Do you have a robot butler yet?
No?
Give it a few years. We’ll see how it goes.
Because the fact of the matter is, nobody predicted we’d be this far advanced in the realm of AI even a few years ago.
AI tools, including generative AI, have all but completely changed the landscape of business operations. Obviously, it impacts some areas more than others, but in the realm of digital marketing, AI is especially prominent.
AI in digital marketing has become so prominent, in fact, that we have a new buzzworthy term to explore: AI Optimization (AIO).
But what exactly is AIO?
And how can you use it to get more visibility and attention on your brand?
How can you leverage AIO when performing prompt engineering in AI software development?
AI Optimization (AIO): Broad and Narrow Views
First, it’s important to recognize that AIO is a somewhat new term, and it’s still being used in different contexts with different intentions. As is typically the case for these novel concepts, it takes some time to truly solidify.
Still, as of now, we can think of AI in both broad and narrow contexts.
Broadly speaking, AI optimization is about using AI to optimize something specific. For example, you may use AI to optimize a landing page for conversions, or in an application more relevant to SEO, you can use AI to power your content creation and keyword analysis strategies.
In the narrower sense, AI optimization is all about optimizing how you use AI. For example, you might cycle in or out different AI tools and change how you issue queries to AI to see better results.
Ideally, you’ll use a combination of both in your digital marketing strategies. If you want to remain competitive in the AI era, it’s important to integrate AI into your search engine optimization and general marketing optimization approaches.
And of course, it’s also important to be mindful and deliberate about how you use AI. This isn’t a blunt, crude tool you can whip around like a club; it’s more like a pen, which must be used with skill and dexterity if it’s going to be useful.
We’ll be considering both broad and narrow definitions of AI optimization as we explore this new digital marketing paradigm.
AIO and Process Improvement
One of the most impressive applications of AI optimization in digital marketing is process improvement. In other words, using AI to make your existing processes better.
“Better” could mean more efficient, more powerful, more accurate, or otherwise more valuable for your business. These are just some of the examples of how AI can do it.
- Automation of repetitive tasks. If you’ve ever used a modern AI tool, you likely understand the sheer potential of automating repetitive tasks. If a task is somewhat predictable and routine, you can use an AI engine to take care of it on your behalf. Depending on the task in question and the power of the AI tool you’re using, this could save you hours of time every week (or potentially every day).
- Improve analytic capacity. Human beings are emotional. We take shortcuts in our thinking. And we’re not really built to process large volumes of data. But AI engines don’t have this problem; when it comes to data analytics, they’re thousands of times better than human beings. When utilized correctly, they can completely revolutionize your approach to gathering and analyzing data.
- Minimize human error. Without listing even more human flaws, we need to acknowledge that human error plays a role in disrupting or compromising countless digital marketing strategies. AI isn’t perfect either, but it can greatly reduce the frequency and severity of human error with systematic reviews and checks and balances.
- Reduce or eliminate risk. Similarly, AI is powerful for analyzing, reducing, and sometimes eliminating risks. This can save you a lot of money and headaches in the long run.
The AI Shift in SEO
One of the most prominent applications of AI optimization in digital marketing is in the realm of search engine optimization, specifically. You can probably imagine why; SEO is a field that demands the completion of many repetitive tasks, in pursuit of gaming somewhat predictable algorithms.
However, AI can’t do everything.
These are some of the best applications for AI in SEO today:
- Content relevance. With the help of generative AI engines, you can make your content much more relevant. This demands a combination of better understanding your audience, better understanding your competitors, and choosing more appropriate topics for development. With better, more appropriate topics, more organic traffic is practically guaranteed.
- Content optimization. Experienced, savvy SEO experts can tune a piece of content to perfection – or nearly so. But this is tedious, somewhat repetitive work that pulls you away from other, more important tasks. Thanks to AI, it’s easier than ever to streamline ground-level content optimization.
- Tailored user experience. You can also use AI to provide more personalized user experiences. Today’s users demand more customization and personalization, but your organization obviously doesn’t have the time or manpower to treat every customer individually, with human hands. AI can help you close that gap.
- Streamlined, comprehensive marketing. Are you confident that you’re presenting your brand cohesively across all channels? Are your digital marketing strategies unified, despite sometimes targeting different segments of your audience on different platforms? AI can help you develop and execute a streamlined, truly comprehensive marketing campaign.
- Data analytics and new insights. And of course, AI optimization is vital for processing data and giving you new insights. The better you understand your unique SEO landscape, and the more objective data you have, the more likely you’ll be to hit your goals.
AIO and Data Analytics
Let’s take a closer look at how AIO can help you in the realm of data analytics, with specific relevance to SEO.
- Trending topics. Do you know exactly what types of topics your audience wants to see? Can you predict what types of topics are going to become popular in the next few weeks? If you’re being honest with yourself, you’re operating in the dark. AI can’t predict the future with perfect accuracy, but it can process large volumes of data millions of times faster than humans can – so you should consider leveraging it for generating new content ideas.
- Brand-consumer relationships and interactions. AIO is also useful for promoting better brand-consumer relationships and interactions. By processing data relevant to your brand, including everything from industry statistics to survey results, you can get inside the mind of your consumers and make changes to better appeal to them.
- Fertile competitive ground. You can also use AIO to process data related to your competition. You can discover who your top competitors are as well as how they’re promoting themselves, so you can discover new fertile, competitive ground to cover in your own strategies.
- General research. And of course, AI can help you with almost any research task. You can discover new strategies, new tools, new angles of approach, or just learn about specific topics so you can present them to your audience better. Optimizing your research with AI means covering more ground and covering it faster than previously thought possible.
While AI isn’t perfect when it comes to data analytics, it gets remarkably close. This is one of the greatest strengths of modern AI, so there aren’t many weaknesses or limitations to discuss.
AIO and Content Creation
Content is still the king in SEO, offering opportunities for keyword optimization, authority building, and more. Developing perfect pieces of content is often challenging, but with the help of AIO, it’s much easier – with some important limitations to acknowledge.
AI can help you with many aspects of the content creation process, including:
- Idea generation. Are you stuck on what types of topics to write about? You’re not alone. With the help of a sufficiently powerful generative AI engine, you can provide minimal direction and get massive lists of new topics to write about.
- Outlining and drafting. AIO is also useful for streamlining the initial phases of content development. Most content generation engines can help you with outlining and drafting, churning out structures in just a few minutes.
- SEO optimization. Are you sure your piece of content is properly optimized to achieve your SEO goals? AIO can help you systematically review your content and update it with richer keyword optimization, more natural language, and proper structuring for search engine crawlers.
- Natural language processing (NLP). Advanced natural language processing (NLP) allows AI to produce content according to specific parameters, even capturing proper tone and stylistic elements. AI still isn’t as good as our best human writers, but it can help you capture the look and feel of the content you want.
- Editing and proofreading. Finally, AIO is highly useful for editing and proofreading. It’s not going to catch every conceivable mistake, but it’s a second set of eyes that can give your content a final review in just a few seconds.
However, it’s also important to acknowledge some of the weaknesses and limitations here:
- Factual accuracy. AI hallucinations are a thing. The current state of AI means most AI engines are capable of providing factually incorrect information. For this reason, content should always go through a human for final review, at the very least.
- Lack of nuance. AI content generation doesn’t typically offer much nuance. For big, complicated, controversial topics, you’ll probably only get bland, straightforward, high-level analysis. In most cases, your readers want to see something more detailed and more human, so keep that in mind.
- Lack of personality/authenticity. Similarly, most people can detect content that’s been written by AI, even if they haven’t been specifically trained to detect it. That’s largely because AI content generation doesn’t have any personality or authenticity. The sentences are, understandably, formulaic and robotic, turning many people off.
- Biases and influences. It’s important to remember that generative AI is created by humans, and humans have biases and agendas. It’s imperative for humans to filter these out, especially if they clash with your SEO or digital marketing goals.
- Content homogenization. With AI, all your content starts to look the same. In some contexts, this isn’t a huge deal; for example, if you need to write up 300 different location pages, it’s not that big of a deal if many of them share similarities. But in other contexts, it’s important for each of your content pieces to have an identity of its own.
- Potential penalties. Google doesn’t explicitly condemn AI-generated content. Instead, it warns digital marketers to ensure that any content, AI or human generated, is high quality. That said, it’s not inconceivable that Google could reverse course in the future and start penalizing overly AI-reliant content.
- Ethics and transparency. AI introduces some ethical issues. Do you proactively disclose that AI was used to generate this content? What happens if you transmit false information because of your over reliance on AI? Until we figure out answers to the complicated ethical issues associated with AI, the best course of action is to use AI only with human supervision and control, and to proactively disclose your use.
AIO and Personalization
AIO in digital marketing also applies to personalization and customer service. One of the best applications here is through chatbots; using advanced chatbots, you can gather far more information on your individual customers and provide them with customized solutions and recommendations. In this era of increasing demands for personalization, it’s an automated, relatively low-cost way to give all your customers the experience they want.
Real-Time Insights and the New Era of Adaptive Search Optimization
AIO also affords us newfound abilities to process data and form real-time insights. Instead of just waiting for your marketing campaign to end, or waiting for your data analysts to crunch all the numbers manually, you can track, observe, and contemplate your performance as your campaigns are still rolling.
This sets the stage for a much more adaptive age of SEO. Instead of waiting months to see how your content piece is performed, you can accurately predict how they’re going to perform. Instead of spending weeks issuing and gathering surveys, you can gather insights on customer sentiments immediately and apply them in relatively short order.
Human Optimization and AIO: The Perfect Search Combination
As we’ve seen, there’s tremendous potential for AIO and digital marketing, but there are also some weaknesses and drawbacks to consider.
For now, the best approach is to use a combination of human optimization and AIO, especially for SEO.
Here are some tips that can help you do it effectively:
- Understand the strengths and limitations of AI. It’s tempting to think of AI as a miraculous, unimpeachable tool that can do just about anything. But the more you understand AI, the more you learn to recognize its limitations. Make sure you understand both the strengths and limitations of AI before you incorporate it into your work.
- Gather as much data as you can. From better understanding your audience to writing perfect meta descriptions, more data can help you do just about everything in your SEO campaign better. Accordingly, you should work to gather as much data as you can from as many sources as you can.
- Choose the right tools. Just because a tool uses AI doesn’t mean it’s on par with the best AI tools available. It’s important to do your due diligence when searching for new AI tools to add to your digital marketing repertoire – and only integrate tools you’re confident will give you a positive return.
- Focus on actionable insights and takeaways. AI isn’t going to optimize your marketing strategy for you. Instead, it’s only going to respond to the instructions you give it. If you lose focus, you may end up marveling at novelties and generating insignificant works. Instead, focus on actionable insights and takeaways – and work that can measurably benefit your business in some way.
- Use human creativity with AI efficiency. AI is incredibly fast, but it’s not especially creative or personable. Human beings are creative and personable, but they tend to be sluggish (and they complain a lot). The best partnership is combining human creativity with AI efficiency, capitalizing on the best of both worlds.
- Remain adaptable. AIO and digital marketing are both undergoing constant and rapid evolution. If you want to continue taking advantage of the best strategies currently available, it’s vital that you remain adaptable.
Competitive Pressure in AIO and Software Development
AI is still novel, and not every business is using it. But soon, AI is going to become indispensable. As your competitors start using AI more aggressively and optimizing their campaigns more perfectly, the chances of your brand being left in the dust increase. For that reason, incorporating AIO into your SEO and digital marketing strategies is a defensive – and arguably necessary – move.
With or without advanced AI tools at your disposal, you’ll need a competent, thoughtful strategy if you want to succeed in the SEO world.
SEARCH.co is our human/AI-powered approach – is here to help you.
In the future, AI prompt engineering will be a must for anyone looking to influence how artificial intelligence is able to reach your ideal customer.
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