As AI content rises in prominence, many marketers, advertisers and publishers are growing more concerned about whether we’re entering an era of useless, automated content. More importantly, is Google prioritizing AI content over human-made content?
We’ve created this piece to explore why AI generated content is gaining traction, some best practices and if we’re going down the Internet spiral.
In this blog, we’ll dive into:
Is AI Content Boosting a Real Thing?
How Google Search Ranking Works
1. Meaning of User’s Query
2. Content Relevance and Quality
3. Website Usability
4. Context and Other Settings
How Will AI Affect SEO? The Proper Use of AI in Content Marketing
Ideating Topics and Generating Keywords
Artistic Inspiration
Creating Faster Workflows
Three Ways to Outrank the Competition
1. Build Your Link Profile
2. Lean Into Human Expertise and Creativity
3. Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Is AI Content Boosting a Real Thing? Google Says No
A report from online company 404 Media claimed that “Google News is boosting sites that rip off other outlets by using AI to rapidly churn out content.” This was echoed by an X (formerly Twitter) user, claiming that their website “in which real humans do journalism, is not indexed by Google News.”
So, is Google News really boosting AI-generated content? The company’s Search Liaison on X said it’s not:
Google’s official stance on this issue cites six reasons how content is ranked in its News tab:
• Indexing: Google finds and indexes content from across the web. However, “appearing in [Google’s] index isn’t a guarantee that content will rank well.” The content you find in News is “forced” to be there because of its timely nature.
• Recency: Obviously, the stories you find in News are the fresher ones. So, the newer your content, the more likely it will be pulled up in the rankings.
Screenshot of Google News showing the most recent articles from trusted sources
• Quality: Despite its recency criteria, Google still looks at content quality before ranking them. Particularly, they want to see if the content displays expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), regardless of how it’s produced. If they don’t, they’re not likely to rank well in News and Search.
• Age of Website: New publications are not expected to surface in Google News for some time. Google “want to see some period of news publishing over time,” to ensure that a website is, in fact, producing news for its audience.
Screenshot of the domain ages of the top four articles in Google News.
• Crawler Access: Some publications actually don’t grant access to Google’s crawlers for fear of plagiarism. This is more prominent for companies that have paywalled content, which might explain why they don’t rank well in News and Search. Google recommends granting access to these types of content using their guidelines and robots.txt.
So, no. Google doesn’t boost a low-quality AI content strategy. And it makes sense because the company wants to maintain a good user experience on its platform.
But does AI content rank in Google? If it’s useful and relevant for the user:
“Marketers and publishers need to worry less about how their content is created and more about whether it sufficiently satisfies search intent,” said Taz Tan, Thrive’s Content Editor.
“It all comes down to depth, relevance and quality.”
Tan points out that an “AI-generated piece that meets Google’s E-E-A-T criteria has a better chance of ranking well than a human-written blog that doesn’t.” It’s not about how they’re produced, but if they’re actually good or not.
How Google Search Ranking Works
An AI content strategy isn’t limited to news and publications – it happens everywhere. From social media captions and blog posts to product descriptions and emails, you’re probably interacting with AI generated content every day without even realizing it.
With Google, however, it’s never just about the content itself. Simply put, if you’re just writing content to rank, you’re in trouble. Google explains how it ranks content in Search using these four factors:
1. Meaning of User’s Query
When you type your query into Google’s search bar, the algorithm tries to understand what you’re looking for. It looks at several factors to try and match it with relevant content on the web. These factors include:
• Spelling
• Synonyms
• Terms used in your query
Screenshot from Google
Google has also refined its algorithms to understand if someone is looking for local businesses, a how-to guide or even trending topics. This way, it can present relevant pages, websites and even images and videos to users.
2. Content Relevance and Quality
Relevance and quality go hand in hand. When you create high-quality content, you’re also creating relevant content.
This is what Google says:
“Just think: When you search for “dogs,” you likely don’t want a page with the word “dogs” on it hundreds of times. With that in mind, algorithms assess if a page contains other relevant content beyond the keyword “dogs” – such as pictures of dogs, videos, or even a list of breeds.”
Content relevance is more than just the keywords you put in your content. Google’s algorithms are smart enough to take a look at other types of information, such as images, videos and lists, for more context.
Google also looks at the number of websites linking to your content. Backlinks “has often proven to be a good sign that the information is well trusted,” said Google.
If you want to rank higher, then stray away from keyword stuffing and pump out good content that even you will enjoy.
3. Website Usability
Google also wants your content to be accessible. Is your website ADA-compliant? Do you use large enough fonts? How about navigation and mobile responsiveness?
If you’re not sure what to tweak on your website to make it accessible, Google made a page experience guide to help you. It involves optimizing your Core Web Vitals, making your website more secure and optimizing it for mobile.
Screenshot of the list of Core Web Vitals to track. Source: Google.
While Google doesn’t have a core signal for page experience, you can actually tell if your website is usable or not. Do you want to scroll through your page and read an article or do you find yourself getting frustrated with pop-ups and slow loading times?
Asking honest questions helps you improve your website so users can actually enjoy it.
4. Context and Other Settings
By context, Google means a lot of things, including:
• Location
• Past Search History
• Search filters and settings
For example, if someone searches for “pizza” on Google in New York, they’ll get results for local pizza places in that place. If someone else searches for “pizza” on Google in London, they’ll get different results.
This feature is leveraged by several companies via local SEO, so make sure to include context in your keyword research.
How Will AI Affect SEO? The Proper Use of AI in Digital Marketing
Given Google’s sophisticated, constantly changing algorithms, it’s clear that it’s impossible to game the system and rely on AI generated content to rank high.
So, what’s a sustainable way of leveraging this technology? And how will AI affect SEO?
“We’re at a point in time where completely dismissing AI as a writing and ideation tool could be a handicap,” said Tan, as she talks about the role of generative AI in digital marketing today.
Here at Thrive, we’ve covered this technology and how it’s applied in several aspects of marketing. Over the last few months, we’ve identified some really cool and ethical ways to elevate the way you do content marketing in your company.
Ideating Topics and Generating Keywords
Google’s official stance is to reward high-quality content, no matter how it’s produced:
Source: X
In fact, Google even “believed in the power of AI to transform the ability to deliver helpful information.”
Tan echoes this sentiment: “While AI has proven itself capable of producing quality content, meaning logical, informative and human-sounding, it still needs a human checker to comb through the content to fill in these gaps.”
With this in mind, you can streamline your content creation in the brainstorming and keyword generation process. You can use AI tools for content creation like ChatGPT to do the following tasks:
• Generate a list of keywords.
Identify long-tail keywords.
Extract keywords from other content.
Find blog topic ideas.
Research sub-niche topics.
Generate topic questions.
Here’s a prompt that helps you generate a list of blog topics with search intent and even a meta description:
Screenshot from ChatGPT
(Read more: How To Use ChatGPT for Your Keyword Research and Content Topic Ideation)
“For an AI content piece to be good, in Google’s terms – there needs to be human intervention at every checkpoint,” Tan said. This includes everything you do in content marketing, such as outlining, generating and line editing your content.
You can then use all your generated output with SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to identify if these keywords are, in fact, worth pursuing in your content. You can determine their viability by analyzing these keywords with important metrics like search volume, competition and more.
Artistic Inspiration
If you’re an artist looking for your first draft, ideas or inspiration for your next piece, AI can also be a useful tool. Bing Chat and ChatGPT already have image creation baked into their system, allowing you to generate unique images based on your input.
You can ask them to create images of sheep, cars and even a fantasy-themed future. Your prompt is the limit with these AI tools for content creation.
Images produced with Bing Chat
(Read more:
However, you don’t want to use the images here as-is. We recommend only using them for inspiration and making your own unique art from scratch.
“AI only knows what it knows – aka data that it’s been trained on,” Tan said. Your creativity, on the other hand, has no bounds.
The art you create with AI alone may be impressive, but when combined with your own imagination and touch, the results can be even better.
Creating Faster Workflows
The key theme here is that you can and should use AI as a tool to make your work easier. It’s not a magical replacement tool to do everything for you.
“Use whatever’s at your disposal, whether that’s ChatGPT or Bard, to make things faster and easier,” Tan said. However, you should “never lose sight of why you’re doing what you do, which is to answer a searcher’s query.”
Generative AI tools for content creation like Bard and ChatGPT have extensions and plugins that you can use to integrate into your workflow. This saves you time and energy, letting you focus on the creative aspects of your work.
If you’re using WordPress, then you can also use Jetpack AI to generate outlines and other text-based content directly inside the WordPress Editor.
Google also introduced the Search Generative Experience (SGE), an AI search companion tool that summarizes Search results into AI-generated text with hyperlinks to original publishers. Microsoft Bing also has its own take via Copilot with Bing, which helps you search the web while leveraging a ChatGPT-like interface for instant answers and insights.
With AI, you can get more work done, extract data from documents in less time and search the web with real-time, AI-generated insights.
Three Ways To Outrank the Competition
The use of AI in search marketing should be deliberate. Now that you can create more content faster and (hopefully) with higher quality, it’s time to leverage them to cement your position on the first page of Google.
You don’t have to ask does AI content rank in Google, if you know exactly what to do when it comes to SEO and AI.
Here are three ways to do this:
1. Build Your Link Profile
Link building is not going anywhere in the era of AI. It’s actually more important than ever. Even with the best content, if no one links to it, it will be hard for Google to determine its value and rank it high.
Remember what we said about Google’s criteria involving relevance and quality? Your link-building campaigns help you hit that bullseye.
You can use Help A Reporter Out (HARO) to find journalists and publishers who are looking for quotes and sources, then use your AI-assisted content as a reference.
(Read more: 25 Tips To Write a Successful HARO Pitch)
Remember to have all these elements on your content to make it link-worthy:
• Unique and valuable insights
• Credible sources and data
• Engaging and easy-to-read format
You’re dealing with smart, authoritative companies and individuals who want to give their audience the best content possible. So, make sure your content meets their standards when making a pitch.
2. Lean Into Human Expertise and Creativity
It’s easy to rely on AI for insights but don’t let it take away from the human element of your content. Your expertise and creativity are what sets you apart from competitors.
If you belong to a company or agency, don’t be afraid to leverage your internal subject matter experts (SMEs) to contribute to your content. They provide that much-needed credibility, personality and branded perspective that AI in digital marketing can’t replicate.
Screenshot from Thrive blog showing an expert quote from an SME
Obviously, you can also use your own expertise and knowledge to make your content more relatable and engaging. You can only insert personal anecdotes, tips and experiences if you write the content yourself.
While it might seem like a small addition, it can make a big difference in connecting with your audience and making your content stand out.
3. Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You can’t rank content without deliberately targeting keywords and optimizing your content for search engines. So, make sure to invest time in keyword research and on-page optimization.
But don’t just stuff keywords into your content without any regard for readability or context.
The best way to rank is to “give readers what they need,” said Tan. “Be the solution to their problems – after all, that’s the principle Google’s E-E-A-T is founded on.”
You can do this by:
• Establishing your target audience
• Identifying their needs
• Predicting their pain points
• Developing a content plan around these sentiments
Be sure to optimize your meta tags, images and links for better visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). You will also want to monitor and regularly update your content for any changes in search algorithms or trends.
Rank Higher With Human-Led Digital Marketing From Thrive
Does AI content rank in Google? Yes, if they’re used deliberately and created with care. Remember that your target audience is made up of real people with emotions, preferences, needs and wants.
There’s no AI content strategy boosting – just brands and companies who found ways to genuinely connect with their audience through quality, informative content.
That’s what we can do for you here at Thrive.
We’re a 200+ strong team of experts, strategists and creatives who build campaigns, websites and content that drive real results for our clients. If you want sustainable results, Thrive is the team for you.
