I was talking with an IT and comms company the other day, trying to describe how the landscape of search has been continually evolving. I highlighted the fact that, years ago, we searched for a keyword and got a list of ten websites that we could look at and these would be useful or not. But we had to click, read, explore, and make decisions on whether that result met our needs before going back to the Search Engine Results pages (SERPs) and looking at the other results in the top 10 and doing it again – click, read, make a decision, go back etc.
Nowadays, Google’s drive has been to provide ever more relevant results, and as I always say to clients, it’s not the increase in impressions and clicks but the relevance of your results and the quality that indicates – you may have slightly more, the same, or even fewer impressions, but what you are ranking for and getting clicks for is far more relevant.
As for how people find you, where your business is within the digital landscape, and how the new generative AI engines, be they ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s Gemini, find you – it’s all changed from how it was even just a couple of years ago.
I tried to find a phrase for this mix of SEO, social media, website content, and other outreach, and I said they needed a new form of digital PR so to speak.
They made notes.
Aggregators, the New Experience Engines
So looking at Google’s results these days, you can see that they’re a mixture of sources. If I ask the question “what’s the best way to network my home for a reliable, fast internet?”
I no longer see a list of ten websites that I have to go and explore myself… Google is aggregating content which, when I open that sidebar and check the link icons under each entry on the left, is being pulled from Reddit, WIRED magazine, NordVPN’s website, even the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom.
Google’s AI Overviews are an aggregator, and all those results have been combined by AI into an overview that is also the answer in itself. If the highlighted text is relevant, concise, understandable, and actionable, I can now step away and go do what I need to do to get better broadband reception in my house.
That was a zero-click search. If I were Reddit, WIRED, or Ofcom, nobody visited my site. But I was there in the results.
Google has morphed, for this type of query at least, into an experience engine. There are probably better examples of searches, but that was the first that came into my head. The WiFi on my iPhone is not as good around the house as it is for the laptops, and glass doors in the house also probably affect signal.
But I digress… the search engine is not just pulling a list of ten links any longer, it’s providing a mix – you can see that there’s a comprehensive list of things to do from Microsoft Support. And scrolling down there are the PAA results (People Also Ask) showing the related questions, then a handful of videos from YouTube. Below this are the organic search results, the top ten that SEOs aim to rank your website for.
But is this enough any longer?
You can see from the results, that there’s the aggregate AI Overview, a compact window of results that change in front of you when you explore the list on the left, YouTube videos, the Reddit forum, and then the websites again. To stand the best chance of being included in this result I’d need to create helpful, relevant content on my website, YouTube, and a forum. Then I’d have to make sure that people see my content.
That’s where the digital PR comes in.
Not Just Me
And then this morning, whilst visiting LinkedIn to see what’s going on this week, I’m immediately presented with a NEW 5 minute whiteboard from Rand Fishkin.
Basically, Rand is positing that the biggest channel of the next decade could be… PR.
What Rand starts with is that ChatGPT is now in the top ten most visited sites in the USA because the way we search has evolved. I think that what we now have are platforms that can take a more human, more nuanced question, and generate more elaborate results, one that are far more detailed, relevant, friendly, and satisfactory.
He also says that he thinks that the Google SERPs are directly competing with the likes of AI engines, that there’s a nervousness. I’d say a fear, an existential threat, after all, Google has been the dominant search engine for years now. And yes, it’s been obvious since OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5 burst onto the public stage in November 2022 and the Mountain View giant soon after issued a “code red” before positioning itself as an “AI-first company” in the Google I/O 2023 event – “AI is at the core of everything” was their key message.
Rand goes on to highlight that his research shows that two thirds of search stays in Google’s ecosystem whilst only a third goes outside, reinforcing the “zero click phenomenon” that he spoke about in his keynote at Brighton SEO in 2019 when I was there.
What Rand does say though is that there are now just a few platforms dominating our attention and taking it away from your website, so that’s where you need to be. And so he’s advocating “digital PR” because he reckons SEO of the last 20 years and content marketing of the last 18 is not what’s happening. You need to be on YouTube and Facebook, on podcasts etc.
Where Your Customers Are
The obvious point that is being made is that you need to place your content where your customers are. If they’re on YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, you should have a presence there. If your audience listen to podcasts, get in there too.
It’s always been like this, actually. When was the last time you targeted a place where you customers were not there? What’s the point in running display ads or a programmatic campaign in an irrelevant channel? Of course, there are exceptions like when you experiment to see which channels provide the best data and some are just “wrong” but you weed that out early and evolve a strategy based on that data.
Content is Still King
One point that I do disagree with is when Rand says that your content no longer needs to be on your website but YouTube, Facebook etc. I don’t know if this was more nuanced and I’m missing the point but I will say this…
Your own website needs to be the source of all your excellence.
E-E-A-T is still a thing. If you’re not demonstrating your experience and your expertise, showing off your authoritativeness and building trust on your own website, then maybe that’s what’s contributing to allowing third parties to take over as the sources of the knowledge. You’re giving away your power. Don’t!
If that is the case then I’d say take a firm stand, and make your website the number one source of all this experience and expertise and then replicate that across the other channels. I’ve always advocated that approach, that has always been my strategy – content and SEO first, then you can intelligently place additional variations of that content in the places where your customers will likely see and consume it. Nothing about my digital marketing strategies have changed over the past ten years, only the specifics of where you repeat and amplify your message.
What I think Rand is getting at is that many digital marketers are still not doing that and now it’s time to branch out.
Break Silos and Find Budgets
I’ve long been known as and pigeon-holed as a “content and SEO” guy. Whilst it’s true that those are my key skills, every digital marketing strategy involves complementary and supporting PPC campaigns, social media activity, both organic and paid, plus PR and outreach, whether it’s digital or traditional.
The other issue is that of budgets and resourcing – if a small digital agency has such high overheads that it has to charge so much that clients can only afford a few hours of work then that often limits the scope to just content and SEO. That’s fine but it’s not enough. And don’t blame the content and SEO people, they need support from PPC and social.
What needs to happen is that digital marketing needs to be led by holistic marketers, those that truly understand how it all fits together. Digital marketing campaigns need a basis on which to be successful and then these can build out. Do content, do SEO, then amplify with social, supplement it with PPC. And all this becomes digital PR as you find the resource and the budget to be able to create useful videos, share that on Threads and TikTok if it’s where your audience are.
And I say this as a freelancer with all the above skills – if a digital agency is too expensive and you can’t get what you need at the right price – go find a digital marketing consultant who can do all these things for your business and really add value.
If you need me, I’m on 01252 692 765.