As Google rolls out its new AI Overviews, SEO professionals and website owners must adapt to these changes to maintain and improve their search rankings. Google’s AI Overview, powered by the advanced Gemini model, integrates generative AI into the SERP. It provides users with summarized answers to complex queries at the top — well above the organic results. Google intends to improve user experience by offering quick, comprehensive answers; however, it also introduces new dynamics in interacting and preparing for these AI Overviews.
Understanding Google’s AI Overviews
Google’s AI Overviews are designed to summarize information from multiple web pages to answer user queries more efficiently. These overviews appear at the top of search results. They include links to the source websites, potentially driving more traffic to diverse sites. According to reports, users tend to click on links within AI Overviews more frequently than traditional search listings. This suggests an opportunity for increased visibility for well-optimized content. AI Overviews are widely available in the US and will gradually roll out worldwide.
Steps to prepare for Google’s AI Overview rollout
Enhance content quality:
Focus on creating high-quality, comprehensive content that addresses user queries in depth. Google’s AI will pull from various sources, so ensure your content is detailed and authoritative. Your ability to influence or to be cited in the summary will be directly related to your existing authority on the subject.
Use structured data to help Google understand and categorize your content accurately.
Optimize for user intent:
Identify and target the specific user intents behind searches. Use tools to determine your audience’s questions and tailor your content to provide clear, concise answers.
Incorporate FAQs and summaries that Google’s AI can easily extract for overviews.
Leverage Yoast SEO features:
Content analysis: Use Yoast SEO’s readability and SEO analysis tools to ensure your articles are well-optimized with relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and readability scores.
Schema markup: Implement structured data with Yoast SEO’s schema markup feature. This makes your content more accessible and understandable to search engines.
Internal linking: Improve your site’s internal linking structure to guide users and search engines to your most important content.
Monitor performance:
Keep an eye on your Google Search Console for changes in traffic and visibility. Google plans to include AI Overview impressions and clicks in Search Console reports. Unfortunately, these won’t be distinguished from traditional search results (SiliconANGLE) (Search Engine Land).
Use this data to adjust your strategies and optimize underperforming content.
Stay informed and adaptive:
Update your SEO knowledge regularly and stay informed about changes in Google’s algorithms and AI capabilities.
Participate in SEO communities and forums to share insights and strategies with peers.
How Yoast SEO can help
Yoast SEO can help you navigate the upcoming AI upheaval. Here’s how:
Content optimization: Yoast SEO’s analysis tools help you create content that meets high-quality standards. Quality is crucial if you want to feature in AI Overviews.
Readability checks: Ensure your content is easy to read and understand. This increases the chance of AI summarizing your content effectively.
Keyword optimization: Yoast helps you target the right keywords and phrases that align with user intent. As a result, you improve your chances of getting into AI-driven summaries.
Structured data implementation: Use Yoast SEO to add structured data to your pages. With structured data, you make it easier for Google to extract and present your content in AI Overviews.
Use Yoast SEO and be proactive
Use Yoast SEO and stay proactive with your SEO strategies. This way, you prepare for and thrive in today’s world of AI-driven search results. Stay adaptable and focus on high-quality content. Use the powerful tools at your disposal to maintain your visibility and traffic in this new era of search.
Carolyn Shelby
Carolyn Shelby is a seasoned SEO expert with a knack for making complex digital strategies accessible to everyone. She specializes in technical SEO, she excels at optimizing web architectures and crafting strategies that enhance visibility and drive growth. Carolyn views SEO as a powerful tool to narrate a brand’s journey, aligning content with core values to engage and convert audiences. Her approach is data-driven yet distinctly human. She uses straightforward, innovative methods to engage audiences and see real results.
Google has addressed concerns regarding the accuracy and quality of its AI overview feature in search results.
The company acknowledges the criticism and odd results generated by the AI overviews but claims that the feature leads to higher user satisfaction and more complex queries being answered.
As Liz Reid, Head of Google Search, continues to repeat the same talking points, here’s what’s being done about AI overviews.
Background On AI Overviews
Google launched AI overviews to provide users with comprehensive responses to complex questions that would have previously required multiple searches.
The feature is powered by a customized language model integrated with Google’s core web ranking systems.
Unlike chatbots and other large language model (LLM) products, Google claims that AI overviews are built only to show information backed up by top web results and include relevant links for further exploration.
Google alleges that, in testing, the accuracy rate for AI overviews is on par with featured snippets, another popular AI-powered search feature.
Addressing Odd Results & Criticism
The widespread use of AI overviews by millions of users has surfaced some odd and inaccurate results.
Google attributes these issues to several factors, including:
Misinterpreting queries
Misinterpreting nuances in web content language
Limited high-quality information available for specific topics
In its statement, Google addresses the viral example of “How many rocks should I eat?” which generated an AI overview based on satirical content republished on a geological software provider’s website.
The company explains that this is an instance of a “data void” or “information gap,” where limited high-quality content is available on a topic.
Improvements & Updates
In response to the criticism, Google says it’s made over a dozen technical improvements to AI overviews.
These updates include:
Better detection mechanisms for nonsensical queries
Limiting the inclusion of satire and humor content
Updating systems to limit the use of potentially misleading user-generated content
Adding triggering restrictions for queries where AI overviews were less helpful
Enhancing quality protections for sensitive topics like news and health
Google’s company message is that less than one in every 7 million unique queries with AI overviews contained a content policy violation.
Why SEJ Cares
The lessons from Google’s AI overview launch will shape the future of search and have implications for the SEO industry.
The concerns about accuracy highlight the need for search engines to be transparent about how these AI features work, their limitations, and how issues are being addressed.
SEO professionals, content creators, and website owners should push for clearer communication. By actively engaging in these discussions, you can guide the responsible use of AI tools.
Google’s challenges present an opportunity for competitors to prioritize transparency, user trust, and ethical AI deployment to differentiate themselves. It will be interesting to see if anyone steps up to the challenge.
Whether or not you believe that Facebook is still the leader of the social media pack, there’s no arguing that it remains an incredibly powerful tool for businesses aiming to enhance their online presence.
However, creating a Facebook Page for your business is only the first step in your Facebook marketing journey.
The real power of the platform lies in nailing effective Facebook Page promotion so that you can reach users and generate awareness and trust for your business.
This article is tailored for those ready to elevate their Facebook Page’s visibility and effectiveness.
Whether you’re a startup just entering the world of social media or an established brand aiming to boost interaction, we’ll explore the essentials of promoting your Facebook Page to capitalize on the vast potential of the platform.
With its staggering 3.049 billion monthly active users, Facebook remains the world’s most widely used social media platform.
Yes, newer platforms are on the rise, but none offer the extensive reach that Facebook does – which is why it’s such a critical platform for businesses that want to connect with a vast and diverse audience.
Secondly, Facebook’s engagement has remained fairly robust.
The average Android user spends over 18 hours per month using the app, and according to SimilarWeb, Facebook.com is the third most visited website in the U.S.
This is nothing to sneeze at – and it signifies that businesses have ample opportunity to capture the attention of potential customers on the platform.
If you need more convincing, consider that 54.3% of Facebook users aged 16 to 64 report using the platform to follow or research brands and products. So, Facebook doesn’t just play a role in brand discovery but in the pre-purchase phase.
Now that we’ve convinced you that you should be on Facebook, let’s look at how to make the most of your Facebook Page.
Top 8 Ways To Promote Your Facebook Page
So, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been active on Facebook for a while, one thing is always true: getting your content in front of new audiences – and convincing those people to follow you – is key to leveraging Facebook effectively.
The good news is that there is more than one way to do that.
You could spend money on Facebook ads, which can work well, but there are also plenty of other easy, free ways to boost your Facebook following.
1. Give Your Page A Personal Touch
Creating a Facebook Page for your business is an excellent way to give your brand a more human feel.
While a “fan Page” is slightly different from the personal profiles assigned to individuals, it still allows people to follow your posts and engage with your content.
By creating a Page for your company, you’re putting a face to the name – and that’s powerful.
These days, the emphasis on authenticity and personal connection in social media is more critical than ever – yes, for brands, too. Users seek to interact with businesses that feel genuine and relatable, not just like corporate entities.
So remember that, while your Page serves professional purposes, the content should resonate on a personal level. Share stories that reflect your brand’s values, highlight customer experiences, or provide behind-the-scenes glimpses into your operations.
Consider this example from Patagonia, which leverages Facebook to showcase its commitment to environmental sustainability and the values that drive the brand.
In this post below, the company highlights a partner and community organizer who is working to make strides in sustainability.
Screenshot from Facebook.com, March 2024
Here, Patagonia isn’t just selling a product; it’s sharing values and stories, engaging millions of people worldwide.
When promoting your products or services, try to frame them in a way that addresses your audience’s needs or interests.
Explain the value and relevance to your followers, and encourage them to see your offerings as solutions to their problems or ways to enhance their lives.
2. Use High-Quality Visual Content
The power of visual storytelling continues to dominate social media – after all, who doesn’t love visuals that are easy on the eyes?
And in a world where even common modern smartphones can capture beautiful imagery – and there is a proliferation of simple editing tools and apps available to us – users don’t just prefer high-quality photos and videos; they expect them.
Your Facebook Page should reflect this shift towards visual excellence if you want to captivate your audience effectively.
Facebook has preferred dimensions for its images, which we’ll go over below, but beware that it will compress photos to their desired size.
This can stretch images, so to achieve the best results, start with the best possible quality and maintain control over the final presentation.
Prioritize crisp, clear, and engaging visuals that embody your brand’s essence and messaging. For uploading, PNG and JPEG formats are typically the best formats.
Focus on two main visual elements:
Your Profile: This encompasses your profile picture and cover photo. For the best Facebook cover photo quality, set the size to 851 pixels by 315 pixels. For your profile photo, make the size 196 by 196 pixels.
Your Posts: The content you share significantly impacts your brand’s perception. For post images, we recommend you aim for 1200 pixels by 630 pixels to ensure your visuals appear perfectly on both mobile and desktop feeds. You can also experiment with other dimensions, such as 1080 pixels by 1080 pixels (square), or 1080 pixels x 1350 pixels (portrait). For Facebook Stories, the recommended image size is 1080 pixels x 1920 pixels – a vertical format, just like Instagram Stories.
Using high-quality visuals not only enhances your Facebook Page’s aesthetic, but also significantly increases the likelihood of engagement and follower growth.
However, substance is as critical as style. Pair your visuals with valuable content tailored to your audience’s interests and needs.
GoPro is an example of a brand that uses beautiful, high-quality visual content on Facebook to engage its followers. See this example below, which, impressively, leverages user-generated content.
Screenshot from Facebook.com, March 2024
3. Enable The “Call To Action” Button
As a business, you want your Facebook Page to enhance awareness of your brand and drive followers – but ultimately, you also want to turn those followers into active consumers.
You can do so by utilizing the call-to-action (CTA) button on your Facebook Page.
By adding a CTA button to your Page, you can direct your audience to where they should go next, including key business goals like shopping, booking appointments, or contacting your company.
Select a CTA that aligns with your primary objectives and consider integrating them with Facebook’s features, such as Groups or Messenger, to keep interactions within the platform.
For example, National Geographic uses its CTA to encourage users to sign up for a subscription to the magazine.
Screenshot from Facebook.com, March 2024
4. Join Or Create A Facebook Group
As we just discussed, creating and joining Facebook Groups is a phenomenal way to interact with others, let people come to you, and increase visibility and authority for your brand.
To get started, identify groups that align with your business’s industry, values, or target market. Search for fitting keywords on Facebook and discover some groups to join.
After that, make sure to engage by leaving comments and reactions to posts. By participating actively and making valuable contributions to the Group, you can foster recognition and trust within these communities.
It’s worth noting that only some Groups allow businesses to join. For Groups that only allow individuals, you must join from your personal Facebook account and promote your brand and Page via comments.
Alternatively, you can create your own Facebook Group. This has become an increasingly popular trend among brands, as it allows you to nurture your own community of like-minded people and start conversations.
When creating a Facebook Group, be sure to provide value first. Rather than building a Group around your brand, build a community around something related to your brand – and structure it as a resource hub where members can find support and tips and network with others.
This way, you’re putting genuine support, engagement, and community-building before sales efforts.
A great example of this is Canva’s Canva Design Community Facebook Group. This official Group from Canva is a place for users to discuss not only the product and get tips and insights, but also anything design-related.
By keeping the Group broad and welcoming all kinds of design-focused discussions, Canva has built a community of over 394,000 members.
Screenshot from Facebook.com, March 2024
5. Expand Your Facebook Page’s Reach
Let’s revisit your current network: a.k.a., the people you already know.
Leveraging your existing network is a fundamental strategy for promoting your Facebook Page.
Whether it’s your friends, peers, or followers across other different social platforms, it’s time to utilize them. These people are already connected to your business and are often willing to support your endeavors.
So, what should you do? Promote, promote, promote.
Start by integrating your Facebook Page promotion across all of your communication channels. Post it to your Instagram and put it in your Instagram bio.
Share updates with personal contacts, embed a link to it on your website, and include its link in your email signature.
If you’ve created any Facebook Groups, make sure you’re directing members back to your main Page for additional content.
Wherever you can, make sure the road leads back to you and your Facebook Page. This will help enhance your visibility and follower count.
In this example, you can see how the Australian meal delivery brand The Dinner Ladies includes a link directly to its Facebook Page in its email newsletter.
Screenshot from Gmail, March 2024
6. Use Facebook Stories And Facebook Live
Both Facebook Stories and Facebook Live can help you establish a sincere connection with your audience.
The cousin of Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories are ideal for sharing short, engaging snippets of your day or quick business updates. This allows for a more casual interaction with your followers.
These fleeting posts can be a mix of personal insights, time-sensitive promotions, or behind-the-scenes looks at your brand.
Facebook Live, on the other hand, offers an intimate, real-time connection that makes viewers feel as though they’re right there with you and part of the moment.
Try leveraging Live to broadcast important events, share updates, or host Q&A sessions. This direct engagement creates a sense of transparency and community between your company and your audience.
The Wall Street Journal is one example of a brand that utilizes Facebook Stories to offer quick updates to its followers. It posts snapshots of the stories of the day, encouraging readers to learn more.
Screenshot from Facebook, March 2024
7. Maintain A Regular Schedule: Consistency Is The Secret Sauce
The key to success in any endeavor – whether it’s becoming debt-free, building meaningful relationships, or improving your personal fitness – lies in consistency.
This is true on Facebook, too.
Something essential to remember if you want to gain and retain followers is to make sure you stick to a regular schedule.
Not only will this keep your brand fresh in the minds of your audience – but an active and up-to-date Page signals to new visitors that they can expect regular, valuable content, encouraging them to follow.
Try to post about one to two times a day, or at least a few times per week, to maintain a steady stream of content without overwhelming your followers.
If you’re too busy to stick to a tight posting schedule, which you very well might be, there’s no reason to fear.
There are many ways to automate posts to your Facebook Page, from plugins on WordPress to software made specifically for the task.
8. Engage Your Audience And Peers
Doesn’t getting all those reactions and comments on your content feel good? You’re not the only one who feels that way; nearly everybody does – including your audience.
Active participation on Facebook, beyond just updating your own Page, can significantly enhance your visibility and credibility. Make an effort to connect with individuals and other businesses that align with your brand’s values and interests.
Do not be self-promotional; instead, post real, thoughtful comments. People appreciate authenticity and are more likely to check out your Page to see what you’re all about.
Don’t be afraid to message peers or influencers within your industry, too. Most, if not all, have been in your shoes before and might be open to connecting and sharing insights with others just getting started – especially those who show genuine interest and respect for their work.
Try finding a successful account you admire and send them a quick message. You never know what could happen if you hear back.
It Is Still Possible To Increase Your Facebook Page’s Following
Time to stop worrying about promoting your Page on Facebook.
Deliver consistent, high-quality content, interact with others, and use the existing Facebook tools at your disposal, and you’ll go far.
With a new set of tools under your belt, it’s time to step out into the not-so-scary world of Facebook and run a Page.
Keep at it, and soon, you’ll start to see the results you’ve been craving!
If a hiker gets lost in the rugged Scottish Highlands, rescue teams sometimes send up a drone to search for clues of the individual’s route—trampled vegetation, dropped clothing, food wrappers. But with vast terrain to cover and limited battery life, picking the right area to search is critical.
Traditionally, expert drone pilots use a combination of intuition and statistical “search theory”—a strategy with roots in World War II–era hunting of German submarines—to prioritize certain search locations over others. Jan-Hendrik Ewers and a team from the University of Glasgow recently set out to see if a machine-learning system could do better.
Ewers grew up skiing and hiking in the Highlands, giving him a clear idea of the complicated challenges involved in rescue operations there. “There wasn’t much to do growing up, other than spending time outdoors or sitting in front of my computer,” he says. “I ended up doing a lot of both.”
To start, Ewers took data sets of search-and-rescue cases from around the world, which include details such as an individual’s age, whether they were hunting, horseback riding, or hiking, and if they suffered from dementia, along with information about the location where the person was eventually found—by water, buildings, open ground, trees, or roads. He trained an AI model with this data, in addition to geographical data from Scotland. The model runs millions of simulations to reveal the routes a missing person would be most likely to take under the specific circumstances. The result is a probability distribution—a heat map of sorts—indicating the priority search areas.
With this kind of probability map, the team showed that deep learning could be used to design more efficient search paths for drones. In research published last week on arXiv, which has not yet been peer reviewed, the team tested its algorithm against two common search patterns: the “lawn mower,” in which a drone would fly over a target area in a series of simple stripes, and an algorithm similar to Ewers’s but less adept at working with probability distribution maps.
In virtual testing, Ewers’s algorithm beat both of those approaches on two key measures: the distance a drone would have to fly to locate the missing person, and the likelihood that the person was found. While the lawn mower and the existing algorithmic approach found the person 8% of the time and 12% of the time, respectively, Ewers’s approach found them 19% of the time. If it proves successful in real rescue situations, the new system could speed up response times, and save more lives, in scenarios where every minute counts.
“The search-and-rescue domain in Scotland is extremely varied, and also quite dangerous,” Ewers says. Emergencies can arise in thick forests on the Isle of Arran, the steep mountains and slopes around the Cairngorm Plateau, or the faces of Ben Nevis, one of the most revered but dangerous rock climbing destinations in Scotland. “Being able to send up a drone and efficiently search with it could potentially save lives,” he adds.
Search-and-rescue experts say that using deep learning to design more efficient drone routes could help locate missing persons faster in a variety of wilderness areas, depending on how well suited the environment is for drone exploration (it’s harder for drones to explore dense canopy than open brush, for example).
“That approach in the Scottish Highlands certainly sounds like a viable one, particularly in the early stages of search when you’re waiting for other people to show up,” says David Kovar, a director at the US National Association for Search and Rescue in Williamsburg, Virginia, who has used drones for everything from disaster response in California to wilderness search missions in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
But there are caveats. The success of such a planning algorithm will hinge on how accurate the probability maps are. Overreliance on these maps could mean that drone operators spend too much time searching the wrong areas.
Ewers says a key next step to making the probability maps as accurate as possible will be obtaining more training data. To do that, he hopes to use GPS data from more recent rescue operations to run simulations, essentially helping his model to understand the connections between the location where someone was last seen and where they were ultimately found.
Not all rescue operations contain rich enough data for him to work with, however. “We have this problem in search and rescue where the training data is extremely sparse, and we know from machine learning that we want a lot of high-quality data,” Ewers says. “If an algorithm doesn’t perform better than a human, you are potentially risking someone’s life.”
In the US, for example, drone pilots are required to have a constant line of sight between them and their drone. In Scotland, meanwhile, operators aren’t permitted to be more than 500 meters away from their drone. These rules are meant to prevent accidents, such as a drone falling and endangering people, but in rescue settings such rules severely curtail ground rescuers’ ability to survey for clues.
“Oftentimes we’re facing a regulatory problem rather than a technical problem,” Kovar says. “Drones are capable of doing far more than we’re allowed to use them for.”
Ewers hopes that models like his might one day expand the capabilities of drones even more. For now, he is in conversation with the Police Scotland Air Support Unit to see what it would take to test and deploy his system in real-world settings.
AI-powered search results and the oft-postponed demise of third-party advertising cookies could lead ecommerce marketers toward alternative forms of content marketing.
Ecommerce shops depend on website visitors for sales — no shoppers, no orders. Two concerning trends have the potential to pinch stores’ site traffic.
Dual Challenges
The first challenge is familiar. Soon, web browsers will eliminate the advertising cookies that track shoppers across websites.
Cookies help advertising networks learn about consumers to show them relevant ads, i.e., ads they are likely to click. More relevant ads, in turn, lead to lower costs per click, better return on advertising spend, and more sales.
As tracking cookies disappear, advertising networks will lose signal, meaning ads may become less effective and, therefore, more expensive. The impact of this signal loss could be similar to Apple’s change in 2021 in how it tracked consumers across mobile apps, making social media ads relatively less effective. Ecommerce marketers may have to spend more to get paid traffic.
Organic traffic could also be a problem. Since May 14, 2024, Google’s AI Overview feature has been available for many web searches. Bing has a similar feature, Copilot, and some in the industry believe these search summaries will dramatically reduce organic site traffic to many websites. Research firm Gartner estimated that organic traffic could fall by 25% within two years.
Ecommerce marketers must find a way to offset reduced paid and organic visits. Alternative content marketing methods are one possible solution.
AI search summaries could reduce the amount of organic search traffic to websites.
Content Alternatives
For many marketers, content marketing is synonymous with search engine optimization. These folks think of blog posts and even product detail content as a way to rank in search engines.
However, a broad view of content marketing may open folks to benefits beyond organic search, focusing instead on three alternatives.
Editorial newsletters
For many, email newsletters are the new blogs and a significant traffic source.
Consider, for example, an online garden supply shop.
This shop could start a “Gardening This Week” newsletter. Every Thursday, it sends an email broadcast with five gardening tips, three curated from the web. The other two link back to the garden shop’s own blog — the one that once received much organic search traffic. The shop could “sponsor” its own newsletter and include a link to a product.
This newsletter would have at least three positive impacts.
Featuring a single “sponsored” product in the editorial context can drive sales.
Podcasts
In 2017, an Idaho-based farm and ranch retailer (where I was director of marketing and ecommerce) started an editorial podcast that would eventually run for 191 episodes.
The show was available on top podcasting platforms and broadcast on three local radio stations. At its peak, it reached 800,000 monthly listeners. Whenever the podcast mentioned a product, sales of that item increased.
Circa 2024, monitoring podcast performance has gotten easier, and using a podcast for content marketing could help ecommerce marketers with both traffic and sales.
Here’s how.
Imagine an online wine retailer starting a podcast interviewing sommeliers, winemakers, and industry experts.
Episodes would appear on popular podcast platforms and social media sites such as YouTube. The host would encourage listeners to visit the shop’s website and also offer a discount code for a wine mentioned in the interview.
On YouTube, the episode description would include links directly to the wine merchant’s website and the weekly offer.
Courses
Some merchants sell products that require assembly or use instructions. This presents an opportunity to teach customers via courses, a form of content marketing.
Think about an online store selling knitting supplies. The shop could launch a comprehensive knitting course, teaching the fundamentals of holding a needle and following advanced patterns. The course could reside on the shop’s website, on YouTube as a playlist, and on a dedicated portal such as Skillshare.
In each lesson, the instructor could include a materials list with links directly to the shop.
Mitigating
Marketing performance is never certain. Some of that uncertainty now concerns advertising effectiveness and organic search traffic. Marketers interested in mitigating these challenges could try alternative forms of content such as newsletters, podcasts, and courses.
Nearly half of global consumers (46%) have increased their consumption of climate-sustainable products, while an overwhelming number (85%) have experienced the disruptive effects of climate change. That’s according to PwC’s annual “Voice of the Consumer Survey,” titled this year “Shrinking the consumer trust deficit.”
In January and February 2024, PwC surveyed 20,662 consumers across 31 countries and territories. The respondents were at least 18 years old and were asked about a range of topics relating to shopping behaviors, emerging technology, and social media.
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Per the survey, worldwide shoppers have trust concerns with the social media industry, questioning its safety and reliability.
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In addition, 83% of respondents state that safeguarding their personal data is critical to a company’s ability to earn their trust.
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Moreover, consumers seek personal connections when discovering new brands and products. According to the survey, 55% of respondents prefer visiting physical stores and interacting with salespeople, compared to 49% who rely on recommendations from family and friends and 46% who opt for online browsing.
