The world of digital marketing is constantly changing, and one element making significant strides in the industry is artificial intelligence (AI). We’ve already begun seeing the effects of AI and its role in the digital advertising world, and we’re expecting to see this only increase moving forward.
To stay competitive, marketers must be open to adapting their SEO and digital advertising strategies to grow with the advancements in AI technology. But before you go all in and fully embrace AI-generated content, there are some risks and best practices to keep in mind.
Here’s how we see AI being used in digital marketing and SEO and things to remember to ensure you are leveraging it effectively.
The Role of AI in Digital Marketing
One of the main benefits of AI is that it helps automate the processes involved in digital advertising, like site audits, link building, and keyword research. AI tools are also great for analyzing large amounts of data, auditing your content, and providing insights and suggestions on where you should focus to improve your SEO efforts and ranking.
By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, marketers can work more efficiently. This saves businesses time and resources without affecting the quality of their marketing efforts.
Digital Advertising
Targeting
AI helps you accurately identify the most relevant audiences for your ads. It can also predict the future behaviours of users and target those who are most likely to convert. Targeting so precisely ensures your ad budget is spent effectively, reaching the right people at the right time.
You can leverage AI to create personalized ad experiences by getting to know your audience. Ad content, product recommendations, and messaging can all be tailored based on the knowledge of your audience’s preferences, history, and purchase behaviour. This personal touch often increases engagement, conversions, and customer loyalty.
Real-Time Data
When you have access to data in real-time, you can make instant adjustments to your campaigns, which has many advantages. AI transforms raw data into actionable insights in real-time, constantly monitoring ad performance, website interactions, and market trends.
Digital Analytics
Automation
AI can process vast amounts of data in milliseconds. With the ability to process data so quickly, businesses can make data-driven decisions quickly to stay ahead of the competition.
Predict User Preferences
Advanced algorithms and machine learning allow AI to predict user preferences and future actions based on historical data. Businesses can use these insights to tailor their marketing strategies through personalized content to achieve maximum conversions.
Data History
Recalling vast amounts of historical data has perks when analyzing trends and patterns over time. Thanks to AI’s infinite memory, businesses can access valuable historical context. This helps analysts make informed decisions and ensure campaigns are optimized.
Event Tracking
Analytics is all about gathering the right data to make smart decisions, like understanding how users interact with your website. Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a tool that helps us collect this data. While it’s super useful for marketers, it sometimes required a developer to write specific codes (JavaScript snippets) to capture detailed information, such as tracking the ‘nearest location’ selected from the dropdown when a user fills out a contact form.
In the past, if your marketing team didn’t have a developer on hand for a quick code, certain data might have been hard to get. But now, tools like ChatGPT make this process easier. You can simply explain what data you’re trying to capture, ask ChatGPT for a custom JavaScript variable, and it provides one for you. If it doesn’t work on the first try, you can describe the issue to ChatGPT, and it can assist you in troubleshooting. So, capturing and understanding your website data has become a smoother process, even without a developer!
SEO
A New Kind of Search Engine
Many SEOs believe AI is reshaping search engines and user search habits. Google and Bing are exploring AI-driven search tools, Bard and New Bing, altering how we navigate online searches. Instead of users manually scanning through the traditional ‘Ten Blue Links’ on the first search page, AI swiftly identifies answers, tailoring them to user-specific needs. Consequently, the future of SEO for businesses may hinge on maintaining a positive standing with these AI search engines. So, when potential customers search phrases like ‘best digital marketing agency for AI strategies’, your business appears on that list.
Keywords
AI programs can determine what keywords your top competitors are ranking for and suggest you use those keywords in your content.
As Google continues to enhance its ability to understand user intent behind search queries, search results will probably become more relevant and personalized. This will require businesses to produce higher-quality content that addresses users’ questions and pain points. Keywords must be used intentionally, and keyword stuffing won’t be effective.
Website Content Creation
Users and search engines alike appreciate when websites have fresh, valuable content. AI can be a useful tool for creating descriptions, blogs, and articles on any subject that read like a human wrote them. But there’s a catch! If everyone uses AI for content, we risk creating a ‘content echo chamber,’ diminishing our unique edge. The power of AI for content creation lies in the prompts: ensure you are giving detailed prompts around your topic, tone, keywords to use etc. Then, make sure you are closely proofreading any content and ensuring all points are factual.
On top of keyword suggestions, topic suggestions are advantages that AI can provide to help businesses create relevant content. This is another way to help you better understand your target audience’s questions and pain points.
Voice Search
As people continue to use their mobile phones to perform search queries, businesses must ensure their website is mobile-friendly and include long-tail keywords based on questions people use when performing voice searches.
AI tools can show you what questions people are speaking, so you can use those phrases as long-tail keywords in your content. People enter search queries differently when speaking versus typing. Voice search queries are longer, more conversational, and formatted as a question.
Social Media
Scheduling
AI analyzes your audience’s online behaviour and can help you determine the best times to post on social media for maximum engagement. The ultimate goal is that your posts reach the right people at the right moment, and AI provides this insight to help increase your social media presence.
Social Media Content Creation
We already mentioned how AI can help with SEO content creation, but it also has some useful benefits in the social media industry. Not only can AI write unique captions, it can also suggest trending hashtags and generate visual assets to enhance your posts.
Sentiment Analysis
A challenge businesses face on social media is difficulty understanding the emotions behind interactions. AI can help analyze comments, messages, and mentions to gauge sentiment, whether positive, negative, or neutral. This insight can guide your responses and identify potential issues to achieve a positive online reputation.
Risks of Using AI
AI tools provide valuable opportunities for digital advertisers, but their role should be seen as supportive rather than a replacement for human expertise.
AI is great at handling repetitive tasks, processing vast amounts of data, and providing insight to help optimize campaigns. However, human marketers bring creativity and strategic thinking that AI needs to improve.
Our advice: take a collaborative approach, using AI to complement your team’s expertise to create the most impactful digital marketing campaigns!
Privacy
- Because AI systems can collect and analyze such vast amounts of personal data, there are concerns about user security and data privacy.
- It’s crucial to comply with data protection regulations and be cautious when sharing your private user data.
Content Authenticity
- Keep in mind that AI technology may only sometimes give us accurate information. Always fact-check the content it produces to ensure you feel confident it is correct.
- While it may seem like AI has access to infinite knowledge, it is possible for the content to get tired and repetitive. If everyone in your industry repeats the same prompts, the result will be the same content reiterated similarly. This poses a considerable risk in a world where you want your business to stand out, as it could devalue your brand and what makes it unique.
- AI can be used to create fake content, like articles, images, and videos. Because of their convincing nature, this poses a threat to the credibility and trustworthiness of digital content.
Bias
- Biases can inadvertently present themselves in AI, leading to discriminatory outcomes.
- This can present itself in targeting, ad content, and recommendations. Data must be vigilantly monitored to mitigate bias to achieve fair and inclusive outcomes.
To sum it all up, AI requires human oversight. It’s a great way to experiment and see how your content can be enhanced, but it’s important for your expert team of humans to review the context and quality to ensure you can confidently stand behind the work you are putting out there.
How Bluetrain Can Help With SEO
There is a lot to know regarding search engine optimization, and there will be lots to keep up with as the SEO world continues to change and AI plays a more significant and prominent role. Bluetrain is here to help. We have years of experience assisting businesses to improve their rankings in search engine results pages and increase their brand’s visibility online.
Our SEO services include an audit of your website, keyword research, customized SEO strategies, content creation and optimization, ongoing management, monthly reporting, and more. View our SEO Services page or contact us to learn more about what we offer.