This post is based on a presentation for the Jersey Shore Tech and Design Group. It was kind of them to let me try a lightning talk at their event in November. What a great event, each speaker had a unique way of approaching AI in their work.
Download the Slideshow PDF 5.5MB
I’m a More Than a Little Skeptical of AI
There’s so much hype, and so many unknowns. NN Group said blindly trusting AI was “magic eight ball thinking” Yet, anytime I dread a repetitive, heavy task, I want to offload it to a computer somehow. With AI there are new opportunities to so this.
Using AI Images
I am OK with using AI generated images in some cases. I decided to source them from Adobe. They compensate all the creatives involved in producing an AI image. They label images made with AI, so I can avoid them for clients who are sensitive to that. You can change images on the fly with a text prompt and Adobe will show you options.
Image Alt Text
Image alt-text is a description of the image that is part of the code on a web page. It helps search bots understand what your image is about. I had a recent project where a designer’s site lost its images’ alt text in a site migration. So I tested two different AI alt text services using the same 15 images.
AHREFs Free Tool
AHREFs currently offers a free tool where ai will write the alt text for an image you upload to the site. I liked the drop down menu for writing tone.Out of the of the 15 images, 2 alt descriptions were usable as is, 12 were usable with some editing, and one was off the mark. The AI hallucinated tools hanging in the back of a garage. Even worse, it completely missed that the garage is leaning to one side and held up by a post.
AltText.ai
This is a online service that offers a free trial. Uploading multiple images’ URLs didn’t work. AltText.ai’ tech support was immediately helpful and worked with me until we resolved the issues. In this case, Cloudflare settings blocked the site’s access to the images’ URLs. We found another way to get alt text for my client’s 15 images. They have integrations with WordPress, Magento, Chrome, and an API. I uploaded the same 15 images, 6 alt descriptions were good, 9 needed minor edits.
AI Writing Help
I don’t use AI to write whole blog posts. Though I do find it useful for some tasks. For ideation I like to use a general purpose AI that is based on an LLM (Large Language Model). My current favorite is DuckDuckGo’s free AI chat. The advantages to using DuckDuckGo’s AI chat; It is free, it is private, and you can choose to pin and save a prompt. DuckDuckGo gives you a choice of free AI agents. It tells you what each agent was built for, who made it, and how strictly it is moderated.
Typical Ideation Prompt
You are a website content specialist. Your client is a high-end interior designer. Can you brainstorm some blog posts that would attract people thinking about remodeling their kitchen?I gave the AI a role, then I described the problem and asked it to brainstorm ideas. Claude suggested these among others:
“The Art of Luxury Kitchen Design: 5 Transformative Trends for 2026” …kind of click-bait-y
“Beyond Functionality: Crafting Your Kitchen as a Culinary Sanctuary” …maybe
“Investing in Your Home: The Long-Term Value of a Premium Kitchen Remodel” …might be good at a certain point in the decision process
Claude also provided details about the key focus and the target reader. It would go into more detail if you asked.
Editing
For editing I use the freemium version of the Hemingwayapp.ai. I assume it is using the data and text somehow, so I never paste anything into it that isn’t public information. First, you paste text into its web interface. Then Hemingway points out issues within the text using color-coded highlights. Also helpful, the readability score, word count, read time estimates.
Hemingwayapp will do the rewrite for you at the paid level. There is also an app version.
Technical SEO
You can think of technical SEO as things that help your site perform in search, but aren’t visible to a visitor. That includes header data, metadata, and forwarding old content to new. This is where AI can shine.
Comparing Long Lists of URLs
I’m updating an older site. There are over 100 pages where the header title matches the H1. The client wanted the metadata tiles rewritten on a rolling basis. So to determine which pages were a priority, I wanted to compare their best performing URLs with those on the duplicate titles list. I used DuckDuckGo and Chat GPT 4o to compare the lists and tell me which URLs were on both.
Can you compare two groups of URLs and give me a list of the URLs that are on both lists?It didn’t work the first time. Using the full URLs was too much data for the free version, and the bot refused. I solved this by removing the first part of the URL, from https to the .com. Then I used Excel Lookup to compare this list with the data from Google Analytics.
Writing REGEX
REGEX is a very useful pattern matching tool. It can
- Filter Data
- Set Bulk Redirects
- Cleanup Data
- Validate Data from Forms
You can use REGEX within
- Google Analytics
- Looker Studio
- Javascript
- To Valid Forms
- Set Forwards in Apache
I wanted a REGEX pattern for filtering the traffic from AI engines. I asked a general question about filtering the data, to see what other ideas the AI might have.
You are working in Search Engine Optimization and data. You need to isolate the traffic coming to your website from AI search. What would be the best way to do that?Claude had some other helpful suggestions. It pointed out the limitations of the Regex filtering only approach. Plus it suggested follow up tasks to consider. The REGEX pattern it wrote saved me at least half an hour. I would have needed to research which AI search options are popular. Then I’d have to find out how each AI search service structured its URLs when it sent traffic to a web page. Then I would need to write the REGEX and double check that all my slashes, dots, and pipes were in the right place. The resulting REGEX works in my tests in Google Analytics and Looker Studio.
After testing AI in my SEO process, I decided that
If I wasn’t using AI, I would be falling behind. If I am not critical of how I am using AI, I am falling for the hype.
