We’re always telling our members to keep up with new trends and updates. Being a business owner in the UK it’s a given that you’ll rely heavily on traffic and potential customers to be driven to your website by Google. This is why being aware of all updates by Google is massively important as not being aware of changes will significantly impact your business’s online visibility. One heavily discussed change on the horizon is Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE). This update aims to change how users interact with search results on the whole. Keep reading and we’ll dive right into what you need to know.
What is Google’s SGE Update?
Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) update is a big shift in how Google will present search results. In short, SGE is bringing generative AI tech into your search results, what does this mean? Well, it allows Google to give more contextually rich responses to a lot of user queries. So, instead of displaying a list of website links that will likely provide all the info you need to know, the SGE will generate content that will aim to address your query in a far more chatty and integrated way.
The SGE update is still new and in trial phases in many countries, you might not even notice it in your own search results as Google is only doing it to a small portion of all search queries in the UK currently.
The SGE result will look like this…
Currently it looks like sponsored results will still show above the SGE result.
This update can impact your experience in several ways.
- It can provide a more chatty or conversation search result. Like many generative chat bots it will aim to resemble a conversation, offering detailed answers and relevant follow-up questions.
- Multi-media results, the results you see may include text, images and other formats of media to help provide a more comprehensive answer.
- It’s going to aim to make a more enhanced user experience.
How Can Businesses Prepare for SGE?
We give the same advice for any significant Google update and that is to adapt. Businesses will need to stay up to date with this update as Google finalises what the end product will look like. There isn’t going to be a big release date when it goes live for everyone, it’ll stay in test phases and will slowly release to wider audiences and as this happens Google will choose what SGE ultimately does based on user experience and market impact.
If you want to protect your online visibility whilst this is all happening then the best advice is to do the following: –
1. Content to focus on the quality of your content: As always Google is in the game to give users the best experience so that they gain value from using their search engine and other products. Therefore, the quality of your content will help Google pull information from your site and even place it as one of the resources used to answer the query which can support you still gaining click-throughs to your site.
2. Work on the structuring of your sites data: Google will still need structured data to help it understand what your site is about. This will make it easier for SGE to put together more accurate responses, do this by ensuring your site has a schema markup for important elements like its service, events and products etc.
3. We talked about this slightly in a previous article but Optimise your content using Long-Tail Keywords: Because the SGE will go for a more chatty style it will mean users might end up asking more detailed questions which will likely have more long-tail keywords inside of them. So aim to create more content around these long-tail keywords which could increase your chances of being featured in the new search result.
4. Keep the fundamentals up: What we mean by this is to continue to do the effective SEO strategies you already know about. The basics will still matter, even more so really. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly, that it loads fast and has all the other SEO best practices we talk about with our members.
Summary
So there you go, 4 ways to help prepare for this update, but the best way to prepare is to continue to monitor and work on your Digital strategies frequently, we know that it’s hard to find the time when you’re a business owner but if your not keeping up with all areas of your Digital we can promise you that your competitors are. If you need support getting things under control or don’t know where to begin, then reach out to us and we’ll get you on the right path and help you make a start.
