How SEOs Use AI: Boosting Efficiency and Productivity in 2024

McKinsey estimates that AI could boost marketing productivity by up to 15%, resulting in significant cost savings — about $463 billion annually.

According to seoClarity, the majority of SEOs (86%) are already embracing AI in their strategies, and 82% of enterprise SEOs plan to invest more in AI.

But how, exactly, are SEOs using AI technologies today? In this article, I’ll give a broad overview of how the SEO sector is using AI in its day-to-day work and tips on how you can integrate it effectively.

In this article:

• Common Use Cases for AI in SEO
• How AI is Changing SEO Roles
• Adopting AI in SEO: Best Practices
1. Identify Key Areas for AI
2. Integrate Slowly and Intentionally
3. Balance AI with Human Oversight
• Assessing AI Tools for SEO
• Functionality
• User Experience
• Accuracy and Reliability
• Scalability
• Cost-Effectiveness
• Evaluation Process
• PreWriter: Bruce Clay’s AI-Powered Writing Assistant
• FAQ: How can I integrate AI into my SEO strategy to boost efficiency and productivity?

Common Use Cases for AI in SEO

SEOs are using AI for efficiencies and insights in various day-to-day activities.

An seoClarity study found that about 67% of SEOs believe that generative AI’s greatest benefit lies in automating repetitive SEO tasks.

According to the research, the top use cases for generative AI today include content optimization, keyword research and content generation.

Let’s take a closer look at how AI-powered tools assist in SEO activities.

Keyword research: AI tools in this area can automate finding, analyzing and implementing keywords, helping SEOs identify relevant search terms. They can also analyze search trends and user behavior to provide insights into high-potential keywords.

Content optimization: AI technology can offer real-time recommendations to enhance content quality, ensuring it meets SEO standards to improve search performance.

Backlink analysis: AI can evaluate backlink profiles, identify new high-quality sources for links and maintain an updated backlink strategy, saving time and enhancing link-earning efforts.

Schema markup creation: AI generates code for structured data, helping search engines display rich results, which can attract more readers. There’s no need for coding skills.

Automation: AI automates repetitive SEO tasks, freeing up time for strategic and creative work. It also quickly provides data-driven SEO insights and recommendations.

Keyword research: AI helps identify emerging topics, uncover market gaps and automate keyword analysis, allowing for more targeted content creation.

Topic analysis: AI clusters keywords and identifies nuances, helping to create content that engages the target audience effectively.

Content refreshing: AI assists in updating content, optimizing titles and descriptions to align with current search behaviors.

Content optimization: AI suggests improvements for existing content, ensuring it aligns with SEO best practices and enhances user engagement.

Backlink analysis: AI evaluates backlink profiles, identifying opportunities for acquiring high-quality backlinks and improving link-building strategies.

Technical SEO: AI automates audits for site speed, mobile optimization and structured data, making technical SEO tasks more efficient.

User experience enhancement: AI personalizes user experiences by analyzing behavior and preferences, improving site navigation and engagement.

How AI Is Changing SEO Roles

McKinsey research suggests that AI adoption is expected to lead to significant reskilling over the next three years, with a smaller percentage of workforce reductions.

Service operations may see the biggest workforce decrease, however — and marketing is also on the list.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that AI will mean automating entire roles — McKinsey was sure to point that out. High-performing organizations are expected to conduct more extensive reskilling efforts.

When seoClarity asked whether enterprise SEOs believe that generative AI will take over SEO jobs in the future, 85.56% of respondents believed it is moderately to highly likely (five out of 10 or above).

However, the most common way AI is impacting the size and structure of enterprise SEO teams is a restructuring of roles and responsibilities (30.49%), which aligns with McKinsey’s data.

In reality, SEO managers now have streamlined processes, allowing more focus on data analysis and strategy. This shift lets SEOs provide insights that enhance — not take away — from their contributions.

Of course, one of the hotter topics in SEO is how AI is impacting content creation roles.

When it comes to content producers in SEO, generative AI can empower them by doing some of the heavy lifting in content creation, such as the prework of ideation, content outlines, initial research, link opportunities and more.

Adopting AI in SEO: Best Practices

Are you curious about adopting AI in your SEO program but don’t know where to start? Here are three practical steps to get the ball rolling:

1. Identify Key Areas for AI

• Pinpoint bottlenecks. Identify tasks that slow down your team, such as keyword research, content optimization or internal linking.

2. Integrate Slowly and Intentionally

• Explore AI tools. Choose tools where AI excels, like data analysis, pattern recognition and automation.
• Start small and test. Begin with specific tasks and experiment with different AI tools.
• Monitor and adjust. Regularly review AI-generated content to ensure accuracy, relevance and adherence to brand standards.

3. Balance AI with Human Oversight

• Maintain human involvement. Reskilling is part of AI integration, but you rarely eliminate entire roles. Make sure there is human oversight for tasks like content creation, strategic decision-making, and quality assurance.

Assessing AI Tools for SEO

There are some things to consider when deciding on AI tools.

The seoClarity study found that SEOs prioritize the accuracy and reliability of insights (64.48%) over all other features of an AI tool.

More data suggests the biggest concerns and challenges SEOs have about using generative AI are content quality and authenticity (65.14%) and data security and privacy (58.64%).

Here are some tips on assessing AI tools:

Functionality

• Capabilities: Evaluate the specific SEO tasks the tool can handle. One tool may handle several SEO tasks, while others specialize in one.
• Integration: Check how well the tool integrates with your existing systems and workflows.

User Experience

• Ease of use: Assess the tool’s user interface and ease of navigation. Remember, the tool is meant to save time, not add time.
• Support and training: Look for available training resources and customer support options. Getting up and running with AI can feel foreign enough without the right support.

Accuracy and Reliability

• Data quality: This is a biggie — make sure you verify the accuracy of data provided by the tool.
• Consistency: Ensure the tool consistently delivers reliable results — not just sometimes. It can be frustrating to rely on an AI tool only to find that, when making updates, for example, the quality of the output fluctuates.

Scalability

• Adaptability: Determine if the tool can scale with your business needs.
• Future updates: How often does the software provider make updates and improvements?

Cost-Effectiveness

• Pricing: Compare the tool’s cost with its features and benefits.
• ROI: Evaluate the potential return on investment by considering how the tool improves efficiency and outcomes.

Evaluation Process

• Trial periods: Use free trials or demos to test the tool in real-world scenarios.
• Reviews and case studies: Read user reviews and case studies to learn how the tool performs in similar businesses.
• Vendor reputation: Consider the reputation and reliability of the tool’s provider.

PreWriter: Bruce Clay’s AI-Powered Writing Assistant

Content creation can be a significant bottleneck and time-suck. That’s why most SEOs are looking to AI to help with content.

Of course, quality content takes time. And it takes the skill of a professional writer.

But certain writing tasks are more administrative or strategic in nature, and tend to take up a significant amount of time.

Those tasks fall into the “prework” writing phase, including initial content strategy, topic ideation, outlines, initial research, tracking down sources and more.

Our AI-powered writing assistant, PreWriter.ai, takes on the heavy lifting of this prework phase. With a touch of a button, PreWriter generates strategic ideas and information in minutes, not hours.

This leaves writers free to focus on what they do best: Content creation.

And for those who are not professional writers but team strategists, PreWriter is your go-to assistant for creating content strategies for your clients or employer.

There is a right and wrong way to use AI for content, however, and we have a tool that helps SEOs and marketers do it the right way (i.e., not automating the entire process).

Visit PreWriter.ai today to pre-register and get on the list to be notified when PreWriter launches.

And when you’re ready to adopt it, learn more about integrating it into your SEO or marketing workflow so that you don’t violate Google spam policies. See my article on Search Engine Land: How to survive the search results when using AI tools for content.

Looking for professional assistance with integrating AI into your SEO strategy? Find out how our SEO experts can help. 

Schedule a free SEO consultation

FAQ: How can I integrate AI into my SEO strategy to boost efficiency and productivity?

In today’s business market, supplementing your SEO efforts with AI isn’t negotiable – it’s essential. That is, if you want to transform your digital marketing strategy in substantial ways. And the first step to doing so is gaining a good understanding of how AI fits into SEO. We’ll address that here.

When it comes to SEO, AI’s main boon lies in data analysis and automation. This technology can be used to automate two critical SEO processes – data interpretation and data collection – and save humans untold time.

It can take days or weeks for someone to compile, analyze and identify trends in SEO data. AI can do it in a fraction of that time. And the time savings isn’t the only good thing we’d like to highlight here – when analyses are fast, you get to leverage and act on the most recent, relevant data.

Keyword research is a vital part of SEO, and AI makes this function easier and more effective. Manual keyword sourcing without AI equates to long, drawn-out guesswork. But when you bring artificial intelligence into the equation, suddenly you can analyze huge datasets to predict the intent behind the keywords (also called user intent).

The result is discovering better keywords that are poised to perform well in search engines, bringing you higher site traffic and more conversions.

On top of that, augmenting search engine optimization with AI upgrades your content creation and optimization abilities. Upon crawling your site, this technology can help identify broken links, tip you off to slow-loading pages, generate a list of suggested improvements and more. Better still, through continuous monitoring and automated reporting, you can fine-tune your content strategy to ensure your content is engaging and poised to rank.

AI also pays dividends in the area of on-page SEO. The right AI tools are built to evaluate web page elements that affect SEO-friendliness. Some of these elements include headers, images and headers. And they don’t just review your pages – they point out ways to fix issues like duplicate content or missing alt texts. Provided you make these changes, this information puts your site in a better SEO position.

Technical SEO, a routinely ignored part of search engine optimization, is among the most important facets of the practice. Areas of technical SEO, like page speed issues and linking problems, can be easily identified and remedied with AI.

Few things are as vital to SEO as your website’s personalization and user experience. Through artificial intelligence, you can tailor and repackage your content to better align with your visitors’ and customers’ habits and tastes. This helps to increase user engagement and dwell time, both of which are great for your search engine rankings.

Staying ahead of the competition is an ongoing challenge, but competitive analysis can help tremendously. Certain AI technologies comb through your competitors’ online strategies – backlink profiles, traffic sources and keyword targets – to yield information that could advance your position.

Then, there’s local SEO, another area you can use AI to optimize. AI models can optimize your content for voice searches, help with online review management and survey local search trends. With AI in the mix, your business can rank higher on search engines for local searches.

AI enables quicker, easier access to data and insights to power marketing strategies. SEO professionals can then turn their attention to strategic decision-making for max efficiency and productivity.

Step-By-Step Procedure

1. Set clear goals as a starting point: Take the time to come up with some clear SEO objectives. These goals should focus on areas that lend themselves well to AI.
2. Choose the right AI resources for your purposes: Not every AI tool is going to advance your  unique AI objectives. Common AI-related needs include content optimization, keyword research and technical SEO.
3. Compile your website’s data: Get your hands on data related to your website’s performance. Your AI tools will analyze this data.
4. Automate keyword research: Google RankBrain and Clearscope are great resources. They can help you find and organize high-value keywords based on priority.
5. Plan out your content: Use your chosen AI tools to generate ideas for your content. These content ideas should align with your user’s search intent and topics trending in your niche.
6. Optimize the content on your site: Start optimizing content you’ve already published according to proven SEO techniques. Look to AI for suggestions.
7. Look at on page elements and tweak as needed: With the help of AI, you can fine-tune your title tags, headers, meta descriptions and alt texts.
8. Get a technical site audit: Fix technical problems on your site, like invalid links, mobile-friendliness issues and pages that load slowly.
9. Monitor competing businesses: Employ AI resources to keep tabs on your competitors’ capabilities and shortcomings. Upon analyzing this information, you could uncover strategic gaps you can take advantage of.
10. Consider your site’s user experience: Strengthen engagement by adapting your content and product recommendations to your users preferences.
11. Manage your local search presence: Use AI to evaluate customer reviews and local trends to improve your content for local search visibility.
12. Optimize for voice search: AI can help you tailor your content to voice search through digital assistants like Siri. You’ll focus primarily on long-tail keywords and natural language.
13. Analyze your backlinks: Backlinking analysis and AI go hand in hand. The latter can be instrumental in helping you get more and better backlinks from authorities in your industry.
14. Track your performance over time: AI analytics can be used to track your performance in search engines and provide data to help you pivot.
15. Identify content gaps: You can find content gaps with AI and then use the technology to create content to fill those gaps.
16. Gather insights into user behavior: Look at user behavior data to improve your user experience and site navigation.
17. Get feedback and put it to use: Develop a feedback mechanism where you collect feedback and insights from AI and use them to inform strategic adjustments.
18. Watch for algorithm updates: Tap into AI for real-time updates on algorithmic changes.
19. Plan for different scenarios: Predictive AI analyses can be used to model potential SEO outcomes and scenarios.
20. Leverage machine learning: Add machine learning to your SEO strategy to gain a better understanding of your users’ behaviors.
21. Learn continuously: Always be on the lookout for new AI developments and features.
22. Assess and make updates: Keep an eye on any revelations from your AI tools and make necessary changes to maintain or improve your SEO standing.

The act of incorporating AI into SEO requires a persistent effort and a proactive strategy. Still, taking this road brings you many benefits, including enhanced productivity and efficiency and the ability to stay ahead of your industry competitors. Adopting a hybrid approach with AI and SEO could very well be a game changer for you.