Why SEOs Must Adopt AI
There’s no denying that during the past year, the AI topic has dominated the SEO world. The ramifications of this new technology are simultaneously thrilling and unsettling. At Go Fish Digital, we have been actively monitoring these changes and adjusting our procedures to take advantage of the opportunities that AI presents.
There is a significant difference in viewpoints both within the greater technical community and the SEO community.
Many people are worried about the ramifications and dubious about the long-term advantages for marketers.
Some people think that this is just another fad, like voice search.
Others think this is a ground-breaking technology that will change the way search is done in the future.
I conducted a poll on my LinkedIn profile out of curiosity. I sought their opinions on whether ChatGPT might affect SEO.
An online survey on LinkedIn about the role of AI in SEO
According to over two-thirds of respondents, ChatGPT would transform our sector. I usually concur with them. We must start preparing as a society for the impending changes that AI will bring about.
SEOs must adopt AI.
I think it’s important for us as a community to be aware of this generation’s technologies. The results they are already creating are nothing short of remarkable, despite the tools’ evident flaws. These tools will help us advance our knowledge, productivity, and technical skills.
It’s crucial that we take into account where these technologies will be in the future as well. We must be aware of and prepare for the fact that these tools will improve tremendously over time. Compared to GPT-3.5, GPT-4’s performance has already seen a huge improvement.
Over the next five years, these tools will develop much beyond what we currently observe. This is why SEOs should start using these tools immediately. Those that succeed will be well-positioned for marketing’s future.
enhancing our SEO effectiveness
I was interested to know how many SEOs were using ChatGPT in their regular routines back in March. Even though it was still very new, I wondered how quickly SEOs started using it:
How marketers incorporate ChatGPT into their daily jobs was the subject of a LinkedIn poll.
I was surprised to learn that 52% of respondents said they had already used ChatGPT to assist with routine SEO activities. Three months had passed since its first release when this vote was taken.
This makes sense because the daily SEO chores we perform have a ton of really great use cases. You can greatly increase the effectiveness with which you are able to perform some of these jobs by utilizing AI technologies like ChatGPT.
An easy case in point is keyword research. With ChatGPT, you can quickly generate sizable seed lists of prospective keywords with semantic ties to the main areas of interest where your website seeks to compete.
Recently, Tom Demers published a fantastic tutorial on Search Engine Land in which he details the steps he takes to conduct keyword research using AI. He provides numerous instances in the manual of how he was able to use various prompts to either directly identify keywords or locate sources to mine for query chances.
He even demonstrated how he could import data into the ChatGPT interface in a tabular format after exporting it from external SEO tools:
Integration of ChatGPT with external SEO tools
Another excellent example of a tactical activity that ChatGPT might use is content ideation. I asked ChatGPT to suggest 30 different topics about “The Metaverse” at this point. They were given in roughly 30 seconds:
Asking ChatGPT for suggestions on content topics.
If I had a technological blog, I could compare it to the site’s existing material and identify any gaps that could be good places for searches. These themes support our standing as a topical authority in a certain content area, even if there is no immediate SEO benefit.
You could also use ChatGPT to scale up content optimization for your website. You can use programs like GPT For Work to connect Google Sheets with the ChatGPT API. By doing so, you can input dynamic prompts and receive the output in Google Sheets.
You might consequently produce tens of thousands of title tags and meta descriptions. With around 30 minutes of setup, you might offer a site a baseline level of optimization:
Making title tags with the ChatGPT API and Google Sheets
From a practical standpoint, ChatGPT can support SEO in a plethora of ways.
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keyword analysis
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creation of content
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content assessment
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generation of a schema
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production of featured snippets
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Meta descriptions and heading tags
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New content section suggestions
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improvements to readability
Despite the abundance of information, Alyeda Solis published an excellent primer on the many SEO use cases.
It’s highly possible that you can identify a situation where using some of these techniques would increase your day-to-day productivity if you are involved in SEO in any way. As a result, we will be able to produce a more effective output and devote more time to tasks that are resistant to automation.
our knowledge base by improving
I think that utilizing AI just in strictly tactical contexts would be well within its bounds. Beyond that, there are a ton of other fantastic programs for the SEO community.
Enhancing their knowledge base is one of the best use cases that we see many businesses employing ChatGPT. When properly instructed, AI can be a great teacher. It can sum up knowledge extremely quickly and provide it to us in a way that is fully tailored to our preferred learning method.
For instance, the late, brilliant Bill Slawski used to review the patent applications Google made. The writing in these patents is longer and more formal, and they are more technical.
The patents of Bill Slawski
We started putting Bill’s patents through ChatGPT for testing, asking it to highlight the key elements. “Summarize the entire article in five bullet points” was a good prompt. Explain as though I’m a high school student:
requesting an article summary from ChatGPT
This suited my learning style because I was able to study enough specifics to comprehend the invention and its consequences without having Bill’s concepts oversimplified in the final product. I could ask ChatGPT to go into greater detail about any given concept if I was interested in learning more.
Additionally, you might obtain summaries from Google’s documentation. I gave it content from Google’s canonical tags page in this case and asked it to recommend best practices.
requesting a page summary from ChatGPT
How many of us have trouble comprehending search engine algorithms, web technology, or technical SEO?
ChatGPT essentially democratizes the labor of brilliant technical minds like Bill and Google Docs. You can now employ AI as a teacher when you come across an SEO topic that you don’t grasp.
There are disadvantages to this, of course. These summaries may not accurately reflect an author’s work because content must be omitted and some factors, including tone of voice, are not taken into account.
But overall, this is a pretty potent thing. The community now has easier access to the SEO knowledge base that already exists.
empowering a creative community
The technological opportunities that AI brings up are, in my opinion, the most fascinating aspect of its ramifications for the SEO industry. Despite the fact that most of us are technically inclined, not everyone has experience in development.
The SEO community will be able to become creators thanks to ChatGPT.
You will now be able to write code that you previously couldn’t, with the correct prompting. That will have a big effect on how effective you are as a search marketer.
For instance, Screaming Frog is now available to SEOs significantly more. Recently, I had to scrape the structured data from REI’s site’s breadcrumb list. Similar activities have in the past required hours of troubleshooting, re-running crawls, and even meetings with other team members.
I gave a sample HTML to ChatGPT and asked it to produce a Screaming Frog extract. I was able to create a functional XPath in less than 5 minutes, allowing me to extract the precise data I required:
requesting ChatGPT to provide an extract of Screaming Frog
Numerous different tools could be used with the procedure. You might use ChatGPT to construct API requests, SQL queries, Python programs, and a lot more. The community will be given the ability to produce new items that may not have been feasible for many people as a result.
You will now be able to build tools that are completely tailored to meet your specific needs, in addition to one-off pieces of code.
A Chrome extension is something I’ve never made before. However, ChatGPT has the capability to accept your commands and transform them into a fully functional extension.
It was able to develop a unique SEO extension that extracts information such as title tags, meta descriptions, H1s, URLs, and more after around 30 minutes of prodding and debugging:
Making a personalized SEO plugin using ChatGPT
Even though there are excellent tools like this one, I could tailor this extension to my exact needs.
You may even develop tools to help you increase the effectiveness of your SEO. Dan Hinckley, one of my colleagues, was able to develop this expansion further.
He was able to develop an SEO extension for our team that suggests title tags, H1, fresh content sections, and more by connecting it to the ChatGPT API:
The entire Go Fish Digital team now has a new tool to use as part of their procedure thanks to this. We can quickly identify page-level SEO opportunities and determine which ones, for a particular recommendation, are worth pursuing.
I believe the community will come up with more options like this using ChatGPT. SEO teams will be able to recognize their demands and develop a solution that properly suits their internal procedures by embracing the power of AI.
Conclusion
We can see that the SEO industry will be significantly impacted by AI. According to the study, SEOs already use tools like ChatGPT in their daily operations because they believe these technologies have the potential to significantly disrupt the market. In my opinion, the SEOs who adjust to these developments will be the most successful.
Marketers who can use AI to boost productivity, expand their expertise, and create tailored solutions to enhance their workflows will be well-positioned for whatever the future of search brings.
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