Is SEO the future? Read up on SGE.

Is SEO the future? Sure.

Read up on SGE. 👇🏻
We marketers know that nothing is owed to us.
We marketers know that nothing is permanent.
We marketers know that everything is racing ahead.

But how do you stay an expert in fields that see this much change in a mere 4 years? The marketing industry has lately been a genuine arms race, a gladiator arena of sales, personal brands and milestone challengers. It is a carousel of successes and failures, a migration of peoples from one specialisation to the next — and above all an ever-greater challenge to make money from it and find some balance in life. Let me put the intervals we are talking about into perspective:

🔵 4 years is less than one term of a Polish president. And Andrzej Duda is finishing his second. 😉
🟠 4 years were not enough for Rockstar Games to release GTA 6 after GTA 5.
🔵 4 years is the average lease on a VW Golf in a small or medium business (vehicle depreciation alone runs to 5 years, so longer still)
🟠 4 years ago we were (?) enjoying season 2 of Fortnite — today it is season 7
🔵 Every 4 years we follow the Olympics, the World Cup, the Euros.

And the people who got into SEO 4 years ago are now watching AI being used in every process. They also have to roll up their sleeves and learn a new approach to SEO — or lose their jobs. And many of them are still in junior roles.
So what will the skill of today’s masters be? Telling the valuable from the junk.

Which is why, after that rather long introduction, I will touch on a few important facts. 60% of SEO specialists are worried about the impact of the new generative experience in Google search on their work and their results. Around 30% are not worried about Google SGE, and the rest are simply not sure yet. These figures come from a recent poll that Aleyda Solis published on her SEO FOMO forum. The question was: “Are you worried about the impact of Google SGE?”.

Repeated on X, the poll gave similar results. SGE is a completely new approach to finding content. It will no longer be based on existing content, which today we painstakingly optimise for the search engine’s new algorithms. In optimising for SGE, search intent and the context in which the user is looking for information matter more. SGE uses artificial intelligence to understand the user’s intent and to present more individualised results.

An example? 🤔

Say you run an online store specialising in sportswear. With SGE you can optimise your website and your marketing strategy to respond better to what customers need and expect.

🟠 Personalised recommendations:

Using SGE algorithms, you can personalise product recommendations on the homepage and in the “Similar products” section. SGE algorithms will analyse users’ past behaviour, their preferences and their purchases in order to suggest products that will interest them.

🔵 Interactive search:

Instead of a traditional search box, you can implement more interactive search tools that use SGE. For example, users can enter a question such as “Show me running leggings for women in size M”, and SGE will present personalised results that take those preferences into account.

🟠 Dynamically adjusting the offer:

With SGE you can dynamically adjust the offer and the promotions on your website based on current trends, the season, the user’s location and other factors. In winter, for example, you can promote ski jackets and other winter products, while in summer you focus on swimwear and outdoor fitness clothing.

Local search and delivery:

If your store has physical locations, SGE can help tailor search results better to the user’s location, for example by promoting offers available in the nearest shop and letting them know about local delivery or click-and-collect options.

All of this will most likely be synchronised with voice interfaces — or with the use of new peripherals such as Neuralink (a chip installed in our brains).

A superboss — perhaps the final one — worthy of any overlong Japanese RPG now stands in the way of everyone who wants to feed a family, build a house and lease a Porsche… out of SEO. It will not be this easy any more. 😎

To get into SGE’s good graces you have to change your thinking and, in a sense, the pillars of everything you have learned about being a nice SEO-friendly operator. And then your link farms, over-engineered copy and business directories may be swept away entirely by an online store that invested in a prompt-based personalised product builder (there you go).

🔵 Because, you see… the fears the polls show are broadly right. In my view SGE will displace SEO faster than we think. SEO in Poland is a business filled to the brim, which has built many corporate fortresses and, wrapped in a certain mystique of hard-to-remember words, persuaded millions to pay millions. With mixed results. The firms that fail to switch to the new gears despite their budget and scale will take a heavy knockout. You do not have to act broadly. You should act fast. 🟠

And how do you act fast with SGE? It looks as if well-planned strategies will win — and they have to be built now. UX and UI will matter, as will the ability to capture new technologies for e-commerce. Extending your current SEO work with AI, while it is worth it and while it still works, is also very much a plus. We do it ourselves at infoBrand, to good effect. You have to learn to live with AI and try to understand as much as you can of what goes on inside it.

Many of the SEO people who fear losing their job to SGE will manage to change their way of working. They will learn something new and claw out a steady job for another… 4 years? In a world in a hurry, better that than nothing. Learn — fast. And it will be fine.

Source: https://www.seroundtable.com/seos-worried-impact-google-sge-36770.html