Howdy degens, and welcome to another edition of the REE Newsletter. This is going to be a long one, despite focusing on only a handful of topics.

In the previous newsletter, we discussed how generating AI content is the way towards better content, scalable output, greater productivity, and even more profits. We’ll continue with this line of thinking as we’ll tackle how you can leverage AI to create visual content to improve your business. Let’s get started!

Fire Your Graphic Designer ( AI Images )

Just like your content writers, artificial intelligence has afforded business owners to downsize their graphic design team and rely on AI tools to generate images for them.

This isn’t to say that you should set the room where your entire web design team is on fire–you’ll still need a handful of people who will edit and refine the images (just like you should with written content). But AI has massively improved your ability to produce graphics and visual assets for your business en masse.

You know the major players: Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and others can create any type of image you have in your mind.

All you need to enter is a prompt describing the image you want the tool to create. The level of specificity and meticulousness in your prompt dictates the quality of images it’ll generate for you–the more precise your prompt description is, the less back and forth you’ll have with the tool.

Not happy with the image style? No problem! Ask AI to change the style to your preference.

But let’s back-track a bit. Not even sure what idea to enter for your prompt? Ask it to brainstorm for you, complete with prompts to enter.

If you have a link to an article that you want to create an image for, just enter the URL and ask AI to generate its image for you (using the WebPilot GPT).

In the example above, AI summarised the article, which it used as the basis for creating the image depicting Google as maze-like and full of traps and dead-ends (pretty accurate, if you ask me!).

You can ask AI to create a different version of your logo and upload an image file of your current one for reference.

Finally, I personally leverage AI for my YouTube thumbnails. I ask AI to create the background for the thumbnails and just place the face of the people I’m interviewing or presenting. It takes me a few minutes to get these done!

Again, you can ask the tool to refine the image to your liking by adding more guidance to your prompt and indicating your preferred image art style.

I used DALL-E for creating the images above for example purposes. There are tons of other tools to choose from that create images differently and, depending on your preferences, could produce images that resemble more of what you’re looking for. So, it’s best to test out all the different apps available and decide for yourself the best one for your business.

Also, some of the images AI will generate won’t always be a slam dunk, even if you keep feeding it with prompts. This is where human designers come into play by cleaning up the design or using the generated content as inspiration.

Either way, it’s clear that creating images for your website is the easiest it’s been. There’s no excuse for you to not leverage AI’s image generating capabilities to create engaging visuals that match your style.

SEO, AI & Digital Marketing News 📰

Now that the Google Helpful Content update has concluded, it’s time for us to look at our sites as they have lost >80% of its organic traffic, leaving us scratching our heads wondering where to begin on our road to recovery.

And to be honest, there isn’t much to work with at the moment.

Granted, I did notice that brand and authority signals reigned supreme (more than usual) in this update. User-generated content has also been performing well (which has probably something to do with Google’s partnership with Reddit, the biggest UGC site of ‘em all). This may have a direct correlation with the continued dip down in rankings and traffic of content sites, which has been the ongoing trend of 2024.

Despite these observations, there should be more findings to come in the following weeks, especially since the exact reason for the general traffic decrease is not clear. By the way, making content  “helpful” is as vague as it can possibly get, even if they have a document about it online!

So far, there have been attempts by people like Lily Ray and Marie Haynes to convey to the public their observations about the latest Google update.

We are now at the point where we define the semantics of what makes a content “helpful.” This is from the same search engine that ranked the very same posts that it now de-ranked in place of more authoritative sites with content that’s less unique and information (read: helpful) than the ones it replaced!

Again, there are just too many questions than answers at the moment that it’s really best to run your own test and wait for more information and data to come your way to make sense out of Google’s SERP decision, if we will ever reach that point.

Shopping Generative Experience

Amidst the chaos of Google organic search, the search engine company is currently beta testing the SGE for a select number of people. 

So far, the results are still iffy, but SGE is ripe with opportunities and possibilities once it irons the kinks.

Malte Landwehr came up with the best thread suummarising SGE by compiling different studies and running his tests to see implications of this technology in people's search habits. You can see the entire thread here.

However, what stood out was the mention about how SGE shortens the buying process by featuring products relevant to the search query.

No longer does the search engine show the top pages with the best collection of products about the keyword. With SGE, Google seems to cut the middleman from the equation and delivers the products and even hotel reservations straight to users themselves.

This could have huge implications in the e-commerce sites, especially those that generate tons of organic traffic from their product listing pages (PLPs).

A suggestion by Aleyda Solis in her latest SEO FOMO newsletter is for these sites to focus on optimising their product detail pages (PDPs) instead in the hopes of getting them included as part of Google’s SGE results for commercial keywords.

With the expected release date of SGE on May 14, 2024, expect more developments about SGE in the coming days. Google seems to be trending the way of AI and incorporating them into SERPs, which could leave organic results lower on the page due to these snippets.

At this point, it’s all about adapting to the changes brought about by AI and technology. Keeping in touch with the latest news is the first step towards this direction, and I’ll help deliver the most recent and best information to you as they happen!

This Month’s Sponsor: Charles Floate Training 👨‍🏫

Looking to access the most up-to-date SEO training, consultancy services, audits and link building packages in the world? Then visit my one-stop shop for all your SEO needs!

What I’ve Been Reading & Watching 👨‍🎓

• This AI Startup Idea Has 500 MILLION Customers Waiting (MFM Podcast)

• Originality (Kevin Indig)

Career Opportunities 💼

• Executive SEO Assistant, SEO Agency, £30k/PA, England, UK

• SEO Specialist, Inhouse Education Sector, £55k/PA, England, UK

• AI & SEO Content Writer, SEO Agency, $10/hr, Philippines