There is a lot of talk at the moment about LLMs like ChatGPT, Grok and Perplexity taking over from search engines. Realistically though, the impact that these “competitors” are having in terms of market share is minimal. According to SparkToro data, in 2024 Google received ~373 times as many searches as ChatGPT.
So far, the noise around standalone LLMs killing Google and other search engines is much ado about nothing (or at least, very little).
That is not to say, however, that LLMs are not going to have a negative impact on organic search traffic. At the moment, the only LLM that is a genuine threat to Google Search is Google’s own LLM - Gemini, or more specifically Google’s AI Overview search results - these are AI answers at the top of Google search results that are powered by a customized version of Google's Gemini LLM, specifically designed for search.
Google officially launched AI Overviews in the U.S. on May 14, 2024 and has been steadily rolling them out across the world since then. Research from the excellent Flow Agency, shows that AI Overview results increased by 300% between June 2024 and February 2025.
As Google increasingly answers informational, top-of-funnel queries directly in the search results via AI Overviews (AIO), we’re seeing a fundamental shift. Global search trends suggest a decline in organic CTR due to the increasing presence of AI Overviews (AIO) and other zero-click results - a Seer Interactive study claims that Organic CTR declines by as much as 50% when Google's AI Overviews are present.
And on the 26th March 2025, Google rolled out AI Overviews in Ireland. What this means is that Irish based organisations can expect a further reduction in CTR for top-of-funnel and informational queries, as Google begins answering more user queries directly on the SERP here in Ireland.
The good news? AI Overviews tend to show up less often for bottom of funnel / transactional focused queries.
Now, I’m not advising anyone to completely ditch their informational / blog content strategy - in fact, doing so completely would definitely be a bad idea. Your informational content is still key for a number of reasons including:
- If you write great informational content, Google is still likely to reference you and show your brand name and logo in it’s AI Overview results. The CTR is likely to be lower than a traditional 1st place result but don’t underestimate the power of having your brand associated with a helpful answer.
- Google still likely uses the informational content on your website to help to decide the relevance and ranking potential of your services pages. Think about it - which is Google more likely to rank at the top of it’s results for a transactional query - a product or service page that stands alone in a website with no additional context, or a product or service page that’s part of a wider content cluster of blog posts and resources that showcase a companies expertise in relation to the solutions that the product/service offers?
However, with the likely downward trend for traffic from informational searches, it’s now more important than ever for Irish organisations to ensure that their services pages are well optimised to attract high-intent, bottom of funnel traffic.
With that in mind, let’s look at some of the key SEO optimisations to consider specifically for service pages.
SEO Considerations for Services Pages
- Keyword focused: You'll want to include your targeted keywords in your page title and throughout your content – this helps you rank well in search results for those specific terms. This is crucial for SEO landing pages, though less important for paid search landing pages that visitors reach through advertisements rather than organic search.
- Compelling, Conversion-Focused Content: Let’s face it. The user is likely to be shopping around - that’s why it’s super important to have clear, compelling, conversion focused content to convince them that you are the best choice, whatever the service you are providing. You should include:
- An overview of the service
- Use cases / industry relevance
- Benefits
- Differentiators (USP)
- A Strong CTA
- A clean and uncluttered design: Nobody enjoys a chaotic, overwhelming page. Keep your design clean and focused to improve the user experience. A cluttered page often leads to high bounce rates as visitors quickly click away. Make it easy for people to find what they need and take action.
- Clean, well formatted html: Good code matters! Search engines rely on your HTML to understand your content, so keep it clean and well-structured. Focus on:
- Using proper heading tags (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) to create a clear content hierarchy
- Applying the right HTML tags for different content types
- Adding descriptive alt text to all your images to help both search engines and visually impaired users
- High Quality Visuals: Search engines favour content that engages users and that usually includes compelling visuals. Use relevant, professional imagery to illustrate your services and team, supported by well-written, benefit-driven text. Every image should include an SEO-friendly alt tag. Not only does this help with image search rankings, it also supports accessibility and provides context for visually impaired users and search engines alike.
- Structured data / schema.org markup: This might sound technical, but it's worth implementing. Adding structured data in the form of schema.org markup to your page gives search engines extra context about your content and can significantly improve your visibility in search results. It's like giving search engines a roadmap to better understand what your page is all about. Where possible, use structured data (Review or AggregateRating) to enhance how these appear in search results.
- Integrated into site structure and navigation: Your pages need to fit logically within your website's overall structure for several important reasons:
- Better crawlability: Search engines need to easily find and index your pages – if they're hidden away or difficult to access, they might as well not exist!
- Improved link equity: When your pages link to each other, they share "link juice" that boosts their collective ranking power. Pages that aren't well-connected miss out on this benefit.
- Effective content clustering: Grouping related content helps search engines understand how everything fits together, providing context and relevance that can improve your rankings.
- Testimonials & Trust Signals: Social proof isn’t just good for users — it helps SEO too. Including client testimonials, partner logos, star ratings, or trust badges increases the page’s credibility in the eyes of both visitors and search engines. These elements signal quality and relevance, which can influence rankings and conversion rates.
- Page performance and mobile-optimization: This isn't just nice to have – it's essential. With most searches now happening on mobile devices, your performance affects SEO in three critical ways:
- Google explicitly uses site speed as a ranking factor
- Slow pages mean search engines crawl fewer of your pages with their allocated budget
- Google's "Core Web Vitals" (speed, responsiveness, stability) have been a direct ranking factor since 2021
- Related Content / Clustering: Service pages shouldn’t exist in isolation. Link to relevant blog posts, case studies, and related services to help build content clusters around your topic. This improves topical authority and helps Google understand the depth and breadth of your site’s expertise. It also helps to convince users that you really know what you are talking about.
An example of an SEO Optimised Service Page
As the old saying goes, a checklist is worth a thousand words, or something like that. So let’s review a real life example of a services landing page against the SEO considerations above.
The page that I’m going to review is an eCommerce & Product Recruitment Agency service page that was recently published by one of my clients, Connexus Recruit. Let’s dig in:
- Keyword Focus: Strong use of “eCommerce & Product Recruitment” in H1, headings, and content. Could add a bit more long-tail variation.
- Score: 9/10
- Conversion Focused Content: Includes service overview, benefits, and clear process. Could improve slightly with more obvious USPs and industry-specific case examples.
- Score: 8/10
- Clean, Uncluttered Design: Modern, easy to read, visually clean with good layout and CTAs.
- Score: 9/10
- HTML Structure: Well organised, uses correct headings and tags like,
, <link>, and <script> are used appropriately in <head>. Could be slightly improved by wrapping main content in semantic tags (<main>, <section>, <article>) to improve machine readability and accessibility. - Score: 8/10
- High Quality Visuals: Visuals are relevant and appealing. Alt tags are present and optimised.
- Score: 9/10
- Structured Data / Schema: Contains detailed WebPage schema.org markup but could benefit from adding Service markup (I tested the page using this Schema.org Validator)
- Score: 6/10
- Site Structure Integration: Well integrated into the site navigation and linked to from a main Hire Talent page as well as all Hire Talent child pages. Also links to related content. Could benefit from stronger content clustering links from related blog posts.
- Score: 9/10
- Testimonials & Trust Signals: Includes testimonials and client logos as well as information on key team members.
- Score: 10/10
- Page Performance & Mobile: No Core Web Vitals issues reported via Google Search Console. However a manual PageSpeed Insights test suggests that overall page loading speed and, in particular, Largest Contentful Paint, could be improved.
- Score: 7/10
- Related Content / Clustering: Includes blog section “Hiring Advice & Insights” which supports clustering and topical authority. Also links to relevant job listing page - eCommerce Jobs Ireland. The page is also linked to from some relevant blog posts but this could be improved.
- Score: 9/10
Final Score: 84 / 100.
As you can see from the checklist above this service page is pretty well optimised from an SEO perspective, and that is reflected below in the improvement in ranking for the term “ecommerce recruitment agency ireland” since the page went live back in early February. Connexus went from not ranking at all, to ranking in 5th position a few days after the page was published and up to 2nd by April 8th.
If you’d like to carry out a similar review of one of your services pages, feel free to make a copy of my Service Page SEO Checklist which should help you to get started.
I'm Darren, founder of SEO by Darren. I develop bespoke SEO roadmaps and implement long term SEO strategies to build organic visibility, traffic and conversions for my clients.
