SEO Frontrunner Lily Ray: "You Choose Your Own Adventure in SEO"

"It's an interesting time."

Lily Ray is the Senior Director, SEO and Head of Organic Research at Amsive Digital and recently she sat down with founder of SEO.ai, Torbjørn Flensted, to discuss how SEO is evolving in the light of generative AI, among other toppics.

She's one of our so-called Global SEO Frontrunners of 2023 and that was our excuse to setup the interview - Really, we just wanted to pick her brain about everything SEO-related.

"Of course, there are super cool ways to use AI, and my team uses them a lot; we are very excited about them," she says.

Global SEO Frontrunners 2023 represents a selected group of SEOs we believe are the most innovative and influential of 2023. These are the frontrunners shaping the future of search engine optimization and pushing the boundaries of what's possible. They make our community better.

However, she also sees how the technology's ability to produce large amounts of text quickly can lead to misuse. If you just want to publish a lot of content without worrying too much about the quality, AI makes it a lot easier to do these tactics at scale.

Check out the entire interview with Lily Ray in the video below or read on to get the most important parts condensed to a single bouillon cube of Lily Ray-goodness.

Doing SEO the "right way" in the era of generative AI

When you want to do SEO the "right way" right now is a tricky time, according to Lily Ray.

"A lot of us want to use these AI tools responsibly and provide value for our companies and the clients that we work for, but a lot of people just wanna make as much money as quickly as possible."

There are quite a few examples of people getting rich quick from publishing spammy content at this point in time, she explains.

"Right now, it’s definitely obvious that the search engines haven’t caught up with, like, ChatGPT content all the time."

This means that even though Google doesn't want spam in the SERPs, you can often find it in the top results.

Lily Ray and other experienced SEOs, who have been in the industry for a good long while, know that spam won't work forever. They know that in the long run shortcuts like this will get fixed, and any rankings based on spammy content will eventually be lost.

Even so, many SEOs are scrambling to publish hundreds or even thousands of pages a week.

"You choose your own adventure in SEO, but it depends on your risk tolerance," she says.

The recommendation from Lily Ray about AI-generated content is to utilize it ethically and do it legally.

"And above all, if you think it’s adding value for your customers, you think it’s truly good content - go for it! But I always recommend reviewing it, editing it, modifying it," she says.

Because in some cases it gets things slightly wrong and you have to be really careful about that.

Dominating Keyword Tools are lagging when it comes to showing trends

During the years of COVID-19 with lockdown after lockdown Lily Ray spent more time on SEO than normally, probably more than ever in her life.

"I was just like: Nothing else to do, I’m gonna do SEO all the time! And I did all this research and I learned so much," she says.

Studying how Google search work, or rather what Google says about how the algorithm should work, she quickly noticed something interesting about the major SEO tools:

They were lagging.

"I think it took them about three months for a lot of the big tools to start showing any volume for covid, for coronavirus."

When all the world is buzzing, focused only on one topic, you'd expect to see it represented at the top of the list of hot keywords in a variety of constellations.

But no. And Lily Ray realized then that if she and her team wanted to produce content about what was happening at any given moment, they would have to use other tools to gauge the trends.

Tools like Buzzumo, Exploding Topics, and Google Trends.

Since COVID, she has seen the same pattern with other trends, like ChatGPT and AI in general; The major keyword tools take time to show any volume even though the searches, queries, and interest is undeniably there.

"A lot of keywords have a built-in news intent even if you think they don't. So even a celebrities’ name or something you think is trendy - You might see half the search result filled with top stories, recent news and recent articles, and there’ll be something about what they did two weeks ago," Lily Ray explains.

One thing you won't find in the top results anymore is a celebrity's biography page. The newest information about a celebrity will jump to the top of SERPs and force the general information down.

"If the tools don’t tell you about that thing that happened two weeks ago, and you are trying to consistently rank for that celebrity, it’s gonna be hard because the search results are changing change based on what’s happening in the real world."

New best practices: The authors' "voice" matters more than ever

In a world where general information is available in quantities online, the personal approach, the first-person experience expressed with a distinct voice, wins out.

Google even has technology to link different content pieces by the same authour across websites and platforms - even across different types of media, according to Lily Ray.

"They have patents to connect an authors writing style with their voice. I don’t know if they are using it, but if you see how much they are pushing YouTube and video, it’s feasible they might be doing that."

Imagine every piece of content you create, no matter where it is published, is linked to you, the author. Imagine the authority you can build not having to worry about where it's published or in what format. The written articles and guides, that time you featured in a vodcast, and even the recording of your keynote at a conference: It all leads back to you.

"Google’s not shy about saying that a good reputation is something that we wanna see for a lot of different topics and categories. And the more you are experts and the more people at your company are investing in their own personal brands it builds up your brands' reputation," she says.

"So, it’s beyond SEO - it’s really brand building and individual brand building."

In her experience, being able to write a great content piece for a tax client is good, but it's better, if that author has attended tax conferences, getting awards and recognition in that field.

And It’s mutually beneficial for the company and the SEO.

"It’s not always; write 20 articles a month about taxes - It’s not about that. It’s; write one good article about taxes with all the best experts on your staff. That’s gonna do a lot better," Lily Ray says.