What is the Role of AI in SEO?

AI SEO, also known as AI-powered SEO, uses artificial intelligence to optimise search engine results pages. AI and SEO together are powerful tools that can help improve website rankings and overall search results and performance. 

Search engine algorithms utilise AI to deliver better search results, which could enable your web page or website to rank higher. Additionally, AI can assist with keyword research, enabling you to incorporate these keywords into your content. 

AI has become an important part of SEO and has developed hugely over the last few years. Most SEO tasks you need to carry out, like keyword research and content creation, can be better optimised with the help of AI. 

How can AI improve your SEO?

Keyword Research

Finding relevant keywords to target through your website content is vital for SEO. AI-based keyword research tools such as SEMRush, Ahrefs and Moz are our personal favourites to use. These tools can help you select the ideal keywords for your website based on search volume, keywords difficulty and the average cost per click. For best practices, read our blog post 6 keyword research best practices. 

SEO Audits

AI-based SEO tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs and Moz allow you to conduct an SEO audit within minutes. It’s another helping hand that I find extremely helpful as it highlights issues on your website that need to be fixed. Not only that, it shows you how your keywords and organic traffic are performing and identifies backlink opportunities, whether new or lost, and presents you with opportunities to drive further traffic to your website.

Optimise Content

To improve search ranking and visibility, your website needs to deliver high-quality content. However, there is no use in having this content if it’s full of errors. This is where Grammarly comes in and it is one of my personal favourite tools. It checks spelling, grammar and offers helpful suggestions. It’s a prime example of how AI technology can improve your SEO and content. 

Voice Search 

Searching for keywords on websites and search engines has always been the traditional method to find what you’re looking for, however, voice search has grown in popularity. It seems we are now moving away from the traditional methods and users are now in favour of more conversational queries. AI-based tools such as AnswerThePublic help pinpoint question type search terms, which is what people use for voice searches.

Link Building 

It is important to understand how the link flow is distributed across multiple web pages. Leveraging AI can help restructure internal linking to push link flow to essential web pages and reduce it for less important pages. AI-powered tools can help reduce link loss, find and correct factors that are negatively impacting link flow and push traffic to higher converting web pages.

What can AI do for your SEO Strategy? 

Adopting AI tools and ensuring they are implemented in your SEO strategy will help you stay ahead of the competition. AI will help your business rank higher in search results, attract users relevant to your business and will enable you to deliver high-quality content. There are many ways AI can help your SEO strategy. For example:

• Higher rankings - With an abundance of tools available at your disposal, AI will help improve your rankings as it enables you to see what exactly your users are searching for, what keywords they are using and which content they are engaging with.

• More efficient - AI is highly automated which saves an enormous amount of time. Keyword research tools and search queries do all the hard work for you, saving you from having to trawl through and search for queries you think your users may search for.

• Improved user experience - AI and machine learning tools collect data on users' interests to attract them to your website. It provides them with the products they are looking for without the hassle of endless research. Chatbots and on-site personalisation are examples of AI that help to improve the user's experience, potentially turning them into repeat visitors.

How Google's algorithm and machine learning has developed over time

Google updates its algorithm almost every single day and receives around 40,000 search queries per second. Keeping up to date with the algorithm is sometimes like walking through a minefield - it is difficult to keep up due to the sheer amount of updates and data. 

SEO has evolved over the years, and while some aspects have never changed, such as keywords, meta tags and link building, certain aspects like user experience and social media marketing have drastically changed. Notable changes include Google RankBrain in 2016, a machine learning algorithm that helped Google to process more relevant results for users.

The frustrating aspect for marketers is that a Google algorithm update can happen at any time. One update may leave a lasting impact on your website, while others can have a significant effect on your overall search traffic and others may have little impact. Before an update, your website was ranking for a range of specific search queries, but that can change all of a sudden depending on the type of algorithm Google deploys.

The impact on SEO is varied as algorithms can affect websites drastically or not very much, which is why it is important to implement and stay on top of your SEO strategy. It is always important to try and stay ahead of the game, so you can be best prepared for any upcoming changes - plus, Google rewards solid SEO best practices. 

Artificial intelligence is likely to impact the future of SEO. Traditional methods such as keyword research and content marketing are always going to be vital, and AI could continue to help make our everyday SEO tasks easier and more automated. However, we are also likely to see advancements in the likes of video, images and voice search, and these are likely to shape the future of SEO.