SEO Content and AI: Key Do’s and Don’ts in 2024

A Deloitte study found that 79% of companies expect artificial intelligence (AI) to transform their organizations in the next three years. Naturally, this shift has meant big changes in search engine optimization (SEO) content and AI for marketing.

As with any powerful tool, using AI in SEO can be helpful or harmful. Learn the essential points about SEO content and AI, as well as need-to-know do’s and don’ts.

Some Basics About SEO Content and AI

Before we jump into what you should and shouldn’t do, let’s clear up a couple of points about SEO content and AI. 

Can You Use AI for SEO Content?

Yes, you can use AI for SEO content. AI can help you streamline processes and improve your content quality. You just need to make sure you’re doing it the right way.

In fact, you may have already been using AI for SEO and not realized it. AI technology involves much more than generated text and images. For example, you’re probably using a grammar checker. AI is what processes your text for proper spelling, word usage, sentence structure, and readability.

Other AI-enabled content and writing tools include:

• Dictation apps
• Website analysis to find on-site improvements for SEO
• Traffic and competition analysis tools to assist with keyword planning
• Search engines that you use for keyword and topic research

If your company is going to be competitive, you need to enhance your SEO content with AI’s help.

Is SEO Still Relevant With AI?

Yes, SEO is still an effective digital marketing strategy in the age of AI. In fact, the massive growth in AI usage makes a thoughtful SEO strategy even more important.

Anybody can pump out article after article with AI to fill up a site with content. Fortunately, the search engines recognize this and keep updating their algorithms to rank websites for quality, not quantity.

For example, Google has a 170-page document of Search Quality Rater Guidelines. The focus is on ensuring that high-ranking sites are those that offer helpful, people-first content. This requires authors to demonstrate E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. 

AI can’t do that alone, but skilled human writers and editors can. Consequently, human-generated SEO content and AI can work together to boost your website rankings.

The Do’s of SEO Content and AI

Now that you know you can use AI with SEO content marketing, here are tactics you need to add to your arsenal immediately.

Use AI for Generating Ideas

You surely take inspiration from other writings or content sources. Generative AI can also be a springboard when you’re feeling stuck with writer’s block.

For instance, suppose you’re working on a subject that’s relatively new to you, and you want to include a couple of true-to-life examples. You can ask a generative AI app to give you 5-6 brief ideas. After that, you can do more research and take those examples in your own direction. 

Likewise, AI can provide title ideas and article rough drafts. Just remember to use these to spark your creativity so you can make original content.

Automate Workflows and Repetitive Tasks

AI can save you tons of time on the routine tasks that SEO requires, especially on the technical side. Rank tracking, backlink monitoring, site crawls, and audits are functions you can and should use AI to handle. 

Plus, automation is your friend when it comes to gathering data for competitive keyword usage and opportunities. Improve your SEO content with AI using tools such as Semrush, Moz, or Ahrefs.

Generative AI can also take some of the grunt work out of content research. One of our favorite uses is converting dense text from references into something more understandable. It can also summarize long articles to give you the main points. Turn master’s-level writing into clear and concise wording that you can quickly process. 

Analyze Data With AI

AI doesn’t just do the hard work of gathering data; it also can help you understand it. If you’re serious about optimizing SEO content with AI, invest in one of the previously mentioned dedicated tools. 

SEO marketing software processes your technical issues and topic research for actionable insights. Importantly, these tools put the information in clean and user-friendly reports so you understand what you’re looking at. That’s much better than staring at a black-and-white spreadsheet full of numbers.

In the case of Semrush, its AI-powered Copilot is an assistant that monitors your site’s SEO performance. It offers daily alerts about technical matters and gives you prioritized lists of what fixes will have the greatest benefit. 

Personalized suggestions for competitor insights show you where to get the edge on your rivals. The tool also outlines new opportunities for building links and using keywords. Other features explain audience sentiment, user behavior, and audience segmentation to further tailor your content to your target demo.

Use Well-Crafted Prompts

“Garbage in, garbage out” applies to SEO content and AI inputs and outputs. A few of our clients request AI-assisted content services, so we’ve gotten substantial practice in seeing what works.

For instance, simply asking an AI app to give you an article about hiring fractional CMOs isn’t going to provide engaging content. Generative AI does better with clear instructions. Share details about your target audience, desired article length, and preferred tone for a decent output. Specifying the readability level is helpful, too. 

These inputs are so important that prompt engineering has become a valuable skill in the job market. Learn how to craft prompts that produce exactly what you’re looking for.

Remember To Consider Copyright Concerns

The legalities around owning AI-generated content, whether text or images, remain murky. AI-produced work is derivative by nature, leading to a whole new sphere of legal questions that we’re still waiting for the answers to.

The only set-in-stone direction creators have is that wholly AI-generated content cannot get a copyright. The line gets blurry regarding how much human input makes something copyrightable. 

Stay safe and carefully document your SEO content and AI practices for clarity’s sake. If you’re an agency, be transparent about how you’re using the technology and keep up-to-date on new rules surrounding AI content and ownership.

The Don’ts of SEO Content and AI

An AI misstep can wreck your SEO efforts. Dodge the following pitfalls.

Never Rely Solely on AI-Generated Content 

AI isn’t the set-it-and-forget-it miracle that some proponents have been promising. Many experts have tested what kind of traffic and engagement AI-generated articles bring, and the results point in favor of human-produced work. At a minimum, content needs to be a hybrid for long-term success.

Don’t Publish AI-Generated Content Without Editing 

One of the hallmarks of generic AI writing is the long sentences that quickly get repetitive. This is not the kind of writing that gets engagement. After producing SEO content with AI, rework it to make it more human before publishing it.

Additionally, generative AI doesn’t always know what it doesn’t know. These models can produce hallucinations, which are incorrect or misleading information. For that reason, most AI tools remind you to always fact-check and edit information for accuracy.

Don’t Generate Longform Content From a Single Prompt

This point connects to the one above about effective prompt engineering. We’ve found that, even with shorter articles for AI-assisted work, you might need a few prompts to get the output right. Therefore, longer posts almost always need more direction.

For example, ChatGPT article introductions are usually repetitive filler. Its conclusions also tend to be too long and are just a rehash of what it already said in the article. The body often repeats similar phrases or makes the same point under different headings.

Give the tool more direction when using AI for SEO content that is more than a few paragraphs. You may need to have specific prompts for each section to create a well-rounded article. Otherwise, just edit the lackluster parts yourself.

Never Use AI To Plagiarize Others

Google has long banned content spinning. The practice involves quickly rewriting another piece of content by switching words around and using synonyms. Such writing delivers no original viewpoint or personality. 

Unfortunately, AI’s rise has made it cheap and easy to spin articles with a quick summary or rewrite of existing text. Still, article spinning with AI remains a big no-no that could get your site penalized. Besides the dubious ethics behind the practice, you’ll wreck your SEO and have to start over from square one.

Do Not Ignore AI’s Role in SEO and Marketing

Love it or hate it, AI is here to stay. Don’t end up like the marketers who ignored the value of the internet and digital marketing and got left behind. While we wait to see the final form of SEO content and AI, keep educating yourself and your team to remain ready for the next developments.

Maximize the Potential of Your Marketing With SEO Content and AI 

Does the thought of staying current with each new development in SEO and content marketing seem like a losing battle? Don’t give up! We can help.

Reach out to our team of content experts at BKA. We’ll assist you in designing and executing a strategy that gets you more traffic and engagement using SEO content and AI.