The technique to make your website content AI ready is called Generative Engine Optimization. With the advancement of AI search tools, major search engines such as Google and Bing started testing AI based search results on their SERPs. Google’s named this as AI overview and on Bing, these AI generated search results are called AI-powered summaries.
AI search tools are considered to be better than the way search engines give results for a search query. For e.g if a user searches any query on Google, in its usual search results, the user will get a list of website links and some relevant paid Ads. With AI generated results, it processes information from different sources to provide a summary of the result, usually 100 words in length. This comprehensive result helps users to avoid clicking on multiple links to get the best possible results.
AI overviews are very useful, as it provides quick answers to the users as they don’t have to click on multiple links to gather the required information. Obviously, it has improved the user experience for the search engine users.
Google now uses generative AI in over 20% of its search results through AI overview. It is very important to optimize your website content as that will allow all your content to come up in AI overviews. Users have the option to click on the links in ai search results to visit the source websites. You don’t have the option to start a chat and build a conversation in AI overview results, unlike what you get in chatGPT and Gemini.
With the steep rise in chatGPT usage, in 2023, google launched Bard, an AI-based conversational Chatbot powered by the LaMDA language model. In May 2023, Google launched search generative experience ( SGE ) as a beta program and later renamed it as AI Overviews.
As per a study done in 2024, AI overview is now available for all the major search intents. It works really well with the informational queries, but doesn’t give many results on transactional, finance and health related queries.
AI Overview mostly appears in the prime position of SERPs known as zero position. Users after searching a query, get the results at the very top of the screen, making sure they don’t have to click anywhere to get the results. AI overviews usually appear along with featured snippets. The only difference is that featured snippets provide quick answers, while AI overview results provide well curated and comprehensive answers generated using multiple sources.
How to Optimize your website content for Google’s AI Overviews ?
Ranking higher in the conventional SERPs for a search query will help your content get visibility in AI overviews. As per the industry experts, top 2 search results have the highest chance to be featured in the AI results. For the informational queries, first position in conventional SERps has around 53.8% inclusion rate and 2nd position has around 47.8% inclusion rate.
With the advancement in artificial overviews, we can expect a decline in the clicks on organic search result links.
To get a presence in Google’s AI overviews, make sure that your website content comply with Google’s search essential guidelines. This content should be well-optimized with targeted keywords. Also make sure that the content is fresh and unique. Quick page loading speed and a good user experience also impacts the AI overview optimization.
Also to rank your website in Google AI overviews, make sure to create the content following the guidelines from Google’s search quality raters.
A few suggestions to optimize the content for search quality raters are:
1. EEAT – Experience – Expertise – Authoritative – Trustworthiness – To make your content follow this standard, make sure you always add author credentials, add content in FAQ format, and build quality and relevant backlinks. Include references, certifications, awards, and quotes from trusted leaders and industry experts. Supporting your content with factual stats also helps with optimizing your content for EEAT standards.
2. Needs Met: As the title suggests, this quality metric ensures that the content on your website is relevant to the search queries from the search engine users.This checks if the content on the ranked pages is optimized for the search queries. The range is between “Fails to Meet” to “Fully Meets”.
3. Your Money, Your Life – To meet this standard, your content requires the highest level of accuracy and reliability. Usually content from financial, health, and legal advice falls under this category.
4. Website Content should follow the Google core ranking system including helpful content, structured data, RankBrain, original content, and BERT. Also, the CTR( Click Through Rate ), content quality, and keyword usage play a crucial role.
5. Suggest Content Structure to rank in AI overviews: The suggested content structure is as follows:
Heading: What is the Topic?
Text: The Topic is….
It is very important that the content clearly answers search intent. The content structure mentioned above allows the search engines to easily crawl your page and find info it needs. Content should be broken down into relevant sections with proper headings describing the content for each section.
6. Target Long Tail Keywords: Long tail keywords are best suited for conversational languages. Also, it is considered easier to tank your web page for the long tail keywords as these are less competitive as compared to the generic keywords.
7. Well-Optimized Web Page Structure: Always make sure to keep the navigation of the page clear and structured using breadcrumbs. Use well-optimized titles and meta tags on the web pages, improve the site’s crawlability, and optimize for page loading speed. Get reviews and recommendations. Use Featured snippets on the web pages.
In the end, I would suggest that yes it sounds like a lot of work, when it comes to optimizing your website for AI overview results but posting high-quality content that answers user’s intent should be the first step, supported by building high-quality links and getting mentions on reputed platforms.
In this fast-moving world, sometimes content on your website gets outdated, so make sure you regularly update such content pieces with fresh details and stats. This will keep your website content always relevant.
Generative Engine Optimization is just an extension of search engine optimization and you can continue implementing the SEO techniques while making sure you focus more on creating user-friendly content. AI overview is the future of organic marketing and you can’t afford to stay away from that.