How To Use AI To Enhance Your SEO & Create Better Content

2
Why content quality matters so much
● Directly affects your brand image and
the probability of conversion/retention
● Acts as a massive ranking factor (e.g.,
Google’s Helpful Content Update)

Using AI
● Don’t be afraid to use AI as long as your content ends up
being original and helpful:
→ Google’s current guidelines are AI-neutral. They prioritize
content quality and utility.
→ AI-generated content is not plagiarism
→ But you need to combine AI with original ideas and human
oversight
● More AI-generated content → more competition, but also,
original, human content will stand out more

How to stand out in the
age of AI content?

Integrate original thoughts and research
Prioritize content based on real-life experience:
→ Publish original research (e.g., a survey with your audience)
→ Leverage your own real-life experience (e.g., write about case
studies with your clients)
→ Work with SMEs (e.g., interview your product manager or an
influencer)
→ Create original visual content (e.g., graphs)

E-E-A-T
1) Experience
2) Expertise
3) Authoritativeness
4) Trustworthiness
● It comes from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines
and is not a direct ranking factor
● More AI-generated content → originality and E-E-A-T
signals are getting even more important

8
New element: Experience
“Consider the extent to which the content creator has the necessary first-
hand or life experience for the topic. Many types of pages are trustworthy
and achieve their purpose well when created by people with a wealth of
personal experience. For example, which would you trust: a product
review from someone who has personally used the product or a “review”
by someone who has not?”

Prioritize off-page authority signals
Greater importance of off-page SEO (e.g., backlinks and mentions):
-> Create research-driven and thought leadership content
→ Opt for story-driven content marketing
-> Embrace your brand story and create content that drives
positive change in your community
→ Focus on building a community of people who will come
back for your content

Example: iFixit
● iFixit is an eCommerce website offering repair
kits for fixing your smartphone or computer at
home
● They get their organic traffic by talking about a
topic they see as fundamental for their brand
story: the Right to Repair
● They believe consumer electronics companies
should release more information about their
software and hardware so people can fix their
devices themselves

Ensure fact-checking and human editing
Make sure to:
● Fact-check automatically generated content
● Rewrite vague sections to be more specific and remove
generalizations
● Edit for style, removing extra words and repeated ideas
● Work with human editors and SMEs

Create content that can’t be easily replicated
directly on the SERP
“Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience) can take up a lot of space for
the queries that it displays on. So once that gets released out of beta, the
available traffic from some keywords might go down.
To hedge against that risk, I highly suggest creating pages with valuable
experiences that can’t easily be replicated directly on the SERP.”
- Kyle Byers, Head of Organic Search at Semrush

Create content that can’t be easily replicated
directly on the SERP
● Make your content interactive
● Add detailed guidelines and screenshots/visuals for every step
you describe in the article
● Add charts, video, GIFs, etc.
● Create a great user experience with your content

● Prepare to optimize your
content to appear in the AI
summaries in addition to
Featured Snippets
● Invest in other channels –
e.g., search on video and
social media platforms

Talk to AI like you talk to a person
● Make your prompts as specific and detailed as possible
● Don’t expect a perfect result from the first prompt
● Ask follow up questions and use multistep prompts
● Fact-check the information and ask for proof

Embrace the “hybrid approach” to AI & SEO
● AI-generated content is not always enough for SEO
● If you’re looking to create content optimized for search, you
still need to analyze search intent, use competitive insights,
and research keywords
● Look for AI content tools that also offer SEO data: e.g., keywords,
search intent analysis

19
Can AI do your keyword research?
● Not accurately. Many will produce convincing information that
is inaccurate.
● Still, AI can help with many aspects of keyword research and
keyword optimization

20
Ways to use AI in keyword research
● Brainstorm content ideas based around keywords you’ve
identified
● Assess keyword optimization of text and compare it to other text
(competitors)
● Keyword clustering and mapping

Get creative and look for more ways to utilize AI
There are multiple ways AI can help you with content marketing
research, content creation and optimization.
Let’s look at some examples.

AI and SEO
Go to Settings & Beta

AI and SEO
Start your prompts from here

AI and SEO
Now you’ve got the upload button!

On-page SEO edits based on GSC data
Improving the relevance of a single article

Include only one URL
Exclude branded queries
EXPORT

Prompt
Paste in the content
of the page

The Prompt:
• Focus on missing keyphrases
• Don’t sacrifice clarity or flow
• Highlight the recommendations

Optimize titles for CTR in SERPS
Site-wide SEO analysis (GSC, GA4)

Include only blog URLs
Exclude branded queries
EXPORT

Delete the rows with no clicks

We don’t care about this data…
EXPORT
Title tags and URLs in one report

Always delete these rows first

What do we think of these
recommendations?

Estimate the traffic impact
Around 700 clicks / month

Adding Depth with FAQ Content
Load content
Load questions
Find gaps
Fill gaps

Expand, collapse, expand,
collapse, expand, collapse
Copy these questions…
Search for the primary phrase

Prompt
Paste in the questions
from the PAA box
Common questions your
page doesn’t answer…

Identify missing topics
on key pages
It’s for both SEO and conversion optimization

Aurora Launch Services
Services: Spacecraft launch services, spaceport
Audience: commercial satellite operators

Aurora Launch Services Homepage
• 325 words total
• One header, one subhead
• Three long paragraphs
• Contact form
• Ranks #28 for “spacecraft launch services”

Prompt
Paste in your
sales page copy

Prompt
Paste in your
competitor’s copy

Competitive analysis based
on the persona’s needs

Ask it for a bar chart
comparing your site to theirs
See the content gaps?
*requires ChatGPT Plus with Code Interpreter

Semantically related
phrases:
“spaceflight”
“rocket launch”
“cubesat”
“launch locations”

Semantically related
phrases:
“satellite”
“launch vehicles”
“low earth orbit”

Semrush semantic
keyphrase ideas

Find the semantically
related keyphrases
This is Market Muse

First, tell it to categorize
Give it the list of phrases

This matrix shows the
opportunities for both
conversion and SEO

Here is the scoring system
it devised

Keyphrase-First
Page Audit and Improvements
Start with a keyword gaps using Semrush data

EXPORT
Get all of the phrases
We’ll focus on the homepage

Keyphrase performance for
your homepage and
your competitors homepages

Give it a goal.
Ask it to analyze.
These look like gaps
(and opportunities)

A visualization helps
you review the data.
Edit this list
A list of phrases we
should consider adding.
Review carefully

Prompt
Paste in your
homepage copy
Draft of new keyphrase-
focused sections
Edit this copy

Keyword Realignment
For those surprise, accidental rankings

Really? I didn’t know
that this page ranks…

Filter the report to just show
performance for that URL
EXPORT

Grab the HTML file for the page

Upload the files
Give it the role, the goal
and instructions
Analysis of page relevance
and keyphrase performance

Suggestion for a new
target keyphrase

Prompt it for edits
A bunch of
exact match phrases.
Not very helpful…

Prompt for better
semantic SEO
Much better…

Find SEO gaps
in your content strategy
Semantic distance analysis

Which topics have you missed?
Topic
Topic
Topic
Topic
Topic
???

Upload and prompt
it to merge the files
Ask for the link to download

Prompt gives it a role,
asks for topics based on
semantic distance analysis
Some of these look good!

I’ve never written these.
But I have written
many closely related articles.
I want more detailed analysis,
more specific recommendations

Shows where a new article
would fit into a gap

AI = Never Starting from Scratch
The Semrush “Content Shake” app gets you started

Pick an intro
paragraph, then edit

Content that fills gaps
built-in promo advantages
Borrow visuals, examples and data
from the related articles.
Share with influencers who contributed
to the related articles
Notify editors who linked
to the related articles.
Link to the new article
from the related articles.

Suggest internal links
Connect the best cheese to the best mousetraps

EXPORT
Report: Pages and screens
Dimension: Page title
Secondary dimension: Page path
Date range: long!
Filter: Page path contains “blog”

It categorizes all the articles
into topics

High traffic pages link to
high engagement pages
on the same topics!
Prompt giving it
two criteria

Quality Rater Guidelines Review
Going beyond the text on the page

Tell it to act as a Quality Rater.
Upload the HTML file.
Give it the target keyphrase
Paste in the page content

Give it a competitor page.

And another…

Let’s visualize the E-A-T
differences
Gaps, opportunities
and positioning

Ask it to suggest
improvements
Some are much better
than others…

Your AI Challenge…
The only limit is your imagination!

What [answers/topics/keyphrases/formats]
are missing from this [URL/website/content strategy]?

…and what data and prompts
will get you there?

Thank you.
Reach out anytime.
Andy Crestodina
Co-founder / CMO
773.353.8301
andy@orbitmedia.com

How To Use AI To Enhance Your SEO & Create Better Content

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