AI Advantage Assessment

In the AI Advantage Assessment, SEO and Content Discovery came out as one of the most adopted “specialized” AI use cases beyond writing and search. But the data shows both surprising gaps and emerging opportunities.

Where AI adoption is strong

• Among all marketers, 44% said they are already using AI for SEO optimization Increasingly or All the Time. 
• Specialists in SEO/Web/Chatbots reported higher adoption—about 60% are using AI for “SEO content analysis and optimization” increasingly or All the Time
• Most who adopt SEO AI are also experimenting with AI platform optimization (e.g., for ChatGPT and Gemini visibility).

Where adoption is lagging

• More than half of marketers (56%) still are using AI in a very limited way or not at all for SEO.  
• Even among SEO specialists, very few are leveraging AI for higher-order tasks. Only 5% report using AI “all the time” for SEO and topic clustering content creation.

This points to an area of great opportunity because this use case should be such a good fit for AI:

• It is based on writing, 
• There is TONS of expert expert advice about what makes content effective for SEO
• AI has a unique strength to scan, compare, analyze content according to these general rules (e.g. # back links)
• Mature AI tools exist (e.g. SEMrush, Ahrefs, Similarweb, SiteImprove,  SurferSEO, SE Ranking, Backlinko, SearchAtlas, Moz, ClearScope, Screaming Frog, Buzz Sumo

So adoption is slower than it could be and this may be due to fear of undermining specialist expertise, real world results (e.g. poor quality or low credibility content produced in tests), and inadequate quality control

Questions for marketing leaders

• Why are so many SEO teams still doing things the old way? Is it lack of trust in AI outputs, or limited experimentation?
• What limited tests could your team run in clustered, AI-generated content expansion to get early learnings without risk?
• How are you balancing SEO (which still drives more traffic) with emerging AI platform optimization?

Let me know what your experience has been using AI in SEO scenarios – what is working and what is not? What tools are working? Your experience will help future content to this community (even if anonymous)