Following on from my recent article about the pros and cons of AI, and my previous articles about how much ChatGPT will affect copywriting, and how it gets things wrong, I want to talk about how content marketers have been screwing the internet for years, and now we have a conflict between SEO and AI.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a bunch of tactics employed by marketing teams, website owners, and copywriters all geared toward improving the ranking position of a web page or site within the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
SEO is like the shifting tide of the internet. It’s ebbed and flowed based on technology and how users search. As the internet has changed, the way search engines sort web pages has also changed. And, every major review of the algorithm means a change in SEO tactics.
Now that generative AI is becoming so popular, SEO shortcuts are coming back to bite us hard.
There’s been a lot written about how AI is impacting SEO. Content marketers everywhere are revising their strategies in the face of stiff competition. But how are SEO tactics from the past affecting the AI-generated content of the future?
In this article, I’m going to look at how generative AI gets it wrong because of lazy, shortsighted SEO.
Table of Contents
Why SEO Became a Thing
SEO has been with us since 1997. Although there had been websites previously, the idea of gaming search engine rankings didn’t hit until then.
If the tales of the Internet yore are true, the manager of Jefferson Starship was so annoyed that his band’s website didn’t even appear in the first four search pages for their own name, he decided to fix it.
Back then, the way to get your site higher up the search results was to have it listed in multiple directories.
If you were a website owner back in the Internet Wild West, you needed to get listed on DMOZ, the Open Directory Project.
Oh, and repeat your keywords over and over…
and over…
and over…
again.
In 1998, Google was launched, and by 2000 it was powering Yahoo Search.
Scroll forward a couple of years and Google bought Blogger, a platform that made it easy to set up your own blog site.
Next, they launched AdSense, a tool that allowed webmasters to monetise their content.
The marriage of AdSense and Blogger meant suddenly, anyone could build a site and fill it with ads.
And the best way to rank?
Repeat your keyword…
Over and over.
How Is Past Keyword Stuffing Affecting AI?
One of the most glaring issues arising from past SEO practices is keyword stuffing. Content marketers used to stuff their articles with keywords to improve their search engine rankings.
So, keyword stuffing resulted in unnatural and often incoherent content.
And that content is still out there.
Fast forward to today.
Generative AI relies on vast datasets, including old web pages, as training data.
Consequently, these AI models have learned from content saturated with keywords, making them predisposed to generating content that is stuffed with keywords and lacks readability.
SEO Had Short-Term Focus But Lacked Long-Term Value
In the past, SEO strategies often prioritized short-term gains in search engine rankings over the creation of valuable and informative content.
This approach, which may have included the creation of thin, low-quality content, is now detrimental when working with AI content generators.
Generative AI aims to produce content that is informative and useful to users. However, the influence of past SEO practices can hinder the AI’s ability to generate high-quality, value-driven content.
Marketers Relied On Over-optimisation and Overemphasis on Ranking Factors
SEO strategies often place an excessive emphasis on ranking factors such as meta tags, header tags, and anchor text.
This focus on over-optimization can lead to AI-generated content that is overly structured and formulaic, lacking the creativity and natural flow required for engaging and effective communication.
This can be a significant impediment when trying to leverage AI to create compelling content that resonates with readers.
Backlink Building Skews Authority
For the last decade, Google has supposedly taken a dim view of spammy backlink techniques.
Black Hat backlink techniques included:
- Using Private Blog Networks (PBNs) to acquire numerous links
- Churning out low-quality guest posts on other sites
- Spamming the comments sections of other blogs
- Buying spammy, low-quality links on unrelated websites
Backlinks are viewed as a sign of trustworthiness by search engines. So, when site owners use manipulative techniques to rise up the rankings, it means bad content rises to the top of the SERPs.
AIs read that content and they cannot grade its quality or accuracy.
Although Google is meant to penalise sites using ill-gotten backlinks, the internet is rife with content that shouldn’t rank.
AI Is Trained On Content that Misses User Intent
Past SEO tactics didn’t always prioritise understanding user intent behind search queries.
Content marketers sometimes create content primarily to match specific keywords, rather than addressing the actual needs and queries of their target audience.
Finding the low-hanging fruit and working your content around benefits your rankings, but not your readers.
Generative AI, on the other hand, relies on understanding user intent to provide relevant and valuable content. When AI models are trained on content that ignores user intent, they can struggle to generate content that truly serves the user’s needs.
The Evolving Nature of SEO
SEO is not static; it continually evolves to keep up with changes in search engine algorithms and user behaviour.
As AI models are trained on older content influenced by outdated SEO practices, they may not be equipped to adapt to the latest SEO trends and requirements. This can result in AI-generated content that does not align with current SEO best practices, potentially harming a website’s search engine rankings.
Recent core updates saw Google placing greater importance on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
When dealing with YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) content that could impact health and financial well-being, Google is doing more to ensure websites at the top of the pile are trustworthy.
After all, we often rely on Google to answer serious life-or-death questions.
Using AI content in YMYL topic areas isn’t a great idea. An AI has no industry experience advising people on mortgage products. No software or app can provide the same authority on medical topics as a doctor.
What If Ill-Informed AI Content Is Influencing More AI Content?
Experts estimate that 90% of website content will be synthetically produced by 2026.
As content marketers work to protect and improve their rankings in a rapidly changing, hyper-competitive internet, they’ll employ AI to create content en masse.
But as AI content built on the SEO mistakes of the past fills the SERPs, it will become the source material.
A photocopy of a photocopy.
Every further rehash diluting the message and thinning the quality.
What Can Fix this SEO and AI Problem?
There are a few ways content marketers and website owners can improve AI content. All of them involve layers of humanity!
When using an AI like ChatGPT, you can’t always tell where it got its information. But if you ask it to provide sources for an in-depth article, it will do so.
Follow the sources. Check they are valid and relevant, and that they haven’t been discredited.
If you don’t have sources, find some. Find several reliable sites that back up the information you’re providing.
Treat AI as a tool. It’s not your copywriter, and it shouldn’t replace your brain. Use it to help build content, but remember to add some personality of your own.
Read everything it produces. AI churns out content in seconds. It makes spelling mistakes, its grammar is often poor. And—it’s a language model and can’t count.
Feed it specific information. The more specific you are with AI, the more accurate its output. By providing precise details and prompts, you can ensure that the AI generates the content you are looking for.
Remember, AI relies on the data it receives, so taking the time to provide relevant information will yield more desirable results.
The Future of SEO and AI
Every time there’s a major disruption in the way search engine algorithms work, someone declares “SEO is dead!” But as long as there is still a constant battle for the top Google results, we’ll need SEO.
With the rise of generative AI, SEO will evolve further. As website owners, content marketers, and copywriters, quality matters more than ever.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below and like, share, and subscribe!