🔎 the sad truth about AI and SEO

I admit…I could be a better writer.

I could 100% be more data-driven. Alas, I am not (and me putting 100% in the last sentence is my best attempt).

I could stop with the rambling thoughts and run-on sentences too…but why even try these days?

Unfortunately, the writing is on the wall.

The end is near for me and all the other writers out there.

Yes, there’s an AI writer lurking right around the corner ready to take my job.

AI will never kill the idea of “writers”, but it’s certainly starting to feel like it will kill certain kinds of writing…especially “SEO writing”.

Wired posted an interview with an owner of an AI-content farm. His company is buying old websites and using AI content to squeeze all the SEO juice out of them.

While the AI content is checked by humans, it’s generated through AI and writes blogs. Vujo himself has downsized his team substantially and gone all-in on AI “writers”.

And it’s working…

It’s turned into a million-dollar enterprise as his traffic brings in hundreds of thousands per users daily…which attracts some good ad revenue as you can imagine.

Read more here about Vujo and his firm Shantel ⤵️

Stories like this are unfortunately not uncommon these days.

Google has done a horrible job of policing search results. In the age of AI, parasite SEO and other tactics make ranking easier than it ever has been. You can outright steal content, run it through AI, and put it on a high authority domain.

Bam. You are now a top result on Google! And it will take them a few weeks to figure it out.

Barry Schwartz (of Search Engine Journal) when asked for comment in the article is optimistic that Google will figure it out and stop rewarding sites run by people like Vujo.

I’m not so sure.

I think largely, yes, we will look back on this as another “spam era”. There have oftentimes been moments where Google’s rankings could be manipulated and they’ve always patched up. Google has thrived for almost two decades because they could remove spam from search results.

However, this issue feels much more existential.

A recent study (see above) suggests that users prefer AI content.

Though it’s a small sample size, this is concerning. Google’s rankings are based on how much their users find the content useful. AI writing softwares are everywhere and they accomplishes what searchers want better than a basic human writer like myself.

I’m naive. I hadn’t even considered the fact that AI would be better than me. I assumed it could do certain things better, like research and format, but I hadn’t thought of their continued sophistication.

I used to like writing and SEO because though the playing field wasn’t always level (as many had much larger resources on hand), you were always competing against people. And if you really loved something, your writing would let you stand out above the rest.

Now we are competing against literal robots. And these robots don’t have typos. They don’t ramble on like I do.

Even worse? Humans seem to like the robots better than me.

What are you thoughts on AI writing software? Let me know! ⤵️