Incorporating AI-generated content into your content strategy offers immense potential, but it's essential to strike a balance with human expertise to ensure the authenticity and relevance of the content. Human involvement in the E-E-A-T process is vital because it provides the context, emotion, and personal user experience that artificial intelligence cannot replicate. This human input then guides the AI to generate more accurate, comprehensive, relatable, and engaging content for the readers.
Watch Clip: Thoughts on Using AI For Content Creation
David Yarian highlighted this point in the podcast, discussing the power and limitations of AI in content creation. While AI can enhance the efficiency and scope of content production, it cannot fully replace the nuanced understanding and personal touch that human creators bring.
Therefore, using AI to complement human creativity and insight as a content creator is vital. AI has shown great potential in providing critical support to content creators, but its capabilities (at least currently) are not all-encompassing. Sure, it can process vast amounts of data with immense speed, identify patterns, and generate content based on predefined parameters.
But what AI lacks is the innate human ability to perceive subtle nuances, contextual implications, and emotional undertones. Nor can it utilize experiential knowledge or personal anecdotes to resonate with the readers emotionally. The innovation lies in leveraging AI as a tool to augment human creativity, not replace it altogether.
Google recognizes the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its growing role in various digital content creation and optimization aspects for website owners. The tech giant doesn't object to using AI for content creation so long as the user-generated content meets its quality guidelines and effectively serves the user's intent.
This approach allows for a synergistic blend of technological efficiency and human authenticity in poor user experience, ensuring that the content meets SEO standards and genuinely engages and resonates with the audience. This is what Google values.
Google Helpful Content Update
Google Helpful Content Update (GHCU) is an algorithm that primarily aims to reward and rank more highly, content that humans write for humans (rather than content written to rank better with only SEO performance in mind). The GHCU algorithm applies what is published in Google's quality rater guidelines to help improve the overall search ranking systems.
The updates have sitewide impacts rewarding high-quality content, which means that the algorithm’s machine learning will look at the content across the entire site and determine if a relatively significant amount of the content is unhelpful or low-quality. If your content is judged to be unhelpful, that could lead to your entire site being flagged, which would result in a significant drop in rankings based on Google's search quality guidelines.
According to Google, the ‘helpfulness’ assessment is weighted, so sites with only some unhelpful content will be less impacted than sites with mostly unhelpful content.
How Does E-E-A-T Factor Into This Update?
Google put out an update support document titled “What creators should know about Google’s helpful content update,” and it includes 6 questions that creators should ask themselves about their content:
- Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
- Does your content demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise from having used a product or service or visiting a place)?
- Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
- After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
- Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
- Are you keeping our guidance for core updates and product reviews in mind?
This tailored approach allows for a more targeted and effective strategy, ensuring that your content meets the general criteria of E-E-A-T and addresses your audience's specific expectations and needs within your industry.
The Convergence of AI and Human Creativity
In conclusion, the blend of AI and human expertise in content creation cultivates a fertile ground for innovative, engaging, and valuable content. While AI excels in processing vast amounts of data, identifying patterns, and enhancing efficiency, the human touch breathes life, authenticity, and emotional relevance into the content.
Google's Helpful Content Update and emphasis on E-E-A-T (Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness) underscores the importance of creating human-centric content, rather than focusing solely on SEO performance.
The goal post for content creators is clear - create content that is expertly crafted, authoritative, trustworthy, and above all, helpful for users. This unique intersection of technology and human creativity is the future of content creation, promising a rich, engaging, and rewarding user experience.
