Optimizing Your Website for Search in an AI World

Slide 1: 0:00 - :20 - Thank you for joining our webinar: Optimizing Your Website for Search in an AI World. We're going to look at how to rank at the top, capture zero click snippets (and what that even means), and dominate voice search. Let's go ahead and jump right in.

Slide 2: Minute :20 - 3:20  Before we get started I do want to define a couple of things. Let's first define what is SEO and then we'll look at what we're talking about when we say AI. SEO is just the process of improving your website's visibility on search engines like Google so that potential customers can easily find your business website when they search for the products or services that you offer. SEO really focuses I will say  - on-page SEO - really focuses on four main things. The first is keywords. We're going to kind of talk a little bit later on how that is changing. It focuses on content the actual text and images and information that is on your website. The site structure also known as the meta data we're going to explain that a little bit and the user experience. If you've listened to any of the webinars that we've put on before you'll know that user experience is top of mind for us on everything that we create and talk about. When we look at what is AI-  again for our purposes today we're simply looking at -  advanced computer systems like chat GPT and specifically Google's AI overviews as that's what's kind of being called out here in the search results. Those are the ones that can analyze understand and generate human-like content and AI is now being used by search engines like Google to better understand what people are searching for and deliver it more accurate personalized and conversational search results.  I've got a a screenshot up on my screen right now just to kind of give you an idea of how these two worlds are merging. I've got a Google search open for the search of -  phrase normally I would say keyword but this clearly isn't a keyword we're going to talk more about longtail keywords and this would be more what I would consider either a longtail keyword or a natural search phrase. So what I've searched for is “what is the best medical massage option for after a car accident in Bellingham” so I've specifically given Google some information on what happened to me and where I'm located. You'll see the search labs AI overview gives me some information back so it kind of reiterates what I have already told it. It tells me that there's several providers including and it names a couple different groups there and then below that it gives me the specific individuals. So it's not giving me just one result it's giving me Barkley Massage, Advanced Medical Massage, Align Chiropractic so it gives me a few different options and it pulls in information from each of those websites to discuss more about how that organization may relate to my search phrase. It's more information than just giving me  a listing back it's giving me more than you know a simple yellow pages or what a traditional directory listing would provide. So when we're looking at this and we're talking about SEO and AI we're talking about how do you make sure that your website is ranked in these options that are shown here or or that it's you know even if you're not looking at at the snippet above how do you get featured in the in the rich snippets or the featured snippets?

Slide 3: Minute 3:21 -5:00 That's what we're going to be talking about today. We talked a little bit about how AI is changing SEO and that it's not bringing back necessarily the same type of search results but one thing that really stands out to us is the study that that indicated over 65% of Google searches end in zeroclick answers or searches. Meaning if I'm doing a Google search maybe I'm baking a cake and I've ran out of baking soda and I do a Google search for “can I use baking powder in place of baking soda”  - before AI I would have to do my search and then click on the website that had the answer and then find the information on that web page that was given back to me and then find the answer on there. What is happening now is when I do that same search Google is pulling the information directly up onto the screen and it's giving it to me in the AI overview in the Google snippet there and it's telling me exactly what the conversion would need to be to use baking powder instead of baking soda. This happens not only in a Google search but also on a voice search so if I'm using Alexa or a Google Home device or even Siri on my cell phone also. Using those voice searches is also on the rise people are asking their phones for answers instead of typing it - so this does change how and where your content needs to show up. If your site isn't optimized for these changes your site could be somewhat invisible to those folks. So today we're going to focus on visibility even without clicks through snippets voice results and trust building exposure because even without clicks showing up in Google's answer boxes builds brand recognition and credibility and obviously you want to be the source Google turns to when answering someone's question.

Slide 4: 5:02 - 7:54 This is as technical as I'm going to get today so bear with me through this one slide while we talk about structured data and schema markup and then we will kind of move into some less technical items. So we do want to get this part covered as well. This part you may not be able to DIY because it does involve generating code and then adding the code to specific pages on your website. So let's talk about it what it is and why it's important. It’s schema markup also known as structured data and it's the language that search engines use to read and understand the content that exists on your pages. Structured data provides a way to standardize information about a page and classify the page content. On my screen there you'll see that third kind of bullet point down where it says key schema types to implement and you see FAQ page schema, articles news schema, and local business schema. These are specific schema categories that you can add to those pages on your website - so if you have an FAQ page you're going to add the FAQ page schema onto your website and all this really does is help Google or the search engine identify the content that exists on that page. The schema data is created through code using inpage markup on the page that the information actually applies to. So you would put again for example you would put the FAQ page schema on the FAQ page on your website, you would put the article news schema on the blog post and news update page of your website. Right now there are over 800 schema type categories and they're constantly being updated. So I have the three of them on my screen there for those different schema types again - FAQ article or news and local business - but there are other data types. Simply said search engines appreciate websites or pages that have structured data added to them because of the structured data the search engine has an easier time understanding the meaning of your page and better chances to return relevant results to its user. Let me just give you a quick example here on what a rich result might show or a featured snippet actually this is a featured snippet. I've just done a Google search for “what is the best way to teach a dog how to heel” and you'll see on the positively.com website there is a paragraph of text that starts with the content there that says “start by luring your dog with a treat…” so that content exists on the positively.com website and Google is pulling that featured snippet out and putting it directly onto that page and the schema markup enhances your chances of appearing in the featured snippets, the knowledge panels, and in voice answers for uh Alexa or the Google Home devices. That's why the structured data or the schema markup is important - again it just classifies your data and basically kind of gives Google a pair of glasses to really understand what is on your web pages.

Slide 5: 7:55 -11:32 Okay, so that's as technical as we're going to get today. There are some more technical essentials that aren't as involved as schema and this is what we would consider our core technical SEO essentials. SEO still starts and will always start with the technical foundations. So making sure that your website is created and built in a way that's easy for the search engines to not only find your website but understand what is on it and there are four things that we look at here. The first is website speed and performance so you want to aim for a fast load time the LCP (LCP stands for largest contentful paint) that's LCP and it measures just how long it takes for the largest element on your page to be rendered and visible to the user.  It is a core metric used by Google to assess page load speed and user experience so they don't want the page to take too long to actually load. One of the biggest offenders for a slow loading website is going to be images so make sure that your images are optimized when you're adding them to the website. Then the other thing is minimal layout shifts on the page itself so your your site should load quickly and all at once not in multiple chunks loading and shifting the layout for the user. The second core technical SEO essential is mobile optimization - so really prioritize responsive mobile design. Most searches now - over 60% of them - are coming from a mobile device so if you haven't looked at your website lately on your phone go ahead and pull out your phone open up your website and take a look and see what you have there. Make sure that the buttons are easy to click, that they're labeled properly, that your menu can be easily accessible on the site and that it's really clear how to navigate through the site. Make sure that your site looks good on mobile.  Mobile first indexing means that Google reviews the mobile version first and sometimes that's the only version of your website that they will view is from the the mobile point of view so make sure that your your site looks real good and performs well on a mobile device.  Security and accessibility is the third item here. Using HTTPS -  which just means that your website has an SSL certificate installed on the site.  One way to find out for sure if your site has an SSL is simply go to open up your favorite browser and go to your website. Go to https:// and then add your your.com or your.net whatever you have and if it gives you an error on the https then that means you do not have an SSL certificate installed. That is going to be one of the easiest changes you can make in your hosting to make your site more enticing to Google and to the search engines. So making sure that you do have your SSL certificate and then also ensure that your site is accessible to boost trust and indexing. If you need more information on accessible websites or WCAG compliant websites head on over to our ProFusion website and take a look at the last webinar that I did because we did a full 20-minute webinar on ADA and compliance and what that means for your website. Then the last item on this page again we've talked a lot about it is user experience. We build websites for humans -  we want the search engines to bring the humans to our website but ultimately Google's not going to be buying my product the user is going to buy it. So I need to make sure that my website has a really good user experience that the menu is clear the content is easy to read it's engaging it answers questions. That really is going to be the core of this presentation today - is looking at the content that's on your website and making sure that it is enticing and engaging to users and answers questions.

Slide 6: 11:33 - 15:57  Once you have all the technical aspects correct now we can look at the onpage experience for the users. First bullet point here says keyword strategy in the AI era but it's really not just about keywords anymore and I showed you that when I was searching for the best medical massage after a car accident right? I used a whole phrase – a whole natural language phrase. That's exactly what I would have asked a friend if I was looking for a recommendation. I was using a question system that would get me to a very specific search result so what we're looking at now is focusing on longtail keywords. A longtail keyword is simply a search term that is longer - it's more specific which ends up making it less competitive than a head keyword. The keyword for “medical massage” is probably a lot more competitive than than the longtail keyword or the natural language phrase that I used in that first example. Another example of this would be if I owned an auto body shop and  someone was doing a search for “can I paint my own car after an accident?” If you're an auto body shop that would be a really good time for your website to have a featured snippet that pulls from a blog post that talks all about why painting your own car is not a great idea. You can show before and after pictures from someone who did the DIY -  how hard it is to match color, the wear and tear over time on a self-painted car versus something a professional has done - it just allows you to capture information and capture people's attention when they're searching for the products and services you offer even if they're not in that exact buy now mode. A buy now mode keyword would be something like “auto body shop near me” - that would be something where someone is very clearly looking for it. Even in that education phase - even if I have just gotten into an accident or - you know let's say my kid bounced a golf ball off the hood of my car and it scratched it and I want to see if I can paint it myself it just allows the user to be educated and allows you to get that brand recognition to your website. So focus on those longtail keywords and the natural language phrases. The second item on here is content structure and readability. On your website, you might notice that you have a heading - you know a lot of people you'll see unfortunately it says like “welcome to my website” which doesn't give you know really any specific information about the company, the products the services, who they actually serve.  You'll see that there is some element of structure to a website that starts off with what we would call a heading one or you'll see it as an H1 on the screen now and it goes all the way down to H6.  H1 through H6. Your most important content is going to want to be in that H1 tag. You're going to want to call that out first typically that's going to be your company name, it could be your products and services, it could be a keyword or keyword phrase that you want to call out but making sure that the structure of your website using headings, bullet points, short readable paragraphs and then FAQs. Making sure you have all of those on your site is going to help when Google is going through to determine what's going to go into that featured snippet. All of that content structure and making sure that it's readable is going to help. We've recently redone our ProFusion website and on every single page you'll see that we have an FAQ section and we used questions that we know a lot of people would ask us - on what is the difference between website design and development,  why do I need an ADA compliant website, you know why should I be concerned about page load speed - things like that. If you answer all of those questions on your website and someone goes into Google and does that same search your website is providing a good answer -  that gets a better chance of being shown in that featured snippet.  So include FAQs to cover those potential zeroclick queries where someone is getting the information directly from Google and not actually clicking through to your website. Then always, always, always we talk a lot about call to action making sure that on every single page of your website and then included within your content as well is a call to action. If you are a restaurant this might be having a book now or order now button throughout the site in your heading within your content. If you are a B2B company this could be schedule a consultation, request an estimate, contact us - something like that. Even if it's in that featured snippet then you're having your content, you're educating and then the user is even seeing even in that featured snippet the ability to you know take that next step.

Slide 7: 15:59 - 18:52 - Now when we're looking specifically at content strategy and positioning ourselves to be in the best position for zeroclick searches we want to look at the actual text on the page. For answering questions if you've gone through and you've created those FAQ pages we just talked about the the first thing you want to do is make sure that you are the best answer so that you're you know potentially addressing objections - that you are you know providing enough information that the user feels like they have been thoroughly educated and they've got the the content that they needed in order to make the best decision. It should be conversational and natural in tone you can write this as if you were answering in real time so just think of of all the questions if if someone calls your business and they have a question start writing those down. You can even insert those into Google and and do a Google search for those and then scroll all the way to the bottom and say see the little list where it says “people also search for…” and then answer those questions as well. Answer as many questions as you possibly can and answer that in a very conversational tone. Now if you're a doctor -  if you're a medical professional or a lawyer or someone who can't be um really conversational or you know you can't have a ton of personality - not to say that doctors and lawyers don't have personalities but you want to provide the information without putting your filter on it. So if you're in those other professions you still want to answer this not in like a jovial you know joking way but just make sure that the the user has access to all of the information needed in order to make a decision. Okay the third item on here is addressing the user's questions -  again I think that that's going to be the theme of this presentation it's just making sure that you you answer the questions and then you use a Q&A format. Specifically type out the question and then answer the the question in a series of you know bulleted list, numbered steps or tables where applicable and then leverage what Google refers to as EEAT. It used to just be EAT and they've added a second E and that is in your business you should be able to answer questions with Experience, Expertise, Authoritiveness and Trustworthiness. Showcase your credentials, cite your sources, include your author bio (you'll see on on our website that we include in every blog post that we put publish there is a about the author section in which we talk about the experience of the user who wrote the blog post) . That is something that AI doesn't have - they don't have our credentials, they don't have our day-to-day experience so including that helps humanize the content that people are finding on the web. And again - with over 65% of the searches ending in no click it's important to get this information correct on your website. You want to make sure that you have the best possible data included so that Google can feature you in a featured snippet or use your content for like the information we saw on that first screen when they're just providing a bunch of of search results in a more conversational tone.

Slide 8: 18:56 - 22:03 - Now, let's talk a little bit about voice search because it is a little bit different. So voice search is if if I'm in the kitchen and I'm talking to Alexa or if I am um in my car and I'm using Siri to either find directions, find a restaurant, answer a question that my kids have about dinosaurs - whatever it's going to be it's going to be a voice search. At this point the same kind of overarching theme here is using that conversational content. Use your natural language that mirrors speech answering questions in the format like “what is…” so “what is the best tamale restaurant in Bellingham” or  “what is the best thing to do after a car accident” or  “what is the proper way to treat back pain for after an accident” -  something like that or questions like “how do I…” So if you were giving  - for us for for ProFusion it would be “how do I optimize my website for SEO with AI” you know answering questions like that. So “what is…” and “how do I” questions that you would be asking an expert in the industry that you're trying to find information from. That's what you want to include in your conversational content. Local optimization is really really important for voice search this includes your Google business profile. You're going to want to make sure that is complete and updated and you're going to want to use that local business schema that I talked about in my super techy slide to increase your chances of being featured in the local queries. Side note on that -  we are going to have a webinar on the 30th that's going to talk all about what's working now in local search so stay tuned or go register for that one but that's all about local search if that matters to you you're going to want to sit in on that webinar. Then voice friendly content okay now this is where we get a little contradictory because here I've been for the last 20 minutes telling you all about how you have to create this deep and uh you know really full and very thorough content that explains all the things and then now here for voice search I'm telling you -  hey but also keep your answers concise to 40 to 60 words. This is where the content structure of your page really comes in handy so you're going to want to make sure that when you are asking that question “how do I optimize my website for a SEO with AI” -  you're going to we're going to have an answer that's right at the top of that page. So we're going to have a question we're going to have an answer and then then we can go in and be really thorough about it so kind of give an overview answer that imagine Alexa in your kitchen reading back to you. So you don't want it to be super long because we do know that after a while people aren't going to listen anymore - especially if it's you know an Alexa where you don't have the ability to interrupt and ask questions or get clarification she's just going to keep reading. What you want to do is make sure that you you do have your site structured in a way that it asks the question provides kind of an overview answer that is enough to at least answer the question and then go in depth further on on the page to discuss more about you know the steps you can take for AI or for SEO mastery. The tools you can use and there's you know the lists and the bulleted points and the step-by-step instructions that Google can pull as the featured snippet.

Slide 9: 22:03 -23:34 -  How can you even tell now if your site is being impacted by zero click or if your ranking is improving? We get this question a lot the first thing you want to watch on your website - I guess the first thing we should say is you're going to need have some to have some level of analytics. We typically use Google Analytics as well as Google Search Console so that we can see and get some insights into the visibility of where our site is ranking in the search engines. Google Analytics is going to tell you things like your bounce rates which is how many people visit one page of your site and then leave without going anywhere else,  it's going to tell you things like your conversion rate if you've set that up, it will tell you the number of people that have come to your website, what pages they've visited. Then the Google Search Console is going to go a little bit deeper on that and tell you how many pages you have indexed, what key search terms people might have used to come find your website, and gives you just a little bit more data. You do want to have both of those things - Google Analytics as well as Google Search Console and then take a look at those metrics that I just looked at. So take a look at if your number of visitors going down it's entirely possible with the zeroclick world now that we're living in it's possible that you're losing a bunch of traffic but they might still be seeing your site they might still be seeing you know the data that you've put on your site that you've worked hard to curate and get up there the users might still be seeing that so you might have a high number of impressions but a low number of clicks and if that's the case you're going to want to look at how do I add a call to action into that that snippet data.

Slide 10: 23:35 - 28:03 -  Then, really the only way to really master this is continuous improvement and future proofing. If you had told me 5 years ago that I would be discussing AI  - and by the way I should have mentioned earlier all of the graphics on this on this presentation were created using AI.  I put in general terms to create the graphics for this after I let AI understand what my presentation was all about out and I said "Okay create the graphics for it." Which came up with some interesting ones especially when we go back to this one here when we talked about the core technical SEO essentials. I told it "Hey uh chat GPT please go create a a graphic that shows icons that would cover website speed mobile optimization security and accessibility and user experience." And this is what it came back with it looks somewhat like some hieroglyphics and I'm not entirely sure but I wanted to include it just to show that AI is powerful but it's certainly not perfect yet. But let's talk more about future proofing here so if you had told us 5 years ago that AI was going to be as impactful and change search the way it's done we we wouldn't have known. We didn't we didn't have this information. If you had told me 25 years ago when we were first starting out in this industry that we were going to have to create websites that looked really good on huge monitors - that were you know 24 in wide as well as on tiny screens on mobile devices that we carried around in our pockets I would have had no way of knowing that. So we understand that when we say future proofing that's a really hard thing to do as is staying up to date on the algorithm changes. Google's not letting us know -  they don't send out like a Monday morning brief that says "Hey here are all the things you need to know in order to make sure that your website is found." They don't do that they don't provide us with that information our 25 years of experience in this industry tells us that if it's good for the user, it's good for the search engine so the more data we provide, the more content we give them that's relevant, that answers their questions that provides them with information that is meaningful to them the more we do that the more search engines like our sites. The more time people are spending on the sites the more Google sends people to our sites. So that is it's it's hard to say to stay up to date on the algorithm changes because it happens often time daily, but it is important to just note the major changes like the Google AI snippet that's now in Google search. So important to stay on top of those things do a regular audit of the content on your website. I know we have blog posts from 2013 that are completely irrelevant that we still have on our website that talks about things that are just no longer accurate . Those can be completely removed from the site or they can be updated. One of the greatest strategies you can use in SEO is going in and updating old content. So if things have changed and you want to note that on your website go in and add a a note with the date that says "Hey this content was still you know was was relevant in 2013 and it's still relevant today but here's how things have changed." So go in and audit the old content add the new structure to it - with making sure you've got the heading tags,  making sure you have your all of your meta data and site structure correct and then update that content. Then, something we're always working on is experimentation and adaptation so making sure we're running AB tests on headlines if you're running any type of ads or if you're you know putting things out on social media run different test headlines put up different content and see how it works um answer a question in a couple of different ways on different pages of your site to see if some of that content gets pulled into the snippets or not. Encourage user feedback and adjust your content based on the customer's needs. If you're continually getting phone calls with FAQs that you know could easily be answered on your website put them on your website make sure that they're answered thoroughly there. Then embrace AI tools.  Use AI driven SEO tools to predict trends. You can ask it to help you predict trends suggest some of those longtail keywords or FAQs and forecast performance changes. Again AI is continually improving take everything that it outputs – I was going to say with a grain of salt but you want to give it more than a grain of salt because a lot of times it has really good information in there -  but but take those longtail keywords, take those FAQs and then go through and answer those questions. You can have chat GPT help you with this or the AI tools help you with with your answers. Just make sure you're going in there and adding your own voice if your company has a specific culture or a specific way that you talk -  make sure that you're adding that in there so it doesn't look like a bunch of AI generated content that is you know really not in your voice - your tone your tenor. 

Slide 11: 28:10 - 30:16 - Now if you're looking at what actionable next steps you can take -  I love this another AI generated photo here with the “fraction plan” on the right hand side - but the actionable next steps is first do just open up your website do a quick audit. Take a look at the mobile optimization, take a look at how's your loading speed, and take a look at the structure of your website. Do you have the very visible kind of hierarchy that shows the heading one through heading six and is your meta structure available. Again - implement that structured data or the schema markup that's the one where you might require a little technical assistance we can certainly definitely help with that or your developer can help with that but it's just really going through and categorizing the content that exists on your site using the schema markup on those high value pages – FAQs, the blog post page, your services page things like that and then go through and enhance your quality content if you have a page on your website already - add an FAQ section to it - to every single page. So if you have a a page on auto body paint,  add FAQs to why you use the paint that you use, how long have you been doing it, talk about different types of treatments that can help prevent rock chips or you know any fading -  things like that. On every page of your website it's not a bad idea to have an FAQ section if it makes sense to do so based on the content and based on what your users are asking you for. I talked a little bit about this in number one but boost your mobile speed. Go test your site's mobile performance and implement the improvements that are being recommended. Again that could be a lot of images that need to be resized and re-uploaded but make sure that your website is performing well on mobile and then monitor and update. Set up regular reporting with your Google Analytics make it make it a habit to go in and check that. In your Google Search Console just to make sure there's not anything funky happening with your analytics you want to make sure that you know if if you're used to seeing a certain stream of data or certain stream of users coming in on the website and all of a sudden that drops off you're going to want to take a look at that and address that quickly before something else happens.

Slide 12: 30:19 - 32:11 Our key message here is that SEO still remains incredibly vital even in a zeroclick voice search world. Making sure that you have content that allows people to find answers that gives them the ability to find more information on your website is going to help you become visible. It's going to help your users trust you and that's automatically going to make them feel like they're you know working with someone they know, like, and trust based on the information that's available on your website.  Embrace the changes that are happening with search. We can't we can't change Google so we just have to embrace what they're doing and and provide that information and again our rule of thumb is if it's good for the user it's going to be good for the search engines. We're going to be continuously putting out webinars like this so you're welcome to come back and watch these again and again to make sure that you're understanding the information and that you have all the data that you need. Next steps if you want us to run a free audit on your website we are happy to do so just send an email to either the info@ email address on the screen or to me specifically it's patrice@profusionwebsolutions.com. We will take a look at your site, the performance data is on the site -  we can help you take a look at that. All of this information will be on our website - you can deep dive into the FAQs that we have and obviously if you have any other questions just let us know. Again, thank you so much for taking the time to watch this webinar. I know your time is super valuable and we really appreciate you investing it in learning how to make your website more visible in today's super weird AI SEO landscape. If you have any questions - maybe you want to dive deeper into your own site's performance or you just want to explore how we can help - please do not hesitate to reach out my contact information is on the screen there. We have our next webinar coming up in just a couple of weeks and we would love to see you on that as well take care.