SEO Playbook : Tailoring Content for AI-Driven Search Results

By Zack Kadish

AI Overviews are here to stay. Whether you love them, hate them, click on them, scroll past them, laugh at them – it doesn’t really matter.

Google has expanded the reach of AI Overviews to almost half the world at this point and has even stated that AI Overviews are driving an increased engagement and user satisfaction especially with longer tail or complex queries.

What Google wants, Google gets. They want AI Overviews and therefore, SEOs around the world need to adapt to this and learn how AI Overviews are generated and how to optimize for them.

Spoiler: It’s not much different. Creating high quality content that users will find relevant using the customer’s voice is still the best way to rank and appear in the AI Overviews.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of how to optimize for AI Overviews, let’s take a step back at how we got here and what they are.

What Are AI Overviews?

AI Overviews were initially known as Search Generative Experience as Google was testing out how to incorporate AI and large language models (LLMs) directly into the search experience.

This was due to the rise of many other AI and machine learning engines such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity becoming extensively used and very popular with mainstream audiences.

AI Overviews are brief summaries that are generated directly on the search engine result page (SERPs) above the fold and standard organic listings with relevant information to answer the user’s query.

AI Overviews do source where they are getting the information from in the result type but this is one of the biggest changes on the SERPs and with Google in the last decade.

Previously, when you were searching for something you would have to click into the result to learn more about it. Even with the release of Answer Boxes, Quick Answers, or People Also Ask – you’re only getting your information from one source.

This is a big change from traditional search snippets because now Google is consolidating information from a variety of sources and giving the user the answer directly.

Why Do AI Overviews Matter for SEO?

AI Overviews matter a lot for the organic channel and for digital marketers because there could potentially be a big decrease of clicks and traffic coming from Google to our websites.

Zero click searches are on the rise now with AI Overviews as Google is giving the user a very in-depth explanation of their query. This might cause users to not have to click into a website to learn more about it.

While Google has stated that the engagement rate of websites being sourced in AI Overviews is better than regular blue links, there is still fear that websites will see a decrease in organic traffic.

The rise of AI Overviews is predominantly with informational keywords or keywords with mixed intent (a keyword where Google isn’t sure what the user means).

People are always scared that SEO is dying. SEO isn’t dead but it’s going to evolve.

The SEO industry will need to start moving away from traditional search rankings and focus more on real estate of the SERPs.

SEOs need to now focus on specificity within the content. With intent targeting, being very specific in the content and answering what users care about is the best way to move forward.

How Can We Create Content That Can Be Sourced by AI Overviews?

To create content or not to create content? That’s the question nowadays.

Even if there might be a decrease in organic traffic from content that focuses on informational queries, if the content doesn’t exist on our site then we will never be sourced in the AI Overviews in the first place.

1. Track and identify keywords that appear in the AI Overviews

In order for our content to be sourced in the AI Overviews, we need to understand what type of keywords are generating this result type.

Half the battle is always what does Google want to show when you’re searching for a keyword. By monitoring what keywords are generating AI Overviews and what sources are being referenced in the AI Overviews, we can better understand how to either improve our existing content or how to create new content around this topic.

2. Craft content in a relevant way for AI Overviews to summarize

When creating content, make sure to use and concise language that users can easily understand.

It’s important to prioritize the information hierarchy of the page as well and include the most relevant and key information that we want in the beginning of the page.

By creating these headers with relevant keywords, Google can quickly navigate the page and identify what is important to the user based on their queries.

3. Optimize for relevancy and authority

Keyword research is the bread and butter of creating content. Before we create any piece of content on our site, doing keyword research will allow us to understand what the customer’s voice is. It’s impossible to create customer demand but we can match our high quality content to the customer’s voice.

By using relevant keywords in our title tags, heading tags, and body copy we can organize the information in a clear way which can allow Google to quickly identify what each section is about. This allows Google to surface the most relevant section of the article that pertains to the user based on what they typed in.

4. Structure content in an easy way for Google to comprehend

Treat Google like a five year old child. Make it stupid simple for them to understand what the content is about. One way to do this is to break down the content into clear sections with bulleted lists, numbered steps, or high level summaries that AI Overviews would then extract into key points.

Additionally, by implementing structured data or schema markup, this can help Google better understand what the page is about and what type of content we are creating. Structured data can help Google better understand if there is an author on the page, if the page is an article, if there are FAQs on the page, if the page is related to a product, and much more.

5. Focus on E-E-A-T

Every piece of content we create should follow the principles of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). This is Google’s mantra nowadays and every algorithm update they release pertains to this.

Google wants us to create content that is high quality, that is helpful to the user, and that is unique. One of the best ways to show Google that we are authoritative around a topic is to create content. If there isn’t content on our site, how will Google or the user see that our website has expertise in this field.

One great way to do this is implementing a hub and spoke content marketing model or topic cluster model. This allows our website to create content around different parts of the buyer’s journey and then internally link all the relevant content together.

By creating content for the user with the most relevant information and making it very clear what the page is about gives us the best chance to not only rank on Google but appear in the AI Overviews.

How Do These LLMs Understand Our Content

Modern SEO has changed. It’s important to now incorporate user experience, relevance, and authority within our content. SEO has moved into Generative Engine Optimization and with these changes come new ways that LLMs are understanding and displaying our content.

To optimize for generative engines and improve visibility in AI generated search results, we need to focus on creating more targeted content and structured data so LLMs recognize what we are talking about in the content.

This section will break down more advanced concepts such as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and Fraggles to explain how AI Overviews and LLMs interpret the content.

This section will also discuss further how to structure and optimize the content for retrieval and fragmentation which is very important to any LLM generated summaries, especially AI Overviews.

How RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) Works?

RAG is a very fancy term for how AI systems such as AI Overviews are able to pull relevant information from a massive pool of data from existing content and then generating all this retrieved information in a coherent and concise summary.

RAG is so critical to SEO because this is the main functionality that is deciding what part of your content to show in the AI summaries.

Imagine you’re typing in “what is the best tuxedo to wear at a black tie wedding”. RAG will then scan all the web pages out there to find the most relevant information for the query. This is the retrieval part.

Next, it will pull all of that information together and reformat it into a very easy to read summary to show the user. This is the generation part.

Google is increasingly focusing more on information gain which evaluates the unique value a document might add to the overall ranking set. This means we need to create fresh, unique, and valuable content to compete with everyone else out there.

What Are Fraggles?

Fraggle are fragmented pieces of content that appear in the AI Overviews and are linked to directly.

This term combines “fragments” and “handles”. Think of this also as chunking information or passage based indexing. AI Overviews take the information that is most relevant to users and deliver it directly to them.

Google was already doing this with Answer Boxes or People Also Ask boxes but now it’s doing it with multiple websites and consolidating all the relevant information in one place and generating a summary that makes sense to the user. The difference here is now Google does this with many different sources and consolidates these fraggles into one answer.

Using RAG & Fraggles to Optimize for AI Overviews

So, how do SEOs and content marketers actually use RAG and fraggles to optimize their content for AI Overviews.

These are the main ways that Google’s AI Overviews and find, retrieve, display, and then finally summarize the content in way that makes sense for users.

RAG is the main way that AI Overviews are retrieving the content. Fraggles are how us as SEOs can make the content easily organized and accessible.

To make our content eligible for AI summaries, we need to make sure we do the following:

• Answer User’s Queries Directly
• Use Smart Headings to Structure Content
• Focus on User Intent
• Organize Content in Chunks
• Add Internal Links or Anchors for Easy Retrieval
• Pro Tip: Implement Schema Markup

By following these steps we are giving ourselves the best chance to appear in the AI Overviews. RAG is critical for what part of our content will show up in the AI Overviews so we want to make sure we make it as easy as possible for our content to be retrieved and generated.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, Google’s AI Overviews are focused on getting users the answers they nee as quickly as possible.

Google wants the user to stay on Google and not go to these other AI engines for informational searches.

The goal is to make our content the most relevant we can be around a specific topic. If we make our content RAG and Fraggle friendly, we will increase the chances of our content being retried and featured in the AI Overviews.

This will then increase our website’s traffic and rankings for high intent keywords that users are searching for which can boost our overall engagement and authority in the organic space.

SEO hasn’t changed, it’s evolved. Use the customer’s voice so we can match our high quality content to what the user is looking for. Focus on organizing and presenting your content that a user would find helpful and the AI Overviews will follow.