Google recently confirmed in a revision of its spam policy that the search giant will exclude artificial intelligence (AI)-generated blogs that seem like clickbait from search results. Google said the reason they are doing this is it wants to reward companies who focus on creating high-quality, user-centric content to provide a better experience for searchers.
What does this mean for businesses and their marketers? Well, it doesn’t mean that you have to remove AI from your SEO blogging strategy. It simply means you can’t use AI to develop mountains of low-quality blogs to simply game Google’s algorithm and aren’t useful to the humans using the search engine.
AI just isn’t good enough yet to produce written content without human input. And while Google reps have said that they can’t necessarily claim that their technology can tell the difference between an AI written article and a human one, it can tell the difference between quality and unhelpful content.
So, now what?
Can we still use AI to write SEO blogs?
Yes, you can still use AI tools to develop your SEO blogs. However, you cannot let it do all of the work for you.
Like we said, Google can tell the difference between high and low-quality content. If you have large amounts of AI-written blogs that you haven’t thoroughly edited to make useful and user-friendly, Google will go back and de-rank it. If you continue to produce content in this way, you’re risking Google tanking your traffic.
If you want to continue using AI to create your SEO blogs, you certainly can. You just need to use the tools differently.
How to use AI for blogging without penalty
There are numerous ways you can still use AI to help you create your SEO blogs.
Personally, we use AI to help us identify topics we may not have thought of before. Any writer will tell you a blank page is one of the most intimidating things to witness. With a few well-crafted prompts, you can get numerous topics to choose from. Some of them may not be great but it can help get the gears turning in your brain.
Once you’ve identified a topic, you can then use AI to draft an outline of the blog for you to help you keep the ball rolling. Again, identify which ones are actually useful or relevant before you start typing out your blog.
If you want to use AI to actually craft the rough draft of your blog, you can certainly do that. HOWEVER, once it is finished you need to do some editing at the very least. Double-check any claims. Add your own (or your brand’s) tone and emotion. You probably even need to rephrase some sentences.
Do. Not. Skip. These. Steps.
AI pulls all of its information for your blog from industry leaders on the web. This means the information is simply reworded and spit out onto the page. If you don’t understand how Google’s algorithm works – when deciding who to rank higher when similar information is available it will weigh expertise, quality of content, and user engagement among other things.
Now, ask yourself: If I landed on a page with robotic-sounding sentences that simply restates content I can find elsewhere, how engaged would I be? You’d likely hit the back button within seconds, right?
So, even if you managed to sneak 100% AI-generated content past Google (you probably won’t), within days your bounce rate would have your blog sliding down SERPS or removed completely.
That means you’ve wasted your time and the money you’ve spent on your AI tool.
In conclusion…
AI tools aren’t going to go away. However, we need to learn to use them ethically and in a way that it still provides value to our website users.
If you are struggling to use AI to increase your SERP rankings, consider calling on the Oddballs! We have lifelong writers on staff who know how to incorporate AI into website building without damaging your reputation with Google.
