AI is just starting to swallow up traditional search traffic, but it's going to accelerate quickly. If you rely on search traffic, you might be in trouble. But if you're an actual business that sells an actual product or service, I don't think this is a bad thing at all.
As these AI algorithms get better, people are gonna rely more and more on these algorithms to recommend products and services like you, which means there are going to be tons of opportunities to get more real customers. So let's talk about the type of traffic that AI is swallowing and how you can benefit from these trends. We're gonna talk about them in terms of a traditional marketing funnel, starting with the top of the funnel, which is the awareness stage.
So in this stage, the user knows what their problem is, but they don't even know what solutions exist out there. They know what issue they're trying to solve, but they don't even know what the options are. This is like how to fix blank or why does blank.
These searches tend to have very high search volume and also very high competition. However, they also have very low purchase intent. These terms have always been great for getting traffic, but they rarely convert.
So as a business selling real products or services, you're not losing much when AI swallows this traffic. Next we have the mid funnel or the consideration phase. At this stage, users have figured Out what their options are, and they're just weighing their choices.
Eli Swartz actually just wrote a newsletter on this topic. This is what inspired me to make the video, and I think the newsletter is great. You should sign up for the future of SEO.
I have no affiliation with him, and I think Eli is totally right about this being where the opportunity is right now in SEO. And that's because the middle of the funnel is where most of the low competition, high intent keywords live. Now, the highest intent, most valuable keywords are the bottom of the funnel.
When the user has figured out exactly what they want, and they're just trying to decide which company to go with. However, as Eli points out, those terms are incredibly competitive, and unless you're a large company or a brand with a lot of authority, you're probably better off going with Google Ads. To get traffic for those terms.
What's great about the middle of the funnel is there are millions of different paths that people are on, which means there are millions of different questions people have as they're deciding which option is right for them. Now, Eli's argument seems to be that a I. Won't do a sufficient job at answering these questions, and people will have to go to your website to get all the context.
That actually doesn't make sense to me at all. I think AI is gonna be great at answering all These questions, we're still just seeing the beginning of AI, and it's gonna get way better. The reason I think the middle of the funnel is so great is because for a lot of these specific questions people have, there's literally no content that adequately addresses it.
Meaning there are millions of questions out there that you can answer on your website and be the only webpage online answering that very specific question. And these AI's aren't picky, they're crawling the entire website. If you have the only webpage answering a user's very specific question, it doesn't matter how much authority you have, it doesn't matter how big your company is or how well known your brand is, you will win by deep.
This already works now with traditional search, but I don't see why it would stop working as people turn to AI to answer these questions. So stop worrying about search volume, stop using these keyword tools. Just think about your customers and all the different journeys they might take to find your product or service.
And make sure that no matter what questions are asking or what path they take to find you, you have a page on your website that meets them, where they're at, and provides the exact information or analysis they would need to move down that funnel. The search engines will reward you today, and AI will reward you in the future.
