It has been made quite clear in the previous blog posts regarding AI and SGE, that the landscape of SEO is continuously changing, and therefore it is important to keep up to date with these changes to understand how to adapt SEO strategies according to them. In this month’s blog post, the focus is on local businesses and how SGE has created not only challenges, but new opportunities for them to improve their online visibility, traffic, and revenue.

 

To recap, SGE uses AI to provide users with a new way to search for information. Users are provided with answers that are concise, informative and interactive often in the form of summaries. This then begs the question; how does this all impact Local SEO and local businesses?

Traditional Search Results vs. SGE

 

To understand how SGE may impact local SEO, it is important to understand how traditional search results and SGE differ. With regards to traditional search results, these will typically provide a user with a list of website links where the user will essentially have to look for the answers themselves by looking through the websites provided. SGE on the other hand, analyses various websites to create a concise answer for the user thereby attempting to understand the intent behind the searcher’s query at the same time. Additionally, SGE has the added functionality of being interactive, where users can ask follow-up questions. In traditional search results, the user would rather have to use different search terms or dig deeper into the number of website links provided.

 

To put the above comparison into context, as well as to demonstrate how this could impact local SEO, a search was done for “The best restaurants near me”. The image below depicts the traditional search results for this query. It is clear with traditional search, that the search consists of the top three local map packs, the top list of ranking websites, and often sponsored posts to answer the search query.

 

 

Now, when this same search was done with SGE (see image below), the search results that appeared were quite different to those of the traditional search results shown above. The image below demonstrates how SGE (through their “Places” module) displays information in a summarised fashion, to provide the user with a more concise answer to their question. The SGE results seem to rely mainly on Google My Business information, specifically details such as ratings and reviews.

 

 

As mentioned previously, SGE has the added functionality of interaction. Again, using the above image for context, the SGE search result for “best restaurants near me” took the search result a few steps further than the traditional one by creating categories for some of the local businesses in the Places module. These were “Stunning views” or “Award-winning restaurants” which again is an attempt to answer the user’s question in the best way possible. The image below includes the results within those categories. It appears that the results that were generated, were done so by once again by summarising GMB information such as reviews left by customers to know if they had “stunning views” for example.

 

SGE’s Impact on Local Search Results

It is quite clear from the above images and search results that SGE produces search results which are quite different from the traditional ones. Taking into consideration the examples that were shown above, listed below is a summary of the various ways in which SGE may impact local search results:

1. Google Business Profile information proves to be highly important in the local search results for SGE. The snapshots above are clear examples of how the information is displayed in a summarised manner.
2. SGE’s very similar version of the local map pack called “Places” includes additional information (for example restaurants with a “stunning view”) to provide information that is more helpful to the user. 
3. Featured snippets are still important in SGE, and therefore content that is concise and directly answers search queries is likely to rank in these featured snippets.
4. SGE consistently attempts to understand a user’s intent behind their searches and therefore search results are displayed in an attempt to understand this. 
5. SGE is more likely to interact with long tail keywords as these search queries make the user’s intent more clear. 
6. As shown in the images above where the SGE search results are displayed, it is quite clear that in SGE, traditional website links are less available. Whether or not this will bring less organic traffic to sites is unclear, however, something that may be true is that because SGE attempts to understand a user’s intent, the traffic driven to sites could potentially be of higher quality.

 

How Local Businesses Can Thrive In This New SGE Landscape

 

From the number of ways in which SGE may impact local SEO, it is clear that there are a multitude of opportunities that have been created for local businesses. Below is a list of strategies that local businesses can undertake to thrive in the new SGE landscape. Additionally, it is important to note that many of the current best practices for local SEO and content creation, remain true for SGE. 

 

1. Local businesses need to keep their Google My Business information up-to-date and accurate. SGE draws on this information to provide the best search results to users. 
2. Local businesses need to become a review magnet. It is clear from the SGE results demonstrated above, that SGE does the heavy lifting for users itself, and generates results by analysing reviews left by customers and displaying them in a summarised manner for users. Therefore it is important to not only get as many reviews as you can from customers, but also to get positive ones.
3. Identify the most common questions asked by your customers and ensure that there is content on your website which concisely answers these questions. 
4. Begin to investigate long-tail keywords beyond those simple keywords that your business directly addresses to understand what problems your business solves. Then create content on this. 
5. Once the above has been done, it is important to answer questions directly and concisely. A concise FAQ section on your website is a good example of how to tackle this opportunity.
6. As mobile search dominates local search, your website must be optimised for mobile devices. 
7. Employ a hyper-localised strategy for the content on your website. An example could be to create content around the surrounding neighbourhoods or the local area of your business. 
8. Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness remain key for SGE. Therefore ensure the content you create addresses the four areas.
9. Ensure that links play a vital role in your local SEO strategy. This needs to include creating links (for example backlinks) between your website and other reputable local businesses to signal your website’s authority to Google. 

 

It is important to note here that if any of the strategies listed above are done so with the use or guidance of AI, it should be done so with caution. Available AI tools, such as Chat GPT, tend to create content that scores very poorly on E-E-A-T, and therefore this signals to Google that the content that has been created is not helpful to users. With the latest Google Algorithm update, for example, many websites have been penalised for such practices and uses of AI. AI is great to use as a source of ideas and guidance, however, it is important to add a “human touch” to all content created.

 

Why do we care?

 

As SGE continues to change the landscape of SEO, it is important to understand what these changes are exactly and how to adapt to them. In this blog post, it has been made clear that local businesses need to remain up to date with these changes. Furthermore, as shown in the images throughout the blog post, SGE provides results to users that are different to the traditional search results relying heavily on search intent thereby providing results that are concise and in a summarised manner. Local businesses need to understand how to adapt to these changes, by using the strategies that have been listed for example, to capitalise on opportunities that may potentially lead to an increase in their traffic and most importantly, overall revenue.