Web search and SEO have been digital marketing hallmarks for brands of any size for years. According to Statista, organic search is responsible for 53 percent of a website’s total traffic on average. To get their brand in front of their target audience, creating search-friendly content has long been the key for digital marketers.

While SEO is still important, it’s undergone major changes in recent months. Google has changed its search format, making competition on search engines even more fierce. Meanwhile, the way young consumers prefer to search for products is changing, too. In this article, we’ll break down the biggest shifts in search and how it will impact marketing strategies this summer.

Recent Changes to Google Search

The biggest change to Google’s search layout came at the end of 2022. For decades, Google had displayed its search results in a page format, with only the top 10 web pages making it onto the first page. This layout resulted in stiff competition among websites to make the first page, because 75 percent of searchers never scrolled past page one, according to marketing expert Neil Patel. However, if you did make it on the first page, your website was only up against nine other choices.

Then, in December 2022, Google introduced continuous scrolling to desktop search results. Instead of separating results by page, searchers can now see every possible result in one long, continuous list. To see more results, you’ll just keep scrolling down the page and occasionally clicking a button to “see more.” While this is good news for brands who have struggled to make the first page, it also means each webpage is competing against many, many more options for the searcher’s attention. As of February 2023, impressions for results ranked 15-20 increased by 25 percent year-over-year.

To win more clicks over the competition, marketers need to be strategic about how they title their webpage or article and what they include in their featured snippet. Titles and snippets should both be optimized to include the most important and relevant keywords. Rather than relying on page placement to determine the quality of search results, users will be viewing and considering more options, and selecting the one that seems to best fit their needs based on its content relevance. Now more than ever, web marketers need to remember that they’re writing for real people – not just search engines.

Consumers Shift to Social Search

Despite the user-focused changes Google has implemented, some consumers are still feeling frustrated with search engine results in general. Many of the complaints cite the increase in ad content at the top of Google search results, and others report that the top results are less relevant to the topic they’re searching for than they used to be.

As a result, more consumers are using social media sites, including TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, as their preferred search platforms. For younger audiences in particular, the visual format of social media can be more helpful when searching for certain types of content, namely product information or recommendations. For example, if a searcher wants to find ideas for what to wear as a guest to an upcoming wedding, it might be very helpful to watch a 15-second video from an influencer on TikTok modeling different outfit options. Reading a written article about wedding guest attire found from a Google search will require more time and effort to find the same recommendation. According to Hubspot, 71% of Gen Zers cite TikTok as the place they most often discover new products.

For brands, this evolution in consumer behavior means it’s more important than ever to optimize social media content to appeal to searchers. Similar to traditional SEO strategies, social marketers should look to strategically use keywords in their captions and hashtags to make their content easy to find. As your brand consider which keywords to use, pay attention to popular hashtags and video trends that relate to your industry. Craft new content that aligns with those themes, so when users search for them in the future, your content will be placed right where they’re looking.