Have you noticed how marketers love to write epitaphs?
SEO is dead (has been for a while)
Blogging is dead (everyone’s on social media now)
Facebook is for your grandmother (why are you messing with granny?)
Every week, someone declares something irrevocably dead.
But nothing has been responsible for as many casualties as AI. OpenAI barely launched ChatGPT in November last year when these articles started popping.
Blogging, SEO, programming, copywriting, ANY kind of writing, graphic design, digital art — all are drawing their last breath according to some.
Will someone stop this serial killer already?
Is this threat real?
To some extent, yes. But it’s not time to write epitaphs yet. In fact, the impact of AI on SEO and blogging looks more like a transformation than a mercy kill.
Before I dig into this, a quick caveat: I have skin in this game. I run an SEO-content-centric digital marketing agency, so I’ve made this analysis many, many times. Here’s why I won’t be shutting down my agency any time soon and why you shouldn’t stop investing in SEO and blogging either:
Zero-click content isn’t new
Back in 2020, we found out that two-thirds of Google searches ended without a click. Answer boxes and expanded search results, along with voice assistants started to spell doom for SEOs.
[I’ve written more about the zero-click world and its impact on marketing here.]
AI-assisted search brings a new whiff of doom. If you can get the answer straight from ChatGPT, Bing, or Bard, why bother clicking?
Search itself can’t die. People will keep searching — we’re always going to need answers. But as AI gains more traction, websites get fewer clicks.
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If search is changing, optimization for it has to change as well. And so does the content we create.
This change is welcome, especially for the users, albeit this transformation may hurt SEOs and writers a bit. Here’s why we need the change:
SEO kinda broke search
Since Google launched the EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) guidelines online writers got the message: to build expertise and authoritativeness you need to write A LOT. And write we did.
Long-form content worked like a charm. Articles upwards of 3000 words were almost always winners and, if you could churn out 5000+ words on a topic on a decently-rated website, you had a top-ranking position saved for you.
In the meantime, Google added another E to EAT (for experience) because oh, boy, the experience of readers who had to sift through 3000 words to get to that one nugget of information they needed was SO poor.
Let’s be honest here: for users, most SEO content was anything but valuable as it made it nearly impossible to find objective information. With very few exceptions, like Wikipedia, the first results are commercial ones, from companies that cover the topic at hand exhaustively but also have an angle to their coverage, something to sell you.
The advent of AI may change all that and finally turn the tables in favor of the users. Because AI is very, very good at something and, with access to the internet it will only get better:
Summaries and curation instead of full articles
Personally, I’m not a fan of book or article summaries. I understand the need to get to the gist of the problem quickly but this penchant for speeding up everything under the sun robs us of a lot of beauty. While a summary of, say, Jonathan Franzen’s Corrections is a crime against the beauty of language, I can understand why you’d want 10 articles on the same topic synthesized into a 200-word blurb.
Truth be told, there is a lot of content out there, perhaps too much of it.And most blog posts never get a single reader anyway.
My prediction is that AI, coupled with zero-click content, will get even less organic traffic to most websites.
Still,
It’s not all doom and gloom for the SEO industry
My agency’s clients are still getting very good results from SEO blogging, so I wouldn’t recommend cutting this tactic from your arsenal yet. Remember: these are speculations, not facts. They are here to prepare you for a potential outcome, not for a certain future.
SEO writing still works and it will continue to work for a few more years at least.
I expect the returns to diminish gradually, though. With AI commoditizing content, there will be even more of it out there and…most of it won’t be any good.
As with any commoditized good, the cheaper it is to produce it, the more competitive the landscape becomes.
This is a signal to start writing content that truly stands out — and not just in search engines. I’ve been speaking about focusing on user intent rather than search engine bots and crawlers for years now.
If there ever was a time to listen to this advice this is it. Focus on the intent behind the search query, not the number of words or search volume.
Here’s an example of what not to do: I searched for “will AI kill SEO” and I found this gem of a table of contents:
This is old-school SEO. I know it well, I’ve done it myself a lot. Moving on, cut the fluff. If a user searches for “will AI kill SEO”, it’s not such a bit leap of faith to assume they already know what AI is. No need to explain it; cut to the chase.
More AI versus SEO and blogging predictions (and what to make of them)
- When content is commoditized, off-page ranking factors (like backlinks) will matter more and more. Invest in them as early as possible.
- Zero-click searches will be on the rise. Aim for position zero (the answer boxes) whenever possible.
- Domain authority (or however else you want to call reputation and good standing) will matter more than ever. Some AI chatbots include links with their answer boxes — these are the positions you want to score but it will be exceptionally hard.
- Author reputation matters even more. Time to spruce up that byline and use it consistently across all the websites you publish content on.
- Bad news for indie and small publishers. AI chatbots will mostly link to websites owned by huge media empires because they come with an inherent promise for quality, vetted content.
- Tiny communities, gated content, paid newsletters, and other similar outlets will have a field day. People still want to read non-AI content, opinion pieces, and in-depth essays. Since those will be harder to find with traditional search (and nearly impossible with AI search), they will turn to smaller communities.
- We will move from SEO to Search Optimization (SO). SO is a term coined by Search Engine Land to describe optimization across multiple platforms. In other words, you need to optimize your content for Google AND social media networks. To make it more fun, each platform has its own algorithm
What happens to (SEO) writers?
This is the question that prompted my deep dive into the topic of AI killing SEO and blogging. Since (SEO) writing is my agency’s main service, I’ve had a front-row seat to how our jobs as writers changed.
I gave our ongoing clients one BIG piece of advice: produce LESS but BETTER content. Instead of 10 blog posts a month, write four but make sure they are 100% aligned with user intent.
I’ve also advised them to diversify, so we recently had more orders for:
- Advertorials for large media outlets
- Guests posts
- In-depth social media posts (mostly for LinkedIn)
- Interviews
- eBooks and whitepapers (gated content)
In a nutshell, the fate of online writers is tied to how versatile they are and how easily they can pivot from pure-breed SEO writing to in-depth analyses, interviews, gated content, and more.
How to apply this in your business
AI may just be the tipping point that lowers SEO’s ROI until you either have to produce insane amounts of content to make it work or invest A LOT in online reputation. But SEO and blogging are far from dead so what we can do now is prepare for two of the most probable outcomes: AI does kill SEO (you need a back-up plan) and AI enhances a new breed of SEO (in which case it would be a bad idea to give it up).
Here’s what to do instead:
Don’t give up on SEO but monitor results closely
Are you getting fewer clicks from organic traffic than you used to? Take a closer look at which pages/articles rank AND bring in traffic. Those are your geese with golden eggs, so figure out what you did right and replicate that.
Look outside your bubble: is everyone on the AI bandwagon?
Some people use ChatGPT instead of traditional search engines now. But, outside certain bubbles, ChatGPT is nothing but hype and vaporware. Whether you agree with them or not, laggards and late adopters make online purchases too.
Before you decide on whether or not SEO and blogging are still right for you, figure out who your audience is: are they more likely to do a Google or a ChatGPT search?
Cut to the chase, stay on point/on user intent
How many words do you need to make your point? 500 or 5000? Either of these is fine, as long as you don’t write for the pleasure of our search bot overlords, but for your users.
Think about what they already know and which knowledge gaps you need to fill in. Cut everything else.
This newsletter issue, for instance, doesn’t define AI or SEO. I know my audience and I assume you already know what they stand for. I did define SO, though, because that’s a relatively new term.
A healthy strategy is a diversified one
I say this every chance I get: don’t put all your eggs in a single basket. Diversify your marketing tactics: SEO, SEM, social media, paid ads, advertorials, guest posts, email marketing, influencer marketing, referrals and recommendations — how many of these are you currently tapping into?
Try to have at least three different channels for client acquisition at all times.
Diversify the types of content you produce too
Articles (whether on your own blog or guest posts on third-party websites) are just one piece of the puzzle. Consider video content, social media content, interviews, analyses, and more.
While you’re at it, diversify the distribution as well. Publish them on more than one channel, repurpose, and re-format as often as possible.
Build a brand and a reputation on more than one channel
Have you ever Googled (or ChatGPTed) yourself/your company? How many results are there? What are they — your website or your Instagram profile where you haven’t posted in six months?
AI may threaten SEO but search will still be here. The safest way to future-proof yourself/your business is to make it so that people search for you directly, not for your service. “Jane McAwesome/Company McAwesome”, not “cheap ghostwriting services”.
This is your safest bet, whether AI kills SEO or not. Unsurprisingly, it’s also the hardest one to achieve.
That’s it from me today! Before I sign off, I want to remind you that most epitaphs for marketing tactics you read online are pure speculation at best and completely wrong and designed to sell you something else at worst. Never give up on a lucrative channel before you took its pulse on your own.
And never, ever believe anyone who tells you they have the future completely figured out.
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Adriana’s Picks
- A fascinating read: enclaves vs exclaves — geographically engulfed and orphaned places
- Montana is the first US state to ban TikTok. The bill goes into effect on January 1st, 2024. Needless to say, TikTok is not pleased and says they’ll fight the decision.
- The jobs AI won’t take.
Here to make you think,
Adriana
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