Client-only newsletter.
Most of us in the SEO industry were holding our breath, anticipating Google’s response to the coming wave of low-quality AI-generated content for SEO.
- How would Google react?
- How would Google even detect AI content?
- How would we stay within bounds of Google’s (frequently murky) guidelines?
As recently as a few months ago Google had said that AI-generation was fine, so long as it resulted in useful content for web users.
They have since “clarified” their position.
And in fact it does not contradict their earlier statement – it just throws up into the air one of the pillars of SEO in recent years.
The hammer is coming down on content marketing. Specifically low-quality, derivative content, created solely for SEO.
Google will not bother trying to identify what is or is not AI (as far as we can tell). Instead they will begin deprioritizing pages that they deem unoriginal, rehashes of existing content from the web. Which is by definition how Generative AI works.
But this would seem to also apply to the old content marketing approach that many of us used before AI, hiring non-domain expert writers to create content, who would similarly synthesize several articles on a topic to create a new one.
We used these techniques because they worked for our clients, they were cost-effective and Google encouraged them with ranking improvements.
Now that all appears to be blown up.
And I am glad.
We can do better. We can create useful, informative, entertaining, insightful information, analyses, and experiences for web users and potential patients – not just “content.” This is a long-overdue change.
It will require that we approach “content creation” differently. But the result will be superior content. It will be content not just for rankings, but useful for your actual patients. And by getting out ahead of this, we can expect a rankings edge over your competitors as well.
How exactly we go about creating “superior content” will vary from one company to the next, but I have been experimenting with it, and the results so far are very cool. It will be different work, it may be a bit more work, but Google will reward you for it. And so too will your patients.
UNTIL THEN
I will leave you with a quote from silly sci-fi author, Douglas Adams, whose Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy outsold the Encylopedia Galactica because it was slightly cheaper, and because it bore the following, in large, friendly words on the cover:
“Don’t Panic”Yours Truly,
Wax