What are zero-click results and how do they affect your eCommerce?

More and more online searches do not generate clicks or any organic traffic.

In the world of marketing, it is very common for a term to become “trendy”, and to be heard or read all the time in talks and on social media. Sometimes it is simply that: a trend, but other times, as in the case of zero-click results, it is something much deeper or structural.

In this post we are going to explain what this type of search results consists of, how they affect your store and, most importantly, how to optimize your presence in search engines in this new reality in which we find ourselves.

Let’s get started.

Let’s start with a definition: zero-click results, are those that display the information directly on the results page, without the user having the need to follow any link.

Keep in mind that search engines such as Google or Bing have always prioritized staying within their ecosystem over “sending” traffic elsewhere. They need your website because the user searches for it, but each interaction on Google is an opportunity to place a few more impressions of their advertising, which is ultimately the basis of their business.

For this reason, little by little, they have been enriching their SERPS with different resources.

Some of these zero-click results can be found in the form of:

If we add to this the weight that video and image modules are beginning to have, which are also capable of resolving queries, what we have is an increasingly evident drop in organic traffic.

With reports that show a 40% decrease in organic traffic, and a 58% drop in CTR, or click-through rate... it seems that the famous prophecy that SEO has died is finally fulfilled.

We are simply facing a different type of optimization because, it is true that clicks decrease, but that does not necessarily have to imply a decrease in brand visibility nor in sales.

In the era we are living in, we must shift the focus from traffic to visibility, which are different things. It is vital to consolidate the brand as a reference of authority and, in parallel or additionally, work on search intentions around decontextualized keywords.

From now on, think that the click is not synonymous with immediate sale. Now we must visualize the purchase journey in a different way, because touchpoints are added and the comparison phase is lengthened.

Many of those clicks that were attributed as organic sales will now end up converting through SEM or direct traffic to the website, but the contribution of zero-click will be vital to close the sale.

Prepare your website so that, when it is crawled and indexed, search engines can identify the contents that are most useful to them to compose their answers:

Will there be clicks? Probably not as many as before, but your brand will be present in the user’s mind at the critical moment of decision-making.

Here you have to be strategic, so you will have to find the balance between a useful answer, but not so specific as to avoid the click.

Basically what I mean is to respond clearly to the main intent, but, at the same time, offer depth, tools and added value that require a little more development. You have to encourage continuing to read and going to the source.

You can do this with relatively simple things such as:

What is the “trick”? That they need to expand their experience by accessing our eCommerce to acquire context.

Results will continue to appear for a long time, so it is important that you work on the call to action or, if you prefer, the call to click. You have to do this wherever the copy is visible.

Since we appear less, what we need is to maximize that presence with the use of resources that activate the click.

Right now it is more important than ever to have strategic control of your eCommerce platform, and for it to be flexible to optimize content and versatile to manage the structure.