Last updated - November 17, 2023
SEO specialists understand they need different content types for higher rankings and the overall marketing success of their WordPress websites.
The problem: It takes time to generate enough SEO content regularly. A lack of time or writers who could provide high-quality texts according to your requirements is among the top reasons to consider AI tools like ChatGPT for content creation.
Such tools are great, but there’s a catch:
Given that they aren’t as intelligent as many believe, it’s critical to understand all possible drawbacks and negative consequences that AI-generated content may bring to your website’s overall performance.
In this post, you’ll find the top three dangers that AI-generated content can bring to your SEO endeavors. Just keep them in mind when deciding how to use AI tools for SEO content creation and promotion.
So, let’s dive right in!
AI Content isn’t Original
Why do you think many websites now add “no AI content” to their editorial requirements? Or, why do content writing services like Writing Help add “essays written without AI” to their features?
Simple:
AI text generators can’t provide you with original content.
They are LLMs (large language models) trained on text databases to craft coherent text content. While they can generate assets that will look “original” for plagiarism checkers, the context of their content is not original at all.
What AI tools like ChatGPT do is predict likely word sequences based on the statistical patterns in the massive online database. They don’t understand the meanings and context behind the generated words. As a result, you get a generic text with no depth, unique information, or insights.
More than that, your chosen AI tool can share false information on the topic because it doesn’t understand or check if it’s true. Since it “sees” that info online, it builds it into sentences that look grammatically and logically correct but miss fact-checking.
And last but not least:
Google itself considers AI-generated content non-original. They say it’s against their guidelines and compare it with content spinning and spam. No surprise there since AI content shares pre-existing online information, lacking up-to-date evidence and a unique experience.
If you are relying too much on AI-generated texts for your SEO content, you’ll soon get nothing but copycat posts from dozens of already-published websites. Such texts don’t add value or new information to your niche, and search engines won’t consider them worthy of higher rankings.
Danger: Getting banned for AI-generated and, thus, duplicated content.
AI Content is of Low Quality
I’m a web writer with about ten years of experience in content creation. And it makes me smile how excited my SEO colleagues and other specialists unrelated to writing are about ChatGPT’s “skills” to craft texts looking as if it was a human who wrote them.
Why?
Don’t get me wrong: AI tools are great at imitating human writing. And I can understand why it’s tempting for SEO specialists to use them: They need texts to publish fast and not wait for a human writer to provide them.
The problem is that those texts aren’t human writing but rather imitation (yet!). With all due respect to high schoolers, AI-generated content now looks like it’s written by a 6th grader.
They are generic and superficial, with tons of repetition and redundant words. They are monotonous. Such texts don’t contain any formatting or structure for better readability or engagement. AI tools often generate lengthy sentences and place the same argument or idea several times throughout the text.
Long story short:
AI-generated content is average. While it’s OK to write outlines or first drafts, I wouldn’t recommend using them as a final version to publish on your website.
For such texts to bring you SEO benefits, you need to revise and improve them:
- Optimize them for search engines (consider your target keyword, LSI, etc.).
- Edit poorly-written sentences.
- Structure them according to the rules of web writing: power words, short paragraphs, logical structure (subheadings), etc.
- Think of visual elements to improve visibility and engagement.
- Add arguments supported by relevant and authoritative references.
Another detail to consider when deciding to use AI tools for generating your SEO texts:
Be mindful of your niche. Tools like ChatGPT still can’t write on some controversial topics: wars, politics, religion, and so on. If you ask AI to generate texts on these topics, it can share inaccurate or biased ones.
Danger: Getting superficial, poorly written, and inaccurate content for your website.
AI Content Fails Google’s E-E-A-T Guidelines
As you probably know, Google updated its search quality rater guidelines in December 2022, evaluating the content, among other things, based on its creator’s first-hand experience.
Thus, E-E-A-T stands for:
- Experience
- Expertise
- Authoritativeness
- Trustworthiness
Moreover, Google puts “trust” at the center of this concept. It indicates content quality through the extent to which the author has experience in the niche (topic) to understand if it’s worth the user’s trust.
As far as you understand, AI content-generating tools can’t provide you with SEO texts that would be at least minimally consistent with the E-E-A-T guidelines.
Even if you add an expert name to the text and introduce that person as an experienced specialist in the niche, Google won’t see it as authoritative and trustworthy. The author of your SEO content should be a legitimate source of information with credentials and relevant past work.
For that, create an About Us page on your WordPress website to introduce the team and highlight specific writers. Provide author bios where you’ll establish writers’ credentials and portfolios. They should be real people you’ll collaborate with for content creation.
When generating SEO articles with AI, please do your best to agree on them with your expert writers. Allow them to revise and improve AI-generated assets according to their writing style, expertise, and skills.
As a specialist with a background in your topic, a human writer will help you polish the content according to their quality standards. Given that you’ll publish the article under their name, they should review it to understand if it meets their professional level. It’s about a writer’s reputation, after all.
Danger: Poor content under an expert’s name; low rankings or no rankings in search engines, and, as a result, no traffic and conversion.
In a Word
AI content generators are on the rise now. There’s nothing wrong with them, and they can be great assistants for SEO specialists and other experts working with content.
They are helpful with generating content ideas, outlining your SEO texts, or completing some technical and monotonous tasks like meta titles and meta descriptions. The point I’ve tried to bring home is that content creators shouldn’t 100% rely on AI. Think of AI tools as helpful hands, not full-time performers replacing you at work.
After all, they aren’t that smart (at least, not yet!) to generate original and high-quality content with the added value we all want to see online today. Once your AI tool gives you a text, re-read it and ask yourself, “Is it the information I’d like to see as an answer to my query in search engines?“
