In this episode, we’re once again diving into the ripple effects we’re all feeling from the current AI boom. This time though, we’re homing in on it’s effects on SEO.
How is AI impacting traditional SEO practices? What AI tools are already altering the way that SEO is done? What do those in SEO need to be thinking as new AI innovations continue to be unveiled?
Helping Dani explore this topic is Ross Raffin, content strategist here at LeadG2. Ross has so many great insights, such as:
In this episode, we’re once again diving into the ripple effects we’re all feeling from the current AI boom. This time though, we’re homing in on it’s effects on SEO.
How is AI impacting traditional SEO practices? What AI tools are already altering the way that SEO is done? What do those in SEO need to be thinking as new AI innovations continue to be unveiled?
Helping Dani explore this topic is Ross Raffin, content strategist here at LeadG2. Ross has so many great insights, such as:
Welcome to Sell Smarter Sell Faster, a podcast dedicated to helping sales organizations grow. Each week, we discuss proven sales enablement strategies and real life examples with experts and thought leaders from across industries. I'm your host, Dani Buckley, Vice President and General Manager at LeadG 2, a sales performance agency. In this episode, we're once again diving into the ripple effects we're all feeling from the current AI boom. This time, though, we're honing in on its effects on SEO. How is AI impacting traditional SEO practices? What AI tools are already altering the way that SEO is done? What do those in SEO need to be thinking as new AI innovations continue to be unveiled?
Dani Buckley:Helping me explore this topic is Ross Raffin, content strategist here at LeadG 2. Ross has so many great insights, such as why keeping a watchful eye on how Google is folding AI into how their generating search results is important. The role humans need to continue to play in AI content creation so that you don't negatively impact your SEO results. And, lastly, the importance of looking beyond chat, gpt and BARD to get a true handle on how AI can empower us and reshape how we work and create. All right, ross welcome. Thank you for joining us today. How are you doing?
Ross Raffin:I'm doing great. How are you?
Dani Buckley:I am doing great too. We are both holding it down in California. So as our SEO kind of expert guru here in house, i'm very excited to share some of your wisdom with our listeners and with everybody who's tuning in. So, yeah, thanks for being here and we'll kind of jump right in. You ready?
Ross Raffin:Yep.
Dani Buckley:All right, cool. So just to get everyone kind of on the same page, first, when we're and this is real, this is real simplifying it but I just want to be sure everyone is on the same page. When we're talking about SEO, what exactly are we talking about?
Ross Raffin:Put it in the simplest of terms for everybody So SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, And really what it's all about is increasing how much exposure your business gets to prospects when they use a search engine like Google. When people search the Internet, they have an intent. They may want to buy something, learn something, go somewhere. When SEO is done right, your business will offer the best answer to their search intent. So when they go to your site, you can pull them in using lead generation or e-commerce tactics, depending on the nature of your business.
Dani Buckley:Perfect. That makes sense to me and, i bet, to most people, so that's good. So let's talk a little bit about and we're going to get into AI is when everyone to know that we can't talk about SEO without AI right now And we can't really talk about marketing and sales without talking about AI at this moment in time. But let's just start with SEO in general, what it's always evolving. There's always new things to be looking at. Google likes to keep us on our toes. So at this moment in time, we're recording this in May 2023. What are the SEO trends that you're seeing right now that you think some folks, that folks should be aware of?
Ross Raffin:So the big one which has actually been rising in popularity because in a way, it takes advantage of AI and these large language models, is something called semantic SEO. And semantic SEO isn't just about answering a single question about a subject. It's about becoming a knowledge base such that Google and the AI programs will use you as their resource for informing People, and this builds what's called topical authority.
Dani Buckley:Got it Okay. Anything else that is, I don't know, kind of popping up right now or has been trending recently.
Ross Raffin:I mean just a general movement towards automation of smaller tasks, for instance the creation of meta descriptions. Those are the little descriptions you see under the title in a search engine result page. You generally want to have those and it can be a bit of a slog to just create these little captions for blog after blog. using automation You can basically push out meta descriptions and article titles automatically.
Dani Buckley:Got it Cool, okay, great. One thing I know we run into a lot with clients that we work with or just folks I talk to is that they're acting on and holding on to things that they knew to be true about SEO a couple years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. I'm curious what are some of the big misconceptions, or just old best practices that people need to just stop or forget about?
Ross Raffin:There's really two big ones. The first is that Google no longer looks for strings of letters that match your query. The idea that instead of trying to optimize for strings, you optimize for things, what are called entities. An entity is just basically a concept, a noun, a person-place thing, but when you optimize for entities, as opposed to repeating the same string, you'll actually capture Google's attention much more, because it doesn't really think in the simple terms of oh, i see the word red apple appear 10 times. Therefore, this page should rank for red apple, and a common example given is if you wanted to rank for Abraham Lincoln, you'd probably want to have words like president and White House in the article, things that are related to it, but if you just had Abraham Lincoln 10 times, then Google really wouldn't know what to do with it.
Dani Buckley:Got it, yeah. So I mean this really just speaks to the old keyword stuffing that people got away with years ago but just doesn't work anymore.
Ross Raffin:And then the other, i'd say, is more about the understanding of the results of SEO. A lot of focus will sometimes too much focus sometimes will go towards keywords, and they might be seen as the most important KPI in SEO. Keywords are important. Ultimately, though, it's a vanity metric. What counts is ROI. You know how effective are your SEO efforts when it comes to actually getting a return on your investments. So I'd say the big thing is it's good to keep track of keywords. They give you some indicators, but always have an eye on ROI. at the end of the day, Got it.
Dani Buckley:What is some types of ROI that someone should look to when it comes to SEO?
Ross Raffin:Well, for instance, you could take a look at when someone comes in from search. it's called organic. You could take a look at the organic sessions you get on a page and then take a look at, let's say, your lead generation company. Look at how many people have filled out a form who also came from organic search. If you have enough information, you should know the cost per lead. Then you can make a calculation How much have you paid the SEOs versus how many leads times the cost per lead?
Dani Buckley:Yeah, love it. I mean just even if some folks it's not always that easy to calculate cost per lead, which is great if you can. But I even just love the idea of looking at not just are you getting traffic at the page, but is it actually doing what you want it to do? If that's a page that you want people to convert into a contact or a lead, great. Are you tracking that? Great reminder. Let's talk about AI. How do you think Ross, ai technology? I know that you've been studying this a lot lately. You're on our board here at our company studying AI and its impact and how we can effectively use it or not. How do you think AI technology is impacting the traditional SEO practices that we have today? Yeah, jess, what are you seeing?
Ross Raffin:Well, actually this is good timing, As of a week ago, Google unveiled how they're going to be incorporating AI into Google searches. It's called a search generative experience. This is going to have a very big impact on traditional SEO, because back in the day it was all about ranking for those 10 blue links. Then things changed a little and it became about ranking for featured snippets. Now it's going to be about providing information that Google likes enough to provide in the search generative experience. That's very different from trying to rank for a Google page, the traditional way that SEOs do.
Dani Buckley:Got it. Yeah, that is a big deal. Let's talk about AI tools. Do you have any examples of tools or just other AI solutions that you've already started, that you've seen changing the way SEO is done? I mean, you just mentioned a little bit of that, but anything else that's important from the technology standpoint we should be thinking about or we're looking at.
Ross Raffin:Yeah, i think it's very important to have perspective on this. Ai writing assistants have actually been around for quite a few years. There are some relatively big businesses that use it. What's changed is the quality of output that AIs can give. Of course, the big one would be chat GTP, but when you talk about AI writers, most of them are actually using the same underlying technology as chat GTP. Really, what this is all about is a technology called GPT Generative Pre-Trained Transformers. That's a lot to remember, but the key thing about it is all of these technologies are about predicting what comes next in a sentence. Actually, some people like to refer to it as spicy autocomplete.
Dani Buckley:I haven't heard that. That's great, yeah, okay, i'm going to just kind of adding a question here, throwing you on the spot Do you have any tips for folks who want to use chat, gtp or something like that for copywriting? Do you have tips on that, what they may or should or shouldn't be considering? and then just especially in relation to SEO, but also just in relation to good content Yeah, So, first off, it's important to know that the prompts you create.
Ross Raffin:Prompt engineering is iterative. That means that you're going to create a prompt it might spit out something useful, then you change the prompt a little and it gets a little better. So basically, don't expect the first prompt you make to lead to very quality outputs. The second thing, because one of the big problems with AI writers is continuity and transitions. So, yeah, so with chat GTP, if you want to make sure that it has transitions between sections, a useful thing to do is to first have it generate an outline, or to create your own outline and then put it into chat GTP. Then give it some label like saying refer to this as outline A. Then you want to make sure it doesn't execute something, So you'd say refer to this as outline A.
Ross Raffin:If you understand what I just said, return the word pizza, and that's going to say pizza. Then your next prompt is going to be whatever you've created, like. Basically, it'll be your writing prompt, but you will only write the first section. Somewhere within that prompt you'll say that there should be transitions between the sections. So what'll happen is you get a series of sections that all have transition statements and it looks a lot more organic than a lot of these outputs where it just looks like the headers were basically pieced together Got it.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, that's a great tip. I think what that actually comes down to what we've talked a lot about is just for people out there listening to remember that AI writers using chat tool like that to create blog posts, create content, is not the end, all be all. You just take what is put out and then you publish it. It's really important that you have a skilled, talented editor or whatever it is on the other end that knows how to utilize prompts and also knows how to edit, proof, finalize the piece, fact check. I mean, there's a lot that has to happen. I know that's one of the things that we're seeing and just really wanting to remind people of.
Ross Raffin:Yeah, ai writing can get you to that, the middle of the pack, but if you have really excellent stuff, you're going to need a human in the loop.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, absolutely Okay. So let's talk about what are some of the challenges that SEO professionals that you think might be facing as a result of AI innovation in the industry. And then I know you touched on the Google stuff. Is there anything else to add kind of related to that, Because I know that's a piece like about Google, whether they're penalizing or not with content written by AI. Yeah, just kind of, what are things that people need to be thinking about?
Ross Raffin:So there's two things. I think that right now, a big challenge for SEOs is less technical and more perceptual. We're at a point in the hype cycle with AI where there are companies which are freezing hiring, saying we're going to transition everyone to AI, Or saying that we should transition all writers to AI. There is a tendency perhaps to challenge the idea do I need an SEO? Could I automate it? The problem with that approach is that they'll soon find that really, a GPT isn't able to do any of the SEO. The real SEO that you need to move the needle can't be done by an AI. Got it. And then when it comes to Google and this is a very important distinction to make Google is fine with artificial intelligence-generated content. What they don't like is low-quality content. So whether an AI or a human writes low-quality content, google won't really care for it. If it's high-quality, google does not care if it was written by an AI. But again, if you really want a high-quality article, it's going to take a human in the loop with the AI.
Dani Buckley:Yes, yes, that is the big takeaway. Great, okay, love that. All right. So talk about let's transition the time of keywords and kind of keyword research. How is AI impacting that? How do you think it can help or not help?
Ross Raffin:So this has led to a huge debate in the SEO industry as to whether chat GTP is going to take away keywords And the reason they say that is. These days you don't have to go to Google if you have a question that's informational. If you just want to know how far is Australia from the United States, you can just ask chat GTP. So what that means is the search volume for informational keywords are going to start to drop over time, especially if it's something that's commonly asked to chat GTP. Now, on the flip side of that, chat GTP plus the subscription offers plugins that assist with finding keywords. But again, mostly these keywords are what are called commercial. So trying to buy something, We don't have to worry about a loss of search volume for commercial keywords, but for informative keywords we're going to see a very large drop.
Dani Buckley:Got it Okay. So the short answer is stay tuned. We'll see, right, like, how things are going to be impacted even more as this continues to evolve. I guess, right.
Ross Raffin:Well, yeah, the consensus is the search demand for informative keywords will drop, but the search demand for commercial will stay about the same.
Dani Buckley:Got it Okay, Great. Well, I'm going to kind of close us out here, Ross. What is there any like closing tips, best practices, anything that you want to leave the group our listeners with that have that we haven't touched on yet, just related to SEO or related to AI.
Ross Raffin:So I would like to make one last point related to AI, which is where you should keep your attention. Google recently had a leak of a document which argued that, while Google's Bard and ChatGTP have a small quality advantage, they're going to be overtaken by what's called open source AI projects. That means it's an AI project where anyone can look at the code behind it. Anyone can make an addition to it. So, when it comes to which AI source is going to offer you the most possibilities, it may not. Within the next year, two years, chatgtp may be seen as the simplistic version.
Dani Buckley:There is a lot to for us to keep an eye on there. It is wild how much has happened in just recent months. I'm sure we'll maybe have you back on Who knows, another six months, ross, and update us on all the things that have changed, as I'm sure they will. So thank you so much for joining today. As always, i appreciate your expertise and your ability to explain complex things to us Simpler folks here. So thank you, ross.
Ross Raffin:No problem, i enjoyed it.
Dani Buckley:Yeah. So anyone who wants to connect with Ross or I have follow-up questions. We'll put our contact information in the show notes And we look forward to seeing all of you on the next episode of Sell Smarter, sell Faster. Until then, happy selling. Thanks for joining us on Sell Smarter, sell Faster. If you like what you hear, click that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Be sure to visit our website, sellsmarters SellFastercom, where you can find even more helpful sales enablement and inbound marketing content.