Summary
- The traditional approach of mass-publishing content for SEO has become less effective due to Google's helpful content update, which emphasizes creating value-driven, user-centric content over mere volume.
- Although AI tools like ChatGPT can produce large amounts of content, they often face challenges like generating unoriginal or shallow material, which can conflict with Google’s guidelines against content that appears designed primarily to enhance search rankings.
- Focus on producing high-quality content that addresses specific user needs and enhances UX instead of simply increasing content volume. It’s also vital to monitor third-party content to ensure alignment with your brand.
- Delivering value to users will remain crucial as search engines continue evolving, particularly with upcoming changes like Google's shift towards AI-generated search results. Investing in support from experienced digital marketers can help brands navigate these challenges.
Volume is often considered a major determining factor for rankings—but that perspective is both incomplete and increasingly obsolete.
It’s true that more content going live means more points of engagement for your audience, and more keywords to create more ranking opportunities via SEO. But if that content doesn’t serve a purpose, it will actually work against your interests.
Here’s why.
Meet Google’s Helpful Content Update
Helpful content is the name of a Google initiative that’s been around since 2022, which is aimed at making sure search results display content that prioritizes value to users.
According to Google, it’s simple: as long as you create “helpful, reliable, people-first content”, you can expect your content to perform. But in March 2024, the processes Google uses to determine what that means became significantly more complicated.
Although there are no limits on how much content you can produce at once, there are new red flags Google looks for when ranking any given piece of content.
So the rule of thumb should be: only create as much content as you can create well.
With that in mind, here are some potential pitfalls to know about before you start churning out blogs—especially if you plan to do it with AI.
Scaled Content Abuse
Google defines this as generating a significant number of pages for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings instead of helping users. This kind of content could be:
- Unoriginal, with large chunks of information that are readily available from other sources in a similar or identical format.
- Unhelpful, with little to no effort made to provide real value to its audience.
- Over-optimized—stuffed with keywords and links in inappropriate places, and at the expense of the user’s experience.
The Risks of AI Mass Production
Google doesn’t explicitly say that the above is aimed at AI-generated content—it says these guidelines exist no matter how content is produced. But given what we know about AI language models and how they work, the above definitely has implications for mass-producing content with these tools.
ChatGPT doesn’t technically plagiarize, but it doesn’t technically create, either. It aggregates and repackages information—which means that if you don’t prompt it carefully, its output probably won’t be much deeper or much different from the data it uses to formulate its responses.
Since a lot of that data apparently comes from unauthorized copyrighted material, this creates potential liability—for the companies that own these tools, if not yet for their end users.
But the more immediate problem is that without careful inputs and edits by a human, content produced en masse by AI can easily run afoul of Google’s new helpful content guidelines.
Don’t Play with Your Reputation
Of course, there are other ways to get large amounts of content for your site quickly. For example, you could host third-party pages, sponsored posts or ads, or create content programmatically—but this also has risks if you aren’t careful about how you do it.
Google’s helpful content policy doesn’t automatically penalize third-party content, but it does if that content is primarily aimed at manipulating rankings. That means you need to carefully oversee any third-party content you publish to make sure it is aligned with your site’s main purpose and brings value to your audience.
Future-Proofing Your Digital Presence
If all of the above seems slightly confusing, you’re not alone. Whenever Google changes its ranking criteria, brands scramble to adapt and avoid getting left behind. It’s the way of the internet.
But based on this information, there are a few things you can do to make sure the content you produce is interpreted by Google as genuinely helpful and high-value. Here’s what we recommend:
- Put quality over quantity. More content isn’t a bad thing, but it can’t come at the expense of content quality.
- Bring value to users. Quality content speaks to a specific audience and helps them solve specific problems. Focus your content strategy on who you’re trying to reach and how you’re going to help them.
- Focus on UX. Your content should be easy to navigate and easy to understand. Use subheadings, bulleted lists, and visual assets like motion graphics and long-form video to break down complex ideas.
- Use AI sparingly. Chatbots and language models can save you time in the drafting process, but always make sure you check their output for accuracy, reformat it for maximum consumability, and tailor it to match your brand’s voice.
- Monitor third-party content. Potential sponsors, advertisers, and brand partners need to be vetted carefully to ensure that their content aligns with your purpose and messaging.
- Build authority. Backlinks, brand mentions, and reviews remain one of the best ways to show Google that your content is worth showcasing to its users.
This isn’t just the best way to maintain your rankings now; it’s currently the best way to insulate yourself from upcoming changes as well. Now that Google has started displaying its own AI-generated results, this focus on quality is becoming even more essential.
Learn More: Google AI Overviews Are Here: What It Means for Your SEO Campaigns
Scale Up Production without Sacrificing Quality
Ultimately, producing high-quality content at a consistent rate requires a certain level of expertise. Your content has to be focused on delivering real value to a relevant audience in a user-friendly way.
Whether it’s created from scratch or by prompting an AI and editing its output, all content requires strategy and attention to detail in order to succeed. It’s more than most businesses can do in-house.
Apex Growth’s SEO services can help you adapt to changing search engine criteria and user preferences by creating strategic content that ranks. Tell us about your needs and we’ll show you how to keep your content performing in 2024 and beyond.