With simple instructions and a mouse click, off it goes; AI software can write a 1,000-word article in a few seconds- great, right?
SEO consultants should all immediately sign on for Universal Credit, and their careers finished?
We don’t think so, not just yet, so hold your horses on that front, and we shall explain why within this article.
Quality is everything
So, many SEOs ask, should they label it as such if they use AI-generated content?
As a lot of us SEO, we are an over-cautious lot, most of us at least, and with good reason.
Time and time again, we have seen Google rollout numerous algorithm updates that have meant that overnight, for defying the Webmaster Guidelines, some businesses have instantly vanished from Google’s results.
So, some SEO companies think that generating AI content marketing seems so easy. Will it harm the business’s search engine optimisation later down the line?
Which we think is an excellent question.
So, at a recent Tokyo SEO conference, when Gary Llyes was asked whether businesses are generally labelling AI-generated content, he replied, “It is not necessary”- as he is a Search Analyst at Google, well, that’s all we needed to hear.
So, if you haven’t got to label AI content as being such, what checks should you be doing yourself to ensure that the 1,000 words you’ve just used Chat GPT for are quality and reliable information?
E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.
This is super important, and you need to grab a coffee and have a good think about this.
If there are 1,000,000 articles, all have been written using AI, well, how can the artificial intelligence show experience?
Real-life experience?
For example, someone writing an SEO post might write most of the article about how their first attempts failed, that they had to keep trying different methods, and finally, they found a way of succeeding.
But how can AI show real-life experience? Of operating in the real world? And failing? And the succeeding? Or at expressing how hard it is to build backlinks or how difficult it is to deal with some customers who are never happy with your SEO efforts?
Well, that’s the thing AI at the moment is trained on data; it doesn’t live in the real world, it doesn’t eat, sleep and breathe the work you do, so it can’t express itself, in a way a human can- that’s why we think SEO’s jobs, well there safe for a bit longer.
Write content for humans, not search engines.
So, this is a line that’s used time and time again on various marketing company websites; however, this advice must be followed.
For so long, companies, marketing companies included, seem to be a bit like working out in the gym.
It needs to be done for, say, 30 minutes; just run on the treadmill, and don’t give it much thought.
And that’s how many marketing companies treated writing content marketing, setting a word count of 700 words and saying, right, that needs to be done every Friday.
Well, this type of content marketing will likely be rubbish, impractical, or helpful to your customers.
Instead, what’s important is to create helpful content written for humans your customers.
So, let’s break that down as to what that means for improving a company’s SEO; let’s say you sell a rather mundane item: dishwashers.
Well, an SEO consultant might start unthinkingly writing content marketing once a week with content marketing; that’s something to do with washing machines. Perhaps, just writing wishy-washy (pardon the pun) articles which mention certain brands of dishwashers in the article.
Yet what’s far better is this:
– Think about questions your business frequently gets asked and write content marketing to answer these
– Make the work as helpful as possible
So, for example, you could write about:
Our ten most energy-efficient washing machines
How to correctly describe your washing machine
Which brands offer the most extended guarantee on our washing machines?
It’s not so much if AI wrote it; it’s more if the work is quality or not
So, let’s reference Gary Illyes just one more time; he stated on June 16th 2023
“It’s not so much if AI wrote it; it’s more if the work is quality”.
The Present: E-E-A-T Guidelines
Experience
So, how do you ensure your content marketing is high quality?
Well, you must make sure that each piece of work follows E-EAT.
Expertise
Just as you wouldn’t take advice from somebody without a clue what they are talking about, neither should you when you read a piece of content marketing.
The work needs to be written by an expert, and Google will want to validate that; for example why not provide a link to the author’s LinkedIn profile? This will demonstrate their experience, even their qualifications on the subject.
Authoritativeness
For any given keyword, hundreds, thousands, if not millions of businesses could compete for that keyword.
So, to separate your business from the crowd, you need to prove your business is an authority in what it does.
Now, how’d you do that?
Suppose your business is respected, well-known, and a brand many people appreciate. In that case, it’s more than likely that your business will have hundreds, thousands, potentially millions of quality followers and no follow backlinks.
If you have all of these backlinks connected to your website, and they send link equity through to the pages, your business is an authority in terms of what it does.
So, for example, let’s say that your business restores classic cars and your enterprises are well-known worldwide.
Many people have taken their pride and joy in their valuable car to your business, and you greatly blog about restoring cars and making them look as if they are brand-new.
So, you might get a lot of backlinks from motoring journalists and manufacturers of products such as car waxes and various car care products.
Through all of these backlinks, this will show that your business is an authority in what it does.
Trustworthiness
This depends on how much the reader needs to spend on content marketing. It boils down to this: is your business a thing to do with YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics?
If it does, then it’s essential that the work is reliable and accurate and that an expert writes it.
For example, if the article is about removing a stain from a shirt, this is not a hugely important topic, so even if the advice is not very good, it will not impact the reader that much.
Other than the stain might remain on the shirt!
Yet, suppose the advice concerns a Your Money or Life topic, such as remortgaging your house. In that case, this is a massive decision, and it’s one where you need expert advice, so Google will make sure that work can be trusted; an expert note inclusion writes it.
So, to conclude, there’s no conclusive answer as to whether AI content marketing can help improve your business’s search engine optimisation.
It boils down to whether a robot or a human has written it and whether the work is quality.
What assesses if the work is quality is the E-E-A-T Guidelines, and your marketing agency must follow these; otherwise, if these guidelines are not followed, this could affect your business’s sales.
