Azahara says: “You need to start changing your mentality in terms of how you do SEO and digital marketing in general. And maybe start following a little bit of what's going on with paid media because we are kind of the elites when it comes to AI.

I think it's giving very good insights about what the future is going to look like when it comes to search and search engines.”

How do you use AI and paid media, in combination, to assist with your SEO?

“We utilise AI for a lot of things within paid media, but I think one of the most important things that SEOs can start applying as well is to just analyse data. We know that we get big amounts of data to analyse, and AI is just facilitating that, so we can focus more on the user because we are moving towards user-centric marketing.

The reason why this is very important is because the context of the user is going to be super relevant in the future when we are moving from our current search engines to AI-powered search engines. We are already noticing that, within paid media, when we create campaigns, we have automated solutions like PMax, where it's the algorithm deciding what to do and who to target, etc.

This is going to be even more relevant when it's the other way around – when we have a search engine that is powered by AI. It will have an effect on how people are searching for things. Obviously, SEO will need to change to be able to capitalise on that.”

Is there user data available in paid media that you can't get anywhere else?

“Yes, definitely. One of the biggest problems that we have right now is that we don't have visibility, for example. With these automated solutions, they’ve become very, very accurate in how to reach audiences and show the right ad to the right person.

The problem with that is that we don't really have that access to actually see who is seeing our ad. But that is changing. For example, last Wednesday Google announced all these new changes. One of those changes is that we are now going to have more visibility on the audience and who is actually converting from these campaigns. That is going to start changing.”

Do we need to give AI access to our Google Ads account, or do we export data from Google Ads and other platforms for AI to analyse?

“I think it would be good to do more than just take the information from Google. We are moving towards a future where we need all the teams within an agency. For example, if you have an SEO team and a paid media team, it's going to be even more important to work together. All the insights that you may see within paid media, you can share within SEO – and the other way around.

We are in a moment where we just need to work collaboratively. It's not like before, when SEO used to do what they used to do and get their results, and then paid media used to do what they used to do and get their results. Now we are coming to a moment where everybody needs to work together because, first, you can really report on who is actually driving that conversion.

The efforts that you are doing on paid media have an impact on SEO, and the other way around, and with other areas of marketing. That's why it's important that we work collaboratively to share those insights within and with each other.”

What would be an example of an insight that you've gained from paid media that you've used in SEO?

“Good question. For example, it's very interesting when you don't really know who your target audience is. With all these automated solutions, one of the things that we have access to is that we can reach a really broad audience. Then, when you actually look into the reports, you are able to distinguish who your target audience is. In other ways, it would have taken you a really long time to actually understand who your target audience was.

We can do this really quickly now. Within a matter of 4 weeks, you can actually understand who your target audience is, then you can take those insights and give them to SEO. Because we are moving towards contextual marketing, it is so important to understand the context of your user when you are going to create that content. Understanding who your target audience is will give you a huge advantage when it comes to creating that content for SEO.”

How do we describe that target audience?

“One of the advantages of paid media is that we can also get to try creative images, copy, etc. - whatever they resonate with. Then that provides insights, because what we want to start creating is contextual content. Then you can take those insights – people respond better to this type of copy or people respond better to this type of image; this is what they like – to create your content within SEO.

Again, it's not just the fact that you can have access to thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of data. It is also looking between the lines and understanding who your user is. Then you can apply all that within your content in SEO.

You’re incorporating this information into a prompt for AI about your target audience, so it comes up with ideas about how to write the kind of content that would be most likely to convert for your audience.”

What AI are we talking about here?

“That's a good question. I’ve tried them all. I have noticed that it depends on what you want them for. You can use one or another. I think it's very interesting to start using Gemini (formerly known as Bard) – just because the plan from Google is to insert Gemini within the actual platform.

For paid media, Gemini will be inserted within the platform, and we are going to be able to use it to run campaigns, which is going to be the next step. I'm actually quite excited to see how that's going to work. Obviously, it's a Google solution. If you are within Google and the Google search engine, it’s something that you should now be trying to understand how it works, more or less, and what kind of prompts work better for that engine.

Then ChatGPT is getting there ahead of the game. They announced that they're on search engines as well. We don't know how that is going to play in the future, but I'm sure it will be one of the players. We will need to know how ChatGPT works.

Again, it's just a matter of testing and seeing what types of prompts work better because each one of them has different algorithms, different ways of machine learning, etc. It's just a matter of trying both (the ones that I think are the two big ones) and seeing which one responds better and to what.”

How do you go about using AI to further refine your keyword strategy?

“It's very useful in terms of, again, understanding the user. You can upload your content, for example, and you can ask your AI to give you a list of keywords based on that content. That's very good practice just because, as we are moving towards search engines that are powered by AI, they are taking your context more into consideration: what you have actually been searching for before, what your current situation is, what platforms you have been using, etc. They will take all that and then they will actually understand what you're looking for.

Just to give you an example, if you are looking for shoes, it won't be like now, where you just look for ‘shoes’ and it will show the most relevant searches. It will be a matter of, ‘Has this person been looking for ‘hiking trips’ before?’ If so, it will be more likely to show you boots for hiking, because it knows that context and it knows that you've been looking for hiking trips before, and it’s more likely that the shoes are for that trip.

That type of thing is what you need to take into consideration when you create your content because that's how search is going to be in the future.”

How do you make sure that there aren't any gaps in the keyword research that you do and that you're targeting as many opportunities as possible?

“The most important thing, which is something that we have forgotten nowadays (especially with so much data and all the changes that are happening with marketing), is that we forget how users engage with content. It's as easy as just putting yourself in the shoes of the person who is going to buy your product, use your service, etc.

Once you have done all your research, you have all the content possible within the AI, and it gives you a list of keywords, maybe it's as easy as to start thinking, ‘If I was this person, what would I be looking for?’ Then you can fill in the gap that may be there with certain keywords. You can fill that gap just by doing that simple exercise.

In our day-to-day, we are so busy that we sometimes forget that, at the end of the day, we are marketers, and we need to understand how user intent works. It's very easy. It's just to think, for this person, what are their motives? What would they be thinking, in this moment, to be searching for my product? Then you can fill in the gaps just by doing that.”

Is that a good question to be asking AI as well: if you were that user, what keywords would you be using in a search engine to find this product or service?

“Yeah, definitely.”

How do you continue to refine your approach to ensure that you're staying up to date and using all the best and brightest tools available to you?

“Don't let yourself get lost in all this fuss about AI. There are so many things going on right now. Just focus on how you can integrate it into your day-to-day. It's not a matter of suddenly changing your completed strategy just because AI is here. It's a matter of how you can integrate it into your day-to-day, to make your life a little bit easier, so you can focus on other things.

And test. Test everything that you can think of. Every time that you are going to run something that you were doing one way a couple of months ago, maybe start thinking, ‘How can I try it with AI?’ Test both and see what results come. It's the only way that we are going to learn because nothing is in writing. There's nothing that says, ‘This is the right way to use AI.’ It's a tool that is there, that no one really knows how to use. How you want to use it is up to you, and whatever results you get, that will be your learnings.”

Are SEOs who aren't actively using AI much in their day-to-day activities falling behind?

“Yes. I don't think there have been that many practical changes yet, when it comes to SEO. For example, what I mentioned is that, from paid media, AI is now integrated within the platforms. Now we are able to run campaigns that are completely automated and run by an algorithm, but in SEO the change is not as direct.

You can use AI as a tool for keyword research and things like that – for translations it’s very useful – but that's going to change very soon. The first thing that we have seen is that Google announced the AI section within search, where it will just suggest things – and it’s just for paid media. However, in the future, it will be SEO as well.

Your complete search will be changed by AI. Now is the moment to prepare. It's the moment to, as I mentioned before, just start understanding how this AI machine learning works. Start testing it. That way, you will have an advantage when the search engine changes, because it will change. I am 100% convinced that they will change because that's where we're going. It’s better to start preparing now, and understand how it works now, so that way you're ready for when it's here.”

What's something that SEOs shouldn't be doing in 2024?

“Stop doing things the way that you used to do things. It's time to look at the future. Especially with SEO, we know that it takes a long time to see results. It's a good moment to start practising, for example, content that is based on context. It's a moment to start creating things in a different way and to test things.

Maybe just change your mentality a little bit. Start forgetting about how you used to do things because that’s not going to be relevant in the next few months. We see this as something that is coming in the next 10 years, but it's probably next year that we will be talking about completely different search engines powered by AI. The earlier you start, the better. You shouldn't continue doing SEO the way that you used to do it.”

How does ‘content based on context’ apply to keyword targeting? If you've got multiple contexts targeting the same keyword phrase, do you attempt to target those contexts on the same page?

“It depends. It will depend on your product. It will depend on your brand. It will depend on so many things. This is where AI will come in very handy – not only because it will help you to create your content, but you can also use it as a search engine.

We know that ChatGPT has already released a search engine powered by AI, and there are other solutions as well. Again, put yourself in the shoes of the user, start searching for things in these AI-powered search engines, and see what kind of information comes up. That will give you some clue of what kind of content you need to start creating, how it needs to be looked at, and what kinds of keywords are relevant, depending on what you've been putting in that search engine.”

Azahara Corrales is Media Manager at RocketMill, and you can find her over on LinkedIn or at RocketMill.co.uk.