AI and SEO content: A partnership the death knell your site’s & SERPs?

If you announced to the world ten years ago how you intend to use Artificial Intelligence to market your business, you would have been met with incredulous laughter. A small business in New Zealand using AI? Are you mad? Yet here we are.

In the fast-evolving digital landscape, Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a game changer across many diverse industries, including digital marketing. It’s provided new possibilities for digital content creation which, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you cannot fail to have questioned whether to use. After all, what could be simpler? Input a command and let a website do the hard work for you.

Access to a free AI tool that writes everything from blog posts to white papers should save you time and money. However, with this revolutionary advancement comes the question: Is AI and SEO content a harmonious collaboration to propel your website to new heights, or does it sound the death knell for your website’s SERPs?

The disadvantages of using AI for SEO content

• Lack of creativity. AI generates text from patterns and data. The text can feel formulaic which makes it less engaging – beige if you will.
• Inadequate comprehension of context. Human communication is not always straightforward. AI may not pick up on intent or tone which can make for confusing or inaccurate content.
• Lack of authenticity. AI uses algorithms and data processing to generate content, it does not do interviews, conduct studies, offer valuable insights into the human condition, or have intimate stories that make content likeable. It passes as a human, but the text lacks the authentic human voice. 
• Risk of plagiarism. AI writing tools rely exclusively on data. This means there is an increased risk that other similar tools will generate similarly predictable or identical text. 

Think about these disadvantages with consideration to the following:

• Content marketing grows the relationship between the audience and brand through relatable, engaging, and helpful content.
• Higher rankings are achieved with unique content written from a fresh perspective
• Google rewards quality content but penalises websites that manipulate SERPs through their content.
• Creating entirely AI-generated content solely for SEO purposes violates Google’s E-E-A-T quality guidelines and Google’s Search Essentials.
• Research by AuthorityHacker found 63% of AI users find its inaccuracies a major challenge.
• It’s not looking good is it, but rarely in life are things so black and white. 

How to use AI for SEO content without damaging SERPs

If you are reading this article to find out how to use AI to effortlessly produce SEO blogs for your website, think again. AI will not deliver the best SEO results. The key to using this technology in your digital marketing strategy is to use it as a supporting tool, the supporting actor rather than the lead.

Here are some examples:

• As inspiration for articles to avoid staring at an empty page
• To brainstorm related topics for future posts
• To suggest titles and headings
• Writing meta descriptions and short form copy
• Create different versions of copy to split test
• Create different versions of repetitive text e.g., product descriptions

Creating quality content is time consuming, so any tool that can make the process quicker is always going to be a valuable asset. AI has the capacity to generate a high volume of content quickly and efficiently, but the best approach is to use it to kickstart ideas and generate a skeleton of the first draft before giving it an overhaul with human TLC - your SERPs depend on it!

Digital Presence is a digital marketing agency, Christchurch based but proudly serving New Zealand. We deploy the latest innovations and techniques to streamline digital marketing and help businesses efficiently thrive online. If you would like to learn more about how web marketing can grow your business, contact us for a free no-obligation chat. Click here or call 0274 278047.