You have 173 days left to achieve your marketing goals for this year.
Okay, let’s be honest. After December 20th, no one really worked or did anything.
So you do have 133 days to achieve your marketing goals.
how’s it going?
If your goals are related to organic search, you’re in for a challenging year. Search continues to disrupt the work of content and marketing teams. Everything is a mess, from new algorithms to false starts to imperfect paths outlined by artificial intelligence.
We turned to CMI’s chief strategist, Robert Ross, to help you make sense of all the news and help you move into the next 133 days with more purpose. Watch or continue reading his perspective:
Analyze searcher behavior
SparkToro posted 2024 Zero-Click Search Study This month, you might be surprised to see how much traffic no Generated by search these days.
Zero click search This occurs when searchers can get answers on the results page without having to click on a link. For example, if a searcher asks “What is the address of the White House?” the address—1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—appears on the results page, so the searcher never visits www.WhiteHouse.gov.
Rand Fishkin and his team at SparkToro examined millions of Google searches around the world using what they call the Million Device Clickstream Panel. They don’t think about keywords, which don’t help much anyway. Instead, they looked at what Americans and Europeans did after conducting searches.
What did they find?
More than a third (37%) of people end their search without clicking. Of the remainder, 21% will search again and 41% will click on something.
Of those who click, 70% go to organic results, and 28.5% end up on other Alphabet (aka Google) properties, such as YouTube, Maps, Images, or News. 1% pay per click advertising.
While there are nuances related to mobile and voice searches, the numbers are interesting. For example, nearly 30% of clicks go to Google properties, where Alphabet can further monetize searcher actions. That doesn’t even count the 21% of people who ended up choosing a Google property when doing another search because they didn’t get the right, best, or most satisfying answer the first time.
However, here’s the real kicker: Only 360 of every 1,000 Google searches in the United States go to the open web.
The study concluded that despite what many seem to think, Google is not failing in search. Google has done a great job of translating more searches in more ways to keep users in the Google ecosystem.
Improve your Google strategy
What is takeaway?
People are overreacting to their claims Artificial Intelligence Overview (the AI-generated snippet at the top of the results) and the quality of Google search results are substandard.
The research makes it clear that marketers can no longer treat Google search as an island. In a more perfect world, you would find matching content on other Google properties (YouTube, News, Maps, etc.).
But the larger lesson from the research is that marketers must focus on the Google ecosystem to understand where they are most likely to be the outlet for people looking for things. It’s most likely not a link to your website or blog, at least initially.
You can get philosophical about technically complex zero search results. But the easiest way to approach this problem is to ask: “How do we become the answer that Google uses for a specific query?”
I can tell you from experience the benefits of this. For several years, the Content Marketing Institute’s page has popped up when searchers ask, “What is content marketing?” In recent years, Google has changed that. CMI is still the #1 organic answer to the query, but above it is a “dictionary box” with a third-party definition that I don’t think is quite right.
You have to understand that the search game is rigged. Google optimizes for Google, not your brand.
Even if you hate this game, you have to play it. But the way you play it becomes more and more complex. On a consoling note, Google appears to be rewarding Good, high-quality and informative content. You will continue to create this for the remaining 133 days of the year minus approximately 6 minutes.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
