The way you use the internet today is very different from the way you use to do it 10 years ago. The tools and platforms you have used may have already evolved a lot over the recent years or may have even already disappeared. The way you search the internet has definitely changed over the course of time.
If you have searched for “beaches in Hawaii” several years ago, you’ll already get several listing. Fast forward to today, your search query will be a bit more conversational and a lot more targeted like, “best beaches to spend a summer vacation in Hawaii”.
A lot of trends have already emerged for digital marketing but one of the most promising is the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI has already surpassed the time where we only associate it with talking robots or self-driving cars but is now widely used for day-to-day activities.
As defined by Meriam Webster, AI is “the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior”, it can be seen now from ride-hailing apps to auto-check-out line at supermarkets to targeted ads for digital marketers. AI has now become a part and a staple for our daily activities.
The Connection of AI and SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of making a website easy to crawl, easy to find, and easy to categorize the data. It is all about helping the customer to find your website among thousands of websites. It is about optimizing the search engine and help your company stand out when people search for keywords related to your products and services.
SEO has undergone several transformations over the years and while some remain the same as keywords, we saw how SEO evolved in terms of mobile optimization, user experience, and digital marketing.
But one of the most notable changes in the SEO landscape is the integration of Artificial Intelligence. It was in the year 2016 when Google introduced RankBrain that uses a machine-learning algorithm to identify patterns that resulted in more effective search queries results.
SEO has been growing ever since with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. In the coming years, we are expecting more. Here are some reasons why AI is important in SEO.
Content Optimization
The internet has never seen as much as influx when it comes to engine searches this time around. This also means that competition among brands is tougher. As everyone tries to outdo each other, you need to create a great content marketing strategy.
AI has been helping a lot of marketers make sense of an immense amount of data and deliver better content to customers. Algorithms make it easier to collect data from a target audience. Data includes what the customers are interested in, what topics they want to know, what articles they want to read or what questions they want to be answered.
Knowing all of these data and juicing out each detail to create possible content relevant to your niche market can ultimately create engagement and conversion. Create content that provides user experience to your target audience. Good content generates better rankings.
- User Engagement
AI allows search engines to be as personalized as possible. AI makes it possible to indicate people’s interest by looking up at sign-ups in different sites and email, the consumers’ behavior on suggested articles, and the spend time on your page as well as the time they conduct a search.
Personalization is crucial not only for SEO but for making sure that user engagement is achieved that leads to customer success. Amplify your content on your different social platforms, create it with intent and purpose, and use meta titles and descriptions that can easily communicate and translate your message to your target audience. Website optimization does not only mean fitting keywords in your content but creating a focus on your niche market to get more traffic from your target consumers.
- Visual Content
AI help makes search engines understand the meanings of visual contents like videos and photos. It also makes search engines get better at recognizing it. It is expected that AI will change this area significantly. Visual content will now be a more significant ranking factor and Google has already been starting with this as it favors video content in SERP’s over text-based web pages.
- Search Engines
Search engines have now become smarter in accessing the quality of your content as well as checking for irrelevant back-links. This is because search engines continue to integrate Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.
AI helps search engines match their needs. It uses AI for quality control that separates relevant content, quality from the low quality, and spammy ones. AI also helps search engines with its ranking algorithms and helps understand the human language thrown by queries and deliver what is being asked.
- Voice Search
Search for online information has been changing these days. More and more people have been using voice search on their devices to look for data and information online. Alexa and Siri have become popular than ever because they can respond and provide an answer to queries within seconds. This technological advancement together with smart speakers like Google Home and of course, Alexa, have been on the rise and has become a “new normal”.
As Artificial intelligence makes online search become more conversational, it can recognize “sentence sense” because of its semantic content. Your SEO tactics should take into consideration this factor to continue to keep up. You need to amp your content for voice search.
- Real-Time Data
Data is the backbone of AI technology in SEO but one of its technological advancements that will make an impact is real-time data. In the near future, AI cannot only organize keyboards and provide a logical ranking for contents but it will show automatically adjusted data.
Final Thoughts
As search engines continue to become more effective and smarter at finding the right keywords, one cannot deny that as consumers’ behavior start to change, AI has become an essential tool in SEO marketing tactics.
Artificial Intelligence has created a significant impact on your content creation and strategies and it will continue to do so. It has enabled your SEO marketing tactics to reach more audiences, create more personalized content, and gave more opportunities for effective strategy to promote your brand.
As you continue to move forward with your content marketing, Machine Learning, automation, and AI can be a great help to ensure that you get the page ranking you want and need.
