AI for SEO is at a tipping point where technology used by large corporations is increasingly available to smaller businesses.
The growing use of this new technology is permanently changing the practice of SEO today.
But is it right for your business? Here are the surprising facts.
What is AI for SEO
AI, or artificial intelligence, is already part of our daily lives. Anyone who uses Alexa or Google Maps is using AI software to improve their life in some way.
The popular writing assistant Grammarly is an AI software that illustrates the power of AI to improve performance.
It takes such great content and enhances it by correcting grammar and spelling errors and capturing repetitive word usage.
AI for SEO works in a similar way to improve performance and, to some extent, democratize SEO by making scaled and sophisticated data analytics within everyone’s reach.
How AI can be used in SEO
Leading SEO AI platforms automate data analysis, providing high-level views that identify patterns and trends not otherwise visible.
Mark Traphagen from seoClarity describes why SEO AI automation is essential:
“A decade ago, top SEOs were big Excel jockeys, pulling in and correlating data from different sources and parts of the SEO lifecycle, all by hand.
If SEOs did this today, they would be left in the dust.
When humans can process: results have changed, algorithms updated, SERPs changed, etc.
And that’s not to mention the access and depth of data available in this decade, the rapid changes in search engine algorithms, the different ranking factors that are different for every query, the results based on intent that change seasonally and the immense complexity of the modern enterprise. web sites
These realities have made the use of AI now business essential.”
AI in on-site optimization
WordLift AI SEO automation platform helps publishers automate structured data, internal linking and other on-page factors.
Andrea VolpiniCEO of WordLift, comments:
“WordLift automatically ingests the latest version of the schema vocabulary to support all possible entity types.
We may reuse this data to create internal links, render context cards on web pages, and recommend similar content.
Like Google, a publisher can use this network of entities to enable readers to discover related content.
WordLift enables many SEO workflows as the website’s knowledge graph is built.
Some use WordLift’s PNL to manage internal links on their important pages; others use knowledge graph data to instruct the internal search engine or to fine-tune a language model for content generation.
By automating structured data, publishing entities and adding internal links, it’s not uncommon to see substantial organic traffic growth for content creators.”
AI for SEO at scale
AI for SEO can be applied to a wide range of activities that minimize involvement in repetitive tasks and improve productivity.
A partial list includes:
Content planning. Content analysis. Data analysis. Creation of local knowledge graphics. Automate the creation of schema structured data. Link optimization. Page-by-page content optimization. Automatically optimized meta descriptions. Elements of the programmatic title. Headings optimized for scale.
AI in content creation
Content creation consists of multiple subjective choices. What a writer thinks is relevant to a topic may be different from what users think is.
A writer may assume that a topic is about topic X. The search engine may identify that users prefer content about X, Y, and Z. Consequently, the content may experience poor search performance.
AI content tools help content developers build closer relationships between content and what users are looking for, providing an objective profile of what a given piece of content is about.
AI tools allow search marketers to work with content in a way that is light years ahead of the decades-old practice of first identifying high-traffic keywords and then creating content around them.
AI in content optimization
Search engines better understand queries and search content by identifying what users mean and what web pages are about.
Today’s AI content tools do the same for SEO from across the content development workflow.
There’s more too.
In 2018 Google developed what they called the Topic Layer, which helps you understand your content and how topics and subtopics relate to each other.
Google described it like this:
“So we’ve taken our existing knowledge graph, which understands the connections between people, places, things, and facts about them, and added a new layer, called the Topic Layer, designed to deeply understand a topic space and how develop interests over time as familiarity and experience grow.
The topic layer is built by analyzing all the content on the web for a given topic and develops hundreds and thousands of subtopics.
For these subtopics, we can identify the most relevant articles and videos, those that have proven to be perennial and continually useful, as well as new content on the topic.
We then look at patterns to understand how these subtopics relate to each other, so we can more intelligently surface the type of content you might want to explore next.”
AI content tools help search marketers align their activities with the reality of how search engines work.
AI in search of keywords
Beyond that, they introduce efficiencies into the content workflow by allowing the entire process to scale, reducing the time between researching and publishing content online.
Mark Traphagen of seoClarity emphasized that AI tools take care of the tedious parts of SEO.
Mark explained:
“SeoClarity long ago transitioned from being a data provider to leveraging artificial intelligence in every part of the SEO lifecycle to quickly move clients from data to insight to execution.
Use:
AI when digging deeper into insights and recommendations from different data sources (rankings -> SERP opportunities -> technical issues)
AI to deliver the most accurate data possible on search demand, keyword difficulty and topic intent, all in real-time visualizations and trends
AI in content optimization and analysis
AI-assisted automation in instant SEO execution enables change at scale.
The future of AI in SEO is not AI “doing SEO” for us, but rather AI taking over the most time-consuming tasks freeing up SEOs to be managers who implement the best-informed actions at scale at speeds unheard of
A key value of using AI for SEO is to increase productivity and efficiency while increasing content expertise, authority and relevance.
Market Muse’s Jeff Coyle outlines the benefits of AI as a justification for how much is budgeted for content and what value it brings to the bottom line.
Jeff commented:
“As more of the content strategy you budget for becomes successful, it becomes immediately apparent that using AI to predict content budget needs and drive efficiency rates is the most important thing in can invest for a content organization.
For operations, human resource efficiency is the highest priority. Where do you have humans performing manual tasks for research, planning, prioritization, briefing, writing, editing, production and optimization? How much time is wasted and how many feedback or rework loops exist?
Data-driven, predictive and defensible optimization and content creation plans that provide single sources of truth in the form of content briefs and project plans are the foundation of a team focused on using technology to improve efficiency human resources.
For optimization, choosing what content to update, understanding how to update it, and whether to use it with creation, reuse, and transformation are the critical benefits of using AI for content analytics.
Knowing whether a page is high quality, shows expertise, appeals to the right target intent, and integrates correctly into the site gives the team the best chance for success.”
Disadvantages and ethical considerations
Posting content created entirely by AI can have a negative outcome because Google explicitly prohibits automatically generated content.
Google Spam Guidelines warns that posting automatically generated content may result in manual action, removing the content from Google search results.
The guidelines explain:
“In order to appear in Google’s web search results (web pages, images, videos, news content, or other material that Google finds around the web), the content should not violate Google’s general Search Google or the spam policies included on this page.
…Auto-generated junk content (or “auto-generated”) is content that has been programmatically generated without producing anything original or adding sufficient value; instead, it has been generated with the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users.”
There is no prohibition or law against posting automatically generated content. Google even suggests ways to exclude this type of content from the Google search engine if you choose to use this type of content.
But using auto-generated content isn’t viable if the goal is to rank well in Google’s search engine.
Can Google identify AI-generated content?
Yes, Google and other search engines can probably identify completely AI-generated content.
Content contains word usage patterns unique to both human and AI-generated content. Statistical analysis reveals which content is created by AI.
The future of tools is now
There are many AI-based tools available that are suitable for different levels of users.
Not every business needs to scale their SEO for hundreds of thousands of products.
But even a small to medium-sized online business can benefit from the efficient and streamlined workflow that an AI-powered content tool provides.
More resources:
Featured image by Shutterstock/Master1305
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