Best Practices To Optimize Your Website For Google’s SGE

AI-powered search engines, like Google’s search generative experience (SGE), are rapidly changing the search landscape for users, how users conduct searches on the web and website rankings for businesses online. For example, Google’s SGE now appears at the top of most search results today, pushing results like sponsored ads, featured snippets and local map packs down the page. Optimizing your website content for generative AI can increase your opportunity to rank at the top of search results, improving your potential to drive valuable organic traffic to your website.

What Is Google SGE?

Google’s search generative experience (SGE) uses AI to deliver enhanced results to users’ search queries. Its AI model can quickly analyze top search results across the web based on a user’s query, create a brief summary of the main takeaways and deliver results in an easily digestible way. This relatively new and fast-growing search experience helps users learn about a topic more quickly and discover new insights and perspectives. AI search results appear in a more conversational format making it easier for users to ask follow up questions.

Since the integration of generative AI, websites have quickly dropped below the fold in Google’s search results—many of which have been pushed off page 1 altogether. That’s why we’re sharing our own generative search optimization tips to help you maintain a positive SEO health score and deliver valuable content to your target audience.

How To Optimize For Google SGE

While Google has the final say in which search results appear at the top, there are many optimizations you can make to your website content to boost your chances. At the end of the day, the best way to gain credibility and prove your website’s value is by focusing on the user. Creating quality content and a positive user experience will influence users to come back to your website. Returning users and user retention are two key signals to Google that your website deserves to rank among the best. Utilize our Google SGE ranking tips to make your web pages more SEO-friendly and visible to your target audience:

1. Establish experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T)
2. Optimize for AI readability
3. Focus on Semantic SEO
4. Publish answers to frequently asked questions
5. Create comprehensive, evergreen content
6. Provide a positive user experience

6 Generative AI Optimization Tips

SEO is essential to everything we do at Blue Compass, from website development to digital marketing campaigns. With the right strategy, any website can achieve a top ranking on Google. Our SEO and digital marketing experts have collaborated with hundreds of clients, creating customized strategies to boost website traffic and improve rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). Here are six generative AI optimization recommendations to help your business appear in Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE) at the top of SERPs and increase organic users online.

Google SGE Ranking Tip #1: Establish Authority & Trust

When developing SEO-friendly content, our experts place a heavy emphasis on E-E-A-T, or experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness. E-E-A-T represents the four tenets of quality content. Here is a breakdown of how Google evaluates each:

• Experience refers to the time you've spent working with the subject matter of your content. The longer your company or website exists in an industry or is involved in the subject matter of the evaluated page, the better its chances are of showing in search results. Experience indicates to Google that your content comes from experts, which increases the likelihood of its accuracy and insightfulness.
• Expertise focuses on how you choose to present your content and the unique perspectives you have to offer. Finding and duplicating content can be easy, especially with AI. However, duplicate content is still a red flag for Google, and your website could get dinged if your content isn’t unique. Incorporating information based on your expertise and experience can help Google recognize that your content is unique and valuable, helping you stand apart from other related resources.
• Authority is very similar to experience but instead focuses on your company's individuals or the content's author. Highlighting or "celebritizing" some of the individuals in your company can make it clear to Google that they are credible and qualified to be speaking on the subject matter being shared. This process can take time, so it is important to start building that authority sooner rather than later. Highlighting these individuals across multiple digital platforms, such as posting them on social media, can help establish their authority more quickly.
• Trustworthiness asks the question, "Why are you a reputable source?" Delivering consistent content about related topics gives Google a reason to trust your website over somebody else. Creating consistent content that continues to provide value for users is also a great way to build trust with them. Users clicking on your website and engaging with the content are a green flag to Google that the information is trustworthy.

Together, these tenets tell Google why it should choose your website over somebody else. Your company, employees and content each hold value in the eyes of Google and can boost the chances of your content ranking above another resource.

Google SGE Ranking Tip #2: Optimize For AI Readability

There are many types of on-page optimizations that can yield significant SEO benefits. No matter your level of familiarity with website code, you can implement these three simple generative AI optimizations to help Google better understand your content and increase rankability in AI search results:

1. Ensure you are being as clear and concise as possible with the verbiage you deliver on your webpage. It’s critical for content to read naturally. Adding too much fluff often leads to lower chances of appearing in the limited spaces available on Google. Concise content presents information more clearly and speeds up its crawl ability.
2. Focus on heading tags and create a page structure that makes sense to users and Google crawlers. At Blue Compass, we recommend including one unique H1 on every webpage. Each page on your site should also include an H2 heading tag to show Google that your page is robust and contains beyond a single topic. All heading tags should follow in chronological order to make it easier for Google bots to crawl the page and for users who require screen readers to follow along.
3. Utilize bulleted and numbered lists wherever it makes sense. These formats make it easy for Google to pull content from your page and display it in the same fashion directly within search results. People often search for tips or methods, and lists are a great way to summarize those insights and display them in an easily digestible way.

Google SGE Ranking Tip #3: Focus On Semantic SEO

Semantic SEO focuses on the technical side of a webpage, evaluating things like heading tags, html elements and schema markup. Utilizing technical SEO tactics ultimately allows you to better communicate to Google what your page is about. By including these elements on your page, you can better relay the content to Google in a way that it prefers and influence how the content appears in generic and AI search results.

Semantic SEO also benefits the user. Understanding what types of prompts your content ranks for, or how users utilize that content can help you better tailor the format and functionality of your page to those users. Consider what types of searches users are typing into Google to reach your page. Are they broader with just a few words? Are they formatted as questions? Are they longer and more conversational? Uncovering search habits can help you determine the types of results your page is going to rank for and how to present that content so that it’s as valuable as possible for your target audience.

Google SGE Ranking Tip #4: Publish FAQs And Q&A Content

FAQs and Q&A format for your content are critical to show up in Google’s SGE results— or any search results for that matter. People often format their searches in the form of a question. “People Also Ask” (PAA) sections are prevalent in search and valuable to users who might have follow up questions about a topic. AI search benefits from content that presents in the form of an answer since users often use AI in a conversational way. Including at least one to two FAQs that users commonly search for on every page can boost the ranking potential of your content.

How you format FAQs on your website is important. Consider what users might be searching for in a tool like ChatGPT or Gemini. These users are most likely asking questions, so that’s how you should format your content. Additionally, PAA results have always been prominent and will continue to be as AI has recently worked its way into them. Showing in PAAs can give you a big advantage, so it’s important to follow the same format as the search result. Include the question as a heading tag on your page and answer it immediately, clearly and concisely. We always recommend following up your answer with supporting content and resources to provide more value. This way, users can click the question and see a full answer directly in search results, and also access more details on your webpage if needed.

Google SGE Ranking Tip #5: Publish Comprehensive, Evergreen Content

When we consider the content that’s most likely to be found by AI, evergreen content that lasts a long time often gets more exposure than timely content. AI models are built on a data set from a specific timeframe and therefore in general, evergreen content is going to be more valuable at any given time. Since it lasts longer, it’s not as time dependent as real-time data like news articles or events. AI struggles to keep up with real-time content because it takes time to train these models. Therefore, evergreen content is the way to go when focusing on AI-based search results.

Google SGE Ranking Tip #6: Make Your Content Easy To Access

Your website’s speed and the time it takes for a page to load is more important than ever with AI’s integration in search. We’ve talked about how to make your content better, but if Google’s bots and crawlers can’t get to your content, all of your work goes to waste. There a few ways to make your content easier to access for bots and users alike:

• Avoid any paywalls, restrictive access, pop ups, etc. These hiccups can quickly turn users away as they provide a poor experience and distract users from what they are trying to accomplish. Not to mention, many of these speed bumps restrict a bot’s ability to crawl your portions of your site.
• Optimize your page load speed. If it takes too long to load, it could deter users who don’t want to wait, plus it will take bots longer to crawl. In some cases, bots may even stop crawling altogether. Oversized images and videos are the biggest culprits of slow pages.
• If you have more pixels on your website than you need, we recommend reviewing what is necessary and removing the rest! Pixels quickly add up and can significantly slow down your site.

Optimize Your Site For Google’s Search Generative Experience

Search engines like Google frequently update their algorithms, making it challenging for business owners and marketers to stay informed. By partnering with an SEO agency, you can concentrate on your business goals while experts work to attract valuable users to your website through generative search optimizations.

At Blue Compass, search engine optimization is our specialty. We consider Google’s algorithm and our own experience to develop customized strategies for clients across a wide variety of industries. SEO is all about setting a strong foundation to help stay in front of Google’s frequent updates and our team is ready to help you bolster your digital presence.

Generative Search Optimization Services In Des Moines

At Blue Compass, we function as an extension of your team, always striving to act in your best interest. Our SEO-first approach gives us a great understanding of your business, allowing us to create tailored and effective strategies to enhance your digital presence. Let’s team up and make your online goals a reality! Reach out to learn more about our SEO expertise.