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AI has dramatically changed how websites work on the web and building a successfully monetized website is even more challenging now. The darker side of SEO has low-effort content farms taking advantage of AI to rewrite other author’s content, focusing on strategies to edge out original authors in ranking while raking in ad revenue.
Even if Google had the ability to understand when a site is doing this and reduce their ranking, they themselves are also complicit in harming website performance via AI content summaries, allowing potential visitors to bypass your website entirely to get answers to their questions directly in the search results.
You could argue that featured snippets already did this – and that is certainly true – but AI summaries have the potential to pull even more relevant details from your content, reducing your own page visits (and ad impressions) even further.
So, what should you do in order to compensate for the lack of revenue due to AI’s impact on your website’s performance?
Focus on engagement!
Building a successful website with a focus on engagement
Even though the content from this article may end up being scraped by Google for a tasty AI-generated snippet designed to allow users to get a quick answer to their questions, I have no doubt that the relevant details – how to actually build engagement – will be missed in the AI’s summary.
Although content will remain an important part of driving traffic, content alone won’t be enough anymore and building a following of active and engaged users will be critical. Thankfully there is a new solution to building engagement that’s actually not all that new: building an online community.
The dream of any website is repeat visitors. While getting lots of clicks in search is great, getting visitors who want to come back time and time again is absolute gold.
Some content types lend themselves well to this: Serialized content, or a website with established trust from visitors can work well, but unless you’ve got an infinite amount of content relevant to a wide amount of people your repeat visitor engagement will shift over time – unless that reservoir of infinite relevant content comes from your users themselves.
Online communities have a brand new relevance online in the AI age; Users can directly engage with each other rather than passively consuming content. Additionally, community content is uniquely suited to growing a content base itself; While SEO-focused content alone isn’t going to succeed, that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. In fact, the increase in content via user-generated content (UGC) – especially when it’s tied to interactions with your regular content – can provide a little extra juice to your search performance over low-effort content farms.
In our 15 years of community experience, we’ve seen how dedicated user bases can boost a site’s performance and establish a dedicated community of engaged and enthusiastic users, coming back to the site to take part in new contests, answer questions, ask questions of their own, and engage with friends they’ve made on the site.
Although engagement is one of the most important parts of creating a successful site in the AI era, it’s not the only thing that needs to be considered. We’ve written several different articles touching on strategies you should consider when creating your own online community, but this guide is solely meant to highlight the importance of fostering true engagement and relationship building in an AI world. By focusing on engagement, you can remain competitive against content farming sites that turn out content simply for the sake of higher search rankings.
Here are a few guides to consider taking a look at:
- Guide to monetizing your community
- How much does it cost to start a forum or online community
- Moderation & Toxicity Prevention Techniques
- Creating a unique and positive identity for your community
- Growing a community with gamification and incentivization
Let’s wrap it up
No matter the focus of your community, dedicating your site to a focus on engagement, building a dedicated user base, and driving UGC creation can do wonders to combat AI’s impact on your site rankings. In an AI focused world, taking the time to focus on engagement between users, genuine content, and building an immersive community will set you apart from competing sites and build an ever growing community of users ready to come to your site and ready to share their thoughts and ideas.
