Win AI Search 🏆

The big opportunity for AI marketers

 

Hello AI marketers!

First things first, it’s time to address the elephant in the room 🐘.

Some of you may have noticed that AI Marketing School took a little break over the past few months. We missed you!

Now, you might be surprised to learn that writing this newsletter isn't my full-time gig. Believe it or not, I’m actually a marketer with awesome clients to help and amazing staff to bring on board.

I was super lucky to get a few big projects all at once. While that's great news, it did mean the newsletter had to take a back seat for a couple of months. I’m really sorry for leaving you hanging like that!

But here's the good news: I’ve been in the trenches, testing out some really cool AI hacks and techniques. Why? So I can help you, our amazing readers, make more money in less time.

So, without further ado, let's jump right in and start sharing!

Here’s the Big Opportunity for Marketers 🚀

We’ve heard it all before: AI-driven search is on the brink of reshaping how people search, engage, and advertise online. 

Instead of the traditional search engine drill — type, search, click through a list of blue links — AI-powered browsers are flipping the script. 

How? By digesting the web's vast information and spoon-feeding us summaries and sources.

Now, despite the noise, it’s important to mention that AI search is still incredibly niche (less than 1%). However, research shows that 28% of adults would consider switching to AI browsers today, and that number is obviously going to grow over time. 

AI search matters because AI web browsers work differently.

That’s because instead of ranking web pages to identify the top result for a list of queries, they sift through an index of ranked pages to pinpoint the most relevant information and provide their own AI-generated response.  

I should point out what the main AI search tools right now are:

  • Google SGE: Google’s own AI search tool integrated into Google search. It’s not available worldwide yet. 

  • Arc Browser: Already out for iOS and coming to Windows soon.

  • Perplexity AI: Backed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who uses Perplexity “Almost every day.”

  • Microsoft Copilot: Fuses ChatGPT and the Bing browser. 

If you’ve not used any, here are examples of how Perplexity and Google SGE serve results. 👇

Info from five websites is combined into one for this search in Perplexity

Google SGE looks very similar to Perplexity

As you can see, these tools are very similar. And they work broadly the same, which is good for us, as an SEO trick for one should work for another.

And this is where it gets interesting…

An Experiment 🥷

We’ve found one way you can boost your rankings in AI SERPs that is WAY easier than you might think (shout out to @timninjakitchen)

It’s all about a shift in emphasis at the beginning of any article.

Traditionally, Google has promoted (overly) long content, but AI search wants something different. It wants to answer the question itself. And for that, it will cite the article that gives the clearest answer, not the one with the most words.

In my experiments (which used SGE, but I’d expect similar results in other AI search tools as they’re all fundamentally similar), the content at the top makes the cut. AI search engines don’t seem to parse all the information in the article.

So, quit the preamble and simply move the good stuff right to the top of the article. And if, like most articles, your article is designed to answer a question, give the most neat and succinct answer you can 

Sources, Quotes, Stats 🔢

Next up…

A research team tested thousands of queries against an AI search benchmarking system. 

They discovered three highly impactful strategies that boost rankings:

  1. Cite Sources

  2. Add quotes

  3. Add statistics

Those three seemingly simple strategies achieved ranking improvements of 30% to 40% compared to the baselines.

Punchy Titles and Visuals 🎨

Roger Montti in Search Engine Journal analyzed how results appear in Perplexity and SGE.

He found that favicons, titles, and featured images command more emphasis in AI SERPs.

“The title is important for attracting clicks. But also, the website favicon gains importance as well."

All in all, AI search might not be so painful after all. Let’s quickly recap:

  1. Move important content to the top of the page.  

  2. Add more sources, quotes, and stats (more important than opinions for AI search engines) 

  3. Upgrade your titles, featured images, and favicons. 

You’ve heard it from the AI Marketer first: AI could change the SEO and digital marketing landscape.

There’s some hype, but in the long term, the traditional web browsing process will probably change. Be smart. Be ready. Be an AI marketer! 

Here are a few great AI marketing resources and tools I’ve encountered recently. Enjoy!

This CNBC piece delivers some pretty cool actionable AI marketing advice, like passing product descriptions into ChatGPT and asking it to generate high-converting titles. You can also use it to parse hundreds of Amazon reviews and develop a list of ways to improve and beat your competitors’ products.

2. AI to Create Affiliate Marketing Campaigns in Record Time

This month’s Affiliate Marketing Podcast discusses using ChatGPT for everything from demographic and psychographic research to content writing for affiliate marketing. They estimate it saves them days of research for each campaign.

3. Create Powerful Marketing Videos in Minutes

With the right stack of tools, you can create impactful marketing videos with video, narrated audio, and subtitles — quite literally in about 5 minutes or less. Here’s one of the best tutorials I’ve watched on how to do just that.

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Until next Friday! Happy marketing.

The AI Marketer