10 Tips to Rank in Google’s Search Generative Experience

The year 2023 marked the advent and massive rise in the popularity of generative AI and its applications. Undoubtedly, ChatGPT pioneered the attention that generative search has received. Given the open-source nature of the GPT engine, it’s not surprising that many developers followed suit, including Google.

Google released its proprietary generative AI tool, initially called Bard, but it was replaced with Gemini. Unlike ChatGPT, which was trained with massive data until 2022, Gemini could access search results to provide more helpful content in response to search queries.

Of course, with Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” Gemini is hardly the end of its objective.

Enter: Search Generative Experience.

This resource will explore SGE in-depth and offer tips on optimizing your content for inclusion in SGE’s snapshots. Keep reading.

What is Search Generative Experience (AI Overviews)?

Search Generative Experience, now known as AI Overviews, is Google’s brainchild designed to modernize Google search by infusing it with generative AI. This AI-powered search engine extracts information from multiple results to give users the gist of a topic more quickly. Jump-off points are also provided for users to explore queries related to their original inquiry.

Here’s what it looks like:

AI Overviews vs. Organic Search Results

Traditional organic search results feature a list of web pages arranged according to the site’s popularity, relevance, and alignment to search intent. Appearing on SERPs boosts a website’s visibility in the conventional search engine optimization sense. The higher a page’s placement on SERPs, the more organic traffic it receives.

However, traditional search results tend to answer one question or explore one topic, causing users to jump off several pages to find their answer.

SGE results or AI Overviews seek to change this. SGE’s AI-generated content aims to help searchers find information as quickly as possible. No more jumping off pages, just a straight, comprehensive answer.

AI Overviews vs. Featured Snippet

A Featured Snippet is a section of organic search that provides users with quick answers to their queries. It often appears as excerpts or summaries of content that are not altered in any way. Snippets are also derived from a single web page, as opposed to SGE, which extracts information from multiple sources, making them more comprehensive.

Here’s what a featured snippet looks like:

Rank in Google’s AI Overview with These 10 Tips

Making your way to Google’s AI Overview is not that difficult, or that’s what Google wants you to think. Here is what Google Search Central has to say:

“There is nothing special for creators to do to be considered other than to follow our regular guidance for appearing in search, as covered in Google Search Essentials.“

In other words, follow SEO best practices, and you’re good. But if you’re not even making a mark in traditional search ranking, how will your odds fare in this new knowledge panel?

SEO is already difficult enough. And appearing on AI Overviews adds an additional layer of difficulty. But we’re here to change that.

Discover our top 10 tips to let your content rank in SGE:

1. Build relevant and high-quality backlinks

Backlinks refer to hyperlinks from external domains leading back to your websites. Google considers them votes of confidence, indicating that you are a reputable source of information. They also suggest that you are doing something good, hence people linking to your content.

With more backlinks pointing to your page, Google may pay more attention to your content for AI Overviews. Here are some ways you can build backlinks to your website:

Guest posting

Find relevant blogs aligned with your niche and pitch your topic ideas. If they approve, you might be able to submit a guest article in exchange for a backlink to your website.

Broken link building

Look for broken links in the content of blogs relevant to your industry. Contact the site owner and propose your link to replace the original URL. If they accept, you will have one free backlink for yourself.

Buy the links

Google itself recognizes that buying-and-selling links are normal in the modern digital economy. While you will likely get a rel=”sponsored” link rather than a dofollow, what matters is Google treats these backlinks as “hints” to understand the linked content. That boosts your site’s relevance score. 

2. Implement E-E-A-T during content creation

E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. While not necessarily ranking factors, these are qualities that Google looks for when ranking content on SERPs. In other words, content demonstrating E-E-A-T is more likely to rank ahead of others.

According to Google’s SEO fundamentals, “our systems give even more weight to content that aligns with strong E-E-A-T for topics.”

Among the four letters, trustworthiness is what matters most. Keep your content real and steer clear of superficial results, especially for topics concerning people’s health, finances, safety, and stability.

The more E-E-A-T your content, the likelier AI Overviews will notice it.

3. Target long-tail keywords

According to SEOs, long-tail keywords are a website’s best friend because they have low competition, which means ranking for them is relatively easier. The same principle applies to AI Overviews.

Remember that SEO, organic search, and SGE are directly correlated. When you rank highly for organic search, AI Overviews may tend to recognize your content better for its snapshot. That is possible when you target low search volume, low competition, and long-tail keywords.

While targeting long-tail keywords is not an AI Overview “ranking factor” (if you will), it indirectly impacts your chances to rank in AI Overviews.

4. Answer complex or niche questions

According to Google’s resource on how AI Overviews work, the AI-generated snapshot tends to appear for searches involving “complex questions that might have previously taken multiple searches.” Otherwise, good old Google organic results or the Featured Snippet are enough to answer the search query.

What do complex questions even mean?

Google didn’t give a direct definition but said something that would normally require multiple searches to answer.

This could refer to niche questions or highly specific, even hypothetical inquiries that can pique a user’s interest.

One way to do this is by creating dedicated resources that answer relevant questions, such as People Also Ask and FAQs. Being active on forums and communities lets you get in on the biggest inquiries of users.

When people ask these complex questions on Google, your content will be at the forefront as a resource for AI Overview snapshots. 

5. Ensure content is NLP-friendly

NLP stands for natural language processing. It is a branch of artificial intelligence that allows systems to understand the content, context, meaning, and nuances behind sentences. Basically, it lets AI comprehend things the way we humans do.

While Google does not explicitly mention NLP, they have guidelines for creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.

The document simply reminds people to focus on writing substantial, comprehensive, reliable, and valuable content free from spelling errors and stylistic issues while keeping the readability high.

6. Create high-quality and supportive visuals

Visual content is designed to make written-word materials more comprehensible for the everyday user. They support the content by giving users a visually appealing data source, preventing information overload and visual fatigue.

AI Overviews also integrate visuals into their snapshots, making them a valuable addition to a piece of content. Proper image and video SEO is important to optimize visual content, increasing its visibility in Google’s eyes.

Here are examples of visual content you may add to your SEO articles:

7. Register on Google’s Merchant Center

The Merchant Center is Google’s entrepreneurial hub for businesses selling physical products. When your business registers on Google Merchant Center, your products have increased chances of appearing on search, Maps, YouTube, Shopping, and Images.

While Google doesn’t explicitly say it impacts AI Overviews, it might appear on some searchers. AI Overviews is only available in the U.S. and via Google’s Search Labs. Since it has not yet been rolled out globally, there might be additional modifications to its uses.

8. Make it into Google’s Knowledge Graph

Google’s Knowledge Graph is a database of factual information about people, places, and things. This is usually found at the top of the search results, on the right side of the first organic result or featured snippet.

While this Google knowledge panel often features results from Wikipedia, it may also cover other sources, provided they feature factual information. Since Google places heavy emphasis on trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), facts and figures can greatly impact search results.

By extension, making it into the Knowledge Graph boosts your chances of landing on the search engine’s AI Overviews section.

9. Practice effective internal linking

Making your links crawlable is one of Google’s key best practices for making pages eligible to appear and perform well on SERPs, as shown below:

Search engines like Google have web crawlers that explore the face of the internet, looking for pages to add to its index. Building internal links throughout a website hastens this crawling process.

Internal links are like portals, allowing web crawlers to jump from the source to the linked page. This helps Google crawl and index newly published pages more easily.

Adding more pages from your site to Google’s index expands the pool of information from which AI Overviews are taken, increasing your chances of making the snapshot.

Conversely, without proper internal linking, Googlebot will take longer to crawl and index your website’s new pages, resulting in slower SEO progress and, by extension, lowering your chances of being included in the AI Overviews.

Internal linking tools are useful for finding and suggesting internal linking opportunities within a website. Instead of manually going through pages, the tool does it automatically, which saves time, effort, and money.

10. Coordinate your marketing approaches

Search engine optimization is only one piece of the entire marketing puzzle. While SEO is paramount, relying solely on it may not be enough. Diversifying your marketing approaches ensures a holistic digital presence, enhancing visibility and authority.

For example, social media marketing drives traffic to your site and increases brand awareness and engagement. Active social media profiles signal to Google that your brand is relevant and credible, which can indirectly boost your rankings.

An effective email marketing strategy is also crucial in keeping your audience engaged and driving repeat traffic to your site. By sending regular newsletters, personalized emails, and promotional campaigns, you build a loyal customer base, which can lead to more shares, backlinks, and overall improved SEO.

Since email marketing leads are highly engaged, they will likely display good user behavior and boost user experience signals. This tells Google that your content is relevant and high-quality, increasing your chances of ranking and making it into the AI Overview snapshot.

Get Ready to See Your Page on AI Overviews

Generative AI has taken the marketing world by storm. The existence of AI Overviews simply shows that even Google uses generative AI to fulfill its mission: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

I think it’s only a matter of time before AI Overviews become the standard of traditional and generative search results. When that day comes, SEO may not be enough to stand out.

You’d better get a leg up on ranking for AI Overviews before everyone else joins in.

We hope you find the above tips helpful. Good luck!