The rise of ChatGPT has sparked a whole new debate around content creation. Some call it revolutionary, others call it the single worst thing to happen to content, but all agree that we’re seeing the dawn of a new age. That raises a few important questions, like whether you should incorporate AI content into your content writing strategy.
As human-like as text generated by ChatGPT and Gemini sounds, can it really compare to the real thing? And if you were to use AI-generated content, how would that affect your search engine rankings? Finally, what role can content writing services play in all of this? The answers are more complicated than you might think, largely because of a recent Google algorithm update that changes everything.
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What is AI Content?
AI content is any media produced by generative AI. That covers mediums like images and videos, but in the context of content marketing, it refers to articles or blog posts generated by chatbots using Large Language Models, or LLMs, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini (formerly Bard), and Meta’s Llama. The same goes for social media posts and basically any other type of written content.
The Role of AI Content in SEO
Now, while there’s a lot to say about AI content’s negative impact on SEO, it’s important to recognize its advantages, too. After all, 35% of businesses use AI to produce content, according to a Forbes survey, and they’re doing that for a good reason. There are factors like scalability to consider. AI allows you to produce content at an absolutely unprecedented scale. Simply telling people not to use it is like vouching for pen and paper during the rise of the typewriter.
And it’s not just scalability, either. AI’s meteoric growth rate means that the content it produces is virtually indistinguishable from human content to at least half of survey respondents. It basically provides a cost effective, easily scalable, and vastly cheaper way to create all kinds of content, so what possible reason could there be to avoid it?
Well, there are already plenty of examples of AI content gone wrong, many of which came shortly after ChatGPT took the world by storm in early to mid 2023.
If you want to learn more about incorporating AI content into your digital marketing, check out this blog post!
Why You Should Tread Carefully With AI Content
When ChatGPT arrived on the scene, it really felt like everything had changed forever. It received 1.7 billion users a year after its November 30th, 2022 release date, and as it turns out, many of those people worked at highly regarded publications.
Just take a look at what happened over at CNET. Long regarded as a central source of news about the tech industry, CNET seemed like the kind of place that wouldn’t dare put its reputation at risk. And yet, the allure of AI was too much to resist, and CNET decided to publish articles written entirely by an LLM chatbot.
This ended up becoming an absolute PR nightmare for the company, firstly because it plagiarized other people’s work, secondly because many of its statements were blatantly incorrect, and CNET never disclosed the content’s true author. The incident was widely regarded as a journalistic disaster, and the company’s reputation never really recovered.
This wasn’t the only organization to make such a fatal mistake, either. Sports Illustrated went through something similar when they published AI content that they quickly deleted when the folks at Futurism asked them about it. The point is, plenty of major organizations have used AI to generate articles, and it often hasn’t ended well.
But, you might be thinking, this is all in the past. LLMs are much more advanced now, and as long as you disclose that you’re using it, AI content should be fine, right? Well, not quite.
How Google’s Algorithm Update Changes Things
This is where things get a little sticky. Back in March, Google announced a new core algorithm update that’s made AI content even more of a risky proposition than before. Now, technically speaking, the updated search algorithm doesn’t necessarily penalize you for using AI-generated copy, but that’s only if you look at the surface.
Dive deeper into the effects of this update, and you’ll see how catastrophic it has been for sites using AI content. By some estimates, nearly 2% of the surface web was deindexed, and all of them had at least some AI generated content. Around half of them had used AI to create as much as 90% of their content. That’s not a coincidence.
If you look a little deeper into Google’s announcement of the update, you’ll see that they’re emphasizing high-quality search results. Basically, Google wants its users to receive content that conforms to its new EEAT criteria, or Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It also wants to remove spammy, low-effort content.
That’s where the dangers of using, or at least overusing AI, come in. Even if you don’t get deindexed, there’s a good chance that your traffic will plummet. Just take a look at Bonsai Mary and House Fresh, two blogs that saw traffic decrease by 95% and 91%, respectively, and they happened to use AI-generated content.
AI content, no matter how similar it seems to the real thing, just doesn’t generate what Google’s looking for, at least in its original form. There’s also the matter of SEO optimization. Unless you specify what keywords you want it to use and where an LLM won’t use them, and research is half the battle anyway. That’s not to say that you should never use AI, though, but there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way.
How to Use AI Effectively in Your Content Strategy
For all its flaws, AI’s not all bad. It’s a tool, like any other tool. Grammarly didn’t make grammar obsolete, it just helped writers automate the proofreading process. This is similar to what AI can do in this area, although its effects are decidedly broader than those of a simple proofreading tool. It can create text, arguably from scratch, and it’s great for coming up with ideas and outlines.
But with that said, you can’t just copy and paste the content without harming your SEO. You see, all AI content has a pattern. It might not be apparent to a casual reader, but AI detectors can detect these patterns with relatively high accuracy, and Google has its own systems in place that are clearly even more effective.
These systems search for awkward phrasing, bad content structures, and other indications that content was generated by AI. They also evaluate content based on its quality, value to users, and the site’s historical performance.
All things considered, using AI blindly can do more harm than good, and if you want to know how to avoid these pitfalls, the answer is quite simple. Just write meaningful content that informs and engages readers. Provide legitimate answers to questions based on your experience, expertise, and authority, and establish yourself as a trustworthy source of information.
Prioritizing EEAT signals like this means adding a human touch to your writing. That’ll help you avoid Google’s pattern recognition systems, eliminate the risk of suffering the same fate as Bonsai Mary and so many others, and give readers a genuine reason to keep coming back to your site.
Use AI to create outlines and brainstorm. Use it as a tool, not a crutch. And remember, whether it’s a hammer, a drill, or a large language model, the tool needs someone who knows how to use it; otherwise, it’ll do you no good!
Interested in learning the secrets behind high-quality content? Read our blog post on content creation hacks for businesses!
Why You Still Need Professional Writers
Your main takeaway from all of this should be that Google doesn’t necessarily penalize AI content, but it’s cracking down on low-quality, spammy content. Simply put, the SERP will prioritize sites that enrich the user experience with value-adding content, and AI isn’t always the best at providing that.
If you want to scale up your content creation while avoiding the pitfalls of Google’s March 2024 core algorithm update, Content Development Pros has got you covered. Our content writing team has 15 years of experience creating top quality blog posts, articles, and social media posts for clients around the world, and our track record speaks for itself. We can help you level up your content production capacity while improving your search engine presence!
Connect With CDP Today!
Give us a shout at (877) 897-1725 to learn more.