October 2024
Is AI-generated content bad for your SEO efforts?
“Why should I be bothered to read something you couldn’t be bothered to write?”
“Why should I be bothered to read something you couldn’t be bothered to write?”
This saying is peppered all over social media on memes, GIFs, and in posts – especially on LinkedIn.
The overriding sentiment among marketers in 2024 seems to be that AI should be avoided at all costs, but is AI-generated content actually bad for SEO (search engine optimization)?
And will you be punished by Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for publishing AI content?
Maybe. But maybe not.
Because AI is a gray area right now.
Yes, most AI content is at least somewhat recognizable for its stilted, flavorless, not surprisingly robotic cadence and word choices.
So, if you plan to publish AI content as fast as the chatbot spits it out, you’ll definitely see negative effects on how your content is categorized by Google (and probably how it’s received by your audience, too).
In that case, it’s true – people probably won’t read it.
But what if you use AI content as a starting point rather than a quick copy-and-paste strategy?
Is the presence of any AI-generated content bad for your SEO efforts?
The overriding sentiment among marketers in 2024 seems to be that AI should be avoided at all costs, but is AI-generated content actually bad for SEO?
How to spot AI-generated content
First, we should talk about how to spot AI-generated content (because some people are total bloodhounds for its presence while the rest of us are trying to figure out how they know so fast).
AI content refers to any textual, visual, or auditory material created by artificial intelligence.
AI algorithms have access to a seemingly unending amount of data and language models to produce content that almost sounds human.
I say almost because there are a lot of AI content “tells,” like:
- Overuse of certain words (most of it is jargon or buzzwords like “supercharge” and “leverage.”)
- Strangely formal sentence structure (that sounds nothing like a person would produce)
- Monotonous sentence length
- An abundance of misplaced emojis
- Formulaic headlines, subheads, and lists
The best way I can describe it is that AI-generated content almost sounds like someone had a word count to fulfill and wanted to sound as smart as possible.
But it sort of has the opposite effect.
Most AI content reads like whoever wrote it has no clue what they’re talking about.
The thing about most true experts is that they do an incredible job of simplifying complex topics and making it easy for non-experts to understand.
The current quality of AI-generated content definitely does not sound like an expert wrote it.
Which brings us to how Google measures the value of content.
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
EEAT: Google's Ranking System
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
This is the basis of the framework that Google’s human reviewers use to assess content quality. The stronger your E-E-A-T score, the higher your content is likely to “rank” in Google’s search results.
Obviously, a framework like this has to exist. Not just because anyone can truly publish anything on the internet…
But also because of the prevalence of AI-generated content and its poor fact-checking abilities.
AI algorithms have been known to make things up, and even AI-generating websites warn you to double-check factual accuracy of any and all content that their language models produce.
Why should you care about E-E-A-T?
For one, it’s important for creating content that’s valuable and relevant to your audience – a huge factor in fostering trust with your past, current, and future customers.
For another, by making sure your content aligns with the E-E-A-T principles, you’re more likely to end up with the kind of quality SEO content that Google ranks highly.
While E-E-A-T isn’t a direct factor that plays a role in the “crawlers” Google uses to rank SEO content, it’s a solid way for you to determine if you’re playing by Google’s rules to rank content based on authority, perceived value, uniqueness, and relevant keywords.
And while Google is supportive of the role of AI in delivering “helpful information,” they point out that it goes against their guidelines when it’s used to “manipulate search rankings.”
In other words, AI content is bad for SEO if you’re using it for any of the following purposes:
- To mass produce poor-quality content
- To scrape feeds or “steal” from other content creators
- To combine multiple pieces of web content without adding original value
- To create nonsensical content that simply contains loads of search keywords
All those activities go against Google’s spam policies.
So, when is AI content not “spammy” but useful instead?
There are really an endless number of ways to use AI, not as a replacement for human beings, but as a tool to increase your efficiency and even creativity.
Using AI As A Tool
At this point, it could be easy to conclude that yes…AI-generated content is bad for SEO.
But that’s not the whole story. Because although AI can be used for spam-like reasons, that’s not the only way to use it.
There are really an endless number of ways to use AI, not as a replacement for human beings, but as a tool to increase your efficiency and even creativity.
To spark your imagination as to how you can best put AI to work for you, here are a few of the different ways we’ve used it (without any damage to our SEO efforts).
As a brainstorming partner to generate ideas for:
- Initial keywords and search terms
- Topics to cover within a post/article
- Content topics to write on
- Names/headlines
As a research assistant to:
- Identify patterns or trends that could be useful
- Find customer reviews on a product or service
- Pull together FAQs on certain subject areas
- Quickly pool multiple resources
As an analyst to:
- Gather data from literature or articles
- Point to key themes in a piece of content
- Break down a long-form piece of content into short-form topics
As a writing assistant to:
- Generate an outline
- Cobble together a first draft
- Complete first-round edits and proofreading
The possibilities are likely endless and people are always surprising me with the things they use AI for.
When it comes to SEO, the key seems to be that you can’t trust it to generate usable content for you in the form that it first appears.
You can absolutely use it to decide which topic to cover, brainstorm some search terms, generate an outline of the article, and write a first draft.
You can even input insights from a Subject Matter Expert and ask AI to include them in the first draft as long as you – or another human on your team – have actually gone out and interviewed that expert for their opinion.
According to E-E-A-T principles, this is where you want to take over.
You can let AI write the whole piece and then try to interject your personality and point of view after the fact, but that tends to take longer and sound less human than if you write it yourself with AI’s output to guide you.
This is because human content sounds human thanks to tone, personality, and the quirks that only a living, breathing person can inject a piece of content with.
Avoid AI content damaging your SEO efforts by creating quality content.
Don't Let AI Spoil Your Efforts
Avoid AI content damaging your SEO efforts by creating quality content that ranks well according to SEO results and reads well so your audience cares what you have to say.
Because that’s what your SEO efforts are for anyway.
They help you publish content for readers that gets noticed by your target audience so you can build trust and relationships with them.
And right now, the best way to ensure that is by being as involved in your content creation routine as possible.
Don’t step out of the way and let AI take over for you.
Let it be the tool that helps you create even better content. Rather than the replacement that churns out mediocre pieces you aren’t proud of.
If you need help creating quality SEO content, book a call, and let’s talk about getting you the monthly support you need.