People have been using machines to help them think since ancient times. Ancient Greek and Chinese astronomers used armillary spheres to calculate the movements of stars and planets. 17th century mathematicians invented even more complex mechanical calculators to solve problems more quickly. Of course, this led directly into the production of digital computing machines that fueled the rapid growth of the information age we live in today.
All of this is a precursor to the latest development in Artificial Intelligence: Large Language Model (LLM) intelligence. LLMs use advanced computing power to sift through vast amounts of human generated material, synthesize it, and produce a response.
This is not significantly different from the development of the alphabet, printing press, computer or the internet. All of these transformed the way we store, process, and communicate information. It is not to be ignored. It should not be embraced with reckless abandon. It is not to be unreasoningly feared.
We will discuss both what a good LLM can do well, and what it cannot. In the competitive world of the internet today, a website will need to be built to perform if it is going to be a key marketing tool on its own. Rather than just being a brochure that’s “printed” online, it needs to be built to sell. We call this a Marketing Website. We approach this type of website in a more technical way. It took us quite a number of years to fully understand this kind of website, and it has significantly changed the way we build them.
In a marketing site, the content of text, images, and video are equally important to the design. We usually begin by first establishing what content you want your website to rank for in search results. In other words, what are the search terms, or keywords, that you want your website to show up for when people search on Google or other search engines?
We begin by examining what are the keywords you need. What are words that are key to describing your business or service? We take those words and go to online tools to see their feasibility to build a search ranking around them. We may change the focus of these keywords to better match what terms or long-tail phrases appear to be best for ranking results.
We also make sure we establish what action constitutes a success for the website. This action might be making a phone call, signing up for an email list, filling out a contact form, or making a purchase on the website. We call this a conversion in marketing speak, and it is the single most important measurement of how valuable or successful the website is to your business.
Using AI
If they are understood, LLMs can be incorporated into normal work processes to increase productivity exponentially. For example, AI can significantly decrease time for research. Instead of having to skim the internet yourself, searching sources, skimming them, and deciding if it is worth reading through in detail, AI can do that for you. You can start your research with a quick prompt in ChatGPT or Grok that will give you an overview of the subject with links out to references for further reading, allowing you to quickly verify the information.
It can also help you organize the information you gather into outlines and rough drafts. The toughest part of writing is usually getting past the blank page. An LLM will take your seed information and generate an outline or rough draft that will get you started.
This goes beyond simply writing too. AI serves well as a thought partner, using its ability to draw on large amounts of information to generate ideas, draw attention to potential problems in thought processes, etc.
Of course, it’s important not to get too carried away. When I was a teacher, I always found it slightly amusing that when I gave students permission to use calculators on the complicated geometry equations, they ended up getting worse grades than when they figured them by hand. They were much faster, but their accuracy went down.
LLMs are a shortcut. Like any shortcut, they come with certain risks. AI generated content often has an obvious, feel to it. It also regurgitates information rather than creating high quality information. LLMs will not do the work for you, the final product must be human generated, or it will show.
What Does AI Change with SEO?
A major part of online marketing deals with optimizing content for search engines. How does AI change how this works?
The short answer, of course, is that we don’t know. A year ago, LLMs hardly existed in the public sphere. Now, a new model or update is being released every month. At this point, everything is changing too rapidly for us to predict how things will end up. We do know a few things, however.
We do know, for example, that Google search results are changing. Initially, a Google search result page would be a list of websites. Then, Google started adding in extras to allow users to find information more quickly. Weather questions would result first in a basic weather display, then in a list of weather websites. Google would present snippets of text or even video that it thought would answer questions. These, however, were directly and easily connected to their website of origin. With recent AI development, Google often presents an AI summary of the question with multiple sources for the information. It is attempting to answer the users question without them having to visit a website. The time was when creating a blog that answered people’s questions would bring them onto your site, giving you traffic and authority. Now, Google’s AI’s will read that content and use it to present an answer so that the user does not need to visit your site at all. Your site will still be referenced and Google will presumably lend your website authority for providing valuable answers, but the dynamics have shifted.
Before, long form blog content was difficult to present, and therefore a valuable investment. Now, AI can write a blog on practically any subject in seconds. Valuable research and information will always be valuable, but the market is going to be flooded with cheap, AI content, potentially muddying the waters for a while. Search engines and users will both need to learn how to sort through the fog to find genuinely valuable content. How this will happen is anybody’s guess at this point.
Finally, for a long time, Search Engine essentially meant Google. That is quickly changing. Companies are competing to have their AI be the one to surf the web best and provide answers more quickly. You don’t have to sit down and log into your Amazon account to search for products, you can simply ask Alexa. If you don’t want to be limited to Amazon, you can ask Grok, ChatGPT or whatever your favorite AI is a similar, and it will be able to answer your questions as if you are having a conversation. We can no longer focus on optimizing content for Google Search alone. AI search has arrived and it is growing quickly.
What Stays the Same?
In an environment of change, how do we maintain value? Better yet, how can we go beyond maintaining value to exploit the opportunities that a change like this opens up?
I believe the answer is to focus on the core fundamentals of marketing stay the same across all media.
Provide Value:
People have the same basic questions and needs they always have. Where can I find good pizza? Will this pair of shoes last well and improve my running comfort, or are they a cheap piece of junk? Is this business actually qualified to take care of my needs, or are they simply going to take my money and run?
If you want to earn business, you need to provide answers to these questions Marketing is simply presenting this value to customers. Think about the main values you provide to your customers. Your website needs to continue to present those values in a way that connects with your customers.
Search providers want to connect people with solutions at a higher rate than their competitors. Provide solutions. Search providers will respond accordingly.
Streamline Customer Experience:
Even if the way people get to your website is changing, the way they interact with your website is fundamentally unaffected. Focus on making sure your website converts. It needs to engage with customers, identify with what they need, and provide that value in a way that is intuitive and easy for customers to interact with.
People want to answer their questions efficiently. They want to be able to purchase with confidence. They want an experience that is pleasing and easy to use. Again, search providers want to send people to sites that they like.
Conclusion
Now more than ever, companies need to avoid gimmicks and shortcuts in marketing. A one size fits all formula may not provide lasting value. Instead, marketing will need to be active and agile to capitalize on what ends up working, and cut what ends up losing value.