How Marketers Win in a Post-SEO, Zero-Click Marketing World

Justin Simon (0:00)

With 68% of searches in Google now resulting without a click, it's leaving marketers panicking, but you don't have to, you just have to diversify your mix. This is Distribution First, and today we're gonna break it down for you. Got Andy here with me, and we are gonna talk all about how to properly set yourself up and your business up for success, regardless of what Google is doing out there in the marketplace.

So, SparkToro and Similarweb just dropped their report, I wanna say around a month or so ago at the time of we're recording this, and basically found that the amount of people clicking Google results is just shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. And I have found, even from my background in SEO, way back in the day, that those signs have been here for probably the last decade. And I think now, all of us are just coming to this realization of, oh crap, the foundation that we built our marketing on, as far as SEO equals traffic equals business, is starting to crumble. Not starting.

Andy (1:13)

It's sand.

Justin Simon (1:14)

And I think a lot of marketers are finding themselves stuck in a spot where, how do I go and talk to my boss about what's going on with our traffic, and what's going on with our website, and what's the purpose of a website, and what's the purpose of our content, if we can't go get searches, and get clicks off of search, and there's a whole bunch of stuff out there, but the funny thing, even without the number of 68%, the number that got me into my entire way of thinking about distribution in this way, is, I think it's a stat from age graphs, like 2020, that was 90% of the content people create doesn't even show up in a Google search. Doesn't show up on page one, maybe, or whatever.

Andy (2:11)

I could be butchering that, but. That makes more sense, though.

Justin Simon (2:14)

But let's just even say if it's page one, right?

The world has changed so much in regards to how people consume content, create content, all of it. That even if you rank number one, it might take you three scrolls to get there.

Andy (2:31)

You got to scroll past the AI answer, you got the quick reply, you got to scroll past the sponsored ads, which there's usually multiples, and no one's doing that. And even honestly, like even talking newspaper terms, it's above the fold. If you have to scroll, you're asking people to do work.

Justin Simon (2:44)

Well, and more and more, it's I'm on my phone. So I'm not I'm looking for an answer. You go to Google for an answer.

Andy (2:51)

Yeah, didn't they say they're actually now an answer resource instead of a search resource? They're just going to give you an answer instead of send you somewhere.

Justin Simon (2:58)

Correct. And so my question would be, as marketers think about content and think about SEO and AEO and all of that, and you've got, especially in the way I think about content around doing what's essential and doing it in a way that's effortless and being a little bit of kind of a minimalist in what you're creating, where is your time, energy, resource effort going to go? Do you want to put your energy and effort into creating content just in the hopes that Google will reward you? I played that game for five years of my career, six years of my career and successfully. Played that game. I just found it to be completely and utterly soul sucking.

It is very cool to be able to report numbers and to be able to track keywords and to be able to see things go up and to the right. It's very fun.

I used to talk about it in terms of, it's like the stock market. You just put a little bit of investment in, you watch that investment grow over time, if invested wisely. I just don't think that's how it works anymore. I don't think that's, I think it can work. I just, I'm really starting to question whether or not, and I would invite you to question whether or not that is worth the effort anymore when you take a macro view of marketing and of the business landscape in general. Because I think it's easy to, I think there's a whole lot of people that are panicking going from an SEO world and they're seeing a gap in their skills, and they're seeing a gap in their kind of place in the market, and I think there's a lot of panic there.