Google’s new Helpful Content update launched in March 2024 causing many people in the industry to revise their content marketing strategies. Some website owners may be wondering whether this new update means that they won’t be able to use AI anymore for their content.
This is just one of many questions that have been posed online, and we spoke to Ignite SEO’s founder, Adam Collins, to share his expertise on this to guide website owners on how to manage their content going forward.
Should you stop using AI?
The short answer is no. This is the first question that often comes up regarding the new Helpful Content update. Website owners want to know if they can no longer publish AI generated content or rely on AI to scale content marketing strategies. Adam Collins describes this new update as “designed to favour content that offers the best experience to the user.”
It’s important to keep this in mind when working on content because it will guide you as you edit it by asking yourself and your team whether the content is offering users a better experience on your website and whether it is helping them. This is an essential element to consider when creating content and all marketers know that.
Avoid Solely Relying on AI
Many marketers got carried away with relying on AI and not critically thinking about whether they were publishing content that provided value to their users.
Don’t misconstrue this however, the issue isn’t using AI, the issue is relying on it and publishing spam content that doesn’t benefit your users or improve their experience when they’re on your website. Adam Collins stated, “As part of the update, a large number of manual penalties (non-algorithmic) were distributed to well-known SEO influencers who publicly showcase their sites abusing AI on sites such as YouTube and X.”
Collins continues, “However, AI content is largely still dominating the SERPs, showing that they aren’t targeting all AI content algorithmically.” He doesn’t think that marketers should stop publishing AI-generated content because there is a way to do it right.
How to Use AI Right
Marketers need to find ways to blend AI efficiency with human originality, Collins breaks it down this way:
- Never post content directly from an AI Chatbot to your site.
- Never ask a Chatbot to generate a whole article. Instead, create a robust content outline and use AI prompts to target section by section, editing as you go.
- The more you customise the prompts and modify the content, the less detectable it will be. So focus on adjusting the tonality, including factual statistics and statements, and ensuring the content is unique.
- Focus on adding valuable insights. Add to the conversation.
- Reverse Engineer Everything. Compare your content to those ranking on page 1 for your chosen keyword. Ask yourself, whose content (including UX and multimedia) is better?
Each of these tips will enable you to use AI as an aid, not as a crutch when creating your content. By customising, editing, and comparing to competitors, your content will not come out looking like AI wrote it, but it will be helpful to your users.
Collins warns against publishing mass AI-generated content with no originality. You shouldn’t do this and abuse Google’s guidelines if you want your content to do well following Google’s Helpful Content update.
Collins states, “Focus on the originality of [your] content. Google isn’t entirely against AI content, just those sites that mass produce AI content that offer little to no value.” Originality is key in making sure that your content does well now. Do your best to follow the advice of an SEO expert so that you can publish the best possible content you can for the rest of this year.
