A Guide to SEO Content and AI: The Importance of Adaptability in the Age of AI

Alexa controls your playlist, bots offer customer service—artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere and it’s the microwave of the modern world. Just like zapping popcorn for a few minutes sped up cooking, AI makes life easier. And for brands, SEO content and AI represent a world of opportunity. 

As AI technology becomes the norm, businesses need to adapt their SEO and marketing strategies to stay competitive. Enhance your efforts with SEO content and AI tools that elevate your brand.

The Evolution of SEO Content in the Age of AI

You remember the good old days of SEO: Masses of content with keywords in just about every sentence and paragraph. For marketing pros, it became a sort of game: Skim an article to figure out the target keyword(s). If it sounded out of place, BINGO! 

Thankfully, we’ve grown, and SEO content has moved from keyword stuffing to organic keyword use, organized structures, and relevance to enhance quality. And AI has introduced yet another frontier to make content creation easier. 

Shifting from Keywords to User Intent

SEO content isn’t just about keywords anymore. Instead, the focus is on understanding user intent and creating content that meets those needs. AI tools make a difference because they can analyze data in ways we never could, identifying patterns and opportunities. 

Take content audits, for instance. Implementing AI to audit existing content helps identify content gaps and analyze content for recommendations on how to optimize it for better rankings.

Blending AI Insights with Human Creativity

Make no mistake: Using AI to assist with SEO content doesn’t erase the human element. It balances data-driven insights with human creativity and contextual understanding to optimize content.

Boosting Content Production with AI

Generative AI tools can be gasoline for content production, but they can also flood the internet with low-quality content. Readers might walk away confused or turned off instead of excited and motivated to engage with you—and search engines penalize your brand, too. So use your SEO content and AI to amplify rather than hinder your message.

Focus on Quality Control 

Another thing about old-school SEO is that it emphasized quantity over quality. More blog articles and long-form content pieces—all in the name of rankings. But marrying SEO content and AI helps you get the most from every initiative. Consider implementing AI tools to: 

• Improve your content strategy to align with audience needs. (Psst! HubSpot recommends using AI to analyze customer reviews, interviews, and sales calls to identify high-value keywords and topic clusters for your content calendar.)
• Get real-time recommendations to optimize content for engagement, search performance, and target keywords.

Find that sweet spot between efficiency and quality. Sure, AI can assist with brainstorming, outlining, and drafting, but it should serve as an assistant, not a master. Human oversight is necessary to ensure that AI isn't hallucinating and that content remains accurate, valuable, aligned with the brand voice, and not plagiarized. 

Staying Nimble to SEO Changes with AI

SEO content and AI are constantly evolving, and you’re bound to fall behind if you don’t adapt. Just think about that evolution from keyword stuffing to intent: SEO strategies require continuous assessment and tweaking. Brands that thrive embrace AI capabilities and search engine updates.

Knocking on the Door of GEO

Existing SEO best practices—keyword research, competitive analysis, topic clustering, link building—will handle most of the heavy lifting even as they evolve, but there's a new kid on the block. Generative engine optimization (GEO) integrates traditional SEO techniques with AI-driven search strategies, and a few best practices jump out:

• Content Adaptation: Creating content that’s not only optimized for AI but also engaging and valuable to human readers
• E-E-A-T Principles: Emphasizing experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness to build credibility and earn search rankings
• Balancing Techniques: Combining AI-focused optimization with human-centric SEO practices to stay competitive
• Continuous Learning: Staying updated with AI advancements and evolving SEO tactics

The Future of SEO: Thinking of AI as the Copilot, Not the Captain

Human expertise isn’t going anywhere. AI can assist in content creation, optimization, and even strategy, but it cannot truly understand context, emotions, and nuanced brand messaging. That said, SEO content and AI come together through several proven tools:

HubSpot AI Tools 

An entire suite of AI tools to refine your SEO strategy? Sweet! Hubspot AI tools cover SEO from A to Z, including marrying SEO content and AI to help brands rank better. Its AI content writer tool assists with brainstorming topics and drafting emails, while its blog idea generator integrates AI and Semrush data to optimize blog post titles, outlines, and content.

Jasper

Hands up if you ever struggled to decipher a creative brief. Jasper’s AI writing assistant helps you convert briefs into high-quality, engaging content such as blog articles, emails, and social media posts that adhere to voice and tone.

ChatGPT

The tool that paved the way for so many others! ChatGPT is a chatbot and generative AI writing tool that generates text based on user prompts. It can help you overcome writer’s block—assisting with brainstorming ideas, key points, outlines, and even meta descriptions— and optimize content for search engines, information structure, and voice and tone.

INK

“Got INK?” That’s not just a question about writing prowess. INK is an SEO assistant and AI writing tool that analyzes top-ranked content and identifies keywords to improve content visibility. Use it for keyword research and clustering, bringing in data from tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush to target competitive keywords.

Frase

Frase is an SEO content creation and optimization tool that offers AI-driven content research and optimization against top-ranking pages. It generates briefs with outlines and analyzes drafts to offer actionable improvements for keywords, headers, and readability. 

So many tools have emerged to power your SEO and marketing, but the key is to prioritize the ones that keep you ahead of the curve. Data is only as good as what you do with it—actionable insights are what matter! 

Combine Old-School Tactics with New-School Tech to Improve SEO Content

SEO has changed, and now brands need to prioritize audience needs and intent in their content. It’s exciting to think about the future of SEO content and AI, where the latest tools bring the best of AI and human insights together. But remember that AI should work with the foundational elements—solid keyword research, on-page optimization, and high-quality content—rather than replace them. 

Focus your strategy on integrating AI without losing sight of core principles. Check out our guide, Harnessing AI in HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, for more tips to guide you as you implement AI in marketing.