Revolutionizing SEO: Google’s AI guidelines for content creation pave the way for higher rankings

Google’s recent announcement of new search guidelines on AI-generated content has given rise to many questions about the use of AI in SEO. As per these guidelines, Google seems to support the idea that it doesn’t matter what you use to create content as long as you’re producing something valuable for people and not gaming the search engine.

In this article, we’ll examine this topic from a few different angles, including the marriage of Google and AI, the caveats to consider when using AI for content, and the skills that SEOs need to develop right now.

The Marriage of Google and AI

Google and Microsoft Bing have been using AI-powered content to deliver search results, and this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Even Google’s guidelines state that they’ve been using AI in some form for a long time.

Paid search marketers also know how much AI and machine learning have changed the PPC game. It’s not feasible to tell people not to use AI for content production when it became widely available. Instead, both search engines are racing to establish themselves as responsible curators of AI content.

Creating Value with Content

Staying focused on creating value with content has always been important. Now, it’s clear that Google has the same standard. After all, humans can write spammy content just as readily as AI. It’s like saying a calculator is bad for math results because you didn’t figure out the answer yourself. As it stands, Google is still focused on helpful content, regardless of the technology used to produce it.

The Caveats to Consider

If you use AI as part of your toolset to provide valuable content, Google won’t ding you. The problem is that it’s enticing to use these tools the wrong way. Google is not giving you the green light to have AI write for you and call it a day. Like any tool, AI is just that – a tool that requires humans to leverage it. Otherwise, it will take and regurgitate what you feed it, delivering no value beyond aggregation. You’re giving users nothing new.

Shoddy Use Cases

Shoddy use cases could include marketers using AI to fill in the location for thousands of otherwise-identical franchise doorway pages and call it a day. This is not an acceptable use case, but what a penalty would look like in this case is not yet clear. Will there be a manual hit if Google thinks you’re using AI for straight-up ranking purposes? Will it tweak some of its algorithms to catch instances of AI being manipulated? Could anyone legitimately trying to do something right get caught up in a manual penalty?

As most SEOs know, Google’s algorithms have occasionally dinged white-hat companies in the past. Any significant change to the algorithm raises fears that it could happen at scale.

The Guidelines

The section of the guidelines that seemed most ambiguous to me is the part about AI disclosures. Google said you could “consider” adding it, which is a strange gray area that doesn’t give marketers confidence either way. Nonetheless, the use of AI-produced content is positioned to be a powerful tool for content production. SEOs who don’t yet know its ins and outs should get serious about learning.

Skills in Focus for SEOs

AI-produced content will create a massive opportunity for skilled writers and marketers to rise above what might well be an impending onslaught of lazy, mediocre copy. The more craft good writers can add, the easier for Google to distinguish actual value.

AI-produced content is a faster way to establish a baseline, but it’s still just a baseline. Good SEOs should learn how to develop valuable inputs, provide good source information, and add their unique skills and research to the refinement stage to make the content truly unique and valuable.