Artificial Intelligence and SEO

Artificial Intelligence or AI is being introduced into social media platforms and search engines. It has evolved so much that Facebook has better Face Recognition Technology than the FBI and YouTube ranks your video based on the audio, not only the Title, Description and Tags. So what does this mean for Search Engine Optimization going forward? Well it’s really pretty simple, you won’t be able to “trick” any of these platforms so easy anymore, and nor should you, just create compelling content to get your audience’s attention.

Here are some factors to look at:

Post Length

In recent studies it has shown that generally the longer the article the better for SEO. The optimum length for an article seems to be around the 2000 word mark. This is contrary to the belief that a 500 word article (such as this one) is optimal for SEO. This takes some serious planning and writing, but if done well adds some excellent SEO juice to your website.

Readability

Readability is super important for time on page and bounce rate. If your article is well structured and easy to read, people will spend more time on your page. These time metrics show search engines how engaging your content is and will rank higher the more the perceived engagement value.

Media

With artificial intelligence, the old “free” internet images is a thing of the past. With AI you will have to create your own media, including pictures, videos and infographics. The AI systems already pick up duplicate content in video and image files. Create your own images using tools like Canva, they already have a unique signature and search engines will see these as unique, see page.

In videos, make sure the content is closely related to the title. If not these videos will not rank at all. Make sure the title, description and content all complement each other. This will allow the search engine or video platform to identify a strong trend through the project

Quality vs Quantity

Spend a lot of time on each post. The days of fresh daily content taking the cake are over. With article spinners and rubbish content overloading websites the main search engines are tuning their algorithm to look at quality. We are not 100% sure how this is calculated but it includes original images and videos, original well written text and length of post and then probably the most important factor is user engagement. If you write rubbish content users will not engage and search engines will not rank you.

Geography

If your run a site from South Africa, there should be user engagement from South Africa (at least some). If there is none you are classified as an affiliate site which is not a label you want for SEO. The important thing is to get your own unique ORIGINAL content. Many people are lazy and either create low-quality content or spin articles, this is the worst thing you can do for the future of your website.