The world of search engine optimization (SEO) has long been one where every website operator and digital marketing agency has to adapt or die. Among the biggest challenges demanding adaptation to emerge this decade is zero-click search. These are the searches where the person looking for information or your business never makes their way to your website or even anyone else’s site. Instead, the search engine presents them with the needed information in a format that never requires the user to go further. In this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn how to start embracing the challenges of zero-click search, how to adapt, and it’s paper on SEO.
Examples of Zero-Click Search Results
If you’re well-established in any specific zero-click environment, it almost certainly is on your company’s business profile. More particularly, your company’s Google Business Profile is a classic zero-click search result. A user looking for your business or something in your industry types in a search and gets a result that includes your operation’s basic info. Typically, a good Google Business Profile includes your organization’s working hours, phone number and contact emails. It might also include a photo and some information about your services offered.
Featured snippets have grown in use in search engines in recent years. A featured snippet is usually a block of text from a high-authority website that appears above all the standard results. If your website offers high-quality content in particular fields, you have a chance of showing up here. Featured search is a great way to cut line, especially if your site isn’t competing well in traditional search.
Notably, featured snippets are a gateway into relevance for voice search. Many voice assistant systems lean heavily on snippets to provide answers for searches on smart speakers, TVs and other devices.
People Also Ask box Zero-Click Search SEO Challenges
A cousin of the featured snippet is the People Also Ask box. Similar to snippets, the PAA box directs people toward questions that often follow from specific searches. For example, someone searching for an event might be prompted about when and where the event happens.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably the biggest zero-click challenge for every SEO services expert. AI-generated search results now appear in the big search engines, including Google and Bing. AI chat is also expanding the battlefield with systems like ChatGPT. These can be challenging search domains to rank in because summaries rarely target specific sites unless there is a compelling reason to provide a source. Notably, source citation is becoming more common in AI searches, especially on Google.
Short-form video is one of the better opportunities in zero-click search. TikTok, Facebook Reels and YouTube Shorts are some of the most popular short-form video platforms. Attention-getting content can quickly drive awareness in this environment. Even if someone doesn’t click through to your website from a short-form video, they will retain your brand.
Zero-Click Search SEO Challenges & Implications
The zero-click search environment presents some notable challenges. Particularly, it decouples some searches from the traditional pipeline that goes from engines to websites. This can be a very good thing for some folks because things like business profiles and PAA boxes can direct users to needed information faster. If someone is searching specifically for your business, this is a big win. Likewise, it offers advantages to well-optimized businesses in local search.
Where it may feel a little scarier is when it comes to things like featured snippets and AI-generated summaries. Especially if your site is built on dominating results for a general knowledge topic, there is a pretty good chance you’ve already noticed a drop in traffic. Winning that top slot on the first search engine results page is no longer a guarantee of a steady flow of visitors.
Fighting to Win in the Zero-Click World
Information richness and quality are the biggest weapons in the age of the zero-click search. If your website isn’t currently leveraging markup schema, the time to find religion is now. Well-structured schema markups ensure that search bots understand what’s special about every page on your website. Schema markups can tell a bot what your specific page is about, such as a how-to, an event listing, a product or a local business profile.
More information is always better. A good product listing should emphasize pricing, key features, options, ratings and reviews. This information helps the bots to latch onto your site as a reliable source for things like snippets, AI summaries and PAAs. Your odds of getting into that top slot are much higher if your schema markup makes the bot’s job easier. It also improves the odds that you’ll get that featured snippet status if your competitors aren’t optimized in this way.
EEAT
AI chat can be a tough nut to crack, but it’s not impossible. You want to be an EEAT website. EEAT stands for experience, expertise, authority and trust. Your odds of becoming a cited website with a link increase considerably in AI chat if you exhibit EEAT qualities. As users become more aware of AI’s shortcomings, such as its penchant just to make stuff up, citations will grow in importance. Curate your content and brand in a way that ensures AI systems will treat you as trustworthy enough to be the source for a cited link.
It isn’t a new idea, but you need to be more local, too. Your odds of not getting washed out in the fight for general knowledge go up if you offer local and highly specific content. We do SEO in Perth, and our digital marketing agency hammers that local connection.
Finally, be sure to embed your brand deeply in your content. If you make a short-form video, state your brand early and late. Work the names of your expert team members into written content to improve their odds of showing up as citations. Draw a direct connection to your brand so people remember you even if they don’t click through.
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