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We’ve entered a new era of technological advancements, and it's already crystal clear that artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the future of not just online marketing, but engagement across the internet, overall.
With AI-powered services such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft Bing and Edge browser revolutionizing how consumers search and information is served, it's more important than ever to keep abreast of the latest developments and strategize accordingly.
Here’s a useful rundown of several ways AI-powered tech is reshaping how consumers learn about and engage with products and services online, and some key considerations for both businesses and marketing teams to be mindful about when preparing for this seismic transformation. We’re all learning!
AI Is Reshaping Search Engines
Let’s state this right out front: Traditional search engines such as Google and Bing, for example, are not going away. What’s happening is that these and others are infusing the capabilities of AI into those services to deliver faster, more accurate, and personalized results.
As of this writing, at least, thoughtful, well-researched content that answers people’s questions with valuable and meaningful solutions still wins the day. Great content will still be rewarded with higher visibility via search engine results pages (SERPs). After all, the popular search engines’ new AI features—Microsoft Edge browser, for example—are synthesizing data from across the web into their helpful results.
What is evolving is how that core information will be presented to folks utilizing these new tools—and that’s what they should be considered as: extraordinary new tools to help consumers better find and purchase products and services to resolve their problems, and incredible resources for marketers to better promote these.
Here are some of the ways AI is changing search:
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): This enables AI to better understand queries—both typed and spoken—akin to how humans do. It helps these bots provide more accurate and relevant results, even for complex queries.
- Visual Search: AI bots and searches also recognize visual content, such as images and videos, and can deliver relevant results accordingly. Users can even perform searches for a product by taking a photo of it.
- Voice Search: With the prevalence of voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, this method of search is becoming more and more popular. AI bots recognize multitudes of languages and provide relevant results.
- Machine Learning: AI-powered algorithms continuously improve the search experience—learning and adapting results accordingly to past behavior and feedback, ever improving with each query.
Businesses, and marketers, should be aware of these changes and incorporate them into how they promote clients.
How to Leverage AI
AI presents fascinating opportunities to reach and engage users.
Essentially, adhering to HubSpot best practices regarding SEO and content will continue to yield results for clients via AI-powered bots. Here are several—not all—of the core tenets you want to keep in mind, overall, regarding content served through these new results engines:
User Intent
It's essential marketers continue to focus on user intent when creating content. AI algorithms recognize the context of search queries, so content with common keywords and phrases will still resonate.
Quality Content
As stated earlier, great content still matters—now, perhaps, even more than ever. AI bots consume data from the internet and digest/process it all, synthesizing the most pertinent and valued pieces on a particular subject into their responses.
What’s at the top of the menu? Those served at the top of traditional search engines. And those pieces secure their prime rankings because the respective search algorithms recognize their value and authority.
Toss machine learning into the recipe, and the ingredients resemble what HubSpot best practices have been instructing marketers to do all along.
So while it should always be the goal of marketers to generate high-quality content, it’s more important than ever that it be as informative, engaging, and relevant to their target audiences as possible.
Mobile Search
With smartphones and tablets ever-becoming the choice way for people to search and purchase products and services, ensuring your website and content is optimized for mobile audiences should, at this point, be a no-brainer.
This pertains to AI-powered bots and searches, as well. People crave convenience. More and more, they’re demanding fast, accurate responses. They also love their phones. You should, too.
Structured Data
Structured data is a way of organizing information on your website to make it easier for search engines to understand and classify what they provide in results.
By extension, this too assists AI-powered bots and searches to better recognize the context and intent of your web content, which can therefore improve the chances that such information will be served to queries. Schema markup is one such microdata language that can help search engines and bots better organize and recognize your content and improve rankings. As they say: Use it or lose it!
Voice Search
According to a report by popular product sourcing and Shopify store management dropshipping app Oberlo, 50% of the U.S. population use voice search daily, 71% of consumers prefer voice instead of typing searches, and more than one-third of all U.S. consumers owned a smart speaker in 2022.
Voice search additionally makes content more accessible for people who use assistive technology such as voice recognition software.
Such queries are inherently longer and more conversational than traditional text-based searches.
AI-powered bots and hybrid search engines are being unveiled to the world and updated and improved constantly, and with them come exciting new opportunities to improve the search experience for users, boost your visibility, and supercharge sales.
It's important, however, to keep in mind that since AI-powered bots and searches are constantly evolving, the strategies that work today may not work tomorrow. Staying informed, therefore, on how AI collects, catalogs, and serves results helps ensure your business continues to thrive.
Hypha HubSpot Development’s extraordinary team of content engineers, design experts, and integration specialists are masters of these new and exciting tools, and will maximize their full potential in tandem with the most effective traditional methods to help you attract and engage more customers, boost sales, and achieve long-term, sustainable growth.
