Kerstin says: “Fully embrace the yin and yang of modern SEO by being human in an AI-driven world.”

What would be an example of yin, and what would be an example of yang?

“Maybe it's slightly philosophical, but it does make sense.

Bear with me, but basically, in the concept of yin and yang, you have these opposite forces that are also deeply interconnected, so you can't have one without the other. It's not static; it is dynamic, and it transforms over time. So, if you want to look at that from an SEO perspective, you might want to argue that, at the moment at least, one can't exist without the other.

You have AI, but you still need a human to work with the AI - to prompt the AI to do the thing that we want it to do. But then, on the other side, you have the human - and the AI can help the human be more efficient, be faster, and basically enhance what we're doing.

It's two sides that are seemingly opposites, especially now with SEO and AI Overviews and AI Mode, and with everyone like, ‘Ah, what's going on?’ So, it’s seemingly opposite forces that are deeply interconnected, and what you're really looking for is a balance between the two.

There can be dynamics, over time things change, but then you rebalance. I believe, with SEO now and where we're going, it's really important to understand this concept, to understand the dynamics and embrace technology, but also on the other hand, the human side, the empathy, and the way people will relate with us, our brands, our content, or whatever it is that we're doing.”

I find the phrase, ‘one can't exist without the other’, a little bit scary because is that the stage that we're at at the moment?

I wonder if, at some point in the future, AI will be able to exist without humans, but that's a conversation for another time, perhaps. But, is it the case that SEOs can't exist without AI at the moment?

“Maybe that's a bit of futuristic thinking. I think we can exist, but you can't avoid that SEO is changing. That's not in our control, right?

For example: Google introducing AI overviews, Google introducing AI Mode, new search engines coming up, all the LLMs, and people using different search interfaces, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or whatever people use. This is not in our control. So it's not that we can't exist without AI – we can continue doing SEO how we’ve done it before, although I don’t know if that’s the best idea – but it’s just not in our control to stop AI from being part of what we do.”

How do you stay human in an AI-driven world?

“This is not necessarily a new concept. EEAT has been around for a long time. We know we need to show our knowledge, our expertise, and our authority in a certain space that we operate in. But it's really taking this further.

It's not just about showing expertise in something, but also creating content – and an online presence, not just content – where people can deeply resonate with you and your brand. It's really about being personal and creating a reaction to what you're doing, because that really sticks.

If you look at AI, there's so much content being pumped out left and right. It's videos, it's images, it's content, it's blogs, it's just more, more, more, more, more. Again, it's almost being the counterpart to that, where we're being deeply relatable and almost forcing a reaction, but triggering something for people to connect with you, and that way you stand out with your brand.

I would say that's the emotional side to it, but of course, there's also a technical side to it, because we're talking about SEO. It's not just, ‘I'm the most relatable person’, it's also, ‘How do I then use this in my day-to-day SEO, in what I'm doing in content creation and things like that?’

But yeah, definitely triggering a human response to what you're doing as a counterpart to all of the generated content that's flooding the internet right now.”

When you say ‘AI-driven world’, you're talking about content that's flooding the internet.

Do you mean the fact that the majority of the content (or a big chunk of the content) is produced by AI now? Are you talking about AI delivering the search results or the answers that the majority of humans consume now?

“By ‘AI-driven world’, I mean that AI is coming into more and more areas of our lives, what we do, and how we use things, right? Just generally, there's more AI in our day-to-day.

Now, from a marketing and SEO perspective, yes, I would argue there is an increase in AI-generated content – whether it's written content, or video content on YouTube. There are a lot of channels that are just AI-created video content, so there is more of that.

That's the AI-driven part, but when we're talking about the yin and yang, it's not just the AI content that's flooding the internet; it's really how to use it to your advantage to be more efficient, be faster, and be more productive. That is the embracing of the side of AI – so not just being scared of what's happening.

Searches are slowly, slowly moving away from Google search. Maybe there are technical changes or how search results are displayed. It's really about embracing the parts that can support your work and help you with what you're doing, and then also combining that with the human aspect.”

You recommend using AI to quickly scale. What does that look like?

“I think you can use it in different ways, and for us, we do that in different ways across different teams.

It's not just about scaling content, I would say, it's also looking at your processes, looking at your workflows and seeing: how can you improve that? For example, we use Zapier for automating workflows. With Zapier Agents, you can do that even faster and even more efficiently.

It is also creation, so we use AI for training new writers on our tone of voice. It can help initially with onboarding and basically producing the content. Different GPTs can be set up for different types of content that we're doing. Then, in other ways for content production – for example, video production – you can use AI to support with that.

I would say it's not necessarily, at least for us, to create the content. It's more about process optimization and automation across the business. Not necessarily just marketing, but just looking at workflows, processes, and how AI can help improve that so your time saving can then be used to think strategically, spend more time on ideation, and again, focusing on that human element that, at the moment at least, I think we're still better at than AI.”

Okay, but AI is certainly better at some things.

How do you decide on what to use humans for and what to use AI for?

“I think we're in a phase of transition, and it's still very much ‘test and learn’. Things are changing so fast at the moment. It's almost overwhelming and difficult to keep up with, and you might use one tool here and then, tomorrow, there's something else. It’s so, so fast.

I think you need to test what works and also decide, okay, where can I use AI? Again, maybe there are just processes where you can use AI to be more efficient, but then on the human side, I would never just publish AI-created content because, again, it's about being human.

For every piece of content that we publish, we want it to be informative and unique. It should be useful. That’s why we're publishing it in the first place; it’s not just to get traffic to our website, right?

We're doing a lot of interviews. We get first-hand experiences and insights from people – basically highlighting the human beings contributing their knowledge and their experience to the content. It could be, we have a lot of data on our platform, so we can use that data for data storytelling.

Again, AI can help you with gathering the data and creating some charts for you to embed in your content. You can use AI in the process, but still the storytelling bit – the human aspects, combining that with expert insights and comments, all of that coming together – for now, this is where we still need humans. This is where we need our input, our creativity, and our experiences, because that's what readers relate to.

It's this first-hand experience. It's really the human side that comes through with the content.”

You used that ‘first-hand experience’ phrase a few times there as well. You also talked about interviews.

Are you saying that humans should produce the initial version of the content, and then you can perhaps pass it to AI to enhance it and break it up into different-sized chunks, depending on the medium that it's being consumed on?

“I think it depends on your workflow. Again, I would suggest testing what works best for you. I know some creators, for example, if it's written content, they might prompt the AI first to come up with a draft, and then they enhance it, they edit the content, and they might add comments or insights from people.

It depends on your workflow and how you want to do it. I guess with video, it's likely far more practical to do the human work and then use the AI to create more material from your recordings, do some form of editing, and help you create more content from the one recording that you already have.

I would say it depends a bit on what you're doing – what should come first, the human or the AI? It's about testing, it's about finding out what works for you, and then how you use AI to help and support your process, but still have the human input.”

Will AI ever replace thought leaders?

“I don't know. Maybe. I don't know if we will have AI thought leaders in the future. It’s too hard to say right now.

I would say, at the moment, absolutely not. We want to connect with humans. As SEOs, I think we're focusing a lot on Google and maybe the upcoming AI assistants now, but still, when you are searching on TikTok or you are on LinkedIn, it’s the humans, right? It’s finding people who are relatable.

For my taste, there’s a bit too much AI on LinkedIn these days, but it’s still connecting with the people. It’s still the human side.”

How do you personally detect that it's AI on LinkedIn, and what turns you off about it?

“I don't think you can always detect if it's AI. If it's a very standard use of AI, then you might do.

For example, with image generation, I think we all know the typical AI images that you're getting tired of. When at first it was like, ‘Oh, this is amazing! This is so cool!’, and now it's like, ‘Okay, it's just another one of those generated images’, so any carousels and any images are a bit like, ‘Okay. That’s nice, but nothing new anymore.’

And written content as well. I think that ChatGPT especially creates a certain structure and a certain use of words. I think it's on us, if we want to use that as help, to then still tweak it and give it our tone of voice but, with a lot of the content that I see, I don't think there is that additional effort in there, to make it look a bit less like ChatGPT.

Also, I don't know if you've noticed, but all the posts are getting longer and longer and longer. No one would have written that in the past, right? Now it’s just all of this storytelling. Everyone's got it, and all the posts are super long.

Also, people start to sound similar. I'm not a native English speaker, so I say things in a way that might not be 100% correct, but that's how I speak and how I speak English. If I use ChatGPT, it's just going to sound like everybody else. You could probably detect it's not actually me because it's too accurate.”

How do you use AI to remain competitive if everyone's using AI?

“That's a very good question. I think potentially for research and getting deeper insights, but I think the competitiveness is still where you need the human to spot the opportunities.

Again, AI for me (at the moment, it might change in the future) is more of a tool to maybe help me find information, understand maybe data or complex things, but I still see it as my role to understand how to remain competitive. So, the strategy for whatever marketing channel, for us, we still do it as humans, right?

We understand our space in the market. We understand our audience. We understand what our competitors are doing. We're doing a lot of competitive research. Yes, maybe AI can help us do that faster and do that more efficiently, but it's still on us to interpret what we're seeing, to spot the opportunities, and then use that to our advantage.

I also wouldn't suggest doing something just because everybody else is doing it: ‘Oh, now we can create tonnes more content, so let's cover every little keyword that we can find.’ I probably wouldn't do that. I think the competitive advantage still comes from the humans behind it, looking at opportunities and understanding the space that we're in.”

Okay, the competitive side still comes from showing your human side, but how do you measure the ROI of showing your human side – of showing authenticity and expertise?

What kind of metrics do you look at in order to actually determine the worth of doing that?

“This is something that's a bit difficult. Well, it's always been difficult to accurately measure what impact a certain action has, and I would argue that, to some extent, it's not exactly possible to measure every single thing that you're doing and the exact impact of it.

You still look at your data, you still have your smaller scale metrics, where you would still look at who's consuming your content, or are you driving traffic to your site? Maybe now it's less, but you will have KPIs to follow for your content. For example, generating traffic to your site. Are people fulfilling a certain action on your website? Maybe you have downloadable campaigns, or you have a newsletter signup.

I don't think this is hugely changing. It's just how we acquire traffic and where we acquire traffic that’s changing, but you would still want to measure, overall, how many people engage with you? How much traction are you getting? Are they coming back? And again, independent of the platform, but this engagement is still what you want to measure and what gives you an idea.

Then, overall, of course, you still need people to convert at some point. I mean, it depends on your business model, but for us, it would still be: At the end, we do want leads. We do want call bookings. We do want sales. Those are the harder KPIs that we still track.

Then, if it's coming because we're being super human and we have great people featured in our content, I don't know. I don't have that level of insight, but I can still see if it's working or not working based on the engagement, and based on the other KPIs that follow in that funnel.”

What's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“Don't freak out. SEO is not dead; it's just changing how we search and where we search.

Really, stay up to speed with technology. It's super fast-moving, so understand what's happening, understand how you can use it to your advantage, embrace technology and empathy, and bring it together to find that balance and use your human side to find the opportunities and stand out from the rest.”

Kerstin Reichert is the Head of Marketing at SeedLegals, and you can find her over at SeedLegals.com.