Artificial intelligence has become an integral part of many marketers’ content strategy, but not all marketers know how to effectively leverage AI to improve SEO efforts. From learning how to improve user engagement to learning how to develop article outlines in the most effective and streamlined way possible, AI can help improve virtually every aspect of your SEO tasks. I have detailed the different roles AI can play in your day-to-day work processes, and tips you can use to implement AI tools to maximize efficiency.
It is possible without your knowing it that you are already using AI for search engine optimization. Many SEO tools already incorporate AI to help assist you. If your current SEO tool doesn’t support a lot of the AI functionality I will mention in this blog post, it might be time to do an SEO tool audit.
What is AI’s Role in Modern SEO?
Artificial intelligence actually possesses many tools to help improve SEO scores, not the least of which is its ability to deliver content ideas adhering to SEO principles, and subsequently help AI-generated content or content ideas further develop to improve keyword targets, and other SEO markers. Ai is far more than merely an SEO tool, but that does not make it any less an important contributor to successful SEO efforts.
The Evolution of Search Engines and AI
Search engine evolution is an important consideration in understanding how artificial intelligence impacts SEO efforts, and how SEO and AI interact with those same search engines. At their outset, search engines relied on literal language to deliver results. This means that searches were not intuitive; instead, they were reliant primarily on the ability of the searcher in question to deliver enough information to yield a relevant result.
Google’s Hummingbird update–really an algorithm overhaul–changed from basic search engine optimization and recognition to semantic optimization. What it meant, essentially, is that Google became an intuitive search engine, rather than a literal one.
The most recent updates coming from Google are no different: as content has become increasingly reliant on AI generation, Google has developed stricter quality standards and as of 2024, actually penalizes sites that rely heavily on AI generation. Ultimately, this means that Google is designing a system to focus on user intent and natural language understanding, which is not necessarily supported by content generated exclusively through artificial intelligence.
Despite these updates, you do not have to fear using artificial intelligence in your SEO efforts (or in your content generation). AI can continue to improve SEO strategies through automation and analytics, while AI generated content can improve through a once-over completed by a proofreader or editor. In combination, AI SEO tools and content generation partnered with human intervention can boost search rankings and increase search traffic.
Predictive Capabilities and User Experience Enhancement
One of AI’s key abilities centers around predictive capabilities. By predicting user behavior, marketers can optimize content to generate a more personalized experience for your target audience.
By predicting the behavior and preference of a given audience member, AI can help improve search engine algorithms. Predictive analyses can help you in the content creation process to successfully deliver content that adequately predicts search intent, and delivers a searcher’s needs.
As an SEO tool, AI driven technologies such as voice search and chatbots can further enhance user experience. This improves SEO components by increasing satisfaction upon arrival on your sites and platforms. Look at it this way: are blog posts more likely to succeed if generative AI is used to simply throw different ideas onto a blank page, or if AI-generated content is accompanied by a chatbot to help delineate the ideas being presented or with keywords and ideas that respond appropriately to voice search?
AI can simply help improve existing functions and streamline a searcher’s ability to arrive at their preferred content.
Streamlining SEO Tasks with AI
AI is an excellent resource for streamlining day-to-day tasks and the larger tasks you might perform on a weekly or monthly basis. AI is able to automate repetitive SEO tasks, which allows for strategic planning and improved productivity. There are countless processes that are essential to maintain a smoothly running SEO strategy, and many of these processes can successfully be completed using an AI tool, freeing up valuable time that can be put toward sales acquisitions and conversions.
AI tools can also be used to scan through content and suggest different optimization options, while adjusting strategies in real time. This is a valuable tool, because optimization needs can literally change day to day and week to week. Having a tool that is consistently humming away, at work in the background, can dramatically improve your SEO efforts.
Leveraging AI for SEO Strategy and Content Creation: 17 Tips to Rank Higher
Having covered the basics of what AI is in search engine optimization, and how AI-generated content can be a boon for a marketing team, I have compiled 17 tips to help you rank higher in your SEO efforts using AI, to make sure that your content tools are working for you, and delivering you the best results possible. First up: content creation.
1. Utilize AI for Efficient Content Creation
AI can be used to significantly improve content research and creation through its use of natural language generation (called NLG), in order to produce unique articles with engaging tones. Content quality is always of some concern, but many AI tools are able to pull effectively from numerous sources to generate a piece based on relevant keywords. These articles typically require only a once-over before being published.
AI tools can help complete sentences, if writing itself is proving difficult, and generate ideas as a whole, to flesh out enough content for search engines to catalogue. The ability to finish sentences and generate ideas can quickly make content creation more efficient.
2. Enhance Keyword Research with AI
AI-powered tools have the ability to analyze multiple keywords at once, assess different keyword difficulty, and even provide data for related terms and search suggestions. Algorithm updates on AI tools and platforms themselves can benefit from improved keyword tools for SEO, as keywords drive people to your content, and serve as the gateway for discovery.
To successfully meet any growth plan based on search engine rankings, you must give some attention to keywords and the different marketing and writing tools used to create keyword-rich content.
Further Reading: A Simple Guide to SEO Keyword Research for Newbies
3. Monitor Competitors with AI
AI can also help keep track of your competition through securing information from online sources. This process involves visualizing competitor data and combing through data to determine your competitors’ approaches, and identify which of their effective SEO strategies you can implement in your own processes. AI can help you develop content briefs based on competitor data to make sure you are reaching as much of your target audience as possible.
4. Optimize for Featured Snippets
AI is able to generate answers to relevant questions about your business. Because search engines are rife with questions and queries regarding businesses and brands, the ability to generate useful answers is valuable to help support your business. These answers can increase the chances of your content becoming a featured snippet, or an answer that is found within the first few hits on a search.
5. Improve Meta Titles and Descriptions
Meta titles and descriptions are important in digital marketing, because they essentially direct a search engine to your site. AI can use machine learning to create compelling meta titles and descriptions. These can engage users and appeal to search engines, further promoting your work.
6. Optimize Images with AI
Image optimization is important, but is often overlooked within content marketing strategies. AI can help create image alt text to successfully optimize images for search engines. This can be particularly useful for product images, as you can procure as much information as possible when a product or brand is typed into a search bar. Image optimization can be tedious, and AI can help eliminate this tedious task from your day-to-day list of work to complete.
Further Reading: 16 Image SEO Tips for 2024
7. Predict Trends and User Behavior
AI’s machine learning capabilities makes it possible to develop accurate predictions based on present and historical data. This helps you stay ahead of market trends, and develop content and social posts according to those trends. By predicting both trends and user behavior, you can develop your content schedule with your target audience in mind.
8. Automate Tedious SEO Tasks
Site audits, content optimization, and ranking tracking can all be completed using AI tools. These tasks are simple enough, but do require some time and effort, so using AI tools in these areas can help save time and preserve resources. Content optimization tools using AI eliminates the tedious nature of many common SEO tasks, and can dramatically improve workflow.
Further Reading: 15 Accurate AI Plagiarism Checkers to Ensure Original Writing
9. Tailor User Experience with AI
Tailoring user experience with AI is another incredible function of these tools, as tailored experiences are more likely to result in improved engagement metrics and subsequent improved SEO scores. AI can be used to tailor experience by providing assistance and support in real time, and predicting user behavior in order to provide personalized suggestions. These tools work behind the scenes to predict patterns and behaviors.
10. Identify High-Potential Link Targets
AI tools are able to assess literal millions of links and domain authority signals. The ability to ID and assess on this scale allows AI to identify the best link acquisition targets with relevance to your business. This eliminates a great deal of work on the back end of your business, as a large portion of marketing efforts are devoted to identifying and chasing qualified leads. By identifying your highest potential leads, AI delivers an invaluable service.
11. Perform Comprehensive Technical Audits
Site crawlers powered by AI can help identify critical issues including crawl errors, broken links, and even page speed performance. Each of these components can impact your search engine rankings, so it is important to keep a close eye on all of the technical aspects of your site and platforms, and ensure that your content recommendations are being fulfilled.
12. Integrate AI with Data Sources
AI programs are able to integrate with different data sources–think Google Analytics–to enable real-time tracking of key performance metrics, such as conversion rates and bounce rates. Tracking these metrics in real time can help you adjust your tactics and strategies quickly, in order to maximize efficiency across your pages and platforms.
Further Reading: SEO Performance: The 15 SEO KPIs You Need to Measure Success
13. Create SEO-Optimized Content Rapidly
AI content generation allows brands to quickly generate entire pages tailored to trending topics using relevant keywords in order to successfully outrank competitors. Content creation is not typically considered a rapid task, so being able to quickly address any new trends or trending keywords is invaluable. Different content types will be able to be generated with differing levels of cohesion and efficacy, but as a whole, AI content generation requires only some basic input before being combed through by a proofreader or editor.
14. Enhance Semantic Search Optimization
Semantic search optimization differs from keyword-based search optimization, and AI can successfully enhance semantic search optimization. AI’s machine learning ability allows programs to understand the context behind user queries in order to improve content relevance. Not all tools include semantic optimization within their key features, so make sure your particular tool offers this ability.
15. Optimize for Mobile SEO
An enormous number of audience members use their phones or tablets exclusively to view content. AI contributes to improving mobile SEO by optimizing different website layouts, improving load times, and auditing content specifically for mobile devices. Optimizing for mobile SEO is important for all brands and platforms, because slow loading times and poor formatting can quickly prompt a user to leave a site or profile.
16. Filter Out Spammy Content and Links
While AI has had the finger pointed at it for generating spammy content and links, it can also be used to filter that same content out, and identify unwanted links more efficiently than the standard, manual methods. Quickly eliminating spam can protect your website’s integrity and encourage users to stick around longer. AI-powered SEO tools are excellent for streamlining tasks, and spam filtering is no exception.
17. Improve Website Structure
AI is a useful tool when it comes to suggesting improvements to website structure. Structural improvements powered by AI can include navigation tools, URL hierarchy, and internal linking. Improving these areas of your website can improve user experience and crawlability, both of which are important to improve your search engine ranking.
Further Reading: 15 AI SEO Tools to Help Your Content Rank
Implementing AI in SEO: Ethical Considerations and Best Practices
A quick glance at recent headlines details the potential drawbacks of AI, and the ethical pitfalls some AI practices and tools have developed. Rather than throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, and avoid the useful nature of AI altogether, it is important to take some ethical considerations into account, and employ best practices when using AI in your SEO efforts.
Adhering to Google’s Guidelines with AI Content
Understanding how to adhere to guidelines is not a shot in the dark, thankfully: Google offers clear and distinct guidelines and policies regarding auto-generated content in order to avoid penalties, and stay afloat in the world of SEO. It is essential to follow these policies to the letter, as you do not want to run up against the possibility of losing your rankings or performing poorly in your SEO scores.
As you integrate AI into your existing content policies and strategies, adhere to all best practices laid out by Google, and by basic ethical considerations. Data integrity and compliance are extremely important when you are working to create a legitimate, trusted site or social platform, so using tools only when and where they are appropriate, avoiding compromising your information, and prioritizing customer experience can all help ensure that you are using AI in a safe and compliant manner.
Further Reading: Can Google Detect AI Content? Here’s What We Know, and Why It’s Important
The Balance Between AI Tools and Human Expertise
Human expertise is not intended to bow down to the presence of AI. AI is a tool, but remember that a tool must have someone to wield it, and you cannot fully replace humans with artificial intelligence. Instead, AI can be used to develop actionable insights, and actually implement the ideas or suggestions put forth by the AI tool in question.
SEO software is an excellent intervention to help identify adequate keyword strategies, complete a competitor analysis, and develop ideas based on target keywords. AI tools can be extremely affordable, costing as low as $15 per month. More comprehensive tools for SEO can cost upwards of $250 to $300 per month. These tools do not typically break the bank of a marketing team, and do not therefore require a lowering of human tasks.
AI’s Impact on SEO Productivity and Efficiency
Although some people look to AI to eliminate human productivity, it is actually intended to function as a supplement to repetitive tasks and a source of support for a side range of aspects of SEO. AI allows SEO tasks to be scaled, and eliminates repetitive activities and tedious tasks, such as combing through competitors’ sites and platforms.
AI can also help streamline the entirety of content workflow, from research to publication. How? AI can be used to generate ideas and conduct a combing-through of different research sources. From there, content can be fed into an SEO tool to help identify the best keywords and size, to make sure content is as prepared as possible to elicit high search engine rankings. Finally, AI can be used to automate the publication process, and deliver a wide range of insights following publication.
Future of AI in SEO: Trends and Predictions
From natural language processing to image generation, to video generation and chatbots, AI has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. While it was once only in the periphery of content marketing and was primarily used to fill content gaps, AI has continued to prove itself as a valuable tool to develop and produce a piece of content, with additional features to improve customer experience and streamline customer service and automate tasks.
The future of AI, though still speculative, does seem to have several important tracks it is on, including SEO, personalization, and content generation. I have looked closer at each of these tracks below.
The Continuous Evolution of AI and SEO
As I noted above, AI can play a powerful role in developing compelling content. As its use increases and machine learning improves, more advanced AI tools are likely to continue to emerge, to help develop and secure SEO content that will consistently rank highly in searches and bring more queries to your site. Because AI is already used in the development of rankings, its role in shaping SEO and SEO strategies cannot be overstated, making it absolutely vital to stay updated with all AI advancements, and to make sure your tools are still working for your needs.
AI’s Role in Personalization and Real-Time Adjustments
AI-driven tools can help personalize user experiences, and make real-time website adjustments. Every time you go to a site, and you see a small suggestion regarding a product you might like, or a small window offering to answer questions, you are looking at the product of machine learning, and benefitting from the valuable insights that machine learning provides.
By personalizing website usage and identifying interests, AI can successfully help users navigate your site, and arrive at the pages or products they are most interested in. As AI continues to grow and evolve, these capabilities are likely to also grow and evolve, making it possible to truly personalize customer experiences and more thoroughly understand and process natural language queries. This means improved customer service and, consequently, improved customer experience.
The Growing Importance of High-Quality Content
As search engines continue to grow smarter and learn to discern between poor-quality content and high-quality content, the creation of that high-quality, relevant content will be paramount. Not all content generation AI is able to deliver finished, polished articles; many of them require additional oversight. Social media posts generated by AI, and blog posts created using generative AI tools that have not been vetted may not rank highly on search engines moving forward.
Apart from generative AI, artificial intelligence can also be used to ensure that your content is complete. From making sure that your meta descriptions are in place, to ensuring that your content production is smooth and without errors, AI can be used as a tool to further improve SEO scores, which will help your scores during searches and improve your overall search engine rankings.
Summary
Artificial intelligence is inextricably intertwined with marketing today, but knowing how to most effectively leverage AI tools is half the battle. Using the 17 tips I have outlined above, you can begin using AI tools to thoroughly overhaul your SEO strategies, and develop a consistent routine of managing your sites and platforms to ensure preferred search engine rankings.
Are you already using AI powered SEO tools to streamline SEO tasks? If so, let me know in the comments!
Hero Photo by Edho Pratama on Unsplash
