PDC’s Guide for SEO Strategies in the Age of AI: Navigating Google’s New SGE Changes

There’s change on the horizon. Google is transforming the face of digital marketing with their upcoming Search Generative Engine (SGE) rollout, which further indicates the ever-growing role of AI in marketing. The idea of Google super charging their search engine with generative AI might seem a little daunting, especially since the changes it’s going to bring to SEO strategies will be drastic. As your digital marketing experts, PDC has outlined the changes we’re anticipating along with tactics and advice for businesses navigating this brave, new SEO world.

What is Google’s SGE?

If you haven’t heard about it yet, SGE is mind-blowing. Currently, when you Google a question, the answer will be broken up into small chunks of info from different websites that have the answer, and we piece together the full picture ourselves. SGE will use AI to do the heavy lifting for you: it’ll put together a few paragraphs answering that question, utilising information from the web and linking to the sites it deems relevant.

Or, say you search for a product with Google. Search Generative AI will help customers see a wider range of products when they’re shopping, with product descriptions, ratings, prices, and images. This new AI shopping experience will be built on Google’s Shopping Graph, which has more than 35 billion product listings, offering the world’s most comprehensive dataset of ever-changing information on sellers, products, brands, customer reviews ever, constantly giving reliable results by refreshing more than 1.8 billion listings every hour.

AI’s Impact on PPC:

Like the upcoming shifts to Google Search with SGE, Google Ads are rolling out new generative tools powered by AI in 2024. This means that your paid advertising strategies will start to look a little different too, as AI can help businesses optimise their “pay-per-click” campaigns for better results. Basically, with this new generative tool, AI will be able to read through your ad and suggest keywords to improve its SEO.

Our advice? Give it a go! Harnessing AI takes a bit of finesse but can help you improve your brand messaging performance. Some key tips are to think of AI as your friendly assistant: an expert in all things algorithms and able to help you optimise the ad content you’ve created.

AI is a powerful tool, but it requires the expertise, creativity, and empathy of marketers to unleash its full potential. It’s not about the technology itself; it’s about what marketers can achieve with it. AI is a partner, not are placement, in crafting authentic and impactful marketing strategies.

Absolutely give new generative tools a try – but be careful not to rely on them entirely.

You know your business better than anyone so while using Ai-insights to optimise your PPC campaigns is awesome, don’t let it write it for you. Use your own judgement along with data-driven knowledge to lead your way when creating ad campaigns, as AI might not be able to infuse the personality and insight that you hold –those human elements that are essential for clicks.

Which brings us to the next big shift we’ll be seeing: purpose and personality-led content will be crucial for successful marketing in this new SEO landscape.

Purpose-Led Content to Stand Out Against Generative AI Tools:

With updates to SEO strategies to prep for generative AI, marketers will need to adapt to a new content model. Personality-led, thoughtful, leadership content will standout on SERPs. Sure, this has always performed pretty well with most audiences, but with the rising tide of AI generated copy and content, brands will need to lean into more personality-driven content to do what AI can’t.

Amidst the surge in AI adaption, the challenge is not to neglect the human. While we’re all riding the AI wave, businesses still need to anchor their brand messaging and marketing to their uniquely human voice. Use AI to speed up your research process and refine messaging, while creating content based on knowledge and personal insights into your audience, competition, and core differentiators.

For 2024 and beyond, think about the purpose of your content. The key to SEO success in this radical new AI-led world will lie in understanding what your audience needs, and creating marketing content that fulfils functional, emotional, and social needs.

It might seem strange that personality is the “Next Big Thing” in an era of AI, but it speaks to our need for authenticity within content. Marketers must rethink their SEO and content creation strategies, leaning into the human touch that AI cannot replicate. Here’s how we’ll see that unfold in 2024:

• Conversational Marketing Takes Centre Stage:
If you’re looking to improve engagement and relationships with your audience, conversational marketing is a great strategy. We’ll see marketers engaging with customers and followers in a more natural way to juxtapose the style of AI and make their brand feel more authentic.

Answering customer queries in real-time is becoming a cornerstone of marketing strategies, as it creates a dialogue between businesses and customers to understand their preferences and needs. Even if your goal is to add a human touch to your marketing strategies AI can still be incredibly useful: conversational marketing with AI-powered chatbots can improve customer engagement and satisfaction.

• Making More Decisions with Less Data:
In the era of low data, marketers will need to make more decisions with less decision support. While click-through rates decline and privacy laws limit data accessibility, fundamental marketing strategies still apply. Building awareness, trust, creating videos, publishing research reports, and collaborating with influencers remain effective strategies, even when connecting all the dots becomes challenging.

• Voice Search Optimisation:
Google says that over 20% of searches are now through voice-activated engines and virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa. With the number of voice-activated searches on the rise, understanding and incorporating voice search optimisation techniques will be crucial for businesses looking to keep their SEO up to date. To optimise your SEO for voice-activated searches, try to think about how your audience asks questions and engages with your brand. Using more conversational, long-form questions for search queries and keywords can improve discoverability and ranking in voice search results.

• User-Generated Content (UGC):
UGC remains a powerful brand marketing strategy that encourages engagement with your audience. It’s pretty easy to weave into your current digital marketing strategy too: try encouraging UGC creation through contests, challenges, and influencer partnerships. Because UGC involves your audience, customers, and followers in content, it helps to enhance brand credibility and customer loyalty – fostering this sense of community among consumers is crucial in an age of AI.

We’re putting it lightly when we say SGE is going to totally transform content marketing and SEO. Marketers and businesses will need to rethink their SEO and content strategies and plan for the impact of implementing SGE-based content. Find more information about SGE here on Google’s blog, and make sure you’re staying up to date on the SGE changes and check back in with the PDC blog, we’re keeping a close eye on this one!

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