maintain a good SEO strategy overall.

Long-Tail Keywords

Focusing on long-tail keywords has already been a strategy for voice-activated devices and apps like Siri and Alexa. People tend to ask questions like they’re talking to another person when they use a voice search rather than typing a few keywords into the search engine. Generative AI is no different. People chat with it like it’s a person, so the same strategy of optimizing for long-tail keywords can apply here, too.

Leverage FAQs

FAQs are an example of this strategy in action. There’s one question highlighted and answered concisely. This is the type of answer that can be featured in the generative AI section because it’s structured as a quick answer. You can use bullet points, clear headings (that are long-tail keywords) and a concise answer directly beneath the heading that is either the entire answer or summarizes longer-form content below.

EEAT

Google has long stated that high-quality content is what the company wants to deliver to its searchers. Generative AI hasn’t changed that. In fact, high quality content across the board can increase your chances of getting the featured snippet because you’ve established your site’s trustworthiness and authority in the subject. It’s a good idea to continue to produce the best possible content you can and even to go through older content to make sure that it’s still accurate and up-to-date.

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How To Rank in the Google Search Generative Experience

How To Rank in the Google Search Generative Experience

Aug 12, 2024

Reading Time: 3 minutes
How To Rank in the Google Search Generative Experience
How To Rank in the Google Search Generative Experience

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.

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How Has the Google March 2024 Core Update Impacted the SEO Landscape?

How Has the Google March 2024 Core Update Impacted the SEO Landscape?

May 20, 2024

Reading Time: 3 minutes
How Has the Google March 2024 Core Update Impacted the SEO Landscape?

Google began to roll out a new core update in March of 2024. Usually, it only takes a week or so for a new update to completely roll out. This update, however, was much more complex and took a total of 45 days to complete. What does that mean for the SEO landscape?

What Did the March 2024 Core Update Do?

The March 2024 Core Update was so complex because it addressed multiple core Google systems. However, it had one primary focus: spam reduction. From the onset, Google’s goal has been to provide users with the most useful and high-quality content when they search. Most, if not all of their core updates have been made with this goal in mind.

This latest update is no different. This update’s aim is to reduce or eliminate the amount of spam, or content produced exclusively to attract clicks rather than actually be useful to users, that searchers see. It’s also to reward those who publish high-quality content aimed at users, not search engines, with higher rankings over those who do not.

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What Kinds of Spam Does the Google March 2024 Core Update Address?

According to Google, there are three primary types of spam that this new core update affects:

Expired Domain Abuse

This type of spam involves purchasing an expired domain name and then using it to produce content that has little value to users, thereby attempting to manipulate search rankings.

Scaled Content Abuse

Scaled content abuse involves producing many pages exclusively for the purpose of manipulating the rankings. In many cases, scaled content abuse involves generative AI being used to quickly produce many pages.

Site Reputation Abuse

Site reputation abuse occurs when a site publishes third-party content that doesn’t have close oversight by the site owner and is published with the intention of manipulating search rankings.

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What Changes Should You Make Because of the March 2024 Core Update?

If you’re producing high-quality content with users as your target audience, then no changes are needed. This update targeted content that was aimed at manipulating search engines. If you have experienced a drop in rankings, consider examining your content and making updates where needed to improve its usefulness and quality. Keep in mind the four principles of EEAT:

  • Expertise
  • Experience
  • Authority
  • Trustworthiness

Ensuring that all of your content meets those criteria is the best thing you can do to not only protect yourself from this particular core update but also to future-proof your content from future core updates.

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Can You Still Use AI To Produce Content After the March 2024 Core Update?

The short answer is that it depends on how you were using AI to produce content. If the purpose of using AI was to mass-generate content to manipulate the search engines rather than to produce high-quality content, then that will most likely negatively affect your rankings. If you were instead using AI as a tool to enhance your content, then you might be safe. Our recommendation is to always have a human writer produce your content, whether AI is involved or not, so that there’s expert human oversight over any content that is produced. You don’t necessarily have to avoid using AI altogether, but it should be a helpful writing aid, not the writer.

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Using AI in SEO Optimization

Using AI in SEO Optimization

Apr 22, 2024

Reading Time: 3 minutes
woman with a tablet with SEO hologram
Generative AI is a versatile tool that has a wide range of applications across the entire Internet marketing industry. Many have used AI tools in content creation and marketing. But can AI be used to help with SEO optimization? The short answer is yes, but with the caveat that any usage of AI ought to be checked by a human expert.

Can You Use AI for Keyword Research?

To streamline the keyword research process, you can ask ChatGPT or another AI program to search for keyword suggestions and trends. In this case, your AI program may not have access to the latest data and might not be providing recommendations based on the latest SEO landscape. Additionally, even if you ask the AI to explain why it recommends each keyword, you won’t necessarily be able to see the data behind the recommendation. This means that you don’t have a good way to judge the search volume for each keyword recommendation. Plus, you know your own industry much better than any AI would.

Tip: Ask for Long-Tail Keyword Suggestions

Don’t replace Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner with ChatGPT. Instead, ask your generative AI of choice to suggest long-tail keywords based on your top keywords from your actual keyword research. Another way to use AI with keywords is to ask it to make suggestions for how to incorporate certain keywords into a piece of content. Keep in mind that you’ll want to review anything provided by the AI.

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Can You Use AI for Content Creation?

AI can be an excellent tool for writers because it can proofread and make suggestions or even provide inspiration for content. We don’t recommend using AI as the writer without a human to review it. This is because AI can provide incorrect information and doesn’t know your audience and your clients like you do. Additionally, generative AI works by predicting what word should come next given the available context. It doesn’t work by understanding what people will want to read.

Tip: Avoid Using AI as Your Writer

Use ChatGPT or other AI to improve writing or to make the writing process faster. Using ChatGPT to write the entire content for you could end up triggering Google’s anti-spam policies. Google doesn’t punish AI-written content just for being AI-written, but it could be flagged as spam. Additionally, readers may be able to tell that it was AI-written and click away. Either could reduce organic traffic to your website. Instead, a human writer can use ChatGPT to write the first draft, provide feedback, or reduce the amount of time spent on research.

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Can You Use AI for Research?

When it comes to research, you can use AI to significantly shorten the time spent. You can simply ask ChatGPT a question and it’ll provide everything you need to know about it. However, it’s important to remember that you should still double-check your research yourself. AI can “hallucinate,” which means that it can provide wrong information, believing it to be correct. Additionally, some AI programs may not have access to the most recent data and could therefore be providing outdated research.

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In a World With AI, Are Small Businesses Getting Priced Out of SEO?

In a World With AI, Are Small Businesses Getting Priced Out of SEO?

Feb 5, 2024

Reading Time: 3 minutes
In a World With AI, Are Small Businesses Getting Priced Out of SEO?
Technology changes quickly, and lately it seems like it’s been changing faster than ever before. While artificial intelligence has been a part of that technological landscape for many years in varying forms, it’s been making headlines lately because of the release of ChatGPT and other generative AI programs. Now, it’s begun to change the landscape of SEO.

How Does AI Play a Role in Google’s SERP Rankings?

Google has used AI in its algorithm for a long time. So how is AI only recently changing the SEO landscape? The answer has to do with the newer generative AI like ChatGPT. Google has started to include responses from its own generative AI platform, Bard, at the top of search engine results pages. This takes up a lot of real estate on the SERP. Users have to scroll down to see any search results at all, even the very first result. This means that the value of that top spot isn’t what it used to be. For those ranked lower on the SERP, there’s a chance users may never scroll down that far.

Who Is Google’s Algorithm Ranking the Highest?

There are many signals that Google’s algorithm pays attention to when it comes to determining search rankings. User interaction is a major one. Google’s search algorithm looks at such signals as clicks, bounce rate, dwell time, and more; websites that not only attract users to click the link but then also remain on the site for longer tend to end up higher in the SERP rankings. In theory, this means that really good content that is the most helpful to users should rank at the top. However, it often ends up being those with the highest ad spend in practice.

How Does Media Spend Impact Google’s SERP Rankings?

Larger companies with bigger budgets for ad and media spend are going to be more visible. Users will therefore recognize these brands more readily, leading them to more frequently click on links belonging to brands they already know and trust. This means that it can be difficult for new or smaller brands to compete; Google shows users what they expect and want to see, which can mean that it shows more popular content and may not leave room for brands that can’t pay to gain that same level of popularity via advertising.

Is Google Favoring Bigger Brands in SEO?

When asked this question, Amanda Shaffer, the founder and CEO of BrainVine, responded:

“The short answer is that it’s complicated, primarily because there’s more than one type of SEO these days. However, within the current landscape and in the more traditional sense of how SEO has functioned during the last decade, the answer is mostly yes.”

 

Amanda Shaffer, Founder & CEO of BrainVine

How Can Smaller Brands Compete in the Modern SEO Landscape?

Even if smaller or newer brands may find themselves priced out of the typical SEO landscape thanks to larger brands and AI taking up the bulk of the SERP real estate, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still options. Local SEO, in which you focus on building a brand within your local area, can be a good option because bigger companies may be focusing on a larger scale. Another option is YouTube; even with generative AI added to SERPs, YouTube videos are often featured prominently at the top. Growing a YouTube channel could be a way to compete for space at the top of a search engine results page.

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How Do Google Core Updates Affect SEO?

How Do Google Core Updates Affect SEO?

Dec 18, 2023

Reading Time: 3 minutes
woman working in front of a computer

Google often releases core updates to its algorithm in order to either address a problem or to improve the relevance and quality of search results for users. With Google changing how its search algorithm works so frequently, there can be some disruptions to SEO. But how, exactly, do core updates affect SEO and what can you do about it?

Do Core Updates Change SERP Rankings?

The short answer is that yes, an update can impact your rankings. It doesn’t always; in many cases, rankings may stay the same if your content still meets Google’s requirements for high quality. However, because the core update may reassess what Google considers to be top quality, rankings may decrease or even increase, depending on how your content matches up with the new qualifications.

What Does It Mean If Your Rankings Decrease After a Core Update?

Each core update just means that Google is adjusting how it ranks content in order to better match users with the best possible search results. In some cases, you may have ranked higher on a keyword that didn’t quite match your content as well and now you rank better for other, more suitable keywords. In other cases, you may need to revisit your content quality and update accordingly to meet Google’s standards.

What Can You Do If Your Rankings Drop After a Core Update?

Whether there’s something you can do or not will depend on the core update. If there’s a specific action you can take to restore your rankings to what they were before the update, Google will let you know. For example, when it switched to mobile-first indexing, optimizing for mobile devices first was something Google announced that you could do to improve your rankings. Sometimes, however, there’s nothing specific and Google will announce that along with the core update.

What Should You Do If There’s Nothing To Fix After a Core Update?

If Google has announced that there’s nothing to fix after a core update, then you should focus on improving the quality of your content and your website. This can mean focusing on EAT principles in your written content as well as improving the technical SEO on your website for things like loading speed.

Do Google Core Updates Cause Ranking Volatility?

It’s possible that a core update could cause volatility in the search rankings as the algorithm adjusts to the new criteria. Rankings may not stay static and may change multiple times during the weeks that the update is being rolled out. If in the immediate aftermath of an update, your rankings aren’t what you’d expect, don’t panic. It may take some time for the rankings to settle after the gradual rollout of the update.

Can You Anticipate a Core Update’s Ranking Changes?

There’s no real way to anticipate the changes that Google will make ahead of time. However, there are things you can do to future-proof your SEO. Focus on producing quality content that will benefit and engage your users. If users find your content genuinely useful and keep coming back to it, then your rankings may more easily recover or may not be affected at all by an update. You should also regularly revisit your technical SEO to make sure that your site is keeping up with current expectations for load speed.

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