Search Generative Experience (SGE) is on the horizon for UK brands. Some are wishing it’d never arrive whilst others are hastily battening down their metaphorical hatches and waiting to see what “Storm SGE” does to their business.
More proactive companies and agencies are taking a different approach however. Whereas some see crisis others see opportunity, or are at least less pessimistic about the negative impacts SGE will have on their organic traffic.
For these brands SGE is the new SEO battlefield and figuring out what to focus on and what success looks like in this new SERP landscape is something lots of agency leaders and SEO heads are starting to consider and create strategies around.
But with SGE being so radically different from anything we’ve seen in the SERP in the last decade, what do we look to for guidance on how to navigate this new landscape? How can we try and get ahead of our competition and what flashpoints on the SERP are going to be the key SEO battlegrounds for 2024 and beyond.
SGE is going to create a SERP unlike anything we’ve ever seen before
Search generative experience’s radical shake up of the SERP isn’t new news anymore. Everyone in the digital space is bracing for the change. We’re going to see paid ads moved, organic results pushed right down the page, and FAQ rich snippets are destined to be a thing of the past.
You can read my full thoughts on what SGE is going to do to brands in this Performance Marketing World article.
But, whilst some previously important SEO placements in the SERP disappear (farewell the coveted P1 spot) others are going to rise to take their place. The SEO will never end, just where we need our website to appear in the SERP will evolve.
In the rest of this article I’ll hone in on some potential flashpoints for competition I can see developing in a new SGE results page. I’ll provide some examples from other marketing channels we could look to if we want to develop strategies that help us win at SGE SEO and explain what steps marketers could take to implement changes that will see them dominate SGE.
Battlefield 1: in-text citations
After an understandable outcry from the marketing community Google has decided to cite its sources directly in its SGE generated copy. See the below image see what that will look like:
Image taken from this SEO Roundtable article – Link
Adding citation directly into the copy has caused the SEO community to breathe a collective sigh of relief but it still begs the question: where do you want a citation from your site to appear and are there any tactics available to us as SEOs to game this system.
Maybe the first citation in the block of text would be the best, or perhaps the citation that provides the most insightful nuggets of information would be the goal of SEO teams.
Unfortunately we won’t know until we get our hands on SGE and test it. My personal hypothesis is that the citation highest up in the copy will be the one SEOs should aim for but we could find there’s no correlation between citation location and click through rate.
How do we start competing for these coveted citation positions?
If we want Google to start pulling our content into SGE results there are two things we can do:
- Improve our sites E.E.A.T signals
- Format on-page copy in a way that’s friendly to Google crawlers
E.E.A.T signals
The first point in this list is something SEOs should constantly be working on. Every site gets graded on E.E.A.T and you need to have an authoritative, trustworthy site with content written by experts before you can begin to think about competing for SGE snippets with any confidence.
If you don’t have an E.E.A.T strategy in place that should take priority before you start thinking about how to compete in SGE. If your site is all good on the E.E.A.T front then you can move on to optimising your copy.
Formatting on-page copy for SGE
How do we present Google with our page’s information in such a way it can’t help but include it in its SGE results. I think to do this it’d be a good idea to look at how brands and websites optimise for Google Voice and use that as a basis for optimising page’s for SGE.
Google Voice and SGE essentially have the same goal: to provide searchers with the answer’s they’re looking for quickly and clearly. This, in theory, means the same principles should apply for getting in an SGE result as an answer.
We should be re-working our content so that page’s answer their primary question quickly and clearly at the top of their pages. These answers should be signposted where possible with schema and separated from the rest of a page’s copy by headers and paragraph breaks.
Presenting these concise bodies of text at the top of a web page makes it really easy for Google to parse, understand and regurgitate that content in its SGE snippets.
We can’t yet determine how we can optimise our copy to target specific citations in an SGE answer and that may in fact be impossible. But, by applying the principles of Google Voice optimisation to our copy we will give ourselves the best chance of appearing in the SGE mix.
Battlefield 2: SGE’s trio of website
If you’re wondering what I’m talking about when I say SGEs trio of websites I’m talking about the 3 websites that appear on the right of the SGE result. See the image below:
We don’t yet know whether the sites that will appear here will be the same sites that are cited (try saying that fast) in the SGE generated copy. I’d assume that they will be but if not then this is another place where SEOs will be fighting for prime position in the SERP.
Getting our site into this trio of results is what we covered in the last point. What I want to explore here is how we give our website the best chance of being clicked on when it does appear in this carousel.
What will likely improve our CTR if our site appears in these results?
What will improve CTR? Will you get more clicks if your site is the result furthest left? Is this now a brand battle where the most trustworthy brands will get the best CTR? Annoyingly pure SEO won’t be able to directly impact these considerations but where we could have an impact is in the image and copy that’s getting pulled through to the thumbnail.
The length of text getting pulled through looks to be fewer than 60 characters, so that really needs to hook viewers. Reducing the lengths of your H1s and page titles to be really punchy and hook a reader in that very short amount of text is a must.
Also what image should we be using? The image could be a huge deciding factor in what someone clicks on. Generic blog stock imagery probably won’t cut it anymore. Do we take a leaf out of Youtube’s thumbnail optimisation guidelines and show expressive images of people in these thumbnails? We can see an example of this in the image above where we have a man sitting at a desk smiling at the camera. Perhaps a bit intense but creating a human connection like this through images can help with CTR.
Other areas to be aware of are the favicon and site name. I don’t think there is much we can do here other than make sure they’re accurate and high quality. If this part of the SERP becomes a battle of branding then making sure these look great should be a given.
Can we learn anything from ASO?
It can be just as tricky to promote on app stores as it is in the new SGE layout. App owners have struggled for a while with minimal images and text that allows them to describe their app when people are browsing Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store.
Looking at the tactics app owners use to get their apps to stand out from the crowd could be a good strategy to use when reviewing our own sites. Titles front loaded with optimised keywords, attractive and high quality images and snappy direct descriptions are all key features of app store optimisation and whilst we can borrow from this playbook wholesale we should take a look at it to see what we can adapt.
Battlefield 3: Google Perspectives
Google perspectives is a new search filter that displays content and viewpoints that relate to a searcher’s query. It acts as an alternative approach to finding content which combines traditional blog posts with video, social posts, forum answers and more.
Considering Google’s continued focus on E.E.A.T it’d make sense to assume that the voices that will be brought to the top in perspectives will be ones that hit all the relevant E.E.A.T signals.
Any website that wants to compete in this space needs to make sure they’re displaying great E.E.A.T. But, perspectives could also lead to more expert “influencers” being employed by websites. This could make this section of the SERP a pay-to-play arena where to stand any chance of appearing in perspectives you need a creator or author that has established fame in their chosen niche or discipline.
Another thing to consider with perspectives is its focus on timely, newsworthy opinion based content. I don’t believe evergreen content has anything to offer perspectives. But since perspectives provide a great way to attract visitors to your site we could see SEOs turning towards publishers for ideas on how to create relevant, engaging content quickly to attract a consistent stream of visitors to your site.
How can SEOs optimise for perspectives?
In the short term the best thing you can do is make sure your site has good authors attached to all its content and these experts are clearly signposted with schema within your site and on dedicated bio pages. Adding rich content like videos or audio files that relate to your written content is another thing you can do right now to improve your chances of appearing in perspective.
If we look at the longer term restructuring part of your SEO content strategy to include more opinion based, news style articles would be wise. Combining classic SEO focused keyword optimised content with content aimed at covering breaking topics, industry trends or news your customers would want to consume would allow you to continue a traditional keyword focused content strategy whilst also testing the validity of perspectives in your overall SEO strategy.
Succeeding in SEO in 2024
Search generative experience is going to be a huge shift for the SEO industry but until we can get our hands on the new SERP and test, test, test we can’t with 100% confidence say we know what strategies are going to work and which ones will be dead in the water.
But by preparing, planning and monitoring SEO strategies like the ones listed in this article we can begin to build new frameworks for succeeding at SEO and adapting internal and stakeholder KPIs to better reflect the new places we need our website to show up in.