The Closing Gulf Between SEO and AI Content Creation Tools

With Google’s latest update that came out early this year, the much-disputed myth about the penalties attached to the use of AI-generated content has been removed. 

Across the world, businesses are readily incorporating AI-generated content in their marketing strategies to produce more personalized, leaner, and insightful content for their respective audiences. According to a recent survey by Influence Marketing Hub, “71.2% of |marketers| believe that AI can outperform humans at their jobs. 

What’s more, the report cites that 60% of marketers plan to either use AI or ML in their influencer campaigns with 61.4% of US marketers and advertising professionals already using it for content creation as well as other marketing-related activities. 

Why are Some of Us Not Getting Results? 

If you have been using AI content for a long time and still not seeing any impactful results then you cannot simply blame the AI content generation tool as there might be something horribly wrong with your content generation strategy. 

It is precisely here where we lose complete sight of the picture and fail to hit the mark, as the success of any type of strategy be it an organic-content strategy or AI-content strategy precisely depends on the way we are producing the content. 

If we are mindlessly publishing AI content in a robotic tone that is completely irrelevant to the reader’s intent then such a strategy is destined for failure. Without a solid methodology backing your core content production strategy that interprets and incorporates the reader’s psychology to add fine distinction and legitimate value to the mix, it simply won’t work for SEO. 

So, what can we do here as no business today can afford to fall behind the rest of the world in this growing tug-of-war? The simple solution is to use AI content creation tools intelligently while conforming to Google guidelines with respect to AI content as well as their core quality content fundamentals. 

For this first let’s take a brief look at how Google curates AI content: 

Well, to your astonishment Google still rewards high-quality and valuable content regardless of the fact whether a machine or human generates it. If you are producing people-first content that is helpful and readily fulfills E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) parameters then that content will rank. 

Think of it this way, AI-generated content can never strike the same emotional attachment with the reader or convey a sense of empathy, so without research or proper instructions, it will never be able to generate people-first content as redundant as we have become we still hold an edge in understanding reader or customer psychology better than the bots. At least, in terms of content.  

So, the human touch will be always needed to strategize and convey the right message in line with the search engine’s guidelines. What this basically entails are five things:

• Understanding Your Audience’s Psychology (Conducting surveys where necessary)
• Designing or Positioning Your Content Psychology as per the Audience’s Insights 
• Use Prompt Engineering Methods to Intelligently Convey the Right Message to the AI Tool
• Using AI Tools to Generate or Research Different Content Generation Methods or Tonal Variations
• Proofread, Edit, and Improve the Content Until it’s Perfect for Your Readers 

Brief Recap: Key Takeaways from Google’s Last Content-Related Update

As per Google’s last content update, it has requested content producers to evaluate their content in terms of “Who, How, and Why”. What does that mean? Well, let’s take a look:

WHO: Google is giving importance to the author in terms of judging the authoritativeness of a piece

HOW: Google is putting greater emphasis on understanding your audience through reviews or transparently revealing your content production methods can help you build greater trustworthiness with your audience. 

Moreover, if your content is AI-generated and this fact is self-evident to your readers, then here Google has suggested providing a brief background of your automation journey or how AI has been helpful in your content production, which means instead of discouraging it encouraging the use of AI tools. 

WHY: This is by far the most critical question you should be asking yourself as it is greatly aligned with Google’s core search fundamentals and ranking systems that prioritize people-first content and EEAT instead of search-engine-first content.  

What does this mean in terms of automated content? So, if you are creating content just for the sake of manipulating search rankings then this act will be reported as spam, and Google can either penalize or blacklist such a website. 

Why Do We Need to Consistently Produce Quality Content? 

Because Google only rewards quality content and reports all other types of content that are merely produced for the sake of juicing up a website as spam. Its identifying markers may not be strong now but in time substandard or spam-y content will not make any impact in the world of search.

Some Popular Methods to Use in Combination with AI Content Generation Tools:

Design Thinking: This approach will not only help you understand your audience but at the same time help you build a powerful outline as well as the complete structure of your piece. 

Prompt Engineering: This will help you intelligently use AI tools to avoid unnecessary information.  

Best Practice Solutions:

Know Your Audience: It is always better to know your audience as without it you will fail to deliver people first content.

Keep a Clear Goal: Your content creation goal should be always delivering value to your reader.  

Use the 50:50 Method: Don’t completely rely on automated content as there is still certain ambiguity in Google policies, so try to mix AI with human content for better results. 

Keep a Reliable Internet at Hand: Another thing that can greatly disturb your outcomes is not having a secure and fast-speed internet as nothing will seamlessly work without it and you will always be on the brink of data privacy leaks. So, to avoid such a situation, we would suggest Xfinity internet plans for the ultimate dependability.