As content writers, of course it seems tempting to use ChatGTP and other AI platforms to help write content. Surely it saves time, resources, and is generally just more efficient? And if other content writers and digital marketing agencies are using it, won’t we fall behind? Of course, as digital marketers, it’s normal that we’re asking ourselves these questions: we need to stay abreast of the new technologies that are potentially out there to help us. And yes it’s true that AI can help you come up with ideas for your content, and help you to create that content faster.
However, I’m here to tell you that whilst it may seem that using AI to create content could save you time (and money), in the longer run, it’s probably going to do the opposite. Here’s why…
If you use AI to write your content, you may actually get less traffic
If you’re creating content for digital marketing and SEO purposes, this is obviously a really important point! As digital marketers, we write content to help drive traffic to our site, so if AI-written content is having a negative impact on the traffic to your site, then it’s not working for you.
A key point to note is that the way AI writes content is by taking that’s already on the web and regurgitating that information. The first issue with this is that most people would prefer to read something new. The second issue is that the information regurgitated by Chat GTP or other AI platforms could be incorrect.
There is also evidence to suggest that human-written content is outranking AI-written content. This study found that 94.12% of the time, human written content outranked AI-created content.
The same study tested exactly how much traffic was driven by AI-generated content vs human-written content. The experiment involved 68 websites, with 744 articles created: half were created with AI and half by humans. The articles were published across the 68 websites, and the amount of organic SEO traffic each article generated on average over time was tracked. The results found that by month 5, an AI article was generating 52 visitors a month while a human-written article was generating 283.
Content for SEO: quality over quantity
Whilst AI might help content writers to produce more content in less time, quantity shouldn’t be the only focus. Of course, search engines like frequent, fresh content, so the more content you’re able to create, the better. But not at the expense of quality.
It would be easy to assume that you could create a higher volume of content using AI, and even if each article generated less traffic than a human-written article, overall the numbers would balance out. However, if you post low/medium quality content, you’ll find your overall site decreases in traffic and rankings. Quality is still an important factor when it comes to SEO.
But I don’t have the time or resources to create content for my website
This is absolutely understandable: it’s the reason a lot of business owners are turning to AI to assist with content writing. But it’s also the reason that digital marketing agencies exist: we’re here to help create high-quality content that not only boosts your traffic and rankings, but is actually interesting and useful to your readers too! And a good digital marketing agency will see the value in creating human-written content, ensuring you don’t fall foul of any of the pitfalls that come with AI-written content.
If you need help with website content that is created with SEO in mind, we can help. We’re a digital marketing agency based in Manchester, and we’re experts in creating content for search. Get in touch today for a no-obligation chat.