Rapid changes are happening with search engine rankings and both small business owners and content creators are increasingly feeling the impact. Despite their ongoing efforts to publish quality content, many small businesses have seen a considerable decrease in organic traffic due to recent Google algorithm updates. If this sounds familiar, a smart SEO strategy along with AI-powered tools may be able to help to rescue your website ranking.
With Google prioritizing big, established websites, having a smart content strategy and building authority in your niche is more important than ever if you want to stand out in search results.
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The days when simply writing about something you are passionate about could easily attract thousands of website visitors are long gone. This is why leveraging the latest technology, particularly AI-powered tools, has become one of the most reliable methods to stay afloat in the competitive SEO field.
Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why your site may not be ranking as high as it could, as well as AI-powered tools that can help.
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Common reasons for why you’re not ranking
While Google keeps its search algorithm confidential, industry experts have identified 200+ factors that impact search rankings based on years of experience and case studies.
While we can’t cover everything in that report, let's talk about a few of the potential search engine optimization issues that may be holding your site back:
Lacking topical authority
Google wants to display the most authoritative websites on a topic when someone searches related keywords.
Authoritativeness is built over time by consistently publishing a high volume of original content that demonstrates expertise.
If your site only has 50 articles that briefly discuss various topics rather than deeply covering a specific niche, Google may not consider your website an authority worth high rankings.
The number of supporting articles you need to publish in order to rank something depends on the competitiveness of your niche and many other factors. You can do a competitor analysis (manually or with some of the AI-powered tools we'll talk about later) to see what Google considers enough for a particular topic.
To achieve topical authority, aim to "blanket" the niche by covering each topic extensively with enough high-quality content before moving on to the next topic. Developing an in-depth knowledge graph through your content is key to being seen as the expert and answering all the related questions your audience might have.
Related: How to do SEO — A beginner’s guide for small businesses and entrepreneurs
Not enough domain authority
One of the most important ranking factors is the quantity and quality of links coming from other relevant websites that endorse your domain.
If your site only has a few backlinks from brief mentions or unattributed content on low-authority blogs and directories, search engines won't trust that your site is popular or significant enough in your industry to rank well.
Getting 100+ relevant incoming dofollow links from authoritative industry publications, relevant businesses, and expert blogs over the span of a year or more can significantly increase your domain authority scores.
While Google frowns upon any intentional link building, there are quite a few white-hat ways to obtain high-authority backlinks by providing value, for example, by publishing case studies with interesting data people are eager to share and cite.
In the SEO world of today, your outreach should be strategic and build genuine relationships.
Related: The ultimate guide to Google Analytics 4
Content quality needs improvement
Things like a regular content schedule and on-page SEO seem to not be as impactful anymore as they used to be. Helpful content is the king now.
And it's not about just doing a good job answering users' queries. You need to publish content that is objectively the best in the world for a given query. Otherwise, why would a search engine put you first?
Other than the information itself and semantic SEO, search algorithms also highly value on-page user experience factors like content structure, grammar, readability, mobile-friendliness, multimedia use, and internal linking. For example, your articles may need improvement if they are long blocks of dense text without visual breaks or proper header use.
Take the time to thoroughly analyze competitors ranking in the top 10. Is your article objectively better than each and every one of them? Do you offer valuable insights? Is your content user-friendly?
Minor tweaks such as breaking content into well-structured sections, optimizing images and calls-to-action, and fixing header formats can polish your pages and make them more scannable and share-worthy for both readers and search engine bots.
Related: What is Google’s helpful content update?
Targeting keywords that are too competitive
Very popular search terms related to current events, top brands, or celebrity gossip will naturally have many results pages from large authoritative sites that receive ongoing backlinks and social signals each time they publish new associated content. These top spots are nearly impossible to break into organically.
Instead, carefully research topic opportunities within your industry using an AI keyword research tool to find related long-tail phrases that have fewer well-ranking pages already to target. These keywords may be more attainable goals, especially for a small website.
Another way to stand out is to keep your finger on the pulse of your niche, continuously identify related trends, and cover them before anybody else. Over time, Google will start seeing you as an expert in the niche, which can help your content stand out in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
5 AI-powered tools that can help your website ranking
While developing topical authority, building quality backlinks, optimizing on-page content, and refining keyword targeting all take ongoing work, leveraging Artificial Intelligence can help streamline many of these efforts.
Using AI tools for search optimization can help to save you lots of time every week and can also give you data-driven insights customized to your business. Integrate them into your content production process along with SEO-focused AI prompts, and you can build a strategic, fast-growing blog that is way ahead of most competitors.
Now, let's look at five specific types of AI-powered tools that can help boost your site's SEO performance!
1. AI content planning tool
Having a targeted content strategy is the first foundational step to ranking success.
A good AI content planning tool can analyze your existing content, your topic clusters, and currently ranking competitors to identify gaps and suggest additional topics that will likely improve your position in the niche.
Some tools offer AI-powered keyword research, while others can suggest the whole content clusters to help focus your efforts on cementing topical authority.
Top AI tools for content planning in 2024:
- MarketMuse automatically audits your website and gives you data-based content suggestions, removing any guesswork and subjectivity from your content strategy.
- KeywordInsights is a next-level keyword research tool that generates topic clusters with the most ranking potential based on your seed keyword, search intent, and other data. It also creates content briefs for you to speed up the writing process.
- Frase is a full SEO suite for ranking your articles. This tool uses its AI functionality to help assist you in every step, from competitor research to outlining and writing an article, finding relevant keywords, creating meta descriptions, and even optimizing your content to attempt to secure a top position in search results.
2. AI article writer
While AI writing assistance can't replace a human content writer, using AI strategically can save researching, drafting, and editing hours during the content creation process. This frees up bandwidth for other tasks or opportunities for deeper exploration of certain business-critical topics to build expertise and conversions.
Simply generating the first draft or certain sections of your article with high-quality AI-powered tools can help save you time and energy in your content marketing endeavors.
The key is to choose a tailored AI writing tool that fits your content optimization needs and ensure that any machine-written content receives human review and a personal touch before publishing.
Top AI article writing tools in 2024:
- Koala is the most impressive AI writer I've seen so far. Besides using natural language processing to help create well-optimized content in your preferred tone, it can do automatic internal linking, generate images, and add FAQs and key takeaways. It also gives you a lot of points for personalization, which I appreciate the most.
- Writesonic pulls up-to-date information from Google to write factual, SEO-optimized articles in your brand voice. It can also help you with other writing use cases, such as social media posts, ad campaigns, landing pages, headings, and many more.
- ChatGPT needs no introduction at this point. It's my go-to chat-based AI assistant for all daily tasks related to writing. And with their GPT store, you can leverage hundreds of useful tools for blogging, whether to check your article's EEAT or generate a detailed outline.
3. AI research assistant
Quality research makes your articles stand out, which is great for capturing users’ attention and giving good signals to Google for ranking success. But this comes with a cost – it usually absorbs enormous amounts of time.
Leveraging the power of machine learning can help you dig into meaningful insights for your articles in seconds instead of hours, using recent industry news and other relevant content. They can help surface trend metrics, user questions, case studies, statistics, and more to make your content even more helpful to the reader (and possibly improve your workflow along the way).
Top AI research assistants in 2024:
- TextCortex is your AI-powered copilot that can take multiple roles, find quick answers to your queries from a big knowledge base, use your personalized voice for every output, and even offer creative support when you face writer's block.
- Perplexity is like a smart and lightning-fast encyclopedia that can answer any of your questions. Besides scouting the web, it can find useful statistics from research papers, find relevant YouTube videos to include in the article, or even give you a summary of Reddit users' opinions on a particular subject.
4. AI search optimization tool
Ranking algorithms evolve regularly, so sites must proactively optimize for the latest standards to achieve good results in SERPs. SEO professionals manage to keep up with these updates, but that’s not always feasible for small business owners or content creators.
AI-powered SEO tools can help give your SEO efforts a boost by assessing content, article structure, and other on-page factors against ranking competitors and offering action plans for improvement.
SurferSEO and NeuronWriter are currently two of the best AI SEO tools in the industry. They both use smart NLP algorithms and semantic SEO techniques to audit your pages, compare each to the top 10 search results, and find opportunities for boosting visibility.
5. AI trend finder
Predicting trending topics gives you the opportunity to rank for new searches that are not dominated by anyone in the search results yet.
AI platforms analyze large datasets like social media, forums, and news to make new information easier for writers and researchers to find.
Covering new topics in real-time with expert insights and high-quality content sets you up to become a go-to source for helpful information, as well as potentially helping to keep your digital marketing efforts ahead of the curve.
Top AI trend-finding tools in 2024:
- ExplodingTopics is a must-have tool for any serious business. It helps you discover industry trends months or weeks before they take off, giving you a competitive advantage.
- Glimpse analyzes user behavior across the internet to identify trending keywords in your niche while most keyword research tools are still showing 0 volume.
Final thoughts
AI is looking really promising for boosting our SEO efforts, and I'm looking forward to discovering what comes next for us bloggers and copywriting experts.
If you want to rank better on Google, give some of these AI-powered tools a try and stick to the ones that make the most sense for your SEO content production process. Keep your articles up-to-date and use the SEO best practices to please search engines.
Remember that Google gets smarter every year and can spot schemes from miles away. Instead of trying to trick the algorithm, we're responsible for thoughtfully creating content that genuinely helps real people. And as much as automation and AI tools are helpful, it's our job to use our human judgment before publishing anything on the web.
