SEO marketers are facing a new reality as zero-click searches are becoming an increasingly common part of search engines.

On the latest episode of iGaming Daily, Ivana Flynn revealed that over 60% of all searches end in zero clicks – meaning that a user’s query has been answered directly on the search engine results page (SERP).

Although more user-friendly, this presents a unique challenge for SEO experts whose success is traditionally measured on clicks and website traffic.

“What we need to change is our mentality because zero clicks means less people are accessing our website,” said Silvia Tavella, Global SEO Onside Lead at Betsson Group.

“Now the success of an SEO campaign can be different and maybe can be measured with the number of times your website is quoted or used as [a source] within the AI overview. So that’s something that we have to have quite clear in mind.”

The impact of this changing consumer behaviour can be felt most among emerging brands that may struggle to be included within AI overviews. 

SEO Consultant Dani Leitner emphasised the need for these brands to become a “topical authority” on a niche rather than trying to position themselves more generally.

She said: “Be the expert out there and all the tools will recognise it. If you have a lot of content about the topic, if you go and present this niche, [AI overviews] will get to the point of maybe we should mention this person because it’s always popping up.”

Another consideration for brands is improving their EAT recognition. EAT – which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness – is part of what Google uses to judge the quality of content.

“[EAT recognition] doesn’t come overnight, it takes a while to create,” explained Tavella. “My tips would be to focus on experience and real facts. The rest will come [because] if you’re bringing your experience people will recognise you as a [trustworthy] and [authoritative] source.”

To conclude the episode, the trio considered how this changing landscape will shape the future of SEO and Leitner expressed her excitement over how zero-click can help to change “boring” SEO content.

She said: “ChatGPT will just need one page not 10 so we will need to change a little bit our perspective, which was about time. It’s really funny to talk with people that say SEO, we don’t need that anymore because AI overview and ChatGPT will take over.

“You look at their website and say, if a normal person doesn’t understand what you’re selling, how will ChatGPT? There’s a lot of things that we are doing [such as] defining what you’re actually selling and putting it into words that people can understand. You still need [SEO] to do that.”