SEO and AI: Data, Search, and Conversions in the New Digital Landscape

SEO and AI: Data, Search, and Conversions in the New Digital Landscape

SEO and AI They're profoundly changing the way people search for and interact with online content. Understanding the impact of SEO and AI on data and conversions is now essential to designing truly profitable strategies: are you ready to rethink your funnel?

In recent months, we've been witnessing a radical paradigm shift in online search. The new goal is no longer simply "getting found" on search engines, but scientifically optimizing conversion performance through the collection and analysis of quality data.

This phenomenon has led to a drastic decline in traffic generated by purely informational searches (e.g., "best camping tents for hiking"). Many searches are answered directly in the SERP or within conversational AI systems, without the need to click on the results.

While a progressive decline in search engine-generated traffic is evident, the average quality of organic traffic is increasing. Users who click on a search result are now more interested in the content, abandon the page less often, and are more likely to perform a conversion action (downloading a resource, requesting a quote, subscribing to a list).

In this context, designing a profitable SEO strategy doesn't just mean producing content that can be mentioned in LLM chats or on traditional search engines. Above all, it means building, with a view to SEO and AI, a data-driven browsing experience that effectively responds to the user's informational and commercial intent, optimizing the conversion rate at every stage of the funnel.

SEO and AI: Why Data and CRO Are Essential for Qualified Traffic

In a scenario dominated by SEO and AI, where organic visibility is increasingly complex, the ability to efficiently convert generated traffic becomes critical to business. Driving visits isn't enough: every single session must be monetized with a rigorously data-driven approach.

To do this, it's essential to accurately analyze user behavioral data, identifying weak points in the funnel and obstacles preventing the completion of the conversion action (purchase, lead, booking, demo). This is where CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) techniques and tools come into play.

The CRO, integrated with SEO and AI, becomes a strategic lever to generate value from each visit, answering key questions such as:

• Which organic channel is my audience coming from (Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.)?
• What do users do once they land on the page?
• where does their path most often end?
• Which visual or textual elements help – or hinder – conversion?

Imagine a well-positioned guide or tutorial for an informational query. About 30 seconds after the user enters, a pop-up appears offering to download a practical checklist closely related to the guide. If the pop-up isn't optimized for mobile, with unreadable text and a truncated or hidden CTA, the user will abandon the page without converting, wasting a real opportunity to acquire targeted leads.

On the contrary, content designed from the beginning with logic SEO and AI, perfectly aligned with search intent and optimized for a seamless mobile experience, with relevant CTAs, clear reading paths and the possibility of progressive diving, can significantly increase conversion rates even in scenarios with lower organic traffic.

Behavioral data and the Clarity tool: the bridge between SEO and AI

One of the most effective tools to read the real behavior of users and improve the performance of SEO and AI is Microsoft Clarity. This is free software that allows you to visually and granularly analyze what users do on your site's pages.

Through heatmaps, session recordings, and dedicated reports, Clarity shows which parts of the page the user lingered on the most, where they clicked, how far they scrolled, and which elements were skipped. A detailed look at all the features would require a separate article, but some features are particularly important for those working on SEO and AI:

• Scroll Depth: shows the percentage of how far people actually read a page and whether they see the desired call to action.
• Segmentation by channel: Allows you to isolate user behavior from specific channels, such as organic search, newsletters, or AI referrals (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, Claude, etc.).

By analyzing these data in combination it is possible to discover, for example, that:

• mobile users abandon 40% more often before halfway down the page;
• a form that is too long reduces the completion rate by 25%;
• the introductory text block is ignored in 70% sessions;
• Users expect to find links on the page that provide in-depth information about the product's features.

These insights aren't just analytical curiosities: they suggest concrete actions to generate a direct impact on business results. Increasing scroll depth, simplifying forms, making CTAs more visible, or introducing comparison boxes are actions that influence both conversion rates and relevant engagement metrics. SEO and AI.

For a theoretical framework on traditional SEO, the definition of Search Engine Optimization on Wikipedia. Today, however, the perspective is broadening to the ecosystem of generative AI, which increasingly function as "response engines" and autonomous traffic channels.

How to Track AI-Driven Traffic: GA4, AI Referrals, and Custom Channels

Responses provided by AI chat systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity are starting to generate increasing volumes of traffic to the websites and blogs cited as sources. In these cases, the traffic sources aren't traditional search engines, but third-party software that often isn't correctly identified by traditional analytics tools.

To optimize the strategies of SEO and AI It is therefore essential to accurately track referral traffic, i.e., visits to the site from platforms outside of its domain, including chatbots and AI platforms. This allows you to measure both the quantity and quality of traffic generated by AI and compare it with traditional organic channels.

In Google Analytics 4 (GA4) You can create custom channel groupings to isolate and monitor known domains of AI tools. A practical example is creating a dedicated channel called "AI Referral," which tracks only visits from sources with the domains "chatgpt.com," "perplexity.ai," "bing.com" (for Copilot), and so on.

This way, you can specifically analyze the behavior of users arriving from LLM or conversational AI environments and compare their performance with traffic from traditional search engines (Google, Bing, etc.), monitoring metrics such as:

• conversion rate;
• average scroll and dwell time;
• bounce rate (page abandonment rate);
• direct impact in terms of revenue and number of leads generated.

In the case of Microsoft Clarity, which recently introduced a specific feature for AI traffic tracking, you can also take advantage of the new automatic channel classification. Clarity categorizes traffic from AI environments into a dedicated channel called "AI.".

Directly from the dashboard, users can view key metrics related to conversions (purchases, form completions, contact requests) and user experience performance: number of actions on the page, time spent, revenue generated, etc. Based on this, it becomes easy to identify concrete optimization actions—for example, adding comparison images, a box with best-selling products, a clearer CTA to the catalog—to increase time on the site, improve conversion rates, and strengthen organic positioning.

SEO and AI: Impact on Marketing and Business

The integration of SEO and AI It profoundly redesigns digital marketing strategies. The goal is no longer to compensate for declining traffic volumes, but to increase performance per session, maximizing the value generated by each visit from search engines and AI systems.

For companies, this means shifting from a purely visibility-driven approach to a profitability-driven one. Content is designed to precisely address user intent, accompanying them with progressive micro-CTAs along the funnel: from reading a guide to downloading a resource, all the way to a sales contact request.

Working in an integrated way on SEO and AI, CRO and Digital Analytics allows you to:

• improve customer experience, especially on mobile;
• build personalized journeys based on the source (Google, ChatGPT, newsletter, social);
• test layout, copy, and CTA variations based on real data;
• allocate marketing budget where the ROI per session is highest.

For example, an e-commerce site may discover that users coming from AI referrals have a more advanced purchasing intent than those coming from purely informational searches. In this case, pages optimized for this purpose SEO and AI With more detailed product pages, clear comparisons, and prominent reviews, you can significantly increase your conversion rate and average order value.

The logic is similar for B2B businesses: technical articles, white papers, and case studies cited by generative AI can become powerful drivers of qualified leads if accompanied by streamlined forms, demo proposals, and targeted nurturing sequences.

How SendApp Can Help with SEO and AI

In this scenario, connecting the strategies of SEO and AI Direct communication channels are essential for maximizing conversions. Qualified traffic arriving from Google, Bing, or AI systems must be effectively followed up in terms of engagement and follow-up. This is where the SendApp ecosystem comes in.

With SendApp Official you can integrate the Official WhatsApp Business APIs in your digital properties. Every content is optimized for SEO and AI can offer a direct CTA to WhatsApp: to request a quote, speak with a consultant, receive a demo, or get immediate assistance.

Thanks to SendApp Agent You can manage team conversations, assign chats to the right agents, and monitor response times and interaction quality. This way, you transform qualified traffic—from organic search, AI referrals, or campaigns—into structured conversations, increasing the likelihood of closing sales or appointments.

With SendApp Cloud you can push the integration between even further SEO and AI and marketing automation. Automatic workflows allow you to:

• send welcome messages on WhatsApp after downloading a resource from the blog;
• activate personalized follow-up sequences based on the page visited or the traffic source (Google, AI, social);
• Recover leads who haven't completed a form with targeted reminders.

The information gathered through analytics and tools like Clarity can be connected to SendApp automations to create consistent experiences across your website, AI, and messaging. If you know that AI Referral users are highly interested in a certain service, you can offer a dedicated consultation or a specific offer for that segment on WhatsApp.

For those who want advanced operational management from the desktop, it is possible to integrate these logics with SendApp Desktop, centralizing campaigns, conversations and reports.

In a web increasingly dominated by SEO and AI, The only sustainable way is to build an organic ecosystem where every visit generates real value. The structural integration of SEO, CRO, Digital Analytics, and automation on WhatsApp with SendApp is not only a technical advantage, but also a prerequisite for the economic sustainability of marketing today and tomorrow.

If you want to transform qualified traffic coming from search engines and AI into leads, sales and lasting relationships, request a dedicated consultancy and find out how SendApp can support your marketing strategy. SEO and AI with custom automations and conversational flows.