Search Engine Optimization

SEO is far from dead — in fact, it's more crucial than ever before. The digital landscape is constantly evolving, and search engines like Google are continuously refining their algorithms to deliver the best possible results to users. This means that staying on top of SEO practices is essential for maintaining online visibility and relevance.

What has long made SEO attractive to many businesses – that it doesn’t require an ad budget – is still true today. While digital marketing efforts like social ads and paid media are likely an important component of your digital marketing efforts, they are fleeting and often come with hefty CPLs. SEO and content generation is an investment that your business gets to keep, ensuring you continue enjoying enhanced performance for long after you’ve paid for the service. 

Search engine optimization is still the best way to establish authority and credibility within your field. This important marketing goal can’t be easily accomplished via paid ad budgets or spam strategies. 

Yes – if the content generated by your content marketing provider adds value to searchers. The problem with using foreign blog farms and low-budget writers on freelance marketplaces is the low-quality (or overpaying for middling to high-quality). If you’re choosing between a $20 blog from Upwork or Fiverr or generating your own blog on ChatGPT, go with ChatGPT. 

The grammar and overall readability of good generative AI will be superior, but the content will not provide new information or insights beyond what other businesses in your field have already published. Chatbots do not have unique thoughts. They simply regurgitate what you and your competitors have written on topics relevant to your vertical for the past decades. 

Google explicitly states that it rewards websites that provide unique, authoritative answers to the inquiries of searchers. The AI bots, by their nature, do not have original information. Based on what we know about how Google rewards content, AI will always be at a disadvantage. 

There are also a variety of quality-related weaknesses inherent in using ChatGPT and similar platforms for content creation. They are extraordinarily repetitive in style, formatting and word usage. They tend to provide answers that are concise to a fault, leading to content that’s far too short to accomplish SEO goals. Additional prompts to expand on content may result in excessive repetition of messaging rather than enhanced depth or increased value to readers. 

Although the writing is cohesive, rationally structured and grammatically correct, it’s not usually engaging, compelling or entertaining. It’s paint-by-numbers in blog form that’s primarily good for generating thin, generic fluff. 

While AI can be a powerful tool in the hands of content creators and SEOs with the critical thinking skills to leverage it for enhanced efficiency, it is not a replacement for human content creators or editors – at least not yet.