The Future of Organic Traffic

[Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] He, hello everyone. Thank you guys for attending. Uh, today we're going to be talking about the future of organic search, one of my favorite topics. I started my career in SEO, but organic search, as you guys have known now, has changed quite a bit since then, and we're going to talk about all of that, plus what's happening with zero clicks, what's happening with AI, and how you need to adapt. So let's dive right in.

My name is Neil Patel. I'm the co-founder of NP digital. We're a global ad agency, and today I have Lindsay and Nikki with me. Um, Lindsay, would you uh introduce yourself if you don't mind? And then Nikki, you can go right after.

Yeah, absolutely. So thank you everyone for taking the time to be here today. I'm Lindsay Shr, the associate SEO director here at NPD. So I'm part of the division that focuses on small to medium-sized businesses. So over the past 11 years, I've had the privilege of diving deep into SEO and helping businesses just like yours. So excited to be here today and talk to you um about key insights and strategies.

And I'm Nikki Brandart. I'm a senior SEO strategist, and I lead strategy and campaign development for a lot of our enterprise clients here at NP digital. And I'm super excited to be here today and talk about the future of organic traffic and really how businesses can start to adapt their strategies to better navigate these massive shifts that we're seeing within the digital landscape, especially given the impacts of AI on both search and user behavior. At NPD, we work with a lot of brands, and we see a lot of data on what's working and what's not, especially with organic search, and we're going to be bringing that to you today. Um, if you are interested in working with us, you can just scan that QR code, and it'll take you to NP digital, or you can just go to NPDdigital.com as well.

So the big question, the elephant in the room, is organic traffic dead? According to Gartner, by 2028, brands' organic search traffic will decrease by 50%, and more people will leverage AI search. Now, this is what Gartner is saying. Is it the truth? Time will tell in 2028, but that's not the data that we're seeing, just being quite frank. Google recently put out numbers, and they said that they get over five trillion searches a year—over five trillion. Okay? And the reason I believe they put out the numbers is because ChatGPT and OpenAI have been putting out numbers, being like, "We get over three billion prompts on a monthly basis." To put it in perspective, ChatGPT is getting three billion per month. Okay? Google, if you look at on a daily basis, is getting more than 13 billion. They're getting multiples more in a day than what ChatGPT gets in a month. The last numbers they put out on their quote-unquote search traffic on a daily basis, I believe was 2016, where they said they had roughly 8.5 billion searches a day. 13 billion is a lot, and seeing that number go up because of AI and the quality of Google's results and how they're trying to improve it and give people more what they're looking for without having to click through on a website, I get that can affect traffic to sites, and we'll get into that in a bit. But overall, the trend we're seeing is there are more Google searches over time, and people are searching more on a daily basis than they were previously because Google can do quite a bit more.

But of course, there's AI, and AI is affecting Google results. It's also affecting the results on a lot of platforms like social, which a lot of people are using. Even Google said when Gen Z does a search for a restaurant or place to eat, a lot of times they're just going to TikTok and Instagram before they even go to Google, which is affecting search to happen not just on Google, but it's happening everywhere. When it comes to zero clicks, if you look at before the AI rollouts and after the AI rollouts, we did an analysis, and what we're seeing is yes, overall there are less clicks taking places on websites, but one big thing is, keep in mind there's more Google searches over time, which is increasing the traffic overall to websites. So even those zero clicks are going up, but at the same time, the usage of Google is going up, which affects the total number of traffic. And here's a study from Seer. They compared with AI overviews and no AI overviews for the organic traffic and look at the results. As you can see, with the AI overview, people are seeing less clicks in general, and with no AI overviews, they're seeing more clicks. With the paid results, they're actually seeing a decrease on both ends. I don't think in the long run Google's going to make changes that that is going to screw up their ad revenue. If you look at their earnings, um, they're generating more revenue from ads than they ever have before. So I don't see a multi-trillion dollar company just turning off the faucet and really screwing up their market cap.

And here's the overview of AI's disruption for informational searches. Right? If you look at it, it's mainly for informational-based searches. With informational-based searches, there's not really as much monetization opportunity as, let's say, commercial or transactional or navigational. And when you look at commercial and transactional, there's not as many AI overviews that are showing up. It's mainly happening on informational keywords. The other thing you have to ask yourself is, is bad content affecting your clicks? People's expectations of the quality of content have increased more than ever before. Content marketing is not a new game; it's an old game. It's been around for so long. People expect amazingly high-quality content. If you haven't checked it out, go to our YouTube page, youtube.com/neilpatel. You'll see the new type of content that we're pushing out on YouTube. We've been doing it for roughly more than a month. The traffic has increased quite a bit. I think our YouTube page is getting roughly—not exactly double, but close to double—than it was the previous uh, call it 60-ish days, right? And what we're seeing is the traffic going up because the quality of the content is just much higher in quality, and that's what people are expecting. If your content quality isn't a not just average or above average, but amazing, you're not going to do well. Search Engine Journal released a number a while ago. I believe the number was either 4.6 or 4.8 billion; it was one or the other. That's the number of pieces of content that are being created on a daily basis, and now that number must be much, much higher because of AI. And because of that, yet think about it. Let's say there's five and a half or six billion pieces a day. Well, people are getting bombarded with information; they expect the quality to be amazing.

But SEO isn't a zero-sum game. It's not just Google. There's ChatGPT, there's Perplexity. There's ways to get visitors from a lot of platforms. There's even ways to get visitors from YouTube, which which is one of the most popular search engines, or Instagram, or TikTok, right? All these platforms can drive visitors to you. You'd be like, "In TikTok, what are they going to do? Click the bio link?" Sure, but that's something. There's different ways to get traffic, and not all traffic is qualified or equal. The reason I say that is if you look at ChatGPT, a lot of people are using ChatGPT for quote-unquote unknown purposes, and it's for just a lot of random tasks, or it's for, um, you know, computations or things that are not related to, you know, what they would typically use Google for. So although there's a lot of usage on ChatGPT, we're seeing the usage be for different things versus quote-unquote traditional search, even though they have search GPT. And what about social search? It's up-and-coming; it's extremely popular. When you look at what consumers are using—TikTok as a search engine for a lot of for things like recipes, music, fashion advice—you know, if you're a company like Chanel or Louis Vuitton, if someone types in handbags, you'd want to show up because it's branding, and that can cause indirect conversions. Social search is going through the roof, and especially with uh them turning into discovery networks where they're showcasing new products that you can just buy or tools that you can end up buying, you're going to start seeing search on social media really increase at a rapid pace, especially because they've drastically increased the quality of their search results.

But Google still remains dominant when it comes to people looking for information online. It is the number one player out there by far. The number two player for people looking for information is YouTube, which is owned by Google. I know there's also Bing, but if you look at Bing and their market cap, it's a fraction of what Google's is. So is it revenue? Um, it hasn't really taken off like the way Google has taken off. And what we're seeing—this was the analysis that we did with over 35,000 websites—we need to release the data for 2024 in this chart as well. We're seeing growth in overall traffic. We're not seeing declines. Yet again, there are more zero clicks, but because the number of people using Google is much higher than the increase in zero clicks, we're still seeing more traffic to websites than ever before, and this has been consistent before even AI.

So what does this mean for you? You don't necessarily have to optimize for traffic. I used to optimize for traffic, and what I found was traffic doesn't mean everything. You should focus on revenue, and I have a great slide that showcases this either in a bit or towards the end. But our overall traffic for Neil Patel has gone down, and it's been intentional because a lot of the keywords like "how to get more Instagram followers" would never relate to someone coming to our, you know, website and paying our ad agency a multi-million dollar contract. So we stopped focusing on keywords that drive traffic, and we started focusing on keywords that drive revenue. And here's actually the slide. As you can see, even though the traffic's gone down a bit, our revenue's gone up over 3x. Why? Because we stopped trying to rank on Google for terms like Discord. Literally, we used to rank on Google really high for the term Discord. What did it do? It drove traffic and zero revenue. We started focusing more on the keywords that are driving enterprise clients for us as well as SMB clients for us. So how do you make this work for any business? Because if you look at our model, it's all about getting the right type of traffic even when you're counteracting all these things and growing your revenue.

Awesome. Thank you, Neil. So let's start out with a really powerful statistic: in that 44% of all Google searches in 2024 were branded. So it's a clear indicator of the importance of brand recognition in today's digital world. What does this tell us? It means that people are looking for solutions; they're increasingly searching for a specific brand they trust. So building a stronger brand is no longer nice to have; um, it's very important for organic traffic success. So we need to focus—shift our focus—towards creating a brand that resonates, builds loyalty, and it's something that people are actively searching for, um, because strengthening your brand directly translates into increased organic traffic, and it's your first line of defense in this ever-changing algorithm.

So now let's talk about a growing challenge: so the rise of third-party content. We're seeing a significant shift in Google search results with this user-generated content from platforms like Reddit, and they're gaining really prominent positions. So we see that Google is increasing the value in these community-given discussions. So even if you have a really well-optimized website, a Reddit thread can outrate your content. So this presents a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that you're competing with these user—this user-generated content that sometimes, for users, it can almost seem more real because they're hearing from other people, right? Um, the opportunity is that you can leverage these platforms to have some control over that sentiment or narrative about your brand. So in that sentiment of controlling your brand image, one of those aspects is customer reviews. So in today's world, negative reviews can impact the brand's reputation and then in turn impact organic traffic. So the first thing is really simple, right? We need to respond to these negative reviews. So if negative reviews are left unanswered, it can project maybe a lack of that company caring, and it can deter potential customers more than that original complaint. But on the flip side, if you are responding—are responding—to reviews, it's showing active listening, that you have a commitment to feedback, and you could even take that negative review, in some cases, and turn it into a positive experience for that customer and even potential customers. Um, next, we need to counter negative reviews. So you can counter negative reviews by publishing positive reviews directly on your website. So you could have a page that's fully dedicated to customer reviews. Um, I also highly recommend adding reviews to your service and product pages, um, and adding reviews that are directly for that service or product. So this can help build your social proof, um, and build trust with potential customers. Um, next, just ask for reviews from happy customers on third parties. So create a really simple process, um, to asking for reviews, making it easy for them.

Next, we'll move on to owning your narrative. So ultimately, what I'm talking about here is owning your brand's narrative. This means that you're controlling the information that appears when people are searching for your brand. So step one: rank for your branded keywords. So this establishes you as that authority and ensures your website is that primary source of information. So ranking number one is crucial, but to truly own the narrative, um, leverage the fact that AI polls directly from your site. So make sure your copy is up to date. Have a strong about us page. Make sure it's accurate and compelling, um, so that you're controlling that information and search results. Also, create a robust FAQ section. So think about common questions or concerns you get from customers and address them directly on the website. Um, so finally, remember your website's the hub of your brand's online presence. So by providing clear, accurate information, you can ensure that your brand's narrative is consistent and compelling.

Next, let's shift our focus to engaging your—your audience outside of your website, right? So building a community and engaging with your audience. So we're moving beyond simply just broadcasting information, and we're entering an era where brands build meaningful relationships with their audiences. So some ways that you can do this: newsletters are a direct line to your audience's inbox. They provide a space for you to provide content, um, and nurture relationships. So think of them as a personalized confirmation, not just a promotional marketing blast of information. Next, private communities. So these are spaces, um, whether on platforms like like Slack or Discord, um, where you can have your own proprietary platform, and you can foster, um, that sense of belonging and engagement with your community, and it's a place for your loyal customers to connect, and you can also get some great feedback out of it. And then, um, brand-led content hubs. So these are dedicated spaces on your site or even a separate platform where you create valuable content, um, that speaks directly to your audience. So think of things like blog posts, videos, podcasts, or even interactive tools. So by implementing these strategies, you're building an audience and a community, and you're creating a space where people feel valued, connected, and engaged with your brand.

Um, and now let's dive into the core of organic traffic: right, your keyword strategy. So on average, 69% of clicks go to the top five organic search results. So that's a massive concentration of traffic, um, so that means ranking outside the top five can impact your visibility and your traffic potential. So it's crucial to prioritize keywords with high potential and develop a strategy to make sure you're climbing in the rankings and earning that traffic. So some things to think about with your keyword strategy, um, is how search behavior is evolving. So users are getting increasingly specific with their queries. Long-tail keywords, um, those longer, more descriptive phrases, now make up 70% of all search traffic. So it means that relying on the—the broad, generic keywords is no longer effective. So more than half of all search queries are now more than four words or longer. So this is showing us that there's a shift towards more conversational and precise searches. So by targeting these long-tail keywords, you're attracting high-qualified traffic that's more likely to convert, and it's also less competition, and it makes you easier to rank for them. So you can get more traffic with less effort if you're focusing on these longer-tail keywords. So with the rise of voice search and advancements in natural language processing, users are asking more questions in a conversation, right? Like we're seeing keywords go for greater; that's part of this conversational search. So your keyword strategy needs to adapt to the style. Um, Google is getting better at understanding the intent behind queries, not just the individual keywords. So this means that your content needs to answer those audience's underlying questions; um, it means you need to understand the context of the search. So what are users trying to achieve? What problems are they trying to solve with this query? And then by understanding the intent, you can create really valuable content. And then next, let's explore a growing area of opportunity: visual search. So 25% of visual searches have commercial potential. This means people are using visual search to find and purchase products. So platforms like Google Lens are making it easier for users to discover products through visual search. So it's a game changer for e-commerce, um, and what does this mean for you? So this means your product images need to be optimized for visual search, and you can do this by making sure that you have high-quality images, descriptive alt text, and that your product pages are appealing. And Google Lens is one of those opportunities that's just so overlooked or underleveraged, and most people don't consider it. They don't look at it as businesses; there's just so much revenue potential, and you should consider leveraging Google Lens. From a lot of the data that we've seen, it's one of the fastest-growing segments of Google that no one really talks about as a marketer. It's not sexy or anything like that, but it's transactional, and we showcased this earlier: on the searches on Google, a very small portion of them are actually transactional searches. Most searches are informational; they're not, you know, someone ready to buy. A lot of the Google Trends—I mean, Google Lens searches percentage-wise are much more transactional; hence, you should really start optimizing for it because they're pushing it, and it's going to become more and more popular. Just wait a few more years. People like, "Oh, we should have optimized for this years ago." Absolutely agree with the terms of um the importance of visual search, especially with all the different updates that Google's making with the circle-to-search feature. I feel like they keep releasing new things, and so that's a clear indicator that it's important to Google, so it should be important to you. And that kind of leads nicely into this next section of giving Google what it wants. And so building off some of the things that both Neil and Lindsay had mentioned, we want to be really breaking it down and giving Google what it wants in terms of following Google's quality radar guidelines. So those are terms that they've laid out in the beginning to help users and website owners understand what works in terms of building your organic visibility. So really prioritizing creating high-quality and authoritative content that's going to add value and is actually helpful to your target audience, and this is going to be one of the best ways to protect yourself from any future algorithm changes. And so this typically begins by addressing any SEO issues that could be holding your site back. So, for example, 301 redirects, having a slow page load speed, having a ton of broken links or duplicate content—these are just a few of the top critical issues that we've identified during some of our content audits for our clients. And so you really want to be making sure that you're going back and regularly updating and auditing your site for any technical issues that could potentially impact user experience and then hold you back from a ranking standpoint. So Google is constantly updating its algorithms to combat spam and low-quality content, and one of their latest algorithm updates in January really cracked down on the growing use and presence of AI-generated content, and so it really prioritized content quality, user engagement, and overall user experience. So as Neil mentioned earlier, AI content is really impacting the overall quality of search results in general. So we did see a lot of business owners really like clamoring to a lot of these AI tools and just producing mass amounts of AI-generated content and publishing it, thinking that it would be a way to quickly build up their topical authority, but we're quickly seeing Google, you know, catch on to this trend and penalize these sites. And so we're going to go through two specific spammy or manipulative tactics that Google did crack down on with this latest January update. So the first of which was Google's crackdown on scaled content abuse, and this basically refers to generating large amounts of unoriginal content with little to no value, primarily intended to, again, manipulate search rankings. And the best example of this is, like I mentioned, using generative AI to produce a large amount of generic content around a specific topic, and this can also include scraping content from other sources without adding any real type of information gain or unique insights. It's going to add value to users or just following the traditional SEO advice of really creating overly keyword-stuffed content and trying to meet like a specific keyword count. So these types of tactics are no longer going to work in today's search landscape, and instead I would caution website owners to go back and prioritize creating quality content over quantity. So really going back and looking at if you have a lot of existing pages, really pruning your content or auditing your existing content and looking for opportunities to refresh that content with new insights rather than just essentially chasing the next big keyword trend or creating another generic form of content where you can easily get an answer in AI overviews for that specific search query, or if you see a wealth of content created around a certain subject, you know, it gives you less room to compete if you're not going to add anything new or anything unique. Another tactic to avoid is this concept of expired domain reuse, which is essentially purchasing an expired domain that has pre-built authority and then using it to host your content in order to hack your way, basically, to the top of search results. And this is considered spammy because oftentimes that content that's posted on these expired domains does—does fall outside of the topic area or industry that that previous site operated in. So, for example, this would be like hosting affiliate content on a former government site or posting gambling content on a former elementary school site. So while I can see the kind of logic here in kind of leveraging the authority of another domain to like boost up your content in terms of rankings, it's definitely something that's been taken to the extreme and actually ended up—uh, can actually end up eroding the trust within your brand and within your website and result in a lot of manual actions or removal of your site from Google altogether. So instead I would advise website owners to really build your domain authority organically over time by building up high-quality and relevant content and links. So while this is going to be uh kind of more of a long-term play, it's definitely more beneficial in the long term than kind of this quick hack and really trying to manipulate rankings, um, and hack your way to the top of search results essentially. So instead of trying to kind of game the system with some of the manipulative tactics that we just covered, we want to be focusing on creating high-quality, original, and people-first content that's going to, again, add value and really demonstrate authority to Google because this is what is prioritized both within organic results and within these AI search tools that we're seeing pop up now more than ever. And so one of the most crucial concepts here is E-A-T, which essentially stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust, and these are the signals that Google uses within its quality radar guidelines to determine the helpfulness of your content, and it even is used to evaluate your content creators and your website as a whole. So one thing that's important to call out here is that these are signals; they're not essentially ranking factors. However, strengthening these signals has been shown to boost rankings. So, for example, things like citing proprietary data, creating in-depth content, and increasing your brand mentions are all things that are going to help differentiate your website and boost your overall visibility and credibility within search results. So diving into each of these concepts in a little bit more detail: when we're talking about demonstrating expertise, we're basically referring to the extent to which your author or your brand is knowledgeable and has skills within your given subject or topic area, and you can demonstrate expertise by infusing your content with quotes from subject-matter experts, collaborating and getting referenced by thought leaders across the industry, and really positioning your authors as experts in their field. And one of the ways that you can do this is by including detailed author bios that include information around that author's education and experience in your given field. And I will say that this is especially important when you're thinking about creating content that refers to anything around medical or like financial queries because in those cases users really need to trust the advice that they're given, and they need to be able to validate that the advice they're—they're seeing is from an actual expert. So, for example, if I'm kind of trying to search for maybe symptoms of cancer or something that's very, you know, critical to my health and wellness, I want to be sure that the content and the responses that I'm getting are going to be well-quality, and this does have legal implications for Google too if they were to get these responses wrong. I think we saw a little bit of this with the initial rollout of AI overviews where Google was getting some of those health queries uh drastically wrong, and then it caused them to do like a massive rollback. So definitely very important to consider for those kind of YMYL niches. Next is experience. So experience is referring to the extent to which your content creator has firsthand or real-world experience with the topic that they're writing about. And so to showcase your experience, try writing from a first-person perspective and incorporating real stories and/or screenshots that show, again, that you have experienced some of the things that you're talking about. And I will say that this is one of the areas where we—where AI cannot yet replicate these kind of like lived human experiences. So definitely something to lean into as we see this growing trend of AI, you know, capturing a lot of organic visibility. And one of the best examples that I've seen of experience and how, you know, AI can't get yet replicate this is if I was to say a travel blogger, I could post pictures and be vlogging about my experiences, um, maybe on different hiking trails in a certain location that I visited or something like that. So AI can't actually go out into the real world and do these things, and so really leaning on your in-house experts to kind of create content or even infusing their quotes within your content can give you that kind of unique edge, um, against the competition. And one thing to know with the experience is you don't have to be an expert to share your experience. A great example of this is—and this is a terrible example, so I hope this never happens to anyone—if someone has cancer and they break down what it feels like to have chemo, that's experience. That's very different from a doctor talking about how chemotherapy works. You have people searching on both ends: who are patients who are interested in learning what it's like to go through chemo, and you have doctors talking about the medical side of chemotherapy, right? So Google does rate content with experience because it provides a very unique perspective. A piece of content doesn't have to have all of those elements; having some of those elements drastically can help definitely. And I think that that kind of um was why we saw the rise in those user-generated content platforms like Reddit in search results because Google is trying to show more of that experience. So when we talk about authoritativeness, we're really...

Referring to your overall credibility and reputation, um, within your given niche, and so you can establish Authority by securing authoritative backlinks and getting mentions across the web and within news and Industry Publications. So, for example, if you were to type in any kind of like Finance related query, you would probably expect to see NerdWallet or Bankrate ranking on page one. So this kind of signals to you that those are authorities within that specific industry, and this is because they've taken time to increase their authority over time by consistently producing high-quality content and acquiring relevant links and citations. So again, this is more of a longer-term play, but it definitely goes a long way when we're thinking about how we can gain visibility within AI and AI overviews. And certainly, brand Authority is something that is beginning to play a bigger role in 2025.

Then finally, trust is basically referring to the degree to which you're honest, transparent, and reliable in the way that you're presenting information to users and search engines. And this also includes maintaining a consistent brand voice wherever your site is positioned online. So some of the things that can clearly erode the trust in your site is going back to kind of the previous section where we talked about some of those like spammy or outdated or manipulative tactics that Google was cracking down on. So producing a lot of just AI-generated content without any human intervention, that can obviously erode the trust and credibility of your website. Instead, I would caution websites and business owners to begin building a positive reputation through things like asking for and replying to online reviews or even displaying testimonials or like industry Awards on your site to help back up your credibility.

Let's shift our focus to talking about zero-click search opportunities. So, at 60% of Google searches end without a click, so it's a big portion of search results that users are getting information they need directly from the search results page. So let's look at how we can turn these zero-click searches into valuable branding and influence opportunities. So first, let's talk about what zero-click searches are. So they encompass a variety of elements that appear directly on the search results page, providing information without the users required to click. So these are things like featured Snippets, so those concise answers that appear at the top of the page, um, this also includes AI overviews, um, and then there's Google Business profiles, so providing information about your local business like your address, phone number, and reviews, um, so that's critical for local SEO, um, and then the map pack, right, another element for local businesses that showcases nearby businesses on a map. And then finally, a knowledge panel, so it provides detailed information about an entity or a person or a place, um, it typically draws from Wikipedia or other very authoritative sources. So these are all elements that give users instant answers, and it reduces the need for a click, um, to get to a website. So optimizing for these elements is critical for organic visibility.

Next, we need to think about, with this is shifting our mindset from focusing on clicks to focusing on influence. So think of zero search, zero-click searches as a branding opportunity. Even if users aren't clicking on your website, your brand can still benefit from appearing prominently in the search results; it's building brand awareness, establishing Authority, and influencing future purchase decisions. So how do you optimize for zero-click searches? First, improve the structure of your content, right? So make sure you have a solid heading structure, subheadings, um, bullet points, maybe even tables to make your content easy to understand and digest. So this will also help Google extract relevant information for Featured Snippets and AI overviews. Second, increase your, um, EAT. So Google values high-quality, trustworthy content, so establish your brand as an authority by creating well-researched, incredible content. Third, schema markup. So this structured data helps Google understand the content of your pages, um, and enhances your visibility in featured Snippets, knowledge panels, and AI overviews. Finally, optimize for local SEO, so, um, this is crucial for appearing in the map pack and the Google Business Profile. So ensure that your business information is accurate and consistent across all platforms, and that you've claimed your Google Business Profile.

We're witnessing a shift in how people discover information, right? Google and other search engines are rapidly integrating AI; users are learning about options and possibilities directly on the SERP with no need to click. So we need to expand our content marketing horizon beyond just our own website; we need to be present where our audience is consuming information. Neil talked about YouTube earlier and about how we've seen almost 50% growth, um, so think about YouTube. It's powerful for engaging audiences and complex information; so ensure you're creating valuable video content that addresses your audience's needs. And then don't underestimate the power of social channels, um, I know earlier Neil said this is a focus for Gen Z, right? It's a direct line to your audience; it allows you to build a community, um, and in sharing you can share engaging content and participate in conversations and build those relationships. And then next, forums and online communities are another valuable source of engagement. So participate in discussions, share insights to create your established brand. Finally, third-party publications; getting your content featured on reputable websites and publications can boost your brand's credibility and reach a wider audience, right? You have someone else vouching for you, um, and saying that you're, you know, a good brand and a brand that others should interact with. So the key here is diversifying your content strategy and ensuring that your brand is present on platforms that your audience is using.

Kind of in the same vein there, let's talk about digital PR. Getting authors of third-party websites to say positive things about your brand is important, right? It boosts your brand's image, enhances your discoverability by those large language models, that helps you control the narrative. So publish data-driven research and reports that provide insights about your industry, um, and developing some a strong thought leadership presence by sharing your expertise, um, and providing helpful tools for free helps demonstrate your commitment to your audience. Next, um, implement strategic outreach. So pitch guest posts or interviews to publications, um, run campaigns that attract media attention or generate buzz, like create, um, a well-thought-through research study that's something new that media is going to latch on to. And don't forget to apply for industry awards and showcase those achievements on your site. Finally, relationship building; so cultivating long-term relationships with media influencers and outlets, um, and encourage customer reviews and testimonials on trusted platforms to build social proof and create trust. So digital PR is all about building trust and credibility; it's about getting your brand mentioned in the right places by the right people, um, it enhances your brand's reputation and ensures that your positive message reaches that larger audience.

We've talked about owning your narrative on your own website, but your audience isn't always just on your site, um, so we encourage you to build on rented land. And what do I mean by that? It means using platforms that communicate, um, platforms and communities where your customers spend their time, right? Social media, industry platforms, blogs; it's about meeting the audience where they are. Don't just broadcast your message, participate in conversations, um, and one of the areas we've talked about a few times during this webinar is, um, social. So, um, leverage this powerful social-to-search phenomenon. So, um, we need to understand that social media isn't just about direct engagement; it's also about planting seeds for future searches. So think of social media channels as like billboards or even TV ads where the goal is to capture intention, engage your audience, and be memorable, and you're building latent awareness, um, which means when potential customers encounter a problem your brand solves, they'll think of you, right? Um, it leads to branded Google searches; people will search for your brand because they remember seeing your content on social, um, so use social media to tell your brand story and connect with your audience on an emotional level. This is how you build a strong brand presence that resonates with people. Google is increasingly showing videos from social media channels like TikTok and Instagram directly in the results; I know we talked about that earlier, um, but it just reinforces the need for video content. So even if it's created for social, it can now directly impact your organic visibility on, on Google. So think about creating short-form videos that are visually appealing and informative, um, and these videos are perfect for capturing attention and conveying messages, um, and then next, finally, think about Pinterest. So a lot of people think about it as like a recipe or a home décor source, but it's much more than that; it had 522 million active users in 2024, and that includes key decision-makers and business owners. So what types of content should you think about pinning? Um, infographics are a great way to visually display data or information, um, high-quality visuals are great for capturing attention, um, think about how-to guides, um, to demonstrate your expertise, and even Idea Pins allow you to create engaging multi-page content and quotes for inspiration. So think about creating content that addresses the needs of your B2B audience, um, think about industry trends, best practices, case studies. So this is a place to capture users at the beginning of their buying journey where they're seeking that inspiration in their, in that idea phase. And for B2B, we've tested quite a bit of ads on Pinterest; it works really well; most B2B companies don't leverage it; it doesn't drive the volume, just being super transparent, but it is a great source for a small amount of ad spend for B2B conversions; pretty good, yes.

So kind of continuing on this conversation, let's talk about some of the ways that you can expand your reach beyond Google by optimizing for discoverability across multiple platforms. And again, this is more important now than ever before because we are seeing search happen everywhere; so making sure that your content is discoverable across all the different platforms that your audience is using. Inherent in this shift in the way that users search for information is something that I believe Neil and Lindsay both touched on earlier, but the preference in younger adults and Millennials turning more towards visual and video content. So, for instance, YouTube is the second largest search engine, I believe, with over two billion monthly active users, and so we're seeing Google prioritize this video content directly within Google search, and so we should be making sure that Google can find and understand your videos in order to boost discoverability. And some of the ways that we can do this include optimizing the way that that content is hosted on your site by creating dedicated watch pages and using supported file types and providing high-quality and engaging thumbnails, and then ensuring that your metadata is optimized by incorporating relevant keywords into your titles and descriptions, and also always the best practice to include transcripts and/or captions in order to enhance your discoverability and accessibility of that video content.

Another opportunity to boost cross-channel discoverability is really leaning into this concept of adapting a social-first approach; so creating content that's optimized for social platforms where your audience is in order to drive traffic, engagement, and build up that initial brand awareness. So I would encourage business owners and website owners to experiment with different content formats across these different social sites; so things like short-form videos, stories, or live streams can help to cater to the different learning preferences of your audience, and also really paying attention to what's trending across these different social platforms and trying to incorporate these keywords within your captions or hashtags or even getting you ideas for new content by looking at the different trends across social media. And then understanding what type of content works best across different social networks; so something that works well on one platform isn't necessarily going to translate to the same engagement rate, um, on a different platform. So, for example, short-form videos work very well on TikTok and Instagram but not so much on Facebook or LinkedIn, again because that's kind of a different audience. You also want to be leaning into community sites like Reddit; I feel like Reddit is a great opportunity for brands, and specifically, you know, with the clients that I've worked on, I've seen them build up a lot of, uh, lot of great engagement and really increase their credibility by leaning into Reddit. So, for example, some of the tactics you can use on Reddit include hosting an AMA, which is kind of like an ask me anything kind of thread where you just ask for maybe feedback on one of your latest product launches or address something that's been concerning your users; so it kind of gives you that like direct line of conversation to your audience. Um, something else that I feel like is very beneficial on Reddit is just asking your community for feedback or recommendations on new kinds of features they would love to see in your product; this is something that one of my clients has leaned into, and I've seen it really enhance just the credibility and the overall feel, um, and sentiment of conversations around their brand because that helps users again feel more connected to you; helps them feel like their, their feedback is heard. And then the last tip here is don't be afraid to repurpose the same amount, uh, the same piece of content multiple times. So, for example, chopping up a video podcast into short reels that you can then post on Instagram or TikTok is going to give you multiple opportunities to capture that organic traffic and get in front of your audience.

And then lastly, making AI your ambassador. Generative AI platforms are becoming increasingly popular, especially in that initial information-gathering phase, and optimizing your content for these platforms is going to give you an opportunity to get in front of your audience and start to enhance your brand recognition and ultimately capture more of that qualified traffic. So users are increasingly relying on these tools in the initial, like kind of discovery phase of their journey. So we're seeing users ask a lot more long-tail and personalized informational queries to these AI tools that they wouldn't necessarily, um, type into Google search. And so while this might result in lower click-through rates, especially when we think about the impact that AI overviews is having on organic traffic, I believe it's ultimately a positive for business owners because the traffic that you are going to see coming to your site is going to be much more qualified and have a very high purchase intent. And we've seen this example, um, work for NP Digital; we've actually gotten, uh, leads and business from ChatGPT referrals. And so what this means is that us as marketers or business owners, we really need to be focusing in on that bottom-of-funnel content and intent-related queries, making sure that we're conducting, you know, conversion rate optimization and that we really have a strong kind of lead funnel in place on our website to capture those users when they are at the point in which they want to convert or, you know, sign up for a free trial for your business. In addition, we want to be following the, um, SEO best practices, and that's one of the best ways to really optimize for generative AI is by focusing in on building up your brand Authority and optimizing your content in terms of comprehension and readability and user experience. So when we talk about building up your brand Authority, things like putting, um, industry leaders and experts within your own company, including proprietary data studies, for example, is another great way to get your brand kind of mentioned and build up your authority over time. And then we also want to be focusing on providing comprehensive and readable content that encourages user interaction. So one of the tactics that we've seen success with for some of the clients I've worked on, specifically in getting visibility within AI reviews, is by adding a table of contents and summarizing key points at the top of, uh, long blog articles. So this is something that's helped you again increase that visibility within AI reviews because summarizing key points, for example, at the top of your article is not only going to give you users that answer of the, the answer to their query directly when they like land on your landing page, but it also gives these AI tools really something specific that they can reference and extract within their answers. And so ultimately, we see generative engine optimization or GEO very similar to just doing and following the best practices for SEO. So search rankings do appear to play some role in influencing the mentions that you're receiving in large language models. So, for example, brands that ranked on page one of Google showed a very strong correlation with mentions in these AI tools, and this also includes rankings in Bing as well. And I will say that Bing is a search engine that you don't want to count out just because of its relationship to OpenAI and, uh, ChatGPT. So Bing actually powers SearchGPT, so it's definitely important to make sure that you are submitting your site to index now to make sure that it can be indexed and found, um, within SearchGPT responses. And I think that this really reinforces the fact that SEO is not dead; we still are going to need SEO in order to provide that kind of high-quality and solution-oriented content that's really relevant to your audience and is going to drive rankings and ultimately, um, enhance your visibility.

All right, so I'm going to go through this fast and that way we can get to some question and answers, but let's end up with, or end off with future-proofing your SEO and digital strategies. So the first thing that you need to know is if you collect more first-party data, this will help you maximize your marketing results, not just with SEO but all channels; you need to collect more first-party data. And by doing that, what you'll find is you'll be able to fine-tune your marketing much more than just relying on third-party data. The easiest way to do this is offer value in exchange for data. Then, of course, you want to use a CDP, also stands for customer data platform. And then you want to follow up more with email and SMS; SMS has a much higher open rate and click rate, but it has a much higher unsubscribe rate as well, so just keep that in mind when you're using SMS to communicate. Out of all the channels that we looked at, if you're looking for lead generation and collecting first-party data, tools and calculators work extremely well; quizzes work next, and then there's a lot of options from there, but it's harder to collect data from anything other than quizzes, surveys, and tools and calculators; the other stuff does work, just not as well. When you have that data, make sure you're leveraging your email list and communicating directly with your customers; if you're not, you're missing out on tons of revenue. There is a guy, guy I met at a conference one time named John Reese; he used to have a site called Income.com, and he did so well he had a fish tank in his house, and the fish tank was so big that people would scuba dive in to clean his fish tank. And I remember him saying, and I was much younger at the time, I was like, what's the key to your marketing success? He says, my ATM. I'm like, what? He says, yeah, my email list. I'm like, I thought you just said ATM. He said, no, my email list is my ATM; every time I want money, I just send out an email blast. And of course, I know we mainly discuss organic; you also want to invest in paid; it works well for both search and social; there's many use cases for them; I won't go through all of them, but paid does well too. It's not about SEO; it's not about paid; it's leveraging all channels that are profitable; when you combine both, that's when you'll see full-funnel growth. And make sure you make every website visitor account, whether it's paid or organic; focus on the experience; don't just focus on getting traffic; focus on things like conversion optimization; you can use tools like Crazy Egg to see how people interact to maximize your conversions as well. And through CRO, here are the steps, but through tools like Crazy Egg, it'll show you where people engage, where they don't, where they get stuck, and then with their WYSIWYG editor, you can click some buttons and literally run A/B tests. And I also want you to start thinking about multi-touch attribution; in today's world, a lot of the content that you're going to rank for on Google is going to be things like video content, which gets your brand out there, which in the long term will generate sales as well. Now, if you need help with your marketing, you can scan that badge and, you know, take you to NP Digital; you can just go to NPdigital.com, um, and let's get into some Q&A. Our next webinar is on social media secrets, uh, and you can join that as well. Good stuff everyone, uh, lots, tons of very positive comments and lots of really good questions, um, here's one that popped up multiple times from a few different people: what are the top three characteristics of amazing quality content? I think there might be four characteristics; one for E, another for E, another for A, and another for T, but that's just me. Anyone want to take a stab at addressing the, the, the top three characteristics of amazing quality content? I'll give you one: make your content unique; too many people create regurgitated content; people are tired of reading the same stuff over and over again; make it on something new and fresh, and you'll get readers, people liking, sharing, linking, etc. Yeah, I'll, I'll add to that and say relevancy, right? Making sure that you're, you're, um, you're answering, you know, what the user is after and you're speaking to your, your target audience; so providing that value through relevancy. And maybe I can get the third one in here, but I would say focusing on driving engagement and providing a positive overall user experience; so inserting things like videos or images within your content is going to enhance your, um, like, or whatever message you're trying to send because a lot of users do rely on that kind of visual stuff to break down complex topics. Great responses, um, couple in here about reviews, about reviews on third-party sites; I prefer Google Business; many businesses prefer Trustpilot or even Clutch; any thoughts on which one to, to focus on? I mean, I guess if we're talking about Google, then maybe you start there, but any, any thoughts on that, that question in particular? Yeah, I, I'd say 100% lean into Google, right? This is going to help you with local search and appearing in that local three-pack and even in the search results, so definitely lean into Google Business Profiles, um, outside of that, I would say figure out, um, where your audience is leaving reviews and, and, and researching, um, you know, perspective businesses; it's kind of more based on your audience outside of Google Business Profiles. Yep, uh, Lindsay, why we have you there were some questions about FAQs; so FAQs really matter; thumbs up; can FAQs help to get you that position zero or, you know, the sort of zero-click search that we've been talking about? Yeah, um, 100%, because we are seeing most of those are informational; a lot of FAQs are more informational in nature, so yeah, make sure if you're using FAQs you're directly answering your questions, um, you're implementing schema, um, and yeah, you're just writing quality content that has a nice concise answer, and that's going to help you show up, um, for that position zero, AI overview, or featured snippet. Awesome, uh, let's see here, um, this was a good one; didn't think about this one, so maybe Neil, um, do these new search criteria impact classical demand home services? Do you think like plumbing, HVAC, etc., etc., all the things that we're talking about? I mean, certainly reviews do, and some of this other stuff, but do you think that it, it matters like across the board? Yes, I do, and it's impacting all industries, not just home services, but yes, all this stuff is important no matter what sector or service you're in; maybe it's not as important for certain sectors, but it does impact all of them pretty much from what we're seeing. Yeah. Last, last one varies, so for last one, Nikki, um, to, we have a process for this, but I'm going to let you answer it: can old residing content on a website from, let's say 2021 or 2022, which doesn't really rank at all anymore, have an adverse effect on overall website SEO in future rankings of current high-quality content? We got a process for this, the 6R process; I don't know if you've got any thoughts on how to best address that question. Yeah, in terms of having a negative impact, I don't see it having a negative impact on impacting your overall rankings, but I do encourage users to go back and review that content, especially prioritizing content that may have gotten a lot of backlinks or referring domains and seeing ways that you can refresh that content or even using it to inspire new content ideas and kind of combining similar Pages, um, that target similar terms into a newer, more comprehensive page that's going to provide more value to your audience and certainly updating those dates; so anytime you're referencing studies or any, um, data information from previous years, making sure that you're leading users to the most relevant, um, source of that information. Awesome; the biggest way to think about it is Wikipedia ranks for everything; main reason being is the content is continually updated; it's not updated because someone wants to change a word; it's updated because there's things that are wrong that can be improved and expanded upon; so if you have content from 2021, it was ranking but not anymore, probably has backlinks, social shares; the biggest issue with that page is probably you didn't update the content. Awesome. And with that, I think we can conclude another great webinar; we appreciate everyone for your time; if you ever need marketing help, check us out at NP Digital; thanks everyone, and sorry we went over; thanks everyone. You [Applause] He [Music]