The recent launch of the new ChatGPT integration into Microsoft’s Bing search engine has roused quite a few feathers among digital marketers, especially the SEO (search engine optimization) experts.
Some are predicting the end of SEO, people have been predicting the demise of SEO since the 90s. Guess their crystal ball was a bit faulty, as SEO is still around today, and has never been more important!
In fact, marketers are starting to even prioritize SEO over paid media. SEO has evolved over the years to meet the demands of changing search algorithms by major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and of course Bing.
Being the first search engine to roll out an integrated solution that ties ChatGPT into its search results page, it definitely will lead the next evolution of SEO. When Google introduced rich snippets back in 2009, people have feared that nobody will ever need to click over to the actual websites anymore since they can get the answer to their query directly on the SERPs (search engine results page).
Again, that did not happen, all it did was improve the user experience of users on the SERPs. If there is valuable information on your web page, you can be sure people are going to click over to find out more.
I believe it will be true for the Ai search results that we will soon see in all search engines. The Ai will simply make information more digestible at first glance, some people might be satisfied with a summarised answer, however, the serious searchers will still click over to your web page proper.
If anything, this is an even clearer sign of the importance of SEO and content. The future of SEO will be even brighter as businesses scramble to optimize their websites for the latest Ai search trend, failing to do so will only mean an even more brutal loss of organic traffic to competitors who have optimized their pages well.
There will be changes, there will be loss of traffic, but only if you have not been paying attention to the constant evolution of search engine optimization trends.
Stay vigilant, pay more attention to SEO, and your content marketing efforts will pay you back in folds. That was my 2 cents on the next evolution of SEO, what do you think? Reach out to me if you would like to continue the conversation.
