With the overwhelming number of AI content generators available these days, there are a lot of free or low-priced options available to create blog content. Many of these tools claim to craft SEO-driven content, which is a big plus when it comes to blogs.
While drafting blog content is not a core-part of Social Light’s services, we do quite a bit of work on SEO-optimization, so I was curious about how AI-generated content would stack up. I decided to put things to the test and see what type of SEO blog content AI tools are creating.
To run my test, I used the same prompt for three different AI tools (Gemini, ChatGPT and Byword) and compared the different drafts they produced. While I didn’t publish any of the content created, I did pop them into my website to see what kind of score my Yoast SEO plugin would give them.
I’m going to break down the results below, but in case you don’t want to read that much, and just want my takeaway here it is:
You can indeed write an SEO-driven blog post using AI tools, but should you? Probably not.
Why not?
- AI tools are pulling from the content they were trained on, which is largely the Internet. There is a ton of good information on the Net, but there is also a lot of false info out there too. Unless you know your topic well, you may have a hard time understanding if the AI-generated is accurate.
- When I work with clients on creating content, they all tell me they want it to sound like them. AI-generated content will not sound like you. At all.
- You’re not going to be the only one using AI tools to create blog content, so it’s entirely possible that you could be posting the exact same blog as someone else. Not only does Google hate that, you’re not going to set yourself apart from anyone else.
- The actual SEO value ranged dramatically, but even if it was all gravy, you still have to know enough about SEO to pick the right keywords.
- For all the AI tools available, there are also a lot of tools popping up to test for AI-generation. You don’t want to get called out for AI-generated content like Sports Illustrated did.
Do AI tools have a place at all?
Absolutely.
One of the hardest things about writing a blog post – or any content for that matter – is getting started. It’s a lot easier to edit and react to something than stare at a blank screen.
The best value that I’ve found for AI tools is brainstorming ideas. The important thing to remember is that you need to be sure to edit AI-generated content to make sure it suits your purposes, and your brand.
AI Tool Comparison
Gemini
Gemini, formerly Bard, is Google’s entry in the AI race. I started with this one by typing in: write a blog post using the SEO keyword “what is a responsive website.”
I grabbed that content and then I typed in: can you give me a meta description for this post?
The result was a 326 word post that was super simple and did a pretty good job breaking down what makes a website responsive.
Most people think of responsive websites as adapting down to mobile screens, so I appreciated that Gemini included a line about both big and small screens:
Imagine a website that automatically adjusts its content – text, images, and videos – to ensure an optimal viewing experience, whether you’re on a giant widescreen monitor or a tiny smartphone screen. That’s the power of responsive design!
The Yoast analysis was actually pretty good, but what made me laugh is that Google’s own tool gave me both a title and meta description that’s slightly beyond Google’s suggested character length.
Bottom line: it was a technically sound draft, if a bit short. It did a good job covering the essentials, but felt like a fifth-grader’s essay rather than something I would publish.
ChatGPT
I used the exact same prompts for ChatGPT as I did on Gemini, and got a 571 word post, which is much closer to what I usually target for blog posts. Like Gemini, it used the keyword 7 times, but did miss some of the SEO elements like making sure the keyword is in the title and headings.
The post definitely went into more detail, but it also used longer sentences and more complex words, which made it less consumable.
The content also seemed to assume a good background knowledge of how websites work as a whole, by talking about fluid grids, viewport meta tags and CSS. That’s great if you’re speaking to a developer, but all web developers understand responsive websites. Someone searching google for “what is a responsive website” is unlikely to have any context of what these things mean.
Understanding an audience and their needs is not something these tools will do for you, so while the content may have been accurate, you still need to make sure it suits your needs.
Bottom line: ChaptGPT does offer a higher-quality of writing, but it’s still going to take some editing to be useable.
Byword
Another marketer told me that Byword is the best AI tool they have found for generating blog content. Since their home screen talks about SEO-optimized articles and encourages you to start with a keyword, I expected this to be the best of the bunch. So it floored me when I got an 1128-word article that used the keyword exactly once, which was in the title.
Interestingly, my Yoast analysis told me the key phrase was used 17 times, but when I looked at what it was identifying as the keyword phrase, it seemed to have honed in on “responsive website” alone, not “what is a responsive website.”
While those are similar, they are different keywords, and the generic one (responsive websites) is more competitive than the longtail keyword I was going for.
This was actually interesting for me to learn about the Yoast analysis, and reinforces the idea that automated tools help, but are not infallible.
Back to the Byword blog post: it starts out almost exactly the way the Gemini post does.
Gemini:
In today’s world, where people access the web from desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, having a website that looks great and functions flawlessly on every device is no longer a luxury – it’s a necessity. This is where the concept of a responsive website comes in.
Byword
In today’s digital era, having a responsive website is not just an option, it’s a necessity. With the ever-increasing number of people accessing the internet on various devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops, it’s important for businesses to ensure their websites are easily accessible and visually appealing across all screen sizes.
ChatGPT also thought it was a necessity, but included the point as part of the conclusion:
In today’s digital era, having a responsive website is no longer optional – it’s a necessity. By embracing responsive design principles, you can provide a seamless and enjoyable user experience across devices, improve your search engine visibility, and future-proof your online presence.
On the positive side, unlike the other tools, Byword included images in the post for me, which would give a boost to the SEO score, but the other tools did a better job of breaking the content up in to bullets to help for online reading.
All of that said, I was bored just reviewing the post. While Google does like to see deep content, most users don’t have the patience to read a long blog post.
It didn’t help that in the first 350 words, it told me that responsive websites were both important (twice) and crucial. Saying the same thing over and over makes for deeper content, but doesn’t actually create good content that’s a value to the user.
So which one did I use?
None of them. While I could pick and choose sections from each draft, then rewrite a bunch of things to sound like me, that’s not really saving me any time.
They are interesting terms of reference articles for what other people are talking about on the subject, but honestly I’d rather pull up articles from sources I know and trust as an authority.
At the end of the day, this was an interesting experiment to see what kind of content AI tools are generating, but it didn’t change my opinion. AI tools are great for brainstorming and getting you started, but they should not be relied upon to create all your content.
