Without adhering to these guiding principles, AI’s potential as a valuable tool for search-driven content production might not translate into tangible results.
If you’ve been keeping up with SEO trends in the past couple of years, chances are you’ve encountered the term “AI” quite frequently. While it might seem repetitive, its prominence is not unwarranted.
AI technology is poised to shape the trajectory of nearly every sector in the modern economy. While some industries are more advanced in its adoption, inevitably, AI will seamlessly integrate into our daily lives.
With this future in mind, exploring how we can leverage generative AI effectively is crucial.
In my agency, we’ve encountered clients with varying attitudes toward AI. Some adamantly avoid its integration into their content production, while others believe it can effortlessly handle all tasks.
However, both extremes are partially accurate.
This raises the question: How should we harness AI for our SEO content production?
Here are six principles for optimally utilizing technology while maintaining the production of effective, Google-friendly content.
Starting with Purpose: Understanding Your Desired Outcome in Content Creation
Whether your content is generated by AI or crafted by human hands, the inception of the creation process should always revolve around a clear understanding of its purpose.
I’ve encountered a plethora of content that needs morality, is created without a genuine end goal, and is devoid of connection to a brand’s overarching marketing objectives.
With the rapid proliferation of AI, the prevalence of brands churning out aimless content is bound to increase. Some have adopted the mantra of quantity over quality, utilizing AI to produce greater volumes of content.
However, simply producing more content isn’t the solution if there’s no discernible goal associated with it.
Each form of content serves a distinct purpose, and every piece, whether facilitated by AI or not, should be purpose-driven and strategically aligned.
Here’s a breakdown of various content types and the strategies underpinning them:
- Core Site Content: This type aims to enlighten prospective customers about products or services.
- Blogs and Informational Content: These pieces seek to engage new audiences relevant to your products or services. Your business can tap into new market sectors by selecting blog topics that resonate with your audience and are supported by proper promotion.
- Shareable Content: Utilize these assets to enhance the authority and reach through backlinks and social engagement. Effective shareable content typically addresses trending topics in your industry from an intriguing perspective or presents proprietary data uniquely or entertainingly.
- Thought Leadership Content: Leverage this content type to establish a person or brand as a leader or innovator in their field. Strengthen the strategy behind this content by incorporating quotes or interviews from subject matter experts (SMEs).
Harnessing Audience Insights: A Key Element in Content Creation
A robust foundation in audience research and understanding is indispensable in content creation. Just as crucial as knowing the purpose behind your content is comprehending its intended audience, especially when integrating AI into the process.
Here are some methods for gaining valuable insights into your audience:
- On-site Surveys
- CRM Data
- Data on “Most Valuable” Customers and Longest-Term Customers
- Data on Brand New Customers (Acquired Within the Last Week)
- Data on Customers Who Entered the Funnel but Didn’t Convert
- Analytics Data (Audience Demographics)
- Social Media Data
- Client Intelligence
- Survey Data of Ideal Target Audiences: Look Beyond Demographics to Psychographics
Once you’ve gathered data from various sources, you can construct a customer persona—a detailed representation of your ideal customer.
Developing and maintaining this customer profile while crafting your content serves as a constant guide, ensuring your tone and voice resonate effectively with your target audience.
When employing AI, it’s vital to integrate this persona information directly into your prompts to enhance output relevance and specificity.
To further align your content with your persona attributes, consider having AI generate your personas entirely. Given the opportunity, this approach may prove more beneficial.
Most generative AI platforms excel at analyzing vast datasets to identify patterns. By leveraging a sophisticated platform and providing ample customer data, you can create a more refined persona than previously envisioned.
Prioritize Privacy: Opting for a Paid Account in AI Integration
Privacy and security should top the list of concerns for anyone considering integrating AI into their daily workflows, especially content creators aiming to harness its power.
As highlighted earlier, understanding your audience and utilizing proprietary data insights are paramount for content performance.
However, selecting the wrong plan type could expose the data you input into your AI tool as training data, risking its public disclosure. To mitigate this risk, consider investing in a plan like ChatGPT Team, priced at $25/month.
In our agency, we rigorously examine the terms and conditions of any AI platform before usage to ensure compliance and safeguard our data—and, consequently, our client’s data—from being utilized for platform training purposes.
Embrace Versatility: AI as a Flexible Content Aid
Dispelling the notion of a singular “silver bullet” prompt, it’s essential to recognize that AI’s effectiveness often relies on diverse prompts integrated throughout the content production process.
AI’s assistance varies across stages. AI prompts can enrich research during content ideation and outlining by providing keyword lists and suggesting headings and subheadings conducive to SERP performance.
Similarly, leveraging AI prompts tailored to your customer persona in the drafting phase can yield initial content drafts. While these outputs serve as solid foundations, human intervention through fact-checking and editing remains crucial for imbuing content with authenticity.
Platforms like Claude and Gemini facilitate the incorporation of outlines into prompts, offering a structured approach to content generation. Though outcomes may not be flawless, they provide substantial groundwork for refinement.
For content refinement and revitalization, AI remains invaluable. Capable platforms trim redundancies, enhance clarity, and identify areas for augmentation, breathing new life into existing content to align with evolving search algorithms.
In this dynamic landscape, embracing AI’s versatility ensures content remains adaptive and competitive amidst the evolving demands of Google AI Overviews.
Boosting E-A-T: Elevating Content with Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness
In essence, Google aims to recognize and reward content authored by individuals who possess and showcase firsthand subject matter expertise and experience. E-A-T encapsulates this principle: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
As many companies increasingly rely on generative AI platforms for mass-producing blog content, the significance of E-A-T is poised to escalate in tandem with AI’s advancement.
To distinguish your content and offer a superior user experience compared to automated outputs, collaborate with the following:
Experienced Authors
Engage seasoned professionals to assist with content creation or enlist experts to review your material. If operating within an agency, encourage clients to designate subject matter experts for formal content reviews when necessary.
Identify individuals with the requisite depth and experience to contribute insights on the covered topics within an in-house setup. Develop standardized interview questions to glean expert perspectives from clients, thereby enriching content performance.
Platforms like LinkedIn offer many opportunities to recruit experts within specific domains for content writing or professional review.
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
Enrich your content with insights, quotes, resources, or statistics SMEs provide. If direct access to in-house or client-side SMEs is limited, alternative avenues exist to acquire valuable insights and quotes.
Platforms like Connectively (formerly HARO) and respondent.io facilitate direct engagement with industry experts, albeit with the need for credential verification. Additionally, mining your client’s YouTube channel, if available, can yield a trove of valuable quotes.
Data
Harness custom or proprietary data to bolster content credibility. Access to unique data within your industry establishes a foundation of experience that resonates with Google’s evaluation criteria.
Conduct surveys to generate unique perspectives on industry topics, whether through internal initiatives or collaboration with third-party data collection entities. Develop tailored questionnaires to extract meaningful insights and enrich content with data-backed narratives.
Balancing Tech and Human Expertise: The Crucial Role of the Human Touch
While AI can effectively tackle 60-70% of tasks and objectives, maintaining a human touch throughout the content creation remains indispensable. Despite technological advancements, occurrences like AI hallucinations underscore the necessity of human oversight in producing exceptional content.
The objective is to leverage AI to streamline processes, elevate content quality, and optimize time management. However, it’s imperative to have dedicated staff for tasks such as plagiarism checks, readability optimization, and final spelling and grammar edits.
It’s essential to acknowledge AI’s imperfections. Human intervention is paramount to supervising content creation, ensuring alignment with key benchmarks like E-A-T, and refining content to resonate conversationally, align with brand identity, and deliver the desired user experience for both readers and search engine results pages (SERPs).
Embrace AI: Nurture Your Curiosity
Cultivate your fascination with AI.
Assume the role of the AI expert within your team.
AI is here to stay, evolving into a more sophisticated entity with each sunrise.
Stay abreast of AI developments and trends, acquaint yourself with emerging platforms, and responsibly delve into innovative AI applications to revolutionize your workflow.
If navigating AI still feels daunting, explore our monthly SEO packages and enlist the expertise of professionals.
