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Advice And Inspiring Resources You Should Follow

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Advice And Inspiring Resources You Should Follow

I have been in the SEO industry for over seven years, and I have been leading the SEO team for the last year and a half.

One thing that keeps the job exciting is how dynamic the industry can be. But this can also be a challenge for some.

Like any average person, especially those in marketing and SEO, I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs – and a lot of life lessons. Some of them might prove useful for you.

I’ve also reached out to some influential colleagues in the SEO industry to share their experiences.

I wanted to compare their stories to mine or show a broader perspective on this career path, and how to make your life easier in such a high-demand market.

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In this post, I’ll share my own experience as a woman and insights from remarkable women and non-binary colleagues in the SEO industry, as well as highlight some useful resources.

With this article, I want to celebrate female and non-binary SEO pros because of their personas and accomplishments (not just because of their gender or identification).

My goal is to inspire you to explore the content crafted by these experts who shape the SEO industry and share knowledge that we all – regardless of gender – can benefit from.

Now, I’m ready to share my personal experience.

Some Of My Personal Wins

For some SEO professionals, their biggest wins are growing their projects and their company’s or client’s website.

Others see success in leading a company or a team. And there are also those for whom it’s all about overcoming personal limits or fears. I have a bit of everything.

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First, managing the brand’s website, especially when it’s an SEO platform, is quite a responsibility. This website is feeding a huge team, and it can’t go wrong any time – you can’t let things go wrong.

I’ve experienced a traffic drop after the December 2022 update. And it was the first drop in my career that I was fully responsible for.

Our team recovered after that update and has significantly grown our organic traffic since then.

It was a stressful experience, but going through it makes you less afraid of failures or such unpredictable turns – you’ve already experienced one of your deepest fears as an SEO of a brand website.

Becoming the head of SEO and a team manager was one of my biggest professional challenges that became one of my biggest personal wins.

Before I got into this position, I thought it involved too much responsibility that I might not be able to handle. Leading, indeed, means taking complete responsibility for people, processes, and results.

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But this position is also empowering, and it opened up new opportunities for my growth.

Some Of My Personal Struggles

I can highlight two struggles many people in SEO or other demanding and dynamic jobs can relate to.

Burnout

As a perfectionist, I tend to raise the bar high for myself and my performance. And I also love my job so I put a lot of effort into it.

But as a manager, I usually have to juggle tasks, meetings, requests, and deadlines. I believe the combination of these factors has led me to burnout a couple of times. Recovery is a long process, but I’ve overcome it.

Some of my tips here are to multitask, switch tasks less during the day/week, and focus more on important ones while delegating.

Otherwise, you’ll just get more tired and won’t be able to accomplish much. Also, limit your work hours, which might be harder when you work remotely.

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Spend more time being outside your working space (a.k.a. on your laptop).

For instance, I try to have long walks every day, do workouts or yoga regularly during the work week, and try to spend my weekends outside my apartment.

Imposter Syndrome Or Feeling Not Good Enough

Before becoming a manager, I thought a good manager had to be the smartest and the most stress-resistant person in the room, which didn’t align with my perception of myself.

But after taking this role, I’ve built a more mature vision of what it means to be a team leader. This helped me overcome my imposter syndrome.

Now, being a good manager for me means delivering results while keeping my team happy.

And this doesn’t mean you should do everything yourself and be the best at everything – but you surely need to be a problem-solver and a good communicator.

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Some Advice That Might Make Your Life As An SEO Pro Easier

Do Less To Get More

Since my student years, I’ve pushed myself into the hustle culture. I combined my studies with a part-time job (or even full-time) and some side projects.

After graduating and starting a full-time job, I often took some online courses and freelance projects after work or on the weekends. I felt guilty when I wasn’t doing something useful or wasn’t productive all the time.

Now, I realize this means doing a lot and not reaching the best results.

Last year, I shifted to a more focused and quality-based mode, which helped me achieve more while being in a better mental state.

But be ready that, in choosing this path, you’ll need to say “No” to some opportunities or people more often. This is something I’m also still learning.

Those were some of my experiences that I believe could be useful to my SEO colleagues.

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As you read this, I hope you feel that you’re not alone, even if you’re working remotely as a one-person-team in-house SEO professional.

To show you that we’re not alone in the challenges we face, I’m excited to share personal stories and lessons from some amazing people from the industry.

Insights From My Female And Non-Binary Colleagues

“Get Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable” – Shelley Walsh, SEO Content Strategist, Search Engine Journal

The first to share is Shelley Walsh, SEJ SEO content strategist, founder of ShellShock SEO content services, and SEO Pioneers content producer. She came to SEO after taking on many different creative roles.

After years of offline marketing, creative and business experience, she started in SEO at the bottom again in her late 30s, which was quite a challenge. Walsh recalls:

“I remember attending my first conference at Brighton and not knowing anyone, feeling intimidated and overwhelmed.

I had to push myself hard to introduce myself and talk to people. A few years later, I was speaking at the conference, and most of the people I admired were friends.”

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Shelley confesses that she suffers from imposter syndrome. One of the reasons is that the SEO industry constantly evolves at light speed, and you can’t learn at the same light speed. And the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.

“From speaking to many successful people, I don’t think that fear of not being good enough ever goes away – but it can be a positive to drive you to be good at what you do.

The payback is that I hover on the edge of burnout constantly. However, I feel driven to keep learning and be the best version of myself.”

For women in SEO, although I think this tip is useful for everyone, Shelley advises networking and stepping out of your comfort zone.

“Invest in your network. I invest a lot of time to connect and keep in touch, and I have a fantastic worldwide network of contacts who are also friends.

And get comfortable with being uncomfortable. To achieve anything, you have to step out of your comfort zone and be able to deliver even under less-than-ideal circumstances.”

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“Take The Time To Find Out What Works For You” – Tory Gray, CEO & Founder, Gray Dot Company

Tory Gray, CEO and Founder of Gray Dot Company, also suffered burnout. But in her case, it was the first step towards the creation of her company.

“Burnout was certainly a challenge, but it – very fortunately – led me to freelancing. Freelancing turned into building my company, so taken altogether, I’m very grateful. The biggest way I recovered was taking the time to calmly explore my interests and options.”

She applied the same approach to finding the best tactics for dealing with stress: Take the time to find out what works for you.

“What works for me, personally, is sleep; ideally, 9+ hours of it per night. I very much don’t subscribe to the ‘wake up at 5 a.m. to answer emails and workout’ philosophy.

Learn about what works: dancing, rest, exercise, meditation, etc. But how much and when and which of those options to explore is a very personal decision. Don’t get hung up on the rules others place on you – take the time to find your own right fit.”

“Find Things That Bring You Joy” – Lazarina Stoy, SEO & Data Science Consultant

For Lazarina Stoy, an SEO & Data Science Consultant who grew her personal brand and became a manager and a professional mentor, burnout has been the most challenging thing to overcome so far.

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“I had to take a hard break and reframe how to prioritize wellbeing and life over work. This has helped me become more in-tune with the aspects of work that I enjoy and how to pursue them more actively, set healthy boundaries, and champion myself a bit better.”

Lazarina has also found a way to balance work and life and deal with stress. Her advice to those struggling with it now is to find things that bring you joy outside of work.

“Prioritize rest and deep relaxation, including digital detox. Limit the information intake for work-related things to working hours.

Always try reframing news and industry events as a passing occurrence – part of the job – not as something that defines you as a person or threatens your role or existence.”

“Prioritize What Truly Matters To You” – Myriam Jessier, SEO Executive, PRAGM

Myriam Jessier, SEO Executive at PRAGM, says that imposter syndrome has been a persistent challenge throughout their career.

“I could tell you that I overcame it by surrounding myself with supportive peers, but that’s not the truth.

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I learned to embrace uncertainty and be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I see new challenges as opportunities to keep learning and to improve my skill set.”

They also had to deal with a toxic manager, which was the reason why they decided to open their own agency. Ultimately, it turned out to be one of Myriam’s biggest wins.

“It pushed me to confront personal fears and embrace my entrepreneurial spirit. I had been told for years I should have my own agency, but I never dared.

This journey has been incredibly rewarding, allowing me to build a company that reflects my values and work with clients I’m passionate about.”

As an agency owner, Myriam sees the biggest challenges in burnout and productivity dysphoria.

“You should not let it eat you alive. If you do, you may lose your love of SEO and that would be a disaster if you make a living with those skills.”

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Their tips for better work-life balance don’t require a lot of effort to put them into practice. Still, they can make a difference.

This end-of-working-day routine is something I should try.

“The one tip I have for those of you who are sedentary is to have a closing ritual for the day. Light a special candle or play a song that signals your work day has ended.

I used to meditate a bit, and it helps, but I absolutely dislike doing it since my dog will always find a way to climb on top of me and try to lick my nostrils.”

Here’s one more piece of advice that will come in handy when planning a vacation. We all have been there: You come back from vacation and start raking up your backlog, but your colleagues are there with tons of new requests.

“My last tip is: Tell people you are going on vacation a week earlier than you truly are and return maybe a week later than you truly are.

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Let me explain. You don’t have to lie; just say that you are unavailable from that date to that date. It will give you time to ease back into work and handle a few things that accumulated during your break … before the horde attacks you with a bunch of new requests.”

Myriam’s advice to colleagues in SEO is to prioritize what truly matters to you so that you don’t waste your energy on things that don’t align with your values or vision.

“This sometimes means being comfortable being disliked by the person in front of you because it will lead to you getting more out of the deal than if you were bending over backward to please them.

But you have to be in a position where you can afford to do that. This means that you have to invest in yourself, in your skills, and in your reputation.”

Valuable Resources From Influential Women In SEO

The powerful voices of numerous influential women make the SEO industry thrive. They are educators, innovators, and community builders who share their knowledge and experience and drive changes.

In this section, I’ll share valuable podcasts, trusted communities, illuminating newsletters, and insightful YouTube channels created and ranked by female SEO leaders. These are sources of SEO wisdom and inspiration.

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  • Marie Haynes’ community platform is a place where SEO professionals can find a wealth of useful information and stay connected. Marie runs the “Search News You Can Use” newsletter and podcast that covers the latest industry trends and updates.
  • Aleyda Solis, an internationally praised SEO consultant, shares her expertise through various channels, including podcasts, newsletters, educational YouTube videos, and an SEO community. Aleyda does whatever she can and more to foster a supportive network for SEO enthusiasts.
  • SEOSLY by Olga Zarr demystifies complex SEO concepts and strategies. In her podcasts, newsletters, and YouTube channel, Olga covers complex SEO topics and explains how to stay ahead of industry shifts.
  • MarketingSyrup SEO Academy and Smart SEO newsletter by Kristina Azarenko help professionals navigate the dynamic SEO landscape with confidence and expertise.
  • Kate Toon is a business mentor, writer, speaker, and award-winning digital marketing coach who equips her audience with the skills and knowledge to excel in SEO, copywriting, and digital marketing.
  • Tech SEO Tips by Nikki Halliwell provides targeted advice and updates, enabling SEO professionals to stay at the forefront of technical SEO developments.
  • Women in Tech SEO community is a go-to resource for women in the SEO and tech industries, offering a supportive space for sharing knowledge, networking, and professional growth.
  • Sisters in SEO is another vibrant community that fosters collaboration and empowerment among women in the SEO field, encouraging members to share insights and experiences.
  • The SEO Mindset Podcast is hosted by self-confessed SEO nerd Sarah McDowell and Tazmin Suleman, a life coach with an SEO background. It gives SEO professionals actionable personal growth and career development tips and offers deep insights into SEO strategies, mindset shifts, and industry trends.
  • Confessions of an SEO podcast by Carolyn Holzman offers an intimate look at the SEO industry, blending professional insights with personal stories. Carolyn’s podcast feels like a heart-to-heart with a seasoned expert, providing practical tips and real-world experiences that resonate.
  • SEO Pioneers YouTube channel by Shelley Walsh is a series of interviews with industry pioneers and influencers that share their personal stories about how they helped to shape the industry and their advice and tips about SEO. Lots of valuable insights from some of the best SEO professionals.
  • Search Engine Journal contributors like me, Martha van Berkel, Motoko Hunt and Sherry Bonelli share high-value advice on SEO and building business in the digital space.

Wrapping Up

Building your career in the SEO industry isn’t an easy road to take. It’s filled with ups and downs, challenges and victories.

As my own story and the stories of my incredible colleagues show, it’s all about our resilience and creativity in finding solutions to problems.

At the end of the day, working in SEO isn’t just about website optimization, rankings, and algorithms.

It’s also about the connections we build, the support we offer, the knowledge we share, and the issues we overcome.

More resources: 


Featured Image: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?

In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.

Price: Free

Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.

Most common reporting use case

GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.

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As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:

  • Total Impressions
  • Average CTR
  • Average Position
gsc-performance-overviewgsc-performance-overview

Tip

If you’ve signed up for AWT using Google Search Console, you can view your GSC performance data in Ahrefs by clicking “GSC Performance” from the main dashboard.

But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.

organic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-yearorganic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-year

Favorite feature

One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.

google-search-console-indexed-pages-reportgoogle-search-console-indexed-pages-report

If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.

Price: Free

Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.

Most common reporting use case

Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.

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Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.

Such as:

  • Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
  • Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
  • Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
  • Social media platformsFacebook, Reddit, and Twitter
  • Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage

Sidenote.

If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks

google-looker-studio-partner-connectorsgoogle-looker-studio-partner-connectors

Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:

ahrefs-seo-audit-dashboardahrefs-seo-audit-dashboard
Ahrefs Google Looker Studio integration

With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.

Favorite feature

The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.

Price: Free for 500 URLs

Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.

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Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.

screaming-frog-user-interface-screenshotscreaming-frog-user-interface-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.

Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.

Favorite feature

Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs. 

If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.

screaming-frog-api-accessscreaming-frog-api-access

Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.

Price: Free

Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.

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when-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustrationwhen-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustration

For example, you could use our:

Most common reporting use case

One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.

With AWT, you can:

  • Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
  • See the performance of your website
  • Check all known backlinks for your website
ahrefs-overviewahrefs-overview

Favorite feature

Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.

If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).

Price: Free

Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.

Most common reporting use case

For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.

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ahrefs-seo-toolbar-overviewahrefs-seo-toolbar-overview

With the free version, you get the following features:

  • On-page SEO report
  • Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
  • Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
  • SERP positions
  • Country changer for SERP

The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.

If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.

severity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbarseverity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Favorite feature

The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.

indexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbarindexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.

Price: Free

Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.

google-analytics-screenshotgoogle-analytics-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.

Favorite feature

You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.

Price: Free

Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.

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Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.

google-slides-screenshotgoogle-slides-screenshot

Most common reporting use cases

The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.

Favorite feature

One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.

share-video-chat-google-slidesshare-video-chat-google-slides

This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.

Price: Free

Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.

Most common reporting use cases

Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.

Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.

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Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.

bbq-google-trends-graphbbq-google-trends-graph

Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.

Favorite feature

Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.

google-trends-comparison-examplegoogle-trends-comparison-example

Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.

You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.

regional-trends-via-google-trendsregional-trends-via-google-trends

Final thoughts

These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.

The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.

Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.

These findings include:

  • When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
  • 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
  • Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.

Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.

As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.

High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects

The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.

The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.

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The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.

This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.

The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.

Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results

With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.

When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.

Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.

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New Competition From Unexpected Sources

The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.

On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.

An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.

Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search

The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.

Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:

“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”

Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.

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Methodology & Limitations

To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.

The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.

While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.

Why We Care

The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.

Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.

SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.

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As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.

How This Could Help You

While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.

Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:

  • As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
  • Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
  • Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
  • Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
  • Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.

Looking Ahead

While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.

By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.


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