35: Zero-click Marketing: Mastering Content Marketing in a Post-click Landscape

Zero click marketing is here to stay 🙅

Content marketing like blogging used to be a straightforward game. As long as you were making great, SEO-optimized content, you would be rewarded with clicks and waves of traffic to your website. 

Since the rollout of Google’s AI Overview, people haven’t been clicking. In fact, more than half of all Google searches today end without a single click. This is because people are getting the answers to their questions in the overview section. 

What does this mean for content creators? You have to switch up your strategy and structure your content specifically for the zero-click game. In this episode of Practical Rebels, the team discusses tips and tricks to make sure your content is built to rank for AI. Listen now on all of your favorite streaming platforms!

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Practical Rebels. How are we doing over here? V?

Speaker 2 0:04

I'm good. I'm very confused about how you're sitting right now.

Speaker 1 0:07

It's comfortable.

Speaker 2 0:09

Ramsey is leaning back in his chair. The mic is resting on his body. Yes, it is.

Welcome to Practical Rebels

Speaker 1 0:17

You should try it. And our friend of the show, logan yeah, it's nice, right, it's a nice feel it is nice.

Speaker 3 0:25

I'm trying it for the first time. I used to just let the microphone sit on the table, but I realized that was stupid, so now I'm resting it on my body, you know I was watching.

Speaker 1 0:34

I was watching a lot of tiktoks and I was like man, look at him holding that microphone. That looks comfortable. Yeah, let me try that. And so we did, and I'm locked in like I'd like to get everybody like this.

Speaker 2 0:45

All right, well, we'll work on that, but first first friend, friend of the show.

Speaker 1 0:52

What are we talking about today?

Speaker 3 0:54

We're talking about zero click marketing, and if you don't know what that is, we'll talk about it soon.

Speaker 2 1:01

So I'm really excited to learn about this because it's you know, as we are constantly working in the world of search, things are constantly changing, and this is something that started to pop up last year when we started to see the AI overviews being implemented within Google, and I think we're starting to see the impact of that rolling out, and Logan's been doing a little bit of research lately, digging into what this means for the way that search has been approached up to this point. So we're going to dig in a little bit and learn more about this from Logan and how we can use this to better up our search game.

Speaker 3 1:38

Yeah, and we're all going to learn together, because a lot of times this stuff comes out and then two or three months later it changes. So you can't ever. You can be an expert at it, but you also have to be studious and willing to always be not wrong, but like just be willing to be like hey, stuff changed, we got to do something different now. So, and that's what this is all about.

Speaker 1 2:01

All right, so go ahead, get in it. What is zero click?

Speaker 3 2:06

well, just in general, it is almost exactly what it sounds like. So, with content marketing specifically, think about google search, blogging and things like that. Whenever you type a search query into google, it used to be about getting the click, and that's why so many people were doing blogs, and blogging in general is because it was a great way to get click-through rate onto your website. But now and I'm not telling anyone anything new here, because you've all seen it since last year the AI overview in Google that makes it so that so many people are getting the answers to their questions without clicking on anything. People are getting the answers to their questions without clicking on anything.

Speaker 3 2:54

So zero-click marketing is an approach where you're structuring your content and your strategy specifically to rank in the AI overview so that you can get as much of your content in front of people without them having to click on it, and it is different. It's a different approach because you're, like I said, you're structuring your content specifically to get into that little window at the top, and that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get a click. It just means that you're going to get in that window, and I will talk a little bit more about like what exactly that means, because I know a lot of people they're thinking, okay, well, great, how does that help me?

Speaker 1 3:29

you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 3:30

So yeah, but that's really the. That's the watered down version of zero click and but it's. It's ubiquitous all over marketing, it's in social media, it's all this stuff. So just people are clicking less right in general.

Speaker 1 3:43

Right, yeah, they're clicking less and social as well yeah, not getting as much um, but you know the ai. So basically what you're saying is how to market to a strategy to the ai.

Speaker 3 3:55

Yeah, so you get pop up in front of the the actual links below yeah, absolutely, because you have to scroll down quite a bit now past paid, paid search and ai overview. I forgot what the number is. I don't know if top my head it's an average of 980 pixels between search and ai overviews before you even get to the number one organic search rank. So that's significant.

Speaker 2 4:26

And I have a question because it's not always. You always don't get the AI overview. Is it only when people are searching for a specific thing?

Speaker 3 4:38

I'm pretty sure it's whenever Google has determined that it has enough search to crawl to spit out an ai overview yeah because sometimes you put in a search query and there's just the search volume is too low and there's or maybe no one's answered that specific question yet. But usually for these high volume searches you're going to get an ai overview because it's high volume and google has decided that it needs an ai overview and that's what they and Google has decided that it needs an AI overview, and that's what they want anyways.

Speaker 3 5:08

They want people on Google. They want people to stay on Google. They don't necessarily always want you to click away and go off their search engine. They want you just to be using their search engine all day.

Speaker 2 5:20

And one of the things that I'm noticing you found in the research you've been done, 58.5% of all US-based searches in Google are zero-click searches. So people are searching for it, but does that mean they're not actually clicking through to a website at all? They found the information there.

Speaker 3 5:35

Yeah, and we got that from NP Digital. It's a really great one to sign up for, if y'all don't know, for newsletter stuff. But yeah, that's exactly it. Over half of all US-based searches people aren't clicking at all. They get their answer and they're off to do whatever it is they were doing before that.

Speaker 2 5:55

So that's, crazy.

Speaker 3 5:57

One search, no clicks.

Speaker 2 5:59

So that's a really good case for diversifying your marketing content strategy.

Speaker 3 6:04

Yeah, absolutely for diversifying your marketing content strategy. Yeah, absolutely, because the way people are structuring their content now whenever they're blogging is totally different, and we can talk about this now. I don't know if we'll talk about it later, but a lot of bullets. You know that it used to be. They wanted the long form essay style content because that's what ranked well. Now, whenever you're thinking of writing an article, it looks much more like a lot of bullets, faqs, um, you know, and stuff like that. You have to think of something that summarizes nicely in that little ai window and whenever you're looking at your content, if you can't imagine it fitting in that window, it's probably not going to get in there. So, um, that's why a lot of people are, you know, like I said, using faq style stuff really short structured, a lot of h2s and h3s, headings and bulleted lists. Google ai loves a bulleted list. So anytime you can summarize your key takeaways in an article in something that's very easy to digest in that little window, it gives you a better chance.

Speaker 2 7:16

I think the great thing about that, too, though, is I think that's the natural progression of all types of content.

Speaker 2 7:22

Like when you think about whenever we're developing social content especially like we work very heavily with one client to do all of their LinkedIn strategy and their content and it's can be heavily kind of dense informational stuff, um, but you're able to take that and break that down into several smaller, digestible posts as opposed to, like some really long form piece that, honestly, a fraction of the people are actually going to scroll through and read the whole thing.

Speaker 3 7:51

Yeah, and people, and if, if anyone uses WordPress or anything like that and they use EOS, you'll see that there's like a readability score in the backend and usually what that means is that if your readability score is really high, that means that your content is easy to read, and I think that this is something that's not new. This is something that's been going on for a while. But really you want everything that you're writing, whether that's social media, whether that's on your website, whatever you want everything to be just so easy to read at a glance, because you have people's attention spans are shrinking, so you have less of a window of opportunity to catch their attention and to give them the information they need. There are some, you know. Linkedin, I would say, is probably where people like to go a little bit long winded, a little bit more, and people do appreciate that style. Um, but even LinkedIn, you know, you're seeing people do more of the bulleted list style stuff and just kind of those quick takeaways, because people want those little bite size like Ooh, that was really really cool, like that, I just learned something really neat, but now I'm going to move on with the rest of my day because I can't sit here, and you know, read a two, three thousand word article that

Speaker 2 9:08

feels like a book, so yeah, and I think that's, even if you are like that's a good approach to take to anything, because there is still the place for longer form blog content. We do it. It's organic search over time. But the more you can take your content and break it down into smaller pieces, the more likely people are to actually read the whole thing, and I mean the new hotel stuff that you're referencing is a great example of that. That's exactly how he formats all of this content yeah, and it's um.

Speaker 3 9:35

It's not only that it's formatted that way, but it's diverse. Um, I mean, there's just so many different ways to digest the same content within the same article. Like I said earlier, with FAQs you can put like a little chart in there and, you know, you can reiterate what you've already said. But visually, one thing I know we've been we talked about with the article that we did that we turned into a podcast about. With the article that we did that we turned into a podcast, you could even link a link to a podcast episode about if you know, if you have your own podcast and you're using um, you're doing blog content on top of that link to a podcast episode on there so that people can click on it and listen to the podcast.

Speaker 3 10:20

Um, there's just so many different ways that you can get people to consume your content on one page and I think that the more diversity of content you can add, the easier it's going to be, because you kind of give people options. You know, and say, like you know, I don't really know if I want to sit here and read this whole article, but I will read this, the key takeaways at the top, and that's another thing people are doing. They're saying basically giving you an outcome before you even get into the article at the top is like key takeaways and there's maybe five bullet points. In that way it's like if you don't have time to read this whole article and you just need to move on to the next thing, here are the five big themes and if you just want to read those and turn the page, that's cool yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2 11:06

And then you know, I think that's also giving the kind of content junkies an opportunity to really dig deeper if they want to. But you're kind of killing two birds with one stone with that approach.

Speaker 3 11:15

It sounds like yeah, absolutely, and I think it's just the um giving people the choice, yeah, and I think that through that, it shows that you're a little bit more in tune with like what? Yeah, the best ones, because I know it's going to be good every time I click on it. And if I get some junk email where I'm just like this newsletter is no good or this article is probably going to be no good, you know you don't get that that return reader readership every single time, like some of these other blogs do, yeah, um, what has been like? So this is all obviously generative AI.

Speaker 2 11:59

What has been like? So this is all obviously generative AI. Who is to say that? What's?

Speaker 3 12:09

getting pulled is necessarily accurate. Well, that's a I mean, that's a huge problem too. So a lot of you know it used to be whenever blogging in general was mostly people who knew how to write. Yeah, so with, but with chat, gpt, you know, whenever, I guess a lot of people said you know, I don't, I don't necessarily need a copywriter to help me with blogging anymore, I could just throw, you know, chat, gpt or whatever AI flavor you like and just throw articles up that way. So that's kind of been. Another issue is that, even though there's I don't know what the number is off the top of my head, but there's more people making content online than ever before, so and that's a lot of it's because of AI.

Speaker 1 12:57

So it's a good thing and a bad thing.

Speaker 3 12:59

It's a good thing and a bad thing. One thing it does is it removes that barrier to entry thing. What one thing it does is it removes that barrier to entry. Right now, people who didn't have the time maybe, or maybe not even the skill, can now get into the game. But you've got a lot of I.

Speaker 3 13:13

I read this reddit post and it was just like every time I put in a google search it's nothing but ai slop.

Speaker 3 13:18

And it's kind of true in a sense, because you can read some of these articles that are written.

Speaker 3 13:23

It's just like, man, this is terrible, um, but yeah, so there there is a uh, I guess it's.

Speaker 3 13:31

It's more on the reader now than ever before to kind of vet the information and to do their own fact checking, I guess, or to make it so that whenever you do read something, maybe read another article and maybe read one more after that and start to kind of compare notes, because you'll you'll quickly see how different you know people's takes are on the same exact topic and you can start to identify like, ooh, man, this is like definitely some some chat GPT going on. Or if you're like, oh, no, this is, I can tell this person really knows what they're talking about, and that all comes back to that that authoritativeness, the, the credibility where you start to position yourself as a source of, like, real knowledge and expertise. So, yeah, like I said, a lot of people out there doing really bad content, but it's it's now more than ever for the people who are really good at it. You have a chance to stand out and you have a chance to shine and be rewarded for that.

Speaker 2 14:34

Yeah, and I think that's also the case because there are people out there listening that are like, well, I built my base of my content and then put it in chat, pgpt and then edit it from there. Like don't, if you're going to be doing that, don't take that as like the truth. Everything that you get spat back out, like you still, you have to do your research, you have to, you know, adjust it to oh, it's coming from a human, so it's true to what you're trying to develop, as opposed to just like it reminds me of the days that, like at the beginning of seo, when people were stuffing keywords into blog articles like this is the new version of that and that died out, and this will too, you know, except for people that

Speaker 3 15:17

are using it wisely yeah, I always like to say that if you couldn't, if you couldn't do it without it, don't do it.

Speaker 2 15:26

Yeah.

Speaker 3 15:26

You know what I mean and it's like I use it and I know that, but I know whenever I'm using it, I'm using it to make what I'm doing better and easier, but you can never use it to replace like what would otherwise just be like the skillset that you need yeah you know, it's like you know a pilot might use autopilot, but if the autopilot fails, he or she still knows how to land the plane.

Speaker 3 15:52

Like that's kind of the same thing where it's like cruise control yeah, it's like if you're using ai, you need to be able. If I came up behind you and like closed out that window and I said, all right now, finish it without it, you should still be able to do it without it. And if you can't say that definitively, then you know, like just I'm not saying don't use it, but I'm saying like you're probably not going to rank as high as the next person who's just, who just knows this stuff back back in front because their content's going to be better, because they can go through and they can vet the, the areas where I either failed or was confusing or whatever like that.

Speaker 2 16:32

So yeah, yeah, um, one of the things that you've noted here. It calls back to just what you said, like I know that historically it's always been. You know, a minimum of a thousand words, all this sort of stuff when it comes to blog content. But what this is? Suggesting that shorter form content may be just as effective if it's set up properly.

Speaker 3 16:55

Yeah, and I think that what you're probably going to start seeing is shorter articles but with a very, a very hardline structure to them and, like I said, that all goes back to the bullets, the FAQs and stuff like that. I think, as long as you're answering the questions that people are asking and you're doing the keyword research and you can finish an article and you don't necessarily need to hit like a giant word count. Yeah, and I think what the takeaway there is that, like, I think it's more about the structure and less about the word count, but I really do think that you could get, you could achieve your goals with less words now because of AI overview. Ai overview and if your goal is that, you know and maybe it's not your goal, but I guess it should be at this point is structuring your content for zero click.

Speaker 3 17:50

And I think being in that AI overview window is going to be more and more valuable to marketers and business owners down the road. And yeah, and it's just because the clicks just aren't happening. So at this point you kind of have to.

Speaker 2 18:08

You either have to adjust or get kind of left behind yeah, I think it's, and I think this is one of the things that we see in social to ramsey is like instagram meta will intentionally put out a product update and like favor, reward people that are actually using it. So it's the same sort of thing that's happening with google like they want you to use this and people that are leaning into it are the ones that are going to capture like that.

Speaker 1 18:38

Top tier rank yeah, it's kind of like. I mean, they updated the Instagram algorithm and they did it because they want to get more views to people who aren't as good as creating content, which has brought down views for people who do create good content. And it's a double edged sword, because I agree with it. I want people creating content but don't hurt the people who are doing great content. But it's the same thing.

Speaker 3 19:04

You just got gotta adjust and adapt yeah, yeah, and I think that the more people, the lower the barrier to entry gets. I guess, like the overall quality is obviously going to go down because you're going to get less qualified people doing the thing that it used to take a very qualified person to do, which people might argue that's a good thing. You know what I mean, because now everyone gets a seat at the table, and I think there is some truth to that, but I do think I stand by the the fact that I think that this is a time where people who are really cued in and really really strong at what they're doing, they have an opportunity to stand out more than ever.

Speaker 1 19:48

Yeah, so um, I just want to go back real quick.

Speaker 3 20:09

We were talking about the blog. Just real quick for people out there listening. I know V said the minimum of a thousand words, with the new structure and the keyword, to the best of your ability and you feel like you gave enough expertise and insight into the question and you've structured it the way we've talked about, with bullets, faqs, maybe some visual aids and stuff like that. I don't think you need to live and die by the word count. I think you need to think of it as you know, maybe use a little bit of common sense, like if I was a reader, what I what, I've gotten everything I needed out of this and if you feel like you're going to add 300 words of crap just to hit a word count, I would suggest not doing that.

Speaker 1 20:54

10 for um, 10 for quality. So quality over quantity when it comes to blog.

Speaker 2 20:59

To get into the, to help you get into the ai overview yeah, yeah, it's like quality and clarity, that combination of those two things, because if you are breaking down your content in a way that's easy to understand it is, then, you know, easy for google to pick up and say okay, ok, this goes here, this is authoritative in here, and we're going to then utilize this within what we're developing with our algorithms.

Speaker 3 21:22

Yeah, absolutely, and, like I said, I really always go back to. If I was someone who was searching for this and I landed on this, would I be what I've gotten, what I wanted or what I've clicked away? And if it doesn't pass the smell test, you know who who really cares whether you've hit a word count or not, it's just right. You haven't done what you've set out to do and I think sometimes people lose sight of that and trying to like, oh, I need to rank for all these keywords. It's like, is this even a useful article that anyone really wants? Right, and I think we're going to go to. I think things are just getting like is this useful, yes or no? Right, and was the answer for the question you know meaningful? And if not, then I guess you haven't done what you set out to do.

Speaker 1 22:09

Yeah, people have less time and they don't have time to be meandering on Google, so Google is trying to come up. But has come? People have less time and they don't have time to be meandering on Google, so Google is trying to come up with a solution to hit you straight in the face with it and if you have the right stuff on your website, they'll hit you straight in the face with that. Yeah, now I want to circle back again. Oh, please don't circle back. Another reason you know you were talking about the 980 pixels like it pushing, pushing down also to underneath the overview. I've been seeing social media before they even get to the um websites or the clicks yeah, well, I mean, it's a google's pulling in youtube, um, instagram, tick tock, um.

Speaker 3 22:52

So and I think we've talked about this before on this podcast specifically but whenever you're talking about just SEO in general and optimizing for search, you can't just do it on your website anymore. You kind of have to do it everywhere. So you know, you have to be thinking about that like structuring your, your social media and your Instagram and your Facebook and your YouTube for search, because that's all structuring your, your social media and your Instagram and your Facebook and your YouTube for search, because that's all part of it. You know, and you know we've we've talked a lot about blogging specifically, just because it's it's the, it's the low hanging fruit. Whenever you're talking about zero click marketing, but the truth is that that permeates everything in marketing now. So, um, yeah, you should absolutely be optimizing for search on in your social media strategy.

Speaker 1 23:39

Because if you don't check this out, people that AI overview is now pushed you down. Social media has pushed you down, so if you were in the middle of the page, you're now on the second page.

Speaker 3 23:50

Yeah, and it's, it's harder and harder to rank. I mean, and it's and that's another thing we haven't talked about yet is that you know, just because you're in the AI overview today doesn't mean you're going to be there a month or two from now, because it's just with all the people doing content now, rank has become super volatile, right like. I think that the average I read was the two to three month period that an ai overview is what it is, and then it changes. So if you think about that, that window of opportunity to get into that spot if you do get into that spot, you might I mean, if you're lucky, you have three months there, unless your article is really freaking good and it stays there for some reason. But you have to.

Speaker 3 24:37

You have to imagine a scenario all the time when the the next person is kind of on your coattails trying to knock you down from that spot. So that's another thing, too, where it's like you have to always be producing new content and optimizing as well, going back to old pieces, because, like we said in the beginning of this, it changes all the time. So I can guarantee you and this is true for us, this is true for everyone you know, your blog content from two years ago that's sitting on your website is probably not optimized for today's algorithm and that's, you know that's. And I know it seems like a big ask to constantly be going back and changing things and the reality is, you know, there's probably not enough hours in the day for everyone to do that all the time.

Speaker 3 25:26

But it's something that you probably should be focusing on is saying like we probably, you know, instead of just like constantly putting out new stuff, you know, have you repurposed that old one that you did. That wasn't that good, you know. You just put it out and it was like it was fine at the time. But really go back and look at stuff and say like, is this my best work as of today? And I guarantee you the stuff from two years ago? It's? The answer to that's probably no.

Speaker 1 25:52

So, so so if, if you go back and you restructure your old blog and then maybe structure your social content like that too, right, yeah, so you want to go through. Like you know, you want to have a profound statement, go through a couple bullet points and that match up with your blog, or something like that, to help the AI crawl for you and maybe put you in the overview, either in that part or in the social media section.

Speaker 3 26:21

Yeah, I think it's never too late to start. I mean, if you're looking at a piece right now, you know, think about ways you can improve it. If you've listened to this, you know, can I add an effort? That's the easy part, right? You know? It's like if I just add, if I go back into all my articles and just add a key takeaway section to all of them right there, you've already given yourself a better chance.

Speaker 3 26:44

Boom that's right you know, or if you just say like I'm gonna go back onto all my articles on my website and I'm gonna add an faq section. You know, that way it's like that's more manageable one, because that'd be a beast to go back and rewrite however many articles you have on your website. But if there's low hanging fruit there, um, optimizing for today's algorithm the easiest way you can, um, I think that's effort worth worth spending on and if that's, if that's something that you're that you have the time and resources to do, I would suggest doing that.

Speaker 2 27:20

Yeah, and that's easy to do. Like you said, that's not something that requires an entire figuring out what you're going to be talking about from scratch. Just make it better.

Speaker 3 27:28

Yeah, and that is one of those things. Honestly, I would say, let AI help you out with that, because that's already content you've written. Hopefully, um, maybe run it, run that article through and say, like can you make an FAQ section for this? And then, like it will give you some ideas because it's just going to take what you wrote and give you an S so, like you know, there's an idea. I mean, I, I don't, I wouldn't say like rely on it, but it will at least get you started in thinking in that direction so that you can say, all right, yeah, I can knock. If I knock one of these out a week, it's more than I'm doing right now, which is just kind of letting it sit there.

Speaker 2 28:03

Yeah, can I? Um, is there anything else big to touch on? Because I think, in the spirit of what you're talking about short and sweet high level bullets you've kind of covered it. Yeah, let's make this episode short and take some of our own advice. No, but I think what you've said is great and these are some really fantastic takeaways for people to take and run with. And this is a great place to start, and this stuff is constantly evolving.

Speaker 1 28:31

We're definitely going to be getting getting into this more.

Speaker 2 28:34

Yeah.

Speaker 1 28:35

For us, for our clients. We have to, they have to. It's just like. It's almost like social media just popped up and people are like, oh, my goodness, what is this? So I think we're done. By the way, this whole podcast was done in AI. Bye, bye. Yeah, this wasn't even us.

Speaker 3 28:59

We talked a lot of trash about ai, but oh my god, this entire podcast was fake.

Speaker 1 29:04

Yes, it was all right, once we do that, one day we will. That would actually be funny. We should do that. That would be funny.

Speaker 1 29:08

We have to make our little avatars all right, ladies and gentlemen, if you're out there, you're listening to this and this has done some good for you. Please make sure you share it, smash a like so it can pop up and maybe even get into the AI overview section. Hey, that'd be something, wouldn't it? Bada bing, bada boom. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be out of here. Friend of the show. Thank you for coming back.

Speaker 2 29:31

Thank you so much, Logan.

Speaker 1 29:32

Yeah, thank you for having, for having me these good to have you back in your spot appearances these days and with that, ladies and gentlemen, practical rebels.