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A couple of years back, Google uses rule-based logic to rank the websites where keyword hacks, legitimate backlinks, and content was enough to get to the top. Later, the era of opacity begins when the search giant brought revolutionary changes to the algorithms that are little-to-impossible for the SEO experts to exploit. Just major announcements like- switch to mobile indexing, emphasis on quality content, authoritative backlinks that add value to the user were revealed in public.
It was the biggest shock to the SEO world that was even considered as black magic. And, Google continued to update its algorithm and pretty tight-lipped for the updates. In a nutshell, the job of SEO became a bit harder. On the flip side, it comes out as a golden opportunity for the marketers to offer brilliant user experience and delight the users.
We can simply put it as the days of SEO game are over when SEO experts can easily outsmart the algorithms. Presently, the valuable content strategy is essential rather than tricks or links. Matching the search king expectations and bringing SEO success is not possible just by playing according to SEO rules. Here, investment in AI-powered SEO would help. Surprised?
Yes, artificial intelligence technology is not an abstract concept to the world or could be seen as if it’s associated with Sci-Fis. Over a decade, the significance of AI has changed. It’s reaching out all spheres of life and the AI twist in SEO is no exception. Google has used the AI-first approach to implement RankBrain algorithm that analyses the context of content for creating accurate search results. Later, more updates made to RankBrain to enhance its analyzation power and intelligently rank the websites.
To better deal with the knock-on effects of how RanBrain changing the trend for ranking and unfolding the mysterious things, embracing AI has become all-important for the SEO professionals as it’s completely out of the human wisdom. It’s expected that AI-based SEO enhance the future of SEO beyond keyword phrases, links, or landing page optimization.
Take a look at how AI-optimized SEO is changing the waves of ranking:
Auto-adjust keywords
With AI advancements, it’s impossible to try black hat SEO techniques that can exploit search engine algorithms and obtain high rankings. The very first thing includes the end of keyword stuffing as AI search can process natural language and find out whether the keywords occurring in a flow and context or not.
That’s why keyword phrasing should be optimized to match the context of the content. Also, the device and location have a great impact on the keyword used, so keyword phrase must be changed. The best practice includes using the main keyword phrase and then using the variation of the keyword phrase throughout the content after a little adjustment and optimization.
The technical audits and keyword research which are labor-intensive in SEO can be handled by AI machines. The SEO automation frees up the time that can be utilized for creating a better SEO strategy.
Optimize content strategy
The biggest challenge comes before content marketers are to identify what type of data the customers really need and how they can be moved ahead from one level to the next. Conventionally, the user research, planning, and target persona development is the ultimate way, but it’s not as efficient as AI. The technology creates opportunities with an effective content strategy that’s built on the top of the user insights and eventually leads to SEO wins.
The AI collect the valuable data, and provide great insights such as understanding and underlying the needs in a customer journey, finding the gap and defining the space in a competitive context, mapping intent into content, and identifying content opportunities.
Connecting the dots, AI analyzes website traffic, email interactions, and social media behavior to create a detailed profile of the target audience and sort out their needs, preferences, and interest. Thereby AI-powered user insights help in creating the content that further assists in approaching the user in a hyper-targeted way.
Enhance attribution analysis
The best content help in reaching out to more users and bring the users to the website, but all the users won’t go further down in the sales funnel. Considering the conversion as the final checkout is the biggest mistake marketers make. It’s actually a journey where the users interact with the websites many times before making a purchase and the content designed across various stages makes them complete the purchase.
The AI-powered Google attrition model works great in identifying which piece of content the user consumed before making a purchase and collectively, determine which content at different step of a journey is converting or taking the users away. Such tools help a ton in measuring the marketing campaign efficacy, define the content that deserves the credit for the conversion, and the content needs to be changed to bring success.
Link building optimization
Link building has a great impact on SERP. Google AI software is looking and analyzing the links that are valuable and hold relevance with the content so optimizing link building has become very important. Due to AI algorithm, SEO experts are becoming thoughtful about the anchor text when linking and the sites they are linking to the web page because the bots instantly catch the irrelevancy and linkless mentions that result in the poor ranking, and even marketers are also penalized for manipulative link practices.
In order to rank better with search AI and develop well-rounded online footprints, handling link building into the hands of AI is a prudent decision. AI tools help SEO professionals by searching the prospects (Sites to link with your website) for the website, finding the bloggers or influencers that have dedicated followings, and analyzing the potential prospects, bloggers, or influencers that impact ranks.
AI works good in building high-quality links, but it’s not advanced to the point where SEO experts can fully rely on it for the link building process. The role of human SEO is not eliminated, AI makes SEO’s work easier to get better results.
Build a brand with hyper-personalization
From 2007, the SERP personalization began where Google algorithms serve the results to the users on the grounds of geography, search history, interest, and other activities that have helped in increasing user engagement and retention rates.
For incorporating SEO personalization at scale, the role of AI is integral to collect user’s data, create content according to persona, user journey and user behavior, use specific pages semantically to associate intent and query, leverage tailored content to nurture leads across search, and finally publish the right content at the right time on the right channel.
The creation of dynamic landing pages based on the user’s data by HubSpot is a good example of it to provide the content that’s relevant and compelling for the users. Amazon takes a leap forward in personalization leveraging user’s data to make smart recommendations to the users based on the browsing activity and previous purchases. Thereby AI helps in mapping content to different states of intent which further unfolds cross-sell opportunities. It has been cited that 35% of Amazon purchase is done through its recommendation algorithm.
Marching ahead differently, Facebook serves the unique experience through personalized content to the users based on the profile. The AI writers create a multiple version of the same story to reach out to the different audience in a hyper-targeted way.
The users fall in love with Voice-based search
The rising trend of voice search has nearly bid a goodbye to the need of typing phrases to search for anything. The people have accustomed to search by speaking directly to the desktop or mobile devices. It’s expected that by 2020, 50% of search activity will be voice-driven. This is why Google has upgraded its voice search to better understand the natural conversation and the patterns.
To make Google’s AI bots happy, it’s essential to optimize the website for voice-based search. That’s where content must be based on question queries that start with what, when, who, where and how. Also, the way the people speak while searching is probably different when they type, so identifying the trends in voice search is all-important to get the website rank high for the written keywords as well as spoken words. It’s extremely taxing for human SEO.
Getting ahead, AI lends a hand by optimizing long-tail keywords and medium-tail keyword usage and creating a new content strategy that’s questions-focused and answer-based. The machines continuously test and analyze the website performance against the content and changing voice search trends, and then incorporate changes in the content accordingly to bring in a human-like conversational tone.
Visual search sounds more intuitive
Undoubtedly, if you want to learn how to sew a button, you prefer to watch a video or images rather than read an article. Understanding the value of visual search like- images and videos, the search engines are paying heed to what’s on the image and optimize the tags accordingly. The SEO professionals are also giving more credence to have visual content and optimize the video from the search perspective.
Using AI, the visuals can be optimized by focusing on keywords wherein the main keyword is included in filename, playlist, video title, and description, and the images in the video are described with relevant words from the database.
The final words
The search space is in constant flux, which has made it impossible to ignore the significance of AI for SEO transformation. AI, that’s an inevitable part of SEO is not essential just due to technology advancements and emerging trends, while it has become a prime candidate to bring hyper-personalization, automate keyword adjustment, link building, content strategy creation, and attribution analysis, and optimize the visual search and video search.
In this way, machine learning has become a great virtual assistant for the SEO professionals to optimize the web presence and improve ranking wearing SEO lens. Don’t underestimate its importance as AI will snake its way into every facet of web experience optimization.
