Which Types of Content Will Win Over Google AI Overviews, According to Experts & 300+ Web Strategists – InstantFollowerz

From May 2024 Google AI Overviews (aka SGE) have reshaped the SEO world as we know it.

While content quality has always been important, the stakes are higher now than ever because content must be not only informative and unique, but also easily digestible by Google’s AI.

This change leaves a big question: What happens to your traffic if some of your content becomes redundant?

See insights from HubSpot’s SEO experts on what content to prioritize and what to avoid in a post-SGE environment.

What types of content to rely on in front of Google’s SGE

1. Rely on personality-driven, thought-provoking content.

HE has a lot going for it. But, due to the nature of robots, they inherently lack one thing: perspective.

Because of this, you’ll want to make sure you start relying on content driven by personal thought that offers personal lessons, examples, and new concepts that move conversations forward.

In a survey of 300+ US web strategists and SEOs, we found that 37% think review and comparison content will thrive, while 27% see opinion and leadership content as strong performers in this new environment.

neither one nor the other Aya FrostHubSpot’s Director of SEO Global Growth, put it on“As a result of the evolution of AI, there is an exponential increase in the amount of low-value content written by AI. And, in response, Google is prioritizing first person, credible, personality driven content.”

This makes sense. Google needs its AI models to keep improving new information on the web. And new information – including new perspectives and ideas – can only come from real people.

For example, consider what happens when I ask Breeze Copilot, “How do I build emotional resilience as an entrepreneur?”

Copilot’s response includes many tangible steps toward building resilience. But it lacks the nuances and complexities of real life.

So I find it more useful to refer to this post: “The Return: Five Founders on Building Emotional Resilience.”

In the post, one founder, Michael Plisco, says, “As founders, we often get so deeply attached to our business and its mission that it becomes difficult to differentiate ourselves from what we’re building. When you fail, you have to take a step back and realize that business failure, regardless of the situation, is not the same as failure.”

Plisco then recommends getting back in touch with the things that make you happy, from hanging out with friends and family to activities you haven’t had time for since starting your business.

Think about it that advice compared to Copilot’s advice “Embrace failures as learning opportunities, allowing you to adapt and grow from challenges”.

See the difference?

After all, there are many topics that deserve a quick, clear, concise answer. I turn to Copilot all the time for topics like “Make me a workout plan,” “What’s the best SOCIAL MEDIA platform right now?” and “Please give me five interview questions about product development and AI.”

He cannot move the conversation into new territory with fresh, new ideas. And it cannot fully convey the subtleties and nuances that many complex subjects require. This is where your content can really shine.

2. First-person narratives will become increasingly important.

AI can round up a long list of tools and provide a comprehensive analysis of each, but that I can’t describe your unique tool testing experience.

This is where first-hand perspectives will become critical.

Also former HubSpot Marketing Manager and SEO Strategist Bianca (Binks) Anderson he told me, “Productive Perspective is a term we’ll embrace at HubSpot to guide our writers in front of Google’s SGE. For us, that means fully immersing ourselves in the subject and sharing our personal journey through first-person stories.”

She continues, “We aim to demonstrate our hands-on experience by demonstrating the products, software and tools we talk about, truly walking the walk.”

📍 It is vital that you look at your existing strategy and consider where you can incorporate first-hand expertise. Instead of writing “Top 10 Marketing Automation Tools,” maybe use a first-hand angle like “I Tried These 5 Marketing Automation Tools: Here Are My Favorites.”

In addition to helping you rank in the post-SGE world, incorporating first-person expertise also helps you build brand trust. Your readers want to know that you have real experience about the topics you write about.

Anderson adds, “We also believe in taking a clear and confident stance on a topic, backed by research and first-hand data.”

She continues, “We believe that forming and articulating insightful opinions is the mark of true expertise. With Productive Perspectives, we strive to provide valuable content that will resonate with our readers.”

Here’s some interesting data on this issue: About 30% of SEOs think content that shares personal stories and experiences will be hardest hit by search engine generative AI and LLM integrations.

I can’t decide if this opinion is based on the belief that such stories will feel less authentic and personal, or that the LLM browser integrations won’t be able to summarize these stories well enough in AI Overviews.

It seems both could be factors.

As generative AI relies more on general patterns rather than genuine human experiences, people worry that personal narratives will lose their impact, and most importantly – their “soul”.

3. You have to include EEAT signals in your content.

Rate Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines EEA — which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Credibility — as critical factors in ensuring your content ranks on Google, and EEAT has become increasingly important following the release of Google’s SGE.

Because of what Rory HopeHubSpot’s head of EN Growth advises all content creators to rely on these factors when creating content.

As he says, “When you create a piece of content, you’ll benefit from writing through the author’s real-world experience while referencing the author or your company’s credentials to improve perceived expertise by search engines and users.”

He continues: “To enhance authority, backlinks will remain importantso try to include primary research data or citations when possible to make your content relatable and shareable. Depending on the type of content, you should also add social proof or reviews to the page, as this will help build trust.”

Hope recommends that marketers read Google’s search quality assessment guidelines to build a deeper understanding of EEAT, which will help you improve your visibility.

On the other hand, three experts from different niches and companies like Backlinko, Wistia, Rainbow Plant Life and Angi follow a slightly different approach – obtaining information. They advise writing SEO-optimized articles and adding only 10 to 40% unique information.

Experts attribute this to the performance of their content and fear that “overloading your content with new information could cause Google to doubt its relevance to the query.”

My opinion? You should include first-hand experience anyway, but that’s not the same as getting information. Browse the posts on the HubSpot blog and you’ll see that our writers put extensive research and external expertise into each post to make it unique and actionable.

All content includes keywords here and there though – no SEO obsession.

4. Rely on long-running queries.

For some time, marketers have been hearing about the power of long-tail queries to rank better in the SERPs.

As a refresher: Head terms like “blogging” are generally searched for frequently and are harder to rank for compared to long-tail phrases. So when considering your SEO strategy, you’ll want to make a list long phrases that could help you capture more traffic.

“How to write a blog post: a beginner’s guide”, for example, is probably easier to rank for than “blogging”.

45% of SEOs believe how-to guides and other educational content will perform best as generative AI and LLM become more integrated with search engines.

And speaking of how-to guides, you’ll often see AI reviews that use ordered lists for step-by-step instructions, according to Surfer survey.

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Senior technical SEO specialist Sylvain Charbit believes that these types of inquiries will become increasingly important in a post-SGE world.

“Prioritizing long-running queries will become even more important because AI responses from Google tend to be better in this case,” he said. “Optimizing images and content around these more detailed questions could lead to greater visibility in AI-generated answers.

in short: People now write long sentences to get short, clear, “as soon as possible”.

And when I say short, I mean AI reviews are usually around 157 words. That only gives you about 984 characters to directly answer the question or make the content interesting enough to get people to click and learn more.

It’s hard, but it really sharpens your focus and keeps you from wandering off topic. You know exactly where to go and what to give your users.

And how will all of this affect search engines?

Well, 55% of SEOs in our survey believe that since the introduction of AI review and other LLM search features, people are using search engines more often to find answers.

Meanwhile, 37% think usage has stayed about the same, and only 9% think it has decreased.

I’m kind of torn between thinking that people are looking for answers more often and believing that usage has stayed about the same. But I bet it definitely won’t fail.

Moreover, we have to consider the traffic generated by AI chatbots — from ChatGPT and Gemini to Claude and Copilot. In October, I saw an influx of posts sharing that they started getting more traffic from chatbots.

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Don’t be afraid of change – just adjust your strategy

To rank high, you need to be prepared for even more changes that await you. Google is not slowing down, and AI is advancing much faster than expected. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We just need to prepare and remain open to change. (The good news: AI won’t take our jobs.)

Your SEO and content strategy teams are ready to test, iterate and experiment to discover what new content strategies work best for your business.

Look at him The Evolution of SEO: Expert Insights into the Future Search Landscape if you are interested in learning more about how SEO will change in 2025 and beyond.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.