SEO in the Age of AI, How to Make Your Company Thrive in a Changing Industry
AI is on the prowl, fighting its way through every industry to conquer all it can. Its next battle is with SEO. Let’s look at how this will shape the industry, and how you can thrive on it.
For years, SEO has been a foundational aspect of the Digital Marketing industry. However, AI is quickly changing how people go about finding information across the web. This change has people concerned, and it raises the question of how companies are going to keep up with this change.
The answer is simple, learn and adapt.
From Keywords to Conversations
I want you to think back to 10 years ago, how much shorter were your Google search phrases? A fair bit, correct? A recent paper states that AI search engines are “fundamentally shaping information retrieval” online. People are changing how they ask for information.
Typical searches are now turning into conversations.
Ones in which you, the asker, now desire a direct answer.
SEO has always required digital marketers to research effective key words and optimise their websites to help grow visibility within search engines. It requires close analysis, careful consideration, and a thorough understanding of the industry. AI doesn’t care about this, if it finds your information not valuable and hard to read, you’re pushed down the search ranks and forgotten about. This is where you must understand how to appeal to AI.
So, What Does That Understanding Look Like?
It looks like adapting your mindset to have greater focus on optimising for citation-based responses, and writing information that can be easily synthesised by AI. Also, you need to build your website to have a high level of machine readability. This can be done with schema markup – a type of code AI relies on to understand your information.
I would like to add, you must not negate the value of traditional SEO and its practices. Your website must still be genuinely useful and easy to understand. To have successful SEO going into the future, you must already have a strong foundation to build from. Now, combine that with an understanding of how AI is gathering information, and you will have what it takes to adapt your SEO for the future.
So, I want you to begin by writing schema markup for your most valuable page - AI readability is the key that unlocks your companies online potential. Get your adaptation started now before you fall behind.
Let me know, what do you believe are some crucial steps in setting up your company to be successful in a world of AI search engines?
Student ID - 10545978
(Disclaimer: This content is for the sole purpose of teaching and learning at Edith Cowan University).
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