Make SEO Great Again!

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I want to start off this blog by quoting the Verge: the entire business of the modern web is built around Google.

So we are rightfully concerned when it became a regular ritual where we hear bad news about how AI Overviews are going to take clicks away from publishers.

Just last week, Bloomberg published this:

Mike King tweeted this graph from Similar web, which shows how AI Overviews impacted the 20 publisher sites that were invited to the disappointing event, the creators summit last October and it does not look good.

Another thing we are used to hearing/reading is reassurances that AI is not going to hurt publishers and we shouldn't be worried. But Bing's Fabrice Canel took a different approach and suggest to us SEOs that we should focus our attention on conversions instead. What about publishers that rely on traffic for ads revenue?

So, while Google (and search) remains the biggest traffic referrer on the internet today, we don't know how the future will look like and for some websites, their present is already impacted.

The problem in numbers

A study by SparkToro found the following:

• Just under 60% of mobile web and desktop searches ended with a zero click.
• Almost 30% of all clicks go to platforms Google owns. YouTube, Google Images, Google Maps, Google Flights, Google Hotels, the Google App Store, and dozens more means that Google gets even more monetization and sector-dominating power from their search engine.
• For every 1,000 searches on Google in the United States, 360 clicks make it to a non-Google-owned, non-Google-ad-paying property (36%).

So How to make SEO great again?

I attended recently a webinar for Amanda Natividad and Matt Lerner on "Content marketing in a post-SEO world" - not the title you are hoping to read as an SEO, I know 😄 and few interesting points where raised, that may give you some direction to deal with the new reality.

Syndicate to rented platforms

Amanda suggested this, and this aligns with my thoughts and the new SEO playbook that I shared a while ago about using other planforms for SEO.

In simple words, redistribute your content and then move (convert) your audience to email newsletter so you can OWN your audience.

I also believe building a community around your business is a great idea to capture value. Think about a reddit community that ranks in search and brings more users to your subreddit? you can then introduce them to your product, suggest your newsletter, etc...

How does this benefit SEO? here's the thing, we are creating a new metric OTHER THAN TRAFFIC. Let's call it "audience"... measure the audience you bring in organically.

So now, instead of measuring clicks to your website as the SEO north star, we should also measure "organic audience". These are users that landed organically on our content on other platforms because of our syndicated content.

Next we want to do something with this audience, newsletter signups? sell a product? increase branded searches? define your journey and measure it!

Here's a diagram that explains the idea

The best time to start testing this, is when you are not desperate for traffic "yet". This time is NOW. This is where we should be dedicating our efforts, exploring different ways to bring and measure SEO value.

That's that for today folks and see you next newsletter! I would be super grateful if you take a moment to leave feedback on my newsletter so I can make it better.