Technology is in a state of flux with respect to AI. It seems to be everywhere and constantly evolving. And that is because both of those things are true. AI is an expansive term that can be used to define a variety of things–from ChatGPT to deepfakes to customer service chatbots. And because the technology has such wide-ranging applications, each one will see its own evolution as users tweak the technology to suit specific needs.
Because this topic is so broad, this article focuses on one specific aspect of AI, which is how AI is changing the landscape of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
AI and SEO, explained
Over the past year, there has been a paradigm shift from concise, keyword-driven content (preferred by search engines like Google) to more nuanced, complex, authoritative information, which AI aggregates and uses to provide answers to search questions. This presents a challenge because a user may find AI-aggregated information on a search results page vs. visiting a website recommended in search. This means that overall visits to search results pages may be up, but overall visits to actual websites may be down. The search engine is essentially acting as a “middleman” purveyor of information. This also means that the previous strategy of “juicing” websites with keywords no longer matters if folks aren’t visiting the sites themselves due to search page content aggregation.
However, this shift also represents an opportunity and frankly, a full-circle moment back to higher quality content. AI is parsing massive amounts of data, looking for expert content to “drive” the conversation (vs. brute-force keyword counting). As a result, content creation (blog posts, news items, additional pages, etc.) no longer favors trying to squeeze in as many mentions of keywords as possible, leading to robotic-like content. Instead, AI prioritizes more nuanced, subject-matter expertise that it aggregates to provide information to users. In other words, we humans were trying to write like robots to appease search engines like Google. Now, the robots are trying to write like humans to appease search engines like Google.
This is still a live conversation because websites (and the companies, brands, and products that use them) have a vested interest in users visiting their websites to complete transactions and engage in other ways. How that will occur is still somewhat of an open question, but for sure, investing time and energy in creating richer content is a way to get ahead of the game.