AI technology has made content creation easier. For some it is a blessing, for others it’s a curse. Many content creators and marketers remain wary and skeptical about AI, while others are fully embracing it and delivering content like never before. As with any advantage, there are possible risks. The question on everyone's lips at the moment is: Does Google penalize AI-written content?
- The short answer: No, if you’re creating valuable content and adding from your personal experiences.
- The long answer: You’ll read in this blog post 😉
To know how to play and win the AI content creation game, it's essential to understand how to utilize it within the bounds of search engine guidelines. Let’s take a look.
Does Google penalize AI content?
If you’ve been using AI to create content, you can rest assured. No, search engine giant Google does not penalize AI-generated content specifically. However...
Google's algorithms are designed to evaluate the quality and relevance of content. It's important to ensure that your AI-generated content is well-written, informative, and provides value to readers. Avoid ‘spammy’ content in order to avoid any potential penalties from Google.
📚 Reading Tip: SEO Best Practices for 2023
What exactly differentiates spammy content from informative content? Let’s first take a look at Google’s spam policies.
Don’ts ❌ ‘Spammy’ content
'Spammy' content (which will be downranked by Google) can be defined as:
“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. Examples of spammy auto-generated content include, text:
- that makes no sense to the reader but contains search keywords
- translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publishing
- generated through automated processes without regard for quality or user experience
- written using automated synonymizing, paraphrasing, or obfuscation techniques
- generated from scraping feeds or search results
- stitched from different web pages without adding sufficient value”
If you want to create valuable content, this is what you shouldn’t do.
But what should you do? We'll now take a look at how to create content that Google will consider valuable and informative.
Do’s ✅ How to write content that won’t get penalized by Google?
Remember this guy? Just like Clippy didn’t always produce the best recommendations, AI can occasionally produce inaccurate content. While AI writing tools can enhance your content, fully AI-generated articles aren't the silver bullet for driving traffic.
By now, we know now that Google will not penalize you if you use AI to help you write content, as long as you make it valuable and informative. But what makes content valuable, accurate, and trustworthy?
Google handles internal guidelines to determine whether a piece of content is high quality: E-A-T guidelines (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). Here are some key factors to consider.
1. Write for people, not for search engines
- Shift your focus from creating search engine-first content to people-first content.
- Be sure to understand your audience's needs, preferences, and pain points, and use this knowledge to augment the AI-written content.
2. Demonstrate expertise and experience
- Include your own knowledge and expertise to the article.
- Make sure your content is well-researched, informative, and factual.
- Give a brief introduction to the authors and explain why they have knowledge in the field. What is their expertise or experience with the topic?
- Make sure the content creators' credentials, qualifications, and experience are highlighted. You can do so on dedicated Author pages.
4. Show authoritativeness
- Include data or statistics to support your claims.
- Link to credible websites and cite credible sources.
5. Build trustworthiness
- Be transparent about any potential biases or conflicts of interest.
- Avoid excessive advertising or promotional language.
- Update content regularly with new insights.
And that, ladies and gents, is how you write content that Google loves. ❤️
Example of using AI for content creation and how Google ranks it
Let's examine a real-life blog article that uses AI to assess the effectiveness of AI in content creation and its impact on Google's ranking.
In this article "Can AI Write This Blog Post For Us? Battle of Top 3 AI Writing Tools," we compare three different AI blogging software (StoryChief, Jasper, Copy.ai). In order to create this article, we utilized our own AI-powered writing assistant.
Here are the tasks for which we employed AI in this particular article:
- Generating blog topics
- Creating blog titles
- Producing an editorial brief
- Developing a blog outline
- Writing blog paragraphs
- Compiling a list of pros and cons
- Conducting spell-checking and paraphrasing
Google currently ranks this article at position 6. Takeaway message: AI-written articles can rank if you consider the following:
What AI absolutely can’t do is write all on its own. It needs your fresh ideas and proprietary knowledge to feed it great prompts. It also needs your keen editing for fact-checking and brand voice. - (Source: StoryChief Blog)
Conclusion
To reap the benefits of AI content creation, use it wisely. AI can be your trusty sidekick in content creation, but ranking on Google still requires human input for fresh ideas and editing. Together, you'll whip up content that's pure magic! 🪄📝
