Case Studies
From Traffic Declines to Increased Brand Authority: How Trex Turned AI Overviews Into a Traffic Driver
Outdoor living brand optimized content and transformed zero-click woes into 2.8x increase in AIO citations plus higher CTRs
Overview
As zero-click search becomes increasingly popular thanks to AI-generated answers, even brands at the top of SERP rankings are seeing significant hits to site traffic. For Trex, a leading composite decking brand, AI Overviews (AIOs) began chipping away at organic traffic to their top-ranked pages.
Trex partnered with Seer to help regain lost traffic to their top-ranked pages and increase their brand presence in AIOs. Together, we tested content optimizations that led to higher click-through rates and increased AIO coverage.
The Challenge
As AI-generated answers began appearing at the top of search results for high-intent decking queries, Trex faced the risk of declining organic click-through rates, even for queries where they ranked well. The concern was straightforward: if Google answers the question before a user clicks, traffic suffers.
Compounding this challenge, Trex's content ecosystem included a mix of product pages, how-to guides, and educational deck-ideas content that had not been updated to reflect current search intent, structured content formats, or the quality signals that AI Overview systems appear to reward.
The core question we sought to answer: could strategic content optimization improve organic rankings and position Trex as a trusted source cited within AI Overviews, ultimately driving more traffic despite the zero-click headwind?
The Strategy
As we worked through our regular SEO audit and content creation work, Seer identified an opportunity to test whether high-quality content optimization could simultaneously improve traditional rankings and earn AI Overview citations. We wanted to turn AIO expansion into a traffic driver rather than a traffic suppressor.
We targeted keywords that prompted AIOs across 39 pages spanning product details, how-to guides, and informational content. Key components of the strategy included:
-
Comprehensive content audits for each target page. We evaluated search intent alignment, content depth, heading structure, and factual accuracy against current SERP signals.
-
On-page optimization across title tags, meta descriptions, H1/H2 structure, and body copy. We focused on directly and authoritatively answering the specific questions triggering AI Overviews on those keywords.
-
Structured content formatting (such as clear definitions, step-by-step instructions, and comparison tables) to improve both user experience and machine-readability — two factors correlated with AI Overview citation.
- Internal linking improvements to reinforce page authority and guide users deeper into the Trex content ecosystem.
- Keyword-level mapping of AI Overview presence via SeerSignals (our custom analytics tool). We tracked which queries were triggering AIOs and whether Trex was being cited as a source, before and after optimization.
- Performance monitoring across GSC click and impression data, organic rankings, and SeerSignals AIO Reference coverage to validate impact over time.
The Results
→ 2.8x increase in AIO citations
→ +0.58pp increase in CTR
→ 44% saw increases in both AIO citations and CTR
→ Increase in SERP rankings (average position increased from 6.28 to 3.08)
Across the 39 optimized pages with matched data, results over the most recent 3-month period versus the same period last year showed clicks growing substantially even as impressions held flat. This pattern is consistent with AI Overview expansion absorbing impression volume while content quality drives through-clicks.
Clicks ran above last year every day of the quarter
Optimized pages · 113K total clicks vs. 66.1K last year (+71%) on flat impressions
seerinteractive
Additional headline results across the full optimized set:
- AIO coverage: Owned AI Overview references grew from 71 keywords to 199 keywords YoY, which is a 2.8x increase across the optimized page set.
- Owned rate: Overall owned AIO reference rate ran 53–78% across the optimized pages, compared to 43–66% across the full tracked keyword universe, indicating the optimized content earns citations at a higher rate.
- CTR: Impression-weighted CTR improved from 0.78% to 1.36% YoY, which is a +0.58pp gain, even as total impressions declined slightly (-2.3%), consistent with AI Overviews absorbing some zero-click queries.
- Dual-win pages: 17 of 39 pages (44%) showed both AIO gains and click growth simultaneously, with only 3 pages showing AIO gains alongside click declines.
- SERP rankings: Average position across the optimized set improved from 6.28 to 3.08.
AI Overview visibility and ownership both climbed sharply from January 2026
Distinct search terms · May 2025 – Jun 2026
seerinteractive
One nuance worth noting: One of the optimized pages saw the second-highest increase in new AIO references (+12) but a modest click decline (-5.2%). This was the clearest example we saw of AIOs directly answering a query in a way that reduced click-through but still reinforced brand authority by citing Trex in the response.
Looking ahead, Trex now has a repeatable framework for evaluating content performance in the AI search landscape. Rather than treating AIO expansion as an external threat, Trex has a methodology for actively pursuing citation, and the data infrastructure to measure whether they're winning or losing that ground over time.
Ready to take your GEO strategy to the next level? We can help.
Let's Talk
"Our goal isn't simply to drive more traffic — it's to create experiences that help customers make confident decisions. By combining data, user insights, and continuous experimentation, we were able to turn existing demand into measurable business growth."
- Tina Johnson, Director, Digital Marketing at Trex