Digital Marketing that Drives Results - Offices in Bristol & London
For years, search marketing was relatively straightforward.
Businesses invested in SEO, improved their websites, published useful content and worked towards higher positions in Google.
That still matters.
But the way people discover businesses and information online is becoming much broader.
Search results now include AI-generated answers, shopping results, maps, video, paid advertising and other interactive features. People are also increasingly asking longer, more conversational questions through AI-powered search experiences rather than relying solely on traditional keyword searches. Google says queries in AI Mode are, on average, substantially longer than traditional searches.
For businesses, this changes the question from:
“How do we rank number one?”
to:
“How do we make sure our brand is visible wherever our customers are looking?”
That requires a broader approach to search.
Traditional search engines were largely built around a familiar model.
Someone entered a query.
Google returned a list of results.
The user clicked through to a website.
That journey still exists, but it is no longer the only way people interact with search.
Google now uses AI Overviews and AI Mode to help users investigate more complex questions, explore topics and discover relevant sources directly from AI-generated responses. Google continues to include links to websites within these experiences.
As a result, visibility does not always mean receiving a traditional organic click.
A potential customer might first encounter your business through:
The customer journey is becoming less linear.
No.
In fact, the foundations of SEO remain extremely important.
Google’s current guidance for appearing within AI features says that the same core SEO principles still apply. There is no separate technical trick required simply to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
Websites still need to be:
Google’s newer guidance on generative AI search also emphasises useful, unique content and strong traditional SEO foundations.
So SEO is not being replaced.
It is becoming part of a wider search strategy.
One of the biggest shifts businesses need to make is how they measure success.
Historically, an SEO report might have focused heavily on rankings.
For example:
Keyword A: Position 3
Keyword B: Position 5
Keyword C: Position 8
Those metrics remain useful, but they only tell part of the story.
Modern search visibility may also involve:
Google has even started introducing dedicated Search Console reporting for visibility within generative AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Businesses therefore need to think beyond one ranking position.
Traditional keyword research often revolves around short phrases.
For example:
SEO agency Hertfordshire
employment solicitor London
independent school Hertfordshire
But conversational search makes it easier for users to ask much more detailed questions.
Someone might now ask:
Which independent schools near Hertfordshire have strong sports facilities and offer boarding?
or:
What type of SEO strategy would work best for a regional law firm trying to generate employment law enquiries?
These are far more nuanced searches.
The businesses most likely to be visible for these types of queries are those that provide clear, comprehensive and trustworthy information.
The term Answer Engine Optimisation, often shortened to AEO, is increasingly used to describe efforts to improve visibility within AI-generated answers and conversational search experiences.
You may also hear terms such as:
The terminology is still developing.
However, Google’s own guidance is important here: website owners do not need a completely separate set of optimisation techniques for Google’s AI search features. Strong SEO fundamentals remain the foundation.
So rather than treating AEO as a mysterious new service, businesses should focus on making their information easy for both people and machines to understand.
Strong content should make the subject clear quickly.
That means avoiding pages filled with vague marketing language.
For example:
Weak:
We provide innovative solutions designed to unlock transformational growth.
That could describe almost any company.
Better:
We provide SEO, PPC and conversion rate optimisation services for businesses that want to generate more qualified enquiries from their website.
The second version tells both the reader and search systems what the business actually does.
Content built around genuine customer questions can become increasingly valuable.
For example, an independent school might publish useful information about:
A solicitor might answer questions about:
These are the sorts of questions people ask both traditional search engines and AI assistants.
The goal should be to provide the clearest and most useful answer available.
AI has made producing generic content much easier.
That makes real expertise more valuable, not less.
If dozens of websites contain essentially the same introductory explanation of a subject, there is very little reason for someone to choose yours.
Useful content should therefore include things such as:
Google’s current generative AI guidance specifically encourages valuable, unique and non-commodity content.
Simply publishing more words is not enough.
Traditional SEO can sometimes be reduced to:
keyword → page → ranking
Modern discovery is more complicated.
People might hear about your business through social media, see you referenced in an article, encounter your brand in an AI response and then search directly for your company name.
That means brand recognition becomes increasingly important.
Businesses should think about their overall online presence, including:
You want search engines, AI systems and customers to have a clear understanding of who you are and what you are known for.
There is little value in producing excellent content if search engines cannot access it properly.
Technical SEO remains essential.
Important areas include:
Search engines need to be able to discover your important pages.
You need to ensure the pages you want visible are actually eligible to appear in search.
Important pages should be connected clearly so users and search engines can understand your website’s structure.
Slow or unstable websites can create a frustrating experience.
Your content needs to work properly across different screen sizes.
Structured data can provide machine-readable information about the content and entities on a page. Google uses structured data to better understand page content and potentially enable enhanced search appearances.
Technical SEO may not sound as exciting as AI search, but without good foundations, everything else becomes harder.
This is another area where misinformation is beginning to appear.
There is currently no magic “AI schema” that guarantees your business will be included in an AI-generated answer.
Google explicitly states that there are no additional technical requirements or special schema needed simply to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
That does not mean structured data is useless.
It can still help search engines understand what your page contains.
But schema should describe the content accurately rather than being treated as an AI ranking hack.
Organic visibility is only one part of the results page.
Paid search can provide immediate visibility for valuable commercial searches.
For example, a business trying to generate enquiries for:
employment solicitor London
may combine:
This gives the business multiple opportunities to reach the same potential customer.
SEO and PPC should therefore not operate in completely separate silos.
Paid search can reveal valuable information quickly.
You can identify:
That data can then influence your SEO strategy.
If a keyword consistently generates profitable PPC leads, it may be worth investing in an organic landing page targeting the same opportunity.
Likewise, high-ranking organic pages can help inform PPC campaigns.
The two channels become much stronger when they share data.
If organic clicks become more competitive, each visitor becomes increasingly valuable.
That makes conversion rate optimisation particularly important.
Imagine your website currently converts 2% of visitors into enquiries.
You could spend months trying to increase traffic by 50%.
Or you could improve the landing page and raise conversion rate from 2% to 4%.
You have doubled your enquiries without doubling your traffic.
This means modern search strategy should consider the full journey:
Visibility → Click → Website → Conversion → Customer
Ranking is only the beginning.
There is a temptation to assume that AI assistants will eventually make websites less important.
The reality is more nuanced.
Google’s generative search experiences continue to rely on publicly accessible web content and surface links to external sources. Google’s current guidance therefore still emphasises making website content accessible, useful and crawlable.
Your website remains the place where you control:
Other platforms may help people discover you.
Your website is where you can turn that attention into business.
The answer is not to abandon SEO and chase every new AI trend.
Instead, businesses should strengthen the fundamentals while broadening their approach.
Make sure your website can be crawled, indexed and understood properly.
Do not immediately publish hundreds of new articles.
Review the pages you already have.
Ask:
Often, improving existing pages produces more value than simply increasing publishing volume.
Identify the questions customers actually ask your team.
Turn that expertise into useful content.
Work towards becoming a recognised authority rather than simply another website targeting a keyword.
Use paid advertising strategically for high-value searches and to gather faster commercial data.
Make sure additional visibility actually produces enquiries and revenue.
As reporting develops, businesses should pay attention to how their websites appear within newer search experiences. Google has already begun testing dedicated generative AI visibility reporting in Search Console.
It is equally important not to overreact.
You do not suddenly need to:
The underlying objective remains very similar.
Create the best possible digital presence for the people you want to reach.
Make your expertise clear.
Make your information easy to access.
And make it easy for potential customers to take the next step.
Search is increasingly happening across traditional search results, AI-generated experiences, paid advertising and other discovery platforms. The Inner Media article makes the same broad point: successful brands need to think beyond individual rankings and consider visibility across a wider search ecosystem.
For businesses, this means the winning strategy is unlikely to be SEO or PPC or AI search.
It will increasingly be:
SEO + PPC + content + brand + conversion optimisation.
Each element supports the others.
Organic search is not disappearing.
But the definition of search visibility is changing.
Ranking highly in Google remains valuable, but modern search marketing needs to consider what happens when customers discover information through AI answers, paid results, maps, video and other search experiences too.
The businesses best placed to succeed will be those that build strong websites, produce genuinely useful content, develop recognisable expertise and measure success based on customers rather than rankings alone.
Google’s own current guidance reinforces that point: the fundamentals that help websites perform in traditional search also remain relevant to its generative AI experiences.
The technology is changing.
The principle isn’t:
Be useful, be visible and give customers a reason to choose you.