Have you ever wondered if the article you’re reading online was written by a human or an AI? 

In today’s quickly evolving digital landscape, distinguishing between human-crafted and AI-generated content is becoming increasingly challenging. 

As AI technology rapidly advances, the lines are blurring, leaving many to question: Can we really trust AI content detectors to tell the difference? 

In this article, we’ll deep dive into the world of AI content detection, exploring its capabilities, limitations, and discuss Google’s view of AI content generation.

What Is AI Content Detection?

AI Content Detection refers to the process and tools used to identify whether a piece of writing was created by an AI program or a human. 

These tools use specific algorithms and machine learning techniques to analyze the nuances and patterns in the writing that are typically associated with AI-generated content.

Why was AI Writing Detection Created?

AI content detectors were created to identify and differentiate between content generated by artificial intelligence and content created by humans, helping maintain authenticity and address concerns related to misinformation, plagiarism, and the ethical use of AI-generated content in journalism, academia, and literature. 

There are several key reasons behind the creation of AI writing detectors:

Maintaining Authenticity: In a world where authenticity is highly valued, especially in journalism, academia, and literature, ensuring that content is genuinely human-produced is important for many people. 

Combatting Misinformation: With the rise of AI tools, there’s a risk of their misuse in spreading misinformation. AI content detectors were created in an attempt to combat this.

Upholding Quality Standards: While AI has made significant strides in content generation, it still lacks some of the nuances, depth, and emotional connection that human writing offers.

Educational Integrity: In academic settings, AI detectors play a vital role in upholding the integrity of educational assessments by ensuring that students’ submissions are their own work and not generated by AI tools.

How Does AI Detection Work?

Perplexity and Burstiness

AI generation and detection tools often use concepts like ‘perplexity’ and ‘burstiness’ to identify AI-generated text. 

Perplexity measures the deviation of a sentence from expected “next word” predictions. In simpler terms, it checks if the text follows predictable patterns typical of AI writing. When a text frequently employs predicted “next words,” it’s likely generated by an AI writing tool.

Burstiness refers to the variability in sentence length and complexity. AI-written texts tend to have less variability than human-written ones, often sticking to a more uniform structure. 

Both these metrics help in differentiating between human and AI writing styles.

Classifiers and Embeddings

Classifiers are algorithms that categorize text into different groups. 

In the case of AI detection, they classify text as either AI-generated or human-written. These classifiers are trained on large datasets of both human and AI-generated texts.

Embeddings are representations of text in a numerical format, allowing the AI to understand and process written content as data. By analyzing these embeddings, AI detection tools can spot patterns and nuances typical of AI-generated texts.

Temperature

Temperature is a term borrowed from statistical mechanics, but in the context of AI, it relates to the randomness in the text generation process. 

Lower temperature results in more predictable and conservative text, while higher temperature leads to more varied and creative outputs. AI detection tools can analyze the temperature of a text, identifying whether it was likely written by an AI operating at a certain temperature setting. 

This is particularly useful for distinguishing between texts generated by AI with different creativity levels, but its detection accuracy begins to degrade the higher the temperature.

AI Watermarks

A newer approach in AI detection is the use of AI watermarks. Some AI writing tools embed subtle, almost imperceptible patterns or signals in the text they generate. 

These can be specific word choices, punctuation patterns, or sentence structures. AI detectors can look for these watermarks to identify if the content is AI-generated. 

While this method is still evolving, it represents a direct way for AI systems to ‘mark’ their output, making detection easier.

The Accuracy of AI Writing Detection

Assessing the Reliability of AI Detectors

These detectors are designed to identify text generated by AI tools, such as ChatGPT, and are used by educators to check for plagiarism and by moderators to remove AI content. 

However, they are still experimental and have been found to be somewhat unreliable. 

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has stated that AI content detectors have not proven to reliably distinguish between AI-generated and human-generated content, and they have a tendency to misidentify human-written text as AI-generated. 

Additionally, experiments with popular AI content detection tools have shown instances of false negatives and false positives, making these tools less than 100% trustworthy. 

The detectors can easily fail if the AI output was prompted to be less predictable or was edited or paraphrased after being generated. Therefore, due to these limitations, AI content detectors are not considered a foolproof solution for detecting AI-generated content.

Limitations and Shortcomings of AI Content Detection Tools

No technology is without its limitations, and AI detectors are no exception. 

Here are some key shortcomings:

• False positives/negatives: Sometimes, these tools can mistakenly flag human-written content as AI-generated and vice versa.
• Dependence on training data: The tools might struggle with texts that are significantly different from their training data.
• Adapting to evolving AI styles: As AI writing tools evolve, the detectors need to continuously update to keep pace or get left behind.
• Lack of understanding of intent and context: AI detectors can sometimes miss the subtleties of human intent or the context within which the content was created.

Real Examples of How AI Detection is Flawed

AI detectors, while increasingly interesting, are not infallible. Several instances highlight their limitations and the challenges in distinguishing between human and AI-written content accurately. 

University of Maryland AI Detection Research Findings

University of Maryland researchers, Soheil Feizi and Furong Huang, have conducted research on the detectability of AI-generated content. 

They found that “Current detectors of AI aren’t reliable in practical scenarios,” with significant limitations in their ability to distinguish between human-made and machine-generated text.

Feizi also discusses the two types of errors that impact the reliability of AI text detectors: type I, where human text is incorrectly identified as AI-generated, and type II, where AI-generated text is not detected at all.

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He provides an example of a recent type I error where AI detection software incorrectly flagged the U.S. Constitution as AI-generated, illustrating the potential consequences of relying too heavily on flawed AI detectors.

As you increase the sensitivity of the instrument to catch more Al-generated text, you can’t avoid raising the number of false positives to what he considers an unacceptable level. 

So far, he says, it’s impossible to get one without the other. And as the statistical distribution of words in AI-generated text edges closer to that of humans —that is, as it becomes more convincing —he says the detectors will only become less accurate. 

He also found that paraphrasing baffles Al detectors, rendering their judgments “almost random.” “I don’t think the future is bright for these detectors,” Feizi says.

UC Davis Student Falsely Accused

A student at UC Davis, Louise Stivers, fell prey to the university’s efforts to identify and eliminate assignments and tests done by AI.

She had used Turnitin, an anti-plagiarism tool, for her assignments, but a new Turnitin detection tool flagged a portion of her work as AI-written, leading to an academic misconduct investigation.

Stivers had to go through a bureaucratic process to prove her innocence, which took more than two weeks and negatively affected her grades.

AI Detectors vs. Plagiarism Checkers

When considering the tools used in content verification, it’s essential to distinguish between AI detectors and plagiarism checkers as they serve different purposes.

AI Detectors: AI detectors are tools designed to identify whether a piece of content is generated by an AI or a human. They use various algorithms to analyze writing style, tone, and structure. These detectors often look for patterns that are typically associated with AI-generated text, such as uniformity in sentence structure, lack of personal anecdotes, or certain repetitive phrases.

Plagiarism Checkers: On the other hand, plagiarism checkers are primarily used to find instances where content has been copied or closely paraphrased from existing sources. These tools scan databases and the internet to compare the submitted text against already published materials, thus identifying potential plagiarism.

The key difference lies in their function: while AI detectors focus on the origin of the content (AI vs. human), plagiarism checkers are concerned with the originality and authenticity of the content against existing works.

Common Mistakes in AI-Generated Text

AI-generated text has improved significantly, but it can occasionally produce strange results. 

Here are some common mistakes that can be a giveaway:

• Lack of Depth in Subject Matter: AI can struggle with deeply understanding nuanced or complex topics, leading to surface-level treatment of subjects.
• Repetition: AI sometimes gets stuck in loops, repeating the same ideas or phrases, which can make the content feel redundant.
• Inconsistencies in Narrative or Argument: AI can lose track of the overall narrative or argument, resulting in inconsistencies or contradictory statements.
• Generic Phrasing: AI tends to use more generic phrases and may lack the unique voice or style of a human writer.
• Difficulty with Contextual Nuances: AI can miss the mark on cultural, contextual, or idiomatic expressions, leading to awkward or incorrect usage.

AI Detection in SEO

Within the world of SEO, content quality has always been one of the major ranking factors.

With the advent of AI-generated content, there’s been much speculation and discussion about how this fits into Google’s framework for ranking and evaluating content.

Here, we’ll explore Google’s stance on AI content and what it means for SEOs.

Google’s Stance on AI Content

Google’s primary goal has always been to provide the best possible search experience for its users. This includes presenting relevant, valuable, and high-quality content in its search results.

Google’s policy on AI-generated content is fairly straightforward: it doesn’t need a special label to indicate it’s AI-generated. Instead, Google focuses on the quality and helpfulness of the content, no matter how it’s made.

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They advise creators to focus on producing original, high-quality, people-first content that demonstrates experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).

Google has made it clear that AI-generated content is not against its guidelines and has the ability to deliver helpful information and enhance user experience, however, they obviously oppose the use of AI to generate deceptive, malicious, or inappropriate content.

Implications for SEO Strategy

Given Google’s position, the use of AI in content creation can be seen as a tool rather than a shortcut. The key is to ensure that the AI-generated content:

Addresses User Intent: The content should directly answer the queries and needs of the users.

Maintains High Quality: AI content should be well-researched, factually accurate, and free from errors.

Offers Unique Insights: Even though AI can generate content, adding unique perspectives or expert insights can set the content apart.

Broader Applications and Future Outlook

As we dive into the future of AI writing and content detection, it’s clear that we’re standing at the brink of a technological revolution. 

AI isn’t just a fleeting trend; it’s rapidly becoming an integral part of the digital landscape. But as AI writing evolves, it’s unclear as to whether or not AI detection will be able to keep up.

The Future of AI Writing and Content Detection

The future of AI writing is trending towards more sophisticated, nuanced, and context-aware outputs. 

As AI algorithms become more advanced, they are learning to mimic human writing styles with greater accuracy, making it challenging to distinguish between human and AI-generated content.

In response to these advancements, AI detection tools are also evolving. The focus is shifting towards more complex algorithms that can analyze writing styles, patterns, and inconsistencies that are typically subtle and difficult to catch. 

However, as AI writing tools become more adept at mimicking human idiosyncrasies in writing, the task of detection becomes increasingly challenging.

The post AI Anxiety – Does AI Detection Really Work? appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

First, think of how vast the internet is, and how impossible it is to reach every crack, corner, and crevice.

Now, imagine a place where millions of people endlessly sift through this vastness, promoting what’s worthy of the front page and removing what’s rubbish.

That’s Reddit.

If you’ve spent only a few minutes redditting, you may be thinking it’s a place for cute cats and ridiculous memes…

However, Reddit is also a place for the president, for customer support, and just about anything else you can imagine. Reddit pulls at least two billion unique visitors a month and normally powers thousands of active communities per day, ranging from science, music, and politics to specialties like tech support and homebrewing.

If you are not paying attention to your niche subreddits, you don’t know your audience.

But there is more to Reddit than its own huge audience you need to be listening to. Reddit is getting a huge visibility in Google’s organic search.

Reddit is becoming an inevitable part of just about any buying journey. Just about any brand triggers [PRODUCT/BRAND NAME REDDIT] suggestion in Google’s Autocomplete results:

[Reddit] comes up in many brand-driven Google’s Autocomplete suggestions prompting consumers to search it even if they didn’t initially intend to.

There’s also a new SERP feature for Reddit called “Discussions and forums”:

Not being on Reddit means missing this huge organic search opportunity and failing to control this narrative.

Four More Reasons to Use Reddit for Digital Marketing

1. User-testing and New Product Feedback

Do you have a new website or product coming out soon? Is there anything in the beta stage? 

Reddit is a great place to get quality (and free) feedback.

Continuing from the previous example, find the proper subreddit relevant to your business. Make sure you are operating within the subreddit rules and guidelines before submitting anything. If you’re unsure, consult one of the moderators by sending them a private message.

Here’s an example:

Further down the comment section, we see real feedback:

Boom! Redditors are happy to help each other in more niche subreddits – pretty cool right?

2.  Extend Customer Service Reach

In the same vein, we can extend our customer service efforts by researching threads where our business or product is mentioned.

Be optimistic – sometimes Redditors are complimenting your service! Find them, thank them, and contribute to the positivity. This ties into increasing brand reputation as well.

A word of caution: do not jump head-first into the comment sections, especially if you’re representing a company. Instead, get your feet wet by observing how people talk about brands and how a representative responds. 

Practice reddiquette (which is often different from subreddit to subreddit) and combine this with your observations. There are many stereotypes about redditors, but these only apply to the masses. 

When you’re in a niche subreddit it’s much easier to identify the tone of voice and sentimental atmosphere. Plus, we’re able to target potential customers who have already expressed interest in our industry.

3. Community Building

Creating a subreddit (a sub-community) is practical for many reasons. We can create private subreddits for an internal office team or an exclusive community for your clients. Public subreddits allow anyone to view content and comment if you allow it.

With an active subreddit, businesses can provide useful information (such as resources, advice, guides, and feedback) to current and new customers. Expect to see a detailed post on creating and maximizing a subreddit from me in the future.

4. Increasing Awareness

While not every business will adopt a whale and host a naming contest, Reddit is a vast opportunity mine.

Take note of which content gets upvoted the most and ask your team, “Can we do something like this?” If the answer is yes, go for it.

There’s even a subreddit for small businesses where you are allowed to promote your business.

Step 1: Start Monitoring Reddit

Products and brands are being talked about in every corner of the internet. Identifying all of these mentions is a pretty simple process; it just takes a bit of time to set up.

Reddit is an excellent medium for providing current social monitoring tactics to aid in brand management and data collection.

I constantly see social media marketers saying they don’t “get” Reddit. They always say it’s too confusing or a place all businesses should avoid. If you call yourself a social media marketer and you don’t at least acknowledge the value of subreddits, you’re doing something wrong. It’s one of the top 50 websites in the world. The branding, social monitoring, and community benefits are undeniable.

Reddit is a medium that doesn’t have everything spelled out. So, some users give up easily after having a bad experience which could have been avoided if they had invested enough time to learn the social norms and history of the platform. By dismissing the platform, they’re dismissing target audience groups that are:

• already bunched together
• already talking about relevant industry topics
• asking questions YOU know the answer to

There are inside jokes, thematic content (i.e.; weekly contests), in-depth quality discussions, beginners looking for help, and much more. A local business – a plumber or an HVAC, for example – can be incredibly useful on subreddits. It’s an extension of customer service.

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The challenge: Social media marketers and business owners need to be flexible when experimenting with new platforms. Becoming a community member in a subreddit is the perfect way to get started. It’s such a simple concept but it gets twisted when you try to approach it from a traditional marketing perspective.

The benefits of being a contributing member include being able to extract social data, learning more about potential customers, the market, the interests, and demographics, and once you’ve gotten your fill, putting it all together in an accepted form of advertising. Or a contest. Or a game. 

Every subreddit is different.

Take advantage of free tools. Here are some useful options:

• Google Alerts and Search Operators + Google Sheets/Excel
• Buzzsumo Alerts

Start off by opening up your preferred spreadsheet program. I recommend Google Sheets because it’s free and in the cloud, but Excel is also fine.

Let’s say your business is a homebrewing supply store – a local business with a large enough operation to handle online orders.

Run searches using site:reddit.com “keywords” in Google. Record each thread link on Reddit that you can contribute to, such as offering expertise, solving a problem, asking your own questions, or being a part of an event/evolving discussion. Then make a column to keep track of which threads you haven’t responded to yet. For more collaboration capabilities, consider using tools like Slack to make Reddit marketing a cross-marketing strategy.

The tools you can use are:

• Google Alerts
• Buzzsumo

Here’s a screenshot of creating a new alert using Buzzsumo:

Step 2: Create a Brand-Driven Subreddit

Owning a subreddit is your first step to owning a brand-driven narrative. Luckily anyone can create and moderate a subreddit.

If your customers are going to discuss your product on Reddit, they’d better do it in a space you can control.

Here comes the SERP management benefit of that: This should help you control [your product name+Reddit] results better. Some brands are doing that very well, e.g.:

• CloudFlare subreddit
• Comcast subreddit

Comcast-driven search triggers “Reddit” suggestion at #2.

As a result, Comcast owns those search results thanks to their official subreddits:

Controlling your brand-driven SERPs is the only way to ensure your customers will end up buying from you. It is your ultimate digital business card.

Additionally, they also successfully show up in Google’s AI snapshot (SGE) answer:

That’s your goal.

It takes time and effort to maintain a quality subreddit but your customer support team will likely enjoy it because it has a rewarding community-building aspect to it.

Make sure you set up your GA4 correctly to be able to measure the traffic from your new subreddit.

Step 3: Participate Outside of Your Subreddit

After you do some thorough reddit monitoring, set up your brand-driven subreddit and learn to talk to your customers in that space, you can start participating outside of it, in other relevant subreddits.

Reply to questions, make comments, and be genuinely active. Consider hosting an AMA (“Ask me anything”) to tell your story, use Reddit for content brainstorming, and learn more about your target audience.

Reddit is great for link building once you get a feel of it and understand what your niche reporters and bloggers are looking for when monitoring Reddit. It is great for competitors’ evaluation, product gap analysis, email marketing strategy and so much more. Stop ignoring Reddit as a marketing tool but approach it with care.

Results

We have been doing all kinds of Reddit analysis and strategy implementation for clients. We managed to control [brand name reddit] search results within 2 months of setting a brand-driven subreddit. For another client, our Reddit-driven viral marketing campaign brought in hundreds of clicks, links and shares, as well as positioned it as a trending search in Google:

Our client was a brand-new startup that barely produced any results for brand-driven searches. Google associated our client’s brand name with the biggest brands in the industry within a week of the Reddit-driven marketing campaign. This is the strongest signal you can build.

Reddit is one the most powerful tools you can use for brand awareness and beyond!

The post Mastering Reddit for Brand Awareness & Reputation Management appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Is SEO dead? 

No, it’s not. (I’ll explain below)

Will SEO exist in 10 years? 

Yes, it will. (In some form or fashion)

What’s the future of SEO? 

A marriage between AI, SEO, & Humans. 

Do I have your attention? 

My name is Connor Gillivan. I’m an SEO and Entrepreneur. I’ve built multiple businesses online in the past 10 years to 6, 7, & 8 figures using SEO w/ an exit in 2019. Today, I teach SEO to millions through LinkedIn and my personal website. 

In this article, I’ll break down simple-to-understand answers on the future of SEO so that you (as a marketer, SEO, or entrepreneur) can benefit from SEO instead of being dominated by it. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• 5 Predictions About the Future of SEO
  • #1: AI & ChatGPT Will Enhance & Hurt SEO
  • #2: GrE-A-T Content Will Win the SERPs
  • #3: Mobile & Voice SEO Will Continue to Rise in Popularity
  • #4: The Best “System SEOs” Will Outlast the AI Rush
  • #5: Is SEO Dead? Absolutely Not. Will SEO Exist in 5 Years? Yes! Here’s Why
  • Actionable Steps to Tap Into the Future of SEO

5 Bold Predictions About the Future of SEO

In the next 5 to 10 years, SEO will undoubtedly change. 

It’s been that way for the past 20 years since Google was founded and search engines became a staple in all of our digital lives. 

This idea of “seo is dead” isn’t a new one either. 

It’s been said time and time again, but SEO continues to grow and live on. 

Why? 

Because people still have questions that they want answers to. 

That’s the core of SEO. 

Let’s dive into 5 predictions I have about where SEO will head next.  

#1: AI & ChatGPT Will Enhance AND Hurt SEO

I believe in looking at both sides of the argument. 

Some think AI is a godsend for SEO and others argue that it’s the worst thing that could happen to SEO. 

I see both sides and I take the pros and cons into account as I incorporate AI and ChatGPT into my SEO processes and strategy. 

Let’s break it down.

How AI Enhances SEO: 

• Speed up SEO processes that were manual before.
• Help marketers better understand their customer avatar. 
• Open marketers up to new ideas they didn’t have before. 
• New tools to make the research & optimization process better.  

How AI Hurts SEO: 

• Marketers relying solely on ChatGPT and AI writing tools.
• Massive influx of poor quality AI generated blog content.
• Race to the bottom w/ AI generated content. 
• Make marketers think they can do SEO w/out all of the other steps involved.

It ultimately comes down to HOW you USE AI for your SEO. 

If you try to abuse it, it will most likely come back to bite you. 

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If you intelligently build it into your current SEO processes and stay focused on high quality content targeted at the customer’s search intent, you should be in good shape. 

#2: GrE-A-T Content Will Win the SERPs

With that understanding under our belts, let’s talk a bit about what type of content will reign supreme in the next 5 to 10 years. 

It’s GrE-A-T content!

What is GrE-A-T Content? 

Here’s a spectrum to define it for you…

• Bad: Solely AI generated. No editing. No optimization. 
• Poor: Human written. No keyword research. Minimal optimization. 
• Good: Human written. Keyword research. Okay optimization. 

GrE-A-T: Human written. Displaying Experience, Expertise, Authority, & Trustworthiness. 

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust. 

It’s a measure that Google takes into account when rating content published on the Internet. 

When creating SEO content, you want to hit on E-E-A-T as much as possible.

Granted there may be adjustments to it over time, it all comes back to creating the best possible content for people searching on Google. 

That’s what will continue to win, no matter how AI impacts the process. 

#3: Mobile & Voice SEO Will Continue to Rise in Popularity

According to Exploding Topics, 56.8% of searches are performed on mobile. And that figure has doubled since 2015. 

Similarly, 50% of the US population uses voice search features daily (according to Oberlo).

As mobile phones and voice enabled devices become more popular in households worldwide, we’ll see increasing amounts of searches performed with them. 

AI and companies like ChatGPT contribute to mobile and voice search experiences enhancing the ability for new features to increase growth. 

As we approach SEO over the next 5 to 10 years, voice and mobile will rise in importance. 

#4: The Best “System SEOs” Will Outlast the AI Rush 

All content is NOT created equal. 

It’s the System SEOs that go above and beyond to create the highest quality content on the internet. 

What’s a “System SEO”? 

System SEOs = SEOs & marketers that are experts on the end-to-end SEO process and build systems and processes to support high quality at quantity. 

The end-to-end SEO process: 

• Competition research
• Keyword research & clustering
• Content planning & clustering
• Matching intent
• Drafting outlines from 1st page SERPs
• High quality human written content
• Content editing & optimization
• Quarterly upgrades
• Backlink building

AI tools can help SEOs & marketers in the entire pipeline. 

The craze right now is ONLY focused on one of the stages: Writing content. 

As AI tools progress and get stronger, they’ll bleed into all areas of the SEO pipeline. 

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The SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs that focus on building a high quality content creation system will be the ones that win in the short and long run. 

#5: Is SEO Dead? Absolutely Not. Will SEO Exist in 5 Years? Yes! Here’s Why

At its roots, SEO is all about your ideal customer avatar. 

Customer avatar = your ideal customer that you want to reach with your business. 

SEO is answering questions for your customers & providing them with answers to questions, pains, problems, and frustrations that they have. 

Yes, Google’s AI generated content will be able to answer questions to a certain extent, but millions of people will still seek deeper answers, content, services, and products. 

People will still see a brand on social media or in an advertisement and want to know more. 

Where will they go? Google and other search engines. 

The same goes for people wanting to learn about specific topics, concepts, ideas, etc. 

I argue this customer trend will continue to thrive in the next 5 to 10 years. 

Actionable Steps to Tap Into the Future of SEO

The future of SEO is exciting! (If you’re an SEO or marketer that believes in SEO).

With the power of AI, creating high quality content will become more and more efficient. 

Here’s 7 SEO tips to take action on today: 

1. Focus on your ideal customer – over everything else!
2. Test out the new AI tools
3. Learn the end-to-end SEO process
4. Optimize an SEO system w/ efficient processes
5. Design with mobile first in mind
6. Focus on 10/10 GrE-A-T content
7. Optimize often w/ intelligence

If you follow these in the next 5 to 10 years, you’ll be in great shape to adjust to the AI changes. 

Just remember: It’s all about the reader and customer. 

Conclusion on the Future of SEO

The future of SEO is upon us. 

In just the past 12 months, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of change to the industry. 

But that doesn’t mean SEO is dead. 

In fact, it may be more alive than ever. 

With ChatGPT and AI tools, SEO content can become even better than it was before. 

It’s a matter of combining SEO + AI + Humans to create the highest quality content on the Internet. 

Join that tribe and let’s make the future of SEO a bright one!

The post The Future of SEO: 5 Bold Predictions Based on 10 Years of SEO Experience appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Want to grow your business faster?…without paying crazy amounts on paid advertising?

Organic marketing is the answer. (Keep reading for my secrets).  

My name is Connor Gillivan. I’ve been an Entrepreneur for 12+ years scaling multiple businesses to 6, 7, and 8 figures w/ an exit in 2019. Today, I run marketing for my portfolio of 4 businesses. 

The majority of my success in business has been through organic marketing. 

In this article, I’ll share my top 7 organic marketing strategies.

1. SEO
2. Partnerships
3. Podcast interviews
4. Social media
5. Content marketing
6. CRO
7. Email marketing

By the end, you’ll have a headful of ideas to execute for growing your business. 

Let’s dive into it! 

My 7 Organic Marketing Strategies

In this section, I’ll define the 7 organic marketing strategies that I mentioned and give examples of each so that you can fully understand how they can help grow your business. 

1. SEO

SEO is the act of creating content on your website (pages & blog articles) that rank for specific keywords your ideal customer is searching for on Google and other search engines. 

For example, let’s say that you run an eCommerce business selling baby clothes. Your baby clothes are organic, custom-made, sourced from the US, and fashionable. 

With SEO, you’d want to rank for keywords like: 

• “Organic baby clothing”
• “Baby clothes made in the US”
• “Fashionable baby clothing” 

By investing in SEO, you can optimize your website, pages, and content with the goal of ranking on the 1st page of search results. 

This will drive traffic to your website where you can convert users into email subscribers and customers. 

2. Partnerships

Partnerships is a marketing strategy where you team up with other companies in your industry where you’re not competing with one another, but you’re targeting the same ideal customer profile (ICP). 

For example, one of my companies is AccountsBalance, a monthly bookkeeping service for agencies, service providers, & SAAS companies. 

We have a Partner Program where we partner with 100s of other digital service providers, softwares, tools, and influencers. 

To start, we add each other to our Partner pages (exchanging backlinks), we feature each other in our newsletters (brand awareness & lead generation), then we find other ways to send leads both ways on a quarterly basis.  

Relationship building turns into brand awareness, visitors to your website, referrals, leads, & customers. 

3. Podcast Interviews

Most people know podcasts for listening to them, but there’s another side to it that is extremely beneficial for organic marketing. 

When I say “podcast interviews”, I’m referring to the marketing practice of getting interviewed on podcasts within your industry where you can share your expertise, establish yourself as a thought leader, and attract new customers to your business. 

For example, my business partner, Nathan Hirsch, has been interviewed on 500+ podcasts in the past 5 years. We have a system where we research top podcasts in our niches where our ideal customers are reading then we reach out and pitch them to interview Nathan. He goes on the podcast & drives leads to our businesses. 

When you do this consistently for months, you create a lot of “buzz” around you and your business. 

That “buzz” turns into new website traffic, leads, and customers. 

4. Social Media

Yes, we all know what social media is, but there’s a specific way to do it for organic marketing that can drive lots of interested customers to your business. 

I encourage you to look at social media as a platform where you can establish yourself as a subject matter expert (SME), build a following, and turn followers into paying customers. 

Here’s an example. I own and run marketing for 4 businesses and I use LinkedIn as a social media channel to establish myself as an SEO expert & entrepreneur, which drives customers to our companies. 

My ideal customer spends time on LinkedIn. I build trust with them through my daily posts & teaching them the SEO & marketing methods that are working best for me. 

It takes time, consistency, a good process, and dedication, but social media is an amazing place to reach your ideal customer.

5. Content Marketing

Content marketing is the organic marketing practice of creating high value content that speaks directly to your ideal customer and pulls them into your email list so that you can continue “talking” to them. 

Here’s some examples of content marketing: 

• Infographics
• Ebooks
• Checklists
• White papers
• Webinars
• Free trainings

Content marketing helps to “pull” your ideal customer into your business so they know you’re an option as they look to solve different problems they have. 

6. CRO

CRO stands for conversion rate optimization.

CRO is the act of optimizing your website and all of its pages for converting as many website visitors as possible into email subscribers or paying customers. 

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Let’s look at an example. You figure out the first 5 organic marketing channels and you start driving 1,000s of visitors to your website every month. Congrats on that first of all! But does it really matter if none of those people convert into email subscribers or customers? 

That’s where CRO comes in. You dive into the design, content, and performance of each page on your website to see how you can convert more visitors into subscribers and customers. 

7. Email Marketing

Last, but certainly not least is email marketing. Email marketing is building an owned email list of people that are interested in your business, you, and the products/services that you offer. Then regularly communicating with those people through a newsletter and automated email campaigns to convert them into paying customers. 

It’s great to get people to sign up for your email list or newsletter, but if you’re not communicating with them, it’s worthless. You need an email marketing strategy where you’re communicating with them, getting to know them better, answering their questions, and building trust with them. 

For example, one of my companies, Outsource School, is focused on teaching business owners how to hire and scale their business with virtual assistants and freelancers from the Philippines. We run a weekly newsletter that provides free advice and strategies on outsourcing to 5,000+ potential customers. We build additional trust with them each week and over time many of them become members. 

How to Get Started (w/ Each) 

Now that you know the 7 organic marketing strategies that you can use to grow your business faster, let’s talk about some simple, actionable steps you can take to get them started. 

1. SEO

Ideas to get started: 

• Build a Blog page on your website. 
• Commit to writing & publishing 1 new blog each week. 
• Target 1 keyword with each blog. 
• Make your keywords what your ideal customer would search to find you. 
• Make all of your content high quality & value for your customer. 

2. Partnerships

Ideas to get started: 

• Open a new Google Sheet or Trello board.
• Make a Partner 100. Your top 100 ideal partners. 
• Find contact information for all 100. (Or have a VA do it) 
• Reach out to them on social media & email. 
• Work to build a relationship with them.
• Run content exchanges together. 

3. Podcast Interviews

Ideas to get started: 

• Similar to the Partner 100, make a Podcast 100. 
• Research 100 top podcasts where your ideal customer is listening. 
• List out your areas of expertise & value you could add to the podcast. 
• Reach out and pitch hosts to interview you. 
• Record the interview with the host. 
• Improve your interviewing skills as you practice. 

4. Social Media

Ideas to get started: 

• Choose 1 channel to start with. 
• If looking for B2B customers, use Twitter or LinkedIn. 
• If for B2C customers, Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. 
• Post 1x per day
• Reply to comments that people leave. 
• Build a personal brand around your expertise. 

5. Content Marketing

Ideas to get started: 

• Brainstorm a list of 5 lead magnets your ideal customer would like. 
• Over 6-12 months, make the 5 lead magnets.
• Feature them on your site. 
• Post about them on your social media. 
• Ask your partners to share them.

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6. CRO

Ideas to get started: 

• Once you have website traffic, set up tracking with Google Analytics. 
• Measure how many visitors you’re converting to email subscribers. 
• Once you have a baseline, make a list of improvements you could make. 
• Implement them and repeat this every quarter. 

7. Email Marketing

Ideas to get started: 

• Choose an email marketing software to use: Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, etc. 
• Start a weekly newsletter that you send out. Same day, same time each week. 
• Build a content calendar and get ahead of the schedule. 
• Schedule newsletters and get feedback from your subscribers. 

Take Action

Organic marketing is a valid and proven way to drive potential customers to your website that you can then work to convert into paying customers. 

I’ve been using organic marketing strategies for scaling my businesses for the past 10 years and I continue to be a huge proponent of them today. 

You don’t need huge marketing budgets to grow your business. All you need is proven processes, consistency, and the drive to keep at it for months on end. 

TL;DR:

1. SEO

2. Partnerships

3. Podcast Interviews

4. Social Media

5. Content Marketing

6. CRO

7. Email Marketing

Sit down and plan out how you’ll get these started for your business.

Take 1 at a time, perfect a process for it, delegate, and then move onto adding another. 

By the end of 1-2 years, you’ll have a fully running organic marketing machine that is driving 1,000s of leads to your business every single month. 
Have question? Follow me on LinkedIn and DM me with questions!

The post 7 Organic Marketing Strategies to Scale Faster in 2023 appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Creating a video is a creative process which involves a lot of brainstorming, editing and producing. But the success of your video does not 100% rely on the quality or originality of that video.

Whether your video is going to be a success is determined by how many people will be able to find it and watch it.

Don’t underestimate the discoverability of your video. It may make or break your whole video marketing strategy performance.

One of the biggest channels that can drive findability of your video is search engine optimization, i.e. optimizing your video page for it to rank in search engines (mainly Google and Youtube search) for relevant keywords.

And one of the most important SEO elements of any page is its title.

What is a Youtube title?

“Title” is what you see on the browser tab when you open any Youtube page:

It is controlled by the “Title” field which is required when you upload your video to Youtube:

In the code of the page the title can be found within <title></title> tags.

On a Youtube video page, the title is also repeated underneath the video as the main heading making it also an on-page SEO element.

Youtube allows you to enter up to 100 characters to the title field and I recommend making the most of those 100 characters.

How can titles impact the findability of your video?

Page titles are key on-page SEO elements because they do both:

• Page titles are direct ranking factors (Google uses them to understand what the page is about)
• Page titles impact click-through by being the most visible parts of standard search snippets.

In that respect, Youtube SEO is not much different from any other types of SEO. The only slight difference is Youtube videos also get an additional section in organic results which you can target: Page titles are also included next to video thumbnails in video carousels:

Since titles are so important for your video findability and clickability, spend some extra time brainstorming effective video titles. Here are a few ideas:

How to create an effective Youtube title

1. Include your keyword

This is important in the context of this article. Keywords are still very important for SEO because they still help search engines understand the main topic of your page.

Keyword research is also a great way to estimate a demand for any topic (by looking at the search volume).

Identifying your main keyword and including it into the page title will help that video page rank for that keyword driving views for your video and generating additional brand visibility to your business. There are lots of tools and plugins allowing you to identify your target keywords.

It is a good idea to grab URLs of your competing videos and run them through this SEO Content Checker to identify their keyword usage and learn from that:

2. Make it sound interesting

I know it sounds obvious but there are too many boring video titles for me not to mention it.

Your video title needs to invite a click, so make sure it is interesting enough to invite one.

I realize it sounds easier than it really is and in many cases it is also highly subjective. But there’s a tool to help.

Using ChatGPT will help you find some ideas, in case you are stuck. Here’s what the tool was able to generate when I requested the following “Generate video title ideas that will include “Youtube marketing” keyword. Make those titles sound intriguing:”

There are quite a few pretty nice ones. If you don’t like what the tool suggested, keep asking it for more, changing your request just a bit to make it think harder.

This tool is great but make sure to pick a title that won’t over-promise. There’s a fine line between “intriguing” and “click-baiting.” Try and avoid the latter as it may reflect badly on your branding strategies.

3. Include numbers

Including a number in your page title has proven to be an effective way to get more people to click it. Click-through is likely to be an (indirect) ranking factor, so if more people click your title, there’s a good chance it will rank higher.

You cannot make each of your videos a listicle though, so you won’t be able to use this trick in each of your Youtube titles. But it is a good format to keep in mind and use from time to time.

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4. Mention a brand (if there’s one to mention)

Finally, if your video is about a well-known brand (for example, if that video is of you speaking at an event) or, more importantly, if you create it in collaboration with a well-known expert and/or influencer, include that name in your title.

Not only will it help your video rank for that searchable name, it will also increase its click-though thanks to people recognizing that name. 

Youtube also allows you to tag that name in the title (much like tagging works on Twitter or Facebook). If you add @ and then start typing that name, Youtube will allow you to select that name from the drop-down (if that brand or person has a Youtube channel). This will notify them on the mention and urge them to engage with the video helping its visibility:

No need to include your brand name though (unless that video is all about you or your company). If you pick your Youtube name well, it will help you build your brand’s recognizability with every high-ranking video because the channel name is always included in search snippets.

Keep a close eye on your results

Finally, creating an effective title is something that you can never do perfectly. There’s always room for improvement and experimentation. Learn from other well-performing videos in your or outside your niche and never stop experimenting.

Monitor video carousels for your important keywords to get notified when a new video succeeds in getting there and not what may have brought them that success. There are SEO monitoring tools that can help you with that task:

Additionally, keep a close eye on your Youtube analytics to monitor keywords that generate views from Youtube search and learn from those results:

Conclusion

You spend hours creating your video. It deserves a good title which will help your video get found. Spend some time brainstorming an effective title, experiment with different formats and measure your success. Good luck!

The post How to Write YouTube Titles for SEO appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Three tips for better SEO?

1. Do Your Customer Avatar!

2. Understand Your CVJ!

3. Start Your Technical

SEO! Download your FREE CVJ toolkit here: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/lp/customer-value-journey/

Atiba de Souza is CEO of Client Attraction Pros, a video first content marketing agency, and DigitalMarketer Certified Partner

The post How to Use the Customer Value Journey for SEO with Atiba de Souza [VIDEO] appeared first on DigitalMarketer.