How AI and SEO Interact
Artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay, but what role does it play in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? With Google recommending writing content for people and then optimizing it for search engines, what room is left for AI?
These questions are on the minds of many marketers and internet users, as AI has been changing our digital search landscape. Search results are now highly customized, as they’re being influenced by the user’s intent, past behaviors, devices, locations, and other factors. While the increasing popularity of generative AI such as Chat GPT or Google Bard has once again confirmed that SEO is an ongoing process, it’s crucial to keep up with the ways AI and SEO interact.
How do you use AI for SEO?
So, how does SEO work with AI? The best way to answer this question is to rephrase it and give yourself more agency: How can you use AI to improve your SEO strategy? This way, it becomes clear that AI is here to help you enhance your SEO efforts and not do them for you. For instance, instead of misguidedly prompting generative AI to write all of your content, consider incorporating the following alternative ways of using AI for SEO.
User Experience (UX) and Content Optimization
Since user experience is a priority when it comes to an SEO strategy, you can use AI to analyze user behavior and the type of content you publish. AI can then provide you with insight and suggestions on the areas that need improvement. Implementing this recommendation is a great way of using AI to make your content SEO-friendly and diversifying it to improve your UX, which will result in better SEO rankings.
Virtual Assistants Implementation
Both voice search assistants and chatbots can benefit your UX, but they go a step further. Chatbots are a form of AI that provides instant help to your website’s visitors, increasing customer satisfaction, return site visitors, and engagement rates.
With the popularity of AI voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, voice search inquiries have significantly increased. Since SEO is always evolving, it’s important to consider voice search when building your strategy. Optimizing your content using long-tailed keywords can be an essential step, as it accounts for users speaking in complete sentences when searching the web for content.
Keyword Research
AI tools can increase your productivity and SEO performance by finding, analyzing, and implementing keywords into your strategy. Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool or Copilot can provide insights into keyword opportunities and adjustments, as well as suggestions for keywords to use in your content.
Is AI going to take over SEO?
The short answer is no, AI is not going to take over SEO. Even though generative AI offers an opportunity to create content that’s optimized for SEO, search engines still prioritize content that’s written for users. The human touch is essential to current SEO practices, even while AI continues to influence and change the SEO process.
Keeping this in mind, it’s important to acknowledge that AI has already substantially transformed SEO and digital marketing with predictive search, enhanced result accuracy, and a constant stream of information. Understanding AI’s continuous influence on SEO will provide businesses and organizations with a necessary competitive advantage.
Staying up-to-date on technological advancements and their impact on SEO is one of our many talents. Contact 5 Horizons today to discuss conducting an SEO audit to help your organization thrive, or follow our Demystifying SEO series to learn more.