Using AI for SEO - Simple Strategies for Success

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Hello! Happy Friday.

Today, I want to carry on the series about how I use AI to help me and how I use it specifically – how I use it to help me with SEO.This is one of the key things that I think has been really, really helpful with the development of AI. The SEO world is changing massively and actually, just using these tools to make our life a little bit easier. I think it makes such a big difference really.

So if you want to check out the other episodes that I've recorded in this series around AI and how it helps me in my business and in my personal life, look at Episode 047: How I Use AI in My Personal Life - From Meal Planning to Mindset Coaching and Episode 049: AI for Small Business - How I Use It to Save Time and Boost Creativity! So I've just dived in to how AI helps me every single day in my business and in my personal life.

AI for SEO: Key Benefits

But today I want to really focus on AI for SEO and how it can help us to just save time. Find new opportunities that we might not have thought of. It really has become a core part of how I manage SEO for my business.

It saves me so much time, just helps me to just get unstuck with things and just lets me focus on what really matters and what makes a difference in my business. And if there's one thing that I would like you to take away from today, it's that AI can help you with SEO, but your expertise and what you do and how you help your customers and all of your knowledge is really the key to making it work.

So as much as the AI tools can help us in our business, I never want you to feel like what you know as the expert overrides that, or doesn't override that, I should say. So it's always all about how bringing your expertise and what you do makes you special into this AI stuff that we're using is what really, really makes a difference.

So when I'm talking about AI, in this sort of context, I'm talking about using tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, but also specific tools for SEO. So like I love Keywords Everywhere. It's a Google Chrome plugin that's really good for finding keyword opportunities, checking search volumes and difficulty and things like that.

And you can actually integrate that in with ChatGPT. And it has some great ways of using it in there. Sometimes some of it can be a little bit too much, a little bit overwhelming, but just generally even having it there running when you're doing a Google search makes a massive difference.

It will show you immediately what the search volumes are for particular keywords. So if, for example, you're typing in something related to your niche, then it will give you some data on that.

And it also helps if you're using something like Google's keyword planner, it helps to make that better as well and just give you more specific data around the amount of people that are searching for whatever you're trying to show up on Google for.

Another SEO tool that I like is KW Finder, and that's another great one where it can really help you to just speed up things like keyword research and stuff like that as well.

Using AI for Keyword Research

One of the things you might wonder is if learning to use AI in the context of SEO is going to take too much time. So I would say if you're feeling like that, then just think about starting small.

Even if it's just using AI for one task, like coming up with blog ideas or like brainstorming blog titles or coming up with keyword ideas, that can really help you. It can just save hours and hours for you and just really make a difference.

Practical Examples of AI in SEO

I was thinking of kind of some examples of how I specifically use AI for SEO because I use it in so many different ways to the point that it's almost just becoming just an integrated part of all of the apps and all of the programmes that I use.

But recently I started using Sintra.AI and I'm still on the fence about it to be honest with you. It's one that I could definitely see the possibilities.

So the whole concept with Sintra is that you have different assistants. So it's got about, I think it's 12 helpers. They call them helpers. And one is specifically like trained to be a business coach. One is trained to be an SEO consultant or an SEO specialist, I think it is.

One's trained to be in personal development. One is trained in copywriting. One is trained in social media. So there's all these different little individual helpers within the platform.

And you go in and you talk to these specifically, and they come up with some great ideas. They actually prompt you with questions, um, to, to make you think about how you can develop your business, but they're all independent. So that's the sort of big downside with that tool at the moment.

There is a central brain that you can train and you have to train it. But I think if the, if the helpers could talk to each other, that would also, that would make it make a big difference with it. It uses OpenAI, so it uses the same tech as ChatGPT, but I feel like it's, that's got a lot of potential.

It's got a lovely interface. It's very, it's a bit cartoony and very sort of user friendly to use. So I think there's potential there. But when I used it, I thought, oh, well, I'll see how the SEO helper.

And I had a moment of thinking, oh, is this going to replace me? Is there, is there going to even be any need for SEO specialists? So I thought I'd go in and try and ask it to come up with some ideas around SEO for podcasts. And one of the things I realised is that...

Balancing AI and Human Expertise

It's not there right now, and I don't think it will ever be there in terms of entirely replacing that human expertise and just that, that ability to kind of think differently and to think about the bigger picture, really. It's very good at honing in on a specific thing, but like with the podcast, it gave, it gave me some ideas that as I know, as a, as I know about SEO, I could see why those ideas maybe wouldn't work for my business.

So it was telling me some of the things I should do, but I realised that if I put those things in place, then that would not align with my other strategies around the podcast.

So things like it might suggest page titles and descriptions for pages on your website, but if it doesn't understand your whole strategy then it might not know that actually that's going to really compete with another page that's also already doing really, really well in the search engines.

So I think it's, thinking of them as a helper rather than thinking of them as a replacement for all of your own critical thinking. Then having that help there makes a big difference really. And I think if you're thinking about your own SEO, that's where having someone like me there as a, as a helpful guide can, can make all the difference.

But the same also applies for you if you've got a client who's looking for help, whether that's help with skincare advice or choosing what treatments are best for them or choosing a coaching plan or deciding which one of your online courses to take, your help and experience is the key to that.

So if you're using AI for example to review your home page or like a services page, tell it about your experience. Tell it about the things that you know, who you're trying to connect with and how, how you can really get across in your messaging.

I think that's the big thing is that it's just making sure that we don't lose our own expertise and don't allow that to sort of be overwritten by the AI's logical answers that that may not necessarily align with your customers really. So that was a bit more sort of reassuring after using that tool, using Sintra and using the, the SEO specialist in there.

It kind of just reassured me that these tools are really there to just make things a bit quicker and easier, but also helping me to sort of stay in control of that and helping me to make the most of it really.

Steps to Optimise Your Website

So if you're thinking about how you can use these tools for your own business, think about the things that we need to determine before we even start thinking about SEO.

So SEO is all essentially all about working out what you want to show up for in searches, which page of your website is most relevant to that search term that you want to show up for, and then optimising that page. And that's kind of the three simple steps really.

There are other things, obviously there's a, there's a lot to optimising pages and there's a lot of other strategies and a lot of other ways you can bring other things into SEO, but fundamentally that's what it's all about. Work out what you want to show up for, which page of your website should that be and optimise that page.

So if you're thinking about this, the first thing I would say, if you were trying to do these three things of working out what you want to show up for, working out which page and working out how to optimise that. First of all, starting with number one, start with your own ideas.

So if you're trying to think about what do I want to show up for in searches, start with a blank piece of paper or ideas that you've already got and just think about the things that you think you should show up for on Google, whether you do or you don't already.

And you can use Google Search Console to help you work out some of the ideas for the things that you already are showing up for. But think about that. Think about the main things that you should be showing up for.

So if you're a local business, what you do in your area, you should be showing up for that. If you've got services for each of the individual services that you do in your area, you should be showing up for that.

If you're an online business, think about what you're selling, think about what the problems your offer solves, the benefits of what you, your offer delivers and showing up for that.

And don't ignore the local part of that as well, because even if you are an online business and can work with anybody anywhere throughout the world, still, it's worth tapping into that local market because there's always going to be customers nearby to you who, it's so much easier to stand out in a local market as well.

So once you've done that, once you've started with your own ideas of what you should be showing up for, then you can feed those ideas into chat, GBT or Google Gemini or whatever AI tool you're using and ask it to come up with ideas around your type of business, around things that you might've missed, around content clusters.

So topics that you should be talking about, the main topics you should be talking about in business. I talk about this back in episode nine, about how to establish your core topics. And this is really important. If you're thinking about what you want to show up for, think about how that fits in with the things that you talk about on your website as well.

And ask ChatGPT to come up with some ideas. And then think about which ones of those are the most important. Think about the ones that are, it's most critical that you should be showing up for those things. And then think about which pages of your website are most relevant for that.

And then start with your own brain first. Look at your website logically. You should have a list somewhere, ideally in a spreadsheet of all of the pages of your website, all of your URLs together so that you can know how to plan what you're actually wanting each page to show up for.

I have a keyword map and planner, which helps you with this. It's available on my website. And it's a Google sheet that has everything in there that will help you to map out the pages of your website, map out what you want to show up for, what keywords you're trying to focus on for each page.

And it will also, it's got a little nifty tool in there where it will let you pop in your page titles and descriptions and it will tell you if they are at the right sort of length that Google likes to see. But think about that. Think about each page and what specific keywords you want that page to be showing up for.

And your pages will show up for more than one keyword. And there will be some keywords that you may have multiple pages showing up for on your website. But if it's a main thing that you should be showing up for, so like for myself, SEO is something that a lot of the pages on my website mention SEO.

A lot of those pages will actually show up in searches for SEO. I would have, have a specific page like SEO for podcasts. The specific page of my course that relates to that is the one that I want Google to understand this is the main page about SEO for podcasts within the whole context of my website, which is all about SEO.

So if you're thinking about that for a, um, if it was a local business, if it was a local spa, then thinking about one of your treatments, which page is on your website is the most appropriate to show up for that particular treatment. And most likely it's going to be your services page.

Hopefully you have a services page for each treatment and it would be that that would be showing up. So having to think about that so that your content isn't competing with itself basically. And then you can ask ChatGPT to help you with that as well.

So ask ChatGPT, especially if you've got a list of all of your website URLs, you could have it there, what this page is about, and then you can add that into ChatGPT and ask it to determine which page of your website is going to be the best option for this particular keyword.

So you've decided your keywords, you've got a list of pages of your website, then ask ChatGPT to help you to suggest which pages are the most relevant. And one of the things to think about with that is the search intent. 

So if you've got a keyword that is very informational, so like, I'm just trying to think of an example off the top of my head, my own business, how to show up in podcast searches, most likely then Google would deliver blog posts and things like that or articles on the search results page.

Whereas if it was an SEO for podcasts course, then Google is likely to deliver courses, online courses, whether they are free or paid online courses in relation to SEO for podcasts.

So you can actually prompt GPT as if it, if it's a sales page, if it's a page that's a product page, please come up with what's the best out of my list of keywords.

What's the best commercial intent keyword that I should try and optimise this page for. And then it, and you can, if you feel a bit confused about this as well, you can even ask chat GPT to help you to, to get this straight in your mind as well, in terms of what type of keyword is this? Are they informational keywords? Are they transactional keywords where people are absolutely ready to make a purchase?

And what pages of your, your website are there? And that would be things like your sales pages. Those kind of things that ChatGPT can help you with that as well. And then you can also then ask chat to your team how to optimise that page.

So if you've decided which page you want to focus on, you've decided which keyword you want that page to be ranking for, then ask chat to give you some tips on optimising the page and ask it to think like a modern up-to-date SEO specialist, because sometimes I noticed that it gives me some advice that I maybe wouldn't advise my clients to do.

Things like in the back end of your website, there's a box that often that says keywords and it's now best practice is not to put your keywords in there because Google is so much smarter at working out what our website pages are about that we don't need to use that. And actually by adding that in there, that can actually harm your SEO.

So when you're getting these suggestions from ChatGPT, just think logically about the ones that make sense for you. And you wouldn't always necessarily know the SEO best practices that make a difference. But actually, that's where having somebody like me just to guide you along the way can, can help as well, really.

But either way, you'll have a starting point. And even if it's not perfect, these tools can just really help to save you some time and just make it feel less overwhelming, really.

Choosing the Right Keywords

So, a question that comes up a lot is how do you even know which keyword to use? So if you've got a list of keywords that ChatGPT has suggested, that you've suggested, that you know are important to you, how do you know which ones to focus on?

And I think the big thing I would say to focus on with this is make sure that you've covered the basics.

When you're thinking about what your clients would type into Google or any search engines or AI search, everything's changing around where people search, but always the best starting point is going to be the things that you know you should be showing up for and make sure that your main pages on your website are showing up for that.

And you can always create additional content that's then more likely to actually really bump you up the rankings and actually show in search results because you need to cover the basics. And that might not be that those pages where you've covered the basics are actually that are the pages that get you those search results.

So for me, I'm not going to be showing up in a search for just the broad keyword of SEO because there's so much other content out there and my small website is not going to show up. So that's where I can get really specific about the other content I create around that. And then that all supports each other.

So the SEO content supports the other articles. The other articles show then bring traffic into those, those SEO pages as well, really. So that's one thing I would just say is just have it as a starting point and be thinking yourself of what's the logical things that your clients would be asking in a search that would lead to your services really.

And then how do you know it gives you advice that's correct? This is where, as I say, having someone like me to help you can, can make the difference. And sometimes just understanding the basics. So things like listening to this podcast, downloading some of my freebies and just understanding some of those basic things.

They don't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be difficult, but just understanding some of the basic things can help you really. And if you're ever in doubt about the advice that it's giving you, and bear in mind that sometimes it still blags it and still says something's right, even, even if it's not, but also you can Google it.

You can search somewhere else and try and determine whether that information is correct. And also listen to your own knowledge and your own expertise as well.

So if ChatGPT or Google Gemini is telling you to really go after a particular keyword, you know, doesn't really relate to what you do specifically in your business, then just always go with your gut really.

So, so one thing I would say in terms of how AI is changing the world of SEO is, I think becoming easier to access information and to very quickly look at the data and look at, you know, what specifically you need to do as like your next steps really.

I think one of the things that is emerging from all the people talking about optimising for AI search is that the basics need to be in place there first. So if you haven't optimised for traditional SEO, then you're unlikely to be showing up in AI searches.

The world of AI search is actually levelling things a bit as well. So we're all trying to make sense of what we need to be doing to show up in AI searches. And actually it's really helpful because it feels like if I, if I'm there and keeping up to date with the emerging technology, then that's where I feel like I can really help you as well.

So I'll go off and read all the geeky articles. I was reading about quantum computing last night, which is like just mind blowing. But then I can then digest that for you and come into the podcast and just let you know any, anything you need to kind of keep an eye on.

Final Thoughts

If you're thinking about what you can do with this information this week, I think just trying AI for one thing to do with SEO this week and just see how it goes for you really, you know, whether that's coming up with keyword suggestions, coming up with blog post ideas, looking at one of your website pages to look for chances to improve that visibility in search, then do just one thing and let me know how it goes for you.

You can download my free beginner's SEO checklist if you head to my website. Have a little read through that. That might help just to spark some ideas on how you can just get started with this as well.

And if you enjoyed this episode, then check out episode 51 on my website, which is all on the podcast rather, which is all, all about how to use AI for your website as well. So use it for specifically creating content around your website and let me know if there's anything you'd like me to cover in future episodes.

If there's anything about AI or SEO or your websites that you'd like me to dive into, then let me know. You can either do that in the comments in the Facebook group, or you can text the show, or just send me a DM if you want to, if you have something that you'd really love me to cover.

And if you would like some help with your SEO, if you want to know where to start, or you just don't know what to do with your website, then book one of my SEO Recommendations Mini Intensive. I'll do an SEO audit of your website, then I'll create apdf guide for you of the most important things for you to focus on.

And we'll hop on a Zoom call for about an hour, just talk through those recommendations and then it's up to you. You can either implement them with yourself or with your team, or we can do it together in a done with you session.

Or alternatively can book a discovery call and we can have a chat about whether that's right for you.

But if you just want some help and advice on what, how to get started, then that's a really great way for you to do that.

So thank you for listening.

Have a great weekend. I will be swimming probably tomorrow. It was six and a half degrees last week, which was very, very cold, but I loved it.

So I will see you soon.

Take care, bye.