AI drives new marketing trends; SEO expert shares: Brand strategies integrating AI-generated content and data analytics.

In an era where data drives business growth, we can leverage AI and data analytics to observe people’s online behavior and apply it to commercial activities to create business opportunities. This is the expertise of the Digit Spark Group. Today, consumers have more and more choices, and their attention is more easily distracted. When consumers have the power of choice, brands must find ways to simultaneously meet consumers’ ” information needs ” and ” emotional support ” to stand out from the competition.

In terms of marketing, we can emphasize a “consumer-centric information communication model”; through SEO, social media content and other content channels , we can meet consumers’ information and emotional needs when comparing products, and capture their hearts through digital interaction.

• Interviewee: Abeni Chung, Director of Ranking

In this article, we interviewed Abni Chung, Director of Ranking at Digit Spark Group, specializing in “SEO optimization strategies.” She discussed current SEO trends and issues of concern to industry professionals.

• As consumers’ ideas become increasingly complex, how can SEO cater to them?
• With the rise of AIGC (AI Generic Content), how should we optimize our SEO work model to truly benefit our brands?

2023 Search Trends & Brand Response SEO Marketing Strategies

Abeni, thank you for taking the time to be interviewed. You’ve always kept a close eye on marketing trends and the algorithm updates of major search engines like Google; we’d like to ask you to share your insights with us:

What efforts should brands make to ensure their SEO content is noticed by search engine algorithms and gets “pumped up” in search results?

Abeni：

Currently, the most commonly used search engine is Google, with a smaller number using AIGC tools such as ChatGPT and Bard to find and receive information.

While Google’s algorithm is constantly being updated, its core principle remains unchanged: “Google values ​​and will strengthen the ranking of ‘high-quality content,’ defined as original content that is helpful to internet users and answers the questions searchers need .”

Simply put, if a website’s content is filled with farm-related articles, titles that don’t match the content, or numerous irrelevant links, then having a large number of SEO-optimized articles is useless. Furthermore, if you simply repost articles from external sites to inflate the quantity, Google won’t consider it a useful website or recommend it to internet users.

A brand website should fundamentally include descriptions of its products/services/brand, along with professional SEO content (not necessarily in article format) that helps visitors (potential consumers & internet users) understand “What does this brand do? What makes its products special?”

Beyond mere description, advanced and excellent SEO should also possess “originality,” enabling deeper engagement with the audience. Originality doesn’t necessarily mean content written entirely by humans. Google also recognizes SEO articles created through human collaboration with AI, particularly those featuring unique topic angles or writing styles .

Therefore, when brand owners are building their brand’s “content marketing,” I suggest the following first principle:

“Brand website content, social media content, EDM messages, etc., must all be prepared in advance by deeply researching consumers, observing their behavior and underlying intentions, catering to their preferences, and anticipating ‘what questions they might want to ask.’ This information is what constitutes SEO content.”

A brand’s SEO content is meant to help consumers understand the brand, not to be a jumble of random information crammed with keywords.

How to adjust SEO when consumers have less attention?

In other words, SEO professionals can’t just write whatever they want; they have to cater to “what potential consumers want to see.”

However, in this era of information overload, with consumers’ thoughts becoming increasingly complex and their attention scattered, how can brand SEO cater to them?

Abeni：

Several years ago, I shared the concept of ” intent targeting ” in a speech. The advantage of the current internet industry is that it is “data-driven”. We can use a variety of AI Martech tools to extract “de-identified” user behavior data and observe the behavioral differences of different consumer groups. For example, after entering website A from an advertisement, who will enter website B and website C, and which specific pages will they stay on, etc.

My team and I at Ranking help clients build brand-appropriate metrics to observe subtle differences among potential consumers and, through cross-data analysis, gain a more accurate understanding of consumer intent.

These intentions can be the topics shared by the brand’s SEO team and the keywords used in writing articles；in this way, the SEO content can truly cater to the needs of consumers, and they will patiently read it and begin to have a good impression of the brand, thus achieving communication between the brand and consumers.

Experts discuss the impact of the AIGC wave on the SEO industry.

The AIGC (Generative AI) explosion means anyone can open ChatGPT, input commands, and instantly generate an article. What impact do you think this will have on SEO professionals?

Does AIGC’s ultra-fast production capacity add or detract from a brand’s overall competitiveness in the industry?

Abeni：

AIGC is certainly a super convenient SEO tool, but be careful not to use it to replace your work.

While AIGC can quickly gather online data and assemble it into a narrative, typical AIGC lacks the element of “understanding consumer intent.” This includes, for example, behavioral data on websites, reactions to current topics, and the relevant keywords and long-tail keywords consumers actively search for.

These “extended needs” need to be unearthed, analyzed, and organized by humans, then transformed into eye-catching SEO content ; and packaged into the brand’s overall marketing strategy, attracting consumers with these needs through precise keyword exposure at the right time and on the right channels. Furthermore, meticulous and precise SEO can make potential consumers believe, “This brand understands me!” thereby sparking more curiosity and demand for the brand; and allowing the brand to demonstrate high market value in the face of competition.

Could you be more specific about what “SEO that understands consumer intent” is?

Abeni：

For example, Ranking once served medical aesthetic clinics that were new to the Taiwan market, promoting their brand.

For cosmetic surgery customers, what do they care about beforehand when it comes to things that are injected into their face? “How long is it normal for the redness and swelling to last after the procedure?” “How will having surgery A before surgery B affect the results?”… These are all “key concerns” that cosmetic surgery websites need to focus on in their SEO and share their experiences with consumers to make them feel at ease and want to receive services.

If a brand lacks “intent-oriented” marketing, and the website provides content such as “What is a whitening injection: Whitening injections originate from OOO, the ingredients are XXX…”, while the information may be accurate, it’s not what consumers want to see . This kind of SEO can be mass-produced using AIGC, but unfortunately, it doesn’t understand consumers. No matter how much you produce, it won’t achieve the brand effect of “making consumers feel understood,” and it won’t perform well in search engine rankings.

When SEO-guided by Ranking for clinics, we first uncovered various medical aesthetic questions that consumers might have and provided them with helpful answers to their searches. In the six months we worked with our clients, we leveraged SEO marketing to double our membership numbers within that short period and also enabled our clinic’s website to garner significant first-page traffic in Google’s medical aesthetics search results.

How can we optimize ourselves and leverage the advantages of AI to avoid being replaced?

I would like to ask you for some advice for brand owners and SEO professionals: how should we optimize our work methods to keep up with the times in the face of the AIGC wave?

Abeni：

I believe that the most modern approach is a deep human-machine collaboration model for SEO, where humans are the commanders and AI is the strategist .

Humans using AIGC save time searching for information and researching products, while also improving their own learning speed; they can then dedicate that time to in-depth research into various types of consumers. The advantage of humans lies in our ability to think from the consumer’s perspective : “When I’m looking for information about A, I might also want to see what B, C, and D are, and whether they can be used in conjunction with A?” By combining this with analysis of keyword popularity , word-of-mouth surveys, website backend click patterns, and other data, we can analyze what consumers are thinking and develop diverse content strategies to respond to market changes.

After humans analyze consumer demand for online SEO, the next step is for AIGC to unleash its power. Humans can ask questions to allow AIGC to generate content fragments that match “brand keywords & consumer intent,” and then integrate and edit them into an “SEO article that consumers want to see and that search engine algorithms also approve of,” so that the brand can rank on the first page of search results .

Leveraging the synergy of “AIGC + Data Analytics” allows businesses to understand the market more quickly. In the past, it typically took a quarter for brands to obtain accurate market reports on their competitive performance; but now, daily search volume monitoring allows for faster assessment of the accuracy of brand SEO strategies, enabling brands to successfully capture consumers’ hearts.

This year, Ranking actually launched a new tool that combines “AIGC-generated articles” and “keyword data analysis” :

Ranking AI SEO helps brand marketers and SEO professionals achieve deep human-machine collaboration and create high-value content!

※Please see the information section below for details, or visit the Ranking official website for more information.

Could you share some of your practical experience in SEO human-computer collaboration?

Abeni：

This year, our Ranking team has been extensively experimenting with integrating AI into our daily workflows. As a result, the SEO team alone has dedicated 75% of its time to this, primarily focusing on “studying client expertise.”

AI allows us to more efficiently grasp key know-how from different business sectors and what corresponding consumer groups are thinking. For example, by analyzing data changes in “keyword research” and “competitive SEO ranking analysis,” and cross-referencing current search engine trends, we can accurately identify the key industry knowledge points needed for this project.

In addition to leveraging AI to reduce the time spent learning industry knowledge, AI collaboration also reduces the team’s “project outline planning time” by 50% . Ranking’s AI tools can generate outline and content suggestions based on keyword topics, helping users quickly revise and optimize outlines. We can more efficiently create initial content for focusing on with clients, allowing us to spend more energy on client communication and meeting diverse client requirements.

Furthermore, before implementing AI, we spent a significant amount of time reviewing and ensuring the generated SEO was accurate and met client expectations. Now, by incorporating the review mechanism into AI process analysis, we can clearly identify which tasks can be simplified or replaced by AI to reduce processing time. Statistics show that the overall team has reduced its workload on review and approval by approximately 20% . We can then focus more on automating generation or using the acquired data to develop marketing strategies.

Finally, Abenni summarized this presentation for us:

In the future, job functions across all industries will undergo dramatic transformations due to the impact of technology. We should embrace technology and make good use of new learning tools to help us quickly absorb knowledge and internalize it as our own abilities. We should also cultivate “multi-faceted thinking and communication skills” to face an increasingly rapidly changing world.

“Therefore, I believe that in the future, those who can handle relatively complex matters will be the most competitive talents.”

In my field of marketing, while AI-generated content (AIGC) is convenient, it also intensifies competition in the marketing market. As more and more companies adopt AI, the next challenge will be the accuracy of brand marketing strategies and consumer behavior insights; these are capabilities that are difficult to obtain through web scraping alone.

In the future, brands must anticipate consumer intent and identify business opportunities . This insight is key to preventing AI from replacing humans. Ranking’s AI tools enable more sophisticated human-machine collaboration than typical AIGC, providing humans with greater opportunities for insightful analysis and creating SEO results that anticipate consumer intent.

▼ Abeni with the core team members of <Ranking>