Content Marketing
6 AI SEO Mistakes to Avoid
Learn some of the top AI SEO mistakes you should avoid to help your content rank on search engine results pages.
Are your artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted search engine optimization (SEO) efforts coming up short? If so, you may be running into some common AI SEO mistakes.
That’s right! It’s not that AI can’t help you rank on the search engine results pages (SERPs) — the potential is there (think predictive SEO or SEO forecasting). You just need to use it properly to see results.
Read on to learn about common AI SEO mistakes and how to avoid them.
As smart as AI may seem sometimes, it’s not a replacement for human expertise and experience.
Remember, AI is only as good as its training data. This can result in challenges in:
Considering that Google ranks sites based on experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or E-E-A-T, publishing unoriginal, inaccurate AI content isn’t likely going to get you one of those top spots on the SERPs.
So, keeping a human in the loop is essential to ensure that AI content meets those standards.
Of course, there are lots of AI tools out there that you can use to create content. However, not all of them are the best tools for SEO.
Take ChatGPT, for example. You can ask it to perform keyword research, but it can’t provide data about search volume and competition level.
So, a chatbot could infer that a keyword like “content marketing” would be highly competitive because it’s a short-tail keyword. However, if you want to make keyword decisions based on more extensive data, you’ll have to consider a different keyword research tool.
To avoid this AI SEO mistake, switch out a general chatbot for tools with relevant built-in features.
For example, if it’s keyword research you’re after, a tool like Scalenut can give you the keywords and metrics you need to help you build topical authority and increase your chances of ranking.
One of the greatest things about generative AI tools is that they make it easy to scale content creation.
However, publishing content based on quantity instead of quality could negatively impact rankings if it doesn’t meet Google’s quality standards.
According to their spam policies, they consider using generative AI tools to create lots of content and manipulate rankings a form of scaled content abuse. At least, if it’s not adding any kind of value for users.
Specifically, they state: “Examples of scaled content abuse include, but are not limited to: Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users.” - Google Spam Policies.
So, if you want to use AI for SEO effectively, you still need to prioritize content quality. Use AI as a writing partner to help you create the kind of people-first content that Google loves to rank.
Google isn’t a fan of low-quality, unhelpful content. After its March 2024 core update, Google applied manual actions to websites to reduce the amount of unhelpful content in the SERPs.
Originality.ai’s study on Google’s AI content penalties found that not only did all of these websites contain AI-generated content, but about half used AI to generate 90-100% of their posts.
With 50% of marketers using AI for content creation, it’s possible that some unedited, low-quality content could be hurting your chance at ranking.
Fortunately, there’s a quick and easy solution: performing a site scan.
By regularly scanning your site for AI-generated text, you can find and address any content that may put you at risk for SEO-related penalties.
It won’t even slow down your content creation process. With the Originality.ai Site Scan, you can scan your entire website in just one click.
Another SEO-related factor that Google looks down upon is plagiarism.
One of the biggest myths about AI-generated content is that it can’t be plagiarized or contain duplicate content.
Generative AI pulls information from its training datasets to generate text, and in doing so can produce nearly identical copies of certain phrases in that data.
So if that information isn’t properly cited it could result in either duplicate text or plagiarism.
Now, Google may not explicitly mention plagiarism in its spam policies, but it does talk about scraping.
Google defines scraping as, “Republishing content from other sites without adding any original content or value, or even citing the original source.”
If it thinks your AI-generated content is the result of copying content from other sites, changing it slightly, and republishing it, it could negatively affect your SEO efforts.
Luckily, this AI SEO mistake has another simple solution: using a plagiarism checker.
By running text through a plagiarism detection tool before publication, you can spot and fix any potential signs of duplicate content and amend them accordingly.
The number of AI-related SEO mistakes on this list may put you off from using it entirely, but this could be yet another mistake.
With all the productivity and cost-saving benefits associated with AI tools, you should absolutely consider using them in your SEO efforts.
You just need to think of AI as an SEO partner rather than an expert.
It still needs you to give it instructions, check over its output, and add your expertise to make high-quality, SEO-optimized content. Together, you can create SEO-optimized content with ranking potential.
AI-powered tools can be beneficial for SEO when used properly.
For best results, review Google’s spam policies closely to make sure that content complies.
Then, incorporate an AI Detector or Site Scan into your publication process to highlight any potential instances of AI that need further review to align content with brand voice.
Finally, don’t forget to fact-check your content to make sure that AI isn’t hallucinating.
Learn more about AI and SEO in our top guides:
Need a little more insight into AI SEO mistakes? Check out some of the most frequently asked questions below.
Yes, AI can be used for SEO. With the right AI SEO tool, you can discover keyword opportunities and content gaps, brainstorm topics, find and monitor trending topics, speed up research, create content outlines and text for articles, optimize content, analyze KPIs, identify link-building opportunities, and even optimize content for voice search.
No, AI content isn’t necessarily bad for SEO. It could still have ranking potential if it meets Google’s E-E-A-T requirements. That being said, significant human editing is typically required to make rankable AI content. So it’s best to use AI as a support rather than a replacement for authentic and unique human-written content.
