SEO Showdown: Why ChatGPT Can't Compete with Human Writers in Crafting Click-Worthy Content

Now, more than ever good writers may feel threatened by the lack of job security that AI-powered language models like ChatGPT may shoot up for them in the future.

Previously, we've had conversations about AI depleting humans to write articles with speed and less cost incurred. However, we have also tried out a few AI platforms to support us in writing including ChatGPT and the most popular observation from that experiment would be:

AI doesn't have the creative ability to write content that humans will love. That is content with so much depth, versatility, tone, context and simplicity.

While popular opinion may consent to this, the view is quite different for two categories of people:

📌 Business writers: Those who write to pay bills and not necessarily because they have a passion for it, hence ChatGPT and its colleagues could be seen as a way out to wade off the stress to research, ideate and write.

📌 Firms: Businesses that wish to optimize cost may understand the benefits of ChatGPT sketchily hence, take the easy route to employ its services for free rather than hiring people to write.

In the midst of all this, good writers are perplexed that AI's mediocre performance in writing should not be lauded over theirs; there are many gaps AI can't fill at the moment to provide quality content.

Google still needs humans to write!

Yes, that's true. Even with Google recently announcing the introduction of its experimental conversational AI, they are still not backing down on the helpful content mandate to make their search engine more human-friendly with authentic content.

Google wants humans to flex their versatility in writing what fellow humans can relate to.

It's about providing enough value, search engine comes second. Google advises that you write with this in mind.

Google's stance on AI in writing

One would be curious to find out what Google thinks about AI-generated content following the recent buzz.

Well, Google is not hoping to change its demands on SERPs-worthy content; however, it holds no bias against how content is created if it meets the standards as an ardent supporter of the use of AI in generating helpful information.

In terms of giving visibility to worthy content, Google is not new to ignoring fluffy content and optimizing search for the best content. With enhanced systems in place, AI-generated content without originality will be treated in the same vein.

Google advises that AI-generated content must be original, following the E-E-A-T guidelines to stand out.

Future of SEO with AI language models like ChatGPT

With the advent of advanced AI models challenging the future of writing, there are predictions that AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) may overtake SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

AEO has always been in the picture of content writing as a subset of SEO to provide answers relating to commonly asked questions which your searchers might find helpful. It's an avenue to tell your readers that you have a wide range of knowledge on a given topic.

However, times are changing. So if your content is usually stuffed with FAQs, there's a high probability you may be helping AI models like ChatGPT, to provide more accurate answers in the future. Still focus on providing helpful content, it doesn't matter where your traffic is split but SEO will always reward quality content.

In terms of writing quality content, it's still important to note that the goal is not only to write what ranks on search engines (SEO) but also to provide value through helpful answers in your content (AEO). Having a good mix of these two ingredients, with AEO being more, rightly determines high-quality content.

AI would always be relevant to aid the process of creating quality content rather than erasing human interference.

Good writers are still heroes 🌟

Here are 5 limitations of ChatGPT in helping writers with SEO

1️⃣ In-depth content

It is unarguable to say that the content space is crowded with so much noise: there are loads of content written for the sole aim of ticking off a task and not necessarily to provide value, hence little effort is applied to deliberate research and it's evident in the quality of work churned out.

ChatGPT in this regard follows the same pattern.

It makes use of data ingested into its model and rambles around it to create something meaningful.

Like virtually every other AI language model in existence, ChatGPT lacks domain expertise on topics and this limits the quality of the content it produces. This is evident in how vague the piece could be: lacking quality storytelling and deeper industry insight which would of course affect the potentiality of such piece-making to SERPs (remember Google's helpful content documentation).

When asked to write an article, it returns general knowledge of the subject matter without providing depth or real-life instances for comprehension. The returned piece could serve as a revised version of a well-researched work.

Here's a sample below, I asked ChatGPT to write an article on ELT pipelines⬇️

In 462 words ChatGPT confidently wrote an article to discuss ELT pipelines as regards NLP, a specific subject it feels pertains to its realm.

This is similar to a large percentage of over 5,000 articles published online daily, without structure and depth.

Quality writers on the other hand take time to comb available resources, comprehend them, provide real-life examples and make bold citations to prove authenticity in their writing and this is what ChatGPT wouldn't do for you.

2️⃣ Tangible experience

You can't take people where you haven't been.

Experience is a bond that binds your target audience. They need to feel each scenario painted out like they are right there in it. This is an indelible mark that AI can't make in your content except if you don't want to be real.

For writers who are familiar with Google's E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) guideline, you might have noticed that a recent update was made to it that adds an extra E making it E-E-A-T which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

This proves the need for human feeling in writing that understands, for instance, the pain point a product solves by being in a situation where the product served as a solution. In that case, the story is more palpable and efficient. AI can't sufficiently generate credible feedback for your customers on their behalf.

3️⃣ Quality content structure

Remember the experiment I showed you earlier on in this piece where I told ChatGPT to write an article on ELT pipelines? That's a perfect fit Illustration for this point.

Simply because ChatGPT generates answers automatically, there is no room to align the content structure. With ChatGPT, you could have many lines of thought in one paragraph and this may confuse the reader.

For a guide to write a B2B story for a brand humans will approach this by carefully following a sequential line of thoughts to introduce first the problem, the present solution and its disadvantages before complementing it with the solution from the value proposition of the brand, making the reader the hero at the end; all this properly aligned to inform the reader on what each section is all about and also providing information to search engines on which part of the article has H1, H2 and H3 tags.

4️⃣ Ranking Keywords

Hold on!👀 ChatGPT ain't good with keywords...yet. I know there's been a whole lot of "Best SEO practices with ChatGPT" that include keyword research which you've subconsciously adopted. Well, if you decide to neglect writing evergreen content through the use of SEO tools for your keyword research simply because you want to save time, you may miss writing with the best keywords in your piece.

Following an experiment with ChatGPT by Ahref which was documented on their Youtube channel, tagged ChatGPT for SEO: Best (and Worst) Use Cases, using ChatGPT for keyword research makes no sense. Here's why:

👉ChatGPT is instructed to provide keywords

👉ChatGPT provides high-ranking keywords in its opinion. At a first glance, they look pretty good for a start.

👉Keywords are tested on Ahref and turn out to have a low keyword density

👉Keywords are moved to Google trends and it frowns 😕

Four screenshots have proven how unreliable ChatGPT could be for keyword research. What other proof do you need?

5️⃣ Featured snippets

The expectations of ChatGPT are way too high because of its recent buzz and superior performance to other previously existing contemporaries.

It's important that we still recognise that it's a chatbot, hence most of its responses would be straight to the point

Also, it's very important to familiarise yourself with its abilities and limitations so you don't get disappointed when it fails your test.

Going by the information above, ChatGPT has no updated data and may not help you create quality featured snippets to outrank your competitors.

Interesting days are ahead

With more criticism, AI language models are learning to generate better results.

However, a large reliance on AI by brands to create copies will give them less opportunity to stand out because more often than not, the same results will be generated for another person.

There is a need to bring extra juice to the table. AI has created a contest for competition and good writers have to embrace their creativity and experience to showcase an upper hand.

If for instance, two web3 companies which are competitors provide this same copy on their website, what then makes them stand out?

In the grand scheme of things ...

ChatGPT has no intentions to unseat quality writers but rather to make the process easier. Hear what it has to say⬇️

Embrace AI and flex more with your creativity.

You can use ChatGPT to help you:

📌 Create a skeletal content outline which you may most times need as a draft guide.

📌 Generate click-worthy titles for your blog post which are subject to further editing based on choice.(Check out the topic for this article, which was still edited by the way😀)

📌 Edit your content for free 😉

📌 Create short-form content like meta descriptions

...Amongst many other awesome benefits.

Celebrate the power of technology and human intelligence with ChatGPT - the perfect fusion of cutting-edge AI and human-inspired learning. - Anonymous