A new study by search industry expert Rand Fishkin has revealed that Google’s rollout of AI overviews in May led to a noticeable decrease in search volume, particularly on mobile devices.
The study, which analyzed millions of Google searches in the United States and European Union, sheds light on the unexpected consequences of AI integration.
AI Overviews Rollout & Reversal
In May 2024, Google rolled out AI overviews in the United States, which generate summaries for many search queries.
However, the feature was met with mixed reactions and was quickly dialed back by the end of the month.
Google says it implemented over a dozen technical improvements to its systems in response.
A subsequent study by SE Ranking found the frequency of these summaries decreased, with only 8% of searches now triggering an AI Overview. However, when shown, these overviews are now longer and more detailed, averaging 25% more content.
SE Ranking also noted that after expansion, AI overviews typically link to fewer sources, usually around four.
Decline In Mobile Searches
Fishkin’s analysis reveals that the introduction of AI Overviews coincided with a marked decline in mobile searches in May.
While desktop searches saw a slight increase, the drop in mobile searches was significant, considering that mobile accounts for nearly two-thirds of all Google queries.
This finding suggests that users may have been less inclined to search on their mobile devices when confronted with AI-generated summaries.
Fishkin commented:
“The most visible changes in May were shared by both the EU and US, notably… Mobile searches fell a considerable amount (if anything spooked Google into rolling back this feature, I’d put my money on this being it).”
He adds:
“If I were running Google, that dip in mobile searches (remember, mobile accounts for almost 2/3rds of all Google queries) would scare the stock-price-worshiping-crap outta me.”
Impact On Overall Search Behavior
Despite the dip in mobile searches, the study found that search behavior remained relatively stable during the AI overviews rollout.
The number of clicks per search on mobile devices increased slightly, while desktop clicks per search remained flat.
This indicates that while some users may have been deterred from initiating searches, those who did engage with the AI Overviews still clicked on results at a similar or slightly higher rate than the previous months.
Implications For Google & the Search Industry
The study highlights the challenges Google faces in integrating AI-generated content into its search results.
Additionally, the research found other concerning trends in Google search behavior:
Low Click-through Rates: Only 360 out of every 1,000 Google searches in the US result in clicks to non-Google websites. The EU fares slightly better with 374 clicks per 1,000 searches.
Zero-click Searches Dominate: Nearly 60% of searches in both regions end without any clicks, classified as “zero-click searches.”
Google’s Self-referral Traffic: About 30% of clicks from US searches go to Google-owned properties, with a somewhat lower percentage in the EU.
Why SEJ Cares
This study underscores the need for adaptable SEO strategies.
As an industry, we may need to shift focus towards optimizing for zero-click searches and diversifying traffic sources beyond Google.
The findings also raise questions about the future of AI in search.
While major tech companies continue to invest in AI technologies, this study suggests that implementation may not always yield the expected results.
Microsoft is making publicly available a new technology called GraphRAG, which enables chatbots and answer engines to connect the dots across an entire dataset, outperforming standard Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) by large margins.
What’s The Difference Between RAG And GraphRAG?
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) is a technology that enables an LLM to reach into a database like a search index and use that as a basis for answering a question. It can be used to bridge a large language model and a conventional search engine index.
The benefit of RAG is that it can use authoritative and trustworthy data in order to answer questions. RAG also enables generative AI chatbots to use up to date information to answer questions about topics that the LLM wasn’t trained on. This is an approach that’s used by AI search engines like Perplexity.
The upside of RAG is related to its use of embeddings. Embeddings is a way of representing the semantic relationships between words, sentences, and documents. This representation enables the retrieval part of RAG to match a search query to text in a database (like a search index).
But the downside of using embeddings is that it limits the RAG to matching text at a granular level (as opposed to a global reach across the data).
Microsoft explains:
“Since naive RAG only considers the top-k most similar chunks of input text, it fails. Even worse, it will match the question against chunks of text that are superficially similar to that question, resulting in misleading answers.”
The innovation of GraphRAG is that it enables an LLM to answer questions based on the overall dataset.
What GraphRAG does is it creates a knowledge graph out of the indexed documents, also known as unstructured data. The obvious example of unstructured data are web pages. So when GraphRAG creates a knowledge graph, it’s creating a “structured” representation of the relationships between various “entities” (like people, places, concepts, and things) which is then more easily understood by machines.
GraphRAG creates what Microsoft calls “communities” of general themes (high level) and more granular topics (low level). An LLM then creates a summarization of each of these communities, a “hierarchical summary of the data” that is then used to answer questions. This is the breakthrough because it enables a chatbot to answer questions based more on knowledge (the summarizations) than depending on embeddings.
This is how Microsoft explains it:
“Using an LLM to summarize each of these communities creates a hierarchical summary of the data, providing an overview of a dataset without needing to know which questions to ask in advance. Each community serves as the basis of a community summary that describes its entities and their relationships.
…Community summaries help answer such global questions because the graph index of entity and relationship descriptions has already considered all input texts in its construction. Therefore, we can use a map-reduce approach for question answering that retains all relevant content from the global data context…”
Examples Of RAG Versus GraphRAG
The original GraphRAG research paper illustrated the superiority of the GraphRAG approach in being able to answer questions for which there is no exact match data in the indexed documents. The example uses a limited dataset of Russian and Ukrainian news from the month of June 2023 (translated to English).
Simple Text Matching Question
The first question that was used an example was “What is Novorossiya?” and both RAG and GraphRAG answered the question, with GraphRAG offering a more detailed response.
The short answer by the way is that “Novorossiya” translates to New Russia and is a reference to Ukrainian lands that were conquered by Russia in the 18th century.
The second example question required that the machine make connections between concepts within the indexed documents, what Microsoft calls a “query-focused summarization (QFS) task” which is different than a simple text-based retrieval task. It requires what Microsoft calls, “connecting the dots.”
The question asked of the RAG and GraphRAG systems:
“What has Novorossiya done?”
This is the RAG answer:
“The text does not provide specific information on what Novorossiya has done.”
GraphRAG answered the question of “What has Novorossiya done?” with a two paragraph answer that details the results of the Novorossiya political movement.
Here’s a short excerpt from the two paragraph answer:
“Novorossiya, a political movement in Ukraine, has been involved in a series of destructive activities, particularly targeting various entities in Ukraine [Entities (6494, 912)]. The movement has been linked to plans to destroy properties of several Ukrainian entities, including Rosen, the Odessa Canning Factory, the Odessa Regional Radio Television Transmission Center, and the National Television Company of Ukraine [Relationships (15207, 15208, 15209, 15210)]…
…The Office of the General Prosecutor in Ukraine has reported on the creation of Novorossiya, indicating the government’s awareness and potential concern over the activities of this movement…”
The above is just some of the answer which was extracted from the limited one-month dataset, which illustrates how GraphRAG is able to connect the dots across all of the documents.
GraphRAG Now Publicly Available
Microsoft announced that GraphRAG is publicly available for use by anybody.
“Today, we’re pleased to announce that GraphRAG is now available on GitHub, offering more structured information retrieval and comprehensive response generation than naive RAG approaches. The GraphRAG code repository is complemented by a solution accelerator, providing an easy-to-use API experience hosted on Azure that can be deployed code-free in a few clicks.”
Microsoft released GraphRAG in order to make the solutions based on it more publicly accessible and to encourage feedback for improvements.
Social media can be a great tool for your business and your SEO, because it can help drive traffic to your website. That’s why it’s good to keep an eye on new social media platforms, like Threads. So, is it worth it to invest your time in Threads? Or should you focus your efforts on other social media platforms?
Before we dive into Threads specifically, it’s good to refresh our memories. So, why is it good for your business to be on social media? Multiple reasons. First, because it helps your off-page SEO, which means it generates traffic to your site.
Second, a lot of people use social media as a search engine nowadays, so being active on multiple platforms can boost your brand’s visibility big time. And finally, it can only enhance your trustworthiness, because your audience will see that there are actual people behind the brand.
What is Threads?
Created by Instagram, Threads is a text-based conversation app. Think of it as Twitter’s sibling. It’s a platform where people are encouraged to be authentic and write whatever they’re thinking.
When Threads was first launched, it became the fastest platform to ever reach 100 million users. Which happened in just five days! However, after a month, Threads quickly lost 80% of its users. So is it not worth the trouble anymore? Not exactly. It still boasts a few million users, and for a new social media platform, that’s not a bad start.
Should you create a Threads account?
Depends! As always, you should look at where your audience is. However, sometimes it can pay off to venture into uncharted territories. And maybe the leap to a new platform isn’t even that big. If your posts always perform well on X (formerly Twitter), then they might actually do well on Threads too—seeing as it’s a similar platform.
Okay, let’s talk about why it might actually be a good idea to create that Threads account.
1. Rapid user growth
As we already mentioned, Threads has quickly gained a large and active user base. This means it has the potential to become even bigger, especially if X (formerly Twitter) keeps making not-so-popular choices.
2. Integration with IG
Since Threads is already connected to Instagram, it allows a seamless integration between the two. This means you can easily share content between the two platforms. Plus, it allows you to use your existing follower base from Instagram. You won’t have to start from zero!
3. Authentic platform with real-time conversation
A huge trend at the moment is authenticity. It’s part of the reason why TikTok has grown so popular, because people are looking for authentic content. They want to see the people behind a brand or business. Since Threads is designed for real-time interactions, this makes it the perfect place for you to build a connection with your audience.
4. Stay relevant
Last but not least, you might want to consider creating a Threads account to stay relevant. If your audience is on Threads, you should be too. This will allow you to stay visible and in the loop, because you know just what your audience is talking about—which you can then use to your advantage!
The future of Threads
It’s tricky to predict what will happen to Threads. How long will it be around? Will it grow more popular or less? Seeing as more people are leaving X (formerly Twitter) and moving to Threads, there’s a big chance that Threads will stick around.
Especially since it’s expected that Threads will introduce more features, such as advanced analytics, ecommerce integration, and an in-app camera function. According to PR Daily, Threads is also testing a draft post option, and exploring automatic archiving of posts, which are all positive signs that Threads is here to say.
Don’t be afraid to experiment on social media
Social media is all about experimentation. Whether it’s trying out funny content or short-form videos, or trying out new social media platforms. Because if you don’t experiment, how will you know what your audience will engage with?
Plus, as we said before, it’s also great for your off-page SEO. If your social media content gets shared by others, you’ll be getting more brand mentions and recognition. You might even get more backlinks! So if you have the time, why not give Threads a go?
Sabrina Joest
Sabrina is the Social Media Specialist at Yoast. She’s responsible for creating and curating engaging content to enhance Yoasts’ brand presence across various social platforms.
This means the file will continue operating even if you accidentally include unrelated content or misspell directives.
He elaborated that parsers typically recognize and process key directives such as user-agent, allow, and disallow while overlooking unrecognized content.
Unexpected Feature: Line Commands
Illyes pointed out the presence of line comments in robots.txt files, a feature he found puzzling given the file’s error-tolerant nature.
He invited the SEO community to speculate on the reasons behind this inclusion.
Responses To Illyes’ Post
The SEO community’s response to Illyes’ post provides additional context on the practical implications of robots.txt’s error tolerance and the use of line comments.
Andrew C., Founder of Optimisey, highlighted the utility of line comments for internal communication, stating:
“When working on websites you can see a line comment as a note from the Dev about what they want that ‘disallow’ line in the file to do.”
Screenshot from LinkedIn, July 2024.
Nima Jafari, an SEO Consultant, emphasized the value of comments in large-scale implementations.
He noted that for extensive robots.txt files, comments can “help developers and the SEO team by providing clues about other lines.”
Screenshot from LinkedIn, July 2024.
Providing historical context, Lyndon NA, a digital marketer, compared robots.txt to HTML specifications and browsers.
He suggested that the file’s error tolerance was likely an intentional design choice, stating:
“Robots.txt parsers were made lax so that content might still be accessed (imagine if G had to ditch a site, because someone borked 1 bit of robots.txt?).”
Building a quality pipeline right now is a challenge, and Google isn’t making it any easier.
Changes in how traffic and leads are coming to your site have probably shifted, yet lead generation is still a top priority.
It’s critical to start by understanding that the customer journey has never been more important. Also, be aware that the final stages are where the most failures happen, such as not having your CRM and sales team ready before a campaign launch.
In a recent webinar, Brent Csutoras and I talked about the shifts that need to happen at an organizational level, not just within your marketing department.
1. The Customer Journey Has Never Been More Important
Understanding customer journeys is crucial for successful lead generation.
Brent and I highlighted the shift in how users navigate online, emphasizing the need for content that addresses pain points throughout the funnel. Quality content that solves problems and adds value at every stage is the key to engaging and converting users effectively.
2. Generating Quality Leads Takes Quality Content, Which Takes Research, Testing, And Budget
Creating content that converts begins with thorough audience and market research.
Regular testing, optimization, and diverse formats like blogs, videos, and emails ensure you can reach potential customers via a media channel that appeals to them. It’s not going to be free, so make sure you allocate a content budget when talking to leadership.
3. The Channels Are Working Fine. It’s Your Content And Execution That Are Not Working
Tried-and-true channels still work. It’s just that too many marketers focus on only the bottom of the funnel because it’s easy to track and attribute.
While some leads will convert from a single content piece, you must prepare for those who require more nurturing before they convert. Considering most of the content you create should be top- and mid-funnel, spend time matching the channel with intent.
Email marketing remains a powerful tool for lead generation, especially when focusing on segmentation and personalization.
Leveraging internal experts and influencers can build trust and credibility with your audience.
Here’s a snapshot of the channels we used to drive leads for this webinar:
4. “Sweat The Assets!” Meaning Use One To Make Many
Maximizing the value of each piece of content is essential for scaling your efforts. Repurpose and tailor content for different platforms and audiences to ensure it serves multiple purposes.
It’s also important to budget for both content creation and promotion, recognizing that quality content requires investment.
5. You Should Expect To Pay Quality Money For Quality Leads
Investing in quality resources for lead generation may mean higher costs, but it can lead to higher quality leads and lower overall Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC). Consider all costs, including advertising and human resources. Optimization and continuous assessment are crucial for optimizing budget spend.
Plus, low-quality leads take your valuable sales resources who could have been working on legit leads. A good lead-scoring strategy can help reduce resource drain.
6. The Key Is An Always-On, Full-Funnel Strategy
A common mistake is relying on a single piece of bottom-funnel content for all stages of the buyer’s journey. Brands must engage their audience consistently from awareness to consideration, conversion, and retention to build loyalty and keep the cycle running.
7. Know What Efforts Are Working For Your Goals
Continuous evaluation is key to understanding the effectiveness of your lead generation strategies. However, with these shifts in customer demand and creating more top-of-the-funnel content, engagement is one of the most important metrics you can track to tell you if your content is resonating.
Leveraging external resources can enhance your lead generation efforts, especially if you’re a lean team. Treat vendors as team extensions, sharing goals and KPIs. Listen to their audience insights. Most importantly, ask if they offer real-time lead delivery to keep leads fresh and your brand top of mind.
9. The Most Important Piece: No Follow-Up = No Leads
Don’t overlook what happens when a lead enters your system. Ensure your customer relationship management (CRM)/customer data platform (CDP)/marketing tech is ready. Set up lead scoring, automation, and dashboards. Prepare your sales teams to smoothly handle new leads, reducing launch day stress for everyone.
It’s All About Building A Customer-Centric Experience
The bottom line is that the way customers want to interact with brands has changed. These strategies outlined above aren’t new. We learned about them in Marketing 101, but they’ve been pushed aside for product-focused marketing over the years.
Customers are really looking for brands who get them, and provide a solution to their pain. Then, they’ll repay you with loyalty.
So, ask yourself – “How is the quality of my leads?” Then, assess how much-focused effort you are putting into their journey.
Discover How You Can Supercharge Your Lead Generation Efforts
As a publisher, we serve as an agency to our advertisers (those looking to reach marketers and SEO professionals). That means we’re marketing to marketers – some of the smartest out there –and that’s you!
And what we’re doing to drive quality leads is working.
Whether you’re an expert or just getting started, Brent Csutoras and I put this webinar together for you. It’s full of functional takeaways that even the savviest marketers tend to forget, or worse, that leadership doesn’t see the value in.
This on-demand webinar has insights that we’ve been taking note of for years, and so should you. You can use this for strategy and to sway others in your organization to change the way you think about – and drive – leads.
Building a quality pipeline is a challenge, and Google isn’t making it any easier.
Changes in the way traffic, and leads, are coming to your site has probably shifted, yet lead generation is still a top priority.
Watch this on demand webinar to learn about channels and tactics that are working, and some of the common missteps we see brands making over and over.
Grab a pen and take notes on the importance of customer journeys, how to build a customer-centric culture across all teams, and what to expect when working with third parties.
Get an insider’s view into lead generation campaign successes and failures for ourselves, and our sponsors.
And, get an exclusive peek behind the curtain and see how we approach product promotions using a holistic, consumer-centered strategy that pays off time after time.
Key takeaways:
The best ways to attract and nurture your leads through every step of their journey.
How to support your team, or an agency, to execute these strategies effectively.
What to do after the lead hits your workflow. Pitfalls to avoid, what’s working, what’s not, and how to set up effective nurture campaigns.
With our very own Heather Campbell and Brent Csutoras, we’ll explore how to shift your strategy to attract and retain quality leads.
If you’re looking to create a holistic and consistent approach that will grow your lead generation efforts to new heights, check out the full webinar.
It has become quiet around AI Overviews. One month after my initial traffic impact analysis, I updated my data for AIOs. The results are important for anyone who aims for organic traffic from Google as we’re seeing a shift in AIO structures.
Shortly after Google just launched AI Overviews on May 14, I looked at 1,675 queries and found:
-8.9% fewer organic clicks when a domain is cited in AIOs than regular results.
A strong relationship between a domain’s organic ranks and AIO citations.
Variations of referral traffic depending on user intent.
Since then:
Featured snippets and AIOs confuse users with slightly different answers.
Google has significantly pulled back AIOs across all industries.
AIOs cite more sources.
Boost your skills with Growth Memo’s weekly expert insights. Subscribe for free!
AIOs Dropped By Two-Thirds
A few days after Google launched AIOs in the US, users found misleading and borderline harmful answers.
In a post titled “About last week,” VP of Search Liz Reid addressed the issue, but also called out that many queries were phrased in a way that would likely return questionable answers.
The debate about LLM answers and questionable queries is not new. Yes, you might get a funny answer when you ask an LLM a funny question. Leading queries were used in the NY Times vs. OpenAI lawsuit and backlash against Perplexity and are no different than leading questions that suggest the answer.
After the PR backlash, Google dropped AIOs across almost every industry by an average of two-thirds.
May 30: 0.6% on desktop, 0.9% on mobile.
June 28: 0.2% on desktop, 0.3% on mobile.
Industries with the largest drops (data from Semrush Sensor):
Health: -3.7% desktop, 1.3% mobile.
Science: -1% desktop, -2.6% mobile.
People & Society: -2% desktop, -3.9% mobile.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
It seems that YMYL industries, such as health, science, animals, and law, were most affected. Some industries gained a small amount of AIOs, but not more than a negligible 0.2%.
Example: SEOmonitor clearly shows the pullback in visibility metrics for the jobs site monster.com.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
For the 1,675 queries I analyzed, the number of AIOs dropped from 42% to 23% of queries (almost half). Interestingly, the domain was cited more often (31% vs. 25%, more shortly) and ranked more often in the top 10 spots (45% vs. 41%).
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
Queries that stopped showing AIOs had, on average, less search volume. However, I couldn’t detect a clear pattern across word count, user intent, or SERP features for queries that gained vs. lost AIOs. The effect applies broadly, meaning Google reduced AIOs for all types of queries.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
AIOs Lean Heavily On No. 1 Web Result For Text Snippets
The before and after comparison allows us to learn more about the structure and behavior of AIOs.
For example, [hair growth products] and [best hair growth products] deliver almost identical AIOs (see screenshots below). The text is the same, but the product list and cited sources are slightly different. Google treats product searches as equal to “best” searches (makes sense).
SERPs for hair growth products (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)
SERPs for best hair growth products (AIO text is identical to screenshot above) Image Credit: Kevin Indig
The biggest difference is that the query for [hair growth products] shows no citation carousel on the side when you click the “show more” button (another example below).
On mobile, the carousel lives at the bottom of the AIO, which is not great for click-throughs. These subtle design differences likely make a big difference when it comes to clicks from AIOs since more prominently featured citations increase the likelihood of clicks.
Citations only expand when users click “show more” (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)
For transactional queries like [hair growth products], Google ranks products in the AIO in no apparent order.
I cross-referenced reviews, average ratings, price, organic product carousel and references in top-ranking articles – none indicate a relationship with the ranking in the AIO. It seems Google leans on its Shopping Graph to sort product lists.
To structure the AIO text, Google seems to pick more elements from the organic No. 1 result than others. For example, time.com ranks No. 1 for [best hair growth products]. Even though the citation in the AIO highlights a section about ingredients (purple in the screenshot below), the whole text closely mirrors the structure of the TIME article before it lists products.
The AIO mirrors the text on the No. 1 web result (time.com) (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)
AIOs use fragments of top web results because LLMs commonly use Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to generate answers.
Sridhar says that Neeva uses a technique called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), a hybrid of classic information retrieval and machine learning. With RAG, you can train LLMs (Large Language Models) through documents and “remove” inaccurate results by setting constraints. In plain terms, you can show AI what you want with the ranking score for web pages. That seems to be the same or similar technique Bing uses to make sure Prometheus results are as accurate and relevant as possible.
The best example of Google mirroring the AIO after the No. 1 web result (in some cases) is the answer for [rosemary oil for hair growth]. The AIO pulls its text from MedicalNewsToday (No. 1) and restructures the answer.
Text in the AI Overview vs. a snippet from MedicalNewsToday (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)
AIOs And Featured Snippets Still Co-Exist
For more informational queries with a featured snippet, like [dht], [panic attack vs. anxiety attack], or [does creatine cause hair loss], Google closely mirrors the answer in the featured snippets and elaborates further.
High overlap between AIOs and featured snippets (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)
In some cases, the elaboration might confuse users. When searching for [which vitamin deficiency causes hair loss], users see a long list in the AIO and a single answer in the featured snippet. While not contradicting each other, the AIO answer makes the featured snippet seem less trustworthy.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
In my opinion, Google would be best off not showing a featured snippet when an AIO is present. However, that would be bad news for sites ranking in featured snippets.
AIOs Contain More Citations
One way Google seems to have increased the accuracy of AIOs after the PR backlash is by adding more citations. The average number of citations increased from 15 to 32 in the sample of 1,675 keywords I analyzed. I haven’t yet been able to confirm that more citations are used to compile the answer, but more outgoing links to webpages are a good signal for the open web because they increase the chance of getting click-throughs from AIOs.
Both Reddit and Wikipedia were cited more often after the PR Backlash. I counted citations from those two domains because marketers pay a lot of attention to influencing the public discourse on Reddit, while Wikipedia has a reputation for having more gatekeepers.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
Keep in mind that, with 0.8% and 1%, the number of citations is relatively low. It seems AIO heavily diversifies the number of citations. Only 23 keywords in the 1,675 keyword sample returned more than 10% of citations from Reddit after the PR backlash (28 for Wikipedia).
Accountability
We can conclude that:
Google shows 50-66% fewer AIOs, which reduces the risk of losing organic traffic – for now.
There seem to be more opportunities to be cited in AIOs, but strong performance in classic web search still largely determines citations and referral clicks from AIOs.
Featured snippets get fewer clicks when AIOs are present since they elaborate much more on the answer.
Google becomes more accountable as it touches the border to publishing with AI Overviews. Verticals like health, science, and law continuously morph as new evidence comes out. It will be curious to understand whether AIOs are able to factor new evidence and opinions in and at what speed.
It’s not clear how, exactly, AI Overviews evaluate the strength of evidence, or whether it takes into account contradictory research findings, like those on whether coffee is good for you. “Science isn’t a bunch of static facts,” Dr. Yasmin said. She and other experts also questioned whether the tool would draw on older scientific findings that have since been disproved or don’t capture the latest understanding of an issue.
If AIOs adapt to new information, websites need to monitor AIOs and adapt content at an equal speed. The adaptation challenge alone will provide room for competitive advantages.
Local business owners consistently face a familiar digital marketing conundrum.
With a myriad of options available and seemingly growing daily, including the recent introductions of AI into the mix, how do you determine the best and most effective approach for your business?
In this guide, we’ll explore the nuances of each option, weigh the pros and cons, and offer actionable insights to help make informed decisions on where to invest your valuable time, resources, and funds.
Understanding Organic And Paid Strategies
Let’s start by defining the fundamental difference between organic and paid strategies:
Organic: Focuses on building long-term brand awareness, trust, and authority via the creation and distribution of consistent, high-quality, optimized content and community engagement. This strategy requires the careful cultivation of a loyal customer base, which naturally takes time and effort.
Paid: Involves investing in often online advertising campaigns to achieve immediate visibility and reach a broader audience quickly. A paid strategy offers a shortcut but requires balancing cost vs. lead volume and quality.
And so, with both search and social media, local business owners are faced with organic and paid options, each of which has unique time, resource, and cost considerations in terms of initial implementation and results.
Below, we’ll review the best practices required for success, along with the pros and cons of each strategy.
While not listed as a best practice, assume all strategies require ongoing monitoring and optimization based on desired outcomes and results – a must for all digital marketing efforts.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
The term search engine marketing is sometimes equated with paid strategies only, but it should really be considered the umbrella for both organic search (local SEO) and paid search (PPC).
Organic Local SEO
The goal of local SEO is for your business to appear prominently in the Local Map Pack and/or organic search results when your customers are looking for services or products you offer.
Screenshot from search for [barrie plumbers], Google, May 2024
Local SEO is much like traditional SEO but requires a few additional steps to be taken.
Best Practices
Keyword research: Identify keywords tied to your business’s services/products, location and competition, which potential customers will be searching for.
Website/on-page optimization: Build a mobile-friendly, responsive, locally-focused website. Optimize your website’s title tags, headings, internal/external links, meta descriptions, and content with relevant keywords.
Local listings: Create a comprehensive and active Google Business Profile (GBP) and ensure your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) is consistent across online directories.
Reviews: Positive, authentic customer reviews, particularly those on GBP, which have been responded to quickly, will go a long way towards establishing local dominance.
Backlinks: Identify relevant local and industry-specific sources to obtain inbound links from to boost authority.
Content marketing: Consistently produce and share high-quality, locally relevant content that answers your audience’s questions and provides consistent value.
Pros
Cost-effective: While SEO requires time and effort to conduct research, identify opportunities or gaps, implement best practice solutions, and monitor results, the overall cost (depending on several factors) tends to be lower than paid search.
Credibility: Organic search results are generally perceived as more trustworthy by users.
Long-term benefits: A well-optimized web presence (e.g., an optimized website, Google Business Profile, high-quality shared content, and relevant backlinks) can consistently attract organic traffic over time.
Cons
Delayed results: As noted, establishing authority and trust is a long-term game. It can take several months to see significant results from SEO activities.
Algorithmic and AI dependency: Search engine algorithms and now LLMs feeding AI-generated results (see Google AI overviews) are constantly evolving, which necessitates ongoing optimization.
Competitive: Establishing authority and visibility for popular keywords can be quite challenging, especially for local businesses in highly populated areas.
Some, including yours truly, will argue that establishing local authority and visibility is very much tied to running a solid business, delivering exceptional services, and engaging with your community.
Well-run local businesses are effectively engaged in local SEO and have an opportunity to be found by their customers via organic search.
Local Paid Search (PPC)
Paid search involves creating and distributing engaging text, image, or video (YouTube) ads on Google or Bing’s search or display networks linked to conversion-focused standalone or website landing pages.
At a local level, service businesses have the option of purchasing Google Local Services Ads, which require qualified businesses to go through a verification process.
Screenshot from search for [barrie plumbers], Google Maps, May 2024
Best Practices
Keyword bidding: Choose relevant keywords with relatively high search volumes and low competition.
Ad copy optimization: Write compelling ad copy highlighting your unique value proposition.
Landing page optimization: Create landing pages aligned with your ad copy and encourage conversions.
Remarketing: Target users who previously visited your website with ads tailored to products or services they may have interacted with.
Pros
Immediate visibility: Ads tied to keyword searches appear near the top of search results immediately.
Targeted reach: Ads can be precisely targeted to specific demographics and locations.
Easily measured results: Track impressions, clicks, and conversions to analyze campaign performance and adjust ad spend accordingly.
Cons
Costly: PPC advertising can be expensive, especially for competitive keywords, such as “plumbers in New York.” A Wordstream study found the average CTR across all industries in Google Ads is 1.91% on the search network and 0.35% on the display network. This means you need to pay for a lot of impressions in order to get clicks.
Quantity over quality: Lots of PPC traffic does not typically translate into lots of conversions.
Click fraud: Many clicks may come from bots or your competitions, thereby wasting a portion of your allotted budget.
Temporary results: Once you stop paying, your ads and traffic will disappear.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
I don’t need to tell you about social media’s pervasiveness in our modern world. However, many local businesses still aren’t quite sure how or if it fits into their marketing mix.
The answers to these questions often lie in the nature of your business and the behaviors and preferences of your audience. In other words, do you have or can you create content that lends itself to social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok?
Do you expect your audience will go to these channels or other social channels in search of this content?
Organic social refers to posting text, images, audio, video, and/or links to any social media channel.
In order for this content to be seen and engaged with, it’s necessary to build and nurture a social following (which is sometimes a missed step in the social media marketing process.)
Screenshot of Superior Plumbing & Heating of Barrie Facebook page/post, May 2024
Best Practices
Visually engaging content: Use high-quality images and videos to capture your consumer’s attention.
Content calendar: Plan and schedule your social media posts in advance.
Hashtags: Use relevant, keyword-rich hashtags to reach a wider audience who use them as a social search mechanism.
Calls toaction: Encourage viewers to click, visit or buy!
Audience building: Follow, like, and share content from other relevant local businesses and content creators.
Community engagement: Respond to all comments, messages, and mentions promptly.
Pros
Cost-effective: Most social media platforms are generally free to use.
Brand building: Foster customer relationships, build community, and showcase your brand’s personality.
Customer engagement: Interact directly with customers, answer questions, and address their concerns.
Cons
Limited reach: Even if you establish a following, which takes time, organic reach on social media is declining, making it harder to reach a significant audience.
Social network dependency: Social media algorithms control the prioritization and display of content in user feeds, also limiting potential reach.
Time-consuming: Creating engaging content and managing multiple social media accounts takes time.
Paid Social Media
Paid social, much like paid search, offers the options of text, image, or video ads distributed via the social network where you expect your audience to be engaged.
Screenshot of mobile Meta/Facebook Ad, May 2024
Best Practices
Audience targeting: Create and target custom hyper-local audiences based on demographics, interests, and behaviors tracked and stored by the social networks.
Ad format: Choose the right ad format for your campaign objectives (e.g. image ads, video ads, carousel ads).
Ad copy: Write compelling ad copy highlighting your unique value proposition.
Landing page optimization: Create landing pages aligned with your ad copy and encourage conversions.
Pros
Targeted reach: The ability to reach very specific demographics, interests, and behaviors
Increased visibility: The opportunity to boost your popular organic posts to reach a larger audience.
Measurable results: Track clicks, impressions, and conversions to analyze and optimize campaign performance.
Cons
Costly: As with PPC, paid social media advertising can be expensive, especially when competing in competitive industries or highly populated locations.
Ad fatigue: Consumers may become annoyed or simply blind to excessive/intrusive advertising.
Algorithm dependency: Social media algorithms also prioritize paid content, making it difficult for posts to gain traction.
Local Challenges
Regardless of the tactic chosen, there are some challenges local business owners need to acknowledge and address.
Limited budgets: Local businesses often have smaller marketing budgets, making it difficult to compete with larger companies on paid search and social media platforms. Be strategic in your spending and focus on targeting the right audience with the right message.
Local competition: Local businesses face stiff competition from other businesses in their area, both online and off. Standing out from the crowd can be challenging, especially in saturated markets. Look for opportunities to differentiate your business through unique value propositions, exceptional customer service, and targeted campaigns.
Limited resources: Many local businesses have limited staff and digital marketing expertise. You may simply not have the time or knowledge to manage complex paid search and social media campaigns effectively. Consider outsourcing to a digital marketing agency or consultant, but do your homework and ask to see what results they have produced for other local businesses.
Keeping up with trends: It can be overwhelming for local businesses to keep up with the latest trends and best practices. Partnering with a digital marketing expert can help them stay ahead of the curve.
Choosing The Right Strategy For Your Local Business
The most effective approach for your local business will depend on your specific goals, budget, and target audience. In assessing your options, consider the following factors:
Goals: What are you trying to achieve? Increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, or increase sales?
Budget: How much are you willing to spend on marketing? Monthly, quarterly, or seasonally?
Target audience: Who are the people you are trying to reach? What keywords do you think they are using when searching for your services or products? What social media platforms do they use?
Timeframe: How quickly do you need to see results for a particular service or product offering?
A well-rounded digital marketing strategy often involves a combination of organic and paid tactics – not organic vs. paid, but organic and paid.
A common and effective approach is to identify organic keywords or topics on which your business has some level of authority and/or visibility, from which you are already receiving traffic and upon which you can build.
Perhaps this represents a unique product or service you offer or one that your customers particularly favor. This is where you focus your local SEO attention.
Concurrently, you may also identify high-value, low-competition keywords you are willing to pay for either via PPC or paid social ads, provided they deliver quick, meaningful results.
Another strategy involves using paid search or social as a test to understand which keywords or topics resonate with your audience and on which channels before you devote time and effort to building and rolling out a full organic content strategy.
If you do have the budget for a comprehensive approach, consider integrating both paid search and paid social into your digital marketing strategy.
Use paid search to capture high-intent users actively searching for your products or services and paid social to build brand awareness, nurture leads, and reach a wider audience.
While sometimes overwhelming, all digital marketing can be tracked, analyzed, and optimized based on what’s working and what isn’t.
Website interactions and inbound channel traffic can be tracked via Google Analytics, PPC ads offer detailed impressions, click and conversion tracking via Google Adwords and Bing Ads, and virtually all paid social platforms include detailed tracking options.
For small businesses, this may be as simple as understanding how many leads or paying customers are being generated from online sources.
However, the more detailed information you can get about the channels responsible for delivering actual customers to your online or physical door, the better.
The Holy Grail is to be able to understand the return you are getting on your investment in each channel, but at least getting close will help validate your strategic decisions.
The Decisions Are Yours
Ultimately, which strategies fit your specific needs will be up to you and will certainly require some fine-tuning over time.
By understanding the true costs, pros, and cons of each approach, you can develop a balanced approach which will deliver tangible results.
Hydropower is the world’s leading source of renewable electricity, generating more power in 2022 than all other renewables combined. But while hydropower is helping clean up our electrical grid, it’s not always a positive force for fish.
Dams that create reservoirs on rivers can change habitats. And for some species, especially those that migrate long distances, hydropower facilities can create dangerous or insurmountable barriers. In some parts of the world, including the US, Canada, and Europe, governments have put protections in place to protect ecosystems from hydropower’s potential harms.
New environmental regulations can leave older facilities facing costly renovations or force them to shutter entirely. That’s a big problem, because pulling hydropower plants off the grid eliminates a flexible, low-emissions power source that can contribute to progress in fighting climate change. New technologies, including fish-safe turbines, could help utilities and regulators come closer to striking a balance between the health of river ecosystems and global climate goals.
That’s where companies like Natel Energy come in. The company started with two big goals: high performance and fish survival, says Gia Schneider, Natel’s cofounder and chief commercial officer.
The company is making new designs for the turbines that generate electricity in hydropower plants as water rushes through equipment and moves their blades. Conventional turbine blades can move as fast as 30 meters per second, or about 60 to 70 miles per hour, Schneider says. When straight, thin edges are moving that quickly and striking fish, “it’s fairly obvious why that’s not a good outcome,” she says.
Natel’s turbine design focuses on preventing fast-moving equipment from making fatal contact with fish. The blades have a thicker leading edge that pushes water out in front of it, creating a stagnation zone, or “basically an airbag for fish,” Schneider says. The blades are also curved, so even if fish are struck, they don’t take a direct hit.
The company has tested its turbines with a range of species, including American eels, alewife, and rainbow trout. In the case of one recent study with American eels, scientists found that over 99% of eels survived after 48 hours of passing through Natel’s equipment. In comparison, one 2010 study found that just 40% of tagged European eels were able to pass through the turbines of a hydropower plant, though survival depended a lot on the size of both the eel and equipment in question.
Changing turbine designs won’t help fish survive all power plants: at some of the biggest plants with the tallest dams, rapid changes in water pressure can kill fish. But Schneider says that the company’s technology could be slotted into up to half of the existing US hydropower fleet to make plants more fish-safe.
Hydropower is one of the world’s older renewable energy sources. By 2030, more than 20% of the global fleet’s generating units will be more than 55 years old, according to the International Energy Agency. The average age of a hydropower plant in the US today is roughly 65 years.
In the US, privately held hydropower plants are licensed by an agency called the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a term of up to 50 years. Roughly 17 gigawatts’ worth of hydropower facilities (enough to power 13 million homes) are up for relicensing by 2035, according to the National Hydropower Association.
Since many of those facilities were started up, there have been significant changes to environmental requirements, and some plants may face high costs and difficult engineering work as they try to adhere to new rules and stay in operation. Adding screens to basically filter fish out of the intake for hydropower plants is one potential solution in some cases, but both installation and maintenance of such a system can add significant cost. In these facilities, Natel’s technology represents an alternative, Schneider says.
Natel has installed several projects in Maine, Oregon, and Austria. They all involve relatively small turbines, but the company is on the way to undertaking bigger projects and recently won a bid process with a manufacturing partner to supply a larger turbine that’s three meters in diameter to an existing plant, Schnieder says. The company is also licensing its fish-safe turbine designs to existing manufacturers.
Whether utilities move to adopt fish-safe design could depend on how it affects efficiency, or the amount of energy that can be captured by a given water flow. Natel’s turbine designs will, in some cases, be slightly less efficient than today’s conventional ones, Schneider says, though the difference is marginal, and they likely still represent an improvement over older designs.
While there’s sometimes a trade-off between fish-safe design and efficiency, that’s not the case with all novel turbines in all cases. A 2019 study from the US Army Corps of Engineers found that one new design improved fish safety while also producing more power.
Slotting new turbines into hydropower plants won’t solve all the environmental challenges associated with the technology, though. For example, the new equipment would only be relevant for downstream migration, like when eels move from freshwater rivers out into the ocean to reproduce. Other solutions would still be needed to allow a path for upstream migration.
Ideally, the best solution for many plants would likely be natural bypasses or ramps, which allow free passage of many species in both directions, says Ana T. Silva, a senior research scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. However, because of space requirements, these can’t always be installed or used.
Natel CTO Abe Schneider holds a large trout used in fish passage testing at the Monroe Hydro Plant in Madras, Oregon.
NATEL
People have been trying to improve fish passage for a long time, says Michael Milstein, a senior public affairs officer at NOAA Fisheries, part of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The solutions in place today include fish ladders, where fish swim or hop up into successively taller pools to pass dams. Other dams are too tall for that, and fish are captured and loaded onto trucks to go around them.
The challenge, Milstein says, is that “every river is different, and every dam is different.” Solutions need to be adapted to each individual situation, he adds; fish-safe turbines would be most important when there’s no bypass and going through a facility is the only option fish have.
The issue of protecting ecosystems and providing safe passage for fish has sparked fierce debates over existing hydropower projects across the western US and around the world.
Even with the current state-of-the-art technology, “it’s not always possible to provide sufficient passage,” Milstein says. Several dams are currently being removed from the Klamath River in Oregon and Northern California because of the effects on local ecosystems. The dams drastically changed the river, wiping out habitat for local salmon, steelhead, and lamprey and creating ideal conditions for parasites to decimate fish populations.
But while hydropower facilities can have negative environmental impacts, climate change can also be extremely harmful to wildlife, Natel’s Schneider points out. If too many hydropower plants are shut down, it could leave a gap that keeps more fossil fuels on the grid, hampering efforts to address climate change.
Reducing hydropower plants’ impact on local environments could help ensure that more of them can stay online, generating renewable electricity that plays an important role in our electrical grid. “Fish-safe turbines won’t solve everything—there are many, many problems in our rivers,” Schneider says. “But we need to start tackling all of them, so this is one tool.”
