It was only a matter of time before content created by AI started to find it’s way onto the web in forms of emails, blog posts and chat bots. With AI tools such as ChatGPT and websites likes Jasper.AI making it easier for people to have content generated for them, it also raises a lot of questions. Questions like is AI generated content good for SEO?
Does AI Boost SEO Rankings?
Content from AIs can definitely help your SEO. The AI can give you topics and keywords for your content based on what users are searching for in Google and other search engines. And by giving content to users that they actually want and search for, it does help with your rankings. AI can also give you ideas in regards to blog post titles or email subject lines that convert and you can also input your old blog post topics to see how you can improve the content.
You can increase your website traffic and increase your rankings based on what content AI provides to you. What AI also does is that it can analyze data and patterns faster than a person can which helps identify weaknesses with your SEO strategy.
While AI does help with SEO rankings it can also hinder them as well. If you generating content just for the SEO algorithms, Google is going to sniff that out right away. You’re not creating content for robots, you’re creating them for people and while AI is new and sexy, using it incorrectly can hurt you more than it can help.
Are There Benefits to Using Content Generated by AI?
As humans we get the occasional writer’s block when it comes to things like blog posts, marketing materials, emails etc.; it happens the best of us. What AI does is help remove some of those roadblocks. You can input a keyword and the AI can spit out content based on that keyword.
Most content generators that use AI can create paragraphs in mere seconds. With more instruction from the user, the AI can produce more and you’ll have an entire blog post or copy written for you in several minutes
Probably the biggest benefit with AI content is that it is cost effective. Instead of paying copywriters etc. you can just use the AI to spit out content for you instantly. You get more for less basically.
What are the Dangers of Using AI Content?
Like most things there is always the other side of the coin and AI generated content is no different. One of the biggest gripes about AI content is that its written by robots for robots. AI doesn’t fully understand the nuances of the human language and you will still need to go in and make edits to the copy to sound more authentic than robotic.
There is a good chance that the AI may not fully understand your intent and it spits out something completely different to what you were looking for. Again AI doesn’t fully comprehend the human language completely and it can misinterpret what you were asking it to create copy wise.
To me the biggest danger with content generated by AI is plagiarism or the perception of it. Multiple people can be inputting the exact term and the AI is going to give each of them what it thinks they want. Problem is that the AI doesn’t automatically creates different content for different users who inputted the exact keyword. It has rows and rows of data that it pulls from to generate it’s content and the chances that your content and someone else’s will be nearly identical or sound the same is very high.
Does Google Penalize AI Content?
The answer isn’t really definitive one way or the other. Late last year Google rolled out it’s latest algorithm update, the helpful content update. The helpful content update targets websites that have a relatively high amount of unsatisfying or unhelpful content Basically where the content has been written for search engines rather than people.
Based on recent data it doesn’t seem like the helpful content update has had the severe impact to website rankings like the way the Panda update did back in 2011. That doesn’t mean it won’t impact rankings down the road. As more businesses adopt content from AI as an alternative to paying writers etc. you can expect a big hit later on the road to rankings because of content generated by AI. AI content is expected to be about 50% of all content generated in the next 10 years so as the adoption of AI content grows so will the penalties from Google.
What Google is looking for when it penalizes websites are spammy and low quality content. If you’re just going to use AI content to generate mediocre content so you can rank higher and faster then don’t be surprised when Google hits you with penalties for your content.
How to Use AI Generated Content
The best way to use content generated by AI is to use it as a starting point for your content or copy. Use AI to help narrow down the topics and keywords that people are interested in and write for that. Don’t take everything that AI writes for you and just use that. AI content still needs a human touch to make it sound human and not like the robot that created it.
AI content is a great starting point but relying on it solely will hurt you in the long run. Google isn’t looking for content for robots by robots. It want’s high quality, authentic content and AI can’t give you that. It can help you get there, but in the end a person is still needed.
In Conclusion
If used correctly AI will help you SEO wise, but it also can hurt you more than it can help. As the lure of faster, easier to rank content from AI grows you will see more Google related penalties as well as algorithm updates that target content from AI. Use AI generated content as a launching spot for you to write your content. Just don’t attach it’s rockets to your back because sooner or later you’ll come crashing down thanks to penalties from Google based on your AI generated content.