“Why can’t we simply use AI to do it?”
Whether or not you’re on the model or company facet of search engine marketing, I’m guessing you’ve heard some model of this from an exec or a shopper with little data of AI instruments, search engine marketing ideas, or each.
I’ve been requested that query a number of occasions as a result of the opposite get together noticed or heard about modest success from LLM-generated content material that received some clicks and impressions.
My reply: as a result of 1000’s of LLM-produced items of content material don’t a profitable search engine marketing program make.
This text dives into the human and AI roles in right now’s search engine marketing panorama, together with:
- What persons are getting unsuitable about AI and content material.
- What AI can and might’t do for search engine marketing campaigns.
- What an professional can sort out with AI instruments.
- The North Star of 2025 search engine marketing (as I see it) and why you want people to achieve it.
(Notice: No LLMs have been used to jot down this text.)
What persons are getting unsuitable about AI and content material
When individuals ask, “Can we simply have AI write 1,000 weblog posts?,” they assume there’s a linear development.
For example, if a weblog put up will get 100 visits/month, received’t 1,000 weblog posts get 100,000 visits?
- No, that’s not the best way search engine marketing works. It’s not a linear self-discipline.
- Extra importantly, that strategy means you’re simply placing crap on the market. You’re basically utilizing AI to construct your personal content material farm of stale, repetitive language.
There’s no worth for the consumer or constructive affinity for the model.
Now, you can use AI instruments and strategic prompts to shortly create a stable base for a chunk of content material, then apply human modifying and a singular POV.
Usually, that’s quicker than the content material course of was earlier than AI, and it’ll produce significantly better content material than 1,000 LLM-produced items, nevertheless it nonetheless requires human enter.
Briefly, neglect about spamming Google with a ton of poor LLM content material. Your customers received’t learn it, and in the end, it received’t do something past perhaps inflating your self-importance metrics.
And, crucially, Google received’t prefer it.
Each time Google offers with an explosion of individuals doing the identical (straightforward) factor to recreation the system, you need to zig whereas others are zagging.
Don’t be a part of the issue that triggers – and will get worn out by – an enormous algo replace.
Dig deeper: 3 methods to make use of AI for search engine marketing wins in 2025
What AI can and might’t do for search engine marketing campaigns
Together with being unable to provide differentiated content material, AI is being requested to do issues like “give you key phrases” or “do inner hyperlinks” by itself.
If you happen to’re simply having AI take a look at your website and replace hyperlinks with out cautious QA, you’ll simply find yourself with loads of crappy inner hyperlinks.
It’s the identical factor with key phrases: you may get an enormous listing, however plenty of them can have low quantity, be barely related, or be straight-up rubbish.
Anytime somebody says, “Let’s simply use AI for [task],” attempt it as soon as, gauge the output and the time wanted to carry it as much as something resembling human baseline, and also you’ll have a extra nuanced reply.
Then again, there are just a few confirmed use circumstances for AI in search engine marketing – and whereas they nonetheless contain human enter, they’re massive time-savers that liberate the specialists to deal with extra strategic initiatives.
For example, if in case you have good supply information and/or good, well-substantiated unique ideas, AI is nice for remixing them into one thing organized and usable.
Let’s say you conduct a radical interview with a options engineer. AI can spotlight, categorize, and synthesize essentially the most salient components of the interview, leaving you to QA the output and layer in your personal voice.
Not solely does this prevent time, it helps floor patterns in massive information units that you just may by no means have noticed by yourself – or at the very least nowhere close to as shortly.
Dig deeper: Learn how to optimize your 2025 content material technique for AI-powered SERPs and LLMs
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If you happen to strategy AI instruments with the correct expectations, they are often extremely highly effective.
I typically use it for technical content material like briefs and ideas – however as a part of the drafting course of. Draft 0.5 (we’re not speaking 1.0) is a ChatGPT remix for me.
That stated, non-technical individuals utilizing LLMs to assist set up a base for technical content material is ok, however even after you make it sound good, you continue to want an professional within the subject to assessment the top product for reality and substance.
As talked about, AI instruments will be nice for synthesizing giant information units and producing pattern and sentiment analyses.
If you happen to’ve received a listing of key phrases, it’s follow to ask AI to give you extra key phrases.
I additionally like utilizing it for title tag and headline choices.
I’ll write one good headline with a personality restrict and a goal persona and ask an LLM to riff on that model.
As an alternative of painstakingly writing 5, I’ll write one actually good one, use an LLM to provide just a few extra, and let the shopper select.
So, typically AI is a superb place to begin, and typically it’s an awesome second step.
It is determined by the situation, and it takes follow to grasp the place its energy is most successfully leveraged.
However the reply isn’t to let AI run wild and think about the output remaining.
Dig deeper: 15 AI instruments you need to use for search engine marketing
Why you want people to achieve the search engine marketing pinnacle in 2025
If we are able to agree that search engine marketing’s final purpose ought to be to drive down-funnel outcomes like pipeline and gross sales, I’d like to supply what I see as one of the best ways to get there in 2025: grow to be the major supply for Google and LLMs to quote.
Use proprietary information and set up a singular POV to your model, and personal the subject by understanding every part the consumer must study associated to the first key phrase (or conversational query).
Changing into a major reference is basically incompatible with LLMs and AI, that are by nature spinoff. (In different phrases, you may’t be the supply by pulling from the supply.)
LLMs and AI, at this level, don’t produce something new or distinctive, which is what customers crave – therefore the rise of TikTok and Reddit search juxtaposed with the emergence of LLM search.
Which means you want human enter to really stand out and interact customers by being a trusted reference on Google or LLMs.
Good search engine marketing makes use of AI – however nonetheless wants individuals to win
The opposite day, a colleague requested me what sort of AI instrument I want somebody would construct for search engine marketing.
My reply, which is totally wishful considering, was a instrument that will present me a community of related concepts that haven’t been written about. A content material hole analyzer of types that identifies what individuals aren’t saying.
Given the character of AI and the best way it sources materials, although, I believe that’s inherently inconceivable (how are you going to supply a destructive?) – at the very least for now.
On the price AI instruments are being developed, it’s value monitoring.
We’ll be shocked on the use circumstances that get addressed within the subsequent 12 months alone.
I’m additionally guessing that irrespective of how good the instrument, people will at all times be wanted to function it.
Dig deeper: AI can’t write this: 10 methods to AI-proof your content material for years to return
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