Is Google Search Still Valuable for Your Business?

It’s a controversial question. It’s stirring up the pot in the digital marketing world. And that question is, is Google search going to bring you any value over the coming months and years? Google’s Search Generative Experience, otherwise known as SGE, it’s literally poised to redefine how search works. We are at the brink of what some are calling an SEO revolution. And this isn’t just about algorithms changing or keywords and things like that. This is about the very fabric of online discovery literally being rewritten. And it will be rewritten to the point where it may not actually serve your business like it does right now, or like you think that it might do right now, or what you hope that it’s going to do for you in the future.

On this podcast, we’re going to delve into what SGE actually means for your brand. Here you can explore how AI-driven search could disrupt your current strategies, and provide you some actionable insights to not just adapt, but also try and actually lead you into this new landscape as well. Because potentially, Google search may not feature in your strategy for much longer. So if that’s the case, where the hell are you going to go now?

Hi, my name is Jordan McFadyen. And welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast. And this podcast is designed to help you navigate this cluttered world of marketing and challenge you to move away from random acts of marketing towards planning an intentional marketing strategy.

And as you can tell from that pretty chunky introduction, with marketing strategies, it’s a real tough game at the moment to try and build a strategy for the next year, two years, three years, four years, but also maintain it and be agile enough to be able to take on some of these challenges that these platforms and that AI is throwing at us and is planning to throw at us over the next few months.

So what I want to look at today is discover how reliant is your business on Google search right now? Is it something that you think that you need, but it actually isn’t what you need? And how hard is it going to be for your business in the future to actually be able to rely on Google search?

Now, the reasons I’m saying this is a whole lot of stuff, and I’ll delve into this, giving you some information about why I’m saying this and why I think that Google search is potentially not going to be right for your business moving forward. But also, we’ll obviously get to some ideas about what you can do instead. I’m not just going to say Google search may not be good for your business, close off the podcast and move on. We’ve actually got a few ideas and things that you should be thinking about right now to try and get yourself ready for this next variation of Google search.

So firstly, the introduction on Google search. Where have we been? Google search has traditionally been around algorithms. Obviously, we’re writing a lot of content for our websites. When we are writing content for websites, we will focus on seed keywords. We’ll have a look at keywords that we think potentially people are using to find websites and services and products like what we have to offer as businesses. And so we’ll write that type of content that’s even around your key product and service to try and capture some attention, so that your business can be seen as one of the forefronts of those searches. And so obviously, if you do this right, you can appear in that top 10 lot of searches, is the key that we’re going for with Google search.

And that’s always been the game. There’s obviously a lot that goes into an SEO strategy that we won’t cover in this podcast, like link building and on-page optimisations, technical optimisation, citations, everything. But at the forefront, it was around trying to create content with solid keywords that would then help your visibility on a Google search engine.

So where’s that going? Where that’s going is Google Search Generative Experience, SGE. Now, this is interesting. They’ve been testing this in Google Labs for a while now. And the reason I’m bringing this to the forefront now is because testing for SGE has just increased. They’re increasing the amount of people that they’re letting into the test on Google Search Labs. You may even be able to do this yourself. If you head across to Google Search Labs and sign up there, you may be able to have a play and see what SGE, Search Generative Experience, is going to look like, and how it could potentially affect your business as well.

And it is. It’s really interesting to test and to play with and to get a good understanding about how it’s going to change things. But essentially, SGE, Search Generative Experience, is adding ChatGPT into the top of Google search. So when you’re asking a question on a Google search, not only is it just going to give you a list of answers and a couple of ads at the top, it’s actually going to give you an answer written like ChatGPT would answer something now. But then obviously have citations and links to some of the articles that then you should go to continue with that search.

But of course, Google being Google, not only are they doing that, but they are putting very prominent buttons at the bottom to continue that conversation with the Search Generative Experience, so that you stay on Google for longer. You get the information that you need from Google. That’s obviously the main game for them. Where ads sit on this is still a little bit undecided. But we can honestly say that Google Ads are going to be at either the top or the bottom, potentially within those AI-powered answers as well. So it is really going to shake up not only the Google SEO side of things, but also the Google ad space as well, and how those are all placed.

So that’s the real quick version of what SGE is, which is essentially putting ChatGPT into a Google search. So a lot of people are really nervous about this. And there has been nervousness about this particular topic for a very long time, ever since they kind of announced that this was going to be put into Google search. There has been concerns mostly around copyright, firstly, about what Google can take and put into those answers. And can they take your information and put it into those answers, and how that all works?

And also the other big one for businesses, and one that you should be thinking about right now, is also that loss of potential organic search traffic. Is Google SGE actually then going to take your organic traffic off you? So instead of someone searching for Google and finding your website, clicking on your website, going to your website and learning about a particular product or service that you offer, are they instead going to get given the answer that they need right on a Google search, and not have to go to your website at all? So that’s obviously some of the big concerns that people are actually facing.

And this is something that you need to be asking yourself. And you also need to be asking yourself the other big key question, which is, is Google search right now a massive part of my strategy? Are you actually getting traffic to your blogs? Are they actually bringing in your potential clients? And if so, your question is going to be, how do you adapt to be able to work within SGE?

And for the other people that you may be thinking, well, I just figured that I have to have content on my website. I’ve got to have blogs on my website. I just figured it was something that we had to do. This would also be a time for you to have a think about, is Google search even an avenue that you need to be exploring and putting your time into right now? So we’re going to go through both of these different scenarios, so you can kind of work out which camp you’re sitting in.

First one, if you are doing very well with organic traffic right now, you are getting a lot of traffic to your website, and it’s all thanks to organic search results. Then you do need to think about how your strategy is going to change over the next few months. Because it is. It’s going to change. We don’t know when it’s going to change, but it’s going to change. So you may as well start researching, doing some more thinking about how this is going to affect you and your business and your content over the next few months.

You should expect a few things. Firstly, a shift towards more long-tail and conversational keywords. So think about your own experience now when you use ChatGPT. Are you using ChatGPT like you’re doing with a Google search? Google search traditionally has been maybe one or two words. And then over time, it started getting longer, more long-tail conversational type keywords. And now think about how you use ChatGPT, and think about how you’d put a conversation like ChatGPT into a Google search.

How is then that going to affect the content that you have on your website, and the content that is currently bringing organic traffic to your website right now? Because you need to shift that content, and the way that content is written, to be able to handle and understand a more long-tail and conversational keyword type search. The other thing you need to have a think about is monitoring the keywords that you do currently rank for, and have a look for any changes in the intent of that search. Consider things like question-based and conversational phrases more in the strategy.

And of course, when you’re thinking about the content that you’re building, create helpful content. That’s always going to stay. Always going to stay with Google’s guidelines. It needs to satisfy the E-E-A-T principle, which we speak about so much on this podcast. Not just for Google content and content that we’re creating for Google, but for content that we have all over the place. E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authority, and trust.

And make sure that you’re using proper markup. Markup on things like your text and your images, your video content, to make sure that it is potentially going to help appear in all relevant AI responses as well. And from there, your key thing will be around monitoring analytics, and monitoring the evolution of the search results pages for your website’s top search terms. Because once SGE starts to roll out and is getting more and more used, you’re going to have to make sure that it is still helping your website to actually bring new customers, and bring you new enquiries and conversions and purchases on your products and your services.

But the other thing that I want you to think about is maybe this is also the time for you to think about diversifying your traffic, and preparing for a potential loss of organic search traffic with zero-click answers. Because it’s going to happen. Zero-click being someone’s able to go to Google, the new Google, Google Search Generative Experience, be able to put a question into Google, be able to get a satisfied answer that they don’t need to go to anyone’s website. They don’t need to click to go to a website. It’s a zero-click search. They’re able to get their answer, move off Google, and move on. How are you going to combat and diversify your traffic to prepare for that loss of organic traffic, of people not coming to your website because Google’s going to answer it for you?

So this brings me to the next point. And this is for people that you’re in that camp now of, look, I just thought we needed to create really good content for our website. I thought that’s what we had to do for our Google search organic strategy. So now is the time for you to actually start looking at the importance of an omni-channel strategy. And it’s going to get more and more important in this age of AI-driven search experience.

So what I’m saying by omni-channel strategy is saying really having a look at your key customers, your key clients, your key audience that you are trying to reach, and really delving in to who those people are, how they’re currently finding you, how you think that they’re researching for the products or services that you offer, and trying to hone in on where those people are finding you and getting information about you. Now, this goes back to something that I honestly think I mention on every single one of our podcasts, and that is know your audience.

Know exactly who you’re talking to, know exactly the people that you’re trying to reach, and know exactly how you’re going to be able to reach them. Because there are so many different platforms right now that offer search, just the way that we think that Google is potentially our only organic way of people being able to find us. Think about how people search using TikTok. Think about how people search using Pinterest. Think about how people are searching for products or services or cafes or restaurants on Instagram.

And if you don’t truly understand your customer, your potential client, and how they are searching or using the internet to find products and services or answers to their problems, then you’re never going to have a shot of being able to reach those people where they are, and in the right mind frame of where they are as well.

So here’s my challenge for you right now, and that’s to literally have a look at your analytics. Funnily enough, you’re going to go to Google Analytics, and you’re going to have a look to see where your current traffic is kind of coming from. You’re going to have a look at all the different social platforms that you’re using. You’re going to have a look at the emails that you’re sending. You’re going to have a look at the website content that is actually doing well for you, that’s actually getting traffic to your website. You’re going to have a look at what platforms people are actually engaging with you on.

And essentially what I’m trying to say is that Google search may not be the answer for your potential customer or your client. And we need to move away from just thinking that we have to create a blog post for Google search, because that’s just what we’ve always been brought up knowing what to do. And when I say this, I’m not also saying that you shouldn’t be creating helpful content for your website. I 100% think you should be creating helpful content that shows your expertise, your authority, and your trust on your website at all times, and across all your social media platforms, to be able to show that you are the leading voice, the leading business, the leading brand in your particular product and service and niche.

But what I’m saying is potentially you shouldn’t be writing those pieces of content on your website for Google search. Don’t stuff it with keywords. Don’t write it too much for an AI bot to be able to hopefully pick up. What you want to be writing it for is your core audience. And then you want to be thinking about how are you going to distribute that content? How are you going to distribute that content that you’ve put on your website, so that your ideal customer or ideal client can actually read it?

So if you go back to your audience persona, you’re a B2B business and you know that your customer, your clients are on LinkedIn, then why are you stressing so much about trying to get a piece of content on your Google search? Why not focus on creating good quality content that you can put on your website, or even upload to a LinkedIn article and put that on LinkedIn, where your customers, where your clients actually are?

So again, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be writing content that is helpful, that is showing your expertise, authority and trust, as you would for a Google search engine. But what I am saying is when you’re writing that content, think differently about how you’re going to distribute it, because the way that Google search and Google search experience is working, potentially Google search isn’t going to be the answer, and may not be where your current customers or your clients are going to be finding you.

And then it comes to my third point. You’re sitting here thinking, well, that all sounds good, but I know that my customers, my clients are coming to Google, and they’re looking at Google, searching for their answers to the problems that I’m able to solve them with my product or my service. So what can I do in this age? And this is where you also need to be thinking about, instead of your Google search and organic Google search strategy, you need to be thinking about Google paid ad strategy.

Now, we don’t know too much about how the Google paid ads will look in and around Search Generative Experience, but we know, as Google is a massive company, that it is going to prominently feature. So there is a massive chance that the traditional search rankings that we see day to day now are going to be pushed even further down the page. It’s going to be a lot of scrolling before you get down to the traditional kind of listings that we see now.

So we suspect that Google Ads are going to be either right at the top within the answers for generative search experience, or right below the answer from generative search experience. But we don’t know exactly where it’s going to go, but potentially that is going to be how you’re going to be able to get your business, your brand, your message seen in front of the people that are using Google search to find the solution to the problems or the pain points that they have that your product and your service actually solves.

So that’s the other thing to think about, is potentially you need to be investing and thinking more about not only the content that is on your website, but also thinking about that distribution channel of Google Ads, and potentially how you can use that in a better way to make sure that you don’t lose that potential Google traffic.

So look, just to wrap up, I don’t want this podcast to freak you out around Google search, and that Google search is going to disappear. It’s going to obliterate your business and things like that, but it’s not. All I’m trying to get you to do is just to think about how you can adapt and change in the future. It’s really a call for businesses to rethink their reliance on potential traditional SEO tactics, thinking that Google search is where everyone is finding you. It’s time to start thinking about embracing a broader omni-channel strategy that is meeting your customers where they are.

And this could be anywhere. It could be social media. It could be in their email inbox or elsewhere. You need to figure out exactly where they are and how to reach them better. Remember, your goal is not just to be found as well, but to try and think about how you’re creating content that is relevant and valuable to your audience. So always focus on creating content that showcases things like your expertise, the authority, the trustworthiness. It’s that old age Google E-E-A-T strategy that you need to be thinking about across all your different platforms, not just Google search.

And don’t forget to consider the role of potentially looking into paid ads on Google search if you feel as though that you are too reliant on organic search right now. You need to have that Google paid ad strategy just in your back pocket, ready to go, just in case this AI-driven search landscape is going to be a bit of a game changer for you and your business.

My challenge to you right now is to take a hard look at your current marketing strategy. Do this now, before all these changes take place. Are you prepared for the shift in how people will search? Are you prepared for the shift in how people will eventually find your business in this AI-driven world? Are people relying on Google search? Or are they actually using TikTok search, Pinterest search, all those other search engines across YouTube search? There’s so many. It’s time to adapt. It’s time to innovate and stay ahead in this AI-driven world.

And again, just a massive thank you for tuning in to the Marketing Mindset podcast. Look, this is something that I love doing. It’s a great passion of mine being able to, A, learn, because that’s my job. My key job is learning about how marketing and AI and everything is changing. But then also, I love being able to teach that back to you and share my expertise, so that hopefully we can get your business on the right track and ahead of that curve when any AI-driven changes happen in the marketplace. So I do thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to talking to you again on another episode of the Marketing Mindset podcast.