The Algorithm Behind Blogs: The Dirt on Blogging, SEO, and AI

Blogs have always increased click-through rate by boosting organic search ranking, but AI is rocking the boat.

In the past twenty years, marketing has witnessed a sudden and drastic evolutionary leap. Traditional marketing strategies like print, radio, and television are regarded by most agencies as an expensive relic useful only to the most major brands. For the most part, professional marketers have traded celebrity brand deals for influencer shout-outs, recurrent newspaper ads for steady social posts, and taglines for hashtags. And, as the recent eruption of AI continues to reshape the digital world one teeth-grinding prompt at a time, the evolution of marketing shows no sign of slowing down. Still, based on the current landscape, we can be sure of one thing: we’re living in the age of the Algorithm.  

Let’s face it up front. Marketers are slaves to the Algorithm (spoken in hushed tones). It’s what makes the world go round. Tiktok, Instagram, Google—if you study any system long enough, they all begin to morph into one unsteady, all-knowing, impatient Algorithm. Marketers and managers have sacrificed blood, sweat, tears, and time into understanding the Algorithm. We’ve dissected it into miniscule segments of code. We’ve spent hours meditating over not just what customers will respond to, but what the Algorithm will reward. 

It’s happened steadily—calling to mind some ancient glyphs about boiling frogs—but the change from appealing to the buyers to appealing to the search bots has fundamentally transformed the way that businesses connect with consumers. 

As someone who’s committed a chunk of her professional career to writing that attracts bots (and through them, human connection), I’m just like 90% of the business world: obsessed with the Algorithm. So, I decided to take a broader look at how search algorithms work, how to score better audience engagement, and how, after 2 years, open-source generative AI is affecting the cogency of blogging and similar marketing go-tos. 

The Algorithm Wants what the Algorithm Wants

Notoriously, most major sites keep their algorithm close to their chest. However, there are a few secrets to improving your blog’s ranking that have remained consistent over time—even as engines like Google continue to tweak their algorithm. 

Since this is just a brief guide, I’m only going to touch on the barest essentials: 

• Keywords 

• Consistency 

• User-Friendliness

  
  

Keywords 

As bots scour the internet to index information, keywords are their bread and butter. At least, they used to be. 

Crawler bots have a big job when they start digesting a page: understand it. Understandably, isolating keywords was one of the simplest and most effective ways that bots could identify the main topic of a page. When receiving a search that includes the keywords, the bot could rifle through the relevant pages and present results that matched with the most important terms. In the rose-tinted good old days, that meant that SEO experts prioritized jamming as many keywords as possible into their online blogs. 

However, things have changed. Today, keywords are just one of the many factors that algorithms analyze for ranking, and AI advancements mean that search bots are more competent at identifying topics, keywords or no. That doesn’t mean keywords don’t matter—it just means that they’ve been dethroned as the end-all be-all of search ranking. 

Consistency 

Consistency remains an important key to boosting your site’s ranking. Regular posting with relevant content is one of the big SEO green flags. It helps define your site as a trustworthy authority. According to Google, one of the factors that its algorithm is trained to consider is a page’s freshness. Certainly, new articles aren’t always ranked best, and Google seems to know that freshness doesn’t always matter most. Still, regularly posting quality content is undoubtedly smart if you’re trying to get in good with the Algorithm—even if it’s just to create more indexable and relevant pages.

User-Friendliness

When it comes down to it, a page that is user-friendly is more likely to be ranked higher than one that isn’t. Perhaps Google puts it best in its guide to Google ranking: search engines are supposed to “present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily crafted to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings.” This is supported by concepts like the dreaded bounce rate, which measures overall engagement by monitoring how many visitors leave a site after visiting a single page. Sure, there’s no official consensus on whether or not bounce rate actually affects page ranking, but there’s certainly enough of a correlation between bounce rate and ranking to say that positively received content is more likely to appear at the top of the page.

So, in theory, consistent, quality blogs should be able to score you a higher ranking, and more clicks. In our AI-augmented reality, though—well, things are getting a little thorny.

AI integration may pose a threat to organic search results.

The AI of it All 

AI isn’t just changing the algorithm; it’s shaping user experience. As of May in the US, Google places AI-generated summaries at the top of the search results—give or take a couple of advertised rankings. Scrolling down further, users are more likely to click on Google’s suggested related searches than a website link. By the time users see a full-fledged organic search result, they could be halfway down the first page. So, yes, while AI-generated results may not be perfect, they’re certainly holding their fair share of user attention. 

The few lucky links that get sourced in the AI-generated responses may still get some click-through, but these sites may simply be at the top of a very short totem pole. Since AI-generated results provide detailed answers without the need for further reading, they have the potential to eliminate click-through rate for every page. 

Of course, this isn’t definitive. After all, AI allows users to ask more complicated questions. Some argue that AI integration will lead to more complex searches, and, as users dig deeper, more clicks. However, many experts are catching a whiff of toxic gas somewhere in the coal mines. As reported by the AP in mid May, as much as 25% of site traffic could be damaged by the overwhelming online presence of AI and the gradual burial of organic search results. 

And that’s not even to talk about the rampant oversaturation that’s sure to occur; when AI allows you to create a 600-word blog in a few seconds, everyone and their cousin can make a post about frozen food, laundry detergent, or anything else that you’re trying to sell (no matter how long the long tails are). As the system is flooded with repetitive AI-generated content, it becomes even more difficult to get your blog noticed. 

Blogging remains as a valuable way to connect with customers through quality content.

The Bottom Line 

Is it time to abandon blogging for good? No, we’re not there yet—and we may never be. While the relationship between blogging and SEO is beginning to shift, blogs are far from obsolete. In spite of how it feels, there are certainly queries that AI cannot answer. Most importantly, AI, at least for now, lacks the personality, originality, and flow of human-created content. One experiment involving 744 articles published across 68 websites found that human generated content produced staggering results, with human-generated content receiving almost 6X the traffic after 5 months of publication. People prefer the human stuff. But, then again, that experiment was published in April, a full 4 months ago—a full space age in the AI timeline. 

Still, blogs will continue to fulfill other purposes. While they may no longer dominate the elusive Algorithm, they still allow you to connect with customers in unique ways. As always, blogs are foundational content that you can use everywhere. If you need newsletter content that will get your customers to return to your website, they’re a reliable go-to. Plus, when it comes to establishing a rapport with your customers or maintaining your credibility, blogs should remain at the top of your to-do list. In the age of AI, quality, human-first content may actually be the key to customer retention, even if it has less to do with customer acquisition. 

In parting, I offer the custom farewell of our people: may the Algorithm be with you. 

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