The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has permeated the mainstream, as companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google work diligently to make voice commands and voice search integrative parts of their OS and user experience. AI’s applications in the search engine optimization (SEO) world are continuing to expand to new horizons. Many have likely heard of the Y Combinator-backed RankScience, which uses thousands of A/B tests to determine how best to positively influence search engine rankings. Complete handling of SEO from AI is likely not going to catch on quickly, however, and there isn’t software currently that handles many of the important aspects of SEO. While no software exists that leverages AI to build links, we can nonetheless use multiple types of software for various stages of the link building process, including:
This means that AI can be used to augment, automate or automatize processes. Link building specifically can’t be a fully autonomous process, but we can leverage AI to augment human processes to increase efficiency of finding bloggers/influencers and improve the quality of sites that we approach for links. Below is the process for leveraging existing AI in link-building campaigns. 1. Prospect new sitesFirst, you need to look at websites as a whole, which likely have multiple contributors or people on staff. These can be good link-building opportunities through sponsored or contributed content. This can be done by finding industry publications or other informative sites that appeal to your target audience. Try searching by industry keyword plus terms like “magazine,” “journal,” “digest,” “newsletter” or “information” in Google to find possible fits. Things to look at include:
If these sites look like they are a good fit, add them to a potential candidate spreadsheet, with notes and contact information. To keep this going on a rolling basis, consider using Google Alerts to be notified when these types of searches have new results. 2. Identify blogs and influencersThe next target for link building is more specific influencers and their blogs, which are usually smaller in manpower than publications but might have larger networks. To find influencers and blog content that hit your target market, you can use text-processing analytics like Watson Analytics, which can be used to search for your industry terms in the context of natural language (i.e., the way people talk online). For instance, someone might not always say, “I am interested in polymer manufacturing,” online, but using AI tools that can predict related text patterns and speech, you might be able to find more influencers who haven’t directly used the terms you’re looking for. Software that makes connections between what you’re searching for and what related people are actually saying online can help you broaden your net for more link-building opportunities. Things to look at include:
Once you’ve analyzed the possibilities and weeded out blogs or influencers that won’t work, add potential blogs and influencers to your potential candidate spreadsheet as mentioned above. 3. Analyzing the sites to determine impactNow that you’ve compiled a list of publications, influencers and blogs, it’s time for the hard part: determining if they will have an impact on your ranking for your target keywords. This is the powerful part of AI — the part that can improve the impact of the links. AI can process data from multiple sources to identify likely variables or variable clusters that correlate with ranking in Google. AI can also identify patterns that you might not have even known existed (e.g., generating links from sites with a DA of 40+ if the site is about shoes, but with a DA of 20-30 if the site is about blue shoes). You can use software to process this data (I use Rulex). But you’ll need to gather the data for the software to process. Most of this data exists through APIs for sites and tools like these:
Final thoughtsArtificial intelligence is a priority for search engines and big technology companies, and voice assistants are getting more and more robust to help users control their online experience. As AI continues to weave its way into connected apps (through the Internet of Things), smartphones and more, we SEOs need start thinking about how AI can make our work easier to help us get better results for our customers or business. The post How to use AI for link building and improve your search rankings appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2wiUgGq
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