I will be honest: I use AI to improve the SEO of my last blog post and revise an older piece.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t think of what to write, nor did I use it to write significant sections of my content, but it was more of an experiment. While I’ve been at this blog thing for a while, most of my views come from social media and just a little from search results. So far, I only have one article that gets search results, and it was one I didn’t even think would do well when I wrote it.

So, with a hopeful mindset to improve search results, I used AI to see if it could help me. Here’s how I used AI to help me write and edit some blog posts.

Understanding Search Engine Optimization – The Basics

Knowing how your content appears in search engine results is essential when writing a blog. That process is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

SEO is about making your content more visible to search engines so they rank you higher in search results. Think about it: when you search on Google, how often do you go beyond the first five results? Ranking higher means more traffic to your site, which can make a significant difference.

Ranking high in the results is challenging but can bring life to a site.

My History of SEO: What I’ve Learned So Far

I am by no means an SEO expert. I have taken a few online classes and read a few books about SEO. I know the basics, but I would love to get some training from an expert one day.

I know you should write your content according to how people search, but that doesn’t always fit my voice. I try to adhere to some of the principles of SEO, but I want my content to sound natural.

That said, I’ve been using the WordPress plugin RankMath for a while to help improve my SEO. Check out my entire method for writing a blog post.

But I never get any more views on my content from search results. The one post that does get me daily search results about how the Apple Watch ECG helped my pregnant wife wasn’t even written with SEO in mind.

So, I thought I would experiment with using AI to help improve my on-page SEO.

What Is AI

Artificial Intelligence has taken over the tech world. Microsoft and Google have leaped in, and Apple is rumored to focus on it with its next round of updates.

But what is AI?

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. It simulates intelligent behavior or thinking by machines, particularly computer systems. AI technology enables machines to learn from experience, adapt to new inputs, and perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and language translation.

Part of building these systems involves uploading information or writing. Artists don’t want their work to go into these systems because they fear the machine will use that work without crediting the author, and they will not get paid.

I totally get it. In my last year of teaching, kids started trying to use AI to write their papers for them. It’s a slippery slope right now. I don’t want AI to create content for me, but allowing it to fix things would be nice. I’m also worried that asking AI to review my work will feed the machine without giving me enough back.

But I’m curious if I could use AI to help me improve. So I tried it out. Besides, no matter how much I dislike content being created by machines, it’s coming, so I might as well find ways to use it to my benefit.

Use AI to Improve the SEO Keywords for Your Content

The first thing I asked AI to do was find some good keywords. Now, I knew what I wanted to write and outline. I even started the intro paragraph before I asked for keyword help. I wanted to start and not force things into my writing.

Ulysses doesn’t offer AI support yet, but luckily for me, Grammarly does. After writing what I did, I asked Grammarly’s chatbot to pretend it was an SEO expert and find me some keywords to include for the content I’d already written. It spit out about 10, which I then copied to my sheet as a note.

While writing, I tried to keep some keywords in mind and include them when they felt natural, but I didn’t want to force words into my content.

Using AI to Optimize H2s for Improved On-Page SEO

Once I finished my first draft, I asked Grammarly’s AI to re-write my H2s to improve my on-page SEO. An H2 is the second-level heading, or the bolder and bigger words that divide each section.

The system spit out some new headings; while I didn’t love them, it gave me an idea. I rewrote what I already had, trying to blend more of my voice with the machine’s. It also helped me realize what I had written in my draft wasn’t what people would likely be searching for.

Because of that, I wrote my piece, trying to keep in mind what I was trying to say and what the search intent might be.

Rewrite My Content With AI to Improve Visibility in Search Engines

After I re-wrote the piece, I asked the chatbot to rewrite my content to improve visibility in the search engines while maintaining my voice.

The machine gave me something that didn’t look like what I wrote. I thought it stripped out all the personality. It trimmed out every story and anecdote I told and left in the cold, hard facts. That might be what shows up better in search results, but that isn’t what I want to write.

I took some of what it wrote and put it at the beginning of the sections. I didn’t want to strip my content of flavor, but I did want to improve my search rankings and show up higher in Google search results.

I gave the post one last editing pass and published it.

Check Back For Results

I don’t have any metrics to report back yet, as I just published it a few days ago. So far, I’ve only used this process twice—once for a new post and once to edit existing content. However, if I start to get more traffic, I will use AI-powered content editing and refine it to ensure I’m including the human element.

Using Artificial Intelligence is scary. We’ve all seen the Terminator. Artists don’t want their work copied and stolen. However, the machines can be an excellent tool to help. I’m looking forward to seeing if I get any results. Regardless, I’ve learned a few things going through this process that I’ll continue to use whether I use AI-powered content editing.

Let me know how you feel about using AI in your work in our discussion on Facebook.

If you want to see my experiment’s results, enter your email address below to join the mailing list. You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads to get little micro-updates and other looks into my work and family life.

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