AI is having a huge impact on the world around us. One sector that is adapting quickly to these changes is the realm of search engine optimization. We discuss this in the article below.
SEO has always been a moving goalpost. Just when you think you have it down, something changes and you are back to tweaking and adapting. Like a constantly adapting organism, AI has made it evolve once more. However, in this emerging climate it is hard to see what the future holds. Is AI content black hat, white hat, or a definite murky grey? One thing is for sure, and it is that AI is rewriting the rules, and you need to prepare.
AI and Technical SEO
Before diving headlong into a world of AI content, it is worth noting that many of the old systems you have in place on your website are still useful. In particular, everything you know about technical SEO remains. It is not a case of starting from scratch, but more about future-proofing your website. The first stop should be a site audit tool. These can quickly help you find out your technical SEO status and address any issues. You can then prioritize fixes that matter, and begin to drive organic high-quality traffic. From here, you have a sound basis to prepare for an AI-based SEO future.
AI models will be crawling your site, and as they are algorithmic in nature, you need to have a well-structured site that is easy for them to scan. This includes great site architecture with an easy-to-navigate linking structure. Keep up to date with a robots.txt file and keep redirects to a minimum. Pages that load fast will also do better in AI searches, and it is worth noting that many AI crawlers do not execute Javascript.
Generative AI and Content
You will no doubt have encountered generative AI in programs like ChatGPT. In fact, around 400 million people around the globe use it every month. It has the ability to trawl the internet and take information to answer questions and queries, essentially, writing whatever you need.
This has changed the landscape drastically. Once upon a time, you would research keywords and then optimize content for it by creating backlinks. This involved manual content creation. However, AI is now improving so much, that it can make its own content and it is getting almost indistinguishable from that written by a human. What’s more, AI can do this at scale, and advanced systems can provide real-time content updates and adjustments to suit searcher needs.
This has made searches much more important, and Google’s AI is now looking at the user’s intent when performing searches. Experience, authoritativeness, and expertise are more important than anything else, making keywords alone redundant. They do still have their place, but the use of them has evolved.
The Downside to AI in SEO
The downside to AI in SEO is that the content created loses a human element, and that is what people are generally searching for. Speed has its advantages, but AI is still formulaic, and this can be detected. It is also quite plausible that unchecked facts and fake news can be included in AI content, as it takes what it skims on the internet as truth.
By using this, we may also find that content becomes stagnant across the board. If AI is taking its cues from the same place, and everyone is using AI, then everyone has the same content. This fails to differentiate your business and brand from others and is extremely poor marketing and SEO practice.
Google Guidelines
Unless your content is adapting, then AI content has quite a short shelf life. While it is great to imagine that all Google searches are done by robots, there are humans behind them. As of January they have trained pages to mark down low-quality AI content.
Google’s quality guidelines break this down into two sections. Firstly is scaled content abuse. This is the creation of content using automated tools that have little to no value. Second to this is the main content, which covers any content that is created with a lack of originality, effort, or value.
For now, this means you need to strike a balance. AI content can still be useful and can save time and money. But you need to be on the ball, ensuring it has a human tone and still adds value. In many cases, the tools to do this may cost the same amount as getting a human to do it.
There are ways to use it efficiently. AI is great for doing research, which you can later fact-check and put into your own content. It can also provide guidance and outlines. Finally, it can actually suggest content. This can be excellent if all your mood-boarding and research is exhausted. In a strange twist, AI may just give you the spark of creativity needed for the killer, unique piece of content.
