By: Rajesh Rajani, Program Director

What is AI-powered SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a way to obtain high placement or ranking of your website on a search engine result page. SEO is said to be organically driven when it’s unpaid and based on search engine algorithms. There are different ways to achieve SEO organically including keywords, improving content quality, providing meta-data and structured data to web crawlers, adding backlinks from other trustworthy websites, effortless user experience, etc.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is known to simulate human intelligence by using systems and includes many technologies like natural language understanding and generation, machine learning, neural networks, and expert systems. AI can analyze hundreds of websites to provide the right insights on keywords for a given topic and can perform content analysis to provide an understanding of missed topics that may have driven more traffic to a site. All these lead to improved SEO, based on factors that are analyzed by top search engines.

Why is AI-powered SEO important?

Major search engines like Google use AI in their search algorithms to rank pages. The reason is, Al is equipped with strong data analysis tools and techniques that help in understanding the context of the search being performed. This gives an edge in terms of listing pages not only based on keywords, but also on the user context. In the sales and marketing function across the technology industry, 30% of AI adopters cited a 6-10% increase in revenue. (Source: Statista 2020). Hence, it is important to understand how AI impacts search engines, which can help in boosting SEO using AI techniques. Here are a few ways by which AI can be used to improve SEO:

1. Content optimization with AI SEO

Google uses a concept called E-A-T that stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google uses these three parameters to determine the quality of webpages, which decides where the page will be listed in the search results. Let’s get into more detail on these three parameters:

1. Expertise
   Google gives weightage to content created by subject matter experts who have a high level of knowledge or skill in a particular field. More importance is given to topics related to the fields of medical/ legal/ financial advice etc., as the impact of inaccurate information on searchers can be highly negative.
2. Authoritativeness
   The reputation or authority of a website is highly important, as seen through the reviews and comments from experts in the industry. In order to evaluate the authority of a website, raters use independent sources of information. One such good source of information is Wikipedia, which provides detailed information about companies, their history, and facts and figures. If the webpage pertains to a community or discussion forum, the conversation quality decides the authority. An important point to note is that authority is relative to a given topic/context.
3. Trustworthiness
   Users need to feel safe and secure while they are on a website. Trustworthiness is very critical for specifically e-Commerce websites, since users need to provide their credit/ debit card information, address details, etc., which is sensitive information. Given that the prerogative is to make the user feel completely safe, key security features should be enabled. One such important feature is the implementation of the SSL certificate, which Google uses for page scoring. The trustworthiness of an application/website can also be inferred from the creator or company that is hosting the main content.

How can LTIMindtree help?

AI can help improve the E-A-T quotient of your website by performing thorough content analysis and providing recommendations in terms of content gaps based on the analysis of top-ranking websites in each category. As discussed initially, AI can help in keyword research for a given topic and can recommend page titles, CTAs, tags, etc. LTIMindtree has built the SEO Max Bot to assist content authors in recommending page titles, CTAs, keywords/tags, etc. for a given webpage. Marketers can perform A/B testing to see which keywords perform better and choose from the options to increase the SEO ranking of the page.

2. Personalization with AI SEO

In 2019, Researchscape International and Evergage Inc. surveyed 300+ marketing professionals across industries and countries. As part of the research, 85% of marketers stated that their customers or prospects expect a personalized experience. Evidently, websites with personalization increase traffic, thus contributing to better SEO.

AI chatbots can recommend deals, products, and responses to visitors’ queries based on their profiles and preferences. AI chatbots are available 24×7 and can access visitors’ information to serve them even at odd hours. This provides a personalized and seamless customer experience, which helps in improving the SEO factor of a website.

SEO and AI go hand in hand; the purpose of SEO is to generate organic traffic once visitors land on the website, while AI chatbots can help them find relevant information. AI chatbots can collect valuable customer data that can be used for lead generation and conversion.

LTIMindtree has immense capabilities in Conversational AI and has helped many clients in the design and implementation of chatbots. LTIMindtree’s customer engagement conversational AI solutions address queries across all touchpoints: pre-purchase, in-purchase, and post-purchase – for consumers to engage and have a seamless experience. Click here for a detailed case study on customer engagement using Conversational AI.

1. 1. https://www.outranking.io/seo-ai/
   2. https://ahrefs.com/blog/eat-seo/
   3. https://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/what-is-e-a-t/
   4. https://blog.marketmuse.com/natural-language-processing-examples/