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    Tag: AI advancements

    The Death (or Rebirth) of SEO in the Age of AI

    Posted on by Bernadette Galang

    Every time shifts in search trends occur, there’s a rapid move to blow taps over SEO. And each time, SEO continues on, because there will always be a need to understand and work with search engine algorithms, so websites can be more easily found. 

    Even though there is a change in how people search due to AI (asking questions is becoming more frequent), we still have our laser focus on what is currently driving the most clicks to your website: (organic search results). But we also want the brand mentions and citations AI search results can provide. In other words, SEO isn’t going anywhere; it’s expanding and becoming more important.

    [Most of our discussion here will focus on Google AI Overviews, but the implication is to also create authoritative content for all answer engines.]

    From Search to Answers—How Generative AI Is Changing User Behavior

    What’s been happening over the last few years is that people have moved to asking more questions vs. key phrase search. These questions reveal their intent (informational, navigational, or transactional). It’s our job to figure out what the user wants and to provide the very best answer to their questions. If we do that, we have the opportunity to be featured in search results (top organic positions, AI mentions, local packs, and more).

    What is GEO? (and how is this affecting the search result?)

    AI is an added feature within Google search that gives quick, specific answers right on the results page, mixed with the familiar list of links. What has become apparent is the degradation of click value of a high-ranking organic result. That’s because organic results are now competing with AI Overviews, with clicks to high organic results declining when an AI Overview is shown (they aren’t shown for every search query). 

    Key point: Generative engine optimization (GEO) is a part of SEO that can help marketers build their visibility in AI search. Even though organic search still delivers the most clickthroughs to websites, this degradation of clicks to top organic results gives marketers the opportunity, through GEO, to try and capture additional SERP real estate.

    How Does GEO Work? 

    1. It focuses on creating content that explains complex topics clearly, and aligns content to top user question search prompts. 
    2. GEO is not only for new content. It provides an excellent opportunity to audit your site and realign existing content with trending user questions.
    3. Different answer engines apply unique algorithms that value GEO-focused resources.
    SEO factors

    Reasons Why Traditional SEO Is Flatlining (and What’s Replacing It)

    There has been some rush to judgment about SEO’s future; we even pointed to fewer clicks on high-ranking organic search results due to AI Overviews. But SEO isn’t dying; far from it. Tactics like keyword optimization and backlink acquisition not only continue to build SEO organic positions, but also contribute to potential presence in AI search.

    How to Win at GEO: Build on Top of SEO Strategies

    Leverage Your Google Business Profile (GBP)

    Your GBP is a critical component of local SEO and GEO. Optimizing this profile includes:

    • Accurate business information (name, address, phone number)
    • High-quality images
    • Positive customer reviews
    • Regular updates and posts

    Even if you already have a GBP, it needs to be kept up to date with the signals that human users, organic and AI search require. Contact us now for a Google Business Profile audit and proposal.

    Align GEO with E-E-A-T Principles

    In 2023, when Google stated “…Those seeking success in Google Search should be looking to produce original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating qualities E-E-A-T,” they gave us their roadmap for creating great content. That focus hasn’t changed; in fact, it is even more important, today.

    Focus your content for the new GEO age and strengthen organic and AI overview opportunities by following these guidelines:

    • Context-rich: AI engines prioritize content that provides comprehensive, nuanced answers.
    • Semantically structured: Use headings and bullet points to help AI understand your content.
    • Authoritative and trustworthy: Cite credible sources and include expert opinions.
    • Answer questions directly: Use FAQ sections and Q&A formats.
    • Use natural language: Write in a conversational tone that matches how users speak.
    • Incorporate structured data: Use schema.org markup to make your content machine-readable.
    • AI engines favor fresh, up-to-date information.

    These strategies will help with both organic and AI search visibility.

    business-presentation-seo-training-and-communicating

    How to Future-Proof Your Brand for the AI Search Era (GEO Principles)

    Review your digital assets and align with these strategies:

    • Keep current on top questions in your space and create content around those that answers the questions better than your competitors do.
    • Optimize for services beyond Google, such as Claude and Grok, by implementing structured data for diverse query types.
    • Use analytics for “AI visibility” evaluations; several new tools are providing insights into where and how your site shows up in AI search, and how you stack up vs. competitors.

    Trek Marketing Can Lead You to Success in this New GEO Era

    SEO isn’t dead. It’s just becoming smarter. The goal is to continue with white-hat SEO; from link building, to content creation, to site speed and crawlability. These are not changing and take on even greater importance today. GEO is a new adaptation of SEO, and it’s still evolving. Trek Marketing understands this new framework, which can strengthen your visibility in both traditional and AI search.

    Contact Trek Marketing for your custom marketing proposal.

    The Impact of AI-Driven Search Results on Modern SEO

    Posted on by Bernadette Galang

    Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a cornerstone of how search engines, including Google, deliver search results. Appearing in these results is becoming more important from an SEO perspective. How business owners can position their websites as sources that Google’s AI selects to support its summaries is something companies want to know more about. We’ll also take a look at if users can disable AI in Google search. 

    What Are AI-Generated Search Results?

    When you type a query into Google, Google AI search results show a summary at the top of the page. This summary aims to directly answer your question by pulling and compiling information from multiple websites. How the AI summary works is that it provides a detailed response, often in paragraph form. 

    Key point: The AI summary is tightly aligned to the user’s intent (what the user is searching for–just information; desire to make comparisons; or ready to buy). We’ll discuss how you can use this point as one of the ways to get found in AI search results.

    How AI Search Results Affect SEO

    For example, if you search “How does AI affect SEO?” you might see a brief AI summary section, that directly links to articles or websites that provide detailed insights on the topic. These linked websites are the backbone of the summary, and being one of them is a golden opportunity for businesses seeking online visibility.

    The authority you gain from being listed in the AI summary in search results is an implicit endorsement which can elevate your brand’s reputation. Google’s AI prioritizes content that satisfies user intent. We’ll discuss a tried and true tactic that can help you align what you offer to what people are searching for.

    Strategies to Appear in AI Search Results

    So, how do you ensure your website becomes one of those coveted links backing up Google’s AI summaries? The good news is that the foundation aligns with a timeless SEO principle: create great content. Here’s how:

    Identify the Questions People Are Asking

    Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or AnswerThePublic can reveal trending questions, keywords and phrases. Additionally, hand-searching Google’s “People Also Ask” section gives insights you can build content around. For instance, you might see searchers ask, “What are the benefits of sustainable packaging?” If you sell these, it’s important to craft targeted content to address that exact question.

    Include data, photos, examples, expert quotes, or case studies. Your goal is to have your content stand out as a valuable resource, thereby pointing to you as the company people should buy from.

    Optimize your content with relevant key phrases and ensure your HTML title and meta description are unique for every page, so search engines can be certain as to what these pages are about, which will help you rank better for your page topic.

    Add Structured Data

    If you’re wondering how to appear in AI search results, adding schema markup (structured data) to your content can help because it assists Google with understanding context. Your SEO agency will know about this. It’s code to add to your website that tells search engines what type of content you have on the page. While not a guaranteed ticket to AI summaries, it makes your content more machine-readable.

    Can You Disable AI Results in Google Search?

    Some people wonder how to disable AI summaries in Google search, perhaps preferring a classic results list. As of now, Google doesn’t offer a way to turn off AI results in Google search. Sometimes, browser extensions can be used to hide page elements like AI-generated sections. Using incognito mode might alter results displays, though this isn’t foolproof. 

    SEO optimization analysis tools entrepreneurs

    Trek Marketing Provides Innovative & Effective SEO Services

    Businesses need every advantage they can get against competitors in search results. AI in search results, particularly on Google, is redefining how businesses approach SEO. Being featured in AI summaries offers high visibility, credibility, and traffic. 

    Most people don’t want to scroll for too long, so being listed on the first page within the AI results is a big plus. Even if your website isn’t the top-ranked result in the AI summary, just being one of the sites listed in and linked from that summary can drive significant organic traffic. 

    Key takeaway: create user-focused content that goes deep when answering top questions people have about a topic. Provide data, photos, videos, and more noteworthy and authoritative elements than competitors do. Optimize your content with SEO best practices and keep it up-to-date. 

    Trek Marketing specializes in creating the exact type of influential content that Google and other search engines deem relevant and trustworthy. Ensure your content instills trust and get the conversions you’re looking for. Call Trek Marketing (855.686.4649 ext.707) for your free project proposal now, or contact us online.

    AI vs. Human Creativity in Content & Art

    Posted on by Bernadette Galang

    Over thousands of years, human creativity has arisen as an expression of our environmental influences and imagination. Storytelling is the basis of much of human creativity. It centres around making sense of what we experience. We shape these experiences (real and imagined) in unique ways to share them with others. That desire to create inspires all of us, and our modern age of technology gives us new tools to do so. Some of the tools speed our creation (reducing busy work and allowing for more meaningful development). Others guide us to learn about different perspectives. And still others augment our intelligence, and point us in new directions that humans alone may not be able to perceive.

    Understanding AI Creativity

    Artificial intelligence (AI) excels at all of the above that we mentioned, and more. Where it can be particularly helpful (and how AI is actually taught) is in recognition of details and patterns. Knowing how to do this allows AI to perform well, embedded into many applications. From assisting in making medical diagnoses (looking for healthy vs. diseased tissues, for example, from thousands of X-rays) to analyzing many types of large databases, AI is now a part of our daily lives. 

    AI is taught to analyze and can also create. It creates through interpretations and correlations of what it analyzes.

    What does all of this mean for AI generated content?

    specialist maintaining AI systems

    The Strengths of AI in Content & Art 

    In only the last 3–4 years, AI has gotten exponentially better at writing paragraphs and whole articles that follow a cohesive argument from beginning to end. It began by producing simple sentences and descriptions. Human editors had to spend considerable time removing repetitive or unrelated wording. Today, AI in digital marketing involves user-friendly tools like Claude, ChatGPT and Grok to create well-researched content, complete with website citations. Another good marketing example is AI analysis of key phrases we want to be found for in our online campaigns. 

    In art, Midjourney, Runway, Kling, Stable Diffusion and others have advanced far beyond their early versions of a few years ago. Today’s art creation tools are used in sophisticated ways, such as in a human creativity experiment like a design challenge (creating 3D objects), video marketing and even filmmaking. 

    The ‘secret’ to AI evolution is improving the quality of the data sets that the tools have been fed to train on, plus increasing the tools’ abilities to learn and incorporate what they learn into their outputs.

    What are the Limitations of AI?

    Some people think they must understand AI through the lens of AI creativity vs. human creativity. When AI tools hit the mainstream (several years ago, when ChatGPT and Midjourney became widely available to the public), people often expected the outputs (a beautiful image, a complete article) to be perfect. Soon, people learned the limitations of AI. Perfection is not a human trait, and it is not a trait of AI. As people’s expectations adjusted, and as AI learned from better quality data, its value increased. It is now often viewed as an adjunct to human intelligence and creativity. 

    AI’s limitations are essentially parameters for use that we can benefit from. By using AI as a collaborative tool in our work, we can ask it to not only speed up processes, but give us new insights.

    handsome businessman shaking hands with robot near multicultural colleagues sitting in conference

    AI & Human Collaboration: The Best of Both Worlds 

    Many articles and videos discuss how AI is redefining human occupations. AI is already of great help in online marketing. We can create websites complete with images and content, coded by AI. Humans can adjust the code to customize the websites. We can use AI to research key phrases based on what people are currently searching for online. Then, we can use that data (along with human refinements) to help us align content with consumer queries. The argument of “is human or AI intelligence better?” fades away. All of these AI outputs boost our productivity; when we use AI as a tool, it becomes our collaborative partner. Instead of human vs. machine, collaborating with AI frees people to discover new frontiers of creativity.

    business owner is using a laptop

    How AI & Human Creativity Accelerate Marketing Success

    Trek Marketing, long before the advent of AI, used tools to accelerate our clients’ marketing success. AI tools give us powerful ways to enhance digital marketing campaigns, from tapping into consumer behaviour and desires, to aligning content to these habits and patterns. Our goal is the same as tools evolve: Trek Marketing provides you with online campaigns that drive visitors to your website and convert them into paying customers.

    Contact us now to take advantage of our free consultation (855.686.4649 ext.707). Learn more about how Trek Marketing can leverage human knowledge and modern technology to build and expand your revenue streams.

    How to properly implement AI into your digital strategy

    Posted on by Alex Wilks
    Businessman working on digital tablet using ai. Business technology, IoT Internet of Things, Ai Software development concept. Coding programmer developing mobile apps. Web icons

    Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into your digital strategy is a game-changer in today’s evolving digital landscape. Since AI has the potential to enhance customer experiences, automate processes, and provide valuable insights for informed decision-making, it’s a process that requires a thoughtful and strategic approach. Listed below are some essential steps to properly implement AI marketing. 

    Define clear objectives and goals

    Start by identifying the specific objectives that you aim to achieve using AI integration. Whether this includes improving customer engagement, enhancing product recommendations, or automating tasks, clear goals will guide your implementation process. 

    Understand the data

    AI marketing relies heavily on quality data. Ensure that you first have a comprehensive understanding of the data you possess, its structure, and its relevance to your objectives. Data cleansing, aggregation, and organization are crucial steps to ensure the accuracy and usefulness of AI algorithms. 

    Use the right AI tools and technologies

    Depending on your goals, select AI tools and technologies that align with your business requirements. These may include machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, or predictive analytics. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of each technology before implementation. 

    Develop a skilled team

    Building a team with expertise in AI and machine learning is vital. We recommend collaborating with data engineers and domain experts to effectively implement and maintain AI systems. This encourages continuous learning and allows you to stay updated with the latest advancements in AI technologies. 

    Create a data strategy

    Formulate a comprehensive strategy for collecting, storing, and utilizing data effectively. You can then address issues of data privacy, security, and compliance to ensure responsible AI implementation and maintain trust with stakeholders. 

    Prototype and test 

    Develop prototypes or proof-of-concept models to test the AI implementation. Gather feedback, identify potential bottlenecks, and refine the models to ensure optimal performance and alignment with your goals.

    Integrate AI into existing systems

    Integrate AI seamlessly into your existing digital platforms, applications, or websites. Ensure that AI systems complement your existing infrastructure and workflows to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. 

    Implementing AI into your digital strategy is a dynamic process that requires careful planning and a willingness to adapt. 

    How do you think AI marketing will help drive success in your digital endeavors? Drop a comment below to share.