SEO in 2024: 101 of the world’s leading SEOs share their number 1, actionable tip for 2024 by David Bain (Author)

Summary of Generative AI in Search with Jason Barnard

Jason Barnard, CEO of Kalicube, provides expert insights on how SEOs can adapt to the rise of Generative AI (GAI) in search engines like Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and Bing Chat.

Understanding Generative AI in Search

• GAI as a Summary: GAI in search is essentially a summary of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), Google’s Knowledge Panel, and its recommendations.
• Dynamic Knowledge Panel: This GAI-generated summary acts as a conversational, dynamic Knowledge Panel, summarizing information about an entity on the fly and offering follow-up questions to initiate a conversation.
• The Conversational Funnel: The main goal of this conversation is to guide the user down the conversion funnel until they are ready to buy, at which point the search engine sends them to the website.

Preparing for Generative AI: The Core Strategy

The key for SEOs is to educate the machines (Google and Bing) about your brand, audience, and sales funnel so that they can replicate your funnel experience directly on the SERP.

This involves:

1. Defining and Clarifying Your Funnel: Businesses must clearly identify what their funnel looks like, including the persona and the specific questions users ask at each stage.
2. Replicating the Funnel on the SERP: Ensure the path Google and Bing create for the user is as close as possible to the one on your own website.

The Crucial Role of FAQs and Schema Markup

Barnard emphasizes that the FAQ strategy is the biggest chunk of work for preparing your site for GAI:

• One Question, One Page: Structure your FAQs with one question and a simple, succinct answer per page.
• Extensive Coverage: The FAQ section must be massively expanded to answer every possible question your audience might ask down the funnel and post-funnel.
• Categorization: Categorize FAQs based on the stage of the funnel (e.g., unaware, ready to buy, post-purchase) and distinguish between branded questions and generic questions about your topic.
• Schema Markup: Use FAQ Schema Markup not primarily for rich snippets, but to reassure the machine (Google and Bing) that it has fully understood the content. Schema is the search engines’ native language and provides supporting evidence.

Balancing Content Strategy

• Blog vs. FAQ: Don’t abandon the blog, but focus heavily on the FAQ section in the near term.
  • FAQs provide short, quick answers (e.g., 100-200 words).
  • Blogs are for delving deeper into a topic (e.g., 1,000-2,000 words).
• SEO is Not Dead: Generative AI won’t kill SEO, but SEOs must adapt. SEO is now an integral part of a wider Digital Marketing strategy, focusing on packaging great branding and marketing for Google and Bing.

Where to Focus Your Efforts

• Know Your Audience’s Platforms: You don’t need to be everywhere; you need to be where your audience is looking.
• Analyze Market Dominance: Identify the platforms (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook) that dominate your market’s digital footprint. Barnard’s Kalicube Pro™ platform can help with this, but you can also do it manually by searching your brand name and those of 20 competitors to see which platforms consistently appear on the first page of the SERP.
• Prioritize Quality: Focus on doing a great job on a few key platforms rather than a poor job on many.

Adjusting SEO Priorities

De-Prioritize Page Speed (from an SEO view): Since GAI keeps users on the SERP longer, page speed becomes less critical from a direct SEO ranking perspective. However, site speed remains important for user experience once they land on your site.