What does AI mean for the future of content marketing and SEO?
We’re living through a fascinating moment in the evolution of technology. AI used to be something you read about in academic papers or sci-fi novels. Today, you can’t go on Twitter without reading about the latest AI-powered startup or being offered AI marketing tools.
But it is fun. ChatGPT has put an incredibly powerful tool in our hands for free. An intelligent machine that can do anything from imitating animated sitcom character Sterling Archer to writing code.
So, what does AI mean for the future of content marketing?
I wanted to share what we’ve learnt so far plus tips for how you can use it, and talk about where this all might be heading.
How good is the quality of AI-written content?
The quickest way to get a sense of the quality is to have a play with ChatGPT.
In my opinion, social media copy written by ChatGPT is about as good as an undergraduate that’s two weeks into a placement. Take this tweet that it wrote for The Pitch:
Startup founders: don't miss out on the opportunity to showcase your company and gain valuable feedback from industry experts at #ThePitch. Plus, the winner takes home a cash prize and the chance to secure funding. Enter now! #startups #entrepreneurship
It’s picked up on specific elements of the competition and had a reasonable guess at relevant hashtags, but it doesn’t understand our tone of voice.
The quality of articles gets a bit more complicated. Most tools won’t let you produce anything of significant length and the quality isn’t great.
The awesome Anne-Laure Le Cunff used AI to produce 100 articles in two hours to find out what it was capable of. The tool box she created tackles psychological concepts like The Butterfly Effect and Confirmation Bias.
The writing is clean. But the posts feel somewhat staccato, containing a series of individual points but failing to build a narrative. And that makes them quite difficult to read.
The tools aren’t good enough to write entire articles now (although people will do that). But they can provide support with lots of the tasks involved in SEO. You can see this in how Copy.ai has structured its product, splitting out tasks like:
Blog ideas
Blog outline
Blog title
Keyword generator
Freestyle
The quality is going to improve quickly too. Dismissing these tools based on what they can do today is like expecting video game innovation to stop at Pong in the 70s.
What impact will AI have on SEO?
Google’s spam guidelines include “automatically-generated content”, although they don’t specifically mention AI:
“Spammy automatically generated (or "auto-generated") content is content that's been generated programmatically without producing anything original or adding sufficient value; instead, it's been generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users.”
The bigger picture is that Google wants us to create “helpful, reliable, people-first content”. A long-term stance that was further cemented in last year’s aptly named “helpful content update”:
Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge?
After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they've learned enough about a topic to help them achieve their goal?
ChatGPT has been trained on the internet, which is why it sometimes says things that are factually incorrect. It’s debatable whether that constitutes “first-hand expertise” but the fact remains that great content is written by subject-matter experts.
In this sense, AI tools are likely to increase the gap between articles that are churned out for SEO and truly great brand-building content.
Can Google tell if your site uses AI-generated content?
We don’t know how good Google is at spotting AI-generated content. One of the few case studies we have is Neil Patel who, rather unsurprisingly, was running a farm of AI generated sites.
The websites that were created by AI experienced a 20% drop in search traffic, with their keyword rankings dropping an average of 7.9 positions, when Google made a spam update.
That’s just a snapshot. We don’t know enough about Google’s response but it’s worth remembering that the search giant has been developing AI for a long time. With the rush of interest in these tools, you can bet they’re thinking hard about how they use it to beat spam and superpower search.
The news that a ChatGPT-powered Bing could be months away has only heaped on pressure – this is an existential challenge to Google’s search monopoly.
Long term, you can expect an AI arms race between tools that create content, from blogs to academic essays, and the tech giants that can profit from spotting it.
A similar race will play out in every industry from cybersecurity to travel as AI impacts the roles of knowledge-based workers and reshapes whole industries. To understand the scale we're talking about, the creative destruction wrought by the internet provides a useful case study.
Learning to write amazing prompts
AI tools are only as good as the prompts they’re given. People are already selling guides with “400+ new prompts”. Not to mention that AI art is a thing – there’s value in the skill. This is important context for understanding the impact on people’s job roles.
People are going to become experts in using AI for marketing. The service will become prevalent on freelance marketplaces like Fiverr and marketing agencies will add various services to their toolkits.
Eventually, marketing teams may have specialists or simply prioritise hiring people who are able to use AI alongside traditional skill sets.
If you want to find out more, Wired has a great article about how AI will assist humans. I’m also a great fan of the documentary AlphaGo, which is a few years old, but digs into how machines can teach us new things and even be creative.
Should we start using AI in our content marketing?
Lots of content is written specifically for SEO. It often relies on desk research. Copywriters are given a detailed technical brief, research subjects and write articles.
At Inkwell, we distinguish between this approach and compelling content written by subject-matter experts.
Both approaches can drive traffic to a website, but we want to do more than that. We want content that builds trust with potential customers: SEO is important, but everything you publish needs to give a great impression of your brand. There’s little point in ranking if you’re not delivering a good experience.
Making that distinction is going to be even more important when these tools increase the volume of content that’s being produced.
Finally, there’s a significant chance using AI to write articles will lead to search penalties. We work with large B2B brands – it’s not worth the risk.
What do you think?
The thoughts in this article are based on my limited experience using AI tools, listening to experts and thinking about the potential impact on our industry: I’m no expert, so please treat what you’ve read accordingly.
I’d love to know what you think. Contact me on LinkedIn with any questions you have, examples of how you’re using these tools or thoughts about where this is all heading. And, please don’t hesitate to correct me if you spot any mistakes.