I see a lot of SEOs panicking about artificial intelligence with the whole ChatGPT thing. I can understand why. For a lot of people, it feels like search is being completely reinvented. And as a business owner or marketer, that’s scary stuff. What’s going to happen to your content and traffic…?
Well, I’m here to tell you that you shouldn’t worry. In fact, this should excite you! And SEO isn’t going to change as rapidly as you may think…
AI Still Uses Search Engines
The reality is this: right now the AI chatbots that have internet access to the outside world use search engines to pull information. Just look at Bing’s AI, for example.
As you can see, Bing is doing multiple web searches in this instance. It is pulling information from websites – the same as you would do if you conducted a Google search. And this is what I mean.
Artificial intelligence isn’t replacing search engines, at least not now. Instead, it’s integrating with them. And that’s a good thing for SEOs. It means we can keep on doing what we’ve always done.
The SEO Fundamentals Don’t Change
And that brings us back to traditional SEO. The reality is this: these AI chatbots and algorithms are doing exactly what Google is doing: trying to pull results that are authority websites. (Or pulling from search in general.) And this is always how Google has ranked websites at the top of search.
Focus on becoming an authority. That has always been the job of SEOs and will continue to be. Create high quality, relevant content. Spread expertise, authority, and trust on websites in your niche through off-site content. Build connections, network with other website owners.
If you’re a local business, continue to optimize your Google My Business listing. Post to it, add photos, create updates.
It’s An Additional Tool In Your Repertoire
AI is yet another tool you can use to make your life easier for SEO. Whether it be content research, outlining your blog posts, coming up with topics, or giving you new ideas – it’s a great resource to have. Here are just some of the things AI will be able to help you with when it comes to SEO:
- It can analyze search behavior data (find trends and valuable patterns)
- It can generate content and keyword ideas for you
- Can automate keyword research and other SEO tasks
- Can suggest fixes for technical website issues
- Can monitor and track your rankings in search engines
- Can help analyze competitor strategies (reverse engineer what they are doing!)
- Can help optimize for voice search
- Can identify new topic trends (create content around these!)
Artificial intelligence is only going to become more mainstreamed, personalized, and customizable. When the time comes where everyone will have their own AI assistants, SEO will become a cake walk for experienced marketers.
Use It For This
Here are a list of real use cases you can implement right now using the power of ChatGPT and Bing to help streamline your SEO process:
Automate Your Keyword Research
Instead of using the oversaturated keyword research tools everyone else uses, why not have A.I. do it for you instead? This is one of the best use cases for the technology right now that can quickly get you some results. You can ask it to come up with a list of questions about your topic, or ideas it thinks your audience would like.
Here are some prompts you should try out:
- Come up with 10 content ideas for [NICHE]
- Give me 10 commonly asked questions by [NICHE] customers
- What are buyers looking up about [PRODUCT]
- What are common online questions about [PRODUCT]
Analyze Competitor’s Content
This one is more useful with Bing since it has access to the internet. You can ask it to gather a common topic a large percentage of blogs in your niche have published articles about. This saves a ton of time doing painful research and makes the entire creative process 10x easier!
You can also ask it to come up with topics it thinks would be a good fit for your audience based on a list of topics gathered from the biggest blog in your niche.
Automate Your Workflows
One of the things I do to give my clients an edge when it comes to ranking them locally is to reverse engineer the competitors. Many SEOs don’t take this seriously enough. Typically, I will open up an Incognito search and find the word count of the home pages, service pages, and so on of the top three ranking businesses.
I will then calculate the average and also look for common keywords all three have.
This process sucks around half an hour of time out of my schedule. With AI, I can easily automate the entire thing. I had ChatGPT write a Python script for me that does this automatically. Now, I can simply tell the program the keyword I want and it pulls all of this information for me, then exports it into several text files.
AI has enabled SEOs to work smart, not hard and to automate time consuming tasks – even if you don’t know how to code.
Optimize For Voice Search
Finally, optimizing for voice search is still an important part of local SEO. While I highly advise against using AI to write content for you, there’s nothing wrong with having it “sprinkle up” your content. For example, you can give the AI a section of your blog post and ask it to optimize it for voice search.
You can tell it what keywords you are trying to rank for, and it will do the magic for you. This is a time-saver and allows you to focus on more important tasks in the SEO process.
These were some ideas for practical, real world uses for AI when it comes to search engine optimization.
But Don’t Write Content With It
I know this is very tempting for a lot of people, but the reality is this: AI is not creating original content. It’s grabbing this information and text from across the internet, and plopping it together. Search engines do not like this, and human-written content is only going to be more demanded by your audience in the future.
Yes, it would save a lot of time. But if 99% of the herd is doing it, why do what the majority does…? After all, you’re only going to get the results that the 99% get. If you want to truly future proof your blog while building something valuable, write the content yourself.
This blog post was 100% written by me – without any AI whatsoever. And if you’ve interacted with AI generated content lately, it’s probably noticeable. Yes, the technology is going to get better in the future. But we aren’t quite there yet.
If you want to win with search engines, you have to play the game their way.
Human Content Still Wins
The reality is this: people want to read content written by a human. Right now, it’s often easy to guess what is AI generated content simply by how it reads. There are also detectors you can use, although right now they are notorious for getting things wrong.
Keep in mind that there’s also Google’s policies and guidelines to consider. Search engines may not like AI written content right now. You can rest easy knowing your website won’t be penalized by writing the content yourself.
Before 2023, Google was against AI content altogether. Now they state that they are, however, against AI generated content where its primary purpose is to manipulate ranking in search results. This is very open ended and can be interpreted in many different ways. Almost all blog posts are made to generate traffic, or in other words – technically manipulate search engine rankings.
I personally wouldn’t take this chance, and am going to continue to create content myself. I’d strongly advise you to do the same.
Be Personable In An Era Of AI Generated Content
The great thing about content created by humans is that it has soul to it. When you add your humor, writing style, and educational methods to your content is when it’s really yours. And there’s something special about that.
Be a real human to your audience. This is relatable and builds trust, authority, and expertise – something SEO has always been about. Be an icon in your niche.
Even If Search Changes…
So many so called “SEO experts” obsess over algorithm updates and cover them in excruciating detail in their courses, books, and blog posts. The reality is this: updates and changes don’t matter! SEO has always been about one thing since its inception: content.
As long as you create original, high quality content that answers questions, provides value to searchers, and achieves your business/clients goals, you’re doing the right thing. This isn’t going to change anytime soon. After all, most AIs are pulling stuff from the web.
So, your job is to keep creating content. Optimize yours to be the one that gets pulled by the AI chatbots.
The TLDR
The too long, didn’t read of this article is this:
The fundamentals of SEO will not change, and have not changed. Keep focusing on content, and building up your authority online. Don’t let the future scare you, instead get excited at the opportunity to unlock new advantages.
Use AI to streamline your SEO process, but not to create content for you. Instead, have it do the grunt work while you focus on the most important parts of search engine optimization.
Want To Be A SEO Ninja…?
If you want to learn proven, powerful, and effective SEO strategies check out Local SEO Shuriken. In it, I reveal the SEO blueprint I’ve used to rank 100s of businesses #1 in search. This is the holy grail for anyone who wants to grow their business with search marketing.
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