Mastering SEO in the Age of AI: Insights from Divya Jain

The content creation industry is pivotal for increasing a company's brand awareness. From search engine optimization (SEO) for better rankings on a search engine to converting meaningful traffic into business value, everything can be well executed by proper planning. However, in recent years, AI has played a significant role in shaping industries and pushing them to change their methodologies.

In this enriching interview, Divya Jain, Global SEO Head at Edvoy, delves deeper into the depths of search engine optimization (SEO) with Rishabh Shekhar, CEO and Co-Founder of Pepper Content.  As Divya shares her insights, she breaks down the multitude of layers into simple steps to help you determine the investment required for SEO in businesses! 

1. Tell us about your career journey and experience as you navigate through the SEO industry.

My journey of 17 years has been long and challenging. I started by taking instructions from people, and for the past two decades, I have been keenly involved in strategizing SEO goals for various organizations. I've grown over the years. I've grown from a newcomer to this field who had very little understanding of things to a seasoned professional.

In my initial days, the game was all about link-building. All you had to do was rank a keyword and build X number of backlinks, and voila! You will have noticed the results soon. However, the playing field has evolved and has been completely transformed today.

It's all about the user today, not just about search engines.

It has become more human, which means my experience in the present scenarios is quite different from my previous experiences. Everything is user-centric now. The search engine algorithms look at the functionality and the engagement aspects of the content while deciding the ranking of the sites.

The past year has especially been exceptional in terms of my achievements. I worked on an e-commerce site, which was a completely new experience. While working on this project, I not only learned a lot but also was able to grow the traffic exponentially.

This was all thanks to the buyer’s guide and glossary we launched at that time. 

In another organization, I was tasked with the role of spearheading a project. This experience holds a special and unique value as the paid experience score jumped from zero percent to 98 percent.

This is a commendable achievement according to me, and all these reflections do not simply describe my journey, but they also depict the evolution of the SEO industry over the past couple of decades.

2. What are the top three most important things in SEO?

The first one is the mobile approach. If you are thinking about the desktop, you need to shift your focus because, in today’s world, the mobile approach has become critical.

The second most important thing is content. The third one would be the technical aspects. Here you will be deciding where to introduce automation into the picture. You can explore the technology and infrastructure of your site and use tools like Google bots to find out how it is reacting to your site.

3. What is the one wrong thing companies are doing while improving their SEO game?

Actually, there are multiple things, but I have noticed that companies look for instant results; however, they only invest and employ limited manpower. I am not asking companies to employ people in bulk, but the manpower should be proportional to the workload at hand. 

It is important to stay patient because SEO is not going to show overnight results. For getting the target results, there is a certain process to follow, and there are multiple dependencies, such as content and product.

Keeping all these dependencies in mind, you would take a lot of time to come up with an SEO strategy that fits all these aspects. In addition, tools like Google bot would also take time to understand your SEO infrastructure, so you should be patient.

4. How do companies create a framework for SEO?

This job is usually undertaken by strategists who build a strategy by keeping the market size in mind. Market size is one of the most important aspects, and when I say market size, I am referring to the online market size.

Once you have identified our market size, look for opportunities and decide how much of it can be covered in three or six months. I usually create a roadmap for a year and then break it down into six months and then three months.

When you are working on a strategy, be clear with your company and business goals and then come up with a strategy that best aligns with your goals. 

5. How do you, as a founder, decide whether to invest in search engine optimization and what do you look for? 

It all starts with back calculations. If I had to decide whether I would be investing in SEO, I would first figure out the search potential in that particular industry. Let me give you my recent experience as an example. Right now, I am working on building a strategy for studying abroad for a domain. So while I assimilate the data, the first thing I would look for is how big the abroad search market is. Once I have figured out the total market, I would then focus on finding out how much of the total market share I can capture. 

Based on this analysis, I could predict and tell them the progress of the company and its standpoint a year later. Another important aspect is the conversion of traffic, and for this, the traffic has to be meaningful. Lead conversions are essential for the brand to generate revenue, so if you are new to the industry and are starting from scratch, you can obviously use the industry benchmark.

If the industry benchmark cannot be taken into consideration for some reason, go with the historical benchmarks and then determine the fund allocation and investment.

6. There is an AI trend when thinking about the future. How do you think this trend is going to affect the content writing and SEO industry?

Okay, so when we talk about the future, I do not see a single but multiple trends. However, the one common driving force of these trends is AI. Every person is aware of the fact that content can not be simply spun out of thin air. It can not be created blindly but has to be created in clusters.

In simple words, your website is a one-stop solution for your customers. Therefore, the information that you provide must encompass as much information as possible to help them understand the specifics of your product or service. Content will continue to dominate the space.

Naturally, AI is going to play a crucial role because, let’s accept it, it is a smart and clever tool. It can help you out in checking the facts as well as producing content. Let me tell you that there is no harm in generating content with the help of AI. However, there should always be a human editor. You may be wondering why.

Well, simply put, the human touch in content creation is important in order to humanize the content as much as possible. In addition, these human editors also need to be involved to check and verify the facts.

The best practice would be to take advantage of both AI tools and human editors. While Ai can cover multiple aspects of content creation, the human editor can spend time proofreading the content and making it vibrant and humane.

Ultimately, this will help you in building value and search engine value. Coming to the best part, you can build brand trust and engagement with your target audience.

7. What is your current toolset, and do you think it is adept? If you had a one-stop solution tool for SEO, what would it be?

I believe that a lot of tools already offer comprehensive solutions. However, there is one major area where these tools are lagging, which is the alignment of your traffic to your scope.

When you rely on tools like Semrush for topic research, you do not really know how much you have already covered from the scope. In short, a tool that can help you compare and holistically understand where you are at present, and your target is missing from the market.

So, I would envision a tool that can incorporate these missing tools to offer you an all-rounder perspective on SEO, traffic, and scope.

8. What is some advice for anyone looking to make it big in the SEO industry and starting off their career right now? 

To begin with, the fundamentals and basics are quite essential. However, you also need to remember that the traditional ways of SEO are non-existent right now. This is why people working in the field of SEO must acquire and have good technical knowledge.

Today it is simply not just a matter of link-building or content marketing. You need a myriad of perspectives to help you navigate in this industry, and for this, having a good hold on technical knowledge is essential.