What Is Generative Artificial Intelligence and What’s the Technology Behind This New SEO?

Have you ever wondered how brands stay ahead in search rankings while consistently delivering fresh, engaging content?

Lately, the most proactive brands have been leveraging generative artificial intelligence (AI) to fuel their success—but maybe not in the way you think. Using AI well is a science and an art, and being able to see good results requires taking time to understand your toolkit! 

That’s what we’re here to do today. Let’s take a minute and get to know what AI really is (and how you can use your newfound techy knowledge to rank higher). 

Here’s why you should care about this:

• AI can help you roll out content to support higher search engine results page (SERP) rankings, but it must be high-quality content. Not all prompts and outputs are created equal. 
• AI can help you personalize content in support of better engagement and conversion. 
• AI can help you stay competitive by analyzing data, anticipating trends, and refining your SEO-ready content strategy. 
  
  

But before we talk about these exciting endpoints, let’s get back to basics: 

What is AI, and how can you use it more effectively to meet your goals? 

What Is Generative Artificial Intelligence? 

Generative artificial intelligence is a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content—text, images, videos, and code—based on input prompts. Under the right circumstances, generative artificial intelligence can mimic some level of human creativity. 

Some key tools that leverage generative AI include:

• ChatGPT: Generates human-like text for customer service, content creation, and more.
• DALL-E: Creates unique images from textual descriptions.
• GitHub Copilot: Assists in writing code by predicting and suggesting lines of code​. 

If you can teach yourself to build prompts that work well with these platforms, AI can become a wildly practical asset.

All this might not be news to you. You’ve probably played around with AI, and maybe even generated a blog post or two. 

As we uncover more and more applications of generative artificial intelligence in SEO—and as we start working with generative engine optimization (GEO)—it’s a good idea to get a little more into the nitty-gritty of how AI delivers outputs. 

In other words: How does AI really work? 

An Ultra-Quick Primer on Today’s Transformative Tech: How AI Works

Let’s peek under the metaphorical hood to see how AI delivers relevant outputs in response to your prompts—starting with the processing units that keep everything running. 

GPUs and TPUs in AI Processing

Graphics processing units (GPUs) and Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) handle the massive data and complex computations that go into understanding your questions and providing relevant answers. 

• GPUs excel at handling parallel processing tasks. This makes them ideal for training AI models, which require simultaneous computations on vast datasets.
• TPUs are specifically designed for AI workloads. They offer significant speed and efficiency advantages for training and deploying deep learning models.

Without GPUs and TPUs, the time and computational power required to train these models would be prohibitive. For example, training a model like GPT-4 can involve processing hundreds of terabytes of data—a task that standard CPUs would struggle to manage efficiently.

Large Datasets: The Raw Material for Generating New Content

Although the term “generative” may make it seem like AI creates something from nothing, that’s not the case. Generative artificial intelligence pulls from massive databases or knowledge sets to compile new content. 

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing by itself. The “massive database” an AI is pulling from could be, for example, the entire internet—or an internal knowledge base (KB). Depending on your application and the AI platform you’re using, you may be able to select the data source yourself (more on that in a moment). 

For now, remember that it’s crucial to collect, identify, manage, and fact-check the data AI uses and the content it produces.

How Generative AI Tools Can Support SEO Successes 

Generative AI’s ability to mine large databases with efficient processing power supports the efficient creation of personalized, optimized, and relevant content. 

Let’s look at the implications of AI work in SEO projects. 

For example, AI can help your SEO efforts become: 

• More efficient: With AI tools and a creative team trained to use them well, you can save time and resources by automating certain parts of the content creation process (e.g., suggesting meta descriptions, tags, titles, and content structures that align with SEO best practices).  
• More consistent: AI tools (from HubSpot’s Brand Voice tool to its various content wizards and assistants) can help you roll out a steady stream of output that sounds how you want it to. 
• More personalized: SEO is increasingly shifting toward understanding and addressing user intent. Search engines like Google (and especially Google’s automated AI answers) prioritize content that meets user needs over keyword-stuffed articles. Using AI to understand user intent and then brainstorm or outline content designed to meet that intent can keep your creative team’s time more targeted and productive. 
• More data-driven and relevant: AI algorithms sift through extensive data to uncover long-tail keywords and trending topics that might otherwise be overlooked. Then, by targeting these keywords, you can create content that better matches user search queries, improving your chances of ranking higher in search results​. 
• More future-proofed: Trying to keep up with the latest in AI and SEO can feel like drinking from a firehose! By putting in the time to learn AI basics now, you’re setting yourself up for the next several years of SEO and AI innovations. 

Practical Applications of Generative AI in Forward-Thinking SEO Strategy

Want some specific ways to leverage AI in your SEO strategy going forward? Here are just a few of our favorite ways proactive businesses are using AI: 

1. We’re seeing e-commerce website owners and online retailers use AI to generate product descriptions. This saves time, ensures consistency and relevance across thousands of products, and provides the ability to work in hundreds of keywords and tailored, user-focused snippets of copy without requiring weeks of content team time. 
2. We’re seeing content marketing agencies training writers to use AI in some aspects of the content creation process—brainstorming, outlining, research, and content ideation—to up the relevance and quality of the content while maintaining efficiency. 
3. We’re seeing tech companies use AI to generate in-depth articles, KBs, internal resources, and tutorials. As long as you’re careful about protecting your intellectual property, you can create prompts that include existing product or brand collateral (e.g., a step-by-step guide for a product you’re launching) to repurpose that existing content into other assets (e.g., copy for an infographic or FAQ guide your sales team can use when talking to prospects). 

Our Favorite Tips and Techniques for Implementing Generative Artificial Intelligence in SEO

Excited to get started with AI for SEO? Great, but remember: When it comes to AI, you get out what you put in! It’ll be well worth your time to train your team in safe, effective AI use, engineer strategic prompts, and stay up-to-date with the latest AI solutions in the SEO space. 

In the meantime, these two heavy-lifting quick tips should help you get started: 

1. Prioritize really, really good prompt engineering: Start with clear, detailed prompts to guide the AI in generating relevant content. For instance, when creating initial materials for a blog post, include specific keywords, target audience details, and desired tone in your prompt.
2. Then, be ready to iterate: Use AI to draft initial versions of content. Review and refine these drafts to ensure they meet quality standards and align with your brand voice.

This practical approach to using generative AI in SEO can lead to substantial improvements in search rankings, website traffic, and overall engagement.

Generative AI is transforming SEO and digital marketing by enabling large-scale, relevant, and engaging content creation. By leveraging advanced tools and techniques, businesses can improve search engine rankings, increase website traffic, and enhance user engagement. 

Embracing generative artificial intelligence is essential for staying competitive. We’re excited to stay on the cutting edge with AI techniques—are you? Check out our HubSpot AI training course for our latest and greatest tips for getting the most out of AI, and peruse our in-depth guide to AI in marketing right here.