Wondering if taking an AI shortcut to generate content will ultimately make your site fall on the search engine results? Should you just not use AI content? Will AI generated content hurt your rank?
The short answer to this is: it depends on how you choose to use it.
- AI content can provide a researching shortcut that will NOT hurt your rank, IF you ONLY use it for research (not writing).
- AI content that’s edited to the point of becoming something new, could prove helpful… and will NOT hurt your rank.
- AI content that’s lifted word for word will hurt your site.
- If you’re just chopping up AI content (which is already pretty much chopped up), or copying it verbatim into a post… your post/website is likely to drop down in rank, YES.
All of this said, though: there is hard data supporting the use of original, NON-AI PRODUCED writing to build your website.
The evidence comes from data compiled by SEO expert Nathan Gotch, who states the following:
“83% of Top Google Search Results Are Not Using AI-Generated Content”
Therefore, if you can avoid the use of AI, and instead rely on human writers to create high quality content for your site, you stand a much better chance of establishing your site high up in the Google Ranks.
And in support of that point: why would you use AI in the first place, when research and writing are things you ALREADY know how to do?
As a copywriter and content creator, I don’t bother with AI content, period. I don’t care how many people say it’s a “shortcut and time saver.”
My content brain has been doing this since 2003, which was when I moved from corporate employee to having a web based business. I have written mass amounts of content in that time.
Therefore, I don’t need AI to write me an outline or work me up a set of points. We already have THE ENTIRE WEB where, if I need to read up on a topic, I can quickly look up my question and find an expert or two, to help me build my argument or make a point.
I also want to say this about the “AI generated” content at the top of Google. First, the fact that it’s listed as “experimental” should tell us to be careful and not lean so hard on what comes up there.
Let me just repeat that.
Do NOT Rely on that “Experimental AI” Up at the Top of Search, to Do Research for Writing or Personal-Use Purposes
I’ve actually taken a look at the AI content that sprang up on a few topics that I happen to be very well read-up on. While in some cases, AI provides a nice, clean summary… in other cases, the information up there is dead wrong.
And the fact that AI actually just spits out information from the most viewed sites, is alarming.
What I read there was NOT accurate, based on deep research I had done before, and from personal knowledge about the topics. The AI summary proved, in this case, to be glaringly inaccurate and a way to spread false information.
But, you know… the AI isn’t always wrong. So if you choose to glance at or paraphrase the summary you find there… do your due diligence, and find supporting evidence from other places (experts, scientific data, authority sites) to back the claims you find via AI, and want to emphasize in your article that you’re creating.
What About Using AI to Generate Content for Your Website?
Again: I’m against AI generated content. But that won’t stop a lot of people from taking what they perceive to be a time-saver. So let’s cover some good practices for, if you choose to use AI content to build your site, how to approach such a project.
- Publish original ideas on your website.
- Establish your own hook or angle in the writing.
- Get rid of junk content that Google is likely to penalize.
- Keep both search engines and humans in mind.
Publish original ideas on your website.
Good research involves finding solid evidence and then applying that to your topic in a way that makes sense.
There’s a great aricle and video from Gotch SEO that explains this. Owner Nathan Gotch cautions against searching a topic on Google, finding a few different articles, and then swiping the ideas from those articles, to include in your own website article or blog post.
You don’t technically need AI to do this. But if you DO use AI, it’s more or less the same affect, unless you spend considerable time reworking the ideas you find. There is a “lazy” way to use AI that will harm your website’s search prominence. But you can also use AI as an idea wellspring.
Establish your own hook or angle in the writing.
The smarter approach, that will help you rank high, is to find your own angle that spins the idea in a unique way. Niche spinning works great for this. Example: If I wanted to build a site that helps landscape company owners get more traffic, I could spin this same point to the landscaping niche.
My advice to them might be “Publish original content on your site, such as unique landscape designs you’ve built for clients, or landscapes that serve a specific purpose, such as to save water or be friendly to clients with limited mobility.”
As you can see, the advice, to “publish original ideas” is the same, but the unique spin toward the landscaping niche adds value.
Get rid of junk content that Google is likely to penalize.
In 2025, Google will bury “regurgitated junk” type of content, which is essentially recycled content copy-and-pasted from AI or lifted directly from other sites. It will also hide websites that create a difficult user experience.
Sites that are difficult to navigate, include dead links, and other confusing elements, will drop down in the search results, to make room for sites that create ease-of-use.
Keep both search engines and humans in mind.
Website content that’s written for search engines will sound repetitive. Read it out loud, and you might find yourself mentally glazing over due to its repetitiveness.
If you know your way around web content, you’ll be able to spot content that’s keyword-loaded without regard to establishing a writing voice that talks to the human brain. AI generated content is still flawed in that the computers can’t seem to smoothly transition from one idea to the next.
That “bridge” that connects two thoughts, is often absent in AI content. This is what makes that regurgitated flavor pretty obvious about AI generated content, which is why it makes so much more sense to just write.
One human mind, speaking to other human minds is far more powerful than word-spitting artificial intelligence. After all, the keyword here is ARTIFICIAL, and it’s still pretty obvious who the fakes are.
How to Stop Leaning on AI to Get Your Site Content Written
As a writer with 20 years of experience; to me, AI is a crutch. You believe you need it, so you use it… but guess what! You have a brain, a keyboard and two hands. YOU CAN WRITE.
Believing that we need AI to accomplish the simple task of writing content counts as hooey in my humble opinion. Here’s how I think about it.
Once social media showed up in our lives, we all became keyboard warriors as they say. So it’s a matter of recognizing this about yourself: that you’ve been typing or talking away into your phone, to drop comments here and there and everywhere on social media, for easily the last two decades.
How much time do we spend using the communication/writing portion of our brain compared to 20 years ago? I would bet it’s more than doubled. Social media turned even the most reluctant writers among us into content creating machines, whether we know it or not.
Why would so many then come to believe that artificial intelligence is something they would need, when they’ve been writing naturally, creating content to advise others, for so long now?
I would imagine that those who were good at writing before the dawn of social media (waves hand) have drastically sped up their content production. And those who didn’t really want to write before, are probably now pretty good at it.
So, where does AI fit into all of this? While I’m not inclined to use it myself, I will acknowledge Nathan Gotch’s point that he made in his article about Google Penalizing AI, which is that it comes in super handy for data analysis.
If you have the need to spew a big mess of statistics and then analyze them this way and that, AI seems to make quick work of such a task.
If you feel like using AI to generate a report or compile evidence of this type, I won’t try to stop you.
But the writer and lover of words in me, does want to remind you: if you use social media; if you spend a good portion of your time on Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites, typing carefully crafted posts and comments…?
Guess what? You’re probably great at writing. And you probably don’t need AI.
And if Google is penalizing those heavy-hitting AI users… why even touch it at all? You’ve got an active mind and flying fingers. Just let it flow.
Forget AI. Hire Dina to Write Your Content.
Dina Gio has been slamming out content for the web, and writing copy for clients and employers, since 1996. She will take on your writing, editing and SEO projects like they were her own. Email dinagio@dinagio.com for a copywriting, content writing, editing, or SEO tune-up project today.