AI-Driven SEO Strategies to Dominate Search in 2025
AI IN SEO
Agnes A. Gaddis
4/21/202533 min read
Google rolled out its "AI Overviews" feature in May 2024, revolutionizing the search landscape. You’ll see these instant summaries at the top of your search results.
For web content creators and SEOs, it’s a big shakeup. Some experts estimate that A.I. Overviews has slashed organic traffic by 25%-50%. This significant change necessitates the development of new AI-driven SEO strategies to adapt to the evolving search landscape.
Obviously, it doesn’t seem to be business as usual anymore. If you’re creating content online to rank, you now have to think about optimizing for Google’s Generative AI search, aside from the usual. Recent Google algorithm updates prioritize stellar content, a slick user experience, and E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, site authority, and trust).
Understand that with Google facing stiff competition from other tech giants like Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, and Apple in the AI race, its dominance in search is being challenged. Google’s main competitors include other search engines using AI (e.g., Microsoft’s Bing), virtual assistants (e.g., Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri), and broader cloud and AI services (e.g. SearchGPT, IBM Watson Discovery).
But with the use of AI, search is not just smarter, it’s now more contextual (more like a chat). In this article, we’ll dive deeper into this new evolution of search and how to adjust your content strategy to thrive with these new changes.
Table of Contents
Google's AI-driven Search
Nowadays, when you search, you might spot a snappy AI summary that answers your question on the spot. Plus, it'll link to sites referenced if you need more details. These summaries are called AI overviews.
They are powered by Google’s custom artificial intelligence models, such as Gemini and Pathways Language Model 2 (Palm 2). These AI models process user queries, gather relevant content, and generate dynamic, context-aware responses. This is a prime example of the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in search engine optimization (SEO).
Since its big debut in the U.S. back in May 2024, this AI overviews feature has now been expanded to countries like the UK, India, Japan, Mexico, and Brazil. And you can access the feature whether you're signed in or not.
Sure, the road was bumpy at first. AI Overviews were initially criticized for providing incorrect or even dangerous information. But with frequent technological updates, Google has been working to improve the accuracy of the feature, taking cues from users’ feedback.
This is just the start. As Google sharpens its AI game, we’re all on a wild ride. It'll flip the script on how we search, craft content, and play the digital marketing game.
But should you be worried about AI as a content creator? Yes, if you’re not good at what you do. What I believe is that for content creators that have honed their craft, AI will be a collaborator, allowing you to do more with less, and take on bigger roles.
But subpar creators should rightly be worried about AI taking over their jobs. This means it’s probably time to hone in on skill acquisition and develop AI-driven SEO strategies to stay competitive.
How Google uses AI in its search algorithm
Google is now smarter. Thanks to advanced language models like MUM (Multitask Unified Model) and PaLM2 (Pathways Language Model 2), it understands what you're looking for way better than before.
With AI integrated into search, search is now more like chatting with a friend. Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE) makes searching online more natural and responsive, almost like you're talking to a voice assistant.
Note: Don't skip the "people also ask" section. Answering those questions in your content is key to attracting more visitors over time. It means that when people ask questions naturally, your answers pop up (with your link). Make sure each question is in H3 to denote its importance.
Google isn’t new to using AI tools. It has been using them since the early 2000s when the misspelling interpreter was introduced to determine the right search queries based on commonly misspelled words. However, recent Google Algorithm Updates have taken AI integration to the next level, enabling the search engine to better understand user intent and provide more accurate results.
With AI Overviews, Google is looking beyond just helping people find answers. It wants to facilitate actions like purchases directly from the search results pages. Google is now integrating ads into AI Overviews. This will be a game-changer for boosting sales directly from online content, and it's a testament to the power of AI-driven SEO strategies in today's digital landscape.
The role of AI in identifying high-quality content and ranking factors
Apart from Google Overviews, Google’s SGE is also adept at identifying the best articles and blog posts on a topic. It does this by looking at the quality, reliability and depth of content. So, if your content strategy is creating a bunch of AI-generated short form pieces that offer no concrete, usable value apart from what’s general knowledge, you might as well just forget about ranking on the first or second pages of Google.
At its core, AI Overviews uses Google’s core search ranking and quality systems. That is Helpful Content (helpful information), PageRank (credible backlinks), and Reviews (for local search rankings). So optimizing for SGE is still all about sticking to SEO basics - create original, helpful content; attract authoritative backlinks, and improve content readability and user experience.
It however introduces E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) as a way to judge what helpful content actually is. This is not a ranking factor, just a way to see if your “high quality content” passes the smell test.
And it is more important when you’re talking about sensitive YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics i.e. health or finances. In these cases, Google's AI really zeroes in on the accuracy and trustworthiness of information, favoring articles that cite credible sources.
Note: Google’s AI knows how to spot great content. To improve trust and rankings, enrich your content pieces or high ranking pieces with charts and solid research data. You can easily analyze data with AI tools. Machine learning and content creation go hand in hand in today's SEO landscape.
With AI-summarized answers popping up in search results, people might stop clicking through to websites. This spells trouble for traffic numbers, especially for sites banking on informational queries.
This shift toward zero-click searches means we've got to rethink our SEO game. You have to make sure your content is the go-to source Google wants to show right away. That is, make it authoritative enough and optimize for formats like AI overviews and knowledge panels via Schema Markup.
Google's Top AI Projects for Search
RankBrain
Introduced in 2015, RankBrain was Google's first AI system integrated into search. Initially used in 15% of queries, it's now used to parse nearly every search query globally.
RankBrain helps Google understand the relationship between words and concepts. For example, if you search for “two names on deed one person dies”, it shows you results about “co-ownership” and “rights of survivorship”. It understands you’re inquiring about what happens to a property when a person dies in a joint ownership arrangement.
RankBrain is still the major algorithm used by Google to rank search results on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). By analyzing language and intent, it ensures search results are spot-on in context and relevance. But it doesn’t work alone. It’s combined with AI systems like neural matching and BERT to help with ranking and understanding search queries.
To optimize for RankBrain, focus on user experience signals such as CTR, Dwell Time and Bounce Rate. To do this, you need to craft punchy title tags and meta descriptions, publish in-depth content and break things up with subheaders. You should also work on increasing brand awareness to boost your CTR, and use LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords that provide context to help RankBrain rank your content for relevant terms.
BERT
The next AI Google introduced into search, BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), was created to take search accuracy to the next level.
BERT's genius lies in grasping the subtle nuances of language in both search queries and content (or in technical terms, the bidirectional context of words in sentences), making Google searches feel almost like mind-reading. BERT looks at the intent behind a search query to provide more relevant results in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
RankBrain and BERT form the backbone of Google's ranking system, playing a key role in nearly every search query.
For example, with BERT Google understands that a search query like “should I get stocks or buy crypto” means that someone is trying to compare the pros and cons of investing in crypto vs stocks. This is a commercial keyword. It means that content on the topic that doesn’t make this comparison won’t rank in the SERPs for the search term.
As long as you keep search intent in mind and write for humans, you don’t really need to optimize for BERT. Just create easily digestible content that meets people’s needs.
AI Overviews (Generative AI in search)
AI Overviews was launched at Google I/O 2024. It was initially available to US searchers. Now it’s going global, set to reach a billion users before the end of 2024.
You can think of Google's AI Overviews like instant knowledge appetizers—bite-sized answers right there on your search page. It’s super handy, but hey if the appetizer is very good, it also means you might not need the main course anymore. It means people might click less to view actual web pages because they're already getting the goods upfront. This change in user behavior is one of the key content marketing trends to watch out for.
Searchers who want the old school search experience can still access that through the “Web filter”, but the reality is that many people don’t use these filters, at least not most of the time.
So it appears if you want the best value from your SEO efforts, you need to optimize for AI overviews. What happens is, the AI sifts through thousands of content pieces and picks three content pieces that answer the user’s query succinctly and helpfully, and then creates its own paraphrased response based on these. The links to these three content pieces are also highlighted. This will drive more qualified clicks.
So what this means for you as a business is to discard the “content marketing is dead” mindset and actually up your content game. Now, it’s all about delivering the kind of content that makes you the go-to expert (E-E-A-T) - expert level, super helpful, and downright trustworthy content, while building up your website’s authority and trustworthiness.
You should also create structured data (schema markup) for each content piece. This provides Google Knowledge Graph with deeper insights about your content, making it more likely to be selected as a source for AI Overviews.
Being selected for AI Overviews also depends on user engagement. You should optimize each content piece for engagement, adding media such as images, videos, info-graphics, and interactive tools.
The challenge with AI-driven SEO strategies is tracking granular impressions and click data. Right now, you can’t distinguish between traffic from the old-school SERPs and traffic from AI Overviews when reviewing Google Search Console data. But you can still get the big picture overview.
MUM (Multitask Unified Model)
Google MUM is similar to BERT but more powerful. It’s designed to handle complex, open-ended questions, providing accurate and comprehensive answers. MUM’s natural language understanding is significantly advanced compared to BERT. It can process and understand multiple languages and content formats like images, providing more holistic responses.
MUM is a multitask model. It can translate, answer questions, and sum things up all at once. This means it can handle complex queries effectively. What sets it apart is that it's smart enough to piece together clues from both text and images to answer queries.
MUM is set to revolutionize not just Google Search but also breathe new life into the Google Assistant and other AI-driven services by Google. That’s because it can handle multi-step problems, such as planning a trip or creating a DIY project. It breaks the steps down and provides relevant information and resources.
One of the key benefits of optimizing for semantic search is that it allows search engines like Google to better understand the intent behind a user's query. With MUM, this understanding is taken to a whole new level, as it can process and analyze information from multiple sources and formats to provide the most relevant and helpful answers.
While MUM is still in the testing phase and will probably replace BERT in the next couple of years, future-forward SEOs and marketers would shift towards optimizing and creating content across multiple media formats (text, videos, audio, images) instead of focusing on one.
Google's stance on AI-generated content
Google loves good content, plain and simple—no matter how it's made. This is how they’ve managed content quality for years, focusing on the value rather than the means of production. But they have clearly stated time and again that using AI just to game search rankings is a big no-no.
With decades of experience, they know when your content is just automated spam or just a rehash of other people’s work and when you’re generating 20 articles with AI, hoping to boost search traffic. Google’s SpamBrain can easily spot that and would label that kind of content spam.
However, let’s not throw the cat away with the bathwater. Not all AI content is junk. AI has been used for creating content for a long time - think automated sports scores or weather updates.
If AI helps elevate your creativity and helps you create better content, then you’re on Google’s good side. That use of AI aligns with their broader view of empowering content creators with new technologies. But if it takes the driver’s seat and you become more like a spectator or assistant, then you’d probably get hit with a manual action or penalty down the line.
That's why it's crucial to follow SEO content best practices, such as using AI to create drafts that would be refined with heavy human editing.
Personally, I don’t recommend using SEO content writing AI tools alone to create client-facing content, and you might say I’m biased because I do freelance content creation. But without human input, AI content turns into a dull loop—missing fresh insights, experiential knowledge, and unique angles.
There’s also the trust factor which is important to Google. AI content without human oversight can be filled with misinformation, especially as it relates to raw data. You need a human in the loop to filter out “AI hallucinations” and ensure your content meets high standards of accuracy and relevance.
A human editor makes sure content not only hits the mark but also engages and resonates with readers.
One new development in search is that with more AI content around, Google's now paying more attention to brand-related signals (e.g. brand terms in queries) to sift the gold from the clutter. This aligns with Google’s new “brands are the solution” approach to content quality. That’s why some people complain about big brands outranking small brands that provide far better content.
This doesn’t mean SEO has become a zero-sum game where the game is rigged for small businesses. It means SEO is now a long-term game that’s intertwined with creating brand awareness. You want to start optimizing for brand keywords and have a good number of backlinks with brand anchor texts.
Penalties associated with low-quality AI-generated content
1. Low search rankings
Google loves relevant, quality content that answers what searchers are asking for. So if your AI content is deemed low-quality and irrelevant, it will rank low in search results.
Google cracks down on AI content that is plain spammy or just reads a bit too robotic. The type of content that’s created just to influence search rankings, offering minimal to no added value and devoid of originality. Such content is often penalized, as it does not adhere to SEO content best practices.
Google's not too kind to content that's stuffed with irrelevant keywords, awkwardly machine-translated, generated with AI without offering any real value, or just scraped together from other sites without much thought or contribution.
These types are likely to be penalized. The effect of this penalty would likely be that the page (and sometimes the site) drops significantly in rankings on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
If your site is penalized over dodgy AI content, regaining lost credibility and trust is a tough climb. You need to improve content quality and consistency, adhering to Google’s guidelines for creating valuable, user-focused content. Then you might need to start rebuilding backlinks and revamping your technical SEO to restore the site’s authority and rankings.
Incorporating AI-driven SEO strategies in a way that prioritizes user experience and content quality can help you avoid such penalties and maintain high search rankings.
2. Manual actions or penalties
You should understand that Google is well advanced to the point that it can easily spot low-quality or auto-generated content. If it spots these kinds of content on your site, you could face manual penalties. How do you know if you've been hit? Easy. Just dive into your Google Search Console, check out the "Security & Manual Actions" section, and voila – any penalties will be laid out there, along with steps to fix them.
Getting slapped with a manual penalty is no joke. It can knock your site way down in Google's search rankings or even get it kicked out of the index (de-indexing). The guys at Indigo Extra conducted an experiment that showed how impactful auto-generated content that’s not edited can be to a site.
They added an AI-generated meta description and intro paragraph to one of their blog posts that was getting 40 clicks per day. This simple change sent their traffic plummeting to zero. Thankfully, rewriting the content by hand and resubmitting it on Google Console brought their numbers back up.
Google’s March 2024 update – a mix of spam and core updates – affected a lot of sites. The message is loud and clear: Google is cracking down hard on low-quality AI content. This underscores the need for a solid content strategy for SEO that prioritizes quality and user value, even when using SEO content writing AI tools.
But there is a difference between a drop in site performance because of algorithmic penalties vs. ranking declines caused by manual penalties. Algorithm changes are Google’s way of refining how they judge content quality, affecting many sites at once without any heads-up. Manual penalties, on the other hand, are direct hits for not playing by Google's rules, and Google will let you know about these through the Search Console.
If you catch a manual penalty, just fix the issues, then head over to the Search Console to plead your case by submitting a reconsideration request, making sure to detail all the improvements you've made.
But if your site's caught in the crossfire of an algorithm update, including those targeting AI content, don't expect any warnings in Search Console. The only thing you can do is keep an eye on your site's performance to spot any trouble.
With its latest policy updates, Google isn’t shutting the door on AI content. Instead, it's zeroing in on the quality and value of content. Just make sure everything, human-made or AI-crafted, meets a standard that values intent and usefulness above all else.
Key Elements of Google's SEO Ranking Strategy in 2025
Google’s algorithm, famously shrouded in mystery, actually uses over 200 factors to decide who claims the top spots in search results. These include backlinks, content quality, user experience, keyword optimization, brand signals, social signals, schema markup, domain age, SSL certificate, and more. But in 2025, here are the four most important ones.
1. Content Quality
Content quality is the most important SEO factor. Google prioritizes content that provides value, dives deep into topics, and answers searches accurately. This is where a solid content strategy for SEO comes into play.
If your content scratches more than just the surface by offering detailed insights or fascinating tidbits, you're on the right track. You should always create content that goes beyond the basics, adding significant value with charts, tables, interviews and actionable information that go beyond copying or rewriting from existing sources.
While content length isn’t a ranking factor. Quality content usually has one thing going for it: depth. That’s why longer, comprehensive content often climbs to the top. Studies have shown that the average content length for pages on the first page of Google results is 1,400 words.
Another hallmark of quality content is that it meets the user’s search intent. What does a person searching for the “best Lululemon dupes” want? They probably are looking to make a purchase. An article comparing different Lululemon dupes and detailing specific pricing for each would have met users’ search intent for that keyword.
Google knows when users want to learn (informational searches), make a purchase (commercial searches), find a website (navigational keywords), or complete a transaction (transactional keywords), and it pushes content that hits the mark to the top.
By incorporating AI-driven SEO strategies into your content creation process, you can optimize your content for better search engine rankings. For example, using AI tools to analyze your competitors' content and identify gaps in the market can help you create more comprehensive and valuable content.
Also, content penned or vetted by experts often carries more weight. Make sure the content on your site showcases expertise through factual accuracy and insights from people who are qualified to talk about specific topics. At a minimum, have each piece reviewed by someone who is well-trusted, an authority on the topic, or even an enthusiast who knows the topic well.
Note: If you have content written by a generalist freelance writer, if the content isn't ghost written, make sure the author attribution shows it's been reviewed by someone from your team who is more versed in the topic.
2. User Experience
Google’s algorithms prefer to rank websites that are easy to use higher—think fast loading times and smooth mobile views. Core Web Vitals are Google's way of keeping tabs on your site's speed and usability. These are a set of user experience metrics that influence your site's ranking. They include:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - measures the time it takes for the main content of a page to load. Google recommends an LCP score of 2.5 seconds or less.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - measures the stability of the page layout. That is, how much do elements of the page shift while it loads? A CLS score of 0.1 or less is recommended.
First Input Delay (FID)/Interaction to Next Paint (INP) - this measures how much of a delay the user gets when they click or interact with elements on the page. For a good page experience, the FID should be 100 milliseconds or less.
Apart from Core Web Vitals, you want to make sure your site’s on HTTPS. It’s non-negotiable. You have to meet this criteria to be considered as having a “Good” page experience based on Core Web Vitals. Sites on HTTP have a “Failing” status in the Core Web Vitals report.
Great user experience also means easy access for everyone, on any device, including those with disabilities. So you want to use descriptive links, clear and legible text, white space, images to break up text, and alternative texts for those images. Your content should also be easy to read and interact with on various devices and screen sizes.
Check out the Page Experience report in Google Search Console to see how you’re doing in terms of user experience. It shows you how your site stacks up in terms of speed, security, and other factors. For a URL to be included in the report, it must have data in the Core Web Vitals report, be indexed, and have appeared in Google Search.
3. Zero-Click Experiences
According to research from SparkToro and Datos, most Google searches now end right where they start—no clicking through needed. In the US, 58.5% of searches are zero-click while the percentage is 59.7% in the EU.
SEO as we know it has significantly changed. Time to start optimizing for things like AI Overviews, direct answers, and local packs that contribute to zero-click searches.
While the above report from SparkToro has some holes and is not representative enough of search data, it points out the importance of zero-click experiences in today’s SEO landscape.
Staying ahead in SEO in 2025 means balancing strategies to capture visibility without clicks with strategies that help you rank and drive clicks to your website. By leveraging AI-driven SEO strategies, you can optimize your website for both zero-click and click-through experiences, and stay ahead of the competition.
4. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust)
As mentioned before, E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor. But it’s the main criteria used by Google’s Search Quality Raters (people employed by Google to provide feedback on search results). It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
Think of it as Google's way of sorting the real deal from the wannabes. While it doesn’t directly decide how your page ranks, it influences how these raters perceive your content. And it’s especially crucial for assessing content creators in “Your Money or Your Life” niches like finance and health, where the wrong info could put people in a big mess.
So if you’ve got credentials or solid field experience, especially in sensitive areas like health or financial advice, flaunt them. These prove you're not just another Joe Bloggs.
Among the E-E-A-T components, trust is the most important. That is, your content should be both accurate and reliable. So if you have all the credentials but your content is 5 years old, it’s likely not going to rank. Apart from updated information and factual accuracy, trust factors in website security (HTTPS), a clear about us page or about the author page where people can know more about you or your authors, and transparent policies.
Understand that optimizing for E-E-A-T might not do anything for your rankings, but that criteria is your best bet for figuring out what Google means by 'high-quality' content. This alignment with Google’s quality guidelines is crucial, even when employing AI-driven SEO strategies, as it helps ensure that your content is perceived as trustworthy and authoritative by both users and search engines.
How to Adapt Your Content Strategy for AI-Driven SEO
Yes. SEO has changed and it's time to tweak your content strategy to keep up with these changes. Gone are the days when stuffing your article with keywords was enough. Now, thanks to AI-driven algorithms like RankBrain, it's all about getting what the searcher really means. So, making your content match searcher intent and optimizing for semantic search are keys to nailing SEO now.
SEO's not just evolving; it's doing a full-on sprint thanks to AI tools. For digital marketers, this means embracing tech to supercharge content creation with smart keyword and competitor research, and constantly tweaking strategies based on new insights.
1. Prioritize High-Quality Content Creation
The secret to winning at SEO is simple: create content that clicks with people, not search algorithms. You should zero in on what your audience wants and provide information they’ll find valuable and relevant. This will boost your ranking on Google, as their AI algorithms prioritize user engagement.
If you’ve seen your rankings drop, that should be a wake up call. You are probably missing the mark on actually helpful content; have outdated information on your site; lack E-E-A-T; or your content is just too search-engine centric (keyword-stuffed). If you want to thrive in today’s SEO landscape, your content has to have depth. Depth shows expertise and authority. Long, juicy articles that cover a topic from A to Z keep readers hooked and show you know your stuff.
You should also raise dwell time and reduce bounce rates by making content well-organized and easy to read. Break your content into bite-sized chunks with headings and bullet points. It’s a win-win for you. It enhances your users’ experience and aids comprehension for search bots when they scan your page.
TODO: Analyze your existing content for opportunities to enrich thin articles into definitive guides, augment content with data and expert insights, and ensure information is current. A solid site-wide content refresh can really boost your SEO results, especially when combined with AI-driven SEO strategies that prioritize user experience and relevance.
2. Focus on Building User Trust and Authority (EEAT)
Trust is everything online. So when creating content, it’s crucial to ensure it is not just accurate and up-to-date, but that your website is secure with HTTPS, and hackers can’t just hack into it and steal people’s information. If you're talking about stuff like health or finances - areas that are really sensitive and can affect people's lives - being a source people can count on is a must.
Content from qualified people — for example, health articles reviewed by medical professionals, real estate software reviews by real estate professionals or with insights from actual user interviews — can improve how Google’s Search Quality Raters perceive the quality of your website’s content. Apart from that, letting people see your credentials and real-world wins makes your content a hundred times more engaging. It's like saying, "Hey, I've been there, done that, and I've got the battle scars to prove it."
So don’t just slap a name on your articles. Your bio should show why you're the person to trust. With the web getting crowded with AI content and iffy sources, revealing your expertise makes all the difference in winning your audience's trust. That initial user engagement boost helps the AI algorithms rank your content higher.
What about authority? Google assesses a site’s authority partly by the quantity, quality and relevancy of its backlinks (links from other sites). Think of it like high school popularity, but in a good way. The more quality shout-outs (or backlinks) you get, the cooler you look. You want to get links from the big players in your niche. If you can get enough of these, all you need to do is just sit back and watch your site's authority and credibility skyrocket.
Note: Hiding the author’s name behind the brand is not a smart move for SEO, unless the brand is a well-known authority on the topic.
3. Leverage AI Tools for Efficiency
Let AI sweat the small stuff—like data crunching, spotting trends, and even content optimization. That way, you can pour your heart into creating content that's not just engaging but aligns with your business goals.
AI might be great at crunching numbers and spitting out insights fast. But it’s our human insight and creativity that turn those into strategies that actually work. So use AI for fast content strategizing, employing it to find keywords and content trends, but ensure to edit and fine tune these if you want better end results. This is the way to combine efficiency with quality, and create a solid foundation for your AI-driven SEO strategies.
Using AI for keyword research
One of the limitations of old-school keyword tools is that most of them mostly give exact match keyword suggestions. Results for “guest posting” could include long-form terms like “guest posting sites”, “guest posting opportunities”, etc. Tools like SEO.ai offer more keyword variety, which can be a game-changer for high-quality content creation.
For example, a search for guest posting for real estate investors gave me keywords like, “real estate guest post opportunities”, and “guest blogging in real estate”. These results work well as LSI keywords, and aren’t just exact match keywords.
But the best way to use these AI keyword research tools is to combine them with traditional keyword research tools. For example, after I’ve gotten my list of new keywords, I would search them all in a tool like Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner to get insights into each keyword’s search volume and difficulty. For instance, my search showed me that “guest blogging in real estate” isn’t really a good keyword.
Some AI tools like Junia offer complementary data from mainstream keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner. So with each keyword generated, you get information on cost per click, search volume and competition without having to leave Junia.
And then there are AI-driven platforms like Semrush that help you spy on competitors' keywords, so you can figure out how to outsmart them with your own keyword strategies.
Using AI for topic brainstorming
AI tools like Wondershare's EdrawMind help you with topic brainstorming. Simply enter a topic and use the "AI Intelligent Creation" feature to unlock unique insights within seconds.
HyperWrite also has an AI Brainstorming Tool that makes creative sessions fun, helping content teams overcome creative blocks. Just type in a problem, topic, or question and let the AI, powered by GPT-4, surprise you with a wide array of ideas.
Most of these AI brainstorming tools support live collaboration. You can share, edit, and refine ideas with team members in real time. This can be especially useful when developing AI-driven SEO strategies, as it enables you to generate and refine ideas quickly and efficiently.
A study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School shows that when given the right prompts, AI’s ability to generate good ideas can rival that of humans.
The study claims there are three crucial elements for effective ideation: producing many ideas, producing good ideas, and producing varied ideas. AI can generate dozens of ideas in minutes, but variety remains something it struggles with. ChatGPT, for instance, can brainstorm hundreds of ideas rapidly but tends to offer similar ones.
For wider idea variety, the researchers recommend using the "Chain of Thought" prompting strategy. This means you start by generating 100 catchy titles, assess each for uniqueness and boldness, and then flesh them out with detailed descriptions. This method combats the AI’s lean towards repetition and encourages bold, distinct ideas.
Here's the original prompt they used (in ChatGPT):
"Generate new product ideas with the following requirements: The product will target college students in the United States. It should be a physical good, not a service or software. I'd like a product that could be sold at a retail price of less than about USD 50. The ideas are just ideas. The product need not yet exist, nor may it necessarily be clearly feasible.
Follow these steps. Do each step, even if you think you do not need to.
First generate a list of 100 ideas (short titles only).
Second, go through the list and determine whether the ideas are different and bold. Modify the ideas as needed to make them bolder and more different. No two ideas should be the same. This is important!
Next, give the ideas a name and combine it with a product description. The name and idea are separated by a colon and followed by a description. The idea should be expressed as a paragraph of 40-80 words. Do this step by step!"
Here's how I modified it for a content marketer who wants to reach real estate agents:
"Generate new blog post/article ideas with the following requirements: The ideas will target real estate agents in the United States. They should be engaging and should offer value that improves the lives of real estate agents. I'd like some of these ideas to tie back to our service: we provide local SEO marketing services for real estate agents.
Follow these steps. Do each step, even if you think you do not need to.
First generate a list of 100 ideas
Second, go through the list and determine whether the ideas are different and valuable to real estate agents. Modify the ideas as needed to make them more valuable and more different. No two ideas should be the same. This is important!
Next, create a short intro for each idea. Each idea should be separated by a colon and followed by its intro. Each idea should be expressed as a paragraph of 40-80 words. Do this step by step".
You’ll see that the ideas are great but they aren’t unique. The AI has drawn them from all over the web. So based on what the researchers found, you should always kickstart your ideation process with the human touch, then use AI’s research skills to generate more unique ideas based on those ideas you came up with yourself. This is how to get truly groundbreaking and creative ideas.
Using AI for content optimization
Imagine sifting through mountains of surveys, customer reviews, and sales calls in minutes, not days. That's the magic of AI tools for us marketers. They spot trends and gems we might miss, guiding our content to perfectly deliver what our audience wants.
If you’re in SEO, then you probably know the feeling of always having something to do. That's where AI comes in, tackling tedious tasks like site crawls, rank tracking across various devices and locations, and monitoring mentions and link building opportunities so you can breathe easier and focus on tasks that are more fun. HubSpot says by delegating some tasks to AI, SEO professionals save an average of 12.5 hours per week.
Using AI content optimization tools like Frase, you can scan your content pieces and tweak things like headlines and intros to align with SEO best practices or create structured data easily. These tools can also assist with generating internal links, and improving content structure and user experience. By incorporating AI-driven SEO strategies, you can streamline your workflow and boost your online visibility.
4. Optimize for Semantic Search
Traditional keyword optimization is old school. You have to think about the semantics or meaning of words and their relationships to each other. By digging into how terms relate to each other, AI-driven semantic search pushes us to create content that’s not just rich but super relevant.
The idea behind semantic search is “why do people type what they type?” (What do they intend to find?). Get this right, and your content will always hit the mark, really connecting with what your audience is searching for—not just playing a matching game with keywords. This is one of the key benefits of optimizing for semantic search.
Optimizing for semantic search also means your writing should be clear and to-the-point, and sentences should naturally flow with each other. It also includes creating content that has depth and incorporating internal and external links to establish topical authority.
Implementing topic clusters and pillar content
To create topic clusters, you pick a topic that's both broad and specific. The core topic should be relevant to your brand, cater to your audience’s interest and have enough angles from which you can generate multiple related subtopics. For example, if your big idea is “apartment decoration”, you could have sub-pages covering things like “kitchen decor” and “living room furniture” to create thematic relevance.
Then conduct keyword research to find more ideas related to the pillar page idea. Use your keyword tool to assess search intent, volume and difficulty for all your topics.
After you've mapped out your pillar and its subpages, it's showtime! Create content that's not just good but provides substantial value for readers. Make your pillar page the mothership that connects all your content on a particular theme together. Doing internal linking in this way isn’t just handy for your readers; it also gives search engines a guided tour of your site and improves your site’s overall topical authority on the topic. Here’s an example from Apartment Therapy.
Using natural language and a conversational tone
Get inside your reader's head! Ask yourself, ‘Why are they searching?’ Are they hunting for information, shopping, or just trying to navigate your site? When you nail their 'why,' your content will appear more relevant – and rank higher as a result.
When writing, ditch the jargon, and keep things engaging by breaking down the brainy stuff. Writing in a tone that’s conversational (human) not only helps you connect with your readers, it helps search engines (which now use natural language models) better understand your content.
Also, you may want to consider addressing frequently asked questions related to your topic. By providing clear answers to these queries, you increase your chances of getting in the “people also ask” section of Google or even in AI Overviews.
Note: Write in an active voice, avoid redundancy, and explain concepts with examples or analogies. Providing clear, direct answers to user queries will help search engines better understand and rank your content.
Using related keywords
Though Google claims it doesn’t use LSI keywords directly in its ranking algorithm, incorporating related terms helps clarify your topic. Optimizing for keywords alone doesn’t cut it anymore. Now Google digs deeper into the overall theme by considering related terms too. This is where AI-driven SEO strategies come into play, helping you identify and incorporate the right related keywords to boost your content's relevance.
For example, if I’m writing a post about 'cold brew coffee', words like 'filter', 'temperature', ‘grind’ and 'ice' can significantly provide search engines (and people) with more context about my topic. You should spice up your content with these types of related keywords to score relevance points with Google.
So how do you find these related keywords? You can use the AI keyword tools we mentioned before, look at Google Autocomplete for suggestions or check out the bold terms in Google Snippet descriptions. You can use these in title tags, image alt text, subheaders and throughout your content.
But make sure you’re not over-optimizing or keyword stuffing. What I do personally is use the primary keyword once every 500 words (wherever it makes sense) and use the secondary keywords at least once or twice throughout the text. Cramming your content with keywords not only makes you look unprofessional, it means you lose points on user experience, which now drops your content lower in rankings.
5. Leverage Structured Data
Structured data is like giving Google a cheat sheet about your content containing the most important information it needs to classify it accordingly. By using schema markup, you're basically telling search engines what your content is about, making it easier for them to show it off to the right people.
Back in the day, Schema Markup was all about targeting those featured snippets in search results to boost clicks. Now, in 2024 and beyond, it’s more about making sure AI understands the context and meaning behind your content so it can match searches perfectly.
Think of Schema Markup as building a bridge (content knowledge graph) between your site’s content and the rest of the web. It helps Google stitch together the big picture of what your content is connected to, making it super helpful in today’s AI-driven search world.
Types of schema markup relevant to blog content
I. Article Schema: This clues in search engines about your article's headline, who wrote it, when it was published, and what it's all about. This helps improve its visibility in search results.
Ii. BlogPosting Schema: This is a special type of Article Schema tailor-made for blog posts. It doesn't just share the basics with search engines; it goes the extra mile, giving them information about your blog's name and URL.
Iii. BreadcrumbList Schema: This schema markup makes it super easy for search engines to figure out how your blog post fits into your website’s overall structure. It lays out a breadcrumb trail from your homepage right to your latest post, making navigation a breeze for search engines.
Tools for implementing structured data
I. Google Structured Data Markup Helper
This free beginner-friendly tool from Google helps you get started with structured data without having to learn how to create code. It visually guides you through the process of tagging elements on your webpage. Just input your URL, pick your data type, and highlight elements to add relevant tags.
You can test the generated code for errors using either the Rich Results test or the Schema Markup Validator tool. Once you’re done, just copy the generated code into your site’s HTML.
Ii. Schema App
Schema App helps streamline the creation and management of structured data for your website. Whether you’re using their handy WordPress plugin or their comprehensive suite of tools, you’re equipped to automate schema markup implementation, build content knowledge graphs for your website, and monitor structured data performance.
You can use the free version as a WordPress plugin to access basic structured data creation features but the premium plans (which start at $50/month/user/domain) support other CMS platforms like Drupal and BigCommerce. It also unlocks advanced features like bulk editing and custom schemas.
Iii. Merkle Schema Markup Generator
Want to generate schema markup quickly but dread the coding part? Merkle’s Schema Markup Generator has got your back. This tool is known for its ease of use. It makes it straightforward to create and apply different schema types.
Future-Proofing Your Content Strategy
As AI reshapes content creation, it's time to blend its efficiency with our creative spark. At the same time, we must recognize that while we can streamline processes with AI, human creativity and insights still remain central to creating winning content strategies. We should harness AI to amplify our strengths, not replace them.
And how do you future proof your content strategy against coming changes influenced by advancements in AI? It begins with a content audit. Just dive into the crucial metrics - search rankings, clicks, and conversions. Identify gaps, opportunities, and what’s not working. Periodic assessments of your content strategy allow you to be able to pivot quickly to align your content with current SEO content best practices.
Also, you need to really get the buyer’s journey. This is the secret sauce to drafting content that resonates. This is something AI can’t do - really understand and put itself in the buyer’s shoes. And creating content that matches searcher intent is not only crucial for SEO, but also important for your conversions. So nowadays, it's not just about creating content. You should always ask: how do I create empathy and guide my audience smoothly towards a purchase with my content?
Stay informed about AI advancements in search
As platforms like Google and Microsoft reinvent search with AI, the rules of web traffic are being rewritten. It’s vital to keep up—if you want your content to stay visible and relevant, you need to stay on top of these AI shifts and the constant changes to how content is indexed.
Historical patterns show that search engines are more prone to evolve rather than change completely. Features like voice search and AI aren’t replacing the old ways—they’re enhancing them.
By keeping up with AI advancements in search and in marketing as a whole, your brand can adapt to and thrive as new potent search mediums arise. You’ll be able to leverage and optimize your content for these platforms also, using AI-driven SEO strategies to stay ahead of the curve.
Cultivate adaptability in your content team
To future-proof your content strategy, encourage a culture of flexibility and innovation. This allows you to easily pivot in response to changes.
You can boost adaptability in your team by breaking down silos. Get your content creators collaborating with marketing, sales, and customer service. The fresh, diverse perspectives they get will help them create content strategies that address real pain points and emerging trends, and can be quickly adjusted based on real-time feedback.
Also, you want to provide regular training for your content team on the latest tools, technologies, SEO and content marketing trends. By investing in their professional growth, you equip them with the necessary skills to adapt to new digital marketing changes fast.
Balance innovation with proven SEO fundamentals
Even though AI now has a big influence on search, the good old SEO basics still apply. So keep your content relevant and useful, nailing what your readers actually want.
Future-proofing your content strategy demands keeping tabs on the latest SEO technologies and watching the metrics to spot trends in user behavior. You want to regularly analyze performance metrics and tweak your strategy as you go. If something doesn’t work, change it quickly.
Create content that stands the test of time by cutting through the noise and serving up fresh takes, deep dives, and firsthand information. Sure, AI can generate factual content, but it can't generate opinionated pieces or deeply researched content that reflect individual expertise, first-hand experience, or proprietary research. These types of content stand out in a crowded digital landscape where bland AI-generated content proliferates.
Conclusion
Google's AI Overviews are shaking things up in the SEO world. These changes require content marketers to create detailed, specific content that addresses niche topics and user queries comprehensively. They also need to know the nitty-gritty of working with structured data and the benefits of answering frequently asked questions in each content piece.
Hopefully this article has provided some clarity on all these, as well as the importance of highlighting author credibility and expertise in every piece. Google is no longer just looking for content; they're after authority and personality, and that's something your team probably already has in spades.
Lastly, the rules have changed and so has the nature of what constitutes a “ranking”. In this day and age, rankings do not just apply to articles and blog posts. It’s time to branch out—articles, podcasts, videos, infographics, you name it. Every piece of digital turf counts. Now it's all about making your mark across the board.
Agnes Gaddis has been an SEO expert and SEO content creator for over 9 years, across real estate, finance and marketing with publications on websites like Inman, Bankrate, GetResponse, Mention, SparkRental, Rentals.com, Credit.com, among others. Right now, she writes confident content for real estate investing companies and platforms. You can connect with her on X (@alanagaddis)
