How SEO and AI Can Fuel Your Lead Generation Efforts

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been a foundational element in marketing for years, and most business professionals have seen the benefits of implementing this strategy. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as another pivotal marketing tool that enhances SEO efforts. Together, these tools can help set your business up for long-term success.

Hire AI as a Team Member

If you haven’t started using AI in your business on a daily basis, now is the time. Even skeptics have seen how helpful this powerful tool can be for productivity. We want to show you how “hiring” AI as a new team member can support your SEO and lead generation efforts. So, how can AI enhance your SEO strategy?

• AI can be your “thinking partner.” Have you ever started writing blog posts, product descriptions, whitepapers, etc., for your website and gotten stuck? Thankfully, AI doesn’t get writer’s block. You can use it to generate ideas, identify popular keywords in your industry, and even provide examples from your competitors. Of course, you don’t want to let AI do all the work for you. However, gaining these insights and feedback upfront can help you start creating powerful content for your website.
• You can use your AI partner to perform technical SEO audits. In seconds, AI can crawl through various pages of your website and identify areas of weakness. You can ask it to compare your website to competitors and evaluate how a first-time customer might experience your site. Gaining this knowledge to refine your search terms and keywords can help your website appear more prominently on Google and other search engines. These are just a few examples of how AI can support your SEO audit efforts.
• Utilize buyer personas for content creation. If you have a clear buyer persona for your business (which you should), you can input that information into ChatGPT and ask it to help you create website copy tailored to that specific audience. This is a game-changer that few other tools can offer. Take five minutes to try it out for yourself!

Here at Sanctuary, we use AI daily—but we use it responsibly. We believe the businesses that will succeed during the AI revolution are those that treat it as a tool, not a replacement. At the end of the day… people still buy from people.

How SEO Helps You Get The Most from AI—and Vice Versa

Now that we understand the importance of AI, it’s essential to see how SEO can fuel the tools and strategies mentioned above. Many business leaders recognize the value of SEO but may not know how to connect it to AI tools. Thankfully, our team has done the research and discovered effective ways to use SEO and AI together.

• AI tools (ChatGPT, CoPilot, Grok, etc.) learn and gather data from the internet. They pull information from website articles (like this one), landing pages, videos, and more. If your SEO strategy isn’t well thought out or is non-existent, AI may not see your business and won’t know how to relay your information to potential customers. The first step is to ensure you have quality keywords and search terms on every page of your website for optimal visibility.
• SEO structure helps AI learn more about your audience. Using headers, keywords, meta descriptions, and links are some of the basic setup elements needed on your website. It may seem obvious, but many business owners skip this step. Not only does it help readers see your content, but it also tells AI where to best deliver your content. For example, let’s say someone is searching for “best coffee near me.” If you’re a local coffee shop owner and have followed best SEO practices, AI can pull and recommend your content more efficiently if your titles and meta descriptions include keywords like “best coffee,” “quality coffee,” “local coffee,” and so on. This is one of the quickest ways to grow your brand awareness and gain potential leads.

Let These Tools Serve Your Potential Customers

You must consider both SEO and AI strategies when marketing your business. Neither tool is going away anytime soon, and the sooner you implement these strategies, the faster your business will grow. Your customers will also benefit positively from the use of these new strategies.

• You can create, think, and even execute your daily tasks more quickly when AI is your assistant. This will help you save time to focus on your business and improve other areas that need attention. According to a Statista survey conducted in the United States in June 2023, 39 percent of responding small business (SMB) owners and marketing decision-makers stated they saved between 26 and 40 minutes per week by using AI. What could you accomplish with an extra 26 to 40 minutes per day?
• There are also AI chatbots that can quickly assist your customers and answer their questions. But what about the human element? If your website follows the SEO principles we recommend, the AI chatbot can learn over time how best to respond and which information to pull based on keywords and phrases. You can also set it to redirect customers to a team member if the chatbot cannot fully answer their questions.

“What could you complete with an extra 26 to 40 minutes per day?”

Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes

If you’re still skeptical about using AI to help boost your SEO and website performance, remember that nothing will change if you don’t change your strategy. Gaining more quality leads may not happen overnight, but following the steps above will help you see long-term results that grow your revenue. If you want to learn more about where to begin with implementing these strategies, reach out to us! We’d be happy to learn about your business needs and how our team of specialists can help.