The Shifting Landscape of SEO – AI and Large Language Models

The deeper we head into the decade at SEO Melbourne, the more frequently incredible innovations seem to crop up, having everyday applications in the face of how intimidating their complexity appears.

When Tesla unveiled their autonomous driving features for the Model S between 2014 and 2015, the world seemed ready for all drivers to turn into passengers from one day to the next. The boom of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, in 2017, similarly saw a vested hope in what the technology meant for individuals, given Blockchain’s decentralising implications for a society becoming deeply sceptical of its governing institutions.

OpenAI’s unveiling of their latest large language model iteration, GPT 4.0, only seems to add to this recent upheaval of game-changing tech to strike the mainstream, visiting a similar trust in its capabilities to alter the landscape of our culture, and the world itself at large. 

Its adoption of visual inputs (images, diagrams), impressive processing power, ability to integrate system directions to return accurate user experiences – all these features coalesce to create a compelling image of AI tools as the future of modern work. But by nature of its function as a data-driven strategy, how will Search Engine Optimisation change as a field that’s just adjacent? Although powerful and ergonomic at first glance, pros and cons exist for any newborn-innovation still under the lens of public scrutiny. SEO Melbourne breaks it down.

The Pillars of Search Engine Optimisation – SEO Melbourne

Before we understand its implications, we should preface with the fundamentals at SEO Melbourne.

At its core, SEO’s processes can broadly categorise in 3 main ways – technical, on-page and off-site SEO. Within the broader digital marketing canon, these 3 nominations accommodate the holistic ways SEO intersects with other marketing practices. Where we consider the realms of SEO between structure, public relations and content, however, it’s the latter that has seen the most uneven interactions with the novelty of AI based tools.

Effect of LLMs on SEO

On the premise that audience engagement predicates its shape on the flow of user web behaviour, search engines exist as key gateways for these users in discovering your site.

On-page factors of your content are signals that engines look for when determining high-quality sites to rank highly, and granular elements like presence of H1 titles, quality of content,  subheadings and meta tags are all essential factors here.

As a challenge, content is the arena that contests the most dynamically, and at face value, platforms like ChatGPT are most worrisome here. In the generation of written content, the tech isn’t quite there yet – but most definitely is in the running to create more effectively as machine learning reaches more sophisticated peaks. 

As for the nature of user searches, only time can tell whether these models will influence SEO practices to optimise for AI-induced results, or – even more drastically – whether optimising for these tools will replace engines like Google completely.

The State of SEO Amid Development of AI Tools

Where does this leave the state of on-page content, and its accessory influence on the whole of SEO’s processes? With the inclusion of native language model updates the likes of BERT, it’s possible for the middleground of intuitive machine learning and semantic language comprehension to breach. LLM tools will fluently supply technically and experientially sound output, and engines will crack the nature of linguistics to perfectly identify search intent, and deliver the best possible result.

In response, content strategy in SEO could revolve more closely around tying discoverability closer to branded searches, as a means of compensating loss in value with a higher call to authority.

The chances of this occurring remains slim, though, and is somewhat dystopian – established means of SEO are still predominant, and AI tools are still in their infancy.

But there’s no denying that their influence is already on the horizon, and that its development is a high card on the cultural agenda. How these developments will further come to affect SEO, only time can tell.

Keen for more insight? Reach out to SEO Melbourne today, and stay at the forefront of digital maturity.