You’re likely here for one of two reasons. Either you noticed a change in your website performance and are wondering what’s going on, or you’ve heard of zero-click search and want to know what it’s about.
Either way, you’re in the right place. We asked 1DigitalⓇ Agency, an eCommerce SEO company with over a decade of experience, all about the trend. Here’s what to know.
What Is Zero-Click Search?
To keep things as brief as possible, zero-click search refers to a phenomenon in which a user will search for some information, read the search results – the literal search results page – and not click on a link.
This has largely come about as a result of advanced answer engine search features such as the AI Overview and improvements to the People Also Ask section. These features serve up curated results that answer queries without requiring a user to click on anything.
In a nutshell, zero-click search is just what it sounds like: a user enters a search and then gets their information right from the search results without clicking on anything.
How Will It Impact My Website’s Performance?
On the chance you are here because you noticed a sharp change in performance to your website, you already know this, but zero click search is resulting in skyrocketing impressions to a website (or to a select few pages) with barely any increase, or with no increase in, commensurate clicks.
Your other metrics, like pages per session and average time on page, may not change, but if you’re getting many more impressions and not so many more clicks, you already know this.
This is the main manner in which zero-click search can impact a website’s performance. The other things – which are related – are that click-through rate will necessarily drop, and that your average position will either fall as your average position actually climbs, the SERPs, or it will drop as your pages come into ranking for new pages that have never been indexed before.
Does Zero Click Search Hurt eCommerce SEO?
The thing about zero-click search is that it mostly hurts CMS websites because those are the ones that live on readership. For an eCommerce website that sells goods and services, it’s not such a big deal.
People that are searching for products or services can only get part of the information from the actual SERPs, if they can get anything. They will still need to click through to your website to convert.
Here’s the other thing. Most of these increases in impressions will come for long-tail queries, either for keywords or for queries that have seed keywords that are informational, which doesn’t make up the bulk of what eCommerce SEO companies and their clients focus on in the first place.
What’s the Way to Take Advantage of This Trend?
Well, this is actually nothing new (at all), but the way to take advantage of this trend is to publish high-quality content that actually answers questions relevant to the keywords it contains.
Be aware that by doing so you may be generating a lot of impressions that don’t turn into clicks, but it will increase brand exposure and bring you into ranking for a larger volume of keywords overall, which is a good thing.
As for eCommerce merchants continuing to pursue revenue gains and conversions, not too much changes. Continue to focus on those commercial and transactional keywords and things will move in the right direction.
Working with an eCommerce SEO Company That Has Experience in This Area
One of the best aspects of working with an eCommerce SEO company is that they will be ahead of the curve on things like this, and you will reap the advantage of their experience. If you don’t have the time to invest in keeping up with changes in the digital marketing landscape, get in touch with a professional who can help take some of that off your plate – your website’s performance will improve vastly as a result.
