AI has been a hot topic for several years now. One reason behind this is that people fear the possibility that AI will take over their jobs. But while this won’t happen anytime soon, we can make the most out of AI tools to make our jobs easier; particularly in the fields of SEO & SEM.
Nowadays, there are plenty of AI tools that can save your time, enhance efficiency, boost productivity, and provide quick information. You can use these tools to make your role as a marketer easier and also gain improved results.
Here are some important statistics on how marketers use AI tools as documented by HubSpot:
- 86% of marketers using AI take time to edit the content produced
- Nearly 86% of marketers say AI saves them over 1 hour a day by streamlining creative tasks
- 84% said that AI and Automation tools have impacted their SEO strategy
- In 2023, there was a 74% increase in marketing AI tool usage compared to only 21% in 2022
- About 55% of leaders say AI has helped their teams become more productive
- Nearly 44% say AI is very effective at performing data analysis
- 35% of marketers create an SEO-driven content strategy with the help of AI tools
With such important numbers, we can see why more marketers are getting interested in using SEO & SEM AI tools. And with the sheer volume of AI tools available, let’s take a look at the best ones to help improve your digital marketing strategy.
How Is Generative AI Helping SEO & SEM?
Generative AI has revolutionised the playing field for marketers around the world. It has introduced us to a variety of ways we can automate processes to gain and automate information at lightning speeds.
In both SEO & SEM fields, marketers use AI tools to spy on their competitors, sentiment analysis, generate content and improve ROI with better targeting. These tools have also allowed marketers to save around 12.5 hours per week with their regular tasks.
Here is how AI tools are helping SEO and SEM professionals:
| How Marketers Use AI | |
| Reduce manual task time | 75% |
| Focus more on important tasks | 73% |
| Focus more on tasks they love | 73% |
| Become more productive | 73% |
| Become more creative | 70% |
| Conduct better data analysis | 70% |
| Understand customers better | 64% |
Data from HubSpot
Improves Information Architecture
Generative AI can help improve the internal linking structure of a website to assist the buying journey and search behaviours of customers. The tool improves a user’s experience to generate conversations and engagement. To create an optimised internal linking structure, Generative AI organises content, inventory, and demand data.
This tool can also improve navigation on a website by analysing the browse and search patterns of customers. Since it can generate a variety of supply and demand data and user preferences, it can come up with a user-friendly experience. This helps marketers boost user engagement.
Improves Data Analysis
Another way you can use AI tools for SEO & SEM is to understand your audience, their search patterns, and behaviours on your website. Generative AI tools can be used to analyse user engagement data, like the time spent on pages, page views, and click-through rates. The tool can also identify which pages are the most engaging for your visitors.
Once you’ve gathered this data, you can use it to adjust the content type that works. You can also use the data to make adjustments to how your visitors are interacting with your page, their user behaviour, common exit points, and the frequently browsed sections.
Content Enrichment
Generative AI tools can also be used to improve your content strategy. You can use this tool to analyse your content gap and the areas where you can improve your content over your competitors.
It can also be used to analyse emerging trends based on search volumes. You can use these to come up with new content for your SEO strategy. This can also help ensure that your content marketing strategy is timely and relevant.
Generating Keywords
Generative AI can also be used to come up with keywords that are high-value, popular, and relevant to your business. AI tools for keyword research have long existed. The most popular platforms include Moz, Ahrefs, and Semrush. These tools, however, use their own AI tools to analyse keywords. Generative AI tools, on the other hand, can be used without a subscription. You can use it for the following purposes:
- Identify key topics and themes
- Formulate potential customer queries
- Analyse search results
Using the data provided by the AI tool, you can craft a content strategy using top-performing keywords.
Schema Optimisation for SERP
Google’s search engine results page (SERP) now comes with various features that were designed to help funnel traffic to a website. This is why SEM & SEO professionals turn to these features to increase visibility and build brand awareness.
Through AI tools, you can identify SERP features and rich snippet opportunities for your content or page. You can also ask the AI tool to generate the correct schema markup that you will use.
Streamline SEO Operations
Another reason why marketers use Generative AI tools is to automate the repetitive analytical SEO tasks. By doing this, you can focus on strategic growth instead of having to go through the usual processes involved in your SEO & SEM strategy.
These tools have allowed marketers to focus on things that truly matter in their line of work. As such, they have learned to embrace AI tools as a big part of their daily operations.
Leading AI Tools Used by SEO & SEM Professionals
| Most Popular Marketing Tools | |
|---|---|
| Chatbots | 35% |
| AI CRM Software | 25% |
| AI Productivity Tools | 23% |
| Visual AI Tools | 23% |
| Text Generation Tools | 22% |
Data from HubSpot
1. ChatGPT
Image Credit: SimilarWeb
Now on its GPT-4o model, OpenAI has made the AI tool even more interesting with a multimodal model. Users can do everything on this AI tool, including data analysis, text-to-image prompting, and voice conversations. OpenAI is also innovating a new technology called SearchGPT, which it hopes will kill Google Search. This is currently in the prototype model.
ChatGPT was never designed to be used for SEO. This is why it’s important to be cautious when using this AI tool for prompts involving clustering, keyword research, link building, and other SEO tasks. But ChatGPT can be used to generate call-to-actions (CTAs), and meta descriptions, and ask questions as if it were a specific person you are targeting.
ChatGPT can also be used in SEM to improve your Responsive Search Ads (RSAs), analyse A/B tests, and many more.
2. Claude AI
Image Credit: Claude AI
Claude AI is another Chat-based tool that can help analyse and collect huge amounts of SEO data. This tool competes against ChatGPT since they can perform similar tasks, but Claude AI allows users to upload files and be used as an app on Slack.
Marketers can use Claude AI to create a tailored and relevant response based on a detailed research report you’ve uploaded regarding your market, audience, and previous performance.
3. HubSpot’s AI Search Grader
Image Credit: HubSpot
HubSpot introduced a powerful free tool called AI Search Grader, which is intended to analyse how a brand par with AI search engines. You can use the tool to see if your brand will show up in the search results.
In addition to this, the tool lets you know where you’re performing well and any areas you can improve to build brand awareness.
4. Jasper
Image Credit: Jasper.ai
A neat AI tool that you can use is Jasper, a writing assistant that can create a comprehensive suite of marketing assets from a single brief. It can produce social media copy, emails, and SEO-optimised blog posts from just that.
Writers use Jasper to help them deal with writer’s block as it helps produce engaging, relevant, and high-quality suggestions to proceed with the content. When used as a writing tool, Jasper can be modified to maintain a unified brand voice or to vary according to a team member using it. This helps ensure that content remains consistent across your site.
5. Surfer SEO
Image Credit: SurferSEO
Another comprehensive AI-powered tool that marketers use is Surfer SEO. It can create content that has been optimised specifically for search engine rankings. The tool can produce high-quality outlines and content briefs based on the top-performing content. As a result, it can provide content gaps to its users and present it as an opportunity to perform better.
Unlike other writing tools, Surfer SEO generates an outline first before it produces the first draft of the article. The tool then chooses the appropriate tone for the article, based on your brand’s usage. It also identifies the best keywords to use in the article to help it rank when it goes live.
6. NitroPack
Image Credit: NitroPack
One of the most useful AI tools for SEO professionals is NitroPack as it addresses issues with slow and unoptimised sites. The tool assesses your site’s performance optimisation by dealing with technical SEO tasks like caching, compressing and resizing images, and optimising for code. By addressing these, NitroPack helps you improve your search rankings and user engagement.
The tool can easily be integrated into existing content management systems and hosting platforms, which results in a straightforward installation process.
7. Content Harmony
Image Credit: Content Harmony
Content Harmony is another AI tool that creates comprehensive briefs by analysing user intent, search trends, and competition. The output it produces has a list of target keywords, insights, questions to address, and related topics. These are all analysed from the best-performing websites under the same niche.
8. AlliAI
Image Credit: AlliAI
Another AI tool that you can use to automate your SEO & SEM procedures is AlliAI. All you need to do is set up SEO rules for your website and watch as it performs bulk on-page optimisation. The tool also offers A/B testing to optimise search page titles and boost organic traffic using user behaviour data.
The best part about this AI tool is that it doesn’t require you to have coding experience.
9. ScaleNut
Image Credit: ScaleNut
ScaleNut is an AI tool that provides a complete solution for your marketing needs. Aside from offering keyword planning, it can analyse SERP, write articles, and optimise content. Once it has collected keywords, the AI analyses potential search volume and relevance and acts upon that data.
The article writing tool makes use of real-time SERP data for curating in-depth content outlines to ensure that your site gets the most visibility.
10. Link Whisper
Image Credit: Link Whisper
Lastly, we have Link Whisper, which is a WordPress plugin that helps simplify internal linking. This is a recommended plugin for websites that have a lot of content and extensive archives. Since internal link building is important for SEO and user navigation, Link Whisper simplifies the process through automation. You no longer need to spend so much time looking for potential internal links to use, thus making your job a lot better.
Concerns of Using AI Tools for SEO & SEM
Although AI tools have a significant contribution to making the jobs of marketing professionals easier, there are some concerns about their usage. Before you integrate the use of AI tools in your SEO & SEM strategy, consider the following factors:
- Content Quality: Make sure that the AI tool you use provides engaging and SEO-friendly content that adds value to our readers.
- Customisation and Flexibility: Choose AI tools that give you customisation options so you can adjust your content according to your brand’s tone of voice.
- Continuous Improvement: Opt for tools that continuously improve, learn, and adapt so they can keep up with the growing number of options.
- Ethical Standards: Always verify originality and accuracy to uphold ethical content creation practices. Avoid relying too much on automation so you can preserve human engagement.
Let’s talk about the more pressing issues of the use of AI tools in the digital marketing field.
Will AI Take Over SEO & SEM Jobs in the Future?
Image Credit: FoundationInc.co
Ever since ChatGPT was introduced to the public, many have voiced their concerns about whether AI will take over their jobs in the future. Based on HubSpot’s survey, almost half of the respondents felt that their jobs were at risk of being replaced by AI. But at the same time, the respondents also believed that all jobs were at risk.
| Outlook from Marketers on Job Security with AI | |
| Concerned that AI will replace their jobs | 48% |
| Concerned that AI will replace all jobs | 46% |
Data from HubSpot
As a result, 57% of marketers felt pressured to learn how to use AI tools, or risk becoming irrelevant at their jobs. The ones who have resorted to this have learned that the existing AI tools will not necessarily replace them, but serve as a tool for them. Through these tools, they can automate routine tasks and free up their workload.
Does Google Penalise Websites Publishing AI Content?
As of this writing, Google supports using AI-generated content. However, these articles need to be original and provide value to readers. This means that even if AI created the content, it should still offer relevant information, and unique insights, and be genuinely helpful to the reader.
Google also hates low-quality content, despite being written by a human. To comply with Google’s standards, you can combine the use of high-quality AI writing tools and fact-check with your human eye. You can also do further refining and enhancing the AI-generated content to ensure that it meets Google’s quality benchmarks.
Improve Your SEO & SEM Strategy With These AI Tools
As AI tools continue to change the processes involved in digital marketing, the best way for marketers to keep up is to adapt to the processes. Still, it is important to balance the use of AI tools with manually performing tasks to ensure authenticity and get past ethical concerns.
But one thing we can be sure of is that these AI tools for SEO & SEM strategies are not taking over our jobs anytime soon. Call us today to talk to seasoned SEO and SEM experts so we can bring your ideas to life.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we use AI content for SEO?
AI-generated content can boost SEO by rapidly producing keyword-rich, targeted articles. However, it’s essential to ensure the content is original, high-quality, and engaging to prevent search engine penalties for low-quality or duplicated material. Combining AI tools with human oversight typically yields the most effective results.
Can AI take over SEO?
AI can significantly enhance and automate many aspects of SEO, such as keyword research, content optimization, and data analysis. However, it cannot fully replace the need for human expertise, creativity, and strategic decision-making. AI is a powerful tool, but successful SEO still requires a balance of technology and human input.
How to use ChatGPT for SEO?
ChatGPT can assist with SEO by helping with keyword research, generating relevant content, optimizing meta descriptions, and brainstorming topic ideas. It’s a valuable tool for creating engaging, keyword-rich content tailored to your target audience.
Is AI good or bad for SEO?
AI is generally good for SEO as it enhances efficiency, provides valuable insights, and helps with content optimization. However, it should be used alongside human expertise to ensure quality and avoid potential issues like duplicate content or over-reliance on automation.
