Making SEO and AI Play Nice

When I talk to clients about SEO these days, the conversation almost always veers into AI. Not because it’s trendy—but because it's now deeply embedded in how search engines work and how we publish content. But here’s the thing: despite what the LinkedIn gurus tell you, SEO hasn’t been replaced by AI. It’s been reshaped by it.

I’ve seen too many businesses either blindly chase AI-generated content or avoid it entirely. Both camps miss the point. SEO and AI aren’t competing forces. Used correctly, they support each other. And frankly, if you’re not already thinking about how to align them, you're likely falling behind.

AI is Already in the SEO Stack

Google’s been using machine learning in ranking algorithms for years—RankBrain, BERT, MUM—they're not buzzwords, they’re core to how results are delivered. Semantic search is no longer optional. If your content doesn’t reflect real language and intent, you're toast.

That means stop obsessing over exact-match keywords. AI doesn’t care if you say “best marketing agency in Melbourne” five times. What matters is whether your content answers the query well, and whether users stick around long enough to prove it.

Where AI Helps—and Where It Can Hurt

I use AI every week in our content workflow at Aquafruit. Not to write entire articles, but to speed up things like outline generation, clustering keywords, rewriting metadata, and even adjusting tone for specific audiences. It’s not about replacement—it’s about leverage.

Where it goes off the rails is when people let the machine dictate everything. AI-generated copy might pass a quick skim, but it rarely hits the mark for nuance, brand, or credibility. Google’s Helpful Content Update was a not-so-subtle warning: if you're pushing thin, generic content—even at scale—it won't rank.

So the trick is: use AI to speed up the grunt work, then apply human judgment to elevate it.

Technical SEO and Content Strategy Still Matter

I don’t care how clever your AI prompts are—if your site loads like it’s running on dial-up, or if your pages have broken schema and missing alt tags, you’re handicapping yourself.

We still run full technical audits for every project we touch. It’s tedious, yes. But it's also how you get clean crawls, predictable indexing, and consistent rankings.

Tools like Ahrefs, SurferSEO, and Search Console are non-negotiable. They help quantify what’s actually working—not just what feels like it should.

And for the record, if your idea of optimisation is “sprinkle a few keywords and hope”—you’ve already lost.

How We Use AI to Improve Results

Here’s what we actually do at Aquafruit:

• We use AI tools to cluster topics based on search intent and opportunity, then map those into a content calendar that hits multiple stages of the customer journey.

• We refresh underperforming posts with new semantic phrasing and internal linking suggestions.

• We test AI-assisted meta descriptions against control sets to optimise for click-through rate.

• We review heatmaps via Microsoft Clarity to see if content actually lands—and if not, we adjust accordingly.

This isn’t automation. It’s augmentation. AI makes our content team faster. But it’s the strategy, the framework, and the editorial review that make it rank.

Want to Do This Properly?

If you're still trying to separate AI and SEO into two conversations, you're solving the wrong problem. It’s all part of one system now—and the winners are the ones who get them talking.

If you're not sure where to start, or you want help making your content strategy AI-ready without tanking your rankings, feel free to get in touch with us at Aquafruit.

We’re not about shortcuts—we’re about building something that actually works.