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Why It Makes No Sense (And What to Do Instead)

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Why It Makes No Sense (And What to Do Instead)

Everyone knows that structuring your website in a logical way is as important for users as it is for SEO, and “siloing” is one way many SEOs recommend doing this.

But I think that “siloing” is a terrible idea and isn’t something you should do.

In this post, I’ll explain why that is and what you should do instead.

But first, let’s make sure we’re on the same page…

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What is silo structure in SEO?

Silo structure in SEO is a type of website architecture where you group, isolate, and interlink content about a specific topic. This creates clean, distinct sections of related content on your website.

Here’s roughly what SEO silos look like in practice:

Flowchart of silo structure in SEO

You can see that each silo consists of a main silo page and related content, all of which are interlinked. However—and this is a crucial point—the content in one silo does not link to the content in another silo. That’s why it’s called silo structure, as the content is literally isolated in silos.

Why is siloing so popular?

If we run a quick search in Content Explorer, we see over 11K published pages containing the phrase “silo structure” and the word “SEO.”

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Content Explorer search of "'silo structure' AND seo"

The reason for its popularity is the perceived benefits, which usually go something like this:

1. It helps Google to find your pages

Internal links are one of the ways Google finds new pages, so it’s best practice to ensure that all of your pages are interlinked in some way or another.

Siloing can help with this because it creates a logical hierarchical structure with consistent internal linking.

2. It boosts rankings

There are two main reasons why siloing may help to boost rankings.

Better flow of PageRank

PageRank (PR) is Google’s formula for scoring the value of a page based on the quantity and quality of pages linking to it. Backlinks are how PR flows into your site, and internal links are how PR flows around it.

As all pages in a silo are interlinked, siloing helps PR flow between them.

In effect, if one page in a silo attracts lots of high-quality PR-boosting backlinks, some of that PR is shared with other pages in the silo through internal links.

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More contextual internal links

Silos are groups of related content. This means that the internal links between pages within them are usually contextually relevant. In other words, siloing creates internal links to and from pages about similar or related things—and usually with relevant anchors, too.

Both of these things help Google to understand the context of a page, as John Mueller explained in this Webmaster Hangout:

[Internal linking] also helps us to get a bit of context about that specific page. And we get some of that through the anchor text …  and some from understanding where these pages are linked within your site.
John Mueller

For example, if you knew that a page had these internal anchors…

  • The company founded by Steve Jobs
  • The iPhone manufacturer
  • CEO, Tim Cook

… you could probably figure out that it’s about Apple.

The same would be true if a page had internal links from pages about these things:

3. It creates a good user experience

Internal links aren’t just useful for SEO; they also help users to navigate your website.

For that reason, siloing can improve user experience, as it effectively brings topically similar pages closer together. In other words, siloing places content about Steve Jobs, iPhone, and iPad fewer clicks away and helps you find relevant content more easily.

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What’s the problem with silo structure?

Given the potential benefits of siloing, you may be wondering what the problem is and why it’s not something I’ll recommend.

The answer: Forbidding internal links between silos is silly and doesn’t help SEO or users.

For example, let’s say you had these three silos:

Flowchart of three silos: gym studios, gym classes, gym instructors; notably, instructor "Sarah" is under the silo "gym instructors"

Very neat. But what if Sarah teaches Pilates at the New York studio? Wouldn’t it make sense to internally link Sarah’s profile, the class she teaches, and the studio she works at?

Of course. But this would ruin your “silos.”

It’s worth pointing out at this stage that some SEOs disagree with the idea of restricting internal links to silos, including Gael Breton from Authority Hacker:

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Historically, when reading about SEO silos, you’ve probably read about the idea of ‘keeping link juice in the silo’ and only internally linking to pages that are in the same site section.

We disagree with this.

We believe that, in content, as long as it contextually makes sense to link to another page of your site, you should do it.

Gael Breton

However, the reality is that once you do that, you’re no longer siloing. You’re effectively just using a traditional pyramid site architecture, which is recommended by pretty much everyone, including John.

The top down approach or pyramid structure helps us a lot more to understand the context of individual pages within the site.

John Mueller

Best practices for site structure

With silo structure out of the window, let’s look at a few simple best practices for planning and structuring a website with SEO in mind.

1. Use a pyramid structure

Pyramid site structure puts your most important content at the top, followed by your second most important content, your third most important content, etc.

This is how most websites are structured.

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For example, here’s what a website selling home furniture may look like:

Flowchart of pyramid structure with "home" branching out to "living room" and "dining room"; each of them then branches out to related furniture categories

You can see that the internal linking structure resembles a pyramid.

Here are the benefits of pyramid site structure:

  1. Easy to navigate – Visitors start on the homepage, choose a category, then dig deeper.
  2. Good PageRank flow – Site homepages tend to get the most backlinks, so having important content close by makes sense.
  3. Internal links are contextual – Categories link to their respective subcategories and vice versa.

You’ll notice that those three benefits pretty much align with the perceived benefits of silo structure. It just doesn’t have the downside of prohibiting internal links between silos, which brings us neatly to…

2. Internally link where relevant

The main problem with SEO silo structure is that it prohibits linking relevant contextual opportunities outside of the silo. Using a pyramid structure with no such stipulations solves this.

For example, let’s say that you have some dining room chairs and a sofa in the same style. You can happily internally link between those pages despite them being in different areas of the site.

Flowchart of pyramid structure; notably, "blue velvet sofa" and "blue velvet chairs" can be interlinked even though they're located in different areas of the site

This is better for users and your bottom line.

If you want to find relevant internal linking opportunities, there are a couple of ways you can do that using Ahrefs’ Site Audit (get access for free with Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account).

The first is using the Link Opportunities tool, which suggests where you should add internal links.

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For example, here the report is suggesting we link from our SEO glossary to our meta robots guide:

Internal link opportunities report results

This is because our meta robots guide ranks in the top 100 for “meta robots.”

The second is using the Page Explorer tool, which allows you to search for mentions of any word or phrase on your website.

For example, if we search for mentions of “search quality rater guidelines” on the Ahrefs blog, which is a keyword we’re targeting in our QRGs guide, we see a mention in our list of Google ranking factors.

Page explorer report results

It probably makes sense to internally link from here, as it may help boost our page in Google.

3. Create content hubs for blog content

Blog content typically suffers from a lack of contextual hierarchy because it’s published chronologically. You can solve this by creating content hubs out of related posts.

Content hubs are similar to silos in that they are interlinked collections of related content.

Here’s what they typically look like:

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Flowchart of content hub: "vegetable" is in center and branches out to different vegetables like carrot, beetroot, etc

The only true difference between hubs and silos is that you’re free to link between content hubs.

For example, let’s say that we have two content hubs: one about fruits and the other about vegetables. Given it’s a common misconception that tomatoes are vegetables, it may make perfect sense to internally link from the post about tomatoes to the vegetable hub page.

Flowchart showing 2 content hubs "fruits" and "vegetables"; "tomatoes" connected to "fruit" can be internally linked/connected to "vegetable" hub

You’re free to do that with content hubs because, unlike with siloing, there’s no rule that you can’t.

In effect, content hubs give you the best of both worlds; related content is grouped and interlinked (as is the case with silos), but you’re also able to internally link between pages where it makes sense. 

Recommended reading: Content Hubs for SEO: How to Get More Traffic and Links With Topic Clusters

4. Make sure important content isn’t too deep

Deep content is harder for users to find, but it’s a common misconception that this is also true for search engines. As long as your content is internally linked, Google will be able to find and index it.

The problem is that Google may not prioritize the crawling or indexing of deep content because it assumes it holds little to no value for searchers.

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This is why you need to ensure that important content is not buried deep in your site.

You can see how deep your content is at a glance using Ahrefs’ Site Audit. Just go to the Structure Explorer and toggle the “Depth” tab.

"Depth" filter in Structure explorer

For example, you see above that most of the pages on the Ahrefs blog are between one and three clicks from the seed (in this case, the blog homepage). However, a few pages are 5+ clicks away, which probably isn’t ideal for important content.

You can see the pages in each depth bucket by clicking on the corresponding part of the visual representation.

For instance, if we click on the “5” bucket for the Ahrefs blog, we see only archive pages:

List of URLs and corresponding data in the "5" bucket

As these pages aren’t particularly important, the depth probably isn’t an issue. However, if we saw important pages or posts here, we might consider adding relevant internal links to them from other content higher in our site’s hierarchy.

Final thoughts

Organizing your content makes sense, but siloing your content doesn’t. All this does is preclude you from internally linking to your content from relevant and contextual locations on your site, hindering SEO.

My advice is to organize your site roughly in a pyramid structure, group related blog or informational content into hubs, and then simply internally link to and from pages wherever it makes sense. This is not only best for SEO, but it also makes your site easier for visitors to navigate.

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Got questions? Disagree? Ping me on Twitter.




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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.


Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

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