The year is 2025 and the world of SEO has undergone a radical transformation.
Gone are the days of keyword research.
Backlinks are a thing of the past.
And with the power of machine learning, technical SEO issues are avoided before
they can even happen.
This is the end of SEO…
So there's been a lot of talk about how AI like ChatGPT, Sydney, and Bard are going
to be the end of SEO.
Now, I'm not denying that generative AI is game changing in some ways, and I'm definitely not
discounting how impressive these AI tools are at certain tasks, but the fear mongering
I've seen on Twitter and LinkedIn sounds and feels a whole lot like voice search 2.0.
Let me explain.
So in 2014 to around 2018, voice search was kind of a big deal.
Like, Google was publishing stats showing that 55% of teens and 41% of adults use
voice search daily.
I mean, they were even telling us when and where people used their devices to search
with their voice.
And this snowball effect of contextless information led to a general consensus among many SEOs
that voice search was only going to get bigger – and if you didn't optimize for voice,
you would get left behind.
Basically, similar sentiments to what people are saying about ChatGPT.
Now, to the best of my knowledge, voice search didn't leave anyone behind.
In fact, SEOs learned that a good chunk of answers that came back from voice search
and personal voice assistants like Google Home and Amazon Alexa were being pulled
from featured snippets, which are these blocks of text that SEOs have been optimizing for for years.
Now, the other reason why I bring up voice search is because it's another time when AI,
machine learning, and natural language processing were all being talked about
together in the SEO community.
And there's kind of a similar vibe where all three of these things are in our faces and
our feeds but still… no one really understands them.
[What is this?]
Now, in order to understand if there's any validity to claims of ChatGPT and company
taking over SEO jobs and search as an industry, we need to understand what ChatGPT is and
how it works.
And the best place to begin is by understanding the fundamentals of what AI, ML and NLP are.
Now, even though these acronyms are often used synonymously, they're not the same thing.
AI is an umbrella term for machines that simulate human intelligence.
And NLP and ML are both subsets of artificial intelligence.
In a nutshell, NLP is what allows machines to understand, interpret
and generate human-like language.
It breaks down spoken content into words, phrases, and structured data.
Then that data can be analyzed and acted upon.
Now, machine learning has quite a few more layers.
Machine learning is the process of training algorithms to make predictions or decisions
based on data.
And as these machines get trained with more data, both accuracy and effectiveness improve.
Now, the subset of machine learning that's used in tools like ChatGPT is called "deep learning."
And deep learning uses something called artificial neural networks, or ANNs, to understand complex
patterns and relationships in data.
It's basically trying to simulate a human brain.
And now we end up at our final layer: Large Language Models or LLMs.
These are a type of deep learning algorithm that can recognize, summarize, translate, predict,
and generate text and other content based on knowledge its gained from massive datasets.
[Magic!]
And ChatGPT is a large language model.
So, unlike voice search that pulls information from third-party databases, GPT models were
pre-trained on a ton of data.
And this allows them to generate entirely new content by predicting the next word,
over and over again based on probability distributions.
It's kind of like autocomplete, but on a much larger scale.
And these predictions on the whole are really good.
So, perhaps predicting the future based on how voice search turned out doesn't make
sense here because we're playing a completely different game.
So much so, that I do think that there is some merit in what people are saying
about how AI will change SEO.
[Forget the old ways, brother.]
And at the risk of sounding dramatic, that may also mean a change in career paths
for some people.
I mean, Google doesn't exactly have a good track record for trying to preserve traffic,
jobs and revenues if it means it'll improve their search engine.
Like in 2011 - 2015, Google Flights was rolled out globally.
And clearly, travel booking sites got the short end of the stick.
And in 2016, when Google rolled out featured snippets on queries like celebrity net worths,
this site allegedly lost 65% of their organic traffic.
While no one knows exactly what will be impacted in SEO, I have a few predictions
of what may come as a result of the rise of AI in search engine optimization.
So first, I think that AI engines will further gobble up market share for queries that
don't require expertise.
And I say further gobble up because it already happened years ago with featured snippets
and other SERP features.
More specifically, I think it'll happen for simple definitions, high-level listicles with basic tips,
and even some of the "how-to" queries that don't require expertise.
Simply put, generative AI can often provide much better answers more succinctly than
4,500-word blog posts with a lot of nonsense.
Second, I think we'll see a decrease in wages for certain SEO jobs – particularly content
writers without niche expertise.
[This is the worst!]
So, imply put, mediocre writers who are writing basic content pieces that anyone
can write aren't going to be able to keep charging five cents a word.
We now live in a world where ChatGPT and other AI tools can write better content for a fraction
of the cost in a fraction of the time.
And as more and more people around the world realize that you can make a living
using the features of ChatGPT, I believe that supply will exceed demand and things like
basic content creation will be outsourced to AI operators instead of lower-level freelance writers.
And with the use of well-trained AI operators, your cost per word may very well get down
to being a fraction of a penny.
Now, to be clear, I don't think that subject matter experts who are writing content for
highly technical niches will be as hard hit or hit at all.
Now, the third change I foresee coming is that the bar for quality content will increase ten-fold.
AI has essentially commodified content.
But as more people generate more content from the exact same source using the exact
same methods, content is going to sound more and more alike.
In fact, we're kind of already there.
So naturally, the bar for "quality" content must go up.
And finally, I think we'll see video results continue to take more clicks in search
engine results pages.
Because there's been a clear shift in preference for video content, search engines have adapted
to give us more of what we want.
Afterall, their job is to serve the intent of the searcher as best as possible.
Now, I say that video results will continue to take more clicks because we've already
seen this transition with the increase in video SERP features and various stats
that support these changes across the web.
Now, the reason why I think AI tools like ChatGPT will further amplify this is because
text content is only going to sound more and more the same.
Take the query "best squat rack" as an example.
You click on a result from a known brand and when you scroll through the content, you see
some generic stock photos and a basic description about the equipment based on Amazon reviews.
ChatGPT can also write content like this.
But if you look on YouTube and find a video like this where a fitness enthusiast actually
has 10 squat racks where he's going to visually walk you through the pros and cons from his
experience using them, you are going to get much better insights from this.
Now, I'm sure there are a lot more things that'll change in SEO and search as a whole.
But here's the thing: just because ChatGPT can perform cool party tricks like taking a list of
ingredients and giving you a recipe for dinner, it doesn't mean that SEO as a profession and
an industry will die.
And I have two main reasons to believe this.
#1. AI tools cannot obtain unique real-world experiences like humans do on a daily basis.
And this ties in nicely with an update that Google made to their quality rater guidelines
in December, 2022.
They state:
"To better assess our results, E-A-T is gaining an E: experience.
Does content also demonstrate that it was produced with some degree of experience,
such as with actual use of a product, having actually visited a place or communicating
what a person experienced?
There are some situations where really what you value most is content produced by someone
who has first-hand, life experience on the topic at hand."
AI can't obtain real world experience and it matters in SEO because Google is now
specifically looking for this.
Now, whether Google is able to algorithmically identify whether content demonstrates experience
is a story for another day.
But by definition, AI will struggle to produce content that thrives in search.
The second reason why I think SEO is here to stay is because SEO is multi-faceted.
SEOs don't become SEOs because they can write a blog post.
Link building incorporates the very human aspects of building relationships.
Some of the most impactful content ideas we create are a product of knowing our customers.
Keyword research is foundational in helping us reach more of those people.
And some of the very specific technical issues we face can only be solved with first-party data
that we probably wouldn't want to share with companies like OpenAI, Bing, and Google.
So while the window for SEO and many other professions may be narrowing, I don't think
AI tools will be the SEO or Google killer that people are talking about – especially for those
who have developed experience and expertise in certain areas of search engine optimization.
Human creativity is limitless, plus someone has to create the content the machine is trained on.
Just think about it like this: Google's mission is to organize the world's information and
make it universally accessible and useful.
An SEO's job is to make those pages accessible and show search engines that it is useful.
So as long as there's information that needs sorting, SEO is going to be around.
And if anything, you should probably be looking for ways to use ChatGPT
to improve your SEO processes.
Watch our video on some of the best ChatGPT uses for SEO, consider subscribing to our channel,
and I'll see you in the next video.