Welcome back to Forests Over Trees, your weekly tech strategy newsletter. It’s time to zoom-out, connect dots, and (try to) predict the future.

This post is a special edition deep dive, brought to you in partnership with Ahrefs.

SEO Thrives With AI

A deep dive about Ahrefs’ response to AI

Today, we’re going to talk about one of the best growth strategies in the world.

It drives 10x more traffic than organic social. It has a 14.6% close rate. It’ll even do your laundry (kidding).

I’m talking, of course, about search engine optimization (SEO).

Surprising, right!? SEO is huge. And it’s huge because search is huge. Search engines are the starting point for 68% of online activity. So when you optimize your brand, your product, your company for search, you’re taking that absolute firehose of traffic and siphoning it towards your thing. That’s powerful.

“Hang on” I hear you saying…. “hasn’t AI made SEO obsolete?”

Actually, no.

SEO + AI

It’s true that AI has had a huge impact on SEO…

For one thing, it makes creating content and products easy. Anyone with a computer and an idea can use AI to crank out social media posts, code a working prototype, etc. Because it’s easy, there’s a flood of new projects, which means competition for eyeballs.

For another, AI search results and GPTs are changing traffic patterns. If only a handful of sources will be cited in an AI Overview (rather than a long list of search results), there’s more competition to be an authoritative, frequently-cited source.

But if we think of SEO as a set of strategies for getting traffic and attention on your thing… isn’t that still important? Don’t we still need attention and customers for the things we build!?

I’d argue that because of AI, we all need SEO – strategies for getting traffic and attention – more than ever.

In fact, what if we turn the tables and use AI to do SEO 10x better, driving even more people to your thing?

That’s where Ahrefs comes in.

Meet Ahrefs

Founded in 2010, Ahrefs started as side project for Founder and CEO Dmytro Gerasymenko. And like any good side project, Ahrefs came from humble beginnings.

Here’s a look at an early version of the site, courtesy of an X post from Ahrefs’ Patrick Stox.

Early on, Ahrefs focused on backlinks — the thing that helps you boost your site’s domain authority (credibility) and rank higher on searches. It’s like a “who you know” test. If the New York Times and TechCrunch link to your SaaS tool in some article, then not only do you get traffic from any clicks, but backlinks from reputable sources also boost your authority. 

Over time, Ahrefs grew with their customers, launching products to help users with other aspects of SEO. Chief among them was a set of keyword research tools. Keywords are the other pillar of SEO – designed to help marketers identify under-valued, important keywords in their category – useful for ads, content planning, product positioning, etc.

And while Dmytro and the Ahrefs team are still humble, today they are far from “humble beginnings”. They have the 2^nd most active SEO crawler (behind Google), trillions of keywords indexed (🤯), and $100M+ in annual revenue according to TechCrunch.

“Ok we get it! But what are they doing to embed AI into SEO?”

Good question.

Ahrefs’ AI Playbook

Here’s how I’d bucket their AI capabilities so far.

1 – Super-Powered SEO

Many AI features are built directly into core Ahrefs tools, boosting user productivity and improving performance on tasks they already do.

One example is the “AI Search Intents” feature, which puts their standard keyword tools on steroids (in a good way…).

For any keyword, there could be multiple reasons people search for it. Those reasons, or “intents”, each require a different pitch – a different way to add value for customers.

Here’s an example for a “calligraphy” keyword search.

When searching for calligraphy – some people want to understand what it is, some people want to learn it, and others want to buy calligraphy supplies.

With AI telling you the most likely intents of the keyword, you can narrow your focus to one specific intent (information only) OR plan the perfect all-in-one product/page to cover multiple intents (information + learning + shopping).

2 – Competitive AI Advantage

Second, they’re using AI to help their users compete more effectively. Rather than eyeballing your competitors’ sites for ideas about what you should imitate (things they do well) or emphasize about your product (things they do poorly)… Ahrefs’ tools add data to that competitive analysis.

Their AI Content Helper is one example. If you provide your keyword and a content draft, it will:

• Analyze competitors’ content and break-down their messaging

• Give you a content score, taking keyword and competitor analytics into account

• Recommend edits (and even draft new wording) that would raise your score

In light of the flood of new content (and corresponding rise in competition) we covered earlier, tools like this are critical to helping you compete effectively.

3 – Equipping Customers to Evolve

The last theme that stands out among Ahrefs’ new AI tools is the ability to help customers respond to (and take advantage of) evolutions in the industry.

AI Overviews being shown instead of search results is definitely an evolution. If you don’t respond as a marketer, your brand, content, etc. might never get seen.

But that doesn’t have to be the case.

Ahrefs now tracks AI Overview results within all their major features, so customers can preview how they might (or might not be) showing up in AI Overviews of specific keywords.

And another evolution is the expectation that every brand – even a small one – needs to be global. But translation done manually can be expensive and time-consuming. So Ahrefs’ AI translator is a gamechanger. It can already do keyword research for 40+ languages, helping you communicate a consistent message and grow into new markets.

Zooming Out

Ok – now that we know a lot more about SEO and how AI can make it better, let’s zoom-out for a minute. I want to ask a pesky question…

What can we learn from Ahrefs’ response to AI?

Lesson #1 — Disruption isn’t personal

Disruption doesn’t happen to you – it happens to your industry. It only happens to you if you choose not to respond!

But if you rise to the occasion, you can ride the wave of disruption and use it to propel your business forward. SEO and other industries are directly impacted by AI, but that impact doesn’t have to be all negative. Ahrefs understands that.

Lesson #2 — Your customer is a compass

If you’re ever in doubt about what to build next, take the point of view of your customers and build what they need. If you do that, you might outgrow some of your original offerings and leave them behind, but you’ll have customers walking with you step-by-step.

Plus, if you feel like your business is facing uncertainty, how do you think your customers feel?!

Be the future-focused partner that keeps their interests in mind.

Wrapping Up

Rumors are swirling that the AI model companies might introduce ads soon. If that’s true, it would represent another huge evolution for the business of getting attention on your thing (aka SEO). Looking forward to seeing how the SEO industry navigates those changes.

In the meantime, if you want to dive deeper into how Ahrefs is using AI — and learn how it can help your business — check out their full suite of AI tools at this link.

The forest is growing.
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