Buzz Word: "AI" - Are There Near Term Impacts on SEO?

We hate to be cliché, but is a note on AI in SEO expected? We would be remiss to avoid a comment. Although the long term implications of AI will definitely change this space, we foresee true long-term impact such as shorter turn around times for content and code writing. How search products and services are found will be different, and require new ways of listing/indexing to meet different algorithm requirements. But there is still some unknown here, and we will save this for a later discussion, including how to start setting the base for this future in marketing. The near term looks less daunting, and we want to ensure we continue to excel and drive more business.

If we are thinking how to strategize for a two year horizon, the basic principles still apply. Ensuring you have good content and page structure is still a dominant philosophy. Working to ensure your meta tags and schema markup truly reflect the work you are looking to acquire. Additionally, consistency and accuracy in content that provides the best user/customer experience continues to be the drivers of winning "points" with search algorithms.

One key element where we are seeing AI being used is the generation of content for webpages, blogs, social media and other digital media streams. You may have heard the story of the agency "The Clueless" who, in a time of desperation to find social media influencers, created a Spanish model names Aitana Lopez, fully built on artificial intelligence. She has a very successful social media account which, as of writing this article, has 294k followers and is generating over $11,000 per month in revenue for "her" agency. While AI engines like ChatGPT are being heavily used to pump out faster websites and more frequent posts in what seems to be a new "arms" race to be more discoverable online, our observations in the near-term market tells a different SEO story. Because the AI based models for now, primarily draw from other sources to reconstruct written content, we find the algorithms sometimes penalize SEO based on a percentage of content it may classify as plagiarism in the newly created content. This is high enough to be a negative ranking factor. This obviously changes very quickly as the pace of AI enhancement improves to become more generative

On the other hand, image generation through AI paints a different picture. The near term impact on time and cost savings for marketing has been quite impactful. Using tools like DALL-E and the right set of commands, visual content can be delivered in minutes and used on marketing media to improve the quality of websites and blogs posts. Even more impressive is the newly released SORA from OpenAI, which is a text to video generator with industry changing results in the early release. This would normally take hours, days or weeks, depending on your marketing team's availability, and whether or not a photo or video shoot is required. If these AI tools are used correctly, there is an opportunity to improve the pace of marketing today and as a result, have a positive impact on SEO. We use the words "used correctly" intentionally here, as on a recent information session with Microsoft and their integration of DALL-E, an interesting question was raised. What about copyright infringement on image creation? The answer is not completely clear and still extremely gray as these waters are so uncharted. However, we know the image can be made without the inclusion of trademarks, and be generated quite organically with the right command. For example, if one was looking to build a picture of someone using facial tissue, it would help to make sure you do not use in the command a trademarked name that we today unconsciously associate with facial tissue, like "Kleenex." This would ensure a logo for that brand is not generated somewhere in your image. Additionally, the more specific one can be in the request, the better the output.

The use of AI today and tomorrow are going to be very different in the marketing industry, with game changing opportunities. Today, as we factor SEO and the use of these time saving tools, going fast is the obvious use case. Our near-term experience however is highlighting that anecdotally, search results with written content are negatively affected, while image generating has a more immediate beneficial use case. This is not to say it will not change. As AI assistants and generative models continue to improve, and algorithms or how data is processed with AI changes, the SEO landscape will have to adjust as well. Our advice, continue to execute with the core principles for today, and begin planning to prepare for a transition in the next 1-3 years. If you would like help in creating a plan to support these steps reach out to inquire, we would be happy to have a discussion. Today, the more conversation we have around this new world, the better the planning will be for brand differentiation, growth, and success in the future for SEO based marketing.

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