Last month I wrote about something I get asked often. Will AI kill SEO?
No, but the opposite will probably happen where Google penalizes patterned AI content. Bye-bye traffic. Bye-bye money… 📉
I saw this same thing over a decade ago, where something like 20+% of SEOs went out of business, and their clients (you) went with them.
And, don’t worry, good copywriters. Your job is safe from AI.
Here’s what I’m seeing. I’m seeing lazy writers at scale.
Just look at the attached screenshot, and see the matching content by color from different contributors.
I surveyed a few “experts” on a topic, and half of them came back with nearly THE EXACT same replies.
[click to enlarge]
And, if I can detect this… What do you think Google, who is infinitely more intelligent than I am, sees?
If you want to see what this looks like, just Google “impact of Google Panda algorithm.” That one algorithm update from 2011 directly impacted a documented 11.8%+ of EVERY SEARCH done on Google. Millions of websites got hammered. Absolutely crushed.
My business blew up then because all other SEOs were cutting corners. I saw the writing on the wall from a mile away and kept my distance. So when Google’s Grim Reaper came knocking on a website’s door, the shady SEOs didn’t know how to react. Goodbye, organic traffic.
Meanwhile, I didn’t have a thing to worry about because I was proactive.
Zero of my clients got a penalty, and business doubled because panicked business owners needed someone who knew how to get them out of the hole their previous SEO dug them into.
What did I see back then to be proactive about? Exactly what I see today.
Low-quality content, mass-produced at scale.
“But, Damon. AI is new. How could this have already happened 12 years ago?”
Because mass-produced content at scale is not new.
Before ChatGPT was Jasper.
Before Jasper was a dozen other tools.
Before those tools were “content spinning,” taking other people’s content, shuffling paragraphs, and swapping synonyms. Weird, sounds exactly like today’s AI tools, only slightly better but still equally liable to punishment.
“But, Damon. AI checkers aren’t really able to tell what’s written by AI or what isn’t.”
True, because they are worthless tools built for an equal money run.
But, it is beyond easy to identify duplicate content though, and that’s largely what AI tools are producing.
Businesses will get absolutely devastated once Google determines, at their discretion, which site is the original author and punishes the thousands of others with similar content. And that’s just for one search result. Multiply that by all the other daily searches and websites scaling AI content, and this could be more devastating than Google Panda days.
I realize some business owners are doing this unknowingly. This is your wake-up call.
For the marketing agencies pitching unmoderated AI content without integrating quality control measures, you will tank your clients’ website credibility, negatively impacting their traffic, revenue, and food on their families’ tables.
For those with integrity, this is a huge opportunity. Well-researched, artfully story-told content of quality wins at any respectable marketing level.
Update: March 7, 2024
Looks like Google’s AI punishment might have arrived.
