Balancing Automation and Authenticity in SEO: Adapt or Die
By Gabrio Linari, Last Updated on 15 September 2024
Where to start….the industry has been both evolving at a rapid pace and equally facing massive challenges. We’ve seen this year in 2024 that so many people ended up losing their jobs due to uncertainties with the economy and the looming fear of ….. AI.
But let me ask you guys: how do we balance automation and authenticity?
Advancements in technology have always happened, whether we like it or not. Look at the past years, they’ve always arrived, caused a big stir and then they eventually became the norm.
Adapt or die, that’s what they say.
Balancing Automation and Authenticity
I am a big fan of new tech and especially those that help us for making our life easier, more efficient and better for others, but equally we need to admit the fact that we need to balance automation and authenticity otherwise it’s gonna end up in a mess.
Heck, look at all the useless content that it’s out there these days, yet Google & co. are trying to patch up this mess by releasing constant updates, HCU and company and SEOs from all over the world have been rather busy trying to recover.
As many SEOs like to say, certain situations are unrecoverable, and I will throw in the usual “it depends” here, as I personally think that many are recoverable yes but many are absolutely unrecoverable, thus literally killing small businesses, all in favour for big brands.
Oh wait, yeah if you’re a big brand you’ve always had that big boost from Google, but we know that since 10 years already!
We all know a bit (or a lot) about automation and especially the folks which are into advanced technical SEO can talk a lot about this or that special tool which saved hundreds of hours (and for the most part they’re great). Programmatically creating landing pages and identifying keyword trends at scale is cool.
The Role of Authenticity in SEO
Let’s talk about the role of authenticity now. I’ve listened to quite a few podcasts recently and many high-profile SEOs all agree that authenticity is key. If you’re building a brand or you’re building something around a product, you have to come across as authentic – that transmits passion to your users.
Do something different, don’t just build a website that achieves perfect 100% scores in the PSI test, of course, that’s great, but do we really care? Or do we just use that to sell audits to our SEO clients? What is the main ROI metric for client X? Ok maybe not a 10-second mobile website… you get the point.
Small example: my westie Rocky inspired me to create new services based on his character for my site, I’ve tried to be original and a bit fun at the same time. Hopefully it wasn’t bad.
Search engines care about content (at least until Google still functions) but even more, humans care about content. If this article is terrible and nobody enjoys reading it, then I have wasted a good hour of my life – hopefully not the case.
I am deliberately writing this piece with the user in mind now, not focusing on keywords, just because I want to add value to my readers and because I am not bothered doing keyword research right now. I just enjoy writing about this topic.
And this comes with many benefits such as building trust for your audience (which brand doesn’t want that? SaaS brands I am looking at you), enhancing user engagement and retention and lastly aligning with search guidelines (ohh the guidelines).
The Risks of Over-Automation
Now on the other side of the coin, we have the risk of over-automation. Pop this into AI and ask it to write about the topic, with minimal input just as an example. What are we going to get?
That’s not gonna be Gabrio-esque in tone first of all – although we can try our best – we’re at higher risk of producing low-quality and duplicate content (enough of that already) and at high risk of overlooking user intent and experience.
Here are some examples of over-automation:
– Automated tools that rephrase existing content to create new articles often result in poorly written, non-cohesive text that fails to engage readers.
– Sending out bulk emails without personalization can annoy recipients and lead to high unsubscribe rates.
– Automating social media interactions can result in robotic, non-genuine conversations that turn followers off.
Strategies to Maintain Authenticity While Leveraging Automation
Do you guys remember what happened when the Ratatouille “rat” combined cheese and fruit? He had an explosion of flavours, a symphony in his mouth that gave him the next recipe, etc. Food digression aside, when we combine human creativity with automated tools, I think we can pretty much achieve Ratatouille-perfection.
Using automation for data analysis, while crafting unique, engaging content manually is a perfect blend of a workflow where you’d be hyper-productive. And I think we as marketers don’t do enough of that. We just want to sit there and wait until “the thing” does everything for us. And Marketing Directors think that way – as an excuse to trim down teams. Yes, we’ll automate that.
This is where innovations are happening. This is where a company will see explosive growth over another. As we’ve said numerous times, a marketer that leverages AI and new technologies will surpass the same marketer that isn’t using those technologies.
When I see esteemed SEO colleagues that are testing new technologies for fun or building tools, they are giving a real-life opportunity of expanding possibilities in doing things differently. That is great!
For this reason, major companies should have more and more an “innovation department” and a figure of Head of Innovation these days should be on the rise, and such a person should be a visionary, a person so curious that challenges the status quo and is willing to take risks. Good example is what Beatrice Gamba is doing for Wordlift’s innovation department.
From Big Brands
Spotify uses machine learning to curate personalized playlists for users while maintaining a human touch with expertly crafted editorial playlists.
Nike leverages automation in its supply chain and inventory management but maintains authenticity through personalized marketing campaigns and community engagement.
Grammarly uses AI to provide writing suggestions, but its content marketing and customer support maintain a personal and authentic connection with users.
Old School vs. New School
The “old school”: Use automated tools to send out surveys and collect feedback through forms. Tools like SurveyMonkey or Typeform can automate the distribution and collection of responses, saving time while still gathering valuable insights about your audience’s needs and preferences.
That’s still cool and will allow you to automate audience engagement to gather insights about your audience’s needs and preferences, enabling you to tailor your content more effectively.
The “new school”: Use automated tools and AI co-pilots for data analysis, scheduling, and routine tasks to save time and improve efficiency. However, ensure that content creation and customer interactions are managed by real humans to maintain a personal touch.
This method is like achieving Ratatouille-style perfection—blending the best ingredients of automation and human touch to create a harmonious and efficient workflow. You get the efficiency of automation while keeping the authenticity that builds trust and engagement with your audience.
The “evergreen”: Ask for help! A one-off audit by a forward thinking consultant that knows latest tech can provide insights and recommendations to improve authenticity and automation. There are a few great consultants out there who would be more than willing to do this.
Leveraging the expertise of a consultant can offer you a fresh perspective and actionable strategies that seamlessly integrate automation while preserving your brand’s authentic voice. It’s like having a sous-chef who knows all the latest culinary tech, ensuring your dish (or strategy) is both innovative and true to your unique flavour. 🍲
Conclusion
In this article, I took you through a brief journey on authenticity vs. automation, finding the right balance is really key. The recent trend that I am seeing in 2023 and more apparent in 2024 has been of reducing teams to the bone for having them run “many” hats and “many” tools, thus effectively achieving cost-cutting. Sounds great right? Not so great for those folks that lost their roles but let’s pause for a second. It’s a business decision.
Remember the movie “You’ve Got Mail” where Tom Hanks went: “It’s not personal, it’s just business”. There. You, as a business owner, “should” know if this is the right move for your company, only you know if you can effectively redirect resources (i.e. time) of your team into doing more human-y things while we use AI and other tools are doing the rest. Or if you just want to be at the beach all day while the automation does your job, that’s also cool. Not so human though.
Brands are going to the extreme and wanting to ‘automate everything.’ As AI Consultant Cien Solon pointed out in one of our many brainstorms, you just cannot automate everything! Business owners often become unhappy when they realize this, and then they tend to cave in.
Are you going to fire your entire marketing team and you’re thinking to hire just one person running automation tools all day?
We’re at a stage where great things are happening, but we also need to pause for a minute (more like a second these days) and start making the right decisions.
If you’ve faced a difficult choice of having to cut budgets at your company, what have you done? Did you go the “let’s automate everything” route or have you decided differently?
Feel free to get in touch to discuss how your brand can navigate these exciting times we live in while remaining….authentic
About The Author
I have over 15 years of professional experience spanning SEO, strategic digital transformations, and business growth initiatives. My expertise lies in aligning SEO efforts with business goals to drive meaningful results. I regularly post on LinkedIn about Growth Marketing, remote work, and inspirational topics—check out my latest articles on Gabrio’s Thoughts, which is updated twice a week. You can discover more about me here.