Answer Engine Optimization

Preface

If you work in search engine optimization (SEO), or if your work involves search engines in any way, something probably feels a little off these days.

The air is thicker. The mood is a bit more pessimistic. Leadership is questioning everything. And organic search, for whatever reason, continues to take a nosedive despite rankings and impressions being up. It’s weird. A bit scary. And honestly, like nothing we’ve seen before.

And that says a lot, as we’ve all seen some pretty brutal algorithm and industry disruptions over the years. Remember Mobilegeddon?

The good news, though, is that you’re not alone in any of this. The industry is weathering one of the most fundamental shifts in its 20+ year history, ever since the arrival of Google back in the late 1990s.

Something has changed about how people find information, and if you’re holding this book, you’ve probably felt it.

For two decades, the path was pretty clear—someone typed a query into a search engine, scanned a list of results, and clicked through to a website. The game was getting your page onto that first screen of links, ideally near the top. Entire industries, careers, and business models were built around that simple mechanism.

Then the conversation started.

Instead of typing fragmented keywords and sifting through options, people stopped looking for a list of places that might have what they needed and started expecting the answer itself, synthesized and delivered directly. The search box became a dialogue. ...