AI SEO: a guide to search engine optimisation with artificial intelligence

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is vital for your business’s visibility online, but working on your SEO can be too time-consuming when you’re busy running a business.  

AI technology can help you work more efficiently across various aspects of SEO, such as research and content optimisation. Combined with actual SEO tools and a well-thought-out strategy, artificial intelligence can take on some of your most challenging tasks and shorten the path to an SEO-enhanced website. 

In this guide, we will look at how AI can boost your SEO efforts and how to best navigate the challenges of using artificial intelligence. 

What is AI SEO?

AI SEO is search engine optimisation where AI technology is used to automate some of the tasks typically needed when optimising a website for SEO. Artificial intelligence can, for example, be used to boost keyword research, website copywriting, content optimisation, and research. 

As with the use of AI in marketing, AI for SEO is a relatively new approach to attracting organic traffic to websites. There are already several AI tools on the market specifically designed for this purpose, and many more are no doubt on their way. In this article, however, we’ve chosen to focus on methods where you can use the most common, free AI tools and a few other practical tools that have built-in AI features. 

Pros and cons of using AI for SEO

AI technology has many advantages, one of the most prominent being that you can work more efficiently by automating certain tasks. Artificial intelligence can process large amounts of data in an instant, find patterns in complex data, and find new opportunities for your business. In other words, it’s a revolutionary technology already used by many companies, both for SEO and a wide range of other tasks. 

However, AI technology is not without its challenges, and it’s important to be aware that you cannot delegate all your SEO work to these tools. AI tools can make mistakes, and at present, tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini are not able to find accurate data on search volume, keyword difficulty, and search intent. We recommend using AI SEO as a supplement to your actual SEO tools rather than relying solely on AI to perform these tasks. 

AI tools for SEO

As mentioned above, in this article we’ve chosen to focus on how you can use the most well-known AI tools, along with a few others, in your SEO work. We’ll take a quick look at them in the list below: 

ChatGPT

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is an AI tool most people have heard of. It can help you generate SEO-friendly content, brainstorm blog post ideas, and draft social media posts. It can also suggest keywords and optimise existing content.

The free version is quite capable, but there is an upper limit to the number of requests you can make within 3 hours. The exact limit depends on your requests, as some tasks are more demanding than others. There’s also a limit in the paid version, but it works faster and can handle more advanced tasks. 

Google Gemini

Google Gemini, previously known as Bard, was first launched in 2023. The tool had some initial issues and is still not as popular as ChatGPT, but it can perform most of the same tasks. Some claim that Gemini is more creative when it comes to writing, while others prefer ChatGPT. We recommend trying both to find out which one best meets your needs.  

Besides the free version, Google also offers the paid, more advanced versions, Gemini Pro and Gemini Ultra. 

Rank Math Content AI

Rank Math is an SEO plugin for WordPress websites. Once installed and activated, the plugin automatically makes a range of improvements to your site.  

The plugin also features the built-in AI tool, Content AI, which can help you write SEO-optimised content for your website. The tool can generate articles and blog posts tailored to your business’s tone of voice, and unlike other AI tools, Rank Math performs actual keyword analysis and incorporates keywords into your content.  

Rank Math Content AI can write SEO content in various languages, including English, Spanish and German.

The AI writing assistant in one.com’s Website Builder

The best tools are often those that are right at hand. If you’re building your website with one.com’s Website Builder, you have full access to a built-in AI writing assistant that can help you write headlines, longer website copy, product descriptions, and any other text you need for your website. 

Well-written content is an important part of a solid SEO strategy, and with the AI writing assistant, you can instantly generate, rewrite, expand, or shorten content for your site without opening other browser tabs or tools. 

Use AI for SEO optimisation of your website

With the help of AI technology, you can speed up your SEO efforts and discover new opportunities without spending hours on research. Let’s look at some of the areas where AI SEO is most useful. 

Research

Designing a solid SEO strategy and producing search engine optimised-content usually requires a lot of time spent on research and brainstorming ideas. AI can help you brainstorm content topics that catch the interest of your target audience and increase your chances of achieving a better ranking in search engines. If, for instance, you run a hair salon, you can ask an AI tool to give you 10 different suggestions for topics you could write about on your business blog. 

Keyword research

Keyword research is the basis of effective search engine optimisation. Although the most commonly used AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, don’t have access to accurate data on search volume, they can still help speed up the process of coming up with keywords, which you can then analyse in an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush.  

If, for example, you need good keywords for your restaurant’s website, you can give the AI tool the key details about your restaurant’s concept, target audience, and location, and ask it to suggest keyword ideas. 
 
We gave it a try and got the following results when we asked both Google Gemini and ChatGPT (the free versions) to come up with 20 keyword ideas for an organic Japanese restaurant in London. We used the same prompt in both tools: 

Google Gemini: The 20 suggestions were categorised into: basic keywords, specific keywords, local keywords, and long-tail keywords. Some of the suggestions were: Japanese restaurant London, ramen London, best Japanese restaurant London, and organic Japanese restaurant. We also received tips on how to use the keywords in the content of the restaurant’s website. 

ChatGPT: Here, the suggestions were presented as one long list without categories. Most of the suggestions were long-tail keywords such as Japanese restaurant with organic ingredients London, seasonal Japanese dishes London, and healthy Japanese restaurant UK. ChatGPT also gave us some implementation ideas for the keywords. 

Both tools are very useful and timesaving when you need to come up with keyword ideas. But as mentioned, it’s important that you analyse the keywords in an actual SEO tool before using them on your website.  

Write search engine-optimised content

Once you’ve completed your keyword research, you need to incorporate your keywords into the content on your website. Writing content requires time, creativity, and many cups of coffee – for humans, that is. All the AI tools mentioned in the previous section can help you write SEO-optimised content for your website, such as headlines, your ‘About Us’ page, product descriptions, meta descriptions, articles, and CTAs. This means you can spend fewer hours writing, maybe consume less caffeine, and spend your time on other creative tasks. 

If you prefer to write yourself, you can use the AI-generated text as inspiration. You can also ask ChatGPT or Google Gemini to generate a draft or outline that you can build your own text around. 

Based on details in your prompt i.e., your request (more about AI prompts a bit further down), AI tools can adapt the text to your tone of voice, your audience, and your business goals. The AI tool in the Website Builder from one.com can also create a complete website, including text, for all sections of your website in an instant. 

If you need to write longer SEO texts for your WordPress website, we recommend Rank Math’s built-in AI writing tool, Content AI, which can generate texts based on actual keyword analysis.  

Content optimisation

Content optimisation is a vital part of a good SEO strategy. When Google’s search bots analyse the texts on your website, they don’t just register good keywords. The text also needs to be valuable for readers, easy to read, and structured in a logical way. 

Artificial intelligence can help you optimise and improve existing content. If, for example, you find that one of your landing pages or blog posts isn’t attracting as much organic traffic as you had hoped, you can ask an AI tool to analyse the text and suggest changes. Most AI writing tools, including the AI writing assistant in the Website Builder from one.com, can also be used to rewrite texts or to extend or shorten an existing text. 

AI SEO – 4 tips for the best results

AI SEO can help you reduce the time you spend working on search engine optimisation. However, to achieve the best results, there are a few things you should keep in mind. Here are 4 tips: 

Good AI prompts

A prompt is the request you enter into an AI tool. The quality of your prompts has a significant impact on the results your tool generates for you. In our example above, with the Japanese restaurant, we used the following prompt: 

I have a Japanese restaurant that focuses on organic, seasonal ingredients from the UK. The restaurant is in London. I need good SEO keywords for my website. Can you suggest at least 20? 

This prompt is relatively simple, but it contains important details about the business that make it possible to generate useful results. You could also have added target audience information and more specific details about the restaurant’s menu and location to get a more tailored result. 

If you’d like to know more about AI prompts, we recommend our article How to write AI prompts that get results. 

Please note that you should avoid including confidential information in your prompts, as some AI companies use prompts to train their tools.

Human evaluation of results

AI tools are getting better and better, but they can still make mistakes, both linguistic and factual. That’s why it’s important to ensure that the generated results are always reviewed and assessed by a human. In some cases, AI tools can also borrow too much from existing text on the internet. 

Google’s search bots favour unique content when assigning a ranking in search results, so you should avoid reusing or copying existing content. If you’re unsure whether your text has plagiarised content, you can use a tool to check it, such as Plagiarism Checker from Grammarly. 

Combine with actual SEO tools

As we’ve already mentioned, you will achieve the best results with AI SEO if you use it as a supplement to actual SEO tools. Use AI tools to streamline heavy and time-consuming tasks like research, brainstorming, and content writing, and SEO tools such as Rank Math, Ahrefs, and Semrush for keyword analysis and tracking keyword ranking. 

AI and SEO in the future

The development within AI is progressing at lightning speed. Existing tools are often improved with new features and increased capacity, and new tools are launched on the market.  

Additionally, Google has gradually started implementing AI overviews, where content from various sources is used to generate AI responses to users’ searches, which are then displayed at the top of the search results. These have only recently arrived in the UK, so it’s currently difficult to predict what overall impact they will have on how SEO work is conducted. Our recommendation is to stay updated on developments so you can take advantage of new tools and stay ahead of your competitors. 

If you want to keep up with updates and news about products from one.com, you are always welcome to visit our product updates page. 

AI SEO as part of your overall SEO strategy 

AI technology offers a wide range of smart tools that can streamline your most intensive SEO work and free up time for other important tasks. You will achieve the best results by using artificial intelligence as one of the tools in your overall SEO strategy. Combine AI with actual SEO tools, experiment with different ones, and find the ones that work best for you and your business.