4 Ways to Use Artificial Intelligence in SEO

Artificial intelligence is the use of algorithms, machine learning and real-time data to perform tasks and reach conclusions which would usually require human intelligence. From analysing large amounts of data to performing deep learning, AI is able to complete tasks and even conduct predictive analysis.

Artificial intelligence has significantly developed over the past couple of years and, whether you knew it or not, it’s become a part of our everyday lives! Every day examples include recommending what you should purchase next when online shopping or understanding what you’re saying through virtual assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa. How many people do you know with an Amazon Alexa at home?

Business are discovering great benefits from AI as they’re able to provide their customers a more personalised experience.

Visual image search is an exciting AI SEO tool that has, so far, been predominately utilised in the online shopping world. Key players in visual search include Google Lens, Amazon StyleSnap and Pinterest Visual Search.

Visual image search optimisation has even become commonplace in retail mobile apps, such as Farfetch and Burberry. This year the British luxury fashion house, Burberry, partnered with Google Search to launch an augmented reality shopping tool which provides a 3D view of the product in a real life setting through your phone!

Keep scrolling to discover the primary benefits of visual image search so you can take advantage of this technology and get ahead of the competition:

“See it, Snap it, Shop it”

Luxury online fashion retail platform, Farfetch, features advanced AI capabilities enabling customers to simply take a photo or screenshot of an outfit that they love and go onto immediately “shop the look”. The result is a more personalised shopping experience that connects a customer’s online and offline inspiration.

Reduced Price Sensitivity

Visual discovery allows potential customers to develop a more emotional connection with the items they’re lusting after. In turn, this translates into reduced price sensitivity which can help you to secure sales.

Increased customer satisfaction

AI SEO tools, such as visual image search technology, allow you to manage consumer expectations for how the product will look before they make their purchase. As a result, you should see a decrease in returned purchases and an increase in customer satisfaction! Paired with the right social media strategy for your business, you should see your happy customers share their positive experience of your brand with their followers!

Selling to customers further down the marketing funnel

You’ll find that consumers who are interacting with your optimised visual search content have already made up their minds about whether they’re going to make a purchase, especially if they’re utilising technology such as Pinterest Lens.

Pinterest Lens is for those who know exactly what they want, but don’t know how to say it – and I’m sure most us can say we’ve been in this situation! As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words” – and this perfectly describes the main benefits of visual image search technology. A picture of a pair of shoes gives away a lot more than just their colour. This allows customers to find exactly what they’re looking for and where they can find it.

Voice Search Optimisation

The rise in voice search has had a powerful impact on search engine optimisation. So, if you’re not considering a voice search optimisation strategy, you’re missing out on a whole host of potential customers and search queries.

According to 2019 survey data, voice search is now the second most popular choice for mobile search, after the mobile browser.

Here are a couple of our top voice search optimisation tips:

• Use natural language – in order to improve the user experience, devices such as Google Nest and Amazon Alexa were adapted to follow everyday language use. This means optimising your keyword length to fit the conversational language used in voice searches. This is done by using long-tail keywords such as “AI SEO Trends to Prepare for in 2020”.

According to Neil Patel, long-tail keywords now account for 70% of all searches! So this really shows us how important it is to focus on them.

• Local Search: According to Search Engine Watch, customers are 3x more likely to search locally when using voice search, and 58% of customers find local businesses when using voice search. So, be sure to optimise your future strategies for “near me” queries, such as “free things to do near me” or “what are the best coffee shops near me?”.

Local Search Results

Another key application of artificial intelligence in SEO is the localisation of content. Google Maps and other geolocation maps have become applications that many people rely on and use on a daily basis. Nowadays, consumers use map applications to discover local businesses that will fulfil their needs. So, whether you’re on the go and looking for a great independent coffee shop, or at home looking for a new hairdressers close to you, Google and other search engines are utilising AI technologies to ensure an accurate display of results in real time.

AI SEO tools such as Google’s Cloud Translation API application allows you to enable quality translations into over one hundred languages on your website and apps with simplified integration. This can have great benefits in your localisation strategy, especially if you’re an international organisation, as a deal breaker for local search results is the inaccuracy of content in a geographical area. Google’s machine learning technology enhances user experience as it can enable your business’ content to dynamically translate between languages.

A recent exciting recent step in the progression of artificial intelligence in SEO is the introduction of Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding (BERT).

Google itself states that their innovative BERT algorithm represents…

“the biggest leap forward in the past five years, and one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of search.”

BERT was developed to essentially provide Google with an increased contextual comprehension of individual words within searches, along with a greater understanding of how language is used.

This means that Google search is able to understand the context of your local search queries better than ever, particularly for long-tail keyword searchers, as it has an increased understanding of the user’s intent.

User search queries are currently being interpreted by Google’s RankBrain algorithm. RankBrain came into effect with the Hummingbird update in 2013, and is an AI SEO tool used to help search engines determine the most relevant results to user queries. RankBrain’s artificial technology encompasses crucial ranking components for websites and is having a major impact on SERPs, which is only expected to expand.

Every query now goes through an interpretation model that calculates data from a variety of sources and applies factors such as location, user’s browser history and the searcher’s true intent. RankBrain’s use of machine learning technology is what makes this update truly unique and revolutionary in the industry.

Studies from researchers and marketers have evidenced that semantic groupings and topic modelling are key components of the Hummingbird algorithm. This means that, in order to create contextually rich content, keywords, keyword variants and related topics all need to have related meaning. Therefore, when planning your SEO friendly content marketing strategy, topic modelling needs to be at the forefront to ensure that you’re organising your content in a way that prioritises topics, instead of keywords. In doing so, you will be creating high-quality and meaningful content for your target audience and rewarded in SERPs by Google!

So, there you go! Now you’re officially in the know on what’s in store for artificial intelligence in seo for 2020 and are aware of some key AI SEO tools available to you. Be sure to fully take advantage of all these exciting trends for your business going forward.

How Can We Help You?

For more information, get in touch with our SEO experts to find out how your company can optimise your future strategies and improve the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of your content. If you want your company to be more prominent in the SERPs and your marketplace, then contact Zelst today!