Have you Googled anything recently? Of course you have. And you must have noticed that for many searches, Google is now offering an AI Overview that takes up the top spot, pushing all organic results down the order.
Google’s AI overview, followed by a rich snippet, followed by the People Also Ask section.
On the surface, this may not seem like a huge change, especially if you’re not a marketing professional, but this has huge ramifications for your website.
All the helpful content you created answering your audience’s most frequently asked questions just got pushed down, not by a competitor, but by Google itself. Not only that, but Google’s AI is now answering those questions. That means customers are not clicking on your website or that of your competitors, they are getting information directly from the search page and leaving without clicking anything.
When it comes to marketing strategy, this changes everything for pretty much every business.
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How Google’s search engine changes impact your business
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) rely on search engines for the bulk of their traffic. They build their traffic acquisition strategy around the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel has four stages:
- Awareness, or Top of the Funnel (TOFU): The awareness stage is where potential customers search for solutions to their problems and come across your website since you provide the answers to their questions.
- Interest, or Middle of the Funnel (MOFU): The interest stage is where they know of you and show interest in your services.
- Desire, or Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU): The desire stage where they are ready to make a purchase.
- Action: All stages of the funnel lead toward the action stage, where the buyer decides to move forward with your business.
Each stage has different keywords associated with it, with TOFU keywords focusing mostly on information and BOFU keywords focusing on purchase intent. A standard marketing strategy usually accounts for all stages of the funnel, and the marketer plans to create assets such as articles, case studies, and landing pages for each stage.
For example, a small retail business specializing in eco-friendly clothes will:
- Start by creating blog posts like “top 10 benefits of wearing eco-friendly clothing” and “how to reduce your carbon footprint.”
- Display customer testimonials and links to case studies on their articles.
- Add links to their latest collection on the case study and testimonial pages.
All roads will eventually lead to a product page where people can purchase eco-friendly clothes.
With Google answering those questions about eco-friendly clothes and carbon footprints, the retail business in our example stands to lose a major entry point to its website and will have to redesign its funnel.
The same goes for all other SMBs that build their content strategy around the standard marketing funnel.
That means the AI Overview by Google may force you to take resources away from TOFU content and redirect them somewhere else, hopefully to an area where you’d get the most returns. For SMBs with physical locations, that area is local SEO.
Want help finding the right keywords? Get our guide >> Complete Guide to Local Keyword Research
Why local SEO is more important than ever
While the changes happening over on Google seem a little scary, local SEO is still a safe bet and can help your business continue driving organic traffic. Here are some reasons local SEO is more important than ever.
1. AI Overviews aren’t showing on local searches (yet)
AI Overviews are meant to aggregate information for broad questions (generally). This means that AI Overviews don’t apply as easily to local searches or searches with buying intent, so when people search for a business near them or in a specific location, the local pack is still showing up in the results. So even if your site is affected by the AI Overview for other keywords, you can still drive a lot of traffic through local SEO.
Want searchers to see (and click on!) your site? Download our free guide >> Ways to Make Your Website More Visible on Google
2. Local searches have a high volume
21% of US consumers search the internet for local businesses once per day, 32% do it multiple times a week, and 24% do it at least once a week. Optimizing for local search will allow you to tap into this market and open up a new channel for organic traffic. Also, “near me” searches are one of the few types of searches that continue to grow by over 100% year over year.
So how is it that user behavior continues to change with new technology, yet people continue to search for services near them? That’s because people want instant gratification and quick solutions to their problems. Now that search engines, especially Google, have made it easy to find relevant local information on the go, people use their phones to search for everything ranging from the nearest gas station to the nearest healthcare provider, and more. This behavior results in high search volumes for local keywords and makes local SEO a worthwhile investment.
3. Google Business Profile gives you everything you need to appear on local searches
Google doesn’t give you a platform or step-by-step guidelines to rank for a snippet or a certain keyword, but with a Google Business Profile (GBP), it gives you everything you need to rank for local SEO.
- GBP allows you to display critical information such as address, phone number, business hours, and more.
- You can add photos and videos to your GBP to attract more customers.
- Customers can leave ratings and reviews on your GBP. Better ratings and positive reviews mean more customers.
- GBP also provides insights into how customers interact with your profile, such as the number of views, search queries, and customer actions (e.g., calls and direction requests). You can improve your profile based on these insights.
All of these features make local SEO a low-hanging fruit for most businesses because you can simply fire up GBP right now, claim your business, and start managing your Business Profile.
Are your listings outdated? Get an instant audit with our free business listings grader!
4. You are only competing with other businesses in your area
When trying to rank for informational keywords, you are competing with all other businesses in your industry (along with Google’s AI overview). With local SEO, you are only competing with other service providers in your area.
For example, for keywords like “dentist near me” or “dentists in Shelburne, Vermont,” there are only a handful of businesses competing with each other. Meanwhile, for keywords like “wisdom tooth removal,” the same healthcare providers have to compete with thousands of other websites.
Look at what happens when I Google “dentists in Shelburne, Vermont.”
There is one sponsored and three organic results in the local pack. If I click on “more places,” the results only go up to two pages.
This will always be the case with location-specific keywords because there can only be a limited number of service providers in most areas. So with local keywords, you are only going up against two to three pages worth of results. Any marketer would take those odds.
5. Local searches have purchase intent and better conversions
82% of the people who use their phones to shop perform “near me” searches before buying something. This means that local searches inherently have a higher purchase intent. These searches involve users who are further along in the buying process. They have identified their need and are now seeking a specific product or service to fulfill it. This results in a higher conversion rate as compared to non-local searches.
For example, imagine a small HVAC repair business. If someone in an area near them notices that their air conditioner isn’t working properly, they will search for “AC repair near me,” “AC repair in XYZ neighborhood,” and similar keywords.
HVAC repair companies that have optimized for local SEO will benefit from this because their business will appear at the top of the local search results complete with contact information, operating hours, and customer reviews. The customer will compare the reviews for a couple of businesses before calling one.
In this scenario, local SEO will help you skip the whole sales funnel and directly connect with a customer at the buying stage. This leads to higher conversions and increased business.
The way forward with local SEO
Although Google has rolled back AI Overviews in scale, there is speculation that they will scale this feature up to most types of results. This will force a shift in traditional content-driven SEO to focus more on local SEO. Here’s what you should do to get the most out of your local SEO efforts:
- Allocate more resources to local SEO strategies and optimize your Google Business Profile.
- Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on your GBP. Respond to reviews, both positive and negative, and demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction.
- Stay informed about changes in search engine algorithms and adjust your strategies accordingly.
- Use analytics tools to track the performance of your local SEO efforts. Monitor metrics such as local search rankings, website traffic from local searches, and conversion rates.
Also, keep tracking the traffic on your best-performing TOFU assets, and slowly dedicate more resources to local SEO if and when you see a decline in traffic. By using these strategies, you can mitigate the impact of Google’s AI overview and capitalize on the growing importance of local searches.
Need help with local SEO? Reach out for a demo!
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