How Will AI Impact the Future of SEO?

Artificial Intelligence or AI has made inroads into various sectors such as healthcare, BFSI, logistics, eCommerce, marketing, and others. As AI evolves and becomes more sophisticated, its role in influencing SEO is getting more pronounced.

Wondering how the continuous evolution of artificial intelligence will change the future of SEO? Let us find out in the below-mentioned segments.

Today, AI is a leading technology in analyzing data and generating suitable outcomes for decision-making across sectors. So, it seems certain that the technology will influence and even dictate best SEO practices in the upcoming days. Simultaneously, with Google algorithms being changed periodically with the aim of improving the user experience, the SEO services are doing a catching up of sorts to adapt to the change.

Top ways AI is expected to impact SEO in the future

It needs to be understood that AI is an evolving technology used in SEO, which can provide the right data-based insights to satisfy the needs of the user. Check out the following points that tell how artificial intelligence will impact search engine optimization and what more changes can you expect in the near future.

1. Relevant and quality content will have more value

It can’t be denied that content still dominates search engine optimization. With regard to crawling the content, Google utilises NLP or Natural Language Processing to find its relevance with the search query. Hence, high-quality content will continue to retain its value in the upcoming years as it retains now.

Moreover, Google algorithms are constantly evolving in understanding things more deeply than before. So you’d be required to create more relevant content based on platforms, devices, trends, and formats.

Likewise, RankBrain (Google’s machine-learning AI system) utilises AI to embed massive volumes of written language into mathematical entities, named vectors, which the computer system can comprehend. At its core, RankBrain is a machine learning system that has taken Google from a “strings” to “things” environment. Here, machine learning refers to the process of leveraging mathematical models of data to instruct a computer system without using direct instructions. This enables the computer system to continuously learn and evolve based on the new scenarios it comes across.

In case RankBrain doesn’t find familiar words or phrases, the system makes a guess about the phrases or words that may have the same meaning and filters the result accordingly. Thus, it becomes easy to handle search queries that were never seen before.

2. Big data

Currently, data-driven marketing has high value because it drives results. Huge data sets help search engines to identify patterns that they couldn’t spot otherwise. With the help of AI, search engine algorithms can use big data to spot, take advantage of trends, and differentiate between similar users based on factors like:

• Age
• Gender
• Geography
• Education
• Profession
• Political affiliation
• Social media activity
• Cultural beliefs
• Search and browsing history
• Hobbies and interests
• Political affiliation
• Social media activity
• Race
• Connections to other users
• Date, day, or time
• Religious beliefs
• Marital status
• Purchase history

After that, big data is used quickly to spot user-behaviour patterns, trends, and fulfilment in search results so that higher quality results could be provided when searches are made in the future.

3. Optimizing visual content will have more value

According to many experts in the SEO community, visual content will have more impact on SEO in the coming years. We already know that search engine algorithms are getting good at recognising what an audio clip, video clip, and image are about. Visual content is gaining more importance and it’s clear that Google is getting better at analysing it.

Search engine algorithms coupled with AI could make visual content a big ranking factor in the near future. Hence, visual artists will have to consider SEO ranking variables when creating visual content. Just like content writers have to optimize headings and keywords to earn Google’s favour in SERPs. When it comes to SEO for videos, factors like tags, video length, descriptions, optimizing keywords, and others, will have more influence.

4. Search intent

To understand a user’s search intent, you’ve to gain insight into his or her past behavioural pattern and find out the reason behind the search query. Although Google has been focussing on it for some time now, it will gain more significance as AI’s role will increase in the upcoming iterations of the algorithm.

Not only you’ll have to think beyond the basic search phrase, but also consider what problem the user seeks to resolve.

When it comes to the search intent, there are four types of queries:

• Navigational queries based on a specific content for a particular URL. For instance, the user may type “YouTube” in the Google search bar to access the YouTube site instead of entering the URL on the browser or using a bookmark.
• Informational queries include an extensive range of queries, but finding the information is the main objective. For instance, a user may type “how do I prepare coffee?” or “making coffee” to get information related to the query.
• Commercial queries comprise both immediate purchase intent queries and information-seeking queries to buy at a later time.
• Transactional queries are referred to as those that includeactions such as creating an account, signing up for a newsletter, or could be just paying a bill. For instance, the user may type “how to create an account in Facebook” to get more information.

5. Optimising voice search

The rise of voice search in the last few years has been quite incredible and is likely to become the primary medium for search in the future. It’s expected that voice search coupled with AI will bring exceptional changes going forward. In other words, the days are not far when optimising for voice search will be a valuable ranking factor.

However, voice search brings an added challenge into the equation because search terms are a lot more varied plus they are phrased differently. For instance, when searching for services using a traditional text search, one might use a search phrase like “digital marketing in India”. On the other hand, in voice search, they may use a conversational tone, such as “which is the best digital marketing company for repairing services?”

Although AI is theoretically capable now to understand that queries like these are pointing to the same thing, it would be wise to consider little hand-holding, particularly in the beginning.

Nevertheless, it’s just a straightforward subject of sound copywriting.

Final thoughts

Artificial Intelligence taking over the world is no more a hypothesis, but a truth actualizing over time. Besides, it has touched various aspects of our lives and has been evolving for many years. Likewise, AI-powered search engine algorithms are going to get better over time.

So, the important thing is to keep up with these developments, do research, and learn, to take advantage of them in increasing your brand’s visibility both in SERPs and social media platforms.