Can AI-Generated Website Content Undermine Your SEO?
At Two Lizards, we know that AI can make producing content quick and easy.
If you need a blog about your latest project, ask ChatGPT.
If you want an article explaining your services? AI can produce one in seconds.
If you need a few more pages on your website targeting different search terms? It can do those too.
So what is the problem?
The problem is, your website doesn’t need more; it needs better content. And that’s becoming increasingly important for SEO too.
AI can be a useful tool for research, generating ideas, structuring content and helping you get started. And Google isn’t saying that every piece of AI-assisted content is going to be penalised. But the problem arises when businesses start using AI to produce large quantities of generic content because they believe more pages will mean more traffic.
There’s also another problem that has nothing to do with Google. If AI can write the same article for your business as it can for your competitor, why should a potential customer choose you? AI isn’t the problem, generic content is.
So this is the important distinction: Using AI to help create content isn’t a bad thing. But there’s a big difference between using AI as a tool to help you create content and asking it to create all the content for your website. Google gives clear, distinct guidelines on how AI should be used to help create good content precisely to avoid these mistakes.
Two Lizards has worked with businesses across a wide range of industries, from luxury bespoke furniture and structural engineering to vineyards, specialist cars and e-commerce. And one thing we’ve learnt is that the most valuable content comes from getting under the skin of our clients’ business.
Bespoke by Acorn as good example of this. It’s easy to write a generic article about bespoke kitchens, talking about craftsmanship, materials, storage, design and quality. But that doesn’t tell a potential customer why they should choose Bespoke by Acorn.
The real value comes from the detail: the way a particular kitchen was designed around an awkward space, the materials chosen, the craftsmanship involved, the clever storage solutions and the thinking that went into the finished room.
That’s the information that brings a project to life. And it’s information that AI doesn’t have unless someone from inside the business gives it to them.
Your experience is your competitive advantage
This is where we think SMEs have a real advantage. You know things that AI doesn’t:
The questions your customers ask you every week.
The problems you’ve solved.
What works and what doesn’t.
What can to go wrong.
What makes a good project.
The local area and the customers you serve.
And you know the stories behind your business.
That knowledge is incredibly important when it comes to creating content.
With Structural Engineers Reports Ltd, the challenge wasn’t simply to fill a website with information about structural engineering, as its a really technical subject, the challenge was to take that expertise and turn it into a website that potential customers could actually understand and use. The result was a clearer, more accessible site, supported by SEO and ongoing content updates. That’s very different from asking AI to write 20 articles about structural surveys. The expertise comes first and the content comes from that.
Imagine you’re a bespoke furniture company. You ask AI: “Write a 1,000-word SEO blog about bespoke fitted wardrobes in Surrey.” You’ll probably get a perfectly respectable article. It might talk about maximising storage, making the most of awkward spaces, choosing materials and creating a design that suits your home.
However, what if another five businesses ask AI exactly the same question?
They’ll get five versions of essentially the same article. And that’s a problem.
Being technically correct isn’t enough, the content needs to give potential customers something they can’t get anywhere else.
Look at your own business for the answers
Tanhurst Estate is a good example of this. You could ask AI to write an article about an English vineyard, and the resulting content would be about growing grapes in the UK, the importance of sunshine and soil, harvesting and English wine. But it doesn’t know what it’s actually like to harvest grapes at Tanhurst Estate. Or what happened during this year’s harvest, and how the hot, dry summer affected the crop. It doesn’t know what varieties of grape have been grown and picked, what wines you’re planning to make with them or how it feels after a long days harvesting those grapes.
These are the stories worth telling. They’re real, they’re specific and only apply to your business. Which is what turns content from generic information into something people actually want to read.
AI can help. Just don’t let it replace you
So don’t stop using AI as used properly, it’s a very useful marketing tool.
You can use it to:
- Brainstorm blog ideas
- Turn customer questions into potential content
- Create a structure for an article
- Help with research
- Identify subjects you haven’t covered
- Improve the readability of something you’ve written
- Repurpose a blog into social media content
- Help get you started when ideas are not forthcoming.
But then you need to bring your business into it by adding your experience, your examples, photographs and case studies. Add the things your customers actually want to know, your opinions and explanations. And, most importantly, make sure it sounds like you.
AI also matters for SEO
Google’s guidance isn’t that “AI content = bad”. Its concern is with content that’s created at scale, it provides little or no additional value to users. The problem isn’t necessarily how the content was created. It’s whether the content is useful, original and genuinely created to help people rather than manipulate search rankings. We think this is really important to understand. SEO isn’t about filling your website with as many words as possible, it’s about making your website useful to the people you want to attract.
At Two Lizards, our SEO approach has always been about finding the right search terms, understanding what potential customers are actually looking for and then building useful, relevant content around them.
That’s why we look at things such as customer questions, competitor search strategies, local and national geographical markets and the actual services a business wants to promote. The keywords are the starting point but they are not the whole picture, and now there’s AI search to think about
And there’s another reason this is important. Search is changing. People are increasingly asking AI-powered search tools questions rather than simply typing a few keywords into Google. So this might make you think the answer is to create even more content. But actually, we’d argue the opposite.
If your website contains the same information that can be found on hundreds of other websites, there’s very little to distinguish it. But if you’ve got genuinely useful information, first-hand experience, original insights and examples from your own business, you’ve got something much more valuable. So it’s important not to try to beat AI at producing content but give it something worth finding.
Before publishing that AI-generated blog …
Ask these five simple questions:
- Does this content contain anything that only my business could say?
- Is the article providing genuine experience or examples?
- Would my customers actually find this useful?
- Is it saying something original, or simply repeating what’s already online?
- Does it sound like my business?
If the answer to those questions isn’t yes, use the article as a starting point.
Add your knowledge, experience and anything that makes your business different. This provides real value for the reader.
At Two Lizards, we embrace the opportunity of approaching things differently.
Used properly, AI can save time, generate ideas and help businesses create better marketing. But it shouldn’t replace the thing that makes your business interesting in the first place. Your knowledge, your experience and your expertise. And that’s particularly important for SMEs. By creating useful content that answers your customers’ questions, demonstrates what you know, and gives people a reason to choose you. So, ask AI for help, just don’t let it do all the talking.
If you want to chat about whether your current website content is attracting new business, give us a call or fill in the contact form, and we’ll be happy to help.
Photo by Jackson Sophat on Unsplash