For anyone paying attention, it’s clear that the ability of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has reached a crucial point. Chatbots, like ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing chatbot, Jasper, YouChat, and others are able to simulate a conversation or produce longer-form text in response to prompts typed in by users.
AI chatbot tools like ChatGPT and the Bing chatbot have been making headlines because they are powerful, useful tools–and perhaps because they seem to bring us closer to a sci-fi world in which AI has become sentient and developed a personality. Whether or not that’s going to happen (we’re guessing probably not), these tools aren’t going away.
What does that mean for marketing and SEO? Many marketing companies already use tools that rely on artificial intelligence, for instance, to generate lists of keyword phrases that potential customers might be searching for. But AI tools like ChatGPT offer the potential to do much more than that.
Are AI Tools the Way of the Future for Blogs and Website Content?
Having great website content, whether a blog post or landing page, is absolutely an SEO best practice. Because ChatGPT and similar tools are so good at spitting out large blocks of content, using them to create blog posts and landing pages seems like a no-brainer. But is it?
There are absolutely ways that content and digital marketers can use ChatGPT, but they may not involve blocks of unedited text. Here are the issues we’ve found with blog and landing page content from AI tools:
1. AI Tools Often Don’t Create Engaging Content
The problem is, AI-generated content just isn’t that interesting. We’ve found that not only does it tend to be very bland and repetitive, it also tends to use a lot of words to convey relatively little useful information.
The following is a AI-written paragraph created by ChatGPT from the prompt “write a paragraph on the benefits of AI-generated content”:
“AI-generated content offers several benefits, including increased efficiency and cost-effectiveness. AI algorithms can analyze large volumes of data quickly and accurately, generating insights and producing content at a speed that would be impossible for humans to match. Additionally, AI-generated content can be personalised to suit specific audience segments, allowing businesses to tailor their messaging to better resonate with their customers. Moreover, AI-generated content is less prone to errors and biases, ensuring high-quality and objective output. Finally, as AI technology continues to evolve and improve, the potential for even more sophisticated and nuanced content generation will only continue to grow, opening up new opportunities for businesses to engage with their audiences.”
As you can see, each sentence in the preceding paragraph reads similarly, and the points it makes are vague and debatable (can AI-generated content really be personalised better than content created in other ways?).
2. AI-Generated Content Isn’t Always Accurate
The ChatGPT-generated paragraph in the last section touts that “AI-generated content is less prone to errors and biases” than other types of content. But is this true? After you create an account in ChatGPT, you’ll see some information about the tool on the homepage, including the following warnings:
“May occasionally generate incorrect information”
“May occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content”
“Limited knowledge of world and events after 2021”
The bottom line is that ChatGPT works a little like autocorrect, filling in sentences with words that it has learned “go together.” The result may sound correct, but be factually wrong. And, of course, ChatGPT and other similar tools were trained on text written by human beings, who are prone to error and biases.
3. AI-Generated Content Is Discouraged by Google
When the goal of content is to drive more traffic to your website, the last thing you want is for Google to penalise the content for being generated by AI. While the broad use of AI tools is still a new phenomenon (and guidelines may change), Google’s policy on AI-created content is that it is acceptable as long as it demonstrates the qualities that Google says it rewards: expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. As Google puts it, “Our focus on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced…”
At the same time, Google also states that using automation such as AI “to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies.” Although it remains to be seen how this stance will play out in the real world of content creation, Google’s emphasis on reader-first content suggests that any text generated by an AI tool for a website or blog will need to be edited before use.
Having said all this, one thing that’s becoming increasingly clear among those experimenting with using AI tools to generate content is that the quality of the content generated is highly dependent on the quality and detail of the prompt being used. The Chrome add-on AIPRM offers a curated list of prompt templates that makes it much easier to use ChatGPT to generate quality, SEO-optimized content.
Reviewing the Blogwriting Tool Bramework
We’ve mostly discussed the tool ChatGPT since it’s the one getting all the attention right now, but there are other options out there for content creation. Bramework markets itself as a tool specifically for creating AI-written blog articles.
The tool offers a few options when you sign up–along with a tool that will write a full blog post for you, it also offers title creation, blog outline generation, and keyword research tools.
If you’re looking to create a whole blog post, Bramework gives you an interface that allows you to customize the approximate length of the post (small, medium, or large) and the tone (choose from options like “assertive,” “casual,” “funny,” and “urgent”). It also has options to add secondary keywords to focus on and to specify any facts it should include.
Once you create a title for the Bramework AI to work with, it will create an outline for the blog post. Like ChatGPT, the content Bramework came up with for a blog outline wasn’t bad, but it was composed of very broad, general statements.
Here’s part of the outline Bramework created for the prompt “using AI tools in marketing”:
“Ai is a powerful tool that can be used in marketing to automate and improve processes. By using AI, businesses can save time and money, while also increasing efficiency. Here are five ways AI can help you in your marketing efforts.
- Automated data analysis: AI can help you quickly and easily analyze big data to identify patterns and trends. This information can then be used to create targeted campaigns or ads.
- Improved customer service: With automated customer service systems, businesses can eliminate the need for human interaction in order to provide support. This saves time and money, while also providing better customer care.
- Improved product development: With AI assistance, businesses can speed up the process of developing new products or updates. This allows them to release new products more quickly and with less risk.”
The trouble with Bramework is going from this outline stage to a full blog stage. Once the outline is created, Bramework will create full paragraphs based on a phrase or sentence you choose to highlight. You could go ahead and highlight willy-nilly, but without careful thought, your Bramework-created blog post could easily end up rambling, disorganized, and off-topic.
We found that Bramework churned out readable, correct information (to our knowledge) that was also–much like ChatGPT–bland and generic. In the case of Bramework, starting off with an outline can result in a better organized and more readable blog post than ChatGPT, but the AI also requires more guidance (and, in our opinion, some practice for those unused to AI tools).
Bramework is a useful tool, but for a reader-friendly blog post–of the kind Google might consider to demonstrate “expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness”–you’ll probably want to start with a Bramework-created outline, and have a human writer expand it into an article.
Using AI Tools for SEO Keyword Generation and Brainstorming
One of the most important things a digital marketing company does is perform keyword research to help them decide how to focus each piece of content they create. Keyword and industry research are also used by marketing companies to help decide what a client’s website should look like, how it should be organized, and what the most important topics will likely be for visitors.
Digital marketing companies like SEO Assassin use various tools to generate keyword ideas, many of which already use some form of artificial intelligence, such as Answer the Public. Answer the Public lets the user input a general topic or keyword, then uses data from Google and Bing to generate a list of questions, comparisons, and other types of keywords related to the specific topic that are actively being typed into search engines.
While chatbot-type AI tools like ChatGPT don’t have the ability to pull a list of keyword suggestions based on actual people’s searches, they can help marketers quickly brainstorm a list of keyword phrases in a more creative way than tools like Answer the Public. Marketers may then submit the generated keywords to tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to find out their search volume and competition difficulty.
For example, we asked ChatGPT to come up with a list of keyword phrases based on the topic “forming a limited liability corporation.” The tool came back with a list that contains some surprisingly good ideas, many of which might make excellent blog articles:
- Limited liability corporation formation
- LLC formation process
- Starting an LLC
- Incorporating as an LLC
- LLC registration
- Benefits of forming an LLC
- Choosing an LLC structure
- Legal requirements for forming an LLC
- LLC operating agreement
- Formation costs of an LLC
- Steps to form an LLC
- LLC taxation
- Liability protection for LLC owners
- Member-managed LLC
- Manager-managed LLC
- Single-member LLC
- Multi-member LLC
- Dissolving an LLC
- Articles of organization
- Operating agreement provisions for an LLC
Numbers 14-17 on the ChatGPT list above, which describe different types of LLCs, offer possible new avenues of topic exploration for a marketer–and were not included among the keyword phrases generated by Answer the Public. For a digital marketing company like SEO Assassin doing research on a client, being able to quickly brainstorm a list that helps us think outside the box could be invaluable.
How AI Can Help Marketers Perform Competitor Analysis
One unexpected area in which AI can support marketing companies is in analyzing competitors and assessing strengths. ChatGPT can perform a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis when asked to do so. We requested a SWOT analysis from ChatGPT on Woolworths, and the AI came back with a lengthy assessment of the retail chain, including the following:
Strengths:
Strong market position: Woolworths is one of the largest supermarket chains in Australia, with a strong presence across the country.
Wide range of products: The company offers a wide range of products, from fresh produce and groceries to household items and electronics.
Strong brand reputation: Woolworths has a strong brand reputation for quality products and customer service.
Online presence: The company has a strong online presence and offers online ordering and delivery services.
Weaknesses:
Dependence on Australian market: Woolworths is highly dependent on the Australian market, which could be a weakness in terms of international expansion.
High competition: The supermarket industry is highly competitive, and Woolworths faces stiff competition from other supermarket chains like Coles and Aldi.
Dependence on suppliers: Woolworths is highly dependent on suppliers for its products, which could be a weakness in terms of supply chain disruptions.
Negative publicity: Woolworths has faced negative publicity in the past for issues like underpaying staff, which could affect its brand reputation.”
Another AI tool that can be used to significantly improve marketing strategies is Rytr. This platform uses AI algorithms to analyze data and make predictions about customer behavior. It can develop frameworks for emails, blogs, brand names and much more. Rytr collects data from various sources such as website interactions, customer demographics and purchase history, then cleans and re-processes the data into a format algorithms can use.
The Rytr algorithm is continuously learning, meaning content is continuously updated, which provides more accurate predictions of content over time. Rytr can therefore recommend personalised products, generate targeted marketing campaigns, and optimise digital marketing campaigns. Integrating Rytr into background marketing research supports digital marketing companies in their goal to keep their clients ahead of competitors.
What Does the Rise of AI Tools Mean for Us and Our Clients?
As we mentioned, AI-driven content generation tools and other types of tools aren’t going away anytime soon, and they can add value when used correctly. SEO Assassin is working to incorporate these tools into our marketing content creation process. Combining this AI technology with the expertise of human professionals achieves the best possible outcomes for clients.
Using artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT, Bramework, Rytr and Answer the Public as part of an SEO-driven content strategy enables us to provide clients with the best possible outcomes. Our use of AI isn’t confined to data analysis and text creation, either. We have started experimenting with creating video content for clients using the video creator tool Lumen5. The videos it produces are basic, placing text over still images; however, these default images can be swapped out for real client images and a voiceover added. As with other AI tools, we’re still experimenting with ways that we can use this technology to better serve our clients and make our process more efficient and effective. The era of artificial intelligence is here–and SEO Assassin is ready.
Chat GPT4 has just been released today promising safer and more useful responses, we'll be testing this and will update you soon
