Traditional SEO vs AI?

Today’s #mugshot coffee thought is brought to you by a double iced espresso. Because it’s a few hours into the day, and I’m heads down into some hands-on deck work. Which is always a fun change. Variety is important for work and life.

But having reviewed some of the early testing with Google’s new SEO and search for AI, I’m pleasantly surprised, fear less for humanity.

I tend to take more of a blasé approach to the AI doom and gloom, but pulling annotations, grouping similar idea results from a myriad of sources (webpages, Reddit, 1p sources, 2p sources, UGC, etc.) is a fantastic user experience.

And like with most significant algorithmic changes to their search function, crafting content that best adds value to users will generally help with your SERPs.

Bottom line I’ve seen 📣 keep your webpages modern.

With each iteration of our “web”, from one-point-oh and so on, an arms race proceeds between search engines and marketers, where your average user might become collateral damage. Every few years, there are some new innovative practices, leaders in search set new standards to which they filter results based on user input (and give advertisers the keys).

While a handful of businesses jump headfirst into staying ahead of that curve, most adopt the previously accepted best practice. That’s actually not a bad idea; there’s virtue in it.

As the gap between someone wanting something, going looking for it, and finding it becomes smaller (soon to be milliseconds), the job of SEO will soon be solidified as a technical practice only. Fewer and fewer brand, content, or creative departments will be measured against it. Certainly, ensuring that content activation is “SEO friendly” won’t be discussed as a box to check, but a given.

I predict that, in the world of e-commerce, we’ll soon have our own personal AI agents that, at a touch or swipe, will find and purchase the products we look for, all in one seamless action.

AI models that are meant to help humans will work to present likable results to those humans. In that complication, writing or creating for humans will never be the wrong idea.