Finding the balance between evergreen and timely content can drive traffic and keep your blog relevant. Check out our guide to balancing these content types!
Will publishing AI-generated content harm your SEO performance? Here’s what you need to know.
AI content is all the rage, and you might be feeling the pressure from your team or stakeholders to increase your content output with generative AI. But we’ve all seen the work that gen AI platforms produce — and it’s not always pretty.
With Google continuing to stress the importance of quality, helpful content, is AI really the right move for your SEO strategy? Or is AI-generated content bad for SEO? In this guide, we cover how Google treats AI-generated content and what you can do to leverage AI while still performing well in search.
While some sites publishing AI-generated content felt the effects of the March algorithm update, Google doesn’t specifically penalize AI content. In Google’s own words, “Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines. This means that it is not used to generate content primarily to manipulate search rankings, which is against our spam policies.”
How does this come into play when using AI for SEO content creation?
Your content needs to provide value and satisfy Google’s E-E-A-T standards. Google doesn’t penalize AI content just for being AI-generated, but that doesn’t mean you can let the quality slip.
Google’s recent major algorithm updates have focused on serving only quality content in the search results, and AI platforms are notorious for outputting low-quality work. When utilizing gen AI for your SEO content, you need to make sure everything you publish has been reviewed and edited by humans to be helpful, original, and accurate.
With the 2024 March algorithm update, Google cracked down hard on what it considers spammy content. The end goal of using AI for your SEO strategy is to speed up the content creation process, but you need to avoid spammy practices.
Don’t use AI to flood the internet with hundreds of low-quality blog posts or landing pages meant to manipulate search rankings. Google will flag and penalize these. Instead, use it to help generate first drafts and quick pieces of content while you focus on other tasks like research, interviews, editing, and strategizing. AI is a tool to help your content team become more efficient, not replace them.
Leveraging AI content for your SEO strategy is like walking a tightrope (human strategy and editing) over a safety net (AI-generated content). If you successfully make it to the other side, you’ve impressed the Google algorithm and your readers with a piece of high-quality, useful content. But one misstep can send you tumbling down. The safety net of AI content is there to catch you by ensuring you still have something to publish, but your audience won’t be impressed by your low-quality act.
Here are a few best practices to follow when using AI to help you produce content.
Generating first drafts isn’t the only way you can incorporate AI into your content workflow. If you aren’t comfortable letting AI create drafts — or if you aren’t getting the results you want — explore other ways you can leverage AI to speed up your process.
Consider using AI during the research stage to put technical concepts in more digestible terms or have AI repurpose a blog into a social media post. Generative AI can save you time and effort on smaller tasks like metadata; you don’t always have to think big picture with a whole blog post.
Every piece of content generated by AI should be reviewed for quality and SEO best practices. Make sure the appropriate keywords have been included naturally, internal links are sprinkled throughout, and the organization makes the content easy to skim and read. No content should be copied straight from the AI platform and published on your site. If possible, say who reviewed the article and link to a page with their bio and credentials.
When working with tools like ChatGPT, a detailed prompt will get you far better results than a quick one-sentence prompt. A prompt like, “Write a blog on when to get an oil change” will spit out some generic, regurgitated piece that’s no different from every other existing article on the topic. Know exactly what you want the AI tool to include and not include before prompting.
Just because you can use generative AI doesn’t always mean you should. Certain content pieces will hit harder when written by a human. While AI can write for you, it can’t think for you.
Content like a blog post on how to clean pet hair off a couch is easily handled by AI (and lifted to SEO perfection by your expert eye), but AI will fall short on pieces involving thought leadership, emotions, and stories. For instance, a thought leadership article on the future of AI in SEO or a case study detailing a successful client project is best written by a human. Leave AI content behind when crafting these pieces. AI can still help with research or noticing trends, but it’s up to you to tell the story in these scenarios.
AI has left many digital marketers questioning the future of SEO, especially with the rollout of Google’s AI Overviews. These Overviews show an AI-generated response at the top of the results for some searches, providing a quick answer to the user’s query. There’s a lot we still don’t know — and may never know — about how Google chooses what information and which pages to cite in the Overviews.
Currently, there’s no official way to rank for AI Overviews. Google says, “[Our] systems automatically determine which links appear. There is nothing special for creators to do to be considered other than to follow our regular guidance for appearing in search, as covered in Google Search Essentials.”
Since AI Overviews pull information from search results (and cite sources), you need to ensure your content appears where it’s scraping. Continue following SEO best practices, including:
AI doesn’t have to be your content enemy. When leveraged correctly, it can significantly improve your content creation efficiency and allow you to focus on other vital tasks for boosting your brand’s presence in search and beyond.
Whether you’re interested in high-quality AI-assisted blogs or want to leave the machine out of the content, GPO can help. Chat with us today to learn about our range of content offerings and how they can take your brand’s online presence to new heights.
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