The new AI Mode will change search – that much is certain. Google will then look like ChatGPT. How should marketing deal with this? What changes in SEO, website traffic, and user behavior?
We discuss this in this podcast episode. It is clear to us: SEO as a marketing discipline will change significantly. At the same time, it is also evident that companies will need to continue investing in organic visibility. This is because customers continue to seek information about products and services and will visit websites to submit inquiries or make purchases in a shop.
What is AI Mode?
AI Mode is Google’s new AI search. In the USA, AI Mode is already available to all users. Last week, Google also rolled out AI Mode in India (Google’s second-largest market). It will only be a matter of time until AI Mode also comes to Germany.
AI Mode is actively promoted by Google in the search bar. Clicking the button there leads to the new AI interface. Unlike AI Overviews, AI Mode is not merely a summary. It is a chat interface where you can write your prompts and ask further questions in the chat.
Unlike ChatGPT, AI Mode evidently always draws “support” from the open web. The AI answer is not generated purely from a language model. Instead, a so-called fan-out occurs: the prompt is translated into keywords and search queries, up to 100 websites or excerpts thereof are analyzed, and the AI-supported answer is then generated from this.
A selection of the sources evaluated by the AI can be found on the right side. Three sources are prominently displayed.
What Will Change with AI Mode?
SEO AI Optimization: Source Analyses
The AI answer in AI Mode is generated based on sources from the internet. Comparators, portals, and independent websites are often displayed here. Being mentioned on other websites – “Off-page Optimization” – has always been a sub-discipline in SEO. From our perspective, the approaches and measures will change significantly here:
- Branding instead of Backlinks: For a long time, the SEO principle was: more backlinks lead to better ranking opportunities. In the future, however, it will be much more crucial whether and that one is mentioned (“Brand Mention”). This is because it automatically increases one’s relevance within the language model.
- Digital Relations instead of Link Building: We are convinced that the methods will also change significantly. Cold link requests have hardly been successful for years. Instead, PR methods are becoming much more relevant: building lasting relationships, developing collaborations – and thus being mentioned.
Revise Content Strategy
In content strategy, two directions are being discussed:
- AI Optimization: Optimize content so that it can be easily read and processed by AI systems like AI Mode. This involves formulating content in a structured, understandable, and factual manner, with the goal of influencing the AI’s output – for example, if one’s own product or service is to be considered.
- Stronger User Focus: A major weakness of SEO texts is that they are often written only for search engines. However, precisely such generic, general texts are now also generated by AI Mode itself. It is now clear that more in-depth content than what the AI answer offers is needed. Here, we advocate for a systematic approach to incorporate one’s own expertise and experience into the content.
Improve Technical SEO Performance
Many websites still have significant technical SEO problems. This is a correspondingly major obstacle to being considered by AI systems at all. Technical problems include, for example:
- Indexing of relevant pages, especially product and category pages in shops
- Structured Data that can be very well read by the AI
- Core Web Vitals, especially loading times, which either reduce or increase user bounce rates
In Academy workshops and our consultations, we repeatedly observe: Those who have optimized their SEO performance are frequently and favorably mentioned in AI systems. This will be similar with AI Mode.
In our Logfile Analysis on AI Bots, we have already discussed: The new AI systems frequently visit and read all content for their training data.
We Advise Marketing Managers on SEO
For anyone seeking an SEO sparring partner or comprehensive SEO consulting, Fabian and Benjamin are the perfect choice. As an in-house SEO expert, I sought competent SEO support and found it with them. During a very pleasant introductory meeting, we jointly developed an approach to establish SEO among the individual stakeholders and thereby gain more internal visibility for the subject. Based on this initial discussion and a joint kick-off with the stakeholders, they developed a sound SEO and content strategy for a product area. Since then, they have both supported me as sparring partners during implementation.
The collaboration with Fabian and Benjamin is a great pleasure for me and all project participants, as they are masters of their craft and bring immense passion for SEO. This combination is infectious and motivates everyone to achieve peak performance.
I look back with great satisfaction on the SEO project that we carried out with Benjamin and Fabian. Firstly, the collaboration was on a very pleasant, goal-oriented level. Secondly, the consultation was structured in such a way that we could immediately start with the implementation. We received very concrete optimization suggestions that were tailored to our internal capacities and therefore realistically implementable. Even though only a few months have passed, we can already see the first results of our work in the Google rankings. Traffic for our relevant keywords is steadily increasing, and we still have enough concrete work packages from Benjamin in the pipeline to boost our site. Furthermore, through the consultation, we have acquired so much internal SEO know-how that we can now optimize our site independently. And most importantly: Visitor numbers have doubled – with correspondingly positive effects on sales.
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