Warning: First and foremost, consider Google’s warning about the limitations of AI and its potential impact on search rankings.
Can SEO be done by AI?
AI is transforming how businesses approach SEO by automating and improving many technical and content-related tasks. It can conduct keyword research, analyse competitors, identify content gaps, and generate on-page content like meta tags or blog outlines. AI-powered tools also help with technical SEO audits, ensuring websites meet performance and indexing standards. These tools work faster than humans and process massive amounts of data with ease.
In content creation, AI can produce readable drafts, optimize them for search engines, and even simulate user intent to improve relevance. AI can support voice search optimization, predict trending keywords, and personalize content at scale. This makes it a valuable tool for improving SEO speed, scale, and consistency, especially for large websites or businesses managing multiple campaigns.
Despite these advantages, AI alone cannot manage a complete SEO strategy. It lacks understanding of brand identity, cultural nuance, emotional tone, and business context. Human creativity and strategic thinking are essential for building a coherent SEO plan, developing meaningful content, and ensuring long-term ethical practices that align with search engine guidelines.
Link-building, outreach, and trust-based partnerships also remain in the human domain. While AI can identify backlink opportunities, building relationships with influencers or site owners requires empathy and negotiation skills AI does not possess. Additionally, interpreting user behaviour or making strategic pivots based on market shifts is still best handled by experienced professionals.
AI is a powerful tool in the SEO toolkit, but it is not a standalone solution. The most successful SEO strategies use AI for automation and insight, while relying on humans for judgment, creativity, and decision-making. SEO today is not about choosing between AI or humans, it’s about using both in a collaborative, complementary way.
Can AI do SEO? Yes. But you must stay in charge.
When students ask me, “Can AI do SEO?” my answer is simple.
AI can help you do SEO faster.
But AI cannot decide what matters, prove what is true, or earn trust for your brand. That part is still human work.
Here are 10 things every digital marketing student should know, from the basics to modern SEO in an AI-search world.
1) SEO means helping search engines understand what you have
SEO is not a trick. It is the discipline of making your content easy for search engines to find, understand, and recommend.
Also, SEO is not only blog posts. Students should think in “digital assets,” such as:
- service pages
- product pages
- location pages
- PDFs like menus, brochures, guides
- videos and transcripts
- images and portfolios
If the asset matters to your business, it should be visible and understandable to search engines.
2) Stop thinking “keywords.” Start thinking “situations”
A keyword is not a person. It is a clue about what the person needs.
People search differently depending on what is going on in their life.
Example:
- “Emergency dentist Montréal” means stress and urgency
- “Dentist Montréal prices” means comparison and shopping
- “How long does a root canal take” means learning and reassurance
Good SEO matches content to the situation.
3) In Québec, timing matters because demand is seasonal
Québec has strong seasonality. That is not a detail. That is strategy.
People search differently in winter than in summer. They search differently before holidays, during back-to-school, and during major local events.
So good SEO includes:
- seasonal pages that you update each year
- content refreshes timed to demand
- internal links that guide people to the right offer for the moment
4) Local SEO is its own game and it is mostly mobile
Local SEO is what happens when people search “service + city” or “near me.”
This is where maps show up. It is where calls happen. It is where directions happen.
Local SEO is not only your website. It is also:
- your Google Business Profile information
- your reviews and how you respond
- consistency of your business name, address, and phone number across the web
If these pieces conflict, you create doubt and doubt hurts visibility.
5) Bilingual SEO is not translation. It is localization
If you are targeting English and Québec French, do not treat it as copy and paste plus translation.
Québec French should sound like it belongs here:
- vocabulary that people actually use locally
- examples that match the region
- a tone that fits the audience
AI can give you a first draft. A human needs to make it sound natural and trustworthy.
6) Technical SEO is the plumbing of your website
Technical SEO is what makes your content eligible to rank.
Here is what the common items mean in plain language:
- sitemap.xml is a table of contents for search engines
- robots.txt is a set of rules that tell crawlers what they can access
- a 404 is what users see when a page is missing
- a redirect sends traffic from an old link to the right new link
- site speed matters because slow sites lose people quickly
- structured data is labeling that helps search engines recognize what the page is, such as FAQ, product, event, or organization
If your plumbing is broken, content struggles no matter how good it is.
7) AI is excellent at drafting but it is not good at being responsible
AI is great for speed:
- brainstorming topics
- building outlines
- grouping keywords by intent
- drafting sections
- rewriting for clarity and structure
- generating FAQ questions and short summaries
AI is risky when you treat it like an authority. It can:
- invent facts
- sound confident while being wrong
- produce generic content that looks fine but adds no unique value
- miss Québec nuance
- misunderstand legal, medical, or financial boundaries
So the rule is simple. AI drafts. Humans decide. Humans verify.
8) Google does not ban AI. Google targets low-value content
This is one of the biggest misunderstandings.
Google’s message is not “never use AI.”
Google’s message is “do not publish content that exists mainly to manipulate rankings.”
So if AI helps you create something helpful and accurate, that is fine.
If AI helps you mass-produce pages that waste people’s time, that is a problem.
9) Modern SEO includes AI visibility because AI answers are becoming the front page
More and more, people see an AI summary first. That means fewer clicks and higher competition for trust.
So your goal is not only to rank. Your goal is to be the page that an AI system feels safe citing.
How do you do that?
- structure your content with clear headings
- answer the question early
- add proof, examples, and credibility signals
- keep it updated
This is not gaming the system. This is clarity and quality.
10) The winning workflow is Human plus AI, not AI alone
This is the workflow I actually want you to use:
- Human sets the goal and audience
- Human defines the situation and intent
- AI generates options for topics, clusters, and outline
- AI drafts sections with human additions, modifications and supervision
- Human adds local context, examples, and brand voice
- Human verifies facts and removes weak claims
- Publish, measure, improve
- Repeat because SEO is iterative
That is professional SEO today. Faster execution and higher standards.
Photo by Aideal Hwa