Intelligent automation is here to stay, and it’s reaching a point of sophistication and accessibility that makes it attractive for small businesses as much as larger corporations.

In this article, we’ll be detailing just why this is such an important consideration in 2019. According to a recent survey within the digital marketing industry, 61% of marketers have identified greater automation as their highest priority for the year ahead.

So, why bother with it?

Informed, data-driven decisions

In an age of data, automation is vital for ensuring your business decisions are built on more than sand. With digital marketing becoming increasingly diverse, it’s harder than ever for marketers and business owners to manage the endless range of tasks relating to SEO, advertising and general online marketing.

If you’re suffering from sporadic and unreliable results, or are spending far too much time on working around problems relating to your tech, you’ll benefit from automation.

SEO automation: Getting it right

We’re already at a point in 2019 where many SEO tasks are automated. The ever-present challenge of staying ahead can now be overcome by intelligently automating further tasks – and prioritising them using similar algorithms and systems.

AI and machine learning now mean we can analyse various data sets with a speed that is unachievable individually. Even better, we can make use of features such as predictive analytics, evidence-based learning and pattern recognition to squeeze more practical suggestions and actions out of our abundance of data.

Common tasks like ranking monitoring, analysis of competitors and audits of websites are better done by automation. The key is choosing which automation is most relevant and beneficial for your business. Not every tool will be suitable for your unique operation and requirements.

Improving the customer experience

SEO is tied closely with the customer experience, and it’s increasingly important to get this subject right in our digital age. Increasingly, automation is able to support businesses by offering real-time analytics, helping to ideally shape the full customer journey from the first search to final sale.

Features such as virtual assistants, automated analysis and automated research reports and information aggregation can provide massive time savings to businesses without sacrificing much in the way of final, actionable results.

Better search performance

In 2019, searcher intent is a much bigger deal than it ever was before. As Google continues to invest in making their AI more sophisticated, similar searches can provide massively different results depending on certain additional metrics, such as location and search history.

As this sophistication grows, we’re seeing SEO move away from being related just to your website; it’s now about the whole experience of a search from start to finish. This is made possible by Google’s increasing ability to determine intent.

Key tips to take away

Voice search: Building a more direct, conversational tone into your website copy will help. Consider long-tail keywords and be ready to adjust your existing copy into more question and answer formats. You’ll also want to look at schema markups if you aren’t already – there’s gold there.

Descriptive text: Don’t get it mistaken: you’ll still want plenty of imagery and video. What can help in your SEO efforts, however, is using AI to automate the writing of descriptive text for your website. It’ll help with SEO and accessibility in one fell swoop.

Fit automation to your skillset: You’ll naturally be more competent and capable in certain areas of digital marketing, be it as a marketer or business owner. Instead of haphazardly applying automation to different areas of your business, consider using it to make up for your own shortcomings in certain areas – any place that takes up too much time is a good starting point!

Thanks for stopping by!

Another day, another helpful blog from the Digiconomy team. Drop us a line directly if you’d like to talk about your digital marketing activities – we might just be able to help!