From the characters Maria (Metropolis) and Gort (The Day the Earth Stood Still) to C-3PO (Star Wars) and Agent Smith (The Matrix), humans have dabbled with the idea that intelligent life will exist at some time. That time has now come – Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a household term these days and has already torn down several technological barriers to help human lives.
Intelligence, Intentionality, and Adaptability are the 3 core qualities of AI, and its applications have reached far and wide across countries and sectors. Transportation, Health Care, Retail & eCommerce, Smart Cities, Cinema, and Telecommunications – the list is too comprehensive to ponder upon. Maybe a little less heard of, but AI has deeply impacted digital marketing as well.
What is AI-Powered SEO?
Were you baffled when you found news article suggestions on American Politics on your smartphone when you googled Joe Biden a few days back? Or maybe a post on Best Places in India to Travel in Winter appeared when you searched Google for travel suggestions that made you go OMG.
This is SEO in action, powered by AI tools that track your searches, cross-reference it with keywords in recent and relevant articles, and throw you these suggestions. If you clicked any of the suggestions, the AI software in the background knows exactly what to recommend to you for the next few weeks!
Some of the popular AI SEO tools include Bright Edge, Can I Rank, Linkhunter, MarketBrew, Squirrly, and many more. The algorithms in these AI-powered SEO tools are built, tested, and calibrated to become a digital marketer’s delight!
How AI is used in SEO
Currently and broadly, AI tools for SEO are used to increase search traffic, generate content that help rank websites higher, find new outlets for keyword research, manage local/global searches, and help increase ranking for existing and new topics. Here we explore some broad applications of AI SEO that show how effective it can be for your business:
Text Search:
AI in text search learns from a user to provide the most relevant, most useful results the next time the user searches for something. The AI can also automatically adapt, if the user starts a series of different topics.
For instance, if you’re looking to buy a Macbook Pro laptop and you googled only the keywords “macb”, your top results will show the closest shops/stores/e-commerce sites that are selling this product.
Content Creation:
An absolute blockbuster of an application of AI SEO, content creation involves finding the best keywords based on a company’s target group, link-building, keyword optimization, and topic suggestion for specific niches. It’s possible to make several leaps ahead in content creation with AI.
Some AI SEO tools also offer keyword insights that you can leverage to stay ahead of competition and create better content. When customers/users are already on your website, AI can understand their search intent and guide them to the right page. It also aids in getting visual content like graphs, images, and infographics ready for improving user engagement.
And optimization? AI allows your existing content to be repurposed by recommending new and better search terms to be included and the ideal length of a blog or website content.
Note: Mind you, AI does have its limitations in content creation – when content needs empathy, passion and high levels of creativity, human writers will always do a better job!
Local Search:
If you’ve been grinding it online to ensure your company shows up in local SEO searches but haven’t seen much traction, then AI is here to help! AI marketing gives a leg-up to SEO features like SEO audits, Google My Business (business profile, google posts, search engine visibility), and citation building.
Automating local SEO could start with something as simple as a Content Management Software like WordPress or Drupal. These AI-powered SEO software can distribute and coordinate your content over different platforms and can improve overall productivity.
Keyword Research:
Closely tied with all three of the above points, finding the right keywords is something that comes naturally for AI in SEO. There is a bevy of AI-based keyword research tools that can support in picking the best keywords to effectively improve website search traffic and spread them across your website. But it all started with Google’s Hummingbird – which paved the way for semantic analysis capability for search engines.
If you’re a new business and you’ve been trying to research a competitor’s keywords to find out what sticks, then AI might make it much easier for you.
SEO Scaling:
Did you know AI algorithms can crunch large amounts of data created by companies and organize them into insightful information that can help scale SEO efforts? Performing site-wide audits, content repurposing strategy suggestions, resolution of content duplication issues are some of the SEO scaling activities that AI can perform, leading to time-and-money saving for marketing professionals.
Benefits of Using AI for Your SEO Strategy
If you really want to leapfrog competition and stay ahead with your SEO efforts, AI is definitely a must in your digital marketing blueprint. But understanding what it brings to the table is also important. Check out the broad benefits of AI in SEO:
- Better Ranking: In a lightning-paced technological world, search engines are constantly updating their algorithms and building advanced machine learning tools to ensure that SEO also becomes conducive for companies trying to build their online presence.
- Faster, More Efficient: It’s a no-brainer that AI can help you become faster, more efficient, and more focussed in your SEO efforts. Through AI-powered tools, tedious and time-draining tasks can be eliminated, allowing you to be more productive in business-related work. AI is also really accurate and up-to-date when it deploys its algorithms in SEO, so you can rest assured that whatever suggestions you get – whether it’s about keywords or a piece of content, it’s for the betterment of your SEO.
- Enhanced User Experience: Ultimately all businesses are trying to capture bigger audiences, wider demographics, and farther geographies. When the UX part of your SEO is set on an upward graph, you are guaranteed results. With AI, this can easily be taken care of.
Future of SEO with AI
It’s important to note that AI is evolving rapidly, and as we tumble into an era of machine learning, deep learning, and neural networks, accepting and adopting AI in SEO are of paramount importance. For those who haven’t heard – Google’s RankBrain is the AI on the backend that collects, analyzes, and judges content on websites. As this powertrain of an AI tool becomes better (and it will), it will become crucial to get your SEO right.
Content Quality and Link Relevance – these two buzzwords are exactly how you can get your future SEO strategy right with the help of AI. Any average content or mildly irrelevant links in your website or blogs can negatively affect your SEO. For this, a bit of human intervention would be required, as there is a slight possibility of your AI SEO tool throwing you the 1-odd not-so-important keyword or topic.
Conclusion
There is little doubt that AI will touch every aspect of digital marketing in the future, but the preparedness of your mindset, methods, and attitude will determine how seamlessly you and your business can blend into the working of AI. AI is certainly beneficial for SEO, but it has cast shadows of doubts in some people about the security of their jobs. While this may be true for some industries, it may not necessarily affect digital marketing. Last piece of advice? Don’t wait any further to make some inroads into bringing in AI for your SEO strategy.
For more inputs and advice, contact us at Wild Creek Web Studio and see REAL CHANGE in your digital marketing efforts.
