
Want to know how AI and SEO can work together to supercharge your content? (Spoiler: It's easier than you think!) In this episode, I chat with Akilah Thompkins-Robinson about her journey from tech expert to SEO and AI pioneer. Akilah shares how she...
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Andrea
SEO is great, but SEO plus our handy little friend, AI artificial intelligence is even better. And today's guest, we're going to dive all into that conversation and more. This is episode number 341 of the Mindful Marketing podcast where we're all about helping you connect more, scroll less and grow together. But first, a word from our sponsor. I've recorded over 300 podcast episodes. Yeah, it's a lot of podcast episodes and I've tried a lot of different virtual recording studios, but my favorite it has been Riverside. Riverside makes their virtual recording studio look so profess. My guests love it. Plus I also low key love recording YouTube videos in here as well because it's so easy to use. My team also loves Riverside because it spits out separate audio video tracks, making editing easy. Breezy lemon squeezy. And if you want a little magic, they've got this tool called Magic Clips which uses AI to take your video and turn it into perfect social media sized videos. I'm talking vertical videos for TikTok and Instagram, Facebook reels, all the places you can post these videos with the captions included. And you don't have to hunt and search for that perfect clip. So if you want to try this out for yourself, click the link that goes with this video. Or if you're listening to the audio on the podcast, it's in the show notes. Okay, Click that Link, use the 15% off coupon code. It's DREA D R E A. And try Riverside for yourself. Thank you, Riverside. All right, let's dive into the episode. Akilah, welcome to the show.
Akilah
Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to talk again because you just on my show. So I'm excited to keep these conversations going.
Andrea
I know, I think it's. So this is one of those situations, y'all, those of you listening where we've been connected online for, I don't know, forever, but we met in person. We were just talking about this. We met in person at DC PodFest pre pandemic, like right before the pandemic and look at us now.
Akilah
Yes.
Andrea
So for the people, for the people listening, can you give us a little bit of background? What has your journey been into? SEO and specifically using artificial intelligence as well.
Akilah
So my, my journey overall has been like two, two paths coming together. Right. So professionally I've been in tech since, since college, a little bit over 20 years. Started working, started as an intern actually, and just took my whole way up a lot of, you know, big major companies and stuff like that. And that's actually where I was introduced to AI. I was working on an AI project back in 2016 for a major bank that we all know. Right. So that's when I first, like. But in that. That time, that project was kind of a chatbot, which is funny because now everybody's doing them, but we were like, building the first kind of chatbot that was going to be used for that particular. And then at the same time, on the other side of my path, I had already been working on SEO. I wrote a book on SEO. I've always been doing, like, web design and just helping people get found in search and all of that work, blogging, all those things. And so eventually, a couple of years ago, the paths finally came together where I was taking a lot of my tech knowledge, which I always infused in everything I do anyway, because I'm a tech girl, right. And now that I'm starting to build out and bring in other people, like, that's my goal, to get more business owners, especially more women, especially more women of color, to like, be embracing these tools, these strategies that we know, I know big companies are using and we aren't. So that's always been the mission of my brand. And so that evolved from just doing it for people. Well, first doing it for myself, then doing it for people, then writing the book, then having a membership, and then eventually the software, which, like I said, is where the two kind of came together, where it's like, I've got the tech skill and knowledge to build, I've got the SEO knowledge to the content and put it together and we got SEO assist.
Andrea
Yeah. And what year did you launch the tool?
Akilah
So the tool officially first launched in its first iteration in 2020. So this is again, before AI. It actually originally was not an AI tool. It was really just a tool to help with content creation. Taking a lot of my templates and putting algorithm and creating content that way. Little crude, I know, but once AI, and initially I was like, I'm not going to put AI in it. I actually was a little bit resistant. I was like, you know, I wanted to still be authentic and using people's V voice and stuff like that. And so it wasn't until I got better at that part of AI of making it sound like the voice of the person who was answering the questions, because that's how the tool works. I'm like, like a chat GPT. There's no prompts or anything like that. We literally give you the questions because we know what you should be saying, right. And then you answer those questions and then based on whatever what we call them, content flows. Content flow you've chosen. That's the content you get. So it wasn't until I could really get that authentic voice that I put that AI in. And then we went, used to be called my SEO writer. And so then it from that to SEO assist and just for the audience might do one more name change.
Andrea
Okay.
Akilah
But you know, so starting from 2020 and then just kind of rolling out different iterations. And so, you know, like I said, here we are now in what we got.
Andrea
Yeah. Okay. I have a bunch of follow up questions, but I think my first one is going to be around this, this concept of AI, because it seems like people fall into two camps. They either love it or they hate it. Right. And I, I feel like I'm kind of in the middle. I'm like, well, some things are, are terrible, but it's actually helpful. How do you kind of educate people on the benefits of AI, Especially those people who are like, never in a million years, it's, you know, it's, you know, cheating or whatever. How, how do you speak to that group of people?
Akilah
Well, first, I'll never say it's cheating because it's still using your ideas and you know, what you're, what you're putting out there. And I'll say I say that all the time, even to people, like even in my book, which was in 2019. So again, way before AI, I said in my book, you know, you don't, unless you're a writer, unless you're somebody who's selling copywriting, right? And selling really writing copy and writing for other people. We're all just giving ideas, right? We're all giving out our, our own knowledge. And so even if you use something like an AI or a template or even somebody like a virtual assistant to get it started, it's still infusing your knowledge. I never want anyone to feel like they're cheating or doing something wrong. Regardless of what the Internet streets say, what's important is the content, the people and the search engines in this case, right? They're not saying it, so you shouldn't worry about it if your actual customers aren't. So that's the first thing I say is that absolutely not cheating. The other thing I say is that especially depending on what you're going to use, like, I know a lot of people default to chat GPT. I even talk about chat GPT a lot. But when you're using more specialized products, right, not even just mine, but More specialized products, they're written with what your end result needs to be. And I think that's where people miss out on using AI, is that if you're not familiar with what the end result should be, like, what does good look like, then you're gonna get potentially not good and sometimes crap out of AI. So you can't just take it for a grain of salt. Which is why I like more specialized products, because they're written with what's good in mind. Like, I use another tool called Opus Clips for video clips for the podcast. One of the things I love about it is it's not just going and saying, you know, minute one to minute 1:30, right? It is actually going in and saying, this sounds good. Let's put this with another piece of this. And it is actually doing some work to make sure you get to what good looks like. And that's because the Opus clip folks know what good short, short form clips look like and know what good videos are like. It even tells you, like, this is a good hook. This is a good statement. Like, it even gives you a little grading score. So you want tools that help you get to that end result. That is what good looks like and written by people who know what good looks like. And so I think if you start combining that, it gets a lot easier and a lot more effective using AI tools.
Andrea
A hundred percent. This kind of reminds me of gingerbread houses. I maybe I'm still in, like, Christmas mo, but I'm the kind of person who, like, give me the kit. Like, I need the bread already baked. I need the icing. Because if you gave me the ingredients just raw, I would be like, I don't even know where to start. And I feel like that's AI tools like this in a sense, where it's like, sure, if you make them all the time or if you know what the end product should look like, you can just have like, flour and sugar and whatever else goes into gingerbread and just make it right. But the rest of us, most of us need. We need to see the box to see what the puzzle's supposed to look like at the end. And I like that. That's kind of what you're doing with, with the SEO assist tool.
Akilah
Exactly. And I love you said the gingerbread, which we have still not done our gingerbread house. I just need to admit it to everybody. January, no gingerbread house is done. But. And when I do my webinars, it's funny, one of the last slides I put is a. A slide with different Cakes. And I use the analogy of this being like cake mix. Like you can start with a yellow cake mix and from that you can make a red velvet cake, you can make a pineapple upside down cake, you can make an eggnog cake, which is what we made this Christmas. Right. You can make lots of different things. And that's what these tools really are. They're that basic, that mix that we know how to get you a good cake. You can add in your own flavor and add in your own extras. But at least it won't be dry. At least it won't be runny. At least it won't be all the ways you can mess up a cake that most of us just wouldn't know until we messed it up a bunch times. And in business you don't really want to do that.
Andrea
Yeah, the cake analogy is perfect because it leads to my next question. So going with the cake analogy, if you are a baker, right, you don't really buy the box cake, you make it from scratch. So I heard you say earlier, you know, if writing copy is your job, then you know, it's a different expectation than the rest of us. So what do you think about people who straddle that line? I'm talking content creators, small business owners. Like we write a lot of copy in our day to day work. We, we publish blog posts on our websites. And even now, you know, Google and other search engines are saying they're going to penalize content that's created by AI. What are your thoughts on that drama?
Akilah
So for the drama, I will say Google's also said that they can't tell what's AI and what's not. And very often, you know, just kind of a smaller version of that. Like we'll see people say if you use words like, like yeah, somebody told.
Andrea
Me game changer the other day and I was like, oh, take that away from me.
Akilah
And that's how I feel because like I talk that way all the time. That's how. Or emojis. I am an emoji person. I like to shot a social personality in everything that I'm sending and writing. And so for me I was always using emojis. Just because AI does it doesn't mean it isn't real. And technically, like I said, Google can't really tell the difference. It has some idea of maybe. But good writing is what, what AI and searching what AI search engines and all that stuff are based on. And so when they start bringing in that information, if you're doing good writing, it's going to look like AI. So that's the first thing I'll say is don't be afraid to somebody saying you look like AI. The other part is straddling fit. So I very specifically I say copywriters only because they're like copywriters. I want to say journalists. That's probably it. Like it's a very small margin of people who get paid for their actual writing different than getting paid for the service that has written material. So like my team, we do content creation. We're getting paid for you to get found in search, we're getting paid for you to come up for different, different topics. We're getting paid to put stuff out there for you. We are not getting paid for the period at the end of the sentence and the correct APA citations. Right? We're not, that's not us. So if our content meets what you need, that's all you need, all you want at the end. And so for those people who are like a content creator or even social media manager, like stuff like that, I think you can use AI. You're always going to review it, you're always going to put your human touch on it. You're never going to just go from tool to person, like to your client tool, even to your own platform. So I think you can still use those AI tools and have absolutely no problem. Like I said, unless you're one of those people who are just getting exactly paid for the periods and explanation points and the things like that. And even though different type of industries, you could still use it for ID ideation, you can still use it for proofreading, expand on this topic, analyze compared to other things. So there's still a lot of things that AI can help you with, even outlines of stuff, even if it's not necessarily writing everything word for word for word. Because it doesn't have to just write for you, it can do a lot of planning and work for you too, which is like I use it, I use ChatGPT and a lot of that is what can you help me work for, get through working wise? Not necessarily what can you do for me? Writing wise?
Andrea
Yes, a hundred percent. This is where I feel like I'm, I'm in the middle with a lot of my thoughts on AI because I use it very heavily throughout my day. But it is a lot of like the analytical, the research, the ideating and a lot of times it helps me just formulate an idea because I'm a talking kind of processor. So for me to even get to the end Point A lot of times I got to talk through whatever is like going through my head. And I can use, you know, artificial intelligence to help me do that. And that's kind of what I like about SEO Assist as well, is that we're not starting from a blank screen. We're not, we're not starting from scratch. We, we have the prompts to help us think through what we want that end result to be, which I think is such a powerful tool that we have on our plate. So when we think about this, kind of like we're in the age of AI, how do we balance AI produced work versus other types of work? Like, like, what do you recommend to business owners?
Akilah
I would say work is work, right? So I wouldn't try to balance or I wouldn't try to separate them. I would say, you know, what does my process look like now? What do I want my process to look like? Cause some people, even without a tool at all, they know they're not where they want to be, right? What do I want my process to look like? And then start thinking about where can I put a tool in this? So going back to like writing content, right? I'm always going to start with coming up with ideas I prefer. And I've learned this now to ask questions. I'm a more of a question generator. I'm a manifesting generator. I don't know if that makes a big difference, but people have told me, I respond and now I see it more, right? So for me, the first thing I'm doing in my process is what questions are people asking? I'm starting with that. And then I'm going to take out those questions, like take one or two of those questions, and then I'm going to say, okay, what kind of style of blog do we need for this particular site? And then I'm going to write the content from that, you know, from that conversation, and then make sure I got the right keywords in there, which I usually already have. And then going on, you know, for the next thing, repurposing. I'd much rather have a tool repurposed than have to continue to rewrite the same thing a couple of different times. So I have all these different steps without a tool involved, right now that I've got the steps and I've got kind of my timeline of this is the things I need to do. I'm going to go in and say, where can a tool help me with this? So I know that I got, you know, a question interview flow, which can be used to get questions. Thanks. Right, got that. I'm going to be manually going through them, so I can't use a tool for that or I don't use a tool for that. But then when I get to the actual writing, I'm going to probably, you know, choose my different blog post type and I'm going to maybe use a tool there if I, even if I write it myself, I'm going to now use it in the next step where I'm repurposing there. So when you're thinking about where am I going to put in the tool, first look at your process and then start thinking, where are the things? I can start replacing my part of the process with a tool or even a person using the tool, because you can also have your team go out and do it, which I found a lot of value in that as well. Like for my podcast and for different things, all I got to do is that one big piece of, of content. They'll go out and now repurpose. They'll go out and do show notes, they'll go out and do all these things and things like tools, just help them do it and help me with the confidence that it's getting done correctly, it's getting done using my voice, so everything sounds like me. Like it's just getting done the right way because I know what they're using to make it happen.
Andrea
Yeah, a hundred percent. I'm, I'm so for this flow. And I think a lot of times we start backwards. We start with like, oh, here's the tool, now how can I use it? But what you're recommending and what I love about this is it's like you got to figure out what your process is first, then find the tools that can help you. So with that in mind, for those listeners who are maybe a little bit more advanced, what are some of the ways that AI can help with content creation? I'm thinking maybe keyword research or competitor. Like, how do we, how do we use this powerful tool to help us improve our work even more?
Akilah
So, so funny you said keyword research, because that's the one thing that I don't really like AI to do down. One of the. And one of the reasons why. And when I say AI, I'm thinking, you know, straight AI. Again, if you've got a specialized tool that has some other things, like we also have an API with Semrush, so we're bringing in other information. If you're just doing like GPT, Claude, something like that, I would not recommend it. For keyword research, one of the reasons why is because it can't. It still can't see what the actual numbers are behind it. So the volume, the, the, what we call the keyword difficulty. So how well it'll rank among others, how populous that keyword is. So those are important numbers that we do when we do keyword research that I would not use a tool, I would not use an AI tool for that. I would go to an actual SEO tool that specifically brings in that kind of data and then incorporates it, which is nice, but I would not use it for that. But for other things, like ideation is always one, right? If I'm going to come up with those topics, I'm going to come up with those questions. Keywords and topics aren't necessarily always the same. They're not one for one. So you can have good topics that, you know, people are asking these questions and answering them, which you should. And only maybe one or two keywords involved there, but you're still going to come up for that topic, if that makes sense. So I wouldn't do the keyword research, but I would help it with the ideation, definitely. Like proofreading, things like that. I need a proofreader life regularly. Then other things like the repurposing for me, like, that's really, really big. So whether it's either a video tool or a written tool or whatever the tool is, being able to break it up into little different chunks. This day and age, we need to not say we need to be everywhere, but we need to have an appearance in most places, right? And so what that means. And why don't say, I don't like the term be everywhere because I think it makes people feel like they need to sit on some computer and be literally on that platform every single day. And that's just not true. What you can do is schedule, right? You can batch and schedule. I usually try to schedule out at least 20 per week. And if I do that, and that's with my groups and pages and everything, so at least 20 different posts going somewhere, right? If I do that, then I can at least interject my little things and not feel like I'm overwhelmed. That all can be helped by AI, right? AI can tell you when to post it, where to post it, what to post it, and then the better part of it at all is that now you've got that consistent voice. Because like, if you start with, like I generally start with a blog post, one big blog post, break this up into a bunch of different little posts. For me, where should I be putting these? When should I be putting these? Now it's doing all that work to help me and figure out and get kind of through that pit of the overwhelm that sometimes comes up on that, like when, when and where kind of stuff. And then now you can move forward to the next thing you have to do in your business or your day or the next week when you do it all over again. Right. But you don't have to spend as much time. So I think those are some of the places where AI is helping out tremendously. And not just my business, but a lot of business.
Andrea
Yeah, 100%. Like when I. People say this to me all the time, they're like, andrea, you're everywhere. I'm like, well, it may look that way, but I have people and tools behind the scenes to help make that happen. Right, right. I'm not always camera ready. So we, we just, you know, we go with the flow. So I'm curious about what you think about the future of AI, because it feels like to me, it's going to be less like the iPhone, when the iPhone first came out was like, oh, big deal. Or, you know, oh, you're fancy if you have an iPhone now, it's like, all phones look the same. And I, I kind of feel that's where AI is headed, where it's like, it's a big deal now, but, you know, five, ten years from now, it's going to be so integrated in what we do, we won't even think about it anymore. But I'm curious, you know, looking ahead three to five years from now, how do you see AI changing? Specifically content. Content and SEO. Because I, I don't know. I don't know what to think about that.
Akilah
I'm so defensive. The SEO piece, a lot of search engines are now incorporating, so they've got like their own SEO or search, you know, search, AI, that kind of thing. So that's, that's one good thing and bad thing. I am one of those people who's a little bit worried, which is one of the things that Mueller, John Mueller from, from Google, said in the very beginning, like, they don't want the Internet to all look like the same thing. And so that is one of the potential downfalls of everyone's using AI and just kind of throwing it out there. Like people say, write me a blog post about being on a podcast. Right. If I don't give it anything more specific than that, it's going to probably sound like a lot of the other Blog posts that are out there because I didn't give it anything specific. So I think, I think that's one of the downfalls and one of the things we have to look out for is not sounding just like everyone else, being more specific, being more detailed, which is where I think things are going to go. I think things are going to get much more specific, much more niche AIs, much more workflow based AI. So it's not just going to be, I'll use Chatty, which is what I call ChatGPT. I'll use chatty for everything. It'll be, I need to do this specific thing. Let me go to that tool that is specifically for this because it has those different algorithms built in, it has additional APIs that it's not just going, it's not just to chat, it's going to a bunch of other things and then pulling that in and bringing it to chat and bringing it back. I think that's going to be a lot more, a lot more workflow based. So a lot more like instead of me having to ask it five or six different things to do, I'll be able to put in like one thing and now it's going to go out and do the whole workflow. It may ask me, do you, you know, I see this is in your content. Do you want me to do this kind of thing? So a little bit more of interactive, a little bit more intuitive. I also think more voice based is going to be important because I think they've gotten, they've gotten written down, of course, but I think now even ChatGPT is already starting to do this and some other tools are working on this. Being able to just answer the questions or say whatever you want and then have it processed from that as opposed to needing. Because even once you sit down and type in whatever you're typing, we still try to make it sound more formal. I sometimes have to catch myself and say, you don't have to write this email for it to write the email. Just tell it what you want to say and let it do the rest. Right? That's what you have it here for. I think we're going to move more into, with voice based, not worrying about that so much because we'll be able to say, hey, write an email to, you know, send a thank you for being on the show. Right? You know, write an email to do this. And sometimes it might actually be able to start sending that email or remind you, hey, you were on your show yesterday. Don't forget to send the thank you they've got like motion is one. And I just started with Sun Summer, it's called, but somebody else on my podcast recommended it. So I just started with yesterday, but now those are starting to look at your calendar and say, okay, here's what you have to do. Here's what you have on your calendar. Here's when you can start doing that work. It's going to now start doing some other things. Like one of those things in your task is send an email. Let me do that for you. Right. You know, one of the things in that thing is schedule your next interviews. Let me do that for you. So I think it's going to move more into doing more work for you to do more the whole workflow as opposed to one to one and to like I said that audio processing where you don't even have to formalize your kind of thoughts as much as we tend to do. You just be able to say, hey, do this really quick and it don't it.
Andrea
Yeah. Oh man, we're truly living in the future. If it starts sending emails for me, I mean, come on, listen.
Akilah
In the morning, like I dropped my son off from school so we have a bit of a commute, like 15 minutes. Imagine in the morning on the way back, I just like send an email here, send an email there. There are the emails I need to send today. And I. By the time I get to my house, all I'm doing is proofing emails and getting them out.
Andrea
See, I was telling someone this the other day because I was looking in my Gmail for something and I just didn't type the right word. And so I never found this email. And I was like, I wish I could just describe it and it could like take my description and then like be smart about it. You know what I'm trying to say? Okay. I just can't think of the word that will give me this exact email. And I feel like we're so close to artificial intelligence truly being like that helpful, especially with something like Gmail, which we all use. It's like, how can we make this smarter? If I could go, okay, give me three emails that are on this topic, but not this or that. Whatever the case may be, even if I don't use the right words, I. I hope that it becomes more integrated and it can help me out a.
Akilah
Little better once you met someone. So along. Along along the lines of that and let you know it's coming. I met someone last year. Young lady, she has, she has an AI tool and it's specifically for the production industry and like actors and commercial work, stuff like that. They send out these sheets. I forgot exactly what they're called, call sheets. So they send out these sheets with information about them. And then on the verse on the adverse, those who are looking are sending out sheets based on what we need. This particular tool goes through your emails, finds all of the different sheets, starts making a database of all the different people who are available because they've sent you a sheet. And then when you come in and say, I need this, instead of you sending out a sheet, it's actually querying the database. That is probably the best tool that I've seen so far. And this. I'm sure she's much further ahead because it's about a year and a half ago that I met her at a different company conference. But that's. That's the. That's where it's getting to where it's. I can actually read. Start making sense of categorizing and then use it for something later on when you actually need to execute some work. That's where I think we're going.
Andrea
Yeah, that sounds amazing. So brilliant. I love it. Okay, so for those people who are listening, who are like, I need the SEO Assist in my life, tell us more about it and where we can find the live demo.
Akilah
So SEO assist is@seoass.com you can have. You can go to Live Demo, which is their interview flow. So basically it's a bunch of different flows. You come in and say. It literally says, what do you want to work on today? And you click what you want to work on, and then from there you can choose, you know, what kind of blog post you want to do, what kind of questions you want to generate, that kind of thing. And so we've made our interview flow, which I've used a lot on my podcast. If you ever listen to my show, I'm using those questions available for people to try. So if you go to seoassist.com live demo, that'll take you there and you can answer. There's about four questions. Who's your audience? What's their goal? Who's the guest? And. And what kind of interview? So it's whether or not it's a blog, podcast, or YouTube interview. And it gives you 25 questions. And the good thing about the questions is it's not just. And this is where knowing what good looks like comes in. Right? It's not just here of 25 questions. We actually break it down into kind of like your general questions, and then we Give you five what we call the controversial questions because our show should have one, right? And then we give you the basic questions which are always the ones that people for get because you're used to doing it so you're not thinking of like what I call the eggs, milk and butter. Back to my cake reference. I talk about cake a lot. Every cake, most of them have egg, milk and butter. Right? So that's the basics and we always forget those. And so it even has questions based on that. So you guys can go and try that and play with it and get your questions. I use it for interviewing people and I use it for myself actually. I have a couple of YouTube videos which are super funny where I'm actually, I'm doing it because I'm demonstrating, but I'm actually interviewing myself, having my glasses and it's like interviewing me. Not interview me, interview me, interview me. But you can use it even if you're not doing it that funny. But you can use any of those questions can become your next blog post. Because those are questions that people are asking out in search engines, right? They're asking the search engines about this particular thing. They're talking about these particular controversial process that are happening. They're. They need this information. And so it gives you, like I said, 25 questions you can use to get, get that information.
Andrea
Yeah, beautiful. I love it. And if y'all want to try this out, highly, highly recommend I use it for my podcasts. Getting those questions can really help save us so much time. So much research time too. So you can check that out and all of the links in the show notes. Onlinedrea.com 341 Hilla, thank you so much for being on the show.
Akilah
You're welcome. Thank you for having me. I love these conversations. So thank you.
Andrea
Yeah, this was so fun. And thank. Thank you, dear listener, for tuning into another episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. Coming up next week, we are kicking off our LinkedIn challenge inside of the Mindful Marketing Lab. And this is our seventh year doing it. If you are not in the lab, you can still get your free pass. Go to onlinedrea.com LinkedIn to join us for free from January 27th through the 31st. In the meantime, I'll be back at you next Tuesday with another episode. That's all for today. Bye bye for now.
Summary of "Boost Your SEO Strategy with AI" - The Mindful Marketing Podcast (Episode 341)
Host: Andréa Jones
Guest: Akilah Thompkins-Robinson
Release Date: January 21, 2025
Podcast: The Mindful Marketing Podcast (Formerly Known As The Savvy Social Podcast)
In episode 341, host Andréa Jones welcomes Akilah Thompkins-Robinson to explore the intersection of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The conversation centers on leveraging AI to enhance SEO strategies, the development of Akilah's tool "SEO Assist," and the future implications of AI in content creation and marketing.
Akilah shares her professional background, highlighting over two decades in the tech industry and her early exposure to AI through a chatbot project for a major bank in 2016. Concurrently, her passion for SEO led her to author a book on the subject and develop web design and content strategies aimed at helping businesses improve their online presence.
Akilah [02:16]:
"My journey overall has been like two paths coming together... I've got the tech skill and knowledge to build, I've got the SEO knowledge to the content and put it together..."
Akilah discusses the inception of SEO Assist, initially launched in 2020 as a non-AI content creation tool. Over time, she integrated AI to enhance the tool's ability to maintain authentic voices in generated content, leading to its rebranding from "My SEO Writer" to "SEO Assist."
Akilah [04:05]:
"It wasn't until I could really get that authentic voice that I put that AI in. And then we went, used to be called my SEO writer. And so then it from that to SEO assist..."
Andréa addresses the divided opinions on AI, questioning how to educate skeptics about AI’s benefits without them feeling it undermines their efforts. Akilah responds by emphasizing that AI tools utilize the user’s ideas and knowledge, enhancing rather than replacing human input.
Akilah [05:50]:
"I'll never say it's cheating because it's still using your ideas and what you're putting out there... what's important is the content, the people and the search engines in this case."
Akilah likens AI tools to essential baking ingredients, providing a reliable base (like cake mix) that ensures quality and consistency while allowing for personal customization.
Akilah [08:04]:
"AI can tell you when to post it, where to post it, what to post it..."
Andréa brings up concerns regarding potential penalties from search engines like Google for AI-generated content. Akilah counters by noting that Google cannot reliably distinguish between AI and human-generated content, stressing that quality writing remains paramount.
Akilah [10:36]:
"Google can't really tell the difference. It has some idea of maybe. But good writing is what AI and searching what AI search engines and all that stuff are based on."
Akilah advises business owners to integrate AI tools based on their existing processes rather than attempting to balance AI and non-AI tasks separately. She outlines her approach, which involves identifying specific stages in content creation—such as ideation, keyword integration, and repurposing—where AI can add value.
Akilah [14:00]:
"First look at your process and then start thinking about where can put a tool in this."
For more advanced users, Akilah highlights AI’s strengths in ideation, proofreading, and content repurposing while cautioning against using generic AI tools for tasks like keyword research due to their inability to provide precise data. She advocates for specialized SEO tools that offer accurate metrics.
Akilah [16:57]:
"For keyword research... I would go to an actual SEO tool that specifically brings in that kind of data and then incorporates it."
Looking ahead, Akilah expresses both optimism and caution. She envisions AI becoming more niche and workflow-based, with enhanced integration capabilities and voice-based interactions. However, she also warns against the potential for content homogenization if AI usage isn't tailored and specific.
Akilah [21:00]:
"I think things are going to get much more specific, much more niche AIs, much more workflow based AI... Being able to just answer the questions or say whatever you want and then have it processed from that..."
Akilah introduces SEO Assist, directing listeners to seoassist.com for a live demo. She explains that the tool offers tailored interview flows that generate relevant questions based on the user’s needs, facilitating efficient content creation aligned with SEO best practices.
Akilah [26:50]:
"SEO assist is@seoass.com... it gives you 25 questions you can use to get that information."
Andréa concludes the episode by encouraging listeners to integrate SEO Assist into their workflows and mentions the upcoming LinkedIn challenge in the next episode. She emphasizes the importance of leveraging tools like SEO Assist to save time and enhance content quality.
Andréa [28:53]:
"If y'all want to try this out, highly, highly recommend I use it for my podcasts. Getting those questions can really help save us so much time."
Key Takeaways:
For more information and to try out Akilah's SEO Assist tool, visit seoassist.com and explore the live demo to enhance your SEO strategies with AI-driven insights.