Search Engine Optimization and AI: How to Drive Better Results

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a highly technical and incredibly crucial process for any website’s success on search.

If you want people to find your brand, your website needs to be at the top of every search engine results page (SERP). If you want your website to be a top search result, you need to optimize it in accordance with very specific search engine criteria.

The overall SEO process includes a myriad of tasks, like keyword research, content creation, on-page and off-page optimization, and more. Given all these highly technical tasks - alongside the many improvements that search engines undergo almost every day - it can be difficult for digital marketers to optimize a website for search successfully, if at all.

This is where digital marketing technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) can come in. By using this exciting type of emergent tool, digital marketers from big and small companies alike can automate time-consuming tasks, optimize content efficiently, and hit internal goals more quickly too.

Regardless of the controversy surrounding AI, you can benefit from it as a digital marketer when you leverage it in smart and strategic ways for your business.  Curious to learn more about AI when it comes to SEO? Discover how these two digital marketing powerhouses can work together for your brand when you check out this expert guide today.

What is artificial intelligence for search engine optimization?

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the use of various technologies, like automation, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), deep learning, and more, to complete complex tasks like a real person would. AI can find patterns in data, make predictions based on those patterns, and then learn from those predictions to make more successful decisions, all in rapid succession.

AI can perform simple but arduous tasks more quickly and efficiently than a human can. This automated technology is designed to make human work a lot easier - hence its popular application among today’s new breed of SEO strategists.

Various SEO tasks, like keyword research, data analytics, technical audits, local SEO, and more, require tons of time and effort. Without these tasks, you risk failing at your SEO; however, these tasks still need a lot of time-consuming effort on your part as a human marketer. With AI tools, you can automate key aspects of your optimization and generate even better results, in way less time.

There are a myriad of ways in which you can leverage artificial intelligence to make your website optimization a lot more productive and effective. Read on to discover some of the top tasks that automation can assist you with in optimizing your website for better search intent today.

How AI can be used in site ranking

Artificial intelligence is an exciting and emergent technology that offers tons of opportunities to revolutionize search engine optimization today. Here are just a couple examples of ways that AI can be used in site ranking this year.

• AI-powered keyword research. Expertly done keyword research is essential to the high-ranking success of your written content. However, this on-page task requires a lot of effort and expertise. With AI-powered keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs Keyword Generator, you can get data-driven keyword recommendations that are trendy and topic-specific for accurate results in just a few seconds.
• AI-assisted content creation. Want to scale up the production of content for your website? Use automated tools like Articoolo and Wordsmith to assist you in the creation process. With these types of tools, you can come up with new ideas a lot faster, generate well-researched briefs, and even create simple title tags or description tags.
• AI-based content optimization. Tools like MarketMuse, Acrolinx, and Grammarly are also effective in the optimization of your content for the benefit of search engine crawlers. These types of tools can help you masterfully edit written copy, recommend revisions and updates, and even help you repurpose existing content for other platforms online.
• AI-enhanced on-page optimization. On-page optimization is a lengthy but crucial process with tons of moving parts. With an automated tool like Yoast, you can conduct multiple on-page optimization tasks at the same time for essential website parts like your structured data, internal link structure, page speed, and more.

Overall, AI can easily assist you in the optimization of your website by automating and tackling multiple site ranking elements, all at the same time. With automated keyword research, content creation, and on-page optimization, you can improve SEO performance and SERP rankings, all in just a few clicks.

Of course, these artificial intelligence pros don’t come without a couple of controversial cons. So keep on reading to learn about the concerns surrounding AI in the realm of SEO - especially when it comes to AI-generated content.

Addressing the controversy around AI content

As exciting as the prospect of automation can be, you need to practice care in the utilization of this technology for your digital marketing needs, especially in the realm of content creation. Here are some of the concerns that experts have around the use of AI in SEO, for your own reference:

• Ethical concerns. Tools that use AI algorithms are exactly that: tools. They are only as good as the people who program them. So if an AI tool is programmed with a biased algorithm, then it will produce biased results - thus leading to potential discrimination towards oppressed communities. To combat this, companies must monitor their algorithms and regularly evaluate the performance of their tools, to ensure that they’re producing results that are diverse, objective, and accurate too.
• Legal concerns. Automated content creation tools collect information from various sources to create titles, descriptions, and even articles, based on a given prompt - without necessarily providing references or citations. This means that you run the risk of plagiarizing another person’s works if you don’t cross-reference your automatically generated information with other existing works online.
• Human oversight. As advanced as automated generation tools can get, they cannot necessarily copy human writing patterns or mannerisms. They don’t have the oversight that human writers have to identify organized flows of thought, or the morals needed to avoid making offensive or oppressive content. So if you rely solely on AI-generated content, then you run the risk of sharing cluttered and morally reprehensible information on the internet, through your brand’s own website.
• Consistency in quality. As mentioned before, automated tools and algorithms are only as good as the people who program them. So if you generate text around a vague or poorly researched topic, then you will receive lower quality results than if you generated text around popular and specific topics.
• Spam scores. Popular search engines like Google and Bing now have criteria for identifying and judging purely AI-generated content. So if your business continuously pumps out low-quality automated content for the sake of increased production, these engines will register your brand as spam and score it lower on search.
• Privacy and transparency. AI-powered tools collect data, and that unsolicited data collection may serve as a violation of privacy for many individual users online. To combat this fear, your business needs to be transparent about its data privacy and collection, while providing clear information about its use of data and AI for marketing purposes.

With the meteoric rise of AI comes the meteoric rise of abuses in using this tool, along with strict safeguards enacted by top search engines in the biz. It’s important to keep all the aforementioned precautions in mind to ensure you use your AI tools for good, for the sake of your brand.

Given these crucial reminders, it’s also time to remind yourself of all the good that this technological advancement inspires in your optimization journey. Keep on reading to discover the key benefits to AI in SEO today.

The benefits of AI for SEO

Automation and deep learning aren't the only benefits of this emergent tool. Here are some of the top pros to AI in SEO that you can leverage in your daily work executions:

• Improve content quality. As important as it is to use generative AI responsibly, it’s also equally important to understand how it revolutionizes SEO for the better. With automated tools like Grammarly and Atomic Reach, you can greatly improve your content’s quality, relevance, and overall performance, thus driving better customer engagement and boosting SERP rankings overall.
• Enhance the user experience. With tools like Market Brew, you can gain recommendations for improving your website’s UX, based on existing criteria from top search engines. With an improved UX, you foster more pleasant relationships with online users, thus encouraging customer loyalty and hitting targets with crawlers for better search ranks.
• Increase website speed and performance. The faster the loading time, the better the UX, thus resulting in higher SERP ranks. By using AI tools to monitor your site speed and performance, you can enact regular technical SEO audits over time, thus providing a smoother experience for users and driving customer satisfaction in the long run.
• Make competitor analysis easier. In competing for SERP ranks, you have to make it your mission to be one step ahead of the rest of the competition. To develop better strategies and beat industry competitors, use automation to collect competitor data, gain updates on market news, and conduct SWOT analyses against other strategies.
• Speed up data analytics. The very nature of artificial intelligence entails processing megatons of data in just a couple of seconds. So when it comes to data analytics - an execution that requires tons of research, data processing, and data visualization in order to build solid strategies - you can use automated tools to process information and build complex strategies faster than ever before.
• Scale SEO executions. All these AI benefits are here to improve your brand’s multi-step site ranking strategy, which inevitably scales up your subsequent SEO executions too. With AI, you can scale your more tedious SEO executions without overworking your human team, thus leading to more optimal resource planning throughout your entire SEO journey.

AI can assist you in making arduous and time-consuming tasks a lot easier to execute. With the weight of basic tasks lifted from your shoulders, you and your team can easily dedicate more time and resources to training for more advanced SEO – thus allowing for better site ranking results for your brand in the long run.

The future of SEO: Is it worth the investment in AI?

Now that you know the benefits and drawbacks of AI in SEO, it's time for you to ask the most important question of all: is it worth it to invest in AI as early as now for your optimization needs?

We think it's definitely worth the early investment. Why? Here are some of the upcoming advancements in AI that will drastically affect your brand’s website and SEO within the next decade alone:

• Voice search engine optimization (VSEO). Voice search is becoming more and more prolific as the years go by, and that is all thanks to the power of machine learning and automation. By investing early in AI tools like Frase, you can start optimizing pages for voice search and create VSEO content to keep up with this increasingly popular search trend.
• Advancements in natural language processing (NLP). Generative tools like Grammarly and Hemingway are also becoming more and more advanced due to AI-powered NLP. By studying these tools in advance, you can automate the creation of conversational content and optimize your existing blogs to be as readable and engaging as possible.
• UX personalization. With automated personalization tools like chatbots for ecommerce websites, you can address customer pain points onsite and improve their overall user experience. This early investment in automated UX personalization can lead to higher website  dwell time, conversions, and site ranking in the long run.
• Automated predictive analytics.  Predictive data analytics is a necessary part of any digital marketing process, but it requires a lot of time, information, and expertise to execute effectively. By automating the overall analytics process, you can collect, break down, and make use of user data to drive valuable insights. These will inevitably help you make informed decisions for better website optimization in the future.
• Integration with digital marketing channels. Artificial intelligence isn’t just transforming the tools you use for your digital marketing - it's also transforming digital marketing channels themselves. With major search engines like Google incorporating automation for targeted marketing on search, it's imperative that you integrate these same functionalities into your strategies for better SERP ranking and search marketing in the future.
• Automated content optimization. Perhaps one of the most popular uses of AI today is in content creation and optimization. By incorporating these topical tools into your strategy as early as now, you can optimize what you create in line with the rapidly transforming needs of search engines, thus allowing you to rank higher than ever before in the long run.

The future of AI in SEO is bright, in that it offers digital marketers an exciting opportunity to make their strategies more robust and advanced than ever before. As long as you pitch your investment into this technology early, you can make the most of this emergent tool right away and drive faster, better results ahead of the rest of your competition in the industry.

Key takeaways

With the right attitudes and mindsets, AI in SEO can be incredibly exciting for digital marketing experts today. So bring these final takeaways with you as you dive into this brave new world of artificial intelligence with the help of the experts at Propelrr:

• Debunk misconceptions around AI. AI isn't here to take over the world. Rather, it's here to assist you in completing heavier tasks that take more time for humans to execute.
• Use it to assist, not to replace. Taking the human element out of your SEO practice can also cause potentially harmful results for your website. Use AI tools to assist you in your search engine optimization, and not replace crucial human oversight.
• Invest early, win early. Advancements in artificial intelligence are arriving more rapidly than ever before. It would do you good to invest in these technologies in advance, so that you can learn from them early and drive wins as early as now.

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