Can SEO Alone Build an Audience in the Age of AI? Let's Find Out.

Alright folks, let’s go for another wild ride through my digital misadventures! This blog is like that gym membership I keep paying for—I show up sporadically, make grand plans, then disappear for months. (Hey, at least I keep trying. That counts, right?)

Table of Contents

My Hypothesis: Can SEO Alone Build an Audience in the Age of AI?

Why This Question Matters to Small Bloggers (That’s Me and Maybe You?)

I’m conducting this experiment with zero social networking promotion---like a hermit in the woods of the internet. If someone shares this content, fantastic! But I’m not counting on my cousin’s Facebook group “Things My Weird Relative Writes” to drive traffic to the blog and bump the search results. Looking at the Reddit thread r/Blogging the sentiment is to give up on blogging and affliate sites. I guess we’ll find out.

Do blog posts even work anymore without the algorithmic steroid injection of platforms like Medium or Substack? Those sites are basically the cool kids’ table in the cafeteria, complete with newsletters and login barriers. Do they even count as “organic search results” in search engines? It’s like claiming you “bumped into” someone after following them to the grocery store. They are helping the writers out so all they need to do is write and the Google machine will find them so maybe I got this all wrong.

What Specifically I’m Hoping to Learn

Do I Need to Use AI Tools to Help Speed This Up?

Every agency I work with now claims they use “AI writing tools with heavy human editing” for content generation. What does that even mean? “Our generative AI writes it, then we check for accidental threats to humanity”? When I ask directly, they give me the digital equivalent of a wink and finger guns but no valuable insights. I read a lot and to me it looks like a lot of AI generated content is out there and at what point will the internet be so big we won’t read anymore? Or when will we skip the Google search and go right to AI search? This has got to be the biggest threat to search engines since… I don’t know, since the government said they were a monopoly?

Do I Need Backlinks for Better Search Engine Rankings?

In theory, brilliant relevant content naturally attracts backlinks like my pizza leftovers attract midnight snackers. But is that actually true in traditional SEO? I’ve seen garbage content swim in backlinks while masterpieces sit alone in the corner like me at my high school prom, despite all their SEO optimization.

Do I Need Interlinking for On-Page Optimization?

This one’s easy---yes. I’ll connect my posts like a conspiracy theorist with red string. “The post about sourdough CLEARLY connects to my thoughts on lawn care using relevant keywords! Can’t you see the pattern?!” (I’ll link a lawn care blog post here in the future. Just you wait!)

Do I Need to Find Ways to Get Indexed by AI-Powered Search Engines?

Search engine algorithms and AI algorithms are just regular bots with fancier hats. They need to find you, like that one relative who needs directions to every family gathering despite GPS technology existing. More on search engine results pages and AI-powered SEO tools soon. (Look at me planning future blog posts! You should be proud.)

How Does One End Up in Google’s Search, and Will People Click Through?

My prediction: people will read the AI search results from Google search and bounce faster than a toddler on a sugar high. But let’s gather some user behavior data on this digital drive-by phenomenon to track my website’s visibility in both the traditional search engines and AI powered search engines.

How does a small blog optimize content and get found, and does it even want to be?

The existential question of our digital marketing age with artificial intelligence. I enjoy shouting my thoughts into the void and documenting my weird projects. But maybe I need the validation of strangers to keep going---something to prove besides my ability to maintain a sourdough starter longer than my houseplants. Or maybe I should just get back on TikTok. Wait isn’t it banned?

Metrics We’ll Be Tracking (Or: Moving the Goalposts as Needed)

Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of this SEO performance experiment with latest the AI SEO tools. What exactly constitutes success when you’re starting with an audience that could fit in a phone booth? (For the youngsters reading, a phone booth was where Superman changed outfits before we all carried tiny computers that track our bathroom visits.)

The Content Creation Process

I’ll be attempting to stick to a consistent posting schedule for my SEO-optimized content, which is about as likely as me remembering to floss daily---technically possible but historically improbable. Will I manage weekly blog posts? Bi-weekly? Or will this devolve into frantic quarterly updates where I pretend I meant to be gone that long? Place your bets now on my SEO efforts!

Keyword Research

I’ll be hunting target keywords like my wife at a thrift store sale---with enthusiasm but questionable strategy. We’re talking long-tail keywords that actually match what regular humans type for search intent and user intent, not just what SEO professionals think humans should type. Think less “optimized content solutions” and more “why does my sourdough look like a crime scene?” I’ll need to identify high-value keywords using keyword data from my SEO tools. (Another blog post I can interlink when I get around to writing it.)

Success Metrics (Or: Moving the Goalposts as Needed)

• What defines success for my SEO tasks here? Is it:

• Organic traffic that doesn’t include my mom and that one guy from Croatia who found me by accident?

• Ranking on page 1 of Google search results for something other than my own name?

• Comments from strangers that aren’t trying to sell me cryptocurrency? Or is that what all these big AI tools should be used for? Minning all the crypto! Well, I’ll need to code this into the blog first (facepalm).

• The sweet, sweet dopamine hit of seeing upward-trending SEO performance analytics from my SEO strategies?

Let’s be honest---I’ll take any of the above as a win. I’m setting the bar at “evidence humans I’m not related to have found this blog through traditional search engines,” which feels both pathetically low and wildly ambitious for my search optimization experiment.

The Brutal Truth Commitment

I promise to document this journey with the unfiltered honesty of a toddler pointing out your overweight in public. If this experiment with effective SEO strategies crashes and burns, you’ll get the full post-mortem (That is if you can find the post haha). If my attempts to create optimized content succeed, and my search rankings sky rocket I’ll try not to be insufferable about it (no promises though).

The Publishing Schedule

This will be a monthly series where I report back on all the search ranking and AI SEO, which means twelve chances for me to question my life choices! That’s right---I’m committing to a whole year of digital self-flogging for your entertainment. Each month, I’ll share the triumphs (finding a keyword with actual search volume using SEO tools and maybe some AI-powered SEO tools) and the tragedies such as realizing that those keywords I’d like to write about have the competition level of “Olympic gold medals” in search queries).

Mark your calendars! Or don’t---I’ll remind you each time with increasing desperation as the months wear on and I question why I thought not leveraging AI for this blog was a good idea in the first place. Maybe someday my content optimization will pay off and I’ll understand all these search algorithms better than I understand why people watch unboxing videos.(My wife and daughter will not stop watching these. I don’t get it. facepalm.)

Current Blog Analytics

Coming soon. I need to add analysis to the blog. However, it’s zero traffic right now haha. Next month we will see what has happened from zero.

Wish me luck!