Artificial intelligence has experienced rapid growth and integration across many sectors during the past year: with technology evolving at a greater pace than ever before, it provides faster, more intuitive and accurate results, and has become a valuable tool for marketers, offering benefits such as accelerated research, streamlined workflows and improved efficiency.
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The global AI market is expected to exceed £1.1 trillion in value by 2030, with 79% of company CEOs believing it will increase efficiency, according to a Fortune/Deloitte survey. More than half feel it will increase growth opportunities and 61% believe generative AI in particular will enhance customer personalisation and engagement. This rapid evolution has prompted digital marketing agencies to reassess their strategies, particularly concerning user intent behind search queries.
How is AI changing the way we search?
The core objective of using search engines to connect users with relevant information remains the same, however, the use of AI has fundamentally changed the way search engine results pages (SERPs) are displayed.
Providing immediate answers
The introduction of AI overviews (AIO) on Google produces fast answers to search queries. Rather than relying on the previous practice of browsing through multiple websites, AIOs curate information relevant to the search to provide an immediate answer to the query.
Traditionally, search engines have returned a list of results, ranked on the basis of keyword relevance, quality and backlinks. However, AI delivers concise answers, rather than simply links, creating synthesised, conversational summaries at the top of SERPs. This change reduces the need for users to click through to external sites, as the information they require is often visible directly within the results.
More personalised responses
AI may herald a change in how users search for results: knowing that an AIO is going to appear allows them to refine their initial searches for more personalised responses where traditional results may lack relevance. This contextual personalisation of results means search engines can tailor content based on user intent, search history and even real-time behavioural signals.
Other visual elements, such as knowledge panels and “People also ask” boxes, are also generated algorithmically and populated by AI models that understand the semantic relationship between queries and content.
How does AI impact the approach to Digital Marketing?
More than ever, agencies need to consider the intent behind a user’s search query and target keyword. The evolution of AI highlights the importance of producing appropriate content that aligns with its understanding of relevance. User-centric design, top quality content and structured data are now even more critical.
Squashing SEO myths
The phrase “SEO is dead because of AI” resurfaces with just about every major technological leap or algorithm update. Some digital industry insiders suggest traditional search engine optimisation will become obsolete in the foreseeable future, due to the increasing relevance of artificial intelligence. However, nothing could be further from the truth, as SEO is evolving too, becoming more crucial than ever to your digital marketing strategy.
AIOs largely appear for more informational queries, meaning they may have more impact on traditional SEO results when targeting informational keywords. For product or service based queries, search has remained largely unchanged for the time being, so all the same SEO practices still apply.
SEO will adapt to the technology it serves. Just as it adapted to earlier technological developments, such as mobile-first indexing and voice search, it’s now evolving to make the most of AI’s increasing role in search. The fundamentals will always remain crucial: the difference lies in how the content is discovered and interpreted by artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence from a marketing perspective
Content optimised for AI-driven systems will perform better for both AI-generated summaries and traditional SERPs. AIOs cite where information is taken from, offering more opportunity from a marketing perspective by considering generative search optimisation alongside SEO.
Digital marketers must provide authoritative, well-structured content with relevant context, as it is more likely to be referenced by AI-generated answers. Rather than diminishing the need for SEO, on the contrary, it raises the bar in terms of quality and credibility.
Content needs to be based on reliable sources, as search engines will continue to rely heavily on authoritative websites for their AI responses. This means that earning backlinks, while maintaining strong expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness signals, is becoming more important than ever.
How can Digital Marketers benefit from using AI?
Digital marketers have long banished the likes of keyword stuffing and link farms. SEO today is about further understanding searcher intent to ensure optimal user experience.
The AI boom has introduced tools for nearly every aspect of digital marketing that can help marketers with day-to-day tasks. It makes each task easier than before. There are various tasks that can benefit from the use of AI:
- Topic research
- Content ideas
- Data analysis
- Image/graphic concepts
- Web design mock-ups
- Website technical issues
Topic research
Traditionally, digital marketers would spend many hours scrolling through search data, keyword planners and competitor content. Now, AI-powered platforms can deliver instant insights, using natural language processing and machine learning to suggest content themes, enabling marketers to make informed decisions in a fraction of the time.
Content ideas
Brainstorming content ideas can be a time consuming activity, but AI can speed it up by analysing data from search engines, social media and content platforms to create relevant and fresh ideas. Various AI tools can help marketers by creating a basis for copy, giving them relevant ideas to work on.
Data analysis
Digital marketing generates a massive amount of data, including website traffic and paid ad conversions. Interpreting it can be time consuming, especially when recovering actionable insights. AI can streamline the process by automating the collection and interpretation of performance metrics, enabling more agile campaign management.
Image and graphic concepts
AI-powered design tools can rapidly generate image concepts, social media graphics and visual mock-ups from text prompts, using generative AI to suggest styles, layouts and themes that will align with campaign goals and brand identity. This means marketers can work to quicker turnaround times and employ greater experimentation.
Web design mock-ups
AI design tools can enable marketers to generate web mock-ups in a fraction of the time. This speeds up the concept-to-prototype process and reduces the design cycle to ensure a smoother and more efficient process.
Website technical issues
Today’s AI tools use intelligent algorithms to diagnose broken links, crawl errors, page speed issues and other problems automatically, prioritising issues and providing clear recommendations for resolutions.
Are there any negative effects to using AI for Digital Marketing?
Views on AI in relation to content are mixed, but the general consensus is that AI is super effective for research, planning and drafts. However, it requires human interaction to ensure additional factors that can’t be replicated by AI are considered.
What are Google’s views on AI content?
Google’s stance is that the method of content creation, whether AI or human, is not as important as the quality: if it meets recognised standards, it can perform well in search rankings. Google has also stated it will take action against low-quality, auto-generated content designed solely to manipulate the rankings.
Avoid repetitive campaigns
Marketers should always maintain editorial oversight when using AI to ensure the content is accurate and aligned with user needs and brand identity. Any factual errors and generic spam can have a negative impact on a page’s search ranking and overall credibility. Fact checking and recognising authoritative sources will always be crucial. The main fear of using AI to completely automate whole processes, projects and campaigns is that they might start to look repetitive and lose their individuality.
The takeaways
There must always be a human element in every marketing campaign: while AI can be incredibly useful, human input is and will remain vital to achieve the best results.
