Tag Archives: AI

Factor in machine learning when content writing

Content writing for machine learning and AI

Content writing for machine learning and AI.

The search engines are increasingly being powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, according to this interview of Fabrice Canal, Principal Program Manager at Bing, Microsoft.

So, keywords are not important?

For a few years, keywords are going to be important because to be able to ignore the keywords completely and just focus on what your message intends to deliver, the AI will need to be much smarter.

Nonetheless, even at this nascent stage, your SEO depends more on factoring in machine learning and searcher intent and less on the keywords and the search terms.

When you genuinely want to improve your search engine rankings – mostly customers come to your website and not random searchers – you need to know the intent of your average visitor.

I will give you my own example: I publish content for two reasons:

  1. Attract people who will pay me for my content writing services.
  2. Attract people who would like to link to my content, share it on their social media profiles, and in general, help me spread my content as far as possible.

I keep it 60:40 – 60% of my content is for spreading information and 40% is to tell people what I can do with my content writing services.

How important is searcher intent for content writing effectiveness?

The term “searcher intent” was introduced in the wake of the BERT update from Google. It stands for “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers”. It is a deep learning algorithm related to natural language processing. It not only helps the machines to understand what the words in a sentence stand for, but also the context and the nuance.

Neil Patel on his blog gives very good “Before” and “After” examples of how the BERT update affects the search results.

The point is, the search intent of the search engine user is carefully analysed by the background AI to show appropriate results.

After all, people should be able to find information they are looking for instead of what search engines like Google and Bing think people are trying to find.

Therefore, Fabrice Canal says that the ranking algorithms at the search engines are constantly evolving and the machines learn on their own what people are searching and what search results they need.

What is search intent?

I have explained it multiple times on my website, but I will quickly recap.

Knowing the searcher intent means knowing exactly what your target audience is looking for. The search terms need to be interpreted according to their need and not according to just the words being used.

Thanks to BERT when you search for “the benefits of apple” the search engine completely ignores the Apple company which, previously, it did not. All the top results are about the benefits of eating apples.

On the other hand, if you search for “I have an apple” Google gets confused and starts showing results from various “Apple” products and reviews. It is not taking an inference from my previous search and then sticking to the fruit instead of the tech company.

Anyway, knowing the searcher intent during content writing keeps you focused and helps you write content your target customers and clients are looking for.

You may like to read: Why searcher intent is most important when writing content for your website.

Again, I will come back to my own example.

Suppose someone searches for “need a content writer”.

This becomes confusing for the search engine. Is the search about the qualities that are needed in a content writer? Does it mean “I need a content writer”? Does it mean “do you need a content writer?”

Big difference. When someone looks for “I need a content writer” it is a person who needs a content writer.

When someone looks for “do you need a content writer?” question is being asked whether someone needs a content writer.

These are very subtle things, but they can have a big impact on your search engine rankings. Even if the rankings of your core content pieces don’t fluctuate much, the sort of traffic that you get may not generate you much business.

What do I do to solve this problem?

I solve this problem by writing highly targeted pages. For example, instead of trying to target something like “need a content writer” or “I need a content writer” I try to write about “content writer needed for a web design agency” or, “looking for content writer for the real estate company”.

This brings us to the discussion of using longtail keywords. These keywords or search terms may appear long, and you may think that very few people may use them, but at least these people will be clearheaded and precise.

For example, when someone searches for “looking for a content writer for email marketing” and then comes to my website, I know that the person is actually looking for someone who can write email marketing campaigns.

You will get higher conversion rate.

The topic of this post was content writing for machine learning.

Search engine engineers at Google and Bing suggest that don’t worry much about keywords. With every new update, keywords begin to matter less. What matters more is the essence of your message.

Hence, focus on quality. Focus on relevance. Focus on searcher intent.

How is AI going to affect content writing and content marketing

How AI helps in content writing and content marketing

How AI helps in content writing and content marketing

Aside from the fact that AI one day may take over the world and cause extinction of human beings as a species, for the time being it can also empower content writing and content marketing.

In this context when we talk about AI (artificial intelligence) we mean the ability of the AI to precisely analyse and predict user behavior and then enable us to create/write content accordingly.

For example, wouldn’t it be nice if there is a software tool that can tell me exactly how many visitors and consequently, leads I’m going to get from a particular blog post based on the content that I have prepared?

Or, which topic I should cover on Wednesday and which on Monday?

AI is already telling Amazon which colour T-shirt a customer is going to purchase if he or she has purchased a blue colour T-shirt.

This article talks about 5 ways AI will bring joy to content marketers and the author mentions Rand Fishkin’s 10x content.

According to the 10x content concept, your content must be 10 times better than the content that is currently featuring on Google’s first page, to be there.

How do you achieve that? The author of the above article says that AI can help.

AI can help you know what information your customers need so that you can provide them that information without them having to look for it.

This is a concept that is also covered in my recent blog post titled How to optimize your content for Google Discover. This is more or less same as writing and publishing content Google things will be needed by your audience before your audience begins to look for it.

What would be the real world example of such content?

Suppose you want to improve your search engine rankings? Publishing high-quality content is the most important aspect of improving your SEO. You may know it, you may not know it, or you may not be ready to accept it. But, if on social networking websites you’re talking about improving your SEO and you’re looking for information on how to improve your SEO, it also means that you need to publish quality content.

Again, whether you know it or not, the AI on your mobile phone or embedded into your browser will know it, and will automatically start bringing up content that insists that high-quality content writing and content publishing can help you improve your SEO.

As a content writer and a content marketer, AI can tell me if you need content to improve your SEO. It will also tell me whether you are actively or passively looking for a content writer or not, and accordingly, I can create content to target you.

In email marketing, AI is already telling us which is the most appropriate time or day to send email messages.

Nice quote in the article:

AI is Dr. Watson, doing all the legwork so that you, the skilled Sherlock Holmes, can put everything together masterfully.