How AI and SGE make your .com content even more important

With the rise of AI, the content on your .com has become more important than ever. This is my wake-up call to get into action and free up resources and budget to vamp up your .com content.

Here's the rationale to free up resources and budget to update your .com content. 

AI uses your .com content
As a business, please don’t only focus on learning how to work with AI; also, make sure AI can learn from you. It matters, as AI uses your content to create its output, as requested by your customer.

Google SGE wipes organic content from the search map
It’s not only ChatGPT, Bard, Gemini, and other AI tools that use your .com content. It’s also indispensable for Google SGE, the new search with generative AI content placed above the organic search results.

Reuse your updated content for your owned channels and socials
A nice side effect is that you can use all this .com content for your other channels. Storytelling in your owned media such as newsletters and newsroom, and on social to capture your customers’ hearts and minds.

Let's dive a little deeper into the details. 

1. How AI tools like ChatGPT use your .com content

Tools such as ChatGPT, Bard, Gemini, Alexa, CoPilot, Llama, Perplexity, and many others browse the web and search, and they use your .com content to generate their output.

So, if you have any outdated content in the corners, nooks, and crannies of your website, that can rise to the surface.

The more up-to-date and informative your content, the more you can claim your leadership and show your passion for what you do. Most AI tools reveal the sources they use to create the output, a nice place to be mentioned as a leader in your industry.

That said, it's not only the AI tools that generate content based on your .com content. Some major changes are coming up in Google as well. Google SGE wipes organic content from the search map.  

2. The impact of Google SGE 

Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) is the new revolutionary search that integrates generative AI-powered results into the search engine.

In short and simplified, there’s a shift from ‘matching on keywords’ to ‘intent-based’ search. The result is more relevant and tailored results and to deliver more insightful and engaging content.

Google places the gen-AI content directly under the paid and above the organic content. Image credits: SE Ranking

Google still uses the same sources, your website, but gives the output back in a different format. Focused on providing the answer directly. Next, the output will be more visual and have a direct chat functionality. Users will probably stay on the Google page and not visit your page anymore.

The good news is that if you update all your .com content to favor AI tools and SGE, you can reuse all of it to ramp up your content across all channels and platforms. 

3. Reuse your updated .com content across channels

Once you update your .com content, why not use that same content for your storytelling in your owned channels such as newsletter and your newsroom? 

Next to that, you can repurpose that content for your socials. After all, it just takes one prompt to get a summary and social assets from a webpage. 

With the extinction of third-party data and stricter cookie and privacy policies, your owned channels and first-party data become more important. You need to tell your own story instead of relying on the socials. The socials are for the distribution, owning and hosting of your story on your .com.  

Conclusion: stay relevant in an AI-driven digital landscape

Summarizing all of the above, the up-to-dateness of your content on your website is more important than ever. I know it’s not the sexiest part of content and marketing; it’s the only place you can influence how your brand and story are displayed to your customers when they use AI.

1. AI uses your .com content to generate output
2. Google shifts from organic search to generative AI search, based on intent and providing an answer directly on the Google page, without a direct need to click through to your website.
3. Once you have the updated content, you can reuse it in your owned channels and for your socials.

Now, it's time to get started. 2024 is going to be an exciting year where content becomes more important and easier to create—all thanks to AI.