Today it's easier to build a website than ever before. And that includes generating content on your website. If you've ever felt stuck about what to write for blog content or even for things such as your about page, it's easy to head over to your favourite AI chatbot, ask it to generate content for you, and you're done. Just copy and paste the content, and it's all good. You can generate tons of content, make the scope of it very detailed, and there's no end to the amount of words you can produce.
Simple, fast, and done. But is this a good idea?
I listened to a podcast episode of Marketing School recently where Neil Patel and Eric Siu talked about using AI generated content on websites for search engine optimization. What they found was websites that use AI generated content initially see a spike in traffic. This makes sense, since the search bots see a website as being updated, and value the volume of content that a website has available to engage its viewers.
Is it sustainable?
Neil and Eric further explained that websites that used the strategy of AI content generation eventually saw a drop in website traffic. While AI generated content is easy to produce, and can be as detailed and information rich as you ask it to be, the engagement isn't quite there. AI content can't be beat by real authority, human-made content that is more engaging and authentic.
Remember, AI is trained on existing materials, including content that has already been written. It follows patterns and algorithms to build these. And search engines also know the difference between AI generated content and human written content. Ultimately, beyond the search engines, it's the readers who engage with your content.
Ask yourself: as I'm building the content for my website, is this something I'd actually be excited about reading?
If you used AI to write your content, and the answer is NO, you wouldn't read it yourself, then you've got to re-think your content creation strategy.
Here's an idea if you're stuck with writing: use AI as a writing prompt instead, to help you outline content to create, and then write the content yourself.
Human-made content for the win. 🏆