AI can help small businesses, startups boost search traffic

Small businesses and startups are deploying artificial intelligence (AI) tools to boost their visibility through search engine optimization (SEO) strategies that leverage generative AI according to one engineering and design consulting firm.

Generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT can help small businesses and startups quickly generate content, reducing the turnaround time for creating content like blog posts aimed at building a business’ brand to ultimately increase their exposure on search engines for areas a company focuses on.

"Our customers are other startups or small businesses typically, so we’re helping them build out an SEO strategy by leveraging their domain-specific knowledge," Justin Fortier, the chief executive officer and chief technology officer of FYC Labs, told FOX Business. 

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?

"We at FYC focus on an SEO strategy that’s driven by domain-specific knowledge and the power of generating content with GPT," he explained. That strategy involves the production and placement of content made with the aid of AI to showcase a business’ expertise to prospective clients and customers.

"That’s the first way, and then in addition we leverage a lot of the embeddings [software development kits] from OpenAI in order to create matching algorithms, to help generate match scores, to help find nearest neighbors to kind of create that Netflix feel of ‘you may also like’ – that type of stuff is really popular right now through the embeddings SDKs," Fortier added about the personalization and suggestions AI can help inform for users.

WHAT IS CHATGPT?

While AI can help small businesses and startups in a number of ways, many AI tools are not yet sophisticated enough to provide in-depth analytics of data sets that can help decision-makers make informed choices about the various options confronting their business.

"I think one of the common misconceptions of AI is that I can just type in any question and throw a CSV of my data in there, and I’ll have all my questions answered," he said. "So when it comes to the analytics side and sort of the data interpretation, it’s not that easy yet… It’s close, but it’s not where it needs to be to give you really actionable, trustworthy data out of the box."

AI IMPLEMENTATION FOR SMALL BUSINESS ASSISTED BY SBA’S SCORE PROGRAM

Additionally, small businesses feeding data from their clients or customers should be cautious about the format in which they are inputting that data to ensure it remains anonymous and does not compromise personally identifiable information.

"If you’re providing an AI solution back to your customer through your app, you better be anonymizing that conversation back in with OpenAI. Now, if you’re passing it for names and information in the OpenAI or whatever SDK you’re using, Bard or whatever it may be, you are not being a good caretaker of your customer data." 

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As far as what entrepreneurs and individuals should do to find the ways that they can best leverage AI, Fortier said they should research what AI tools can do for them rather than trying to resist the technology’s emergence.

"I feel like that next little thing that everybody can do is just really inform themselves on how they can ride the wave versus trying to stand up against the wave and kind of being smacked in the face by it," he said. "So best practice is to figure out what it’s doing, figure out how it can help your business and start to ride the wave because it’s coming no matter what."