You’re pretty excited. You prompted ChatGPT to write you a blog post and you had it less than a minute later. You spent 10 minutes editing and you’re ready to post, right?
Not so fast.
If you care about getting traffic to your site, not just in the short-term but over the long-haul, I urge you to think twice.
It’s true that content creators are flooding the Internet right now with so much instantly generated information that we all want to cry. At the same time, there are many who are making bank by promoting their products and services in their articles or YouTube videos. So kudos to them on the short-term win.
And while you spent 10 minutes touching up the information from ChatGPT, where do you think that information came from?
In web parlance, it was scraped (aka stolen) from other sites.
If you don’t take the time to fact check the post, you can be publishing plagiarized information. Worse, you can serve your audience an article filled with falsehoods, which the AI chatbots are known to put into their content.
Again, in web parlance, these lies told by ChatGPT are called hallucinations.
And while search engines aren’t currently punishing creators that use AI to generate content, that could still happen. If it does, your website, blog post, YouTube videos could all go from hero to zero in the literal blink of an eye.
Four Steps To Safety
If you don’t have the time to spend marketing online, you’ll want to blend human and artificial intelligence to create the most helpful content for your users as quickly as you can.
1. Diversify your content
Just as you probably diversify your business by offering multiple services and serving multiple clients, you want to think about the use of AI in content creation the same way.
If you don’t have the time to spend marketing online, you’ll want to blend human and artificial intelligence to create the most helpful content for your users as quickly as you can.
Consider posting a mix of AI content—which always needs a human fact check and review—with some purely human-generated content. This way, if an algorithm update happens, your site rankings will be at least partially protected.
Another way to approach this, though, is to make a habit of building every web page, blog post, YouTube script and social media post with a blend of both artificial intelligence and human intelligence.
2. Find the balance
If you’ve used an AI chatbot to generate a first draft, you’ll want to run your content through an AI detection tool that will tell you what percent AI and what percent human the tool thinks your final piece is.
How do you use this information?
The same way the algorithms do. Every algorithm is different though. For example, while Instagram might allow a 70% AI created post, the search engine Bing might penalize a blog that it detects is 95% AI and only 5% human.
It’s a lot to keep track of, right? And then the algorithm for any given platform can change at any given time. So then what?
That’s why I find it’s safest for businesses to use a blend of AI and human intelligence on every piece of content.
Keep in mind that while Google might not punish 100% AI content, it does say that content generated to manipulate search results (rather than serve humans) is considered spam. Posting spam can impact your ranking.
3. Cite your sources
Some generative AI tools like Koala will give you the option of citing sources. It’s critical that you take advantage of this. It doesn’t mean that every source needs to appear in your blog post or social post.
But you want to fact check it to make sure the information you’re about to make public actually is true. Otherwise, you risk your reputation when someone goes to fact check you and finds out you posted an AI hallucination.
4. Generating AI content does not replace an SEO strategy
Before the release of ChatGPT, it was standard practice to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is a strategy to get content to rank higher and be shown to more viewers on a particular platform like Google.
As a trained SEO, I can tell you there’s a lot involved with targeting the right keyphrases that can beat the competition, creating content clusters that show deep knowledge of target keyphrases, and sending Google (or a social media platform) the signals that tell it you are authoritative and trustworthy.
Many Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are now abandoning traditional SEO (search engine optimization) strategies to rely solely on AI. For this reason, Eli Schwartz, the author of Product-Led SEO, recently posted this on X:
“Too many CMOs think that AI-written content is an SEO strategy that will replace actual SEO. This mistake is going to lead to an explosion in demand for SEO strategists to help them fix their traffic when they find out they might have been wrong.”
More than 50 industry heavyweights left comments agreeing with Eli, while there was only one voice of dissent.
While AI tools will speed up your SEO strategy, it’s still a process that takes time and some expertise. If you want to play the long-game, keep using SEO to build out your content strategy while you also take advantage of drafting content with generative AI.
Take it easy
Trying to get up-level your content game at a time when the industry is in an incredible state of flux is time consuming.
We all know how quickly AI is evolving and, right now, this technology that is promising to make our lives easier can make you feel breathless just trying to keep up.
A well-executed content strategy that blends AI and human intelligence can drive leads to your business while you sleep.
If you’re not already AI savvy, you’ve got a couple of options.
1. Stick with the 100% human methods you’ve always used.
2. Commit to learning as much as you can about the changes in the industry
3. Hire an AI-savvy content strategist who can help you avoid the pitfalls and achieve your goals.