Is Blogging Dead? How Content Creation AI Is Reshaping Digital Marketing
Creating a blog strategy for SEO (search engine optimization) used to be fairly straightforward. Plug in the right keywords, optimize your title and subheadings, include a little relevant alt text for images, and write a meta description. Nowadays, bloggers have a whole new beast to tackle: AI. AI has changed the game for blogging, introducing both AI-generated content competing for top spots and generative AI impacting search rankings.
All this begs the question: is blogging a dying art? Does blog SEO optimization still work, or is it time to focus your business’s content strategy elsewhere? Blogging used to be a keystone of any halfway decent SEO strategy, and I believe it still is. AI isn’t killing blogging—it’s changing it.
Is Blogging Dead Due to AI?
Whether or not AI will completely wipe out genuine, authentic blogging as a career or website value remains to be seen. Personally, I don’t think it will. AI writing is impressively good at imitating human-written content, but that’s all it is—an imitation. AI also has several flaws because all it can really do is copy, edit, and paste the original ideas of others. AI has been proven to provide incorrect information time and time again, not to mention including typos and other errors. So writers, don’t panic! I don’t think robots have replaced us yet!
So we’ve determined blogging isn’t dead. It is still a valuable part of any good digital marketing strategy, coupled with a reliable and user-friendly website and effective social media usage. However, AI has absolutely begun to alter the way we blog.
AI Overviews in Search Results
One of the biggest ways an average person encounters AI nowadays is through the generative AI search results at the top of Google and some other search engines. These AI overviews and summaries don’t directly quote the webpages they’re using as sources, but rather rephrase and regurgitate that information to hone in on the searched terms and what is being asked by the searcher. AI Overviews pull information from high-ranking webpages that match the searched terms. In other words, if you have a high-ranking blog, you’re still going to benefit from SEO if the generative AI model recognizes your content as valuable!
Using AI Overviews involves some risk, as the AI will not always get the information correct. Just last year, Google AI Overviews were under fire for providing flat-out wrong answers that could lead to dangerous consequences. AI doesn’t understand nuance and can easily misinterpret what its sources are actually saying.
How to Use AI Overviews
AI overviews can be extremely useful for researching a topic. As a copywriter who writes articles about everything from healthcare to pest control for various clients, I love the overviews for getting me quick information and sources to pull data and facts from. However—and this is a big however—I never, ever trust the overview to be directly factual information. The AI overview should be a starting point, helping you determine which articles and webpages to click through to and gather the actual information. I like to look through the first 3-5 sources from the sidebar and read through those. If I need a very specific piece of information, I click on the link icon next to the relevant part of the AI overview, which usually opens the source that directly answers my question.
AI-Generated Content or “Generative AI”
Generative AI is a deep-learning AI model designed to generate content based on data training. Basically, it takes words, photos, music, code, and videos that are fed into it and churns out content based on those. Google’s AI Overview defines Generative AI as “new, original content” based on these datasets, but that’s where we disagree. The content is neither new nor original and can get too close to plagiarism for comfort if you’re not careful.
However, using AI to generate blog content will not necessarily hurt your SEO ranking. Jenny Romanchuk has a great article about this, pooling expertise from hundreds of web strategists to talk about the impact of AI on SEO. When asked whether using AI will hurt search ranking, Romanchuk said, “Google is less concerned about how you produce content and more concerned with the quality of the content itself.” In other words, AI won’t hurt your SEO ranking as long as you are creating high-quality content.
How to Use Generative AI for Writing
If you want to save time by using generative AI to write articles, emails, blog posts, and social media content, just make sure you’re doing it right. When using content creation AI, proofreading and fine-tuning are essential to ensuring the generated content is accurate and fits your brand. Follow these steps to make sure the AI content is ready before posting:
Invest time and effort in thorough keyword research to set the AI up for success
Proofread for grammar, punctuation, etc.
Fact-check the information
Adjust the writing style to be authentic to your voice
Add external links, internal links, and quotes from sources
There are also other ways to save time with content creation AI besides fully writing a blog with it. I liked how one Redditor on the Blogging subreddit said it: “Use AI like a dictionary, a tool to help you write better.” Generative AI can enhance your writing by:
Brainstorming ideas to break out of writer’s block
Creating an outline from which to build your blog
Generating titles, subheadings, meta descriptions, and image alt text
Or even acting as a beta reader to provide constructive feedback on your writing
Should I Hire a Copywriter or Use AI?
If you’re a business owner looking to boost your website traffic with a blog or by investing in social media, do you really need to outsource to get it done? Or can you just tell an AI to do it for cheaper? If you don’t know how to use content creation AI effectively, I do not recommend trying to DIY your content this way.
In the digital marketing sphere, you need a copywriter who understands the tools at their disposal and knows how to use them properly. You don’t want a copywriter who just copies and pastes your blog topic into an AI content creation tool and gives you whatever it spits out—you need a copywriter who values your brand, understands your voice, and gives both the respect and attention to detail they deserve!
If you’re looking for digital marketing support with copywriting or social media, contact me to learn more about how I can help!
