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Google have started rolling out AI Overviews in Search. How will Google’s AI Overviews impact bloggers? It all depends on what you do. Here’s how to not only survive but positively thrive as a blogger in 2024 and beyond...
Google have started rolling out AI Overviews (formerly SGE) in Search. Right now, Google is only showing AI overviews to US users. But soon this will become the norm, when Google rolls out its AI version of search to everyone.
Why should we care about this?
Because AI Overviews are likely to have a dramatic impact on search traffic.
In fact, recently Raptive (formerly AdThrive) published the results of a study into the potential impact of Google’s AI Overviews on search traffic, and the results were very worrying.Google’s AI-powered search engine is expected to trigger a drop in search traffic of up to 60%, leading to a correspondingly significant decrease in digital ad revenue.
Why such a huge potential drop?
The prediction is that when AI Overviews fully roll out, the majority of search queries will feature an AI powered ‘answer’ to the search query.
This ‘answer’ will be a little like a featured snippet, but instead of pulling answers from 1 website, AI Overviews will provide an answer based on multiple sources.
If you currently own the top spot, you’ll soon find yourself sharing that space with several other websites.
The AI Overview also takes up a lot more space than featured snippets, so if you don’t get featured, your result is going to be pushed even further down – resulting in fewer clicks.
Worse still, searchers will be able to ‘chat’ with Google and ask follow-up questions, which will keep searchers on Google, instead of clicking through to a website for more information.
And the fact that Google has now started rolling out AI Overviews in the main Google Search results shows that the full rollout is getting ever closer.
How to thrive as a blogger in an era of AI-assisted search
Are you ready for the full rollout of Google AI Overviews?
Here are 5 things you can do to ensure you not only survive but positively thrive as a blogger in the AI era…
1. Write content that can’t be answered by Google
Not every query can be answered well by an AI powered chatbot. If you want to continue to rank well in Google, write the kind of content that users will want to click through to a real website to read.
Take a long hard look at your existing content and ask yourself… If I was searching for information on this topic, would I bother clicking through to a website, or would I be happy with an answer given to me by Google?
And bear this in mind when you write new content. Avoid writing about simple informational topics that could be answered easily by an AI overview.
2. Write unique content
This isn’t just good advice for the future, this is also important right now. One of the main thingsGoogle has about recent updatesis that they are aiming to reduce ‘unoriginal content’ in the search results.
Again, take a long hard look at your content and ask yourself… Is this different to the other search results? Does this add value? Does it show my own unique take on this subject?
Unfortunately, a lot of SEO ‘advice’ out there tells you to look at what is currently ranking as a guide to what you should write if you want to rank. There are even SEO tools that will help you make sure your content contains all the same things that the current top ranking pages contain.
And there are blog post ‘formulas’ that give you an exact blog post structure to follow in order to rank well. The problem with this is that, if thousands of bloggers follow the exact same formula, your content is not going to be unique or original.
You should not be aiming to COPY what is already ranking. You should be aiming to write something BETTER than what is already ranking – and something that makes searchers want to click through to your result because they want to read your unique take on the subject and learn from your expertise, rather than rely on a non-expert chatbot.
3. Build a strong brand
Work on building up your authority in your niche. Become a ‘thought leader’ and ‘go-to expert’ in your niche. And build a community of raving fans, happy customers and advocates.
So, instead of going to Google, your people come directly to you, your website and your products for the solutions to their problems.
This will make you a whole lot less reliant on Google traffic, but it will also mean that, when people see you in the search results, they will be more likely to click through and read what you have to say on the subject.
READ MORE >>> 15 easy ways to improve your website’s E-E-A-T
4. Convert ‘borrowed’ traffic to ‘owned’ traffic
Google traffic is ‘borrowed’ traffic. Building your business on borrowed traffic is incredibly risky – especially given the direction Google is going in.
To reduce your exposure to this risk and protect your business from AI Overviews, you should be trying to convert as much of your current ‘borrowed’ traffic as you possibly can into ‘owned’ traffic – in other words, your email list.
Your email list is the only source of traffic you truly own.
The bigger your email list, the less reliant you will be on Google traffic. So when AI Overviews are fully rolled out, and if search traffic drops as much as predicted, you will be much less impacted than those who still rely heavily on Google traffic.
READ MORE >>> Why you should never build your business on rented land (and what to do instead!)
5. Diversify into digital products
If you rely on ads for the majority of your income, you need huge traffic volumes to support that. And you will be most impacted when AI Overviews fully rolls out.
(If you monetize solely via ads and your traffic drops by 60%, your income will also drop by 60% – that’s a HUGE drop in income!)
Digital products offer much higher RPMs than ads. This means that, by diversifying into digital products, you can earn significantly more income, even if your traffic drops.
Better still, digital product income is much more dependent on the size and quality of your email list than the amount of Google traffic you get.
This means, if you focus your efforts on building a strong email list and diversifying into digital products NOW, when Google fully rolls out AI Overviews, your income will be much less related to your Google traffic and so you won’t experience a massive drop in income if your traffic drops significantly.
(In fact, if you do a really good job with email marketing and digital products you may barely notice!)
READ MORE >>> How to build a successful digital product business: The 7 essential ingredients that will take you to $100K and beyond!
Want help with this?
I truly believe that the best way to protect yourself from the potentially massive drop in traffic and ad revenues that is predicted to come when Google fully rolls out AI Overviews is to diversify into digital products.
However, most bloggers seriously underestimate what it takes to run a successful digital product based business.
It’s not sufficient to simply create a product and advertise it on your website.
You need to do market research, create a product your audience is actually willing to pay for, build a high converting sales page, launch your product properly, build an evergreen sales funnel, do digital product specific SEO, grow your own personal authority, harness the power of customer advocacy and convert your traffic into red hot leads with high converting lead magnets and new subscriber nurture sequences.
If you are thinking, ‘How on earth do I do all that?’, I have good news…
I’ve created the Digital Product Success Academy specifically to help bloggers like you make the leap into digital products and protect your business from whatever future curveballs Google throws at us.
DPSA a step-by-step roadmap that will take you along the entire journey of building out all the moving parts of a successful digital product based business.
Basically, I’ve done all the hard work for you and come up with the perfect step-by-step plan to follow, so you can just follow my roadmap and focus on one thing at a time.
Plus, there’s lots of support, motivation and accountability baked in AND a super supportive community of likeminded bloggers and online business owners to encourage and motivate you every step of the way.
If this resonates with you and you’re ready to take your online business to the next level,click here to find out more!
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