How to Keep Your Website Relevant for AI-Powered Search
Guest Post by Jason Khoo
AI technology has dramatically shifted how individuals and businesses collect and consume new information. Not only are generative AI tools faster and more reliable at providing helpful data, but they’re also reinventing how people search for the information they need online.
Because of the processing power of AI-powered search algorithms, search engines are becoming much more helpful at providing users with the answers they’re looking for. Instead of having to comb through hundreds of search results looking for relevant resources, users are now able to leverage solutions like Google’s AI Overviews to provide them with quick answers without ever having to navigate to an individual website.
While this improvement in user experience is great news for anyone looking for helpful information online, it does raise certain concerns for businesses. Many are wondering how they can still keep their websites in line with these new changes while still continuing to bring in more organic search traffic.
Below are some helpful strategies you can apply to keep your website relevant for AI-powered search:
Create a Clear and Consistent Content Structure
When creating new content for your website, it’s important to consider how you structure it for viewers. Using a clear and consistent content structure throughout your site helps to improve the user experience and allows the information to flow to the reader more smoothly.
A common SEO best practice is to make strategic use of headings (H1-H6). Below is the format you should use when applying these header tags to your content:
- H1: Reserved strictly for the title of your page
- H2: Used for section titles (or chapters) that separate main ideas
- H3: Designed to break up larger content sections into subsections
- H4-H6: Useful for creating additional subheadings within subsections to better organize supporting content
Make Use of Semantic HTML
Although structuring how your content looks on the surface is important, it’s also essential to consider how it looks to search engine crawlers. AI-powered search algorithms rely on HTML coding to quickly reference the context of published content and how it’s structured.
Semantic HTML involves using relevant coding tags in the code of your site to categorize different navigational elements. For example, blog posts, navigation links, headers, footers, and sidebar content should all have their own classifications. This helps search engine crawlers know which elements – such as blog posts “<article>” – house the content most likely to provide the most value to readers.
By assigning the right semantic HTML tags to every element of your site, you streamline the crawling process for search engines and make it easier for AI-powered search tools to locate and serve your information.
Evaluate Your Content Readability
While search engines may be changing how they serve content to users, they still favor websites with highly valuable content. However, while the accuracy and relevancy of this content are important, it also matters how easy that information is for readers to digest.
Businesses can use online readability tools that evaluate written content to see how easy it is for individuals to understand. Depending on the audience you’re trying to attract, you may want to target different readability scores. However, in most cases, search engines favor content that is easy for a wider range of readers.
This means, wherever possible, you should try to simplify your messaging. Check for things like sentence length, word difficulty, and word counts. While optimal readily scores often vary from one business to the next, they can be a helpful gauge to use as you publish new content.
Leverage Schema Markup
Over the years, getting featured in Google’s rich snippets has been a great way for businesses to increase their click-through rates on search engines. Rich snippets display on the first page of search engine results and provide additional supporting context of certain links.
For example, if a user searched for “how to ride a bike,” they may be provided with a list of links, but they might also be given a quick step-by-step instruction attached to a link before clicking it. Businesses are able to structure their content in a way that makes it more likely to be featured in these snippets and significantly improve their chances for additional web traffic.
To achieve this, you’ll want to embed schema markup into each of your content pages. This is a small line of code that allows you to categorize your content with different labels. These labels then enable AI-powered search engines to better understand what your pages are all about and improve how they showcase your content to users.
Use Content Pillars and Clusters
When looking for relevant content to serve to users, AI-powered search tools leverage Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines to decide which websites to prioritize.
Google E-E-A-T references the ability of a website to showcase experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. All of these guidelines help search engines decide what type of content is likely to provide better value to users and worth highlighting.
One of the ways businesses can ensure they meet these guidelines is by creating content pillars and clusters. Content pillars are pages of content that cover a broad topic while linking out to separate pages (clusters) that provide more detailed information on related topics. The benefit of this approach is that it makes it easier for readers to focus on the specific areas that matter most to them, while showcasing the broad range of expertise you have on certain subject matter.
Don’t Let AI-Powered Search Distract You From What’s Most Important
While new information continues to surface on the best ways to keep websites relevant to AI-powered search, the consensus is that original, well-structured, thought leadership web content is a top priority. By following the guidelines discussed, you’ll make sure your website continues to provide real value to users and is less likely to be impacted by new search engine features.
Leap of the Week
Evaluate the top three and bottom three performing content pages on your site. Take a look at the structural differences between each of the pages and identify gaps on the lower-performing pages that can be filled. Use this information to help design a consistent content framework for all your content pages going forward.
Looking to amplify your impact and grow your business? Discover more valuable insights at the LeapZone LearningLab!
___________________________________________
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Post Written by Jason Khoo.
Jason Khoo started freelancing in SEO in college, sold his first agency, and now is the founder of Zupo, an Orange County-based SEO consulting agency helping construct powerful long-term SEO strategies for our clients. Jason also enjoys multiple cups of tea daily, hiding away on weekends, catching up on reading, and rewatching The Simpsons for the 20th time.