Just a few years ago, the concept of AI Content Optimization was still in the realm of speculation and “one of these days” thinking. Innovative AI technologies, like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, are rapidly changing how we do things and even how we think about the things we are doing. As with every other major innovation, we need to consider how to integrate with and incorporate these changes into our content creation strategies while still keeping the “human touch” that draws our readers in and keeps them coming back.
Introduction
There is plenty of hype concerning AI-generated content and what ChatGPT and Google’s Bard can do as if this was new technology. It’s not. AI has been around for many years. We have had virtual assistants to help us manage our time, easily find what we are looking for online, and suggest sites to see and places to eat. Google and other search engines are improving at recognizing the words we type in and the intent of what we are looking for, even if we do not always express it clearly.
To bring fresh, relevant content to our customers, we must understand their needs and wants. Historically, content creation has been a challenging and often time-consuming task involving market analysis of potential, ideal customers and what our competitors are doing to attract them. Understanding these markets, how people are searching, and what will get them to click on our links takes skill and a lot of highly repetitive tasks.
AI offers the possibility to go through these processes more efficiently and create content that reaches prospective customers effectively.
AI Content Generation Overview
Generating content that follows Google’s E-A-T guidelines and is “by humans and for humans” is critical but often time-consuming. Laying the groundwork for the success of your content involves researching keywords, titles, descriptions, and outlines that will get you noticed, get people to your content, and keep them engaged.
AI-based content optimization refers to using AI algorithms and tools trained to understand SEO best practices and what resonates with your clients to create, optimize, and manage your content. The goal is to streamline the content creation process and make it more efficient, more effective, and data-driven.
Using AI for Content Creation
Good writing takes time, skill, a high degree of creative thinking, and experience. However, there are aspects of the writing process where AI can come alongside and help out. Guided by skillful and knowledgeable people, AI can automate, optimize, curate, analyze, and manage content efficiently and take at least some guesswork out of creating great content.
In this section, we will dive into the various ways AI is revolutionizing the content creation process and explore the applications of AI to generate meaningful content.
Content Automation
All of the techniques mentioned here are things that any good SEO/Marketing practitioner is already doing for you. AI brings nothing new to the table in terms of the tasks that need to be performed. Instead, what it does is speed up the process.
Keyword Research
Identifying keywords relevant to your niche and audience is foundational to reaching your audience. AI-powered tools can quickly analyze search trends and competitor keywords to suggest the best keywords to target.
The Content Itself
Some people find writing difficult. Sometimes the ideas are just not there. At other times, they are there, but we can not find good ways to express them.
Using natural language processing (NLP) and natural language generation (NLG), AI-based content generators can write content based on your specified topic or keywords that are human-like in their language and tone.
Duplicate Content Check
Duplicated content is problematic. It causes problems and a lack of trust from readers. It also makes ranking that content higher because Google does not always know which content to present. AI can quickly scan your content and identify any duplicated content. This helps to ensure that your content is original and unique and avoids plagiarism.
Topic Clustering
A topic cluster is a group of interlinked web pages built around one piece of pillar content targeting a broad topic and linked to several related but more narrowly-focused pages. Think of this as the “You might also be interested in this article.”
Topic clusters help to increase engagement on your website once a visitor lands there. When developing a content strategy, take the time to consider what content is related and how you can tie pieces together. AI can group similar topics and keywords to help you identify those your audience is interested in.
Sentiment Analysis
It is all about your brand message. What feeling do you want people to have when they browse your site and – eventually – buy from you? Are you creating the experience for them to have those sentiments?
Properly trained, AI can analyze the tone and sentiment of your content to ensure that it is positive and aligned with your brand message.
AI Content Optimization
Using AI for content optimization can decrease the time it takes to create content that Google will want to recommend.
Getting noticed in search results pages can be difficult. At first, all you needed was to get the right keywords, and you stood a good chance of getting onto the first or second page of search results. Although keywords still play an important role in Google’s algorithms, there are many other factors to consider.
Keyword Optimization
There are a lot of questions when it comes to keywords and how to use them well.
- What are the best keywords to target?
- Can I really go after high-traffic keywords?
- Should I look at lower-traffic keywords or find ones more specific to my area?
- How many keywords should I use to not come off as spam?
- What are my competitors doing that is working?
The data is out there to answer these questions or to point you in the right direction. Analyzing that data takes time, and that is where AI comes in. It can help you identify the best keywords to target based on search trends and competitor analysis. It can also suggest optimizations for your existing content to make it more search-engine friendly.
Readability Analysis
You and your AI assistant have done all the work, and you have an excellent idea, good keywords, a catchy title, and a description, and written your copy. Your finger hovers over the mouse button, poised to click publish. You ask yourself:
- But is it any good?
- Does it make sense?
- Does it engage people?
- Is it too complicated or too simple for your intended audience?
- Does it resonate?
Grammarly and other tools can analyze the readability of your content and suggest optimizations to improve its readability and overall user experience by
- Pointing out spelling and grammatical errors
- Verb tense issues
- Passive/Active voice
- Too much similarity in sentence structure and length
- Sentences with unclear structure.
- Provide a reading level indicator of either a percentage or a grade level.
AI Managing Content Distribution
They say that content is king. It may well be that where to distribute it and when to do so are queen.
Marketers have known for years what the best times are for reaching out. They will send emails at the start of the day, at around noon, and again around the end of the work day because they know these are times when people are more likely to read and respond to emails.
Social media works the same way. There are times when your target audience will check into their accounts and scroll. Getting content posted during that time will increase the likelihood of it being seen.
Facebook and Twitter already offer to schedule posts during optimal when people who follow you or your business are online.
AI can also help you branch out into other channels based on the content of those channels.
AI Content Analysis
We have already looked at several factors that go into creating great content that will get noticed. What about after you hit publish and send it on its way? How well is it doing on its own and compared to your competition?
Tools like Ubersuggest, Semrush, and Google’s Search and Analytics consoles already provide a lot of metrics for tracking engagement rates, click-through rates, and others you will find helpful to optimize your content strategy.
Incorporating AI into your data generation and analysis can allow you to gain a deeper understanding of your content’s performance and make data-driven decisions to improve it.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence technologies have been around for many years and have become integral parts of our lives. As with every tool before, these technologies develop and improve over time.
Using AI in areas that have long been the domain of creative people is a new challenge, requiring skills and levels of knowledge and understanding in machine learning that has not existed before.
This still calls for skilled creators to learn how to use the tools to simplify and ultimately improve their work.
At Growth Zone Media, we believe your content should be written by human writers who will work with you to understand your business and what your customers are looking for. We may use AI tools in development and first drafts of your content, but we will always deliver content written by people.
We invite you to explore what we have to offer.