What Is AI in SEO? Elevate Your Website With AI-Powered SEO

AI is taking the world by storm and integrating itself into every part of our lives. For website owners, you can use AI to automate and streamline SEO-related tasks to boost your site’s visibility and ranking in search results. With the search landscape shifting to reflect user intent and behavior, rather than basic keywords, AI can help your website keep up.

AI takes time-consuming jobs off your plate and analyzes data quickly, enhancing the work that you’re already doing. I’ll dig into how AI can help with important SEO tasks in the next section.

From keyword research to technical audits, here’s how AI is transforming the search landscape and making it easier for smaller businesses to rank.

1. Keyword Research

❤️ Benefits: Find content opportunities, connect with your target audience, carry out competitor analysis
💻 Recommended tools: Semrush Keyword Magic Tool, NeuralText, Hostinger’s AI SEO Assistant

Keyword research is a key strategy for SEO success, but it can be quite manual and time-consuming. AI is changing that through natural language processing, which tools then use to understand search intent and predict future trends. You can take these learnings and apply them to your website pages to make sure they cater to search engines and your target audience.

Instead of just identifying popular keywords, AI keyword research tools can help you:

• Uncover related long-tail keywords with higher conversion rates
• Group keywords by topics and user intent for content optimization
• Prioritize keyword opportunities based on seasonality, competition, and growth potential
• Receive ongoing SEO recommendations as algorithms continue optimizing
• Stay ahead of trends with future keyword popularity forecasts

Platforms like Surfer SEO and Semrush use AI to deliver advanced, data-driven analytics and competitive intelligence. For example, I used Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool to find keywords for this article. All I had to do was enter a word or phrase, add my website URL, set my location, and click “Search.” This told me that the term “AI in SEO” has a search volume of 390 and a 66% keyword difficulty (in the US).

2. Content Creation

❤️ Benefits: Build a sustainable content schedule, deliver helpful content, fill content gaps, connect with your target audience
💻 Recommended tools: Wix Text Creator, Squarespace AI, Shopify Magic, Hostinger AI Writer, Jasper, ChatGPT, Bard, ContentShake AI, Semrush Copilot, INK, MarketMuse

High-quality content is integral for increasing website traffic and conversions, but few business owners have enough hours in the day to produce sufficient blog posts, product pages, and other copy. Although we’ve got tons of blog SEO tips to help you optimize your content, this is also where AI comes in handy. In fact, 77% of entrepreneurs already use generative AI to support content creation.

Author's Testing Notes

The latest AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Jasper, can create complete pieces of content in your brand’s voice when you give them a brief prompt to work with. I tested Wix’s AI Text Creator to fill my website with fresh copy, and though I had to make a few minor tweaks here and there, I was impressed by the customization options. In particular, being able to tweak the tone of voice and translate the copy at the click of a button is really great.

Emma Ryan Lead Writer

While AI won’t fully replace the human creative process, it can significantly accelerate the process of moving from concept to polished copy. This enables you to maintain a steady drumbeat of fresh, optimized copy and imagery to keep visitors engaged without burning out your team.

Just remember to review and refine your content to ensure it serves your brand’s vision and audience – AI-generated copy won’t always be ready to publish without a few checks for errors first. Plus, it’s good practice to add a human touch or unique, personal story where relevant to hook your readers in. After all, Google won’t rank AI content if it’s been purposefully created to manipulate search rankings instead of adding value to readers.

3. On-Page SEO Optimization

❤️ Benefits: Get personalized recommendations, improve site performance, create a better user experience
💻 Recommended tools: Wix Meta Tag Creator, Hostinger’s AI SEO Assistant, Clearscope, MarketMuse, AlliAI

When was the last time you audited your website’s on-page SEO elements? We’re talking page titles, metadata, image alt text, and so on.

AI can crawl through your pages and quickly identify on-page optimization opportunities personalized to your site. This can help you catch thin content or spot where your pages could use more engaging elements, such as videos.

Some AI tools will even recommend ways to optimize navigation menus and site architecture for better crawlability, increasing your chances of ranking well in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Others, such as Wix’s Meta Tag Creator and Hostinger’s AI SEO Assistant, will automatically generate metadata for your site’s pages.

4. User Experience Enhancement

❤️ Benefits: Boost customer relationships, increase traffic and conversions, improve navigation
💻 Recommended tools: Plerdy, Hostinger’s AI Heatmap

If your website traffic and conversions aren’t where you want them to be, a poorly optimized user experience could be the culprit. But, how can you accurately identify frustrating navigation or complex site flows without intensive user testing?

AI tools, such as Plerdy, can observe how visitors navigate through your site by incorporating aggregated behavioral data. You can then pinpoint exactly where users abandon your site before they complete an action. For example, maybe customers are leaving your store from the homepage before visiting your product pages – in this case, it’s clear you need to signpost your shop better.

I also really love Hostinger’s AI Heatmap tool. AI tracks the behavior of your website visitors and marks in color which elements users interact with the most and which areas of the site are neglected.

5. Link Building

❤️ Benefits: Help search engines understand your site, build authority, improve navigation, increase traffic
💻 Recommended tools: Postaga, LinkHunter, ChatGPT, Semrush Copilot, Link Whisper

Do backlinks matter? Yes, they’re one of the prime ingredients for ranking success and contribute heavily to your domain authority. Unfortunately, researching and reaching out to earn backlinks can take a lot of time and effort, which is why you can use AI to identify linking opportunities for you.

AI tools, such as Postaga and Link Whisper, analyze discussions, trends, and influencer commentary across the web to pinpoint media sites, industry hubs, and topic experts relevant to your brand. You can then bring those AI-compiled leads into your outreach CRM to more easily manage the link recruiting cycle.

With AI finding fresh opportunities for your brand, earning links becomes less taxing and unpredictable, since you’re building a steady stream of backlink wins. As a result of more links pointing to your site, you’ll likely see a boost in traffic and get recognized more frequently as an authority in your industry.

6. Rank Tracking and Monitoring

❤️ Benefits: Prepare your site for algorithm changes, monitor site performance, keep track of competitors
💻 Recommended tools: AccuRanker, Nightwatch.io

Regular Google algorithm updates have caused a lot of volatility in the SERPs over the last couple of years. If you aren’t monitoring the daily fluctuations of your site’s search rankings and visibility, you won’t be able to effectively prepare your site for the next core update.

Rather than obsessively checking rankings manually, you can delegate the task to an AI-powered platform, such as AccuRanker. These tools offer real-time tracking of your site’s ranking movements, as well as those of competitors.

Not only does this help you identify what phrases and terms people are asking to end up on your website, but it’ll give you a clear picture of how rival businesses are performing online.

7. Technical SEO Audits

❤️ Benefits: Fix website errors, improve site speed and performance, create a better user experience
💻 Recommended tools: Semrush Copilot, Jasper’s FAQ Schema Generator, NitroPack

Technical SEO might sound complicated, especially for beginners, but it encompasses critical areas, such as page speed, schema markup, broken links, and mobile responsiveness. For many, in-depth technical audits fall by the wayside, but this potentially leaves the door open for tech issues to sabotage your site’s overall performance.

AI-powered crawlers can flag troublesome areas in your site’s architecture – this could be multiple broken pages that hurt crawlability, or thin content causing high bounce rates.

Platforms like Jasper can review and summarize your site’s health based on key technical SEO factors, helping you optimize your pages without sacrificing in-house resources.

➡️ Check out our SEO glossary to bring you up to speed with important technical SEO terminology.

8. Voice Search Optimization

❤️ Benefits: Understand user intent, build awareness of audience pain points and needs, increase traffic
💻 Recommended tools: Surfer SEO, Ahrefs, Semrush, WordLift

Can you confidently say your pages are ready to be discovered and consumed by the growing number of voice assistants? With Siri and Gemini at everyone’s fingertips and smart devices throughout our homes, you should consider tapping into this audience base to boost brand awareness.

Voice search optimization is very different from written keyword targeting. AI tools can leverage machine learning to analyze language patterns and intent from voice searches. To help you make sure your content appears in voice-assisted search results, AI will suggest natural-sounding keywords and content structures optimized for voice discoveries.

Instead of hoping you’ve covered relevant voice queries, let your AI assistant analyze voice search trends, and craft conversational content accordingly. Getting page elements, FAQs, and multimedia ready for voice searches will position you ahead of competitors who are still focused on text-based tactics.

9. Predictive Analytics

❤️ Benefits: Target future search trends, supports long-term planning
💻 Recommended tools: BrightEdge, seoClarity

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could see into the future and know which SEO strategies will hit the mark? Enter predictive AI. You can use AI to identify historical patterns in areas like search trends, website analytics, ranking fluctuations, and content performance. And you’ll save tons of time, since AI can review thousands of data sets in seconds.

However, AI doesn’t replace human strategic planning – it supplements it with statistically-sound forecasts. Having access to AI tools, like BrightEdge, allows you to orient current efforts toward high-potential SEO opportunities months, or even years, in advance. It’s a useful way to plan ahead and anticipate changes that might impact your business.

10. Social Media Monitors

❤️ Benefits: Connect with your audience across channels, boost brand visibility
💻 Recommended tools: BrightEdge, Meltwater, Hootsuite, Audiense, HubSpot

AI-powered tools, such as Audiense, easily interpret social chatter and platform feeds. This analysis aggregates sentiments, engagement levels, influencer actions, and competitor comparisons. It doesn’t just include official brand handles on TikTok or Instagram either – all relevant public conversations and comments are summarized quickly on demand.

With more human-like language comprehension from machine learning, think of it as having a social media manager listening 24/7. You can tap into the social media goldmine to better engage, amplify, adapt, and satisfy customers.

As you can see from the list above, introducing AI into your SEO strategy and workflows can benefit your business drastically. To summarize the main perks, AI can:

• Automate time-consuming tasks
• Identify content opportunities
• Help you connect with your audience more effectively
• Flag issues or errors to improve site performance
• Help you boost your visibility in the SERPs
• Help your business compete  (44% of microbusiness owners believe AI helps their brand compete with more established companies)

My advice? Assess your business for weaknesses and note down which tasks take up too much of your time. From there, start integrating AI into these workflows and review your site’s SEO to see if it has a positive impact.

Optimizing your site for search engines involves a lot of work – and the work never stops. SEO is constantly evolving, and AI is even shaping the future landscape.

You can use AI tools to help with content creation, increasing your site’s likelihood of appearing in search results, and checking your site for technical issues. However, while embracing AI can absolutely save you time and set you in the right direction when it comes to SEO, it can’t fully replace a human’s touch or expertise.