Savvy business owners know that one effective way to stay at the top of search engine results is to create quality content consistently. And that takes a lot of work as you need to brainstorm interesting topics, find the right angle, research the subject, and finally put pen to paper and create content that is unique, engaging, and useful.
So, naturally, you may be excited to learn about AI-generated content. You mean, a machine can do all the hard work while you reap the benefits? Sign me in right now, please!
Not so fast!
While content written by AI may sound like a no-brainer for most business owners, the matters are more complex than just feeding a machine the right input and waiting for it to generate content.
Why you may ask. Well, for starters, Google isn’t really happy with this kind of content. And, here’s why.
First Thing First: What Is AI Generated Content?
As the name suggests, AI-generated content is content written by artificial intelligence. While it may sound like a novelty, the truth is that natural language generation (NLG,) the process of creating meaningful sentences in the form of natural language, has been around for over 60 years.
If you think that your content marketing has been missing out on AI writing, don’t worry. Although it’s been around for so long, only recently we’ve been able to create systems that can automatically generate content that sound more like natural language.
But, the advancement has been quite impressive.
The UK Press Association, for example, claims that is using AI to write about 30,000 news articles every month. Moreover, the company OpenAI has created one of the largest language models that can generate content in different styles, such as stories or medical content.
It all sounds really promising. So, why shouldn’t you start using an AI tool to create more content right now?
Should You Use It?
There is quite some debate on the use of AI-generated content. On the one hand, there are the data enthusiasts and computer scientists who are excited about the capabilities of using machine learning to simplify our work, be it content creation, data analysis, or ad metrics monitoring. On the other hand, there’s Google which sees automatically generated content as spam.
And, here’s why.
As we all know, Google cares A LOT about user experience. For an article to get at the top of Google search, it needs to be unique, well written, and add value to those reading it.
Although AI-generated content has improved tremendously since 20 or 30 years ago, it’s still no match for natural language. Moreover, most AI content tools rely on the old tricks of rehashing content, swiping worlds, or using synonyms to make articles look unique when they actually aren’t. And, because AI-generated content is considered spam, it falls against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
But, can Google detect content that has been created using an AI tool? It’s hard to say. While it’s not clear yet if Google has the capability to differentiate between human-generated and machine-generated content, if they do find it, you will probably get a penalty.
When (and How) Is It OK to Use AI-Generated Content?
We know what you are wondering right now: should you just not use AI-generated content at all?
Not necessarily.
While you can’t use AI for generating an article from start to finish, you can use it to streamline the content creation process and improve the quality of your articles.
For example, if you are a content writer who usually struggles with organising their ideas and starting writing, you can use AI to help create an outline of your content.
You can also use AI to collect data from surveys, social media interactions, website clicking behaviours, and other relevant metrics that you can use to improve the quality of your content. AI can also help you get an in-depth look at your analytics and identify any trends or patterns that could boost your content creation efforts.
But, if you really want to use AI to elevate your content, then you need to look beyond the data and try to give all of this process a human touch.
And, that boils down to personalisation.
While you can use AI to create ad copy, products descriptions, and marketing messages, make sure to review the content and personalise it based on the actual context.
For example, don’t just automatically generate “Happy anniversary” emails for your customers. Customised them by using their names, making personalised recommendations, and so on.
Or, if you are using AI to create an ad script, review it and make sure that the language is natural and that it fits your brand’s voice and persona.
What’s Next?
Creating high-quality content is hard. While artificial intelligence won’t completely take over this task any time soon, it can definitely help make things a bit easier.
Although machine learning has advanced in recent years, AI-generated content is still not good enough to mimic natural language. And, because of its spammy feel, Google doesn’t approve of it and you may get a penalty if you are caught automatically generating articles using AI tools.
That’s not to say that you can’t use AI writing at all.
In fact, AI writing can be great for speeding up the content creation process and helping you create more insightful and targeted content. However, you do need to carefully review it and add a human touch to it.
We Can Help
If you are still wary about using AI-generated content but don’t have the time to create as much content as you want, then you can reach out to us.
We here at Australian Internet Advertising are expert marketers and know what it takes to create content that both your audience and the search engines will love.
So, call us now!
