How Automated AI SEO is Revolutionizing Search Marketing

Like almost every other field, AI has made its way into SEO, too. Marketers and SEO professionals are increasingly automating SEO through AI to save time and improve efficiency. In fact, our AI SEO Benchmark Report found that 17% of marketers save over 10 hours every week using AI tools, while half of the professionals say that AI tools improve their SEO rankings by 49.2%.

So, it's perfectly understandable why everyone, from SEO influencers to marketers, rave about AI SEO. But how exactly is automation in SEO changing the game? We discuss this in detail below.

Plus, we discuss AI tools that can help you automate your SEO tasks and streamline your search marketing efforts.

Revolutionizing SEO: How AI and Automation are Changing the Game

Today's search engines are quite different from that of a decade ago. The evolution of search engines through the years has forced SEO professionals and marketers to adapt and keep up with automation. 

Today, marketers also have to account for generative engine optimization (GEO), which is an SEO adjacent for AI-powered search engines. As these search engines, such as Perplexity.ai and You.com, have become more and more popular, reliance on traditional search engines has dwindled, resulting in zero-click searches. 

Google has also entered the GEO race with its AI Overviews that appear above organic search results. So, it has become more important for your content to be featured in AI Overview or featured snippets because most searchers won't go beyond these sections if they find their desired information here. 

These shifts have also changed the way keywords are to be used in SEO. Once upon a time, they were the be-all and end-all of SEO. The more of them you could use, the better. Now, the focus is on user intent. Keywords have become longer and more conversational, which means you have to address the intent behind them rather than merely use them in the content.

Automation in SEO has become necessary to keep up with the demands of modern search engines. AI optimization tools help keep up with the growing volume of data that's practically impossible to manage and analyze manually. These tools streamline decision-making by providing insights and recommendations based on data, helping SEO professionals make the right choices for their campaigns.

AI is not only automating SEO tasks but also transforming the way SEO is done. For example, AI tools can predict your ranking potential based on your current position, providing you with opportunities to capitalize on. Semrush's Keyword Overview tool shows you the potential SERP position of your website for a specific seed keyword, allowing you to focus on queries that have a higher potential for traffic and conversions.

Semrush keyword overview tool

AI automation tools also enable automated testing and improvements. You can A/B test everything from meta descriptions and headings to page layouts and even website designs. This automation allows you to experiment and optimize without significant manual effort, ultimately improving your SEO performance.

Unlike traditional SEO, where you have to manually adjust for algorithm shifts, AI optimization tools can quickly adapt and suggest changes to help you stay ahead. They can also analyze your competitors' strategies and make recommendations for your own, whether it's for content re-optimization or adapting to algorithm updates. 

More importantly, AI tools monitor your SERP positions around the clock to alert you of any sudden changes and provide actionable insights to help you maintain or improve your rankings.

Semrush's Position Tracking tool provides you with an overview of your keywords' ranking position over time. From visibility to average position, this tool lets you take proactive measures to address any fluctuations before they negatively impact your website's performance.

Semrush keyword position tracking tool

Together, these factors mandate the use of AI SEO tools in today's time. Not only do they provide deep insights, but they also save a ton of time and money. 

How Automated AI SEO Enhances Content Strategy

Content generation is one of the most common use cases of AI automation tools since creating content through tools like ChatGPT is as simple as inputting prompts. However, the final stage of content creation isn't all that AI SEO tools do.

They assist you right from the beginning.

Content Gap Analysis

Content gap analysis is an integral part of SEO since you want to compare your content with your competitors and identify areas where you can improve. AI tools can be helpful in this regard, too.

Semrush's Keyword Gap tool lets you find the content gap between your domain and three competitors. It shows you which keywords are missing in your content. You can use this information to improve your content strategy with relevant keywords that will help you rank higher in search results than your competitors.

Semrush content gap analysis

Content Optimization at Scale

AI optimization tools help refine content at scale due to their quick and efficient nature. They can analyze your content for readability, tone, audience engagement score, keyword density, and more. With AI optimization, you can quickly identify areas where your content needs improvement and make changes accordingly.

The best part is that AI-assisted content optimization actually helps you rank higher. In our AI SEO Report, we mentioned a case study that analyzed more than 260 AI-generated pages from reputed websites like CNET and Bankrate. The results revealed that AI-generated content's performance is comparable to that of human-written content, leading to the following:

• 20k organic visits for CNET
• 125k organic visits for Bankrate

Although subject matter experts reviewed and edited the content before publishing, it's clear that AI optimization played a significant role in boosting rankings and driving organic traffic. The case study is further proved by the observation that 13.08% of the top-rated content on Google is AI-generated.

So, there's no denying that AI-assisted content optimization can be beneficial for your content strategy. Semrush's SEO Writing Assistant also provides real-time recommendations for content improvement, such as keyword addition and readability enhancement. Since the keywords it proposes come from Semrush's own keyword database, you can be sure of their effectiveness.

Even better, you can regularly run your content through Semrush or Frase to monitor its performance based on new SERPs. For example, after a Google core update, the rankings tend to shift. Put your content in these tools to see which new keywords you can target and what changes you need to make to appear above your competitors. As a result, your content stays fresh, optimized, and competitive. 

AI-Powered Technical SEO Audits

The technical side of SEO is just as important as the content and keywords. In fact, without a solid technical foundation, your website may struggle to rank well in search engines. AI-powered technical SEO audits are extremely helpful since they use advanced algorithms to analyze your website and identify technical issues that may be holding you back from reaching your full SEO potential.

For example, Semrush's Site Audit tool checks your website for technical errors and provides a detailed report on how to fix them. Since you can rerun the audit campaign regularly, you can track your progress as you fix technical issues and improve your website's overall health.

Semrush Site Audit

The tool also shows you the Core Web Vitals of your website, which are important factors in Google's page experience ranking signal. This includes metrics like load time, interactivity, and visual stability.

Semrush Core Web Vitals analysis

Similarly, it audits your site's overall performance to show you where it may be lacking. You can see page load speeds for all crawled pages, which helps you determine if you need to take steps to improve site speed. Since the tool flags the errors and shows warnings, you know which issues to prioritize for a site performance boost.

Semrush site performance report

Besides site performance, you also want to ensure your website is crawlable. After all, if search engines can't crawl and index your content, it won't appear in search results. The AI-powered site audit tool identifies potential crawl issues, prompting you to take quick action for improvement.

Semrush crawling issues

Based on the information from Semrush's Site Audit tool, you can improve pretty much every aspect of technical SEO, from load speed to mobile optimization and crawlability. As a result, you save time and resources by targeting specific issues rather than having to manually check every page of your website. Plus, regular audits help you retain your position on the SERPs. 

Where AI Efficiency Meets Human Ingenuity in SEO

Even though AI SEO tools simplify and enhance many SEO tasks, they can't function on their own. Human oversight is mandatory to reap the full benefits of these tools.

While AI automation speeds up SEO processes, it's the human ingenuity that drives successful SEO strategies. Humans can use the insights derived from AI tools to refine and optimize their strategies further, which would not have been possible without the deep analysis capabilities of AI.

Here's how the blend of AI and human capabilities helps SEO efforts.

AI Enhances Human Creativity by Automating the Complex

There was a time when human SEO professionals had to spend most of their time on repetitive tasks like keyword analysis and technical optimization. Now, AI can automate these processes.

For example, the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool generates thousands of keyword suggestions and analyzes user intent behind each keyword. This saves SEO professionals a lot of time they'd otherwise have to spend on manual keyword research.

Semrush keyword magic tool

While AI does that initial analysis, humans can use their creativity and think outside the box to come up with unique and innovative ways to use these keywords in their content. An excellent example of this comes from SmartSites success story for US Framing, which we've mentioned in our guide on AI SEO agencies.

As an AI-using agency, SmartSites uses AI tools for data-crunching tasks like SEO analysis and technical SEO audits. Then, their human SEO experts used these insights to improve the site navigation and content quality of the client's website. This AI-human hybrid resulted in a 2,420% increase in organic search traffic for US Framing. The client's website's bounce rate also went down by 44%.

Source: smartsites.com

The Collaborative Power of Human Intuition and AI's Efficiency

SEO professionals should not see AI as their replacement because it's not meant to be that. Instead, AI is an assistant. Human expertise is the catalyst that makes AI's potential explode with power.

AI's capability is processing and analyzing large amounts of data and finding patterns in it or predicting trends based on it. But, human insight is needed to contextualize these insights and then apply them creatively.

For example, the Semrush Keyword Gap tool showed us the keywords missing on our site and present on our competitor's. But that's it for AI's work.

Semrush keyword gap tool

Next, we have to determine which of these keywords we can use, keeping our content's relevancy top-notch. AI won't do that for you. If we want to use paid keywords, we'd also have to look at the CPC metric to ensure we're not overspending. Plus, we'll look at the keyword difficulty to determine if we should be spending our time and effort on a specific keyword.

Another example is AI pointing out the technical issues with a website. For example, the Semrush Site Audit tool shows what's wrong with the website and ranks them in terms of severity.

Semrush site audit tool

However, it's the SEO expert who will prioritize which issues need immediate attention and which can wait, considering the site owner's budget and resources. Then, they will go on to fix these issues. 

Rethinking SEO Metrics for the AI Age

Traditionally, SEO metrics have been measured based on keyword rankings, backlinks, and traffic. However, AI has brought a predictive and engagement-driven approach to SEO, shifting the focus from ranking alone to creating high-quality content that meets user intent.

Content Relevance and User Intent

The internet is saturated with content, and for your content to stand out, it must be highly relevant to the user's search query. This means understanding and predicting user intent, which can be challenging. However, AI tools facilitate this aspect of SEO.

For example, Semrush shows user intent along with keywords, allowing you to tailor your content according to what users are looking for. Instead of merely focusing on keyword density, you can then match your content to the user intent and cover the topics comprehensively, increasing its relevance.

If you’re unsure how to create an intent-centric content piece around these keywords, use the SEO Content Template tool by Semrush. It creates an SEO-optimized template based on your provided keywords. The best part is that Semrush analyzes the top 10 pages ranking on Google for the keywords to create a comprehensive content template.

Semrush SEO content template

Sure enough, these pages have ranked so high because their content addresses user intent and is relevant to the keywords. So, when you write your own content based on insights from these pages, it’s also likely to be highly relevant and intent-driven. 

Engagement Metrics: Time on Page and Bounce Rate

AI tools also account for engagement metrics such as bounce rate and time on the page. They don't merely focus on driving traffic to your site; they analyze whether the user found it valuable enough to stay. Based on their results, you can gauge if the content is engaging enough for the user.

Even better, you can compare how your site’s engagement metrics compare to your competitors. Semrush’s Traffic Analytics tool shows you the trend in visitors, unique visitors, and purchase conversions over time. You can also see which pages your website has an upward trend for. 

Semrush traffic analytics

Since the tool shows you the traffic journey for your website visitors, you can ensure excellent experiences for them at different touchpoints to further increase engagement rates.

Semrush traffic analytics

Predictive SEO Metrics: Conversion Probability

The predictive potential of AI tools is highly beneficial for SEO. These tools help you identify keywords with a higher conversion probability, allowing you to target them in your content creation and optimization efforts. They analyze historical user data and search trends to predict how likely a keyword is to lead to conversions.

In Semrush’s Keyword Overview tool, you can see how likely your domain is to rank for a keyword on the SERPs. It shows you the topical authority of your website for the keyword, too. This information can help you predict the success of your content for certain keywords.

Keyword Overview tool

Exploding Topics is a useful tool here that shows you keywords that will be high-converting in the next 12 months. You can then optimize your content around these keywords to stay ahead of the competition and attract more potential customers in the future.

Similarly, Dynamic Yield lets you personalize experiences on your website for your audience to enhance conversions. With AI-powered personalization for content, CTAs, recommendations, and website layouts, the tool predicts the conversion likelihood of each visitor and helps you tailor user experiences based on this data.

Dynamic Yield

Hyperpersonalization and Hyperlocal SEO in Search Marketing

In a world where 66% of marketers are driving personalized marketing initiatives by realigning internal resources, AI tools enable real-time hyperpersonalization to create tailored experiences on a consumer-by-consumer basis. As a result, every experience is personalized for individual visitors, resulting in higher conversions.

AI-Powered Personalization at Scale

Previously, SEO was, to some extent, a generic process where the same techniques were used across all target demographics or, at least, customer segments, resulting in a one-size-fits-all approach. However, AI-powered personalization tools provide personalized experiences to every individual that lands on your website.

These tools detect user behavior and past interactions to determine what they want to see and how they want to see it. So, marketers can implement user-specific SEO to display personalized content and product recommendations, thus improving user engagement.

For example, Google uses RankBrain to provide personalized search results. According to Google, the tool helps them

"find information we weren't able to before by more broadly understanding how words in a search relate to real-world concepts."

The AI system understands how user queries relate to several concepts and then displays the results most relevant to them.

Hyperlocal SEO for Targeting Local Audiences

AI has made local SEO more precise than before since AI search tools can assist you in optimizing your business for local search engine rankings. To start, you need to list your business in different directories. With Semrush’s Listings Management tool, you can get an overview of your online presence. 

Semrush listings management

The tool shows you how many directories you’re not a part of and which of your listings you need to fix for better local visibility.

Semrush listings management tool

If you want to particularly focus on your Google Business listing, Semrush has a tool for that too. The GBP Optimization tool specifically shows you what’s missing in your Google Business profile. You can then set your profile up manually or with Google through Semrush.

Semrush GBP optimization

Integrating Hyperpersonalization with Hyperlocal SEO

To take personalization a step further, local businesses can create a blend of location-based targeting with user personalization to create a comprehensive strategy. It's a two-tier benefit, including:

• Content personalization based on user preferences and past behavior
• Experience personalization based on geographical location

The end result is a fully tailored experience that maximizes the chances of user conversions. For example, a local coffee shop can use AI-based tools to analyze customer behavior in their area and personalize their offerings accordingly. They can show personalized recommendations to website visitors.

Even further, they can promote special deals on certain occasions. For example, if their town has an annual carnival, they can offer a discount on their coffee during the event to attract more foot traffic. The cumulative result of these personalized efforts is a higher conversion rate and increased customer loyalty. 

Common SEO Challenges and How AI Solves Them

AI marketing automation solves a lot of common issues associated with SEO. Here are some of them.  

Keeping Up with Algorithm Changes

Google reports that the search engine makes changes to its algorithms and systems several times a year. As the algorithm shifts, so does the SEO landscape, making it difficult for marketers to keep up. However, AI can analyze these changes and provide insights on how to adjust your SEO strategy accordingly.

For example, Semrush can monitor algorithm changes regularly and adjust optimization strategies accordingly to help websites maintain their rankings. For example, its Position Tracking feature shows you how your website's ranking is changing in real time in response to the changing algorithms.

Position tracking in Semrush

Similarly, Alli AI's A/B testing feature responds to search trend shifts in real time and lets you deploy changes immediately to ensure your website remains relevant and optimized. Without AI, it would take you days, if not weeks to identify the changes and make necessary adjustments, by which time your website may have already suffered a drop in rankings.

Optimizing for Voice Search

As voice search and conversation eCommerce becomes more common, queries have become longer and more question-oriented. To adapt, marketers need to optimize their content for long-tail keywords and natural language.

Semrush’s Listing Management tool shares your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) data with the top directories to help you rank for voice searches, particularly those made by virtual assistants like Siri. With support for over 150 directories across 60 countries, Semrush really gives you a widespread presence online. 

Semrush listings management

You can also update or change any information from a centralized dashboard, eliminating the need for making the changes on multiple directories in a time-staking process. 

The tool further shows you your position on Google Maps to give you an idea of where you rank well for certain keywords. Its heat map feature makes it easy to see which areas you’re doing better in and where you may be facing more competition.

Source: semrush.com

Managing Large Datasets and Analyzing Competitor Performance

Manual data analysis can be quite time-consuming and tedious. On the contrary, AI tools can analyze large volumes of data in minutes. What you see are tables or graphs with insights that would otherwise take you hours to discover.

In addition to your own, you can also monitor competitor data to see which keywords they rank for and how their content performance compares to yours. Such insights can help you identify areas for improvement and stay ahead of the competition. As we've mentioned above, the Semrush Keyword Gap tool lets you find opportunities that your competitor may have missed or keywords that they're ranking for, and you haven't tapped yet.

Similarly, the Domain Overview tool lets you get a full view of your competitor's search rankings, including the keywords they rank for and the amount of traffic they get. You can also see how many keywords they use based on different intents, giving you a better understanding of their content strategy.

Semrush Domain Overview

The Semrush Organic Research tool further shows you the keywords your competitor is using along with their SERP position for the query and the traffic they generate for it. Based on this data, you can analyze all your competitors' top-performing pages and optimize your own content to outrank them.

Semrush Organic Research

Scaling Content Creation and Optimization

Before AI came into the picture, SEO experts had to spend countless hours researching and optimizing their content. This process was not only time-consuming but also limited the amount of content that could be produced and optimized.

However, with AI content generation tools, it's much easier (and quicker) to generate content. As we've shown earlier, you can use tools like ChatGPT and Semrush SEO Writing Assistant to create and optimize content. 

AI’s role doesn’t only come in content writing. It also helps in the steps prior to the writing process, such as topic research and outline generation. Semrush Topic Research tools gives you a comprehensive view of the topics you can cover under a seed keywords based on the analysis of the top search results. 

Semrush topic research tool

The topic of your choice can then be put in the SEO Content Template tool to create an optimized, keyword-rich template that tackles the user intent and contains the main content angles top search results have covered. Without an AI tool, you’d have to do all this manually, which can be quite time-consuming. 

AI tools also make it simpler to repurpose content for different use cases. For example, you can create a social media post out of a blog or convert your podcast interview with an industry professional into an article introduction. 

AI writing tools further facilitate automated translations, which is helpful for marketers dabbling in international SEO. However, while AI content writing tools can speed up content creation, they shouldn’t be the only ones working. Your oversight is absolutely mandatory. 

Anyone who has used AI tools knows that they are prone to making errors and adding biases to their outputs. At times, they’re not fully knowledgeable about a certain subject. In translations, they may miss cultural nuances and colloquial themes. You, as a human professional, need to supplement AI’s efforts with your creativity and superior understanding of the target audience. 

Optimizing for Mobile and Core Web Vitals

Since mobile optimization and Core Web Vitals are some of the most important factors Google looks at when ranking content, it's important to ensure your content is optimized for both. Traditionally, this was a difficult task that required a lot of technical knowledge and coding skills.

AI tools like Semrush have made technical SEO audits a breeze. Anyone can run a quick audit to find issues like page load speed or mobile responsiveness and fix them. Semrush also shows you the Core Web Vitals scores of your website and provides recommendations for improvement.

Semrush core web vitals analysis

Since you can rerun the audit as many times as you want, you can easily track and improve your website's mobile optimization and Core Web Vitals scores over time.

Adapting to New Search Trends (e.g., Video and Image Search)

When new search trends like image or video search emerge, SEO professionals must be prepared for them. If you were to do this manually, it would take you a lot of time and effort to jump on the bandwagon.

AI tools come with many of these built-in features. Plus, their developers constantly add new features and update existing ones to keep up with the latest search trends. For example, Clarifai is an open-source AI solution that automates data labeling, speeding it up by 100x. It can also identify visual content and create tags for images and videos so that they are recognized by search engines and ranked accordingly.

For one client in the media and entertainment industry, Clarifai improved metadata tagging time-to-value by 10x and resulted in 90% savings by reducing the manual effort needed. This is just one example of how you can use these AI tools to adapt to new search trends quickly. 

Embrace the Future with Automated AI SEO

From generating AI SEO keywords to analyzing data and monitoring your competition, AI tools offer a wide range of capabilities that can enhance your SEO strategy. You can use them to create and optimize content at scale, fill keyword gaps, adapt to algorithm changes, analyze your competitors, and find technical issues on your website.

AI has also changed the face of SEO by making it more intent-driven rather than just keyword-focused. Automating SEO with AI tools can help you keep up with the new search landscape and use your time and resources more efficiently. While you're at it, use our enterprise SEO ROI calculator to see how much you could be saving by integrating AI into your SEO process.

About the Author

Nadica Naceva

Writer

Nadica Naceva, Head of Content at Influencer Marketing Hub, is a seasoned writer and reviewer with in-depth expertise in digital and content marketing. Leveraging her extensive experience in guiding content creation and strategic direction, Nadica brings a critical eye and analytical approach to reviewing articles and educational pieces. Her commitment to accuracy, integrity, and innovation with each review helps IMH grow as a leading source in influencer marketing. Her insights are backed by first-party data, ensuring content meets the highest standards of relevance.