Lately, the talk around AI content generation tools has been crazy. and the question is, will there be AI SEO software that facilitates the process of ranking on search engines?
I believe that AI has come to lead the second wave of Digital Transformation which was initially carried by the innovation of the internet. AI, without a doubt, has come to change how we think and how we evaluate our business needs.
Now AI has come to repeat the loop. In the past, content creators used to write in journals and books, now they are creating ebooks and writing blogs and online press releases. AI will add another advancement in their workflow as well to make things much faster and simpler.
Now content creators can depend on AI to give them ideas, create outlines and even help with writer’s block.
But, will AI always be limited to content creation? That is certainly not the case. AI started to have major applications in a lot of other fields, like visual creation, financial analysis, reporting, and SEO.
What are the types of AI SEO tools?
AI, since its boom on November 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, has been looked at as an innovation that will lay off a lot of employees in various professions.
There is another optimistic approach however, that is AI has come to speed up a lot of tasks that used to take a lot of time and will spare humans the time to explore more and focus their time on further development.
AI SEO tools have come in various forms and with a diverse range of services that can help speed up the process.
What is an AI SEO tool?
Of course in that short of a time, a tool that covers all SEO aspects using AI has not been developed yet.
But, there is a wide range of AI tools that can support the work of SEO in numerous aspects.
AI on-page SEO tools (Surfer SEO)
Among the top tools that depend on AI and has to do a lot with SEO, is Surfer SEO.
Surfer SEO depends on NLP and deep analysis of the top 10 results for any search query in order to come up with a set of writing guidelines and instructions that can help you climb up the search rankings, and secure a position among the top 10.
Surfer SEO provides recommendations for
Relevant keywords and recommended number of users for each
Headline structure and count
Topics and inquiries around your focus keyword
Recommended number of paragraphs
Recommended number of images
The average number of words
check your content for Plagiarism
All of that combined can help you create an article that appeals to search engines like the top search results.
On-Page SEO will not benefit from using AI content creation tools, as robots still speak with facts, but will lack the personal experience or the addition of examples to simplify information for readers.
Hence search engines will always encourage human content creators to write their own minds. Using Surfer SEO however, will guide you to craft an article that is both human made yet follows all the guidelines placed by Search engines’ AI ranking algorithms.
The Role of AI in transforming modern SEO Techniques
AI, no matter how advanced it becomes, still follows a set of functions or procedures to think and evaluate criteria. All that criteria by far are still programmed into it by humans.
Search Engines are racing in the direction of including AI algorithms in their search indexing and ranking mechanism.
That’s why the best thing to identify what makes a blog article successful and what makes another not, is through evaluating several queues and repetitions in the flow of the top 10 articles to highlight what is common among the most successful ones and what brings the others to the floor.
Surfer SEO for example, being an ai powered SEO optimization software, uses that method to evaluate search engines ranking criteria for a specific keyword and empower you with a list of hints to maximize the potential of each article.
How AI complements traditional SEO Strategies
Now, as we come to a point where AI is being used in almost every aspect of the digital world, how can we use it to speed up our SEO process?
I heard a lot of rumors speaking about AI putting search engines out of business and consequentially SEO specialists. They said AI chatbots will replace search engines as they provide the required answer right away without any need to check multiple results.
Today I want to address those allegations head-on. That will never happen, instead, AI shall help bloggers and search engines alike to provide better search results for search engine users.
AI provides a short answer that is not at all conclusive and will only state certain facts. But most times, readers are looking for a similar case to reflect on.
Human bloggers should however speak based on their experience and empower their content with previous experiences and examples.
Now, here is how to utilize this new technology in your work and make the best out of it.
Key Features of AI SEO Tools
AI SEO tools are capable of facilitating a wide range of SEO tasks. Those tasks range from keyword research, backlink building, content optimization, idea generation, and so on.
Advanced keyword research and optimization
Keyword research in its traditional meaning is almost dead. Now a blog doesn’t rank for a single keyword. A keyword shall be considered as a cluster uniting the focus keyword and a set of relevant keywords.
Based on my trials, I have used ChatGPT to get ideas for long-tail keywords related to my niche. So if you are planning to have a long list of long-tail keywords, you can ask AI content generation tools to provide you with a long list of recommendations.
Afterward, proceed to check those keywords with a keyword research tool like ahrefs or Semrush to get better insights about the search volume and competitiveness of each of them.
Then decide on which keywords are worthy to proceed to the next steps and distribute them on your content calendar.
Semantic analysis for keyword relevance
After you have come up with your winning bets, go on and start building up towards building your article.
But the key rule of search engine optimization is to write search-optimized content. And since this article is about the usage of AI tools to facilitate SEO and blogging, my recommendation would be to use an on-page content optimization tool, like Surfer SEO.
Surfer SEO provides you with a keyword research tool, I am not supporting it as a research tool, however. Instead, use it after you have decided on your winning bets, to establish keyword clusters related to that keyword and use them to create content editors for each article.
Keyword clusters are a set of relevant keywords that are very closely related and can all be ranked using the same article. So instead of optimizing for one keyword, you are going for the whole cluster.
Search intent prediction
This step is a fusion of AI and HI (Human Intelligence =), first to identify the search intent of a focus keyword, you can use a tool like ahrefs or Semrush, which will highlight the user intent, whether navigational, commercial, informational, or transactional.
The rest of that process lies on your shoulders. You are the one who is supposed to then optimize content and your writing style to answer a user’s search intent. Based on your understanding of a searcher’s purpose, you can craft an article that responds to the desired benefit of that specific article.
And remember, only when you provide your audience with the highest benefit, will you be able to capture back some value in terms of visits clicks on affiliate links, or direct purchases.
Automated content generation and improvement
Of course, Google doesn’t recommend using AI content creation tools to write full blogs. That won’t support their E.E.A.T. model for evaluating search results and your article will get buried.
Artificial Intelligence can be used however for some other SEO practices that will have an indirect effect on rushing your organic traffic generation.
Since your content strategy consists of building proper keyword strategies, filling out meta descriptions, titles, and so on, then why not use it to help those other small yet time-consuming tasks.
AI-driven content ideas
AI tools like ChatGPT can help you generate content ideas and decide on a target keyword, in almost half the usual time.
All you need to do is just type in “Long tail Keywords” followed by your niche for example, and let it provide you with tons of ideas. Afterward, you can review those options against any keyword difficulties measurement tool like Ahrefs or Semrush and decide on your target keyword.
Optimizing content for readability and engagement
Another use that I have personally found pretty helpful, is to let AI help you rewrite a paragraph that you can’t tailor quite well.
For example, if you have something that you want to say but don’t know how to squeeze it into a short paragraph, AI chatbots can help you achieve that.
According to Adam Enfroy, AI can have several benefits to speeding up the process, but never eliminating the human factor in it.
What I believe is if AI was used to create all content on the Internet, then we will be going in loops. AI creates content generated through its knowledge of what’s on the internet.
The only new information fed into the system would come through people who write content out of their own experience, the old-fashioned way.
Intelligent link-building strategies
Now for the toughest part in search engine optimization, Link Building.
Despite how valuable and important it is, a lot of bloggers still set aside link-building from their SEO strategy. That is a result of how hectic and time-consuming it is!
A lot of SEO tools already have AI link-building solutions, that can help greatly with identifying potential prospects for linking back to your website.
Identifying high-quality backlink opportunities
Ahrefs and Semrush provide a set of reports specialized for Link Building like backlink profile audit, Link Building tool, and Link Gap tool.
Through the above you can identify which websites are linking back to your competitors but not you. With some extensive research, you can even realize if any of your competitors are getting backlinks on their broken web pages, replicate them, and ask for link amendments to point back to you.
Monitoring and maintaining link profiles
Backlink profile monitoring solutions are your shield to protect you from all backlink attacks. Those are the ones that come in the form of toxic backlinks generated in large numbers to your website as a trial to bring your rankings down.
In addition, you can check which backlinks you have lost and can learn why, or even pitch back to those who changed the links to bring them back.
Backlink is not an easy task and will require a lot of effort from your side, but definitely, AI solutions can reduce the pressure of that process.
Benefits of Using AI SEO Software
Despite AI not being favored by search engines, Google mentioned that the use of AI is not completely prohibited.
Understandably, they said that writers and SEO specialists can use it for light tasks that support their efforts, but not to shove the internet with robotic content that adds no extra value to its readers.
Time-saving and efficiency
AI has come around with the aim of facilitating people’s lives not switching them. Yet everyone keeps panicking over how it will put everyone out of business.
That is just arising from the instinct that people fear what they don’t understand.
I mean, look at the internet breakthrough. It was new and people feared a lot of jobs would disappear as a result at the time as well. However, everything almost stayed the same only was transformed from the physical environment to a digital one.
Show hosts took the form of vloggers. Finance departments only switched paperwork with computerized files. Everything almost kept working, just at a faster pace using computers and internet networks.
AI SEO tools are just the same. They came around with the sole objective of facilitating long processes, thus saving bloggers and SEO specialists loads of time.
Streamlining repetitive tasks
The time saved comes in the form of reducing the effort carried out to perform repetitive tasks.
AI tools are taking charge of streamlining repetitive tasks, leaving your mind free for the though-consuming tasks that require a huge portion of your time.
Now you can be free to focus more on doing well-researched topics, tool analysis, and comparisons, and build studies that prove your points.
Accelerating research and data analysis
The AI SEO writing tool, Surfer SEO has created AI models based on NLP content analysis for the top results on search engines.
Those analyses then are presented to you in the form of relevant keyword suggestions to use in a specific count for your article to appeal to search engines same as the top 10 results.
Surfer SEO also provides another feature called Grow Flow that supports you with recommendations for topics to write about and other topics to amend with specific criteria.
Following those recommendations will push your rankings significantly for new articles and the ones that showed initial potential for growth.
Conclusion
The introduction of Artificial Intelligence to the world has not come to replace blogging and SEO value, but to facilitate the process.
SEO is our friend, not a foe
Overall, AI is not just about content creation using ChatGPT, it has a lot of applications ranging from Keyword Research, Content Optimization using natural language processing, SERP analysis, content writing, internal linking, and so on.
Embracing AI SEO tools to stay ahead in the digital marketing landscape
Now it is just a matter of choice.
Since you have come to realize the power of AI SEO tools, it’s your choice to decide whether to benefit from it or not. But if you choose not to, others will.
And you don’t want to fall behind in the coming race of development or you will risk losing all that organic traffic to your competitors.
Leveraging AI-powered Tools for competitive advantage
Search engine results pages are a hub for fierce competition, and the next weapon you should yield to have a point of advantage is choosing the right AI tool to support your efforts.
Keep a close eye on the coming trends in the AI field and start implementing your own modern strategies to cope with that wave.
Search traffic is not going anywhere and your major goal should still be to create high-quality content for your readers.
Fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation
The near future is going to be loaded with advancements in SEO software tools. Just a week ago from the time of this blog, Surfer SEO released an AI SEO content creation tool.
But the wheels have just started to gain momentum and the speed of development will keep pacing until the Canva of Digital Marketing would be reshaped completely.
Let’s keep this thread going, what do you think is going to happen when Google releases its new search engines?
Where do you think SEO is going in the near future? leave your replies in the comments below.
