Understandably, this will change the future of search forever, and of SEO too. Or not? Here are my predictions based on what we know so far.

What is Google SGE / AIO / AIM

Google has taken a significant leap forward with its Search capabilities, introducing the new Gemini model, tailored specifically for AI-powered search. The Gemini model merges advanced functionalities like multi-step reasoning and multimodality with Google’s robust search systems.

Now, AI overviews are being integrated into general search results for U.S. users, with the rollout expected to reach over 1 billion users by the end of the year. These overviews can be fine-tuned in terms of language and detail, making them more user-friendly and personalized.

Additionally, the Gemini model excels at managing complex queries. For instance, you can ask for the best restaurants in Italy, including their specialty dishes and proximity to major landmarks, and get a detailed response. It also provides practical planning assistance for everyday needs, such as generating customized meal plans with recipes sourced from the web.

Google is also launching AI-organized results pages, which group useful information under unique, AI-generated headings, offering diverse perspectives and content types. Initially, this will cover dining and recipes, with plans to expand to other categories like movies, books, and shopping. Moreover, Google’s new visual search feature allows users to utilize video content for their queries, streamlining the search process and saving time.

For more details on Google’s innovative search features and the Gemini model, check out Google’s official blog here.

What kind of searches are served trough SGE?

As Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) evolves, its impact will become increasingly apparent across various business verticals, with significant implications for SEO strategies. According to studies and insights gathered from various sources, industries such as healthcare, ecommerce, B2B tech, and education are seeing varied levels of AI integration in search results, which significantly influences organic traffic patterns​ (Search Engine Land)​.

Interestingly, SGE’s effect is not uniform across all sectors. For instance, while healthcare queries show a high percentage of AI-generated answers, the finance sector experiences a much lower integration, suggesting a cautious approach in areas dealing with sensitive information​ (Search Engine Land)​. This makes me giggle a bit (and worry a lot) when you think at the fact that Lily Ray shared this on here LinkedIn:

All in all, from the data we have today, the introduction of Search Generative Experience (SGE) notably disrupted ecommerce, electronics, and fashion sectors the most, although it affected all business verticals to some extent.

Which businesses are going to be affected worse?

So, in my opinion we shouldn’t focus too much on how Google is going to show the results, but on how people search. This has always been the winning strategy. Focus on people, and how to adapt your inbound strategy to get the right people, at the right time, for the right search intent.

Media & Publishers

As an example, I believe that SGE is going to serve very well a 1 click query like:

“who won yesterday’s match between Napoli and Roma?”

“how do you calculate cost per click?

“How to make Pinacolada?”

You see, to better serve user experience (and Google is all about that), you want to give an immediate answer to that search, without any CTR to some sites with tons of ads and what not. That’s why I think the first and foremost vertical to really take a deep hit, is going to be the publishing and media (magazines, news websites, and so on).

These kind of businesses entirely rely on programmatic advertising, and for sure it’s a grime time for their existing content.

Part of E-Commerce, Wellness and Fitness websites

Other queries that SGE will serve well are ones on fitness, wellness, and some online shopping, but not all of it (meaning, discovery search, but not bottom of the funnel queries):

“What’s the best workout routine for a 6 months period to develop calves? Add some nutrition tips too”

“I want to eliminate meat from my diet, but I don’t know how to respect all of my nutrition macros”

“What are the best brands for natural non toxic skincare?”

“Best Christmas Gifts ideas for 2024”

So yeah, understandably these kind of queries can only benefit from SGE. Bravo, Google. So also discovery for e-commerces, and likely fitness and wellness sites are going to be impacted significantly.

Online free tools

I don’t know about you, but I love online tools. Calculators, chart generators, image-video-audio converters, you name it. These nifty utilities are there at our disposal to help throughout the day with our job and tasks. In exchange, they render advertising (that we all ignore). Well, this is going to change.

Infact, SGE is perfectly capable of serving all of these results, straight in the above the fold of SERP, and it can do that very quickly (and it will be quicker in the future.

Will Google entirely replace Search Engine Results with SGE content?

No, it won’t for 2 reasons:

1. as I mentioned earlier, when we look at large numbers of queries, SGE servers mainly one click queries. This is informational intent that wants to be satisfied in a split second. No, it won’t take away your conversions in terms of lead generation, or ecommerce revenue in my opinion. Other things might though, like the rearranging of ranking in SERP that we recently saw. It may also cause the number of results pages to decrease significantly.
   
   Just think, as an example, at this website. If you needed a hand at configuring and testing consent mode v2 in gtm, you couldn’t get that from SGE. You’d still click the generated result, to inspect the article and go through it step by step.
   
2. The other reason is based on the fact that Google bases a lot of their revenue on search ads. Self explanatory (sorry, I’m trying to keep this short).

Not all queries can be answered in a second; especially when a user is actively looking for a product or a service, they won’t just be satisfied with pretty graphs and charts and some pictures and cards. No, they want to buy the product, or they want to get the service that solves their issue.

That kind of traffic will still exist, and it’s the traffic that performance marketers and SEO’s are, after all, after.

Will this disrupt search? Yes, for sure.

Will it disrupt many online businesses, projects and things that were working great before? A good percentage, yes.

Is it ethical towards small and medium businesses? No, not a bit.

Will technical marketing survive this? It’s actually an age of opportunity, in my opinion, but there’s going to be a lot of turmoil.

What were the clues that this was about to happen

Well the clues were all there both from a technology industry advance, and a google core update themes standpoint.

Obviously AI has been the core of research in the past years, but it’s an ongoing field of research since 1956. It was just a matter of time until it reached Google b2c products. The same applies to cookies, by the way.

Then, when OpenAI released to the public its Chat GPT model, the race begun and the push to show Gemini was very strong.

Look at Google’s Core System Updates rollout, and think about them in the context of what Generative Search needs in order to work properly (and the environment it creates, with it).

To me, it’s clear that there’s been an active demotion of websites that exist to generate cheap traffic to render ads, and there’s been an accent and uplift in websites that present fresh content that only human experts can produce. And that’s what AI needs. Human expertise. They need our fresh ideas, ideas that come from real life, a life AI doesn’t have, both to train their models, and both to serve humans contextual content based on aspects AI just can’t make out quite yet.

Will AI content keep ranking in SGE Search?

I honestly don’t think so. Everyone who knows me know how much I am “against” AI, in terms of what it’ll do to our youth when it comes to the very idea of what “thinking” means. I am not a fan of machines when we are not completely in control, and when those in control are unreliable.

Having said that, I think AI will need to keep feeding on data, to gain fresh insight, and keep its answers top-notch. How can it do so, if it stops to sample from direct experiences of authoritative humans? Also, the other reason why I don’t think blue links are going to disappear, is that many people want to find information and pieces of information which are contextual to their need of the moment. There’s no way AI can address all of this; it’s science, not magic.

This is true at least as we don’t all have a chip in our brain. Then, I think SEO will have bigger problems

Abstract

The client is an emerging entity in the Digital Transaction Management and Technology industry. They covered both b2c (digital signature, certified communication..) and b2b (banking, insurance and digitalization of secured processes) services. Fuel LAB was assigned the goal to scale up e-commerce revenue exponentially both with performance advertising, and with the sustainability of organic search.

Two years later, the client is today recognized as “Large Tech Provider” by the Forrester Report, won the Aragon Research Innovation Award in 2022, and is nominated for the same award for 2023 and is recognized as business Exellence by Forbes.

This Case Study focuses on our approach and business impact on scaling up the E-commerce Revenue and Value Traffic acquisition trough Organic Search.

When we started getting involved in late 2020, The Client was facing several challenges to meet their goals, such as:

• Existing strong competitors with full Market Saturations (InfoCert, Poste Italiane, Aruba..)
• Virtual products with no visual or physical appeal, of which the target has little to none knowledge about in terms of use cases and functionality
• Little to none pre-existing Performance Marketing experience and Search Traffic strategy, with over 20 websites to optimize and monetize.

Here’s how at Fuel LAB we have driven the scale up on e-commerce digital sales and value traffic acquisition.

Why Organic Search Engineering (O.S.E.)

Organic Search Engineering is the name of the practice designed by Pietro in Fuel LAB when developing Organic Traffic projects on a large scale. Click here for more informations on Organic Search Engineering.

The power of Organic Conversion Engineering and strategic volume growth trough Technical SEO projects have met and exceeded the goals set by the Client.

While at Fuel LAB we have entirely designed, organized and managed the Performance Search Engine Advertising, largely responsible of the whole e-commerce scale to success by generating significant Organic Search demand, focusing on Organic Search is a pivoting point of digital strategy for several reason, including but not only:

• Strategic SEO and Technical SEO contribute to driving a consistent volume of highly converting traffic to the website, instead of merely focusing on volume, leading to a significant revenue impact.
• Topical Authority and Top and Middle of the funnel search volume help to boost brand awareness, recognition, retention and coverage.
• Increased search share saturation increases the user’s confidence and trust in the brand, scaling Conversion Rate also for other Traffic Acquisition Channels.

Our Organic Search acquisition strategy focused on acquiring constantly increasing volume of highly converting traffic to the website, instead of merely focusing on impressions volume.

This approach led to a yearly increasing volume of traffic from Organic Search with a significantly high revenue impact, while boosting the Brand Awareness and coverage thanks to Top of the funnel and Middle of the funnel queries.

Business Impact

Case Study data: February 2021 to February 2023.

• Organic traffic acquisition +241.4%
• Organic Search Value (e-commerce Revenue) +226.36 %
• Search market saturation +297.2 %
• First position keywords +4840.00 %

The client met and exceeded the goals set for Organic Search as a performance channel.

Furthermore, in the last two years it moved from a starting point of 78 Organic Keywords, to over 6.000 Organic Keywords. Moreover, the client moved from ranking top 3 position of page 1 for 20 search terms, to ranking for 988 search terms in top 3 position.

Worth of notice, is the fact that the highest value and volume from Organic Traffic is mostly entirely based on general queries, and not branded queries. This is of extreme strategic value.

Organic Traffic Volume growth: +231.4%

Organic Search Saturation and Volume

Organic Traffic Value growth & Ecommerce Impact: +226.36%

Organic Search Traffic e-commerce Value

First page, first positions ranking Keywords +4840.00%

Ranking of pages for number of indexed keywords / search queries

Share of Voice and Search Market Share trough Technical SEO

Moved to top ranking entity, excluding Poste Italiane & Aruba

In the last 2 years, when isolating the share of voice and the traffic share for 9 top competitors, the Client has reached the largest scale up in Average Position, and growing its Search Share Voice to 7,30% and its Traffic Share to 13%. This positions the client on top of all realistic competition, where the top 2 positions are occupied by “Poste” (the Italian governative entity) and “pec.it”, Aruba’s main domain (leading, solid player with highest investment in the market since over 10 years).

Here we can see how the Client has scaled its Share of Voice over all the competitors, excluding the brand giants “Poste Italiane” and “Aruba” (pec.it).

Share of Voice amongst competitors

Traffic Share amongst competitors

Strategy and Approach

The first step in our workflow, was to determine a census of the active websites, understanding their role in the Company’s online presence and ecosystem, segmenting the monetization websites from the informative and lead generation ones (b2b and b2c).

The second step was the competition’s websites and strategy analysis, crawl, and content gaps identifications, as well as content overlap. This gave us a clear mapping of what the competition looked like, and where did the opportunities lie in order to scale rapidly the client’s key metrics.

This allowed us to identify which competitors we could have outranked in 2 years (InfoCert, Register, Lepida, Sielte), versus which competitors were positioned out of historical brand positioning, which will require large investments on mass media and more time to outrank (Poste Italiane and Aruba).

This helped us identify the major pain points and weak links in the chain of the competition’s tactics, such as:

• Average Technical SEO implementation
• Poor investment in internal and external linking
• Weak tagging and technical analytics implementation
• Slow and inconsistent content updates and Sitemap updates

While the client has been briefed and informed on the need to invest in a significant Entity based Topical Mapping and Content Clustering (leveraging Semantic Search Engine Content Engineering), a solid technical SEO plan, joined with a redesign of semantic page content and better linking logic, has in 2 years scaled significantly the company’s Organic Search results, as per the numbers shown.

In depth Data Documentation

We have focused on a Technical SEO Approach to offer maximum Search Engine crawlability, optimize Crawl Budget, and redesigning the entire internal and external linking policies.

Once the policies were in place, we have selectively optimized all the pages of the e-commerce, including product pages, category pages and dedicated Schema Markups and local+xml sitemaps.

Product Pages

1.72M impressions, 53K sessions

Category Pages

381K impressions, 24.3K sessions

The same approach has been run for Category pages, which offer the opportunity to showcase more related products, and direct traffic to better search-intent-matching pages.

Non Branded Searches

7.96M impressions, 190K sessions

The vertical growth of the client share of search and organic traffic acquisition was scaled up especially for non branded keywords, thus opening the gates for enormous amount of new opportunities to turn visitors into new customers.

In the specific business vertical of this client, branded keywords have rarely transactional purchase intent, and are more often versed towards support necessities.

E-commerce Product Vertical Queries volume growth

Product Family: Digital Identity

13.7M impressions, 1.09M sessions

The data shows the traffic volume over time for queries containing the word “SPID” and mispelling, trough regex .(spid|speed).

Product Family: Digital Signature

1.46M impressions, 67.8K sessions

Product Family: Certified E Mail

4.81M impressions, 250K sessions

The data shows the traffic volume over time for queries containing the word “PEC”, trough regex .(pec|posta|mail|pecmail)..

Informational Queries growth

374K impressions, 6.35K sessions

In growing the organic traffic volume, we have scaled up the client’s presence and reliability for Top and Middle of the funnel queries; here is a breakdown of informational (top of the funnel) search queries, isolated by who|what|when|how|why queries.

Commercial Queries growth

56.5K impressions, 1.89K sessions

This chart shows the growth for commercial queries (Middle of the Funnel), isolated by best|top|vs|review

Transactional Queries growth

1.86M impressions, 81.7K sessions

This chart shows the growth for transactional queries (Bottom of the Funnel), isolated by buy|cheap|price|purchase|order

Long Tail Keywords growth

362K impressions, 18.4K sessions

This chart filters search queries containing more than 4 words, thanks to the following regex applied to Google Search Console: (\w+\s){4,}\w+

Share of Voice and Traffic Market Share

Share of Voice amongst competitors

Traffic Share amongst competitors

Total Domain Growth

53.7M impressions, 2.69M sessions

Organic Traffic Value

€ 1.5M

The directly attributed Organic Traffic Value on the e-commerce have succeeded the expectations quickly, ramping up the average monthly organic traffic value from € 24.197 to € 68.776.

This way, we brought Organic Traffic to represent 1/4 of the total Ecommerce Revenue for the tracked period (2 years), almost matching the value of paid traffic, reaching the directly attributed value of € 1.000.718. When considering indirect conversions and mixed-channels paths, Organic Traffic has surpassed the revenue of Paid Advertising, proving SEO’s and Organic Conversion Engineering as a primary and fundamental business asset for e-commerce websites.

Direct Attribution (last click)

Organic Traffic and Paid Traffic Overlap in Conversion share

Assisted Conversions Organic Traffic added Value

Conclusions

While Fuel LAB has been responsible to the Digital Technical and Strategic Performance marketing, involving also Data Intelligence, Pay per Click Advertising, Social Media Advertising and Conversion Rate Optimization, Organic Search has represented one of the most interesting challenges, proving also in the case of a small player (in terms of digital presence) in an already established market, can significantly scale over competition and match up to paid traffic Ecommerce Revenue.

The main difference and value from an investment standpoint in Organic Search, is that traffic and results keep growing in time, offering a way lager ROI when compared to Paid Traffic, even in the field of Performance Marketing.

While traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is often insufficient from an organic traffic value standpoint in today’s AI driven ranking and Search Engine evolution, the holistic approach of O.S.E. was proven capable of reaching these results with no backlink and digital PR strategy.

Additional Key Metrics

What is O.S.E. (Organic Search Engineering)

Organic Search Engineering (OSE) is an innovative approach to Search Engine Marketing I have refined and created at Fuel LAB®. The methodology utilizes a combination of technical SEO tactics and proprietary technologies, such as Conversion Engines, alongside a content strategy based on Semantic Entities and Topical Clustering, plus O.P.N (Other People’s Network) Digital PR and traditional Digital PR for backlink generation. This approach enhances four key areas for the client:

Topical Authority

By leveraging Semantic Entities and Topical Clustering, OSE aims to establish the client’s website as an authoritative and reliable source of information on their topic, satisfying Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines and complying with the Helpful Content Update. Projects are developed by the I.A.D. protocol (Isolate, Amplify, Deepen) developed in Fuel LAB®, focusing on three fundamental steps:

• Isolate the website semantic entities
• Amplify the topical authority with topical clustering
• Deepen experience proofing with long form content + rich schema markups.
• Powerful Social Proofing trough verified reviews

Search Share Saturation

OSE aims to increase the client’s visibility in their niche market through a content plan based on Topical Authority and whitehat SERP bombing through Conversion Engines (conversion engines are technical SEO products we have been using on SERP since 2014, which can sustain up to 4.999 indexed pages per website).

It’s important to consider not only money pages and single indexed articles or content, even if their metrics are outstanding; sooner or later, the project will loose its rank. Every experienced SEO knows that there’s rarely such a thing as more than a couple quarters ranking first for a traffic worth keyword.

By amplifying the number of pages ranking for a wider coverage of main keywords and long tail keywords, outranking competitors is easier, and the higher SERP saturation delivers a strong Brand Awareness effect. All of this, concurs holistically to an increased Conversion Rate through Organic Search.

Search Market Penetration

OSE has proven to help clients expand into new markets by outranking well established competitors with poor Topical Authority. Be it because the market is a niche one and there aren’t many skilled competitors, or be it because of sleeping giants in the industry, leveraging their brand authority and overlooking the nitty gritty work on SERP, OSE pushes the website’s authority beyond the one of other well positioned websites.

We have observed this in several cases, included the one of the Case Study on Organic Search Engineering that we have published in 2023. The Case Study featured the success of the new kid in the block in the world of Digital Transaction Management, ramping to become an industry leader in 2 years, surpassing the stakeholders expectations and predictions.

Increased Social Proofing and Trust

Trustpilot® is used as a CRO technique to strengthen user trust and confidence while improving Domain Rank through its Domain Authority. While Trustpilot® quality as a SaaS is undoubted and widely recognized, there are some technical aspects about it (SEO wise) that not everybody is aware of.

While there are several Case Studies proving how Trustpilot® is able to enhance conversion rate with impressive numbers thanks to their wonderful widgets and other features, it goes often silent the fact that while Google reviews are not verified, Trustpilot® one’s are, and Google knows it. In fact, Google officially recognizes Trustpilot’s Domain Rating, and displays rich snippets of the review stars directly in SERP; both on organic search, and both on RSAs (Responsive Search Ads).

By introducing direct links and Trustpilot’s owned widgets into the project, we have observed an enhanced and faster ranking for commercial and transactional queries, as the trust isn’t just increased in the users (which is fundamental for CRO), but also for the ranking system.

The A.P.A. Logic

Moreover, OSE is designed to help the client get more high-quality traffic to their website, resulting in increased conversions and organic revenue. The approach is a long-term strategy that has shown to provide sustainable results over time, based on Fuel LAB’s A.P.A Logic:

• Assessment: Conducting an assessment of the business’s capabilities, product marketability, competitor landscape, and budget.
• Analysis: Analyzing historical data, competitor strategies, and conducting topical and keyword analysis.
• Planning: Developing a Traffic Funnel Strategy, Semantic Entities and Topical Mapping, Editorial and Backlink Profile Planning, Budgeting and Resource Scouting, Conversion Engine LTK Project Planning, and Analytics and Rank Tracking Planning.
• Production: Producing pages design and creation, schema markups design and creation, on-site and on-page technical SEO, digital PR for backlink profile, analytics and rank tracking production, and dashboarding and reporting production.
• Analysis: Analyzing results, content nurturing, new content production, isolating new topics and niches to cover further, and isolating optimizations and CRO to report.
• Assessment: Reporting results every 3 months, measuring KPIs every 3 months, and producing a case study within 2 years.

O.S.E. is a comprehensive and effective approach to Holistic SEO that we have refined over time to help businesses establish themselves as authoritative and reliable sources of information, increase their visibility in niche markets, and drive high-quality traffic to their website with a power ROI driven approach.

To learn more about Organic Search Engineering, please visit Fuel LAB or request a meeting.