Since the mass adoption of artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, people have been asking questions about these tools’ usefulness and the ethics of using them.
This guide will provide answers to these frequently asked questions and will lead you through the process of incorporating AI in your SEO work in a way that is efficient and ethical.
What even is AI, and what is SEO?
AI stands for artificial intelligence. It’s when a machine tries to imitate human intelligence.
AI can be used in many ways, like:
- Answering questions
- Creating images and videos
- Writing prose and poetry
- Coding and solving coding problems
- Transcribing speech into text
- Scheduling appointments
- Recreating someone’s voice and likeness
SEO stands for search engine optimization. People who create content for the web can use SEO techniques to help their content appear as a top search result when people use search engines like Google.
There are three types of SEO: technical, on-page and off-page.
- Technical optimizations (like using proper header tags) help search engines crawl and index — find and file — your site.
- On-page optimizations (like using relevant keywords in your writing) help your pages rank higher in search results and gain more traffic.
- Off-page optimizations (like when another website links to your site) happen outside of your site and boost your credibility. When other sites refer to you, people are more likely to trust what you have to say.
Will AI replace SEO and content creators?
At the time of writing this guide, AI will not replace SEO or content creators. Instead, AI serves as a useful tool to help search engine optimizers and creators do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.
How can AI help improve page rank?
AI can be used in all three types of SEO to improve page rank.
On-page SEO
Keyword optimization
AI tools can help you find the best keywords to target by analyzing trends. These tools can also suggest related secondary keywords and phrases that can be incorporated into your content.
Research and curation
Tools like ChatGPT can curate a list of sources on most topics. You can also ask the tool to provide a short summary of each piece of content to see if it’s worth reading the entire source.
Beware of hallucinations
Just keep in mind that AI tools like ChatGPT do not fact-check. Oftentimes, they “hallucinate” — a term coined by AI researchers.
According to the New York Times, an AI “hallucination” is when “the system provides an answer that is factually incorrect, irrelevant or nonsensical, because of limitations in its training data and architecture.”
Content creation
AI-powered content creation tools can help you produce relevant content that resonates with your target audience.
It’s best to generate content ideas or outlines using AI and write the content yourself to ensure accuracy. Then AI can analyze your content and suggest improvements to make it more search engine friendly.
For example, AI can recommend changes to the title tag, meta description, header tags and body text to improve relevance and readability.
Off-page SEO
Link building
AI can help you identify websites and blogs that you can reach out to for link-building opportunities.
Competitor analysis
AI tools can analyze the online presence of competitors and identify strategies that are working well for them that you can adopt as well.
Technical SEO
Real-time performance monitoring
AI tools can monitor website performance and identify issues that may be hurting your search rankings in real time.
For example, AI can analyze website speed, page views and user engagement to identify areas for improvement.
Predictive analytics and automated reporting
AI-powered analytics tools can use historical data to make predictions about future SEO trends and performance.
AI can also generate automated reports that summarize SEO performance metrics and provide actionable insights. These reports can be customized to meet the needs of different stakeholders.
What AI tools can be used for SEO optimization?
UC Davis uses Conductor, an organic marketing platform, as its primary SEO tool.
Conductor has a feature called Content Guidance. This feature uses AI to generate recommendations based on content in the top-ranked pages in search engine results. The topic and page suggestions it provides can help you create high-value content.
If you feed a topic and URL into Content Guidance, it will provide you with suggestions about:
- Primary and secondary keywords
- Alt tags
- Content length
- Readability
- Page speed
- Top competitors
- Ranking
For a comprehensive list of AI tools, check out Futurepedia.
Is it ethical to use AI for SEO?
AI is not a replacement for search engines, nor is it a replacement for an SEO specialist. AI is a tool. Like any tool, it can be misused depending on the knowledge and intentions of the person using it.
When you first use ChatGPT, a warning appears: “While we have safeguards in place, the system may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information and produce offensive or biased content. It is not intended to give advice.”
In the wrong hands, AI can allow bad agents to scam people and spread false information quickly, cheaply and easily.
And even if someone does have good intentions, if they’re not aware of AI’s hallucinations, they could be unintentionally spreading misinformation.
To avoid spreading false or biased info, it’s best to always fact check your content and have others look at it before you publish.
How can search engines prevent the misuse of AI?
Fortunately, major search engines have already implemented algorithm updates to ensure spammy AI-generated content gets demoted in search engine results.
Google Search's guidance about AI-generated content is a useful guide on how to generate high-quality content using AI. It discusses topics like:
- E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness)
- Using automation to create helpful content
- AI automation disclosure
As for Microsoft, it has limited the use of its AI Bing chatbot and is continually patching vulnerabilities.
Even with these large efforts, content consumers should be careful about what they read and be sure to fact-check important claims.
What are the pros and cons of AI content?
There are many pros and cons to AI-generated content.
Pros
The pros are that it’s easy to use for content ideation and generation. AI tools like ChatGPT can help you come up with content ideas that are relevant to your audience so you can save hours of tedious work.
Cons
The cons are that AI can generate biased information and misinformation. AI doesn’t fact-check, and its content is not always useful for the reader. Also, its information isn’t always up to date. For example, currently, ChatGPT can only pull information up to 2021.
What does the future of AI in SEO look like?
Google has made it clear that it will not ban AI-generated content. Instead, Google’s algorithms will boost the rank of high-quality content, whether it’s made by AI or a human.
Your best bet is to use AI tools to:
- Brainstorm and research content ideas
- Choose relevant keywords
- Assess your competition
- Monitor your content’s success
- Analyze your results
For future success, the key is for SEO specialists and content creators to continue producing helpful content for their audience regardless of the tools used in the process.