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The internet is buzzing with some SEO professionals raising concerns about using Generative AI for SEO. But the smarter ones have embraced GenAI SEO tools successfully to adapt to the changing search engine landscape.

According to a study by HubSpot and 10Web, 84% of SEO professionals say AI and automation have impacted their SEO strategy for 2023. And, 37% of marketers use AI to automate time-consuming SEO tasks.

Today, Generative AI can analyze data, forecast trends, aid content creation, and automate SEO tasks. Smart SEO experts have invested to learn prompt engineering and upskilled themselves to improve search results and productivity.

We share 10 Generative AI for SEO strategies and success stories suitable for beginner and advanced use cases.

10 Use Cases of Generative AI for SEO With Success Stories from Brands and Content Creators

1. Generating SEO-optimized content

Creating content stands out as the primary and the most obvious application of AI in content marketing.

58% of US marketers said increased performance is a benefit of content generated through Generative AI, reports Insider Intelligence.

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard can help get you from a blank page to a strong outline, ultimately resulting in a well-crafted piece of content. These tools generate content optimized for search engines as they include relevant keywords wherever necessary. You can even provide AI writers with a checklist of optimizations that you’d like in your content, and the tool will work accordingly.

However, be cautious as they often provide common answers. To stand out, edit content to reflect your brand’s voice, adding personality and expertise to better connect with your audience.

Jake Ward, the founder of Byword, propelled the Casual.app to reach 1 million monthly visitors in under a year.

He performed detailed competitor analysis to extract their keywords and used his AI content generator tool, Byword, to generate around 7000 new pages.

The result:

• An astonishing 1.07M monthly sessions

• 41K first-page ranking keywords

• New backlinks from 1648 domains

Learn more – Casual.app case study

2. Content enrichment

Generative AI enhances content through advanced algorithms and machine learning, automating tasks like language translation, summarization, and tone edits to ensure abundant and refined content for maximum engagement. Here are some approaches to content enrichment using AI:

Analyze data and trends

You can use generative AI to analyze recent data and trends in your industry. The AI can identify patterns, emerging topics, or changes in consumer behavior, providing you with insights to incorporate into your content strategy.

Competitor analysis

Generative AI can analyze your competitors’ content strategies and identify gaps or opportunities. This can help you stay ahead by creating content that addresses current market needs and differentiates your brand.

Feedback analysis

AI tools can analyze user feedback, comments, and social media interactions related to your existing content. This can help you understand what your audience is looking for and identify areas for improvement or expansion.

TSL Media Group used Brandwatch, an AI-powered social media listening tool to craft compelling Gen Z content for their clients. 

They analyzed the behavior, social sentiment, and brand emotion of Gen Z across the social media handles of its clients and created the best-suited content for this audience group.

Learn more – TSL Media Group

In essence, AI not only accelerates the content creation process but elevates its quality, diversity, and interactivity, fostering a more immersive and personalized user experience.

3. Predicting important trends

If you publish a story first, there are high chances Google may rank you first too. 

Using tools like Exploding Topics, you can seamlessly uncover emerging keyword trends, allowing you to stay one step ahead of your competitors. 

Take, for instance, the promising surge in interest around the term “AI logo generator” over the past five years.

The keyword has had an astounding 4900% growth in the past 5 years and the graph only seems to go further up in the future.

Armed with this valuable trend data, you have the chance to act proactively, securing a higher spot on search engine results pages (SERPs) before your competitors catch wind of the change.

Predicting keywords

Using predictive analytics and Generative AI, you can uncover emerging trends and generate popular keywords. Here’s a simplified approach you could consider: 

• Create a diverse and relevant dataset of current content, including articles, social media posts, and any other relevant sources. Clean and preprocess the data to remove noise, irrelevant information, and duplicates. Convert the data into a suitable format, and prepare it for input into the generative AI model.
• Train a generative AI model, or specifically in our case, a language model on the preprocessed data. Ensure the model can generate text and understand the contextual relationships between words.
• Use the trained model to generate text and predictions about future keywords. You can do this by providing a prompt related to the topics of your interest, and the model will generate text based on its learned patterns.

Zalando, a German fashion retailer giant, harnesses the power of data and artificial intelligence to steer its fashion operations throughout Europe.

The extensive use of artificial intelligence in all its operations makes it as much of a tech company as a retailer.

The company’s AI algorithms powered by ChatGPT can identify emerging trends in the fashion industry. It can examine data from a range of sources such as social media trends, fashion blogs, and historical sales data to draw trend insights, organize listings, and manage inventory accordingly.

This way, their product listings take the lead on search engines the moment a trend emerges.

Learn more – How Zalando uses generative AI for trend forecasting

4. Understanding search engine algorithms for improved SEO

Generative AI, armed with its formidable capacity to analyze vast datasets, plays a pivotal role in understanding the nitty-gritty of search engine algorithms. 

By figuring out patterns and relationships among various variables such as keyword utilization, backlinks, site speed, and mobile-friendliness, AI contributes significantly to understanding the factors influencing search engine rankings.

For instance, if a search engine pivots its algorithm to prioritize site speed, generative AI can swiftly detect this change and recalibrate the SEO strategy accordingly.

Predicting algorithm changes

How many algorithm updates did Google roll out in 2023?

A total of ten Google algorithm updates!

Imagine the impact on your website if it suffered negatively from these updates.

Generative AI not only comprehends algorithms but can predict potential future changes by analyzing patterns and historical data. It identifies variables that historically had the greatest impact on algorithm changes.

Beyond mere detection, Generative AI goes further by actively implementing SEO best practices. Armed with its profound comprehension of search engine algorithms, it optimizes websites by incorporating certain changes and generating content tailored for SEO.

The YouTube video of Matt Diggity of Diggity Marketing below is a perfect example of how generative AI can be used to decipher search algorithms and suggest changes in content strategy.

He wonderfully explains how to use ChatGPT to understand Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines and tailor your content strategy based on it.

The video also highlights the importance of providing proper context and information to an AI tool before seeking answers, especially when working with generative AI tools.

5. Internally linking your pages

Internal linking plays a crucial role in optimizing your website for search engines and enhancing its overall SEO performance.

How? 

• Effective internal linking enhances website navigation, leading users to relevant pages and improving engagement while reducing bounce rates. 

• It aids search engines in gaining a clearer understanding of your website. 

• It enhances the indexing of your pages and contributes to the assignment of authority (flow of link juice) as well.

Here’s what Matt Diggity thinks of internal linking.

Generative AI makes internal linking a swift and effective process. It saves you the time of manually linking every page and every new post.

What’s more, generative AI can suggest the best anchor texts for internal linking.

AI empowers SEO professionals to:

• Identify underperforming pages and keywords by considering search volume and impressions

• Automatically pinpoint the most impactful internal linking opportunities, along with optimal target pages and pages that should link but currently do not

• Effortlessly implement internal links throughout the website and automatically monitor their performance

• Prioritize pages and keywords according to seasonal trends or market opportunities

• Help generate optimal anchor text suggestions by analyzing datasets

WordLift, an SEO management service, ran an extensive AI-assisted internal linking campaign for its client, EssilorLuxottica, a leading manufacturer of ophthalmic lenses, frames, and glasses.

According to WordLift, the implementation of dynamic internal linking with AI support significantly enhanced EssilorLuxottica’s user engagement and content precision.

During the period from April to September 2023, EssilorLuxottica experienced a 30% increase in website visitors, coupled with a notable 20% improvement in the average position on the SERPs.

Learn more – WordLift

6. Personalizing user experience

Where would you spend more time? – A website where you have to find what you’re looking for or one that welcomes you with personalized content based on your past engagement with the website.

Certainly, the latter.

Personalizing content increases your website’s user engagement and indirectly affects your SEO for good.

Generative AI can help you achieve this feat with your website via:

• User profiling: Through the analysis of a user’s browsing history, behavior, and preferences, AI constructs a distinct user profile for each individual. For instance, if a user frequently reads articles related to technology and spends more time on product reviews, the AI system builds a profile reflecting these interests.

• Content customization: Leveraging the created user profiles, AI can generate or modify content to align with the specific interests and needs of each user.

• Increasing engagement: The personalized nature of content generated by AI tends to captivate users more effectively. This increased engagement translates into longer dwell times and lower bounce rates. The positive impact on user metrics can contribute significantly to SEO performance.

Triola, an eCommerce brand that specializes in lingerie and swimwear, boosted sales by 10% by implementing AI-based software called Recombee. 

This software utilizes Generative AI for eCommerce algorithms to display personalized content and recommendations to website visitors.

Learn more – Triola

Another success story is 9GAG, another client of Recombee. Using Recombee’s AI-powered software and showing personalized content to users, 9GAG saw a 37% increase in post views along with other KPI improvements.

Learn more – 9GAG

7. Integrating Google Analytics (GA) and Google Search Console (GSC) with generative AI for some magic

Thanks to Google, marketers already have a tonne-load of information about their website’s performance with the help of GA and GSC.

Using ChatGPT, you can produce actionable insights to help you improve your website’s SEO and bottom line. Generative AI can examine GSC data to figure out the key drivers of website traffic. It can effectively pinpoint both underperforming and overperforming keywords based on patterns and trends.

For instance, it might identify the superiority of certain keyword types over others, or recognize fluctuations in keyword performance based on seasonality.

Leveraging the insights gained from the analysis, Generative AI can propose refinements to a website’s keyword strategy. This could involve prioritizing new keywords, downplaying underperforming ones, or adjusting the utilization of keywords within content.

Jaswanth Adapa, Sr. Global Marketing Head of DAMAC Properties, one of the largest real estate corporations in Dubai, has efficiently outlined how he integrated GA and GSC with generative AI tools like ChatGPT to enhance the firm’s marketing strategy.

Jaswant emphasizes that while Google Analytics and Google Search Console offer extensive data, ChatGPT can extract additional valuable insights beyond their scope.

For example, while GA and GSC can find high-value keywords and pages, they cannot:

• Provide recommendations for further optimizing top-5 high-value pages

• Suggest related keywords with high potential for growth in organic search traffic

• Show the search trends for the top 10 keywords related to the website during a particular time

But, ChatGPT can.

He has even listed the optimized AI prompts that are most useful when integrating these tools.

Learn more – How Jaswanth integrated GA and GSC with generative AI tools

Other advanced use cases of generative AI for SEO

8. Improving local SEO

Local SEO involves tailoring a business or service for location-specific searches, concentrating on reaching potential customers within a defined area. 

Generative AI can enhance local SEO by analyzing search data of various geographical locations. It identifies local trends and user behavior to suggest actionable improvements. 

With this data, the AI can pick up on trends in different places. It might notice that folks in a certain area are really into a specific topic or type of product and suggest a tailored content strategy based on this inference.

Furthermore, AI can conduct a content gap analysis to highlight where your online presence doesn’t align with local search queries. Any suggestions and improvements are a result of examining competitors ranking higher in those areas.

9. Optimizing schema for SERP features visibility

Should Google officially introduce its Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently in the testing phase, SERP features such as featured snippets and the People Also Ask section will appear just beneath Google’s AI-generated results. 

Result?

Users will encounter SERP features before reaching the top-ranked website for a specific query. This shift increases the likelihood of searchers selecting these SERP features over the articles ranked at #1.

Generative AI is there to help you optimize your content for these SERP features.

Tools like ChatGPT can efficiently help you optimize your content for SERP features.

Here’s how:

• Featured snippets: Generative AI can assist in creating concise and informative content that directly answers common user queries.

• People Also Ask section: By analyzing existing PAA questions and generating high-quality, relevant answers, AI can enhance your content’s chances of inclusion in the PAA section.

• Structured data markup: Generative AI can assist in creating structured data markup for your content. This markup provides search engines with additional information about your content, making it easier for them to understand and display relevant snippets.

10. AI-assisted link building

In SEO, one cannot overstate the significance of backlinks. Backlinks have considerable influence over a web page’s standing in search engine rankings.

Instead of manually sorting through numerous links to determine their quality and relevance, AI algorithms can precisely assess these factors, saving significant time and effort. Here are some factors it can consider:

Competitor analysis

Generative AI transcends traditional competitor analysis by delving deep into the intricacies of backlink ecosystems. By studying what strategies competitors use, it finds not just where they get backlinks but also spots areas where they might be missing out.

Relevance and authority

Mere identification of link opportunities isn’t enough.

Generative AI assesses the relevance and authority of potential sources, ensuring that each link aligns with the website’s content and also possesses the required influence to enhance SEO.

Outreach strategy

A big part of SEO involves outreach. Based on the data gathered from various backlink sources, AI can help in crafting a perfect outreach plan. 

This involves a thoughtful combination of tactics such as guest posting and collaborations. The result is a tailored approach that maximizes the acquisition of valuable backlinks.

Backlink monitoring

Every marketer understands the importance of a link-building strategy for enhancing SEO and directing traffic to their website. Managing and monitoring these links, however, is a challenging task that marketers are well aware of.

Antonio Gabric, Outreach Manager at Hunter, recounts the story of losing 9% of the backlinks they had built over 2 years. 

He highlights how generative AI played a pivotal role in monitoring these backlinks and recovering over 50 backlinks within just one month.

Here’s where SEO professionals are mistaken about Generative AI

While adopting Generative AI, check for below pitfalls:

• Content quality and relevance: Generative AI cannot fully replace human oversight. It is advised to review and edit AI-generated content to ensure it aligns with brand voice, accuracy, and SEO best practices.

• Duplicate content issues: don’t overlook the risk of duplicate content. To avoid search engine penalties, it’s essential to monitor and diversify AI-generated content, preventing identical copies that can harm online visibility.

• Lack of human touch: Generative AI can’t write like a human. And this goes beyond merely sounding like a human. It cannot include social media posts or expert quotes in your content to support it. An even bigger drawback is it can’t generate real-world examples. Even if you ask it to, you will most likely end up with incorrect information, mostly based on assumptions.

• Algorithm changes: Generative AI has managed to impact Google’s algorithms – hence, today’s successful strategies will not remain effective forever. To navigate evolving search engine algorithms, you must adapt strategies regularly for sustained effectiveness in online visibility.

• Misconception that using AI for SEO is easy: It really isn’t as easy as it sounds. You have to:
  • Learn prompt engineering skills
  • Educate and train your AI model by giving it the required context
  • Provide it with data that is accurate and that AI models can analyze
  • Continuously add more to the database to tweak strategies based on prevalent situations

Do you have any success story with using Generative AI for your SEO strategy?

As we delve into the diverse applications and success stories of Generative AI for SEO, it becomes evident that embracing these advanced tools is not just a trend but a necessity for those aiming to sustain a competitive edge.

Have you experienced any success with any of the above 10 SEO opportunities or beyond?

We would love to feature success stories (with relevant metrics achieved) of SEO professionals who have successfully leveraged Generative AI for SEO. Share your journey, lessons learnt, and future scope on this blog post – email to content@merrative.com

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