Trends come and trends go, but there is one trend that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon is artificial intelligence (AI).
AI was the stuff of science fiction a long time ago. It was meant for robots, machines, and complex software.
Now, SEO is untouched from the power of AI. As search engines are improving to identify keyword stuffing, irrelevant backlinks, and quality content for users, SEO experts are now utilizing various automation tools to increase efficiency, streamline manual tasks, and organize their daily workflow.
By using AI in SEO, it is not only giving digital marketers great opportunities to enhance the page rankings, but also enabling them to develop more effective SEO strategies and smart content.
So, what else you need AI for success in 2021 and beyond?
Here in this blog, we will take you through the hottest takeaways that how AI and machine learning will impact the future of SEO 2021 and how SEO specialists can make the best of AI SEO in their digital marketing strategies to rank on the top of SERP.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
In technical terms, Artificial intelligence (AI) is an umbrella concept that involves various different technologies like deep learning, computer vision, natural language processing, machine learning, and other emerging technologies.
In simple definition, AI is a technology that has one goal- to perform certain laborious cognitive tasks better and faster than humans. It is primarily developed to make our life faster and easier.
What is AI SEO?
AI has become an important component of major search engine algorithms such as Google’s Rank Brain and BERT.
It means if you know AI and how it affects search engines, you can transform your SEO using AI.
But AI doesn’t end here only,
AI empowers you with excellent tools for data analysis, discovering trending topics, spotting content gaps and much more tasks. You can boost your SEO using AI-powered SEO tools.
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Impact of AI on SEO
AI and machine learning have become an integral part of search engine optimization because they play an influential role in how search engines crawl and rank web pages in SERPs. Therefore, you must possess knowledge of AI when creating SEO strategy.
As search engines are becoming more advanced in finding the right keywords, irrelevant backlinks, and improving content quality, marketers are using various AI tools and software for search engine optimization.
Why AI in SEO is highly important?
It’s true, both AI and SEO are complex disciplines; however, they mutually can bring surprising success to your website traffic and ranking.
You should always keep one thing in mind that search engines like Google always put the user first. Eventually, their core aim is to deliver content that is as relevant as possible.
Therefore, SEO is not just about keywords anymore today. It is about:
Meaning of query: What is the idea behind a search query?
Relevance: What exactly a user is looking for through search query?
Search Intent: What is the intent behind search query?
User satisfaction: How much better quality of content Google can offer as far as possible?
So, in this way you can understand only keyword optimization and backlinking will not be as effective as you are expecting.
How to Use AI in SEO?
Focus on Google’s AI Algorithm
AI is changing how a user interacts with online content. Google’s AI algorithm- RankBrain plays a significant role in Google’s ranking factors for SERP results.
Introduced in 2015, RankBrain is a search algorithm based on artificial intelligence and machine learning that is used in Google search process.
The concept of RankBrain is to provide users with the most relevant content that is not mainly optimized for keywords.
Google’s webmaster trends analyst Gary Illyes defines RankBrain in the following way:
“RankBrain is a PR-sexy, machine-learning ranking component that uses historical search data to predict what would a user most likely click on for a previously unseen query.”
Here the focus is not on keywords anymore. Google now wants to make sure that search result page contains domain, location, or content that is highly relevant to the search query.
In 2019, Google takes the idea ahead with another algorithm update, BERT. It basically tries to understand the search intent of a query and focus on concepts rather than keywords.
This is proof that keywords are not going to be the most decisive ranking factor in the future. So you should create content that supports RankBrain and Bert algorithm.
Content Creation with AI
AI helps in creating and executing an effective content marketing strategy. By using various AI tools, it gives you more chances to connect to the target audience.
AI SEO tool like BrightEdge that is used to find keywords, it helps you find out what kind of content you should create. Further, AI-powered tools assist you to determine:
- Content gaps to exploit.
- Trending topics.
- The important sections to include based on data.
Such insights help to customize your content to resolve specific problems of your audience and you start giving great value through more personalized content that satisfies user intent.
Additionally, AI empowers you to make the most of those connections more meaningful and drive the results you want from them.
Good content creation goes around good data, and that you get from AI and machine learning based tools. Businesses collect and organize customer insights and data so that they can take advantage of AI to sort through it and develop the best SEO strategy to increase web traffic.
AI can help you to deliver the right message and ensure that content you create is highly relevant to each stage of your funnel. So, using AI in SEO 2021 will help you in creating content that users will find helpful, and this is what Google wants from your content.
Optimizing for Voice Search using AI
When users type a query in the search box, they want to find the search results faster. To do this, they use shorter phrases, such as “Brad Pitt age”. On the other hand, in voice search, this search query would probably look like “What is Brad Pitt’s age?”
So here you can see the difference between written search query and voice search query.
When conducting voice searches, users do not need to stare at their screens all the time. They can now find content through voice search queries. This indicates how important is to optimize with perfect phrase of keyword that can meet voice searches.
As companies are introducing many features in voice assistant apps in smartphones, it is not surprising that today, 20% of searches on Google are voice-based.
Just take a quick look at how fast the number of voice-based assistants is rising.
Statista predicts that the number of voice assistants globally will reach 8.4 billion in the upcoming few years- that is even higher than the global population.
Most voice searches are question-based queries, so you should create content and implement SEO in a way that answers the questions users are asking.
And for this, AI tools can help you substantially.
For example, AI tool like Frase can help you create content for voice search SEO by showing you the questions that searchers are asking. You can develop content around these voice queries.
But you should note that voice search is highly competitive. This is because voice assistants in mobile phones only give one answer-the one right at the top of the SERP. It means you have to put great effort to ensure you rank well for voice search SEO.
SEO Analytics with AI to make Smarter Decision
Normally, an SEO professional spends a few hours daily on research, analytics, reporting and monitoring using several SEO tools. But with the right automated SEO tools, this would no longer be necessary.
AI tools that are based on deep learning and automation will provide you with better insights and convert your SEO insights into actionable tips to execute.
Reportz is an AI reporting tool that works on automation and allows you to access real-time data from multiple points. With this, you can create customized SEO dashboards and integrate different SEO tools.
Apart from SEO analytics and reporting, there are many SEO tasks you can automate using AI tools that contain:
- On-site SEO
- Technical Audits
- Tag Management
- Content Optimization
- Link Prospecting
- Keyword Tracking
- Keyword Researching
- Content Optimization
- Content Distribution
This is where another AI SEO tool like Alli AI can help you. This tool can perform many SEO tasks at a time. From finding links to monitoring your traffic and detecting errors on your website and telling how to optimize the content, the best thing about this one is that it tracks changes to Google’s algorithms and automatically adapts your SEO strategy.
As a result, AI can free up your SEO team to do the other important things that need more human attention.
Hyper-Personalization with AI
The most effective way to reach out to target customers is to deliver a message and concept that they personally find appealing and helpful; one that matches their own personality. Users or customers want companies to solve their problems and address their relevant concerns. And personalization stands out as highly effective method in SEO to meet customer expectations and success.
Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and data mining help digital marketers provide personalized content and improve SEO results. There are multiple ways to use AI tools to record users’ data and develop buyer personas by:
Directly asking customers regarding their needs and interests via bots, quizzes, and questionnaires.
Developing users’ profiles indirectly. AI tools formulate buyer personas and personalized offers according to users’ digital footprints.
Many leading brands are using AI to personalize user experience. Thread uses AI to provide customized clothing recommendations to its customers. Macy’s Chabot interacts with customers, recommended products, asks questions, and provides directions around the store.
In this way, hyper-personalization using AI has boosted profits by up to 15%. So, AI can really change your business scale through great personalization of any service or product.
Optimize For Search Intent
For beginners, optimizing website content for voice searches means you should make the content highly conversational. Instead of optimizing your content for short-tail keywords, observe how voice searches interact with search engines. As they include long-tail keywords and questions, you can optimize content specifically for this kind of keyword.
Besides traditional keyword research tools, you can utilize resources like Answer the Public. All you have to do is type your specific keyword, and the tool will tell you what sort of questions people ask using this keyword.
As a result, by understanding search intent, it will be easier for you to optimize content more strategically and implement the desired actions.
Conclusion
Let’s conclude how AI can bring success to your SEO.
First, robots are not going to replace SEO experts. This technology will help automate various elements of their jobs and upgrade productivity.
Second, AI is all about humanizing your brand voice. By using chatbots and developing smart content optimized for conversational keywords, it will enable your brand more relatable and establish personalized relationships with the audience.
Third, artificial intelligence prioritizes user experience (UX). It helps you collect users’ data, analyze it, and develop buyer personas and highly personalized content that can give user satisfaction and generates more leads and conversions. As a result, Google will trust your content as per the E-A-T factor and rank your site higher on SERP.
Search engines change its algorithm as users change its taste. The good news is that today’s technology is upgrading to understand user behavior to collect data and resources that can further assist to create better marketing strategies and manage automation.
Need Help in using AI for SEO? We do it daily.
At eSearch Logix, we have a team of AI and SEO professionals who mutually work to utilize the power of various AI tools to enhance our clients’ website performance and build an effective content marketing strategy. You just tell us your requirement and our team will gear up instantly to make it possible.
