Effects of AI on B2B SEO Competition: Making Things Better?

The world is in quite a frenzy about artificial intelligence (AI). However, is it worth investing in a business-to-business (B2B) company? A B2B SEO agency that wants to help you compete aggressively uses it—to a certain extent.

This blog post discusses the pros and cons of AI in B2B optimization.

• How it impacts the organization’s bottom line, especially in increasing revenues and productivity.
• Its different use cases.
• The limitations, challenges, and ethical questions about the technology.
• Primary reasons no business should depend solely on it for marketing.

Is this innovation making B2B SEO better? Read the article to get the answer. Let’s go!

Want to learn more about the Digital Authority Partners approach to SEO? Watch this video!

AI Addresses Many B2B Optimization Challenges

Optimizing websites for organic search is neither simple nor easy. For this reason, most businesses either build an in-house team or hire a digital marketing agency. Others work with a fractional chief marketing officer (CMO) or a brand strategy consultant, depending on where they need the most help. 

Today, B2B companies and online advertising firms face specific challenges that AI can address. These include the following:

   1. Big-Data Analysis 

Most B2B companies are candidates for enterprise SEO. It means they likely sit on a vast amount of data. When harnessed, it can help them:

• Understand their target market at a granular level.
• Spot brewing marketing trends and promptly adapt their strategies.
• Identify persistent or potential issues that can affect optimization and the user experience (UX).
• Forecast consumer and industry behavior.
• Uncover missed opportunities for differentiation and growth.

The problem is that some businesses are unaware that they have significant, helpful information. If they do, they are sometimes the least knowledgeable about gathering, processing, interpreting, and converting them into digestible reports. 

AI handles almost all technical aspects of big-data analysis, from curation to processing. It also allows users to customize and sort the information into various categories, modeling techniques, or filters. Most of all, the figures help complete a more vivid picture of your optimization performance and financial health. 

   2. Better User and Customer Experience 

User experience (UX) and customer experience (CX) do not share the same meaning. While UX involves a person’s interaction with a product or service, CX covers the entire buying journey, including post-sales and engagement. 

Regardless, as ranking factors, they impact SEO. They usually become repeat customers and brand advocates when they feel satisfied and happy with the experience. 

From a search engine’s standpoint, you are credible, authoritative, expert, and trustworthy—a business worth an outstanding ranking for your chosen keywords.

UX and CX also benefit from AI applications, particularly in countries where the digital economy is rapidly growing. For example: 

• Chatbots provide instant responses to queries, guide customers through purchasing, and resolve common issues.
• Natural-language processing technologies such as AI enable B2B firms to add more digital touchpoints, such as voice search.
• Machine learning continuously studies customer interactions and feedback and improves systems over time. 
• A website can offer more useful functionalities, such as dynamic pricing, by analyzing customer behavior.
• A sentiment-analysis platform measures customer feedback and social media data to understand a user’s perception of the brand.

   3. Streamlined Optimization

As a B2B, you spend more than a B2C because you have more resources, such as a budget, and generate bigger revenues. Your sales cycle is also longer, so you spend more time on demand and lead generation.

Although the marketing cost varies according to industry, most allocate at least 2% of their sales to revenue. If you earn $1.2 million this month, at least $24,000 will go toward online and offline advertising. It might not be much, but it also does not hurt to be more efficient and spend less.

This is where AI is important for doing the following:

• Analyze transactional data and identify patterns indicating fraudulent activity.
• Forecast equipment maintenance, helping companies manage cash flow, assets, and operation disruptions.
• Design and sustain an optimized supply chain to improve inventory management, logistics, and product fulfillment.
• Streamline routine SEO tasks, including keyword research and content creation, distribution, and promotion.
• Improves employee productivity and stress, decreasing the attrition rate.
• Assists B2B companies in prioritizing and allocating resources.

All of these benefits boost returns, scale the business, and allow you to increase the marketing budget. You become more capable of beating your competitors and staying relevant to an ever-changing audience. 

AI Is Not the Savior B2B Companies Are Looking For

Despite these immense benefits, AI is imperfect. Depending solely on it to grow your B2B is both costly and dangerous in the long term. One of the persistent issues with AI is ethics, especially bias, whether in content, data, or images.

A Bloomberg experiment revealed that lighter skin tones dominated Stable Diffusion-generated images about high-paying jobs. On the other hand, darker complexions often appeared for prompts for “social worker” or “fast-food worker.” Other studies also cited how supposed content detectors flagged articles by non-native English speakers as AI-generated.

AI is also prone to copyright and trademark accusations and lawsuits because it learns from available data—in other words, what others have already created.  

From an online marketing perspective, this technology stunts your creativity and originality. A blog post, for example, might sound disjointed, with paragraphs copied from various sources.

When you stop being creative and imaginative, you also stop being innovative. Such a virtue could have helped you stand out from your competitors and make your brand more memorable. 

Most of all, AI is as cold as any other technology. Unless you can customize its content, it will not resonate with your audience. Unless you use the data wisely, your efforts will mean very little. 

Summing Up

With AI, there is no looking back. It will only continue to transform the marketing landscape by leaps and bounds. As a B2B, you benefit from embracing rather than ignoring it. However, accepting it comes with legal, ethical, and brand-reputation risks that you must learn to manage and address promptly.

Digital Authority Partners (DAP), a B2B SEO agency, combines the precision and efficiency of this innovation with the intuition and creativity of human expertise. This way, you build a sustainable, user-oriented business for years. 

Contact us to learn more about how we do it.