Every website owner needs to understand one thing, SEO. The website’s success in search engines is dependent on how well it is optimized for Google. If your SEO is done good, you have a better chance to find yourself in the SERPs first page when someone is searching by your keyword. To have your page on the first page, you need to understand how SEO works and how to optimize it to affect your better ranking. SEO is changing constantly, so you have to be prepared to make those changes so that you stay on top of it.

Over time, SEO changed a lot. It was first introduced as a simple optimization for landing pages on desktop computers, now it is a process of continual content modification and development of more appealing content that will speak to the readers. SEO used to be about putting a ton of keywords into a short article, now it’s about the type of content that actually has value and meaning and can connect with the readers.

Not everything changed, keywords in the content are necessary and so are meta tags. But other things like a responsive website, detailed content, and better user experience challenged anyone looking to build an audience online.

But with the increasing growth of Artificial intelligence, SEO is to evolve again. In the near future, we will actually see the changes in how artificial intelligence is transforming SEO.

What is AI?

Artificial intelligence is one of the newest technological advancements which uses a combination of software and hardware to work like the human brain. In the dictionary, Artificial intelligence is defined as the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. When it comes to some AI systems, they don’t have flaws like humans in logic or subjective judgment. It has one more benefit than us, a large memory capacity. Large memory that AI has, permits it to process a large amount of data and get information from that data. The deep learning algorithms which AI is using are only as smart as the data they are given in training. For training an AI program, humans choose what data should be used. Because of some ethical questions that AI can raise, these decisions should be monitored closely.

The more information you feed it with, the more it will learn and it gets better at finding the right solutions and providing needed information to the user.

There are three types of AI:

• ANI – Artificial Narrow Intelligence which is programmed for one action, such as playing chess.
• AGI – Artificial General Intelligence is programmed to perform any intellectual task a human can perform too.
• ASI – Artificial Super Intelligence surpasses human intellect.

While looking at these categories, which one seems the best for SEO? You might think it is ASI, but actually, Google uses ANI. It uses back-propagation to find mistakes and uses those mistakes as learning material.

People are always scared that new technology will replace them. There is no need to think of AI as one of the replacements. AI will simply improve products and services, it won’t replace the humans who use them.

What is RankBrain?

Google has been developing a new AI system since 2015 which is called RankBrain. It prioritizes relevance and quality in its output. Before RankBrain, Google focused on algorithms that were designed by humans. Now, Google RankBrain is in charge of the majority of the search engine system. How artificial intelligence is transforming SEO is something that can be seen now when a new feature like RankBrain is introduced. RankBrain comes with several changes that will change the way SEO works. Some of the elements which are important to the ranking of your page are:

• Bounce rate
• Depth of the scroll
• Time on page
• Pogo sticking

Even though RankBrain is affecting SEO, some algorithms that Google used before still exist but the way methods are applied has changed. RankBrain is used to determine the combination of the best methods and algorithms that will work best together. Some of the things that will make your website pop up in the eyes of RankBrain are:

• Density of keywords
• Site structure
• Backlinking

User experience is essential

User experience has always been a crucial element of a website, now it’s significance is more notable. It is all based on the user and how he/she perceives your website. Search engines are there to assess how good the user experience is on individual pages. Because it is their top priority, they take user engagement and linking patterns into consideration when evaluating a website. If you want your website to be successful, you have to get to know the audience and how they interact with the online world and pay attention to what they are looking for.

Responsive website

If you are a website owner, you are probably aware of the importance of mobile friendliness. Back in the day, it wasn’t necessary to have a responsive website, but now Google made it a decisive factor to rank a site. Google probably based this decision on our society which has adapted to a mobile-centric attitude. And it has been growing more and more and it doesn’t seem like it’s changing anytime soon. That means a lot more work for SEO professionals because it takes time, effort, and energy but it all pays off in the end.

SEO is changing and evolving each year, evidence of that is seen when you look back a couple of years and see how much it actually changed. It is getting more and more complicated if you are an inexperienced user. Artificial intelligence is transforming SEO in a way that is more closely related to users and their needs. To rank on Google, you need to follow trends and keep up with new SEO features.