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If you’re a digital marketer or you work in SEO, chances are you’ve already started leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) tools. With the rise of tools like ChatGPT and other AI software, it seems like everyone is leaning hard into AI. It’s bringing exciting new ways to work, save time and create faster content.
Love it or hate it, AI is here to stay. And this technology has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. Generative AI is now taking the world by storm. Almost everyone from product managers, SEO experts, content writers, software engineers, and everyone in-between, is using some kind of AI to do their jobs more efficiently.
We’re going to look at how AI is impacting SEO and how you can leverage it more effectively. From keyword research to meta descriptions and HTML coding, AI can be used to streamline a lot of SEO practices.
What Is AI?
AI (or Artificial Intelligence) is the hot new thing in 2023. But what exactly is it?
AI is a field of computer science that focuses on creating “intelligent” machines that can carry out tasks that would typically require a human to do. AI involves algorithms and models that enable machines to mimic human cognitive functions. This is done through machine learning and deep learning.
Machine learning allows algorithms to learn from data without being explicitly programmed.
Deep learning models are inspired by neural networks and model the human brain’s functioning, enabling machines to analyze and interpret complex information.
AI systems process large amounts of data, learn from patterns, and adapt their behavior based on the information they receive. (Of course, the machines are not doing any actual thinking. They still require humans to design and maintain them.)
AI is being used in speech recognition, problem-solving, decision-making, language translation, and much more.
What Is Generative AI?
The world of generative AI focuses on “generating” new data or content that resembles human-created data. Generative AI models can produce original and creative outputs based on deep learning techniques. Tech companies like OpenAI, Google, Meta and others are investing billions of dollars into creating generative AI.
Generative AI is being used to create:
- Images—Creating realistic images from scratch or modifying existing images
- Text —Generating human-like text, including creative writing, chatbot responses and even code generation
- Speech and Audio—Generating realistic human speech or audio content, which has applications in voice assistants and entertainment
- Videos—Creating new videos or modifying existing ones
- Drug Discovery—Generating molecular structures for potential new drugs, speeding up the drug discovery process.
- Art, Music and Design—Helping artists, musicians and designers to generate new visual concepts, ideas or music
- Data Augmentation—Generating additional dataset samples, which can improve the performance of other machine learning models.
While generative AI has huge potential to create all kinds of content, it also should not be relied upon too heavily. Generative AI tends to produce generic material that most humans can spot as being created by AI. There are also ethical concerns about generative AI creating realistic deepfake content or generating false information.
How AI Is Revolutionizing Industries
AI is transforming nearly every industry it touches, including healthcare, finance, aviation, agriculture and manufacturing. So it’s no wonder that the world of digital marketing and content is also being impacted heavily by AI.
Experts in Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) are tapping into the power of AI to optimize their online presence and reach their target audiences more effectively.
With AI, marketers and content creators can leverage Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand user intent and provide relevant content. AI-powered tools can help with keyword research, content creation and content optimization. By analyzing search volume and competition, AI can identify relevant long-tail keywords that have higher chances of ranking well in search results.
The future of SEO lies in embracing AI technology and incorporating it into an effective SEO strategy. As search engines continue to evolve, you need to leverage AI to stay ahead of the competition. Don’t be left behind!
Here are the top ways to use AI to level up your SEO game. We’ll also give you examples of prompts you can use as you get more familiar with what’s possible.
7 Ways to Use AI for SEO—With Prompts!
The first way you can use AI for your SEO and content strategy is to help with keyword research.
1) Keyword Research
Keyword research is the foundation of any successful SEO plan. It involves identifying the specific words or phrases users are likely to search for when looking for products or services related to a particular industry.
Once the right keywords have been identified, they can be incorporated into your website’s content, meta tags, headers and URLs. This helps search engines understand how relevant your website is and increases its chances of appearing higher in the search results.
Since keyword research is such a big part of SEO, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that SEO experts are using AI to take some of the burden off of keyword research.
While some people say you shouldn’t use AI at all for keyword research, we think it can be used alongside traditional methods of research. In other words, don’t use AI for all aspects of keyword research. But it can save you time and effort if you mix it with traditional research tools.
For example, you can ask AI software for a list of 10 keywords based on your initial keyword.
Prompt example: “Please give me 10 keywords that have [insert main keyword] in them and are between 3 and 5 words long.”
One final warning. If you don’t already have some knowledge of the industry you’re targeting, be extra careful you don’t use AI too much. This can be a little like the blind leading the blind. You need to have some basic knowledge of an industry to be able to spot times AI might be leading you astray. (After all, ChatGPT even comes with a warning on its website: “May occasionally generate incorrect information.”)
Once the AI gives you a list of 10 new keywords, you can ask for more variations or use that list to build another keyword list to target. You can mix this research with information you find from traditional research methods and save some time and come up with a more thorough list.
2) Generating Titles
Coming up with engaging titles with keywords in them is another way to use AI for SEO. You can use AI writing tools to create more interesting and click-worthy titles. This will save you time and allow you to focus on some of the other areas of your SEO content strategy.
For instance, if you’re thinking of doing an article with the title, “Best Credit Card Rewards Programs of 2023 – Full Reviews,” you could use the prompt below to ask for variations of this title.
Prompt example: “Please give me 10 article titles similar to the title [insert title above] that are engaging and under 70 characters.”
And if you’re not happy with the first list of titles it gives you, you can always ask it for more variations.
3) Creating Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions can be easy to ignore. Some don’t even do them, or they make them too simple and plain. But writing effective meta descriptions is still very important in the world of SEO.
You can use AI to create more engaging meta descriptions that will lead to more clicks.
Here’s an example of a prompt you can use for meta descriptions:
Prompt example: “Please give me a meta description for this article [insert title] that is under 160 characters.”
And remember, you can always ask for more variations or more options if you don’t like the initial meta description.
4) Writing Long-form Articles
Search engines today prioritize websites that provide high-quality content. By consistently publishing well-written articles that align with your target audience’s interests, you can build authority in your industry and improve your search rankings.
With the rise of AI writing tools, you can now use AI to help generate text for long-form articles. This tactic has gotten a lot of press since the release of ChatGPT’s latest versions. However, it can’t totally replace a human content writer and you shouldn’t use it to do everything.
AI writing tools can help a lot in the content writing process, but it has limits. Don’t just ask it to write a 2,000-word article on your topic and post it. AI-generated content articles are generic and won’t help your company stand out in the crowded and competitive world of digital marketing.
Overusing AI writing tools for long-form content will give you generic content and articles that people can easily spot as being written by AI. Even though AI has some amazing writing and research abilities, most humans can still tell the difference when something is written by a computer.
Use AI writing tools to give you an article outline. (You can also use it to create outlines for your videos if you are creating video content.)
Then take that outline and break up the different sections and ask for prompts for specific areas. Here’s an example of a prompt you could use:
Prompt example: “Please give me a few paragraphs on [insert specific section of the article].”
Once you have a block of AI-generated text, you can then tweak it to make it more human or interesting. Or your writer can use the outline to create a unique approach to the content.
When it comes to article writing, ChatGPT and other tools can help a lot with the process. Just be careful not to lean too heavily on it. People still want to engage with interesting, funny, insightful or thought-provoking content. And that’s not really AI’s strength.
5) Proofreading
You can also use AI writing tools to help with proofreading your content. This can save you time, especially if you have a lot of articles. AI software can take a content article that was poorly written and improve its tone and grammar. This can also save you money so you won’t have to hire a proofreader to look at articles.
Prompt example: “Please proofread the following article.”
6) HTML and Coding
Another way to use AI for SEO is for HTML and coding work that you might have to do. There are some technical aspects of SEO and AI is great at taking some of this off your plate.
You can ask AI to take an article that was not written well and turn it into HTML. This will transform a once-jumbled article into something that is really well formatted.
Here’s an example of a prompt you could use:
Prompt example: “Please write this article in HTML but also well structured with ordered lists and bullet points when necessary.”
Doing this for certain articles is an easy way to improve articles and give them a much better look.
7) Link Building
Link-building is a big part of a successful SEO strategy, and AI algorithms can now help with this. You can use AI to identify relevant websites and suggest potential link-building opportunities.
Here’s an example of a good prompt to help with link-building.
Prompt example: “I own an online site that sells men’s shoes. Please give me a list of bloggers, websites and podcasters who interview entrepreneurs like me.”
AI-powered tools can analyze website authority, relevance and trustworthiness, and can help you get high-quality backlinks, elevating your search engine rankings.
AI Is Changing the SEO Game
There’s no question about it. AI is changing the game in SEO. AI has revolutionized the way businesses, SEO experts and content strategists approach search engine optimization.
And the methods listed above are just a few of the ways you can use AI to save you time. There are lots of other ways to leverage AI to make yourself more effective.
Don’t be intimidated by this brave new world of AI and SEO! Have fun with these new AI tools and enjoy the process of learning new ways to get more done.
And if you’re looking for extra SEO or content support, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team at Searchific. We partner with all kinds of different companies and can help you drive more (and better) traffic to your site. Schedule a free call today to learn more about how we can help!