SEO In the Times of AI Overviews, AI Chat and Conversational Search
- Elisabeth Ric Hansen
- May 19
- 6 min read
On a recent WIX webinar the SEO team at WIX, along with guest speaker Mike King from @ipullrank chatted about how you might better manage your SEO Strategy in the times of Conversational Search.
You may have recently noticed that a Google Search does not look like it used to. Instead of serving you a range of sponsored websites, and then a list of organically ranking websites that made it to the first page (SERPs), you now get what looks like a series of ChatGPT style answers, each with their own headline or new associated question. This is now known as AI Overviews.
It works right? Less work for you. All the possible answers spelled out very simply and in less than 1 minute you have what you were looking for. And there's always a link to the source if you really want to fact-check it.
But what about the brands, the advertisers and the sites that have worked so hard on their SEO to get to to the first page? They now have no brand presence at first glance at all. The 'old playbooks don’t work' anymore says Mike King 'new rules are being written every day'.
So Now What? Did AI Kill SEO?
The short answer seems to be no. With many voices weighing in on the conversation and plenty of data being surfaced to review the impact of this change over the past 6-24 months.
Wikipedia, one of the top SERP rankers globally, is one that can really shout the numbers here, having lost 1.6 billion pageviews since AI Overviews launched.
Hubspot, a high ranking site with plenty of great ranking content has also seen a drop in ranking, in fact a drop of 75% early this year. According to company data, this is not impacting them overall, with other tools being used to carry them through. After all, it's not just about the blog, but all your site pages, and your content and brand mentions on other sites.
So Which AI Tool Should I Use?
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the term Ai and it is frequently being used as a broad brushstroke to shame people into being left behind if they don't to X & Y. This is somewhat absurd as we are and have all been using various forms of AI for some time now. I often hear people asking - should I use ChatGPT, or Gemini or CoPilot? And do I use them instead of Google?
The answer is not one - or the other - or either. It really depends on the platforms you work daily and finding what works best for you. For example if your company is Microsoft dominant, you will probably find using Copilot a more seamless integration. But at home you're always on Google. What is important is that the AI tool you use will keep learning about you and how you like what it creates for you. So in theory you should build a relationship with your AI, give it some feedback and keep outsourcing to it. Load it with the information you prefer to reference - and don't be too promiscuous!
As for which is better? Well, it's a bit like an Olympic 400m swimming race - the first one to surge ahead is not usually the winner, and those that fall behind on the second lap can still end up in the top three. We're still waiting to see if Siri will even make the squad!
Looking back at 2025, how frequently have you used AI tools compared to 2024.
I find I am using it more and more everyday
I barely use AI - I think?
About 50% of my outputs are now done with the help of AI
More than 80% of my outputs are done using some AI
So What Do I Do Now
Do I scrap my blog posts and SEO strategy? Pivot completely? Or double down?
Firstly - if you haven't yet, you need to embrace AI as soon as possible. AI is definitely not a fad, or a foe - AI is your new best friend.
Secondly - go back to basics: review all the content on your website and your overarching content strategy - and re-ask yourself what is the objective for your content? For example, have you created somewhat random content about a small pieces of your business just because someone told you it might help traffic to your site? Or have you created content that genuinely educates and informs your audience, engaging with them? If the second part is accurate - keep going - as with anything in marketing, it always circles back your customer - who are they? What they are interested in? What do they love about your brand that you can amplify.
Thirdly - look beyond the blog and closer at all your content on all your pages, Treat every page as if it were a landing page and maximise the relevant content, and opportunities to engage your audience, educate and inform, and entice them to stay a little longer, browse a little further and ultimately share their email with you so they can stay in touch, or better yet, buy something.
How Will Google and ChatGPT Look to Find My Content?
Browser based AI such as Google and Bing will look up live pages to find answers, which means your content may be referenced and linked to in an AI Overview. So as long as your URL is on Google Search Console, and your pages are indexed and a sitemap submitted, you have a chance - but again, your site's authority score, and page rankings still play a part - historically and going forward.
ChatGPT - and other newer Open AI tools that have surfaced over the past 2 years don't necessarily crawl the world wide web in real-time; so a post you load on your website today is not going to magically show up tomorrow. These tools are worked on in the back end, taking snapshots of publicly available data and relevant resources when are fed into Open AI's LLMs (Large Language Models) to teach them, and enable them, to structure, format and iterate answers to typical questions they have already seen around these subjects or in AI terms: generate human-like text based on the patterns and knowledge they acquired during training.
This training is a process in itself. In fact I was recently contacted by a philosophy group to work on complex philosophical questions to be fed into their AI training modules in an attempt to better train the AI tools on managing complex, 'grey' and... well, 'philosophical' questions. Question for which there are no factual answers - such as what is the meaning of life, or if the tree fell in the forest and no one heard it would it make a sound? The kinds of questions you enjoy annoying Alexa with on a Sunday morning. Needless to say I didn't respond to the request, as my lazy brain would need AI to help dredge up my Bachelor of Social Science Philosophy major content for me to even begin to think that hard again.
So How Do I Show Up in ChatGPT Then?
Get referenced! Much like fake news and social media, there is an element of "what you tell it, it may start to believe" - so if for example you wrote one self-published book on the the pros and cons of Having Frogs in Your Garden, and you keep telling the internet, social media - and anyone who will listen - that you are the best selling author of frog books and an expert and authority on garden frogs - you might just become that to AI.
Being a published writer or academic, or being referenced on other credible sites is a great start. Reigniting the age old question to self - "should I write a book?".
Here are some starting points to make sure you have a chance of showing up in both AI Overviews and AI Tools Like ChatGPT
Google Search Console: Use this tool to make sure your URL is publicly available for Google to Index (view, read and organise)
Submit a Sitemap to Google Search Console, so the bots know how to navigate your site.
Backlinks | Mentions | Referrals | References: get your content or brand to show up on other reputable websites. As this content usually "lives forever" it could be worth paying for. This will enhance your brand's authority and its likelihood of being included in AI training data later on and search engine results currently.
Use your H2 and H3 headers to literally "ask" some of the questions you know (through Google tools, or you just know), that your customers may ask in relation to your brand - such as "what is integrated marketing" (see how I forward linked my own content there).
The paragraph or content below should be structured like an answer - as clear and concise as possible - and yes, bullet points and numbers really work.
This syntax makes it cleared to the "bots" that these are answers.
Share your content - don't just create it and leave it there - send it on an email, on social media, to journalists and directories. Any traffic to this content will help its future ranking.
Huh? I am Still Confused?
If any of these tasks seem complicated, or you think you haven't done them yet, reach out to us for a quick call to discuss how we can help you on a one-off project basis, or an ongoing retainer towards continuous improvement.
Or email: stok@stok.nz
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