Artificial intelligence (AI) is the current era of SEO; there’s no escaping it.
Google it, and you’ll see AI content creation companies, AI web design careers demanding SEO knowledge, and AI prompt engineers with SEO capabilities. Essentially, if you’re involved in SEO and aren’t toying with how to use AI to your advantage, you’re probably falling behind.
We’ve got some statistics to prove why everyone in SEO is practically becoming obsessed with AI:
- 65% of brands noticed improved SEO results by using AI.
- 75% of marketers use AI to reduce time spent on manual tasks.
- 35% of brands are using AI to create SEO-driven content strategies.
AI and Modern SEO
AI is the new cornerstone of modern SEO.
AI-powered algorithms, like Google RankBrain and BERT, are becoming more effective at understanding users and their search intent, delivering more relevant search results. With AI, there are fewer old-fashioned keyword-based puzzles that, at the time, felt almost impossible to solve. Now, there’s meaning and context, which improves how information is searched for on the internet.
AI technologies are also enabling businesses to optimise their content more efficiently. For example, AI-based keyword research tools can identify patterns and propose the keywords in demand. That assists businesses in reaching out to target specific markets more conclusively.
Essentially, AI is doing everything to improve the user experience through search and content (more on content later).
How AI Transforms Keyword Research
We need to talk more about keyword research. There are some statistics as to why:
- 74% of keywords get 10 monthly searches or fewer.
- 0.0008% of keywords get more than 100,000 monthly searches.
- The first 5 organic results from keywords in the SERPs account for 69.1% of all clicks.
Keyword research has always been labour-intensive. Research starts with top-level queries on the search engines, followed by several factors like search volume, competition, and relevance. But this routine expands as it becomes more specific.
In comes AI to save the day. These algorithms help analyse big data, recognising not only commonly used but also highly prominent selling variants.
With the ever-quickening pace of digitisation, Google’s Autocomplete feature and analytical platforms, like SEMRush and Ahrefs, can help with identifying gaps in keywords that could be beneficial for a business strategy – and even they are using AI.
On-Page SEO and AI-Enhanced Web Design
How a web page appears in the SERPs greatly depends on on-page SEO optimisation; with the help of AI, it is getting easier to enhance web design for SEO purposes.
The development of AI has opened up avenues for multiple AI-driven tools that are used to process web pages and extract essential SEO information like keywords, meta tags, tags, and mobile tags. Web developers can now create more attractive websites that follow SEO best practices without thinking too much. There’s a theme in this article and it’s that AI is helping people to think less.
AI can check content and assess readability, keyword saturation, and engagement metrics, and even suggest how to improve the page performance. The result? Businesses are developing less complicated, more attractive, and clearer websites that can perform better on search engine results pages.
That being said, we know full well that there is a lot of human value left in website design. That’s why if you were to use our web design services in Oxford, our team puts their knowledge and assessments above all else. While AI is great for saving labour and time in certain areas, that time should be spent in the areas where human expertise and experience is greatly felt.
Content Creation and Optimisation with AI
We’d say this point is more controversial.
AI and content creation isn’t exactly something everyone agrees with, but then you have companies who are marketing their AI-specific content creation services.
The concept is growing. Programs like Jasper AI and MarketMuse allow users to input keywords and relevant data, and create content that is optimised for search engines in minutes. It follows SEO frameworks and does save time and effort. But Google will penalise AI-generated content, which has been primarily created to manipulate search rankings.
AI tools don’t stop at content creation though. They’re also capable of improving the content already available on the website by evaluating metrics – bounce rate, dwell time, the number of clicks, page views, etc. Sticking to the topic of content strategy gaps, AI offers tweaks that can boost the ranking of a website page. Tools assisting the creation of content materials even allow you to know the ideal wording, keyword usage, and readability scores for pages of sites.
AI-Driven User Experience and SEO
Combining creative marketing strategies with SEO principles and artificial intelligence has led to significant changes.
Let’s go back and look at how things were a couple of years ago. Website developers and marketers made their pages SEO-friendly and included several keywords here and there, while the rest was filled with (not always) attractive images.
Now, with search engine algorithms improving and artificial intelligence growing, the user experience has become more refined and somewhat demanding. There are tools, developed using AI, that can determine where within a webpage a user clicks on and where they’re most likely to click on. This helps to create a better user experience and increases a webpage’s ranking.
A/B testing is also common practice when using AI and helps developers improve user experience. End users, businesses, and designers can learn from these tests to improve designs and marketing strategies.
So, SEO in the era of AI. What’s changing? Everything! There isn’t a single aspect of SEO that AI isn’t changing. It’ll be interesting to see how AI continues to change the fundamental concepts of SEO.
If you are looking to improve your website SEO, contact us to find out about our Technical SEO Consultancy offering.
