AI Content – Google and Search Rankings
Everybody is pushing it but does Google Penalise AI Content? The answer is both yes and no. Googles AI search engine guidance will state themselves they don’t penalise AI content. But the real world data seem to show that AI content does not rank highly on search engines. But is this google penalising websites or users not using the tool correctly? Probably a bit of both
A lot of companies are pushing AI generated content including all the major wordpress builders and plugin providers. For example the wordpress page builder elementor and SEO plugin Rank Math both have a generate AI button that just writes your content for you. I have a problem with this as it will likely negatively affect your SEO. RankMath will actually decrease your on page SEO score for not using their AI generated content despite the fact human content is unquestionably better. You’ll notice these are additional tools that require additional payments so maybe that’s why their pushing something that is not in the best interests of your website. We have large companies pushing us into AI generated content when real world data seems to suggest the opposite
Human Content Outranks AI content
We need to be mindful that lots of companies are making lots of money from AI and they’re all fighting for a place at the table. Your websites best interests is not at the top of their priority list. We’re being pushed into AI content despite the fact human content is far better. Neil Patel of ubersuggest arguably the biggest SEO marketer in the world recently released results of a study he ran. With the data they analyzed, 94.12% of the time, human-written content outranked AI-generated content. And on average the sites they surveyed AI content generated 3.18x less traffic than the human-written content. I’ve linked a couple of relevant youtube videos below
As the title of Neil Patels video above states “Everyone is creating AI content, But very few people are reading it“. So, what does this mean for AI-generated content creators and businesses relying on it for their SEO strategies? It suggests that while Google may not explicitly penalise AI content, it certainly doesn’t favor it either. The lower rankings and decreased traffic experienced by AI content indicate a preference for more engaging human-generated content by search engines and users alike.
How AI works – Are you wasting your time?
We have to keep in mind how AI works. Its not putting out original thoughts or new information. Its repurposing content that is already out there and available and then regurgitating it. I would consider AI an advanced re-spinner tool. Re-spinning is an old SEO trick. You would take content someone already created put it into a spinning tool it would re-spin it to make it somewhat unique. AI is really an advanced model of that. It pulls the information from a mass database including books, websites, social media and academic research papers spins it and passes out the information. People want to read something interesting not machine regurgitated machine generated text.
How I use AI for creating blogs & articles
I use AI to blast out ideas. For example I might ask the AI to give me 20 blog ideas in a particular niche. That alone is a massive time saver. Instead of sitting down and having to write out ideas ChatGPT can do it in an instant. Another good trick if you get writers block submit the current article contents to ChatGPT and ask it to finish the article and to give you 5 different variations. This will open up a host of ideas on how you can progress and finish the blog. I won’t use the content it provided but it can get the flow moving again in the direction I want but with my own original content.
Conclusion: Shortcuts lead to long delays
AI is a useful tool but you have to use it right. Don’t over depend on it. Make it work for you not against you. AI content creation can actually help you skyrocket your own content but not in the way you might think. With a large percentage of marketers and website owners now using AI content it gives you the opportunity to outwork your competitors. Spend the time writing your own engaging SEO Rich content and you’ll get the rewards.
But to finish off we need to keep in mind that this is a new and rapidly evolving technology so the goal posts may shift quickly. What’s relevant and working today may not work tomorrow.
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