SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a dynamic field, and SEO professionals everywhere are used to constantly changing their strategy and approach to align with Google's latest algorithm updates. These updates have continued to refine the algorithm to provide users with helpful and reliable answers to their queries. On the other end of the spectrum, SEO professionals have been continuously pushed toward creating helpful content and following the best practices laid down by Google.
This synergy is now facing disruption with the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, which can fundamentally alter the landscape of SEO and the entire search market.
Let's look at these tools, how they are being utilized, and what the future of internet search looks like.
An Overview of AI Tools
Let's get one thing out of the way: AI is not new. Chances are, many of the services you have been using for the past few years have been powered by AI in some way. For example,
So, if AI has been around for a while, what has changed now that it has become a dominant topic of conversation in the tech industry and captured the attention of the wider public as well? The answer can be found in the rise of OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Released to the general public in Nov 2022, it surpassed 100 million users in less than a week. It is essentially a chatbot powered by the GPT3.5 engine (GPT 4 was released on 14th March 2023). While it was designed to mimic human conversations, the users quickly realized its potential; it could write content like articles and blogs, code, macros, and a host of other things. The more users tested its capabilities, the more it continued to surprise.
Let's see the use cases where it can add value to your SEO process.
Use Cases of ChatGPT for SEO
AI tools, as they stand today, can help an SEO and Content professional with the following tasks:
Regex, short for regular expressions, can be a powerful tool for finding and manipulating text. ChatGPT can help you construct regex expressions by analyzing patterns in your text and suggesting appropriate regex syntax.
Automating repetitive tasks can save you time and energy, and ChatGPT can help. By analyzing your workflow and the tools you use, ChatGPT can suggest ways to automate certain tasks. For example, if you use Google Sheets to track your blog posts, ChatGPT could suggest creating a script that automatically populates certain fields based on the title and keywords.
Writing effective titles is a crucial part of content marketing, and ChatGPT can help you develop catchy and click-worthy titles. By analyzing your content and understanding the emotions and desires of your target audience, ChatGPT can suggest titles that are more likely to grab attention.
Before you start writing a blog post, it can be helpful to create an outline to organize your thoughts and structure your content. ChatGPT can help you create quick outlines by analyzing your topic and suggesting a logical structure.
Seed keywords are the foundation of any SEO strategy, and ChatGPT can help you develop relevant and effective seed keywords. By analyzing your content and understanding the search intent of your target audience, ChatGPT can suggest keywords that are more likely to drive traffic to your site.
Sometimes you need short-form content for social media, email newsletters, or other channels. ChatGPT can help you generate short-form content by analyzing your topic and understanding the tone and style you're going for. You can also generate metadata for webpages using ChatGPT.
Proofreading is important in content creation to ensure the final product is polished and error-free. ChatGPT can assist with proofreading by analyzing your content and suggesting corrections for grammar, spelling, and syntax errors.
Sometimes you may need to rephrase a sentence to make it clearer, more concise, or more engaging. ChatGPT can help you rewrite sentences by analyzing the context and suggesting alternative phrasings.
Overall, ChatGPT is proving to be a valuable tool for SEO and content writing tasks, offering insights and suggestions to help you create high-quality, engaging content that provides value to your readers and drives traffic to your site.
But, all these use cases are for SEO as it stands today. It is primarily meant to compete on the SERPs on Google. But that is about to change.
The New Bing: First Mover Advantage for Microsoft?
If you have not followed the latest features that Microsoft is incorporating into its search engine, Bing, and its services like Office and Teams, then you must check them out. It was quick to announce the integration of GPT 4 into its search engine just a couple of months after ChatGPT was released. Now, a user with any query can just go to the 'Chat' section on its Bing website and chat with Bing to get results that are curated from across the web in a manner that is concise and highly valuable. Although still in Beta, Microsoft has seen a gradual increase in the usage of its search engine, prompting Google to announce (but not release yet) similar features for its search engine and Office suite.
As this technology improves, users will move away from the traditional SERP to chatbots that crawl the internet for you. What it means for the existing business models of Google and the millions of businesses that drive traffic through it is yet to be seen. By extension, the future of SEO will be shaped by these developments.
Conclusion: What is the Future of SEO?
At this point, it isn't easy to predict. However, we are at an inflection point, and many developments are happening daily. One thing is clear, the integration and widespread usage of AI are inevitable. Therefore, industry professionals must pay close attention to the developments in search and search engine optimization to stay ahead of the curve and adapt their strategies accordingly.
