You’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t use AI for SEO. You’ve also heard it said that AI is the magic touch to get SEO going.
Both are potentially true. You just need to know what to do.
For instance, you should never let AI fully generate content for you. It’s not going to do a good job, even if what it writes might sound nice, because when you use AI for content generation, it gets basic facts wrong.
That said, there are ways you can use AI for SEO.
1. Keyword research
Keyword research is probably the most effective way to use AI for SEO. Sometimes it can be hard to determine whether a keyword is viable or not, but based on what your website’s authority already looks like, AI models can help you find good keywords to target.
2. Assigning target URLs
Even once you get a good set of target keywords, figuring out which URLs to assign them to can be quite a challenge. That being the case, AI can often analyze the nuances associated with the user experience of the URL and intent of the keyword, and help you pick the best ones.
3. Optimizing page structure and metadata
Basic page optimizations, like shortening page titles and inserting target keywords, as well as optimizing other metadata, is something with which AI can help. AI can also help with optimizing the page structure, creating schema markup, and finding code issues. These are small elements of search engine optimization, but together they add up.
4. Coming up with blog ideas for your SEO strategy
While you should absolutely not let AI write your copy for you, you can ask it for help. One of the best ways is to ask it for help coming up with ideas. AI can also usually build out relatively effective SEO-friendly outlines. Once you draft, you can ask for edits and optimizations that might improve SEO. The caveat is not to use generative content because AI makes some really bad factual claims and other errors that human writers, at minimum, should not make, at least with good research.
5. Competitor analysis
Another unique way to use AI for SEO is to find out where your current competitors stand, not only in terms of current search rankings, but how healthy their website is. You might be able to take on some competitors and others might occupy positions that are out of your reach, and AI models may be able to help you get to the bottom of that.
6. Technical audits
Some agencies will charge you for a technical audit, or a general SEO audit; some do them for free. AI as a general rule always does, and a good audit, albeit AI-executed, may be able to help you find areas in which your website could be improved.
7. Finding pages on your website that need to offer a better user experience
AI is not human, but it can sort of look at a website, or a specific web page, and tell if it is doing a good job in terms of UX. AI may even be able to tell you some basic ways in which a web page can be improved on those grounds, and may be able to save you some time doing so.
8. Finding website issues
This is another thing AI is really good at. Coding, finding coding errors, broken links, fixing botched integrations – all of these things fall well under AI’s wheelhouse, making it really good for that use.
Ready to Use AI for SEO?
While using AI for SEO is not some magic solution to any issues your online business is facing with digital marketing or overall operations, you can use it to improve performance.
Don’t let it write your whole website for you, but as long as you follow this basic outline, you should be good.
