With artificial intelligence’s rapidly increasing impact on our everyday search for answers, I asked myself the question of whether or not AI is harmful for content generation and, subsequently, search engine optimization.
We know that in school or the workforce, it is discouraged in most cases to use AI in order to generate content as a replacement of original, authentic work, but do major search engines such as Google also think this way? The answer is no. Google does not inherently penalize AI-generated content but rather analyzes the quality of the content produced. Google has stated that their ranking system rewards high-quality content regardless of who or what creates it. However, Google will not reward AI-generated content created with the intention of manipulating and deceiving the users to jump to the top of the search ranks. This is often achieved by spamming key words without including substantive information to support them with the sole goal of ranking higher in search results. Google has policies that defend against mal intent such as this and only reward sites that contain user value and high-quality, informative content. Google states that all high-ranking sites must align with their E-E-A-T principles (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
The main disadvantage of using AI to generate content lies in the fact that it may focus on quantity over quality, and that if not prompted correctly, AI may focus more on key words and what it can say to rank higher in search results, than producing quality content, informative and valuable to the reader. That is not to say, however, that there are no advantages of using AI to help generate content for SEO. AI has the ability to generate content more efficiently and on a much larger scale than human writers. If utilized correctly, this can be done in an ethical, intentional way that will produce massive amounts of high-quality, valuable content. AI tools are also available in order to promote keyword optimization by analyzing search trends, competitor strategies, and currently high-ranking searches.
I believe the solution lies in combining artificial intelligence with human skills as I don’t believe AI can ever fully replace human originality and creativity. This could mean using AI-generated content but having a human writer read through it to ensure that the content is informative and valuable to readers. Or perhaps a human writes the content and then utilizes AI SEO tools to identify key words to make that content rank higher in search engines. In any case, the main thing to remember is that the main goal of all content, no matter the source, is to answer questions that people are searching for in an ethical, thoughtful, and trustworthy way.
5 Responses
In my time online, I’ve frequently seen both sides: people over-using AI and people who refuse to have anything to do with it. AI will most likely be interwoven into modern workflows, but I hope that, like you said, it won’t replace quality content. I think it should be used to create a more efficient workflow and optimize content to be received well (in terms of SEO, of course), but never to replace original and authentic thought.
I really liked your balanced take on this. You explained Google’s stance on AI clearly, especially how quality and E-E-A-T matter more than how the content is created. I also agree with your point that the real risk is when AI prioritizes quantity or keyword stuffing over actual value. Your idea of combining AI efficiency with human creativity is a very realistic and ethical take, especially as AI becomes more integrated into SEO workflows. This was thoughtful and well-supported!!
Hi, I enjoyed reading your blog post. I agree completely with your conclusion about combining both AI and human intelligence to create the best content. AI does allow content to be created more efficiently but it misses the component of human originality and creativity. Allowing for both parties to come together helps create ethical content that appeals to both humans who are looking for answers and google who is ranking the websites. It is nice to learn that Google does have protection through E-E-A-T principles (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) to guarantee high ranking websites actually earned their placement. Overall I thought this was an interesting and well written article!
This is so interesting Violet! Thank you for sharing! I thought the EEAT principles are really important. Google searches for quality and not quantity, and just a copy and paste from AI does not provide this.
I really like this take on SEO in addition to AI, I’ve never really thought about these two together. I like the point about what standards Google has and what they are looking for with the EEAT principles, that’s something I’ve never heard about before I thought that was really interesting. I like that you tied in ethics with something that is so controversial lately like AI.