How WordPress Bloggers Can Benefit from AI
In the recent, rather swift turn of events, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a game-changer across various industries. All of a sudden, AI is available for mass consumers to use, while many businesses have already been using it for quite a while. From chatbots and other CRM solutions to inventory management and content production, there’s no shortage of exceptional AI-powered WordPress plugins and other solutions to benefit the bloggers.
For WordPress bloggers, the fusion of AI and blogging, known as AI blogging, brings forth a host of opportunities to transform their content creation process and enhance the overall performance of their websites. In this comprehensive article, we will explore the many ways in which WordPress bloggers can benefit from AI, in areas ranging from content generation and optimization to audience engagement and beyond.
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Improving Content Generation with AI
AI-powered content generation has redefined the possibilities of creativity for bloggers. By leveraging advanced language models like GPT-3, AI can assist WordPress bloggers in brainstorming content ideas, generating outlines, and even producing draft paragraphs.
When ChatGPT first stepped into the public arena, content creators were initially terrified that chatbots would take their jobs away. The fear came from the fact that the produced output was actually quite good. However, upon a deeper investigation, it became clear that what chatbots can produce in terms of guides, articles, listicles and social media posts definitely requires improvement and cannot be published as is.
As of mid-2023, this remains true. The free and most widely available tools, like ChatGPT-3, have knowledge cutoff at 2021. This means they cannot give you fresh and relevant information, and this seriously hinders not just their usefulness as standalone content creation tools, but also as research tools.
This has somewhat placated the anxiety content creators feel regarding the future of their jobs. Now that it’s clear that the human factor is still required in the creator economy, writers can focus on making the most out of the available tools – they can use them for initial research, content ideas, outlines and drafts. Chatbots can be used to come up with alternative titles, fresh ways of structuring content, and so on. They can also be used for proofreading, synonym suggestions or making the text more readable and SEO-friendly. If you need pictures to accompany your text and don’t want to pay for premium stock images, you can use AI image generators.
In short, AI can both speed up and improve your content creation workflow.
Top AI Content and Copywriting Tools
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Jasper is an AI tool designed to help writers overcome creative blocks, generate ideas, create drafts and article structure, and overall produce quality content faster. It works in 25+ languages and can be used for blog posts, sales emails, social media posts, outreach emails, website copy and more. Thanks to machine learning, Jasper can adopt the desired tone of your brand, and you can set additional tones and styles. Jasper comes as a browser extension, integrates seamlessly with WordPress, but also with other tools like HubSpot and Google Docs.
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Copy.ai is one of the most popular tools among content creators. It is a chatbot tool that promises to help create blog posts 10x faster, and to make them more converting and engaging, too. It doesn’t promise to deliver a finished product, but that would be too much to expect anyway. Instead, Copy.ai helps writers create quality briefs and outlines, as well as full first drafts.
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Wordtune is a tool that you can use to reuse or repurpose your old content. It’s basically a paraphrasing tool, but it shouldn’t be used for so-called content spinning, as that’s penalized by Google. Still, if you have older blog posts that need refreshing and updating to boost their ranking, Wordtune can be of tremendous help. Just make sure to polish and edit the output carefully.
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Writesonic is a tool that uses ChatGPT-3 and ChatGPT-4 models but, unlike those chatbots, also provides relevant, fresh and updated data using information from Google, thus creating more accurate and relevant content. It can be used for anything from blog posts to website copy, guaranteeing 100% plagiarism-free content.
Elevating SEO Strategies with AI
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a pivotal role in driving organic traffic to WordPress blogs. AI-powered SEO tools offer valuable insights into keyword analysis, competitive research, and content optimization.
However, it’s vital to point out that creators who’ve been around for a while shouldn’t expect anything too revolutionary in this department, either. If you were already using an SEO plugin to help you with optimization, chances are you’ve already used AI for SEO, as a lot of those plugins have already incorporated machine learning long ago. They scan your text and assess it based on the input you’ve provided (keywords in particular, text length, etc) and suggest areas that require improvement.
However, as AI research and innovations expand, the SEO tools are gaining more functionalities for providing even better insights.
Plus, you can also use chatbots to do keyword research and to come up with secondary and tertiary keywords and synonyms. You can even tell a chatbot what sort of audience you want to reach and it can help you tailor your content accordingly.
Again, you shouldn’t expect any miraculous automations in this department since chatbots are quite limited.
SEO Plugins Using AI
Like we said, if you’re a WordPress blogger and have been one for a while, you probably already use AI through your favorite SEO tool. Some of the best AI-powered SEO plugins include:
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RankMath, an extraordinary plugin we’ve already written about and praised. Content writers should pay particular attention to Content AI, the feature designed to help you create SEO friendly content.
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AIOSEO has two interesting AI features that can be of great use: the title and meta description generator that churns out suggestions for these important SEO elements, and link assistant that crawls your website and gives you internal linking suggestions. The plugin packs a terrific selection of features, like generating RSS sitemaps and more.
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SurferSEO, a powerful SEO plugin that has a free version. It gives you keyword suggestions and tracks clicks and impressions. The premium version provides additional keyword suggestions to boost your SEO score, suggests optimal H-tag structure and content length, and much more.
Improving User Experience Through AI
Understanding and catering to the preferences of the target audience is vital for blog success. AI algorithms can analyze user behavior, study reading patterns, and offer personalized content recommendations. By harnessing AI’s capabilities, bloggers can create tailored content that resonates with their readers, leading to improved engagement and brand loyalty.
Content Personalization
AI can analyze user behavior and preferences to deliver personalized content tailored to each visitor. This keeps users engaged and encourages them to spend more time on the blog. This functionality is perhaps more relevant for big media outlets and social networks than for small and medium blogs. After all, if you write niche blogs and keep a modest output, you probably don’t even need content personalization automation as you already know your audience well and don’t even have that much content to put in the recommendation loop. Still, the tools are being researched and developed continuously and we’re sure there’ll soon be a proper WordPress plugin for this purpose and this scale of users.
Tool: Recombee has a module for articles, news and media that provides real-time recommendations based on the users’ interest, behavior, location and other factors.
Chatbots and Virtual Assistants
AI-powered chatbots can provide instant support, answer common queries, and guide users to relevant content. They enhance user engagement and improve satisfaction by providing real-time assistance. As such, these tools are particularly useful for online shops and service-based websites, but also for online presentations of businesses, educational or government institutions and various facilities.
Tool: Check out our list of the best chatbot plugins for WordPress.
Search and Recommendations
AI can enhance site search functionality, making it easier for users to find what they are looking for, and provide personalized content recommendations. Search autocomplete and AJAX search have been around for a while so the users are already not just familiar but well-accustomed to it and expect to see these advanced search capabilities on your site, too. Of course, with the expansion of AI technologies, their capabilities are expanded to include neural hashing, natural language understanding, adaptive learning, etc.
Tool: Algolia is a powerful search and discovery platform that can be integrated into WordPress for improved search capabilities with their native NeuralSearch technology.
Performance Optimization
AI can optimize website performance by automatically compressing images, caching content, optimizing CSS, and implementing other performance-enhancing techniques.
Tool: Swift Performance AI is a comprehensive performance and caching plugin that improves page loading speed and performance. It prioritizes loading more important content, optimizes assets for real users (not just tests) and works to reduce server response times.
Sentiment Analysis
This one may seem scary since it sort of sounds like AI is reading people’s minds, but in fact it’s only analyzing user behavior in the similar way we analyze Net Promoter Score. AI can analyze user comments and feedback to understand sentiment and identify areas for improvement.
Tool: MonkeyLearn is a feedback management tool that offers sentiment analysis APIs and integrations.
Spam Filtering
This is another feature that’s been around forever but we never thought of it as AI. If you’re not already using AI spam filtering, it’s not too late to start. Once you rid your blog of pesky spammers, you will notice improvement across your metrics and, of course, your user base. AI-powered spam filters work by monitoring comments and contact forms for spammy content and then either reporting and waiting for orders or cleaning them up by themselves – depending on the settings you make.
Tool: Akismet is a widely used spam filtering plugin for WordPress and one you get with your WordPress installation by default. Don’t delete it! It’s a great plugin and you really don’t need a different one.
Content Tagging and Categorization
WordPress offers taxonomies out of the box – you can classify your content in categories and tags. However, this is done manually, and for big blogs with a lot of content, AI can not only streamline the process but it can also provide more complex categorization options. As a result, navigating your blog will become significantly easier, which improves UX and is vital for retention.
Tool: Watson Natural Language Understanding by IBM is an extraordinary AI service for advanced text analytics, extracting metadata from unstructured text and offering classification, keywords, sentiment, syntax and other suggestions.
A/B Testing
AI can assist in running A/B tests to optimize elements such as headlines, images, or call-to-action buttons for better user engagement. This UX research method uses two variants of the same output to determine which one performs better.
Tool: Nelio A/B Testing is a WordPress plugin for conducting A/B tests. It’s also great for WooCommerce, as it analyzes product names and descriptions, as well as featured images.
Accessibility Improvements
Improving your website accessibility is a vital element in good website UX as it helps you make your content reachable to everyone – including differently abled users. AI can identify and suggest elements that need improvement in order to make the blog more accessible to everyone.
Tool: accessiBe is a leading AI-powered web accessibility tool that can be integrated into WordPress.
Streamlining Content Editing with AI
A lot of content writers and bloggers work without an editor, especially if they’re writing and managing their own blogs. The problem with this setup is that identifying your own mistakes is basically impossible. Our brains simply gloss over the mistakes unless they are highlighted or stand out in some other way.
That’s why AI-powered grammar and style checkers have become indispensable tools for bloggers. These AI-driven editing assistants can detect grammatical errors, offer suggestions for improvement, and refine the overall writing style. Some of these solutions, like Grammarly, have been around for a while, and most word processors, including Google Docs, already have the spelling and grammar checker functionality built in.
However, sometimes these tools are too basic and aren’t enough for advanced editing, so we need the help of specialized AI-powered tools.
Best AI-Powered Spelling, Grammar and Style Tools
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Grammarly is great as it works across multiple devices and provides a great all-round solution for spelling and grammar checking and suggestions. The premium version offers even better features, such as plagiarism checker and an option to create a style guide, which is great in case you’re working in an organization or have multiple authors on your blog.
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Ginger is a tool that, in addition to checking for grammar and spelling mistakes, also provides rephrasing suggestions. It doesn’t come as a WordPress plugin but you can use it as a Chrome extension or an app for Windows, iOS or Android.
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Slick Write is a free-for-use platform where you can input up to 30,000 per editing session. In addition to grammar and spelling, it also analyzes your style and provides suggestions for less wordy (or more wordy, depending on what you want) phrasing, excessive prepositional phrases, transition words, passive voice, weak descriptions, etc.
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Hemingway is a popular content writing assistant that color codes your input and analyzes it for readability, phrase length, complicated wording, passive voice, adverb use and more. You also get a word count, sentence and paragraph count and reading time.
Enhancing Social Media Presence with AI
Social media plays a crucial role in promoting blog content and connecting with the audience. Hopefully you’ve already connected your blog to your social profiles using social media icons in your menu or in your sidebar. Now it’s time to go the extra mile and boost your social media presence. AI-powered social media management tools enable bloggers to schedule posts, analyze performance metrics, and even generate content based on blog articles.
Top AI-Powered Social Media Tools
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IFTTT is a terrific social media automation solution that can help you with cross-channel content management, automated scheduling, content ideas, content streams and much more. You can use it to post directly from your website to major social platforms like Facebook, to create a social media posting calendar and much more. There are so many advanced features packed in this tool, it would take too much time to list here, so we recommend you check the IFTTT website.
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Buffer is another all-round solution for managing multichannel campaigns and creating content arcs. It can also be used to post from your website to your social media profiles. Buffer integrates with WordPress easily through a specialized plugin.
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FeedHive is a tool that has an AI assistant feature that can help you with writing social media content based on your posts (or unrelated to them), with emojis, hashtags and all. You can use this feature for content repurposing or recycling, conditional posting and performance predictions.
Breaking Language Barriers with AI Translation
For bloggers with a global audience, language barriers can limit reach. AI-powered translation tools bridge this gap, enabling bloggers to cater to diverse markets and cultures.
AI-powered language and translation tools can be of tremendous help in communicating a simple message. However, they’re still far from replacing actual human translators who can go beyond simple transposition of meaning and who are able to convey the nuances, sentiments and subtle linguistic touches.
Still, if you’re not looking for complex, literary-grade translations, there are a few tools you could check out.
WordPress Translation Plugins Using Machine Learning
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WPML is one of the most downloaded translation plugins. It’s compatible with any WordPress theme, well-supported and can be used to translate everything from pages and posts, custom post types and taxonomies, to menus and even theme text.
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Weglot is one of our favorites here at Qode Magazine. It comes with an intuitive interface and supports 100+ languages. Check out our tutorial for creating a multilingual site to learn how to make the most out of this versatile plugin.
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Polylang can be used to create multiple language versions of your site, from just one or two extra languages to 10 or more. The plugin integrates to core WordPress and only uses the language packs you specify. If you need additional ones, just download the appropriate pack, in order to minimize the strain on your site. The language versions can be set in the website URL or as subdomains.
Voice Search Optimization with AI Blogging
As voice search gains prominence, AI can play a pivotal role in optimizing content for voice queries. Understanding user interactions with voice-activated devices empowers bloggers to tailor their content for voice search trends, potentially improving visibility in voice search results.
Voice search is an important functionality for eCommerce websites, too. Enabling users to use voice to look for products, variants, add to cart etc, can significantly streamline the user experience and ultimately help you grow sales.
Top AI-powered Voice Search Plugins
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WP Fastest Site Search is a plugin that adds a brand new search bar to your website and builds upon the search functionality by adding voice search, PDF search and image search. It creates a results page and features search filtering, autocorrect and autocomplete options.
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Voxpow is a tool that uses machine learning for voice recognition and can be used not just for search but also for typing from voice and text-from-speech. It supports 100+ languages, as well as multiple accents.
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Virtual Assistant is a plugin designed primarily for admins, enabling them to use voice to navigate their website, open new tabs, scroll, etc. However, it can also be set to enable shoppers to add items to cart using voice, and so on. Plus, new features can be added using custom JS.
How to Overcome the Limitations of AI Tools?
One of the biggest limitations of any AI-powered tool, especially the copywriting ones, is that it can never be 100% original. The tools use content someone else already created, combine it, learn from it, and give you the results. The results, therefore, can’t possibly be 100% original. Sure, they can be plagiarism-free, but that’s not enough for content that actually helps with ranking and conversions.
If we assume that basically every other content creator out there is using an AI tool of some sort for producing content, we can also assume the SERPs will soon be (if they’re not already) overflooded with AI-generated content. Over at Google, they realize that this is most likely inevitable, but also that it’s a bubble that will be bursting soon.
In order to make the best of AI while maintaining and growing your reputation, relevance and authority, content creators still need to follow the EEAT formula: to show Expertise, Experience, Authority and Trustworthiness. What used to distinguish good copy from mediocre still applies and it will be even more important in awarding human-generated content with good ranking.
So, instead of overcoming the limitations or expecting the tools to improve to overcome them, we should simply be aware of them and seek the best ways to build upon what’s available.
If an AI tool gives you a good article outline, make sure to fill it with well-researched, insightful content that provides actual value to readers.
If you’re struggling to come up with blogging ideas, use AI to help you jumpstart the inspiration but don’t take its suggestions for granted – explore the keyword potential and tweak the material where possible.
Finally, if you find that entire paragraphs of what AI suggested can actually be used without modification, make sure to check for plagiarism before publishing.
The bottom line is, the tools are here and there’s no reason why WordPress bloggers shouldn’t everage them in their favor.
Remember that while AI can greatly enhance your work, it should be used thoughtfully and responsibly to ensure that it aligns with your blog’s goals and your users’ needs. Always keep the human touch in mind and use AI as a supporting tool to augment your efforts, not replace them entirely.
