The use of AI or Artificial Intelligence is becoming commonplace for many businesses. In fact, tools like ChatGPT, and Claude are being utilized as SEO tools for tagging, meta descriptions, and more. So, how likely is it that AI tools will replace SEO?
Ultimately AI will not replace SEO, however, it will drastically change how the industry operates.
While AI tools can perform some SEO tasks, human expertise and creativity are still crucial. Additionally, search engines are continuously evolving, creating a moving target for AI tools to keep up with. This means there will always be a demand for SEO professionals who are up-to-date with these changes. Especially as humans can adapt much faster than AI tools. Below are some of the key ways AI will change, but not replace SEO.
Automating SEO content descriptions and content is a helpful feature of AI tools. Search engines traditionally need text to see what a page is about, and it is difficult to write a meta description to meet various search queries. Especially for eCommerce websites with many SKUs and product lines. Utilizing AI tools can help with this, but can’t be 100% reliable. This is due to the lack of personality, and style that a human naturally writes with. Furthermore, as AI-generated content becomes more common, search engines will develop ways to identify it, and penalize sites using it prolifically. Thus, businesses can utilize AI tools for content creation drafts, as long as they edit it carefully afterwards. This still saves time, while ensuring it will rank well on search engines.
Using AI tools to scrub your content for keywords is a big benefit. This is a task that would take a human days, or weeks depending on the website size. Additionally, as AI tools use semantic analysis, there may be keywords you were not even aware of. As with content creation, the list will need to be double-checked before being used.
AI tools can perform small tasks to help save your business time (and money). Some tasks include simple coding, basic research, data analysis, and creating snippets. AI tools can quickly put together Schema codes using simple instructions, or provide clean HTML code for text inputs. These tasks will need to be checked and verified before use, as there may be small errors. But, this is a step that would be necessary even if a developer created them in the first place. Think of AI tools as digital or virtual assistants.
AI tools rely on their existing knowledge base and cannot access other search engines. This means that they cannot find trending articles on the web or trending items. Staying on top of changes and trends is crucial for effective SEO and, thus, requires an SEO professional.
If you are looking to truly connect with your audience, it is important to add emotion and style to your content. This is something AI tools are not great at doing, which means content can be dry and harder to read. Furthermore, AI tools fall short on creating relatable content, communicating with your audience, and promoting content. This is because your tech-savvy audience can tell when the tone, formatting, and verbiage are too perfect.
While AI tools are still relatively new, there is little to no chance of them ever replacing SEO professionals. This is because even if AI tools learn to capture emotion and search the internet, they will still need to be checked and verified before publishing. Thus, AI will not replace SEO, or at least not in this lifetime.
