Speaker 1: 0:54

Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of keywordspeopleusecom, the place to find and organise the questions people ask online. I'm an SEO developer, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur. I've been building and monetising websites for over 20 years and I've bought and sold a few along the way. I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years. The SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years.

Speaker 2: 1:17

Hello, welcome back to SEO is not that hard. It's me, ed Dawson, here, as usual, and today I'm going to be talking about a topic that's causing quite a well a stir in the SEO world, and that is zero-click searches. So if you've been keeping up with SEO trends recently, then you'll see more and more people talking about zero-click searches because they're becoming more common, and if you're a SEO site owner, content marketer, whatever, you'll see the impact that they can have on your traffic. But what are zero-click searches? Why are they happening and what do you need to do to adapt your strategy to cope with these zero-click searches? So that's that's what we'll go through today.

Speaker 2: 1:59

So let's start by defining what we mean by a zero-click search. Well, simply put, a zero-click search is when someone types a query into google or any search engine and gets the answer directly on the search result page, results page, so without having to click through to a website. So, for example, let's say you're looking for a weather forecast. You type weather in rome into google and bang, forecast appears at the top of the search results in a neat little box. You've got your answer and you don't need to visit any weather website to sort of get that answer. So these zero click searches they can show up in many forms, so featured snipp, which often display a short answer to the query, you know, right at the top Knowledge panels. So those boxes on the right side of the search page that give detailed information on people, places, things and even things like quick answers for calculations, conversions, or, you know, times of events, like football matches and things like that. So what's you, what's really important to know here, is that these search results, they fulfill the user's intent without them needing to click through to a website. So that's a big shift from traditional SEO approach where the goal has always been to get people to click through to your site.

Speaker 2: 3:12

So why is this happening? Why are they becoming so prevalent? Well, it's really because google's evolved and it's you know, its ultimate mission is all they've always said is to organize the world's information and make it sort of universally and widely acceptable, accessible and useful. So part of that, that mission, essentially involves providing the most sort of convenient and quick and accurate answers to users' questions. So think about the user experience. So if someone can get their answer to their question without having to click through like multiple links, then that's a good thing for the user. You know you would say in the first instance for the site that's provided that information, but for the user, you know, that's a win. I mean, you think about it yourself when you're using Google for those simple queries. How often do you sort of click through to visit the site when the answer is just given to you there straight away?

Speaker 2: 4:04

So another reason for this is mobile search increasing. So you know, the vast majority of searches now are done on mobile and mobile users are often they want quick answers and you know know, having that information served up to them directly on the search page saves some time and effort. Um, so that's, you know, something that google focused on with this mobile first indexing and improving the mobile experience. Here it's naturally increased, um, the amount of zero click results that are returned. So, with all that said, and this being the world that we live in, we may want google to send every user to our site for every question, but clearly they're not doing that and they're not going to reverse that. So we've got to work out what our strategy is to deal with this.

Speaker 2: 4:50

So you know, it might seem on the surface bad news. Few people are going to click through to our sites and that means our organic traffic is going to suffer in the first instance. So so let's think about it like on the yes side of things. So if the content is competing for answers that google can easily display a snippet or a quick answer box, then yeah, you're going to see a decline in clicks. So if you run a weather website or a time zone conversion site, you know your click-through rates are going to see a decline in clicks. So if you run a weather website or a time zone conversion site, you know your click-through rates are going to be dropping.

Speaker 2: 5:20

But on the other side, the no side, not all zero-click searches are created equal. So a lot of these zero-click searches are for simple, quick answers. These are searches that may not have you know they won't have resulted in valuable clicks anyway. So if someone is, say, searching for the population of a country or doing a quick currency conversion, they're not looking to engage deeply with the website. They just want that quick piece of information. So you may be losing a visitor, a vanity metric, but you're not likely to be losing monetary value.

Speaker 2: 5:52

Essentially Unless I get the one sort of elephant in the room here is display sites. You know, monetizing with display advertising, zero-click searches are always, always going to be bad for you, okay, but for everybody else it's not that bad if you don't get a user who has got real, really zero intention of engaging further than just getting that quick answer to their question. So how do we adapt to this? Well, the way that we adapt is that we think about the long game to this. Well, the way that we adapt is that we think about the long game because, if you think about it, someone is searching for the weather in rome. There's a good chance that person is looking because they're potentially thinking about visiting rome on holiday. Okay, people start their searches small and then they narrow down and they get further and further towards the actual intent that they're trying to satisfy in the long run. So it might be someone at the very start. They're thinking about where to go on holiday.

Speaker 2: 6:46

And their first initial search may very well be simple and be the right kind of search to have those zero-click answers, but that doesn't mean we should give up on that content because essentially, we're still trying to insert ourselves into Google's eye as a resource that's, an expert and a specialist in the area, the topic, the brand or whatever that we're covering, and we also want to insert it into the user's eyes that we're a brand okay that. So we need to start appearing for them in these zero click places. So what we need to do is we need to start optimizing for feature snippets. So you know, one of the best ways to embrace this trend is to aim for these featured snippets. It's also called position zero. So when the content is chosen from our site as a snippet, we're not providing the quick answer, we're also positioning our brand as a trusted authority, and this visibility can increase our brand recognition. Even if it doesn't always result in a click, it doesn't matter, we've increased our brand recognition. Plus these snippets yeah, they usually include a link to a site, so there is a potential still to attract clicks from users who want to go to go deeper. So to optimize for snippets, we to make sure our content answers questions clearly and concisely. We need to use bullet points, numbered lists, concise paragraphs, essentially sort of think, like google, how would you summarize the most relevant part of your content in a few sentences? And that will aim you for those feature snippets. And obviously you know you still want to be answering those questions, finding what questions to answer. That's why, again, just a little pitch here for keywords people use will help you find those questions that people are asking that you need to be creating the content for.

Speaker 2: 8:19

And then, secondly, we that you need to be creating the content for. And then, secondly, we need to focus on high-intent, long-tail queries. So, while the zero-click searches might be taking away some of the traffic from basic queries, the users are still going to be clicking through for more complex, high-intent searches. These are the kind of searches where users are researching products, looking for reviews or seeking in-depth knowledge. This is the sort where we're going to have a. They're the users we want to be targeting more, because they're the ones that more likely to be going to take the actions by the products, by the services that we're trying to advertise, trying to try to push. And so by focusing on these long tail keywords, these more specific sort of less common search terms, then you can capture users. They're much further down the purchase funnel again more likely to click through to your site for detailed content and hopefully, you know, turn into customers at the end of it. And you know.

Speaker 2: 9:05

Thirdly, you've got to double down on rich, engaging content. So even though some searches won't result in a click, doesn't mean you shouldn't be creating that sort of high quality content on the back end, because you know, as we discussed, I mean in previous episodes about embeddings, the depth, the depths of our content and the relatedness of the content and getting all the right stuff together increases our relevance in those embeddings. When Google is deciding what the most relevant piece of content, the most relevant sources to rely on to A get these zero-click answers. But then also for these deeper searches, for people who want to find out more context, who want to go further in the journey, who are further down the purchase funnel, we will need to be that site and we demonstrate that to google with this rich, in-depth content. So you know again, if we're, if you're doing travel, then you know, don't just write the top five things to do in rome. You need to go further, you need detailed guides. You need insider tips and interactive elements, if we can like maps, quizzes, anything that's going to create content that's more likely to attract those engaged users who want to click through and learn more. We want to include structured data Anywhere you can include structured data in a website. That will help search engines better understand the content of your pages and it can increase your chance of your content being selected for the feature snippets or appearing in a knowledge panel. Schema markup, for example, is a powerful way to tell Google exactly what your page is about and make it easier for the search engines to pull the most relevant information.

Speaker 2: 10:34

And fourthly, we need to build our brands. Zero click it highlights the importance of building a strong brand. So when users get quick answers from a zero click result, they may not visit your site immediately, but they will remember where the information comes from. If you keep appearing in these zero-click searches as the source, when they want to go deeper, they're going to go to your brand. They're going to look for you in the results when they want to find out more information. And those users those ones who trust your brand and have seen you around before are much more likely to engage with you and much more likely to become customers.

Speaker 2: 11:11

So, in terms of what's the future for zero-click searches, it might be that we're probably going to see more of these, but that doesn't mean that SEO is losing its value, because, at the end of the day, it's not about the number of visitors that you attract necessarily. It is about the quality. It is about the intent of those users. If those users have got the right intent for the service and products that you're offering, then that's Zero click doesn't matter. They can't purchase off of zero click. If someone is looking to buy something or engage with a service at some point, they have to come to the provider for the source and Google will lead them there, but at the right time where it's better for you to engage with them and better you're going to get the customers. If you still provide the content, google isn't going to send content sorry, send users and customers to sites which don't have the content, because Google's trying to decide who's the authorities here, who are the people who are going to best serve this user's need?

Speaker 2: 12:14

Okay, and it might be, as I say, as we've covered to start with, a lot of stuff gets covered in zero clicks. You might see less visitors. But what matters at the end of the day is your revenue, your sales. So it doesn't matter if your visitors drop, if your revenue still goes up, because you might be getting less visitors, but more relevant visitors, the ones that are ready at the time for the purchase. That's what you're after. So you don't need to be scared of zero click unless you're doing display. You know you're up to.

Speaker 2: 12:46

You know you're monetizing by display ads where yeah, this is going to be difficult for you and that's where you know your strategy is probably going to be much different and will probably involve around diversifying your traffic sources, looking at other platforms. For everybody else who has got a product or service to sell, that isn't just eyeballs, then I don't think it has to necessarily be the awful feature that many people predict. Anyway, I hope you found that useful and, yeah, it can be something to think about and, yeah, I look forward to seeing you next time.

Speaker 1: 13:18

Before I go, I just wanted to let you know that if you'd like a personal demo of our tools at keywords people use that you can book a free, no obligation one-on-one video call with me where I'll show you how we can help you level up your content by finding and answering the questions your audience actually have. You can also ask me any seo questions you have. You just need to go to keywords people usecom slash demo where you can pick a time and date that suits you for us to catch up once again. That's keywords people usecom slash demo, where you can pick a time and date that suits you for us to catch up once again. That's keywords people usecom slash demo and you can also find that link in the show notes of today's episode. Hope to chat with you soon. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share. It really helps.

Speaker 1: 13:57

Seo is not that hard. It's brought to you by keywords people usecom, the place to find and organize the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywordspeopleusecom To get an instant hit of more SEO tips. Then find the link to download a free copy of my 101 quick SEO tips in the show notes of today's episode. If you want to get in touch, have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at Channel 5 on Twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywordsbeacleusecom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard.