With the emergence of AI technology, some fear that the days of human SEO are completely done. Others believe we’re facing the death of SEO as we know it. After all, why would anyone use search boxes when they can just ask an AI a question directly? While both fears are completely unfounded, things have changed quite a bit.
The world of SEO optimization is rapidly expanding, and keeping up with the latest trends gets more difficult by the hour. To stay ahead, you need to understand the latest SEO trends and find a way to adjust to them. Here are some trends you need to watch out for.
AI-generated content
It is a common misconception that Google penalizes AI content. While it can recognize AI content, Google is not penalizing it for being made by AI. Instead, it penalizes it for its lack of originality and uniqueness. This is something that AI still cannot deliver.
While many content creators fear AI bots replacing them, this won’t happen anytime soon (if ever). Among those who understand this field a bit better, there’s a saying that AI tools will never replace writers, but writers who use AI tools might replace those who don’t.
AI-generated content is invaluable when it comes to research. It can save you hours of Google browsing to find what you need. This gave birth to a new fear – ChatGPT and similar platforms may somehow replace Google. This is not likely to happen.
From this, you can already recognize a trend – much fearmongering and very little substance.
These bots are also great for brainstorming, rapid draft making, and many other functions that writers cannot do without.
Automation
The algorithm is constantly changing, and to stay on top of these changes, you need to automate your SEO activity. For starters, you need to use your algorithm for tasks like keyword research and on-page optimization suggestions and even implement it in the link-building process.
All of this falls under the concept of programmatic SEO.
The reason why it’s getting more prominent than before is because the tools and technology have grown so much that you can now use machine learning for much higher pattern recognition. This increases the accuracy of your response and allows you to analyze a huge set of data in a matter of minutes.
Again, some fear that programmatic SEO will completely replace human activity in this field, but nothing could be further from the truth. It’s merely there to enhance the performance of human SEO specialists.
Voice search optimization
About 27% of people use voice search on mobile. Those that do, however, use it disproportionally frequently. It’s more convenient, and you can use it while walking without being distracted from your surroundings. It’s quicker and far more convenient when you have just one hand free.
The reason why this trend wasn’t as big before is the fact that technology just wasn’t there yet. Language tools can now pick up on your accent and understand the context of the spoken word more accurately than before. Higher accuracy leads to higher user experience, which leads to more frequent use. It’s that simple.
One of the interesting things about voice search is that it tends to be far more grammatical than its text-based counterpart. Just think about it, when typing, do you really bother to use apostrophes or even add a preposition/determiner? You know that Google can understand you, so why bother? With voice search, it takes so little time and effort to do this that you might even be more grammatical.
Mobile-friendliness
The majority of people browse the internet via their phone. While this is true, these people are on apps about 90% of the time. Still, you need a mobile-friendly site since even 10% of the time, they use a browser on their phone is a huge influx of visitors.
To be mobile-friendly, your site must load fast, look great on smaller screen sizes, and have great content for this particular device. Mobile content needs font and font size that’s easily readable, an abundance of whitespace (to break the text and give some finger space for scrolling), and fewer clickable elements.
In the past, people were fine with the idea that their mobile presence would be somewhat slower. Today, on the other hand, people expect the same loading speed. Some (roughly 12% of people) expect the site to load faster on mobile than on PC.
To make your site mobile friendlier, you should also optimize your images. Switch to a mobile-friendlier format and try to compress the image without compromising its quality. This will greatly improve the loading time and reduce your bounce rate.
First-hand topic experience
Previously, we’ve talked about how Google sanctions content that’s not authentic, unique, and innovative. After all, an AI can find anything already online and replicate it in seconds. What you, on the other hand, can provide is an authentic experience.
Giving personal examples will appear more relatable and will be much more immersive for your audience. This will make your content stand out and perform exceptionally well, even in this AI era of SEO that we’re heading towards.
People also highly value the opinions of people with professional authority. When it comes to dental health, they want to hear it from a real dentist. They want to hear it from a real mechanic when it’s a mechanical issue. A professional writer should still format the content, but they might want to cooperate rather than just replicate it.
Remember that, aside from being a mechanic or a dentist, being their client also puts you in a unique spot as long as you’re talking from a personal experience.
Also Read: Ecommerce SEO Best Practices: 7 SEO Tips to Increase Sales
Wrap up
For the last 20 years, the world of SEO has changed quite a bit. Still, it was always dependent on human labor. Human SEO specialists developed strategies, handled link building, and even created content. This still hasn’t changed and probably won’t change in the foreseeable future. All this new AI technology merely represents tools that help you do so in a simpler, quicker, and more efficient way. It’s up to you to learn how to leverage this technology to your advantage.
