Search never stays the same for long. The SERP is constantly evolving and so are our searching habits. SEO has become increasingly competitive and this has led to a lot of “noise” in the SERP.
When I say “noise” what I really mean is that Google and the internet in general is awash with shit, low quality, bottom-of-the-barrel articles that serve no purpose other than to try and get sites ranking.
Wow Liam, don’t hold back!
If that sounds like a damning assessment of search it’s because ultimately, it is. Google has warned SEOs and marketers time and time again: do not chase rankings with SEO first content, focus on providing real value to searchers and you’ll be rewarded.
Google wants content for users not for SEO. This has led the company to develop a new search filter called Perspectives. This new filter uses AI to diversify your search results. It presents users with a broader range of viewpoints and sources to counteract echo chambers and biases (and crappy SEO focused blogs). These viewpoints can come from “traditional” website blogs and journalistic publications as well as sources like Reddit, Youtube, Quora and Tik Tok.
In its quest to become the world’s answer machine Google built Perspectives to serve searchers with real answers from real people. It can bypass the over-optimised SEO answers on websites and give searchers the answers they want directly from people like them, not search marketers.
But what does the advent of Perspectives mean for us humble SEOs? The ones that aren’t flooding the internet with crap content that is.
Personally I’m excited for Perspectives, I think the benefits it could bring to SEO far outweigh the negatives and it could really revolutionise the SEO game.
Why I’m excited by Perspectives
We should never shy away from change and innovation. If we do we risk being left behind by the early adopters and tech evangelists. There will be some SEOs out there currently looking down their noses at Perspectives.
They’ll see the filter as nothing more than user generated content and sneer at it before returning to their long-winded blogs nobody reads. But discounting this new filter as a fad or not applicable to SEO runs the risk of missing out on loads of relevant traffic for your brand.
So, why I am excited about Perspectives.
Perspectives creates a new way for SEOs to attract visitors to their site. The organic channel has traditionally been dominated by blogs and landing pages with a smattering of YouTube videos. Whilst these are tried and tested ways to get visitors to your website they have become a bit long in the tooth.
Incorporating Perspectives into your organic strategy will give you a multitude of different media types to explore and optimise for SEO. Searchers are more likely to head towards bite-sized video content now than a listicle so serving potential customers answers in the format they want will be that much easier if we use Perspectives.
SEO’s will need to start thinking about how we can optimise rich media for search. This will be a new skill for a lot of search marketers so getting ahead of the competition early could see your site or clients reap the rewards of more traffic and more conversions.
Perspectives gives SEOs a way to mitigate some of the traffic that could be lost by the introduction of Search Generative Experience (SGE).
We know that SGE is coming, we know it’s going to be big. But we can put processes and safeguards in place that should help us retain some of those informational visits we need to keep our site’s metrics looking good. Adopting Perspectives early could be a way for SEOs to do this.
Embedding media from Twitter (I’m not calling it X), Tik Tok, Reddit etc on to traditional blog posts could help those articles rank in more places than just the SERP. Can SEOs boost the experience signals of their traditional blog posts by resharing and embedding Tik Tok and Youtube content on their articles.
Imagine the possibilities if users could click through to your site from watching a video on Perspectives. We don’t know whether this functionality is available yet but once UK SEOs get their hands on the filter we’ll be able to test and iterate.
My excitement doesn’t come without some considerations though:
The most obvious thing to consider is whether the creation of content for Perspective sits within the remit of an SEO team. Surely this is a job for a content team with some guidance for SEO.
Would a content team want their ideas constrained by factors such as rankability and traffic per search term? Do SEOs have the right knowledge to create Perspectives content well?
Personally, I think they do. SEOs will have to change their approach to content ideation for Perspectives. Keywords and search volumes are out and consumer trends are in. SEO’s job for Perspectives will be predicting the content and questions people will be wanting answers too in 1-3 months time. We can no longer rely on search volumes if we’re to win in Perspectives.
I think Perspectives should from part of an overall SEO strategy. One that still does ‘traditional’ keyword research and content creation whilst also having a segment of the strategy designated to quick, reactive content for Perspectives.
Who knows, in times these snippets of rich media on Perspectives could be added to traditional blogs on the site to further prolong their usefulness and combine the two approaches to search together.
Will Perspectives even arrive? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Google drops features quickly when they don’t think they’re valuable. There is a possibility Perspectives never makes it to the UK. Even if it does there’s no guarantee it’ll be anything like the examples we’re seeing now.
We can’t get ahead of ourselves and we have to wait until Perspecitves arrives before we start assigning any value to it.
Currently Perspectives is mobile only. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It serves the type of content you’d expect to consume on a mobile. Adding Tik Tok videos to a desktop experience would look a bit odd.
The main thing we’d need to consider here is whether a user would purchase a product or service over mobile. If you’re selling legal services no one is going to complete that buyer journey on a mobile. If that’s you you’d be better off sticking to ‘traditional’ SEO.
Lastly, will Perspectives let you link to your site? This would be a massive hindrance to the point where Perspectives would be useless to SEO if it didn’t let you do that. There needs to be some way to continue your journey from Perspectives to make it useful to SEOs.
How does Perspective impact the experience in E.E.A.T
Perspectives could be a huge tool for improving the experience signals your site could send to Google. As we already know, Perspectives displays ‘real’ insights from ‘real’ people. These views provide good experience signals.
If Perspectives can be incorporated into traditional blog content or lend its weight to articles that need to display experience it could be a really powerful tool for helping search marketers display experience to Google.
So, What could perspectives mean for SEO? Will it make or break it in 2024?
Personally I think Perspectives is going to have a positive effect on SEO. It’ll open up a brand new way for search marketers to attract visitors to their sites and could provide an opportunity for getting around SGE and maintaining informational clicks.
The roll out of Google Gemini means Perspective will become all the more prominent in the near future and with this new prominence comes opportunities for SEOs to adapt and diversify their content and their overall roles within search and marketing.
