Write for People, Obviously

I work with various content writers on a regular basis, be it in-house marketing teams, freelancers, founders or CEOs. And at some point during the work, there will inevitably be some target keywords.

And what I am seeing more and more is people giving me content that is entirely generated with AI. You can spot it a mile off.

Writing should be focused on something interesting - the value of content comes from opinions, expertise, research, new data and helpful experience.

And as good SEOs, we have to combine those things with keywords we already know people are searching for, so that the content attracts readers.

Before AI, it was a case of saying things like “don’t keyword stuff, write for users first and we’ll do the SEO after”. Or something like that. Then you’d get an original piece of content that you’d need to edit and make even better.

But increasingly now, a brief becomes something people just shove into ChatGPT and copy the response. Yes Chat GPT knows how to target keywords (sort of), but really that was never the point. The value of the content is the important part, the keywords come after.

Before AI, the only option was to write the thing. Now we have the option to get the computer to write the thing. And we shouldn’t get the computer to write the thing.

I’m not trying to be a luddite here, I actually think AI tools have a very solid place in the research process for content. I use AI daily, I love it, it is very powerful.

But it should not be writing the pieces that are supposed to be something interesting - opinions, expertise, research, new data, helpful experience - this type of content needs to be written by a human.

You can spot AI written articles a mile off, they are tedious, and your readers deserve better. Your content represents your brand - act like it does.

Here’s a super simple process to create content that uses AI but is still interesting and of value.

1. Create a brief around the subject you want to cover

2. Do some basic keyword research for the subject with a tool like Ahrefs

3. Add the keywords to the brief

4. Use another tool like Also Asked to get an idea of what questions people need the answers to for the given subject

5. Add the most relevant questions to the brief too

6. Give that brief to your AI assistant, and ask it to:

   • Suggest any important areas within the subject we may have missed

   • Find any recent articles or important news related to the subject

This is a simplified framework, but gives you a good idea of how much work should be going into creating good content - far too many people are relying entirely on AI.

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