Do blogs still help with SEO? Not if you’re still blogging like it’s 2020!
If you’ve been blogging for years, you’ve probably noticed that the traffic payoff isn’t what it used to be. What once drove steady growth for many websites has dropped off sharply in the last couple of years, and AI is a major reason why.
I’ve seen this firsthand. As a healthcare SEO specialist, I’ve driven major traffic increases to websites, mainly through blogging, but also their procedure pages, only to watch those numbers decline as AI began reshaping search.
This was largely unforeseen, but now that we’ve seen it, we know how to avoid it. In this article, I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned about how blogs can still drive SEO results today, which topics are worth your time, and how to futureproof your content strategy as AI search evolves.
Want to make sure your blogging strategy is still worth the investment? Schedule a call with Sagapixel today. Our digital marketing specialists will help you create content that attracts the right visitors, builds trust, and supports your business’ long-term growth, even in the age of AI.
Blogging for SEO: Is It Effective?
So, do blogs help with SEO? Well, sometimes. But the way it gets done most of the time, no. Let me explain.
If you’re using blogs as a way to earn backlinks from other websites as part of a digital PR strategy, or a way to passively earn links—great. It’s going to help your SEO.
If you’re using blogs to answer your solution-unaware target customers’ questions and then presenting what you do as the solution, that’s not only going to help with SEO; it’s going to help your bank account.
But how do you futureproof this strategy?
Understanding The BARS Framework for Content Topics
We have a framework that we use to qualify content topics to make sure that they’re going to have business value before we spend time on them.
It’s called BARS.
I won’t get into detail about it here. If you want to hear more about it, you can take a look at our video breaking it down. However, I am going to talk about the A in BARS:
Will someone be satisfied by an AI answer?
For lots of topics, people are going to perform a Google search and just take the information they get from the AI overview, and that’s it.
As the years go by, more and more people are going to bypass Google entirely and go to ChatGPT for that information.
At the same time, there will always be topics where people are not going to want to hear from AI. They’re going to want to hear from people with firsthand experience and a perspective.
Those are the topics that you need to be focusing your blog content strategy on.
Example: Topics for Cataract Surgery Content
Let’s take a look at an example.
- Topic 1: “What are the types of intraocular lenses that you can get implanted when you have cataract surgery?”
AI can do a good job of giving you that answer. Honestly, you don’t really need to hear from an ophthalmologist for that.
Unfortunately, that’s the kind of traffic that goes away, like the screenshot I included earlier. Your ability to get in front of that potential patient for the first time is basically gone.
- Topic 2: “How common are starbursts with multifocal lenses?”
This is a specific type of lens that can cause starbursts when you’re driving at night, where all the lights look like they have massive stars around them. It sounds pretty terrible, right?
People are going to want to hear from surgeons and patients who’ve had the procedure, not AI.
That traffic isn’t going anywhere. It can put money in your bank account.
That’s the kind of content you should focus on.
What About Getting Cited in AI Overviews?
The studies I’ve seen so far show low single-digit percentage click-through rates on those citations.
In other words, there’s not a lot of value you’re going to get from being cited there.
Frankly, the same thing goes for ChatGPT. I think the argument that it’s important is coming from SEOs who are terrified that their livelihoods might dry up.
Blogging for AI Optimization: Query Fan-Out
What about doing blogs specifically for AI optimization, in particular when you’re optimizing for query fan-out?
In ChatGPT and in Google’s AI mode, when someone types in a query, they’re very rarely short, three-word questions. People aren’t using it the way they use Google.
Instead, they’ll type something like:
“I need a digital marketing agency that has experience both in social media and SEO, and that has a track record of success working with dermatologists.”
ChatGPT (or Google’s AI mode) will now take that phrase, perform dozens of searches, pull together all the information it can uncover, and then synthesize everything into the result you get.
This is something I think, over time, we’re going to have to reverse-engineer on a search-by-search basis. Your website being part of that whole result could actually increase your likelihood of being recommended in the answers AI delivers to people.
But the truth is, today, we don’t know. This is all speculative and theoretical at this point.
In summary, some blogs help with SEO, but a lot fewer than before ChatGPT came along in October of 2022.
Future-Proof Your SEO Content Strategy with Sagapixel
At Sagapixel, we help healthcare providers and businesses adapt their SEO strategies based on the way AI is reshaping search behavior.
We’ll work with you to identify the types of content that still drive traffic and conversions, build a blogging strategy that focuses on topics AI can’t replace, and create a framework to ensure your investment in content continues to pay off.
Schedule a call with us today. Let’s future-proof your content strategy and build an SEO plan that keeps delivering results, even as search evolves with AI.
