HOW AI COULD BE FORCING SEOs TO BE MORE STRATEGIC

TLDR

• Write useful content.
• Stay in your business lane
• AI is not inherently replacing everyone or making autonomous decisions yet. Just like we still need to hire human devs to work with a CMS, I think we'll need humans to work with our AIs.

I see traditional SEO as a race to the top of SERP rankings and then playing a game of King of the Hill to maintain that position. It largely involves writing an article for the algorithm, but each component of the article for curious humans who (we hope) might also be interested in learning more, signing up, or buying now.

AI is changing the game by making it easier--too easier--for brands to churn out volumes of this sort of content, optimized for search. It's already better than the $0.01 per word Upworkers today, and I'm sure it will get better than my 16 years of experience writing tomorrow. And that doesn't matter.

From what I can see, Google couldn't give less of a care what commercial brands publish, Google won't care how good or compelling AI-generated (or human-written) content is, because Google wants commercial brands to stay in their lane, and that's fundamentally changing the game.

EEAT and Useful Content Update Recap/Key Points

• Google created an infinite scroll, which means there's no longer a first page to compete over. Likewise, there's no infinitive SERP; each user has a SERP that is customized to their profile. Therefore, there's no longer such thing as first position rank or top 10 rank or first page.
• I interpret authorship as being a clear distinction of commercial and non-commercial entities. In order to maintain integrity and accuracy of the organic SERP, Google is creating incentives for informational content to be verified by authors--meaning precedent is given to content written by a person or published on a website of an organization that is accredited and unbiased. Not a commercial entity or advertisement.
• I interpret "useful content" as not a booby trap room where the traps are ads, popups, signups, and haphazardly placed internal links.
• I interpret "useful content" as being a well-organized website, and/or a curated user journey as opposed to throwing a bunch of articles on the blg and seeing what sticks.
• The only infinitive SERP that's consistently curated the same way (more or less) is the sponsored section(s) which you can still bid to rank on. I think this is Google's "hold my beer" response to all the SEOs who were advertising organic search as a cheaper alternative to paid search.

INFORMATIONAL CONTENT IS DEAD

I think informational, "soft-sell" "top funnel" content used to be the bread and butter of SEO content, with the idea being medium and top-funnel queries could introduce readers to your brand and therefore the sales funnel. The strategy could be summarized as

1. User asks a generic, informational question
2. We answer it in a way that they see our result first, and click on us to get the answer
3. While we have them on our website, we try to get SOMETHING out of them, whether it's an email, phone number, more exploration of the site, or purchase.

This is why, in my experience, some brands are interested in writing compelling content and keeping readers on a page longer. The more they scroll, engage, and explore, the more likely they are to convert. That said, in my experience, most companies have KPIs tied to increasing traffic and generating leads. So a common strategy is to cast a wide net of content in the hopes of just driving as much visibility as possible. That is why we have so many bulk discount deals, content mills, and bad content on the internet.

And, in my experience, this model works for a company with the budget for it--if you put out 100,000 articles and convert at least 2% that can be pretty lucrative. But the SMBs who invest in 100 articles yielding a 2% conversion rate aren't gonna do as well.

HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE

If John Smith types into google "how do aerodynamics affect fuel efficiency" Toyota, Chevrolet, and Honda might all have blog content aiming to answer that question truthfully for general brand awareness, while also promoting the fuel efficiency of their respective vehicles, and/or to showcase a special promotion or rewards program.

How AI is Changing the Game

This is changing because in order to actually rank prominently in organic search, Google and SGE are prioritizing sources that our professors did when it came to writing essays in college/university. So, just the same as you couldn't cite a commercial brand website like Toyota or Chevrolet when writing a paper about aerodynamics and fuel efficiency, those brands' informational content won't rank as easily as it once did against research institutions, for example

That's not to say Toyota shouldn't share informational content about aerodynamics and fuel efficiency, especially if they decide to put a fun spin on it, but it changes how they would effectively get that content in front of audiences, how they would write it, and what business purpose it ultimately serves.

Where Brands Should Play Instead With Informational Content

I think blogs are still inherently useful in two key ways

1. Sponsored content, such as an interesting article about aerodynamics sponsored by Toyota, can reach a different audience than an NFL game sponsored by Toyota. Awareness is still awareness.
2. You can use informational content as an asset for social media, email communication etc. and also on the literal sales floor. If a customer walks into a dealership curious about aerodynamics, and you can hand them a branded pamphlet about it, or direct them to a page on YOUR website, that's better than referring them to a museum down the street or someone else's website... but are these assets worth investing in compared to other marketing materials and strategies? For smaller businesses, probably not.

Where Brands Should Play Instead With Regard to SEO

I think blogs should go into more depth about YOUR products, YOUR brand, YOUR programs, etc.

And it should be easy to get answers like "how does XYZ company's rewards program work" or "what are the main ingredients in XYZ product" directly from XYZ company's website.

When it comes to queries like "Best Widgets 2024" of course XYZ company will say we have the best widgets. When I type something like that into Google, I'm looking for unbiased, unsponsored opinions, and I usually read Reddit discussions accordingly. I must not be alone in that, because Google is starting to cater its results accordingly.

I don't think this means companies should start trying to get content on Reddit. I do think this means focus on controlling your communications rather than the third-party media, which forums like Reddit are now a part of.

Organic Traffic as a Measure of Brand Awareness

I also think this means organic traffic would become a measure of brand awareness as opposed to quality of content. Unless the unbiased .edu, .gov, and wikipedia-esque publishers are terribly boring, I don't see any reason curious people would read content offered by commercial brands. That said, when it comes to branded keywords, commercial brands will want to control the conversation as much as possible by working with influencers and ultimately flooding the market with their own product reviews and tutorials.

Then, if you're able to get more organic traffic than the independent influencers and publishers, that's a sign audiences are interested and engaged with your brand, as opposed to the traditional SEO model which may indicate you wrote a more interesting article, but it doesn't necessarily lead to a conversion.

How AI Won't Replace Humans in this Equation

Simply put, AI might be able to write better than us, but it doesn't know YOUR brand.

Like, a company would have to invest in teaching an AI model its brand. And then every time there's a new direction, re-train the AI model to adapt the new direction, refine it, etc.

This immediately imposes a cost and logistics barrier until AI companies figure out how to make their AI generators function more like human marketers. Or, humans will need to learn how to direct AI models that are deployed to companies much like how content managers had to learn how to use Salesforce, Hubspot, or other CRM and CMSs that were deployed.

It doesn't kill jobs, it changes them, and it's not going to happen overnight.

I think that AI will enable brands to produce more content and reach larger audiences, just like CMSs enabled brands to build bigger websites and CRMs enabled retaining and engaging larger audiences. That doesn't mean AI will manage these systems autonomously better than we do--yet.

An AI probably will someday, but it has to be trained with marketing strategy first--that strategy I predict will be driven by humans, and we are entering the phase where that's happening right now. I don't think it will be a very long phase, because it didn't take long for large corporations to mobilize and utilize CRMs and CMSs either, but I think human innovation and agility will give brands the same sorts of advantages and disadvantages that building a custom website vs using Hubspot, if that makes sense.

Salesforce is great, but it's like a railroad. Sometimes you need to be able to go off-road, and I think AI deployment will inhibit larger companies from even going off the tracks, if that makes sense, so while AI will replace many roles, it will also create new ones, and I predict humans will drive that innovation as well as AI evolution--AI will learn from us, and it will learn quickly, but it won't have the advantage of getting inspiration from a water cooler conversation or watching a dumb kids show with your family on Netflix.

TLDR

• Write useful content.
• Stay in your business lane
• AI is not inherently replacing everyone or making autonomous decisions yet. It's more likely going to have an impact like Salesforce and Hubspot had on customer retention or Wordpress and Wix had on building websites, and the same sorts of growing pains we have with those platforms will be applicable to AI. Just like we still need to hire human devs to work with our CMSs, we'll need humans to work with our AIs.

About The Author

I'm a Content Writer and SEO Consultant that's worked with businesses large and small around the world. I love helping small and medium-sized businesses cultivate audiences and optimize their listings to make product fly off the shelf. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or drop me a line jason@jasonhewett.com