Bringing on AI as your intern, not the team leader
Today you’ll be hearing from another expert from the big Recipe course. For this episode, I’ve invited Cath Fowler, Copywriter and Keyword queen to explain how AI is affecting keyword research, her top tips, and why AI hasn’t put her out of a job yet.
Tune in to learn:
- How AI is changing keyword research
- How prompts can uncover long tail keyword opportunities for you
- What risk comes with the overuse of AI
- Why human judgment is still absolutely critical
- Cath’s predictions on where AI-driven search is heading in the future.
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About Cath Fowler
She is an SEO consultant, website designer and copywriter who helps businesses get found and look good online. Using SEO smarts and compelling copy she will establish your brand as the leader in your local area or industry. She loves working with businesses of all kinds to help the little guys compete on the big stage.
Degree-qualified in marketing and economics, she brings the perfect mix of creativity and analytics, which makes keyword research the perfect SEO focus area for her skillset. She is a Certified Practising Marketer (CPM) from the Australian Marketing Institute – the peak professional benchmark for Marketers in the Asia-Pacific region.
Transcript
Kate Toon: Hello, my name’s Kate Toon, and I’m the Head Chef at the Recipe for SEO Success, an online teaching hub for all things related to search engine optimization and digital marketing. Today you’ll be hearing from another expert from the big Recipe course. For this episode, I’ve invited Cath Fowler, copywriter and keyword queen to explain how AI is affecting keyword research, her top tips and why AI hasn’t put her out of a job yet.
Cath Fowler: Hey, I am Cath Fowler from the Digital Laneway, and today I am chatting to you all about all things keyword strategy and AI. So for this episode, I’m gonna assume that you’ve got some base level knowledge around On-Page SEO and the important role that keywords play in helping you get found online. So I’m not gonna spend any time really at all explaining what a keyword is.
Instead of what I’m going to dive into is one of the biggest shifts that I’ve seen when it comes to SEO keyword strategy, and that’s the rise of AI and how it’s influencing the way we do keyword research and placement. So unless you be completely living off grid, maybe out bush, no wifi, living under a rock.
You’ve probably noticed that artificial intelligence has crept into just about every corner of our work and personal lives. It’s affecting the way we shop, how we write. And even how we search. So here’s one way that really hit me. A couple of weeks ago. I overheard a young person say, I’m going to ChatGPT that, which is so interesting ’cause me as an elder millennial, I go around saying, I’m gonna Google that. I’ll just Google it. So that language shift to ChatGPT is a really interesting one and it kind of stopped me in my tracks that that just shows how much, behaviour is changing and relatively quickly.
Search engines really aren’t the only place that people are going to answers anymore. AI tools themselves are becoming search engine. And on top of that, the actual more traditional search engines, Google, Bing, and things like that, they’re moving away or they have been for a long time now, moving away from that 10 blue clicks, results page. Instead, what they’re doing is they’re generating AI-powered answers, summaries, and even step-by-step guides directly in the search result.
So that means the way that people discover information and the way that people are getting found online is ever evolving. So in this episode, today I’m gonna tackle how AI should influence your keyword strategy, and then a little bit of where you should be cautious. So I’m gonna chat you through how AI is changing keyword research, how prompts can uncover long tail keyword opportunities for you, what risk comes with the overuse of AI, and why human judgment is still absolutely critical. I’m not out of a job yet. Happy to say. And finally, I’ll close with I guess, where I think AI driven search is heading in the future. What I kind of say here is, as well as a business owner or as a SEO consultant, my job is still there. It’s just evolving. That’s actually nothing new in this marketing sphere. When I first started my career focus was a lot on direct mail and print advertising. Slowly but surely, I kind of saw digital creep in and it now takes the lion’s share of marketing budgets. Same with the SEO itself. It’s constantly evolving from the days, this before my days, the dark, dark days of stuffing keywords into, you know, white text on a page to then semantic search, to now this AI powered landscape that we kind of face now.
So let’s get into it and let me cover off for you, how AI impacts my job or how you can do SEO strategy or keyword strategy particularly different and incorporating some elements of AI. So the first thing is, I use AI as a research assistant. So traditional keywords has always been, I guess, part science, a bit part detective work.
You’re starting with your head or you seed keyword something broad like say, Wedding photographer Sydney, or Best Running shoes, and you throw that into tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, whatever your tool of choice is. SEMrush is my kind of go-to, so I might refer to that throughout this episode.
But essentially what you do when you start with those head keywords, it then spits out a mountain of data for you where you’ve got search volume competition scores and cost per click values, end up with a whole heap of spreadsheets. And look, I personally am a little bit of a geek, so I do love the old spreadsheet angle.
But it can, you know, hours of exporting these files, filtering columns, you’re grouping words together, your colour-coding opportunities. And it’s deep work and it’s a lot of work. And yes, I personally actually love that side of it, but for many business owners or people it can feel really tedious. So, being able to couple these with AI tools can be incredibly powerful.
I still use my SEO tools like SEMrush every day. They’re actually the backbone of my process. But AI is changing things in some exciting ways. So let’s, for example, say that you own a bakery in Sydney and you specialize in, say, gluten-free bread.
Traditionally, what you’re going to do, or what I’ve done in the past is I’m gonna sit there and brainstorm all the ways someone might search for your products. Put gluten-free bakery Sydney into your tool, maybe come up with a list of related keywords like Gluten-free cakes Sydney, or gluten-free catering in Sydney.
But now what I can also do as a layer over the top of that is I’m jumping into an AI tool like ChatGPT, and I literally can type in something like give me 50 long tail keyword ideas for a small bakery in Sydney that specializes in gluten-free bread. And in seconds I’m able to get a massive list that might’ve taken me, in the past, an entire afternoon to put together the old fashioned way using my noggin. So I I like to explain this to people a little bit as having an intern.
They just happen to never sleep, don’t need coffee breaks, and they kind of can brainstorm at lightning speed. What’s important when I use that example is interns, people and ai, we don’t always get it right. AI can generate keywords that sound amazing, but have zero actual search volume, or it can spit out vague phrases like say, I don’t know, delicious bread near me.
But they don’t really work in practice in implementing them. So that’s where our human brains come in. AI is brilliant at helping you brainstorm and expand your thinking, but you still need to crosscheck with the hard data from Google, SEMrush, Ahrefs, whichever tool you prefer to make sure these keywords are actually worth targeting.
So that would be my main ticket. Use it as a research assistant, use it to broaden your brainstorming knowledge, but you still need to do that really hard sense check with the data. Another way or kind of a more leading in way into what I’ve already covered with using it as a research assistant is I find great value in it for the long tail keyword discovery.
I feel that’s where AI can shine brightest. So just quickly for anyone who needs a refresher, a longtail keywords, a longer, more specific search pages. So let’s say think of the difference between running shoes, head keyword, and then a long tail keyword would be something like best women’s running shoes for flat feet in Melbourne.
That second one is the long tail keyword. It’s usually less competitive, but the search intent is much stronger. The person typing that in knows exactly what they want. And they’re often ready to buy. So here’s where AI can really help. Instead of racking your brain for every possible long tail variation, you can use prompts to get AI to role play as your customer, essentially.
So let’s just say go back to running a café in Sydney. You might say something like, as your prompt list, 20 questions people in Sydney might ask when searching for dog friendly cafes, or let’s just, what’s another example, Eco-friendly cleaning products in Brisbane, you could say, act like a customer or consumer in Brisbane shopping for eco-friendly cleaning products, what phrases would you type into Google? And see what that spits out. Suddenly what you get is a list of highly specific human-like queries that represent real buyer intent.
So another use that I use, especially for longtail discovery and it only really applies sometimes of certain products and services for seasonal variation as well.
So let’s just say you’re trying to target works around camping here in Australia and search behaviour might change with the seasons in December or summertime. People might search best camping gear for summer holidays, but in May heading into winter, people may be searching things like best rainproof tents for winter camping.
So what I find AI can help me do is, faster than I could in the past, uncover angles that I might not have thought of myself. And often these ideas don’t even necessarily show up in traditional keyword tools because it’s too niche or they’re too new. But if you can identify them early, you can create content that fills that gap before your competitors even realize the opportunity exists.
That’s the real power I’ve discovered in bringing AI into my process, specifically for a long tail perspective. But I’d be remiss if I said all these great things about how to use AI in terms of helping me brainstorm or as a research assistant and not identify some of the risks of overusing AI. We need to talk about them because essentially at the heart of AI, it’s trained to use existing data, has a tendency to give you the most generic and overused keywords, especially if you’ve had not spent a lot of time generating really good prompts.
So let’s say digital marketing space, nine times out of 10 if your prompt is quite generic or it just says, what are people searching for when it comes to digital marketing, it’s gonna give you what I would say, tired and overdone suggestions. SEO tips, social media marketing, email marketing strategy.
Now these are, keywords aren’t wrong. No, of course they’re not. But are they saturated? Absolutely. Like literally everyone and their dog is already targeting those terms, so you need to really, layer the data over the top in terms of what it spits you out and really focus on improving the type of prompts that you are asking.
And what’s really happening, and I’m starting to see it a little bit more in I would say the social media space right now than anything, is when everyone starts using AI, it’s the flavour of the month, and we all use it the same way, we all end up optimizing for the same thing. That means differentiations starts to go out the window. So let’s just say Melbourne Cafes is every single cafe in Melbourne describe themself as having best coffee in Melbourne, how do we choose, right? So the real skill here isn’t just asking AI for keywords, it’s knowing how to write better prompts that lead to unique and useful results.
And that’s where I feel like personally, prompt writing is becoming a skillset in itself for business owners or digital marketing or SEO professionals, it’s not really enough to ask, gimme a bunch of keyword ideas. You’ve gotta push the AI into specific scenarios, customer personas or intent focused angles.
That to me is where the real value and real opportunity lies. So yes, absolutely use AI to brainstorm, but don’t let it do the heavy lifting alone for you. Always run those outputs through your own filter of data validation with those SEO kind of tools like SEMrush and even more importantly, through human judgment.
So this is why I say I’m not out of the job yet because human judgment still absolutely has a place. It’s vital. It’s essential. It brings us to the keyword side of things in terms of strategy. It’s actually never for me, even when I’m using and diving into the spreadsheets, it’s never actually really been solely on those data points.
It’s about understanding people, and this is where my briefs, my client briefs really are some of this information around target market and things like that. I need to understand people’s behaviours, their cultures, even their quirks, to be able to be create the best keyword strategy I can.
So let’s take an example. I’m just trying to think. So let’s say you own a surf shop on the Gold Coast and AI might spit out a keyword like surfboards for beginners. That’s totally fine, totally valid. It’s probably a half decent keyword, but say as a local or as the business owner, you know that every summer that parents are looking for kids foam surfboards because you know, they are a little bit safer for little ones.
So that kind of nuance, that insight into seasonal, cultural, or local behaviour is something that AI can easily and readily miss a lot of the time. Another layer on top of that is language differences. So let’s just, in the US, people say flip flops in the UK it’s sandals here in Australia we’re out there proudly saying thongs, which I made the mistake when I went last year to America, I was swimming in the pool at the hotel we were staying at in Florida, and it started to rain. My husband moved all our things under an umbrella like our towels and things like that. And, when I got out of the pool later, I said, you didn’t move my thongs undercover and my thongs are all wet.
So yes, I said that in a front of a crowd of old people at the bar, sipping their cocktails. Every American eye on me going, are you crazy woman saying that your thongs are wet? And then I realized I wasn’t in Australia anymore, so I said flip flops. Flip flops, I meant flip flops. So yes, language difference, is not always taken into account for AI, and sometimes my brain, my own human brain didn’t take it into account when I happened to be poolside in Florida.
So I would just say act with caution when you’re getting keyword suggestions and at face value ’cause you can easily miss the chance to connect with your actual audience. And that’s why human judgment, in my opinion, was always going to have a place.
It allows us to spot what’s realistic and relevant. It allows us to understand the language that our customers actually use. And what we can do is, and humans still do this best, is layer in emotion, brand voice, and intent. So let’s just say you’re writing content for a physio in Brisbane, AI might say Physio near me is the top keyword, and that’s likely true.
But what I would probably be heading down the path of is best physio for sports injuries in Brisbane or affordable physio with student discounts in Brisbane. They are the type of things that don’t always come up in AI output. But they matter because they speak directly to the people that you want to reach.
So that’s why, in my opinion, human oversight is still critical and I believe it will remain so. ’cause without this you risk creating generic copy paste content that blends into the crowd, and heaven knows I’m seeing a heap of that at the moment. Which is, is largely on social media feeds, I would say. But it’s certainly tempting to get AI to be writing whole blog posts and things.
But I would say handle that with caution and I’ll talk a little bit about that in a few minutes.
So, I guess I wanna just continue to say where are we all heading with, with AI? And all I’ll say is AI isn’t going away. If anything, it’s gonna get more deeply integrated into the way search works.
Google’s already started rolling out AI of reviews. It’s definitely here in Australia. And instead of clicking through to a list of link, users are getting that AI generated summaries right there in the results. I know Bing has been experimenting with their own versions for a while now too. So this means keywords aren’t just about ranking me anymore.
They’re about making sure your content’s good enough, clear enough, and detailed enough to be pulled into these summaries. And that means, I think these things happen already, but we’ll continue to see more voice search, people speak in queries conversationally, like, Hey, Google, what’s the best childcare center near me that opens at 7:00 AM. And that more conversational query is less stilted, keyword only searches, and more natural use of language, more zero click, which I’ve just kind of touched on above more. Zero click searches where users get the answer without even leaving the search results page. I certainly know that when I’m doing quarterly reports for my clients, I’m seeing as they shift away from being in that traditional one to 10 search results in the first page, they’re moving more into those SERP features of AI or questions people ask or images, it has an impact on traffic.
So their keywords or the SERP features are growing exponentially, but people are then not clicking through to their website. So it’s certainly a challenge that SEO consultants or business owners have going forward as searches, keeping people in the search results page and not taking them to websites more and more.
So I, I guess, yeah, what I’m seeing with keyword strategies of the future is that we need to focus less on exact match phrases and more on building that topical authority. You wanna cover your subject in depth, answer the real questions your audience has, and end up being that trusted source that AI tools lean on when generating the answers.
Because if you as a business rely too heavily on AI generated content, you’re gonna be standing up with something that looks polished, but it lacks depth, originality, or any real world insight. I’ve seen blog posts generated where AI’s turned out, say, a thousand words on a topic and what it reads fine, soulless, and search engines are starting to get better at picking up on that.
Think about it this way. Say two businesses both publish article titles, say, Best Coffee Beans in Australia, but one article’s written entirely by AI and the other includes insights from a local roaster in Melbourne, say tasting notes, photos from the cafe, even a little story about where they source their beans. Which one do you think that Google is going to value more? It’s going to be the one with that human experience layered in, right? That’s why keyword placement now needs to be much more strategic. It’s not about shoving a phrase like Best coffee beans Melbourne into your content 10 times. Instead, it’s about weaving that keyword naturally into a piece that demonstrates your expertise.
Maybe that means including your personal experiences, like how you’ve tested different blends. Or it can include a case study, like a customer story about switching to organic beans, using unique visuals, sorry, or videos that AI can’t necessarily replicate because they’re, you know, inclusive of your particular brand.
So what AI can do is it can help you brainstorm the skeleton of your content, but you need to be the one that adds that flesh and soul and really heart and authenticity to your piece. That’s what I would say would be a main thing I would focus on going forward, because if you are going to focus on spitting out content, for example, by using AI, AI tools draw on similar training data. So it’s entirely possible that the same phrases, the same structures, or even the same examples pop up in a lot of AI generated articles across the web. So that means if you just copy paste AI output, what you do is you really risk being lost or blending into the crowd, or worse yet, being flagged for thin or unoriginal content.
So to protect yourself, always take what AI gives you and layer in your own brand’s unique perspective. If you’re like, I think I’ve used this as demo before, physiotherapy in Brisbane. Don’t just write 10 tips for back pain. Add your spin. Maybe a story about, say you’ve got a client who was able to get back to playing footy after treatment, or a tip specifically tailored to office workers who are sitting at their desks all day. That’s the type of content that can’t, AI can’t readily replicate. They can with good prompts come] pretty close, but that uniqueness, is going to be rewarded by Google if you can ensure you bring that human element or unique element into your content.
And yes, probably conversely to that, I’d also add that AI can be brilliant for your content optimization as well. So say you’ve written something yourself that’s human, that’s original. You can use AI to check if your keywords are in the right places.
So copy-paste your draft and say, suggest improvements for SEO optimization of this article that’s targeting, what have I said, eco-friendly cleaning products in Brisbane. So AI might recommend adding that phrase in a subheading, tightening up your meta description, including a related FAQ. So really think of AI in a way is potentially a proofreader who specializes in SEO.
And this is what I, I guess would say is my main strategy with keyword research and SEO and AI is a hybrid approach is one that I found beneficial and that works where humans can create the depth, and AI maybe can help polish the structure.
And this is where I’ve kind of seen some of my best results. So I guess in closing, should AI influence your keyword strategy? Absolutely. It’s one of the most exciting tools we’ve had in SEO for years. But should AI be the sole driver of study? Absolutely not. Cause keywords just aren’t about search engine, they’re about connecting with real people in your city, in your community and in your industry.
So it’s about reflecting the language your customers actually use and creating content that not only ranks, but resonates. So this is something, well before the days of AI, it’s no good ranking number one for something if they land on your page and they just feel nothing to compel them to buy when they get on that page. So you wanna create content that ranks, but almost more importantly, that resonates. So yes, use AI to work smarter, but also apply your expertise, your local knowledge, and your unique brand personality. That’s where the absolute magic happens.
And so on that note, I’ll wrap up this episode. I want to thank everyone for their time and happy optimizing. Thanks. Have a good day.
Kate Toon: So that’s the end of this week’s show. If you have questions about keyword research or ai, you can head to the I LOVE SEO group on Facebook. I also wanted to tell you about my AI SEO workshops with Tony Cosentino. If you’re ready to learn how to get found by ChatGPT, and other LLMs. And appear in the AI summaries, head to the recipe for SEO Success website and book your spot. These sessions are mostly filled up, but we have new ones being added all the time.
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