Can AI Replace Human SEO Experts? Here’s What You Need to Know

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing how we do SEO. AI tools make SEO actions like quickly finding keywords, writing content, and building optimized sites. What took hours can now be done within a few clicks.

But can AI replace human SEO experts? Even with all these smart technologies, AI still can’t think like a human. Indeed, AI tools are helpful, but we know that they still need human touch to get the best outcomes.

This article checks how AI works for SEO, where it still falls short, and why SEO experts are recommended to work side-by-side with AI when moving forward.

Now, let’s get down to business!

How is AI Already Shaping SEO?

First, let’s check out how AI is shaping SEO in some of its areas.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is not just about finding keywords and optimizing websites. Thanks to AI—it’s also about how smartly and quickly you optimize your website content through data-driven approaches.

So, AI is already changing the way SEO works in these areas:

1. Keyword Research and SERP Analysis

Start with these statistics:

• 86% of SEO experts integrate AI with their keyword research workflows. This enables them to cluster keywords, discover topics, and analyze intents.
• 62% of the time, organizations use AI to analyze SEO data.

Those days when you had to guess and rigorously find keywords to use are all gone. Now, you can use AI-powered SEO tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Surfer SEO. Wondering how? 

• These AI SEO tools can now scan millions of search queries. 
• With that, you’ll get to know exactly what people are searching for.
• You can easily analyze competitor rankings.
• It lists out trending topics and suggests keywords that you can rank for.

For example, Ahrefs and Semrush use machine learning to find keywords, analyze competition, and group keywords based on intent. On the other hand, Surfer SEO uses AI to help you plan your content based on user intent and topical relevance.

Overall, AI offers deeper insights into search behavior through which you can quickly start your content creation that actually gets seen.

Similarly, AI tools like Outranking and Frase.io are focused on guiding SEO experts in SERP analysis. For instance:

• Outranking studies SERP features in top-ranking pages and accordingly suggests optimized headings and content structure.
• Frase.io helps to rewrite your SERP content by ensuring it aligns with search intent and offers more ranking opportunities.

2. Content Creation and Optimization

Previously, content writers and on-page SEO experts had a hard time researching and writing their optimized content. This time-consuming task is now much easier and quicker with AI tools for writing, rewriting, and optimizing your content.

Here are some examples:

AI writing tools like ChatGPT and Writesonic let you draft articles, blog outlines, blog posts, product descriptions, or any other kind of content within a few minutes. These tools pull data from top-performing pages to help you in content creation.

Similarly, there are tools like Clearscope and Chatsonic that optimize your content through suggestions about keyword placement, structure, tone, and whatnot.

Eager to know how AI is growing for SEO content? Here are some insights:

• 35% of businesses use AI to implement SEO-optimized content strategies.
• 70% of companies agree with the fact that ChatGPT helps them produce content faster.
• In fact, 13% of the top-rated content on Google is generated with AI.

One recommendation! Rank Math is a powerful WordPress AI SEO plugin. It has a Content AI module with these features for content creation and optimization:

• Generates eye-catching titles and meta descriptions with your one click.
• Provides on-page SEO suggestions that you can consider applying. For example, it guides you on keyword placement, internal links, alt text, etc.
• Based on your prompt or instructions, it generates optimized content title suggestions, blog outline, blog post content, and more.

Overall, Rank Math is one of the most popular AI SEO plugins to make your content more SEO-friendly and aligned with what search engines currently favour.

3. Automation of Technical SEO

Not only content creation, but AI tools also mark their significance in the technical SEO aspect, too. How difficult it is to fix broken links, check page speed, and maintain website structure, isn’t it? Well, AI tools gladly come in handy. 

AI SEO tools can crawl your site and point out the issues within seconds. Influencer Marketing Hub mentions that 22.1% of marketers perform technical site audits with AI automation. This helps to find broken link issues, crawl errors, etc.

Here are some tools ideal for this area:

• Screaming Frog automates crawling for data analysis, by which it flags issues of indexing and metadata. It even prioritizes issues according to the impact so that you can quickly start fixing what matters most.
• Semrush has a technical audit tool with AI functionality to scan sites and detect issues related to speed, schema, etc.

But remember, AI doesn’t make decisions but just points out the problems. You must decide whether to fix or not, how to fix them, and when to fix them. It’s all up to your website goals.

Here’s our ultimate list of the best AI SEO tools you must not miss out on.

Can AI Replace Human SEO Experts?

Now, let’s focus on the main question that’s in all of our minds. Can AI replace human SEO experts?

AI is indeed transforming the SEO world, but not by replacing human SEO experts. Instead, all it is doing is changing how we use the AI SEO tools to do our work.

Of course AI can handle several operational SEO tasks like quick keyword research and automated content generation plus optimization. But find out what it lacks and why it needs experts to lead the way.

1. AI Augments and Does Not Replace SEO

AI SEO tools are helping SEO professionals to publish more content, track their performance in real-time, and execute audits. But understand that AI isn’t replacing jobs. Instead, it’s actually improving them.

Yes, 67% of SEO experts, including many famous professionals, have claimed that AI has made their jobs more efficient as they reduce repetitive actions. But 93% of marketers still review their AI-generated content before publishing it.

So the plus point is that the SEO team can quickly finish such operational tasks and focus on their bigger picture. This includes creating campaign strategies and planning content.

2. Limitations of AI in Strategic Decision-Making

AI can help in analyzing your SEO data, but it doesn’t understand nuance. AI SEO tools can provide you trending keywords, but they can’t distinguish what one meets your brand or how you can alter your strategy based on the market.

Let’s take an example. Suppose you’re planning an SEO campaign for a product launch. This includes components where human touch is indeed needed. Some of them are competitor research, market timing, and the storytelling approach.

What’s more? AI even has limitations on predicting trends as per factors like culture shifts or undecided events. Hence, human SEO experts have to always be aware of what’s happening in the real world.

Didn’t know about that? 32.7% of SEO professionals and marketers even believe that AI can’t assume strategies. So, humans must be involved in high-level strategy and decision-making.

3. Dependence on Human Input and Oversight

It’s a fact that AI tools are trained based on human-written content (most of which is well-ranked and optimized). If there’s no reliable human input, then AI will generate basic or way-off suggestions for your content and SEO strategy.

Heard of platforms such as Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) or AI-based engines such as Perplexity? All of such AI tools heavily rely on quality and reliable human content. Only because of that, they can offer better results.

In fact, 66% of SEO experts and marketers believe that human oversight is needed to effectively use generative AI. Moreover, they say that using AI without manual guidance can provide content misaligned with their business goals.

Therefore, human SEO experts have a core value of publishing well-researched, original, insightful, and well-optimized websites. And this is the backbone of search on which AI depends to work effectively.

In a nutshell, AI is a powerful and emerging tool in SEO, but it’s not a replacement for any human expert.

Where Humans Still Lead?

Now, let’s explore the areas of SEO where human experts truly shine despite having so many smart AI tools.

1. Strategy & Creativity

As mentioned before, AI can deal with numbers and suggest possible ideas. This gives you free time by quickly completing daily minor SEO tasks. But it can’t strategize a powerful campaign or recognize an emotional story. 

Here are some statistics to claim this statement:

• About 11% of SEO experts and digital marketers believe that AI-generated content is superior to that written by humans. 
• But a majority of 63% of them say that human SEO-optimized work is more reliable and aligns with the audience’s needs.

As an SEO expert, you’re the one who makes decisions on prioritizing content, ensuring brand voice alignment, and responding to market alterations. So, human SEO experts lead in strategic thinking and creativity for a winning SEO strategy.

2. Complex Interpretation

SEO is also about context and not just data, so it wouldn’t understand why a certain situation may impact your business. Meaning, interpreting the results is crucial to clearly understand what’s going on or what to do next.

Who obviously does that? Human SEO experts. These professionals are always necessary to interpret analytics for highlighting real-world events, competitor moves, and understanding growing algorithms.

Therefore, human professionals are one step ahead of AI SEO tools to guide them on turning raw data into smart actions. Whether it’s for customizing messaging or improving UX without an expert leading the way, AI tools perform nothing.

3. Trust, Ethics & Judgment

You may use AI to optimize your content based on your found keywords. But if you let AI do it automatically without your guidance, then do you know what happens? It may stuff pages with too many keywords. So, is it good for SEO?

No, right? That’s what makes professionals essential to lead the way. Human SEO experts ensure the suggested tactics are ethical and sustainable. With that, it becomes easier to assess brand risks and maintain trust among audiences.

Do you know why humans’ judgment is becoming more necessary? Generative search and AI-based snippets are becoming more common. 

71% of SEO professionals and marketers believe AI has limitations in terms of creativity and contextual judgement results.

So, it’s an expert’s duty to ensure the content is credible and follows ethical standards. This makes your website transparent and accurate to its audience.

Humans + AI: A Winning Combination

Combining the speed and ease of AI with the strategic and proper interpretation of human experts is the winning deal for successful SEO. It not only balances the overall SEO tasks but also provides real and long-term outcomes.

Let’s check out how this strong partnership comes into play in the real world.

1. Hybrid SEO Workflows

The combined effort of AI and SEO professionals is ideal for modern SEO workflows. This hybrid SEO strategy enables AI tools to be involved in keyword research, technical audits, and content generation. While experts can focus on proper content optimization and other things that require creativity and strategies.

A report by Single Grain mentions that 72% of companies using AI SEO in their workflows have reduced their manual effort by 30%. This was because experts focused on planning and audience engagement that gave value to their business.

So, hybrid SEO workflows guide businesses to stay efficient and human-focused.

2. Use Cases: When to Use AI vs SEO Experts

In a nutshell, here’s the overall look at the major use cases of AI and SEO experts. 

Therefore, the integration of AI and SEO not only improves productivity but also oversees creativity, judgment, and ethical perspectives. So, the future of SEO isn’t about AI or humans, but it’s about them working together.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Check out these FAQs and learn more about AI SEO.