With the recent rise in AI content creation tools, a lot of business owners are wondering how they can use them for their business. Website content, social media and blogs are usually the first things to come to mind. But with the rise of AI content detectors, will it help you or hurt you in the long run?
Obviously, we don’t have a crystal ball to peer into the future. But we can tell you what we know about Google’s views on AI content creation and how that can impact your business if you decide to use it.
Google’s E-E-A-T Update
Back in August, Google tried to get ahead of the AI content creation curve with updates to its E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness or Trustworthiness) algorithm. The “helpful content update” redefined what it considered to be low-quality content to push original people-first content written by people, for people. Basically, this meant that Google would rank these pages higher in search results, showing them to more people.
In December, Google took it a step further with the E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness or Trustworthiness) update. By adding “experience” to the algorithm, Google is prioritizing the first-hand experience of content creators. It goes without saying that a human writer is going to have that personal, first-hand experience that an AI content creator is missing.
Google has also shared that it doesn’t matter how much E-E-A (Experience, Expertise or Authoritativeness) a page has if it’s lacking Trust. You can think of the T as the center that everything else revolves around. But how do you build trust with Google? It might be easier to talk about how you don’t build trust.
Here are a few examples of how to get flagged as a low-quality page:
- Missing the first-hand experience with the topic you’re writing about. For example, writing a review about a store or restaurant you’ve never been to.
- Needing the expertise to be knowledgeable about the topic of the page. Writing a blog on how to bake a souffle when you’ve never done it yourself would be a big no-no to Google.
- Inadequate authoritativeness about the topic of the page. This would be like us writing a blog about rocket science. (We’re the experts on websites, and we’ll leave the rockets to NASA.)
- Lacking trustworthiness about the topic. This could look like a restaurant website without any menu, location or ordering information.
How Does Google Feel About AI Content?
With all of these updates, it probably comes as no surprise that Google doesn’t want you to use AI-generated content on your website to boost your search rankings. In fact, this kind of content is a violation of their spam policies.
Here are a few examples of spammy content to avoid:
- Gibberish content that is full of keywords (also known as keyword stuffing)
- Using AI content creation without review or curation
- Having AI rewrite a piece of existing content (basically rearranging the words. Think: copy my homework but don’t make it obvious)
- Aggregating existing content without adding anything new
That doesn’t mean you can’t use AI content creation at all, but we’ll get into how to best use it later.
What Does That All Mean?
While these might seem like straightforward changes, there are more layers to it than most people think. Just write about things you know, right? Not exactly.
Yes, Google wants you to write about things you have first-hand experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness on. Google wants you to write helpful people-first content. But it goes beyond that. Google wants you to answer baseline questions and build deeper content, like pillar pages. This means that you have to be a teacher, but in a way that’s engaging and meaningful — you can’t just spout random knowledge on a page in the hopes that Google notices. While word count doesn’t necessarily matter, businesses will benefit most from long-form content. For us here at Infomedia, that means blogs that are closer to 1,000 words instead of 500 words like we’ve done previously.
AI Content Detectors
You’re probably thinking, “Okay, great. I’ll just plug in a prompt and get AI content creators to write a 1,000-word blog once a month. Problem solved.” Unfortunately, that’s probably not the best idea. As we mentioned earlier, Google has a toolbox of people and automation meant to combat that exact type of content.
In fact, there are new tools rolling out, both from Google and third parties, meant to identify AI content creation. These AI content detectors use datasets to figure out if a piece of content was generated by human hands or an AI content creation tool.
As tools for AI-generated content get better, it just makes sense that the tools used to combat them will too. After all, AI content detectors are AI themselves. (Robots fighting robots. Sounds like a sci-fi plot, right?)
Create Helpful, People-First Content
Now on to the question you’ve probably been asking yourself, “How do I use this new and exciting tool to improve my business?” The good news is that you can. The bad news is that AI content creation tools are just that — a tool. AI isn’t going to replace human copywriters, but it can help them in the writing process.
AI content creation tools can scrub the internet and give you a piece of aggregated content, but they can’t add any new ideas. And the new ideas are what Google (and your audience) are looking for to build trust. They also lack the creativity, critical thinking and emotional intelligence needed to create high-quality, helpful content. It goes without saying that you need people to create the people-first content that search engines and customers look for.
Here are some tips to use AI content creation tools to help (not hurt) your business:
- Your copy will only be as good as the prompt you give it. Be as descriptive as possible.
- Edit, revise and add value to your AI-generated content. (This can also help you avoid being dinged by AI content detection tools.)
- Fact check everything that is produced by AI. A few companies are already in hot water for AI-generated misinformation.
- Use AI content tools for inspiration and suggestions when you’re stuck, not to create an entire piece of content.
Need Some Help?
Our team is always on the cutting edge of new technologies. We’ve been researching and testing AI content creation tools since there were first whispers about what they could do. We can guide you through what we know and what we expect to happen as these tools grow and adapt. And if you don’t want to use AI at all? We get that. Our human copywriting team has the experience you need to create helpful, people-first content unique to your business. Let’s talk about the unique challenges that your business is facing.
