What the heck does one have to do with the other? (I hear you ask.)
Well, I know it seems like a strange comparison, but I can explain, unlike the Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, asking why a raven is like a writing desk.

First, why do you need SEO?
Many people get a new or redesigned website, and then, after some time, realize – or get told – they need SEO and wonder, why? They spent time and money on that shiny new site! However, not all sites are optimized. Some have the basics, but few designers are also SEO experts.

Sometimes, well-established site owners get complacent and don’t stay on top of the ever-changing landscape of Search user-centric web design. And suddenly find their traffic dwindling.

From the day you launch your site, to the day you retire it or sell it, optimization is not a one-and-done; it takes time and effort – or a comparable amount of money.

Where does the parade come in?
Think of SEO as a parade and your website as an entry – a float with many pretty tissue paper colors and a banner along the side. You and your designer worked hard to make it attractive and to decide what the banner should say. It’s probably pretty nice!

You’re excited for people all along Main Street to see it. (“Main street” = page one of the Google search results”).

But wait! Main Street is only a few blocks long. The parade only lasts a few minutes. Oh, and only about ten to twenty floats can go down Main Street before people go home.

One more detail…there are hundreds to millions of entries!

Enter the Parade Master
(Parade Master = Google)

With so little space and a short time allotted for the parade, Google (ahem), the Parade Master, must eliminate all the floats that aren’t right for this particular parade. Then, re-route most remaining entries to side routes (page 2 plus of the Google Search Results Pages.)

The Parade Master alone decides whose entry is worthy of Main Street. Just having a nice-looking float is not enough. A good theme and banner aren’t sufficient to stand out among so many others like it. The PM wants the chosen floats to give spectators the very best experience.

What gets your pretty little float to Main Street from all the thousands who want to be there?

1. A fast, well-functioning float. (no slowdowns or breakdowns on Main Street!)
2. A float with a carefully worded banner and other features that resonate with and satisfy the viewers along the route better than the others.
3. A float that people recognize, trust, and possibly voted for in previous parades.

No matter how attractive, your float won’t get seen in the parade if it doesn’t pass those three tests.

Once your float makes it to Main Street, the crowd’s visual and emotional reaction to it becomes critical to getting them to vote you best-in-show.

It’s just the same for your website!

1. Your site should load fast and work well. Your visitors need to have a good experience using it.
2. The message and words on your site must match your prospective visitor’s search words and answer their questions.
3. Your site needs to build popularity over time.

And always, once visitors find your site, they need to engage with it and like it well enough to become your clients or customers.

Not every site needs to do the same thing to optimize.
Every site has strengths and weaknesses. Some older sites may be popular but need a redesign for better engagement. Some sites may be attractive but have the wrong message and wording to connect with the right visitors. Some may do both things right, but technical errors make the site slow, hard to use, or even pose security threats, driving visitors away.

When you optimize, you correct site issues and errors and focus on the things your ideal visitors are looking for. When it is visitor-friendly and helpful, you promote the site on any “street” on the internet where those ideal visitors are hanging out. Your Main Street.

So, optimize your site!
Now you understand why you need SEO and the steps to achieve it, you can better work with your SEO Pro to choose what you need to focus on first. Then, identify projects you can work on to keep your site at the front of the parade!

The post Why You Need SEO appeared first on Webbability.

Google’s new Bard is an AI tool. That alone is nothing new – AI tools are everywhere and are being used for many tasks, intelligently processing and organizing information at a speed humans cannot. They can help in many of the mundane tasks website owners face, from producing, editing, and converting content into different languages and formats to giving a truly good and conversational experience to people using their chatbots.

But a Google AI is news. So when I heard that Bard was being offered for testing, I queued up immediately. I wanted a test drive of its capabilities and conversational savvy and to assess how it might affect how we do SEO.

Bard, in its own words, is  “a large language model, also known as a conversational AI or chatbot trained to be informative and comprehensive. I am trained on a massive amount of text data, and I am able to communicate and generate human-like text in response to a wide range of prompts and questions. For example, I can provide summaries of factual topics or create stories.”

Wow. So, in short, a conversational and comprehensive way of getting questions answered and creating or summarizing content.

What can we do with Bard, and what does it mean for Search?

I am truly excited by the possibilities of a truly well-conceived and executed AI. An AI can assist website owners in creating the content that right now is what Google is looking for to establish “Authority” and improve site standing. Many people are simply not comfortable creating content. A tool such as this, used correctly, could assist many of my clients!

Conversely, it also seems probable that when Bard is integrated into Google search in some way, searchers will get many of their information queries answered directly by Bard and not be scrolling through the endless list that is Google’s organic SERPs to find a website to answer those questions, possibly reducing a website’s ability to establish that “authority.”

And is Google for or against (or even indifferent to) using AI to generate authoritative content? Is it better for the author to draw from their own Expertise and Experience (the two “E”s in The EEAT content guidelines), or will it be OK for millions of website owners just to reformat and regurgitate information provided by AI? Will that really improve user experience? How critical is the author’s “voice”? Will information win out over engagement? We can only hope that all those things be balanced somehow.

Only time will tell.

Will Bard replace traditional Google Search?

The word is Google is positioning Bard as an addition to Search and not in any way as a replacement. However, I think that Bard is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of what might develop over time.

And it may be that the time has come. SERP positioning – always a climb – has become increasingly competitive among websites with both the explosive number of websites and the fact that more and more people are optimizing. The challenge for a small business to scale the heights to page one among literally thousands and often millions of search results, many of them highly ranked national or international concerns, is overwhelming.

Soon, someone, be it Google or a new innovator, will develop a more *three-dimensional* search model that will topple the outdated, two-dimensional page scrolling status quo that is Search today. A deeper or richer initial query interface will allow sites that today never show up high enough to be seen to have a better chance of seeing the light of day. IMO, AI will be the gateway to that kind of thinking and functionality.

Right now, adding Bard to Google’s other suite of tools and search features is a viable way to enrich what is available. But the interface is still two-dimensional (and increasingly clunky). Adding more “features” has cluttered the once simple Google landscape.

So I had lots of questions today when I got the nod. It was my turn to chat with Bard!

Here’s what I have learned so far…

I warmed up with some questions about food and nutrition – two subjects I am passionate about. Bard answered my questions in depth and accurately.

I then asked Bard to compose a song. Hmm, now that was interesting. While technically Bard produced verses – about kindness BTW – that could be set to music, it was a bit, uh, bland and repetitive. But then, I suppose many hit songs could be defined the same way. A second try with more specific rhyme and subject matter instructions netted something marginally better. But I will spare you the details. So far, the name “Bard” may be a bit of an overstatement.

Next, I hopped right into questions about Bard and SEO. This is where it got interesting. Here are y questions and Bard’s answers, verbatim:

Q. How will the use of Bard change how people gain traffic for their website?

A. The use of Bard can change how people gain traffic for their website in a few ways. First, Bard can be used to generate content that is relevant to a website’s target audience. This content can then be shared on social media or other channels, which can help to drive traffic to the website. Second, Bard can be used to answer people’s questions about a website’s products or services. This can help build trust and credibility with potential customers and lead to them visiting the website to learn more. Finally, Bard can be used to create chatbots that can answer questions and support website visitors. This can help improve the customer experience and lead to more people visiting the website.

Overall, the use of Bard can help websites to generate more traffic by creating content that is relevant to their target audience, answering questions that people have about their products or services, and creating chatbots that can provide support to website visitors.

Q. If two people use Bard to generate content for a blog on the same subject, won’t they end up with essentially duplicate content?

A. Yes, if two people use Bard to generate content for a blog on the same subject, they will end up with essentially duplicate content. This is because Bard is a large language model that is trained on a massive amount of text data. When it is asked to generate content, it will use this data to create text that is similar to other text that it has been trained on.

If two people are using Bard to generate content for a blog, they should make sure to use different prompts and questions. This will help to ensure that the content that they generate is unique and original.

Here are some tips for generating unique content with Bard:

• Use different prompts and questions.
• Be specific in your prompts and questions.
• Use keywords and phrases that are relevant to your topic.
• Use Bard’s creativity feature to generate different variations of your content.
• Edit and proofread your content before publishing it.

Q. Is using AI generated content in any way detrimental to SEO?

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