How AI will KILL SEO (and what you should do instead)
it's already started the biggest media brands that dominate Google have adopted AI for Content generation and just check out this YouTube Community poll where I ask you folks if you're currently using AI in your websites 68 said yes they're already doing it 19 said they will be soon and only 13 said no it's not for me 13 and you already know what category I fall in just check out the traffic boner that sprouted for my AI case study project sooner or later everyone and their mom is going to be leveraging AI for SEO but what will that mean for SEO professionals if SEO turns into spamming the AI button like a madman how about you compete in this video I'm going to take a deep dive into answering that question if you're using AI I'm going to show you how to stand out from the other AI wannabes and if you're a human content purist I'll show you to Showcase that you're the real deal now in case you're in denial and don't think that an AI content feature is ahead of us let's unpack that what are the current major complaints about AI content well the first one is that it occasionally gets facts wrong you guys chatgpt has been out since November last year gpd4 is 40 more accurate then it's also ancient predecessors gpd3 from a few months ago we're in an exponential development curve give it a minute others argue that AI is not as engaging as we humans are check this out I asked chatgpt with gpd4 mode engaged to write an engaging introduction paragraph to an article about why milk isn't the superfood we once thought it to be use psychological hooks urgency and other tools for engagement just look at this imagine the glass of cold creamy milk you've been told to gulp down since childhood touted as the ultimate superfood brimming with essential nutrients but what if everything you believed about milk is about to change in a shocking turn of events recent studies are challenging the age-old wisdom that has had us swearing by milk for decades I don't know about you but I can't do better than that okay fine but AI content isn't optimized for search engines you still need to sprinkle SEO Magic on AI content not for long Surfer is about to release Surfer AI a tool that will create ready-to-publish SEO optimized content with the Press of a button AI development is moving fast and that's because the world wants it AI is cheaper than hiring writers it doesn't come plan or get sick doesn't need time off when you desperately need to publish like crazy plus it's already being used in mass and it's only going to get better and if everyone has access to it how are you going to win that kind of environment let's dive in and make sure to stick around to the end because the last item is the most important but real quick head on over to the link in the pin comment to sign up for my free SEO training masterclass it's 45 minutes of unreleased content going over everything I do today to get sites to the top of Google in 2023.
Now back to the show if everyone is going beast mode with AI how will Google decide who wins the first very important differentiating factor will be topical Authority sure everyone can produce great SEO optimized content and on the cheat but do they know what content actually needs to be written if you start randomly writing an article or two on gardening Google would be like I don't give a [ __ ] but when you really start to cover the entire topic of gardening at a plant garden design garden tools all of it then Google will start to think your topical Authority on the subject of gardening so the name of the game will be who can figure out everything that needs to be written in a given Niche this is called creating a topical map here's how to create one using the protein powder niche as an example go to answerthepublic.com type in your topic and get a head start with a hundred or so topics type your keywords into Google itself and get tons of topics from the people also asked feature you can use a tool like SEO minion to download hundreds of them in a single shot go to the bottom of the search result and pull tons more topics by clicking around and exploring the related searches and leverages of Google search Bar's autocomplete function to get even more topics here's where the gold is look at your competitors to see what kind of topical coverage got them to the top of Google I said this a million times before the answer to SEO is always written on page one how do you do that you dig through their site map and do a search for your keyword other golden sources include ahrefs questions report as well as Google's NLP API then when you're done remove duplicates and put your long list of results through a keyword clustering tool like keyword Cupid which is going to organize what topics need to be written in the same articles as opposed to separate articles or if you want me to create a topical map for you I'm relaunching my topical map service soon so join the waitlist to be kept in the loop next up in a world of AI apocalypse backlinks will be a key differentiating factor over who wins links have always been the deciding factor just think about it like this there's two grilled cheese sandwich recipe articles fighting for page one ingredients bread and cheese it's not complicated which one wins the one with more links this is the way this is the way when Google founder Larry Page baked pagerank into the Google algorithm they basically married backlinks as a ranking signal and that marriage solves all of Google's challenges including eat or as we say now e-e-a-t which stands for experience expertise Authority and trust and it's a huge Staple in Google's quality rater guidelines search liaison Gary Elias has been reported to say that eat is quote largely based on links here's a breakdown of links that I'm building in 2023.
40 of the links I'm building your guest posts and these are coming from both in-house Outreach and using vendors like Authority Builders another thirty percent of My Links will be link insertions getting links and existing articles that have links going to them and I also do that in-house or outsources authority Builders fifteen percent of the links will come from helping reporter out Haro which we build in-house 10 comes from digital PR or we're creating newsworthy stories and outreaching to journalists for this I'm using fairy and the amazing team at searchintelligence.co.uk three percent is coming from business directory citations with dial sources Authority Builders and the remaining two percent is from link exchanges just answering the Inbox and working out some exchanges with high quality websites that are already reaching out to me speaking of eeat while Google currently relies on backlinks for this I truly believe it won't be this way for long you can see their efforts with the recent addition of this about this author feature when you click on the three dots next to a result to learn more about the source in a world of AI Google is going to have to step up the game when it comes to eeat detection if they're gonna surface the best content and when that happens you need to be ready in my opinion they're going to have to look at the content itself to see signs of eeat when you read this guide on how to do a kickflip does this author John depoean actually seem like you can skateboard or if you read my article on how to learn affiliate marketing do I actually have authority in the field of affiliate marketing here's how I think they're going to solve it Google's not going to crawl all over the internet track down that I've spoken at this many conferences been on that many podcasts flipped a bunch of websites and whatever there's too much data to keep track of it's too expensive how do I know that because they'd already be doing it right now if it weren't I think Google is going to start reading into the content itself for signs of eeat in my article did I reference my experience with managing an affiliate portfolio and whatnot this is difficult to solve with AI but I will say this is something we're working on secretly at Surfer hold on to your butt because the solution is outside the box and works like gangbusters next on the list is user experience also known as ux and website design all things being equal if everyone can answer each search query due to AI which website serves up the answer the best the name of the game here is how quick and how clear you can serve up these answers Google's been popping up these surveys on mobile devices after you go to a website and hit back on your browser Google wants to know quote how easy was it to find what you wanted on the site and in this day and age easy means fast ain't no one got time for reading anymore when was the last time you read a full article from start to finish without skimming I know right people want their answers right away and if you're gonna compete with Bing or Bard's AI chat boxes you need to be just as quick this all comes down to ux I have a video coming out on this so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it the next differentiator is the most important that's adding a human touch to your content yeah I just can't do that as of now while AI can generate creative content to some extent human authors have the potential to create unique and Innovative content that showcases their individuality and Imagination the funny thing is chat GPT wrote that last line for me it knows its shortcomings let's start with entertainment which Humanity has on lockdown I'll never watch an AI do stand-up comedy no matter how funny it is the fact of the matter is that it just wouldn't be funny because I can't relate to it like I do my fellow humans over 2 200 million people watch alphago be the chess Grandmaster but how many people do you think gave a rat's ass about two AIS playing each other Scott Delong is a pretty sweet newsletter talking about SEO and AI he recommends creating a sense of belonging on your website connect humans to humans in a way that AI simply couldn't rally people together maybe that's a discussion forum like Reddit or Discord Channel now bear in mind as of now these touches of humanity don't matter at all Google loves uniformity in the search results but this will be a thing in the future which brings me to my next Point you're gonna need to continuously pivot and prepare for new shifts in the algorithm as Google reacts to AI deployment you need to stay up on things and for that I recommend subscribing for more videos just like this one
