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Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.

You can read your partner’s private messages, but you probably shouldn’t.

You can speed on the motorway, but you probably shouldn’t.

You can speak your mind all the time, but you probably shouldn’t.

It’s the same with AI. You can use it to do absolutely everything, but that might not be a good idea.

Humans seem to want to take shortcuts and cutting costs will always have an impact on decisions. But cutting corners, particularly in marketing, can often have unwanted consequences.

AI is a very useful tool, specifically for SEO. However, there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed. It’s a tool, it shouldn’t be in the driving seat. It’s brilliant for streamlining processes and bouncing ideas around.

You could use AI to write your entire website content. But here’s why you shouldn’t (and some advice from a leading copywriter and SEO expert).

What do SEOs use AI for?

Experienced and smart SEO experts know how to use AI responsibly. It’s a great brainstorming tool, and it can help you to outline content ideas. It can also summarise and collate stats and research for reports and to use as insights for content. It’s best used for the more monotonous SEO tasks that would normally take hours, but now take minutes. Keyword research. Data summaries. Ranking insights. When AI is used properly, it can be a game changer. But used irresponsibly, it can be a game-ender. Think website ranking tanks and huge technical website errors.

What should SEOs not use AI for?

Let’s not buy into SEO AI agents that just do your SEO for you. A human needs to be in the driving seat. It’s a risky strategy to hand everything over to a robot, and it can have huge implications for website traffic and revenue. If your site goes down because AI got it wrong, you’ll find yourself in a sticky situation. AI shouldn’t be used to auto-generate bulk content either. It doesn’t send very positive signals to Google; it just presents as a content farm. Mass-generated AI content most definitely won’t meet Google’s EEAT guidelines. Do not hand over your entire SEO strategy to AI; it can cause huge problems later down the line.

This causes problems such as:

Indexing issues

What a lot of people don’t realise is that AI content doesn’t just have a negative impact on rankings; it can affect your indexing too. So those AI pages you posted? They may not even get indexed by Google in the first place, let alone rank. When Google isn’t impressed by a website’s overall quality, they just don’t crawl as much of it. This means it’s not just the crap AI pages that are impacted; it could affect the indexing of your entire site.

Ranking issues

Myself and freelance SEO expert Sarah Fitzpatrick have both seen websites initially rank OK when using AI content, but after a while, their rankings tank. One of my old clients had this exact experience. They didn’t know that members of staff were using AI to write content, and then all of a sudden their rankings dropped off the face of the earth. You may think you’re winning initially, but if you post AI content with little human editing, it will come back to bite you later. A Semrush analysis of 42,000 blog pages found that human-written content is eight times more likely than purely AI-generated content to hold the number one spot on Google. AI content can sometimes rank and make it to page one, but it doesn’t hold the top positions that actually receive clicks.

Conversion issues

If people spot your website is packed with AI slop, they’ll bounce. It breaks trust and therefore hurts conversion. You’ve spent years building your brand reputation; why would you throw it away by taking a shortcut that really isn’t on brand?

Errors

SEO specialist Sarah Fitzpatrick tells me that overusing AI in SEO can cause unwanted and risky errors. Think incorrect pricing, made-up case studies, hallucinated stats and facts that are totally wrong.

What copywriters should use AI for

I’m not writing off AI as a useful tool. If you don’t use it at all, you probably will struggle to keep up. It’s definitely worth dipping your toes in the AI pool and deciding how you want to swim in it. I think it’s great for certain types of research, recording and translating interviews, brainstorming and also summarising big ideas.

What copywriters shouldn’t use AI for

Don’t call yourself a copywriter then get AI to write articles for you. It’s deceptive, and it’s not a great representation of our profession. If you’re in marketing or a business owner, it can be oh so tempting to use AI to write blog posts, landing pages and product descriptions. But it’s not worth it.

Own your tone of voice and your brand values and write your own copy. Don’t use ChatGPT or Claude to write your entire website. Don’t use it to come up with your entire content strategy. Some of the best campaigns out there are successful because a human came up with a brilliant idea, and we don’t want to lose that.

From a copywriting and content perspective, there are also quite a few drawbacks that many people aren’t aware of. Beyond the normal quality issues and lack of originality, using purely AI content can harm your site and your brand.

It can impact your on-page statistics

Yep, it’s hardly surprising that using AI-slop will probably tank your on-page stats. People are naturally going to spend less time on the page if the content is poor and just like everything else they’ve seen.

Trust metrics

We can look at all the stats and show how content performs, but when it comes to copywriting, it’s all about one thing — trust. When you write content, you’re trying to engage with an audience and build trust. Tricking them by using content auto-generated by a machine won’t earn their trust. Plus, a study found that when people suspect content is AI-written, trust drops by 50%. Marketing Insider Group’s report (from 2023 — which is an important detail) emphasised that human content wins in quality and trust.

Likelihood of purchasing

Here’s the thing: if people are going to spend their hard-earned cash on your website, they are going to want to trust you. If they suspect you’ve used AI, you’re in trouble. A study by Raptive, a digital publishing platform found a 14% decrease in purchase consideration when content was perceived as AI-generated.

A LinkedIn performance study compared AI versus human sales copy and discovered that human content had a better conversion rate (2.5% for human vs 2.1% for AI). What is even more interesting is that people’s willingness to pay premium prices also dropped by 14%. People see AI content as a shortcut. It’s cheaper, and it’s easier, but it’s not necessarily better.

Initial success that then tanks

People think they can just cut corners and they’ll come out on top. A lot of people I’ve spoken to have seen an initial increase in content performance in the search engines, but then a sudden tank. Why? Because Google will eventually clock on and penalise you if you upload thousands of purely AI articles.

You can’t achieve EEAT with pure AI content

AI can generate generic content for you to publish, but what it’s missing is the important bits that make copy unique and engaging. Things that computers can’t come up with. Your main goal should be to meet Google’s EEAT guidelines, and you cannot do that without adding a human touch. High-quality content should be helpful and useful, and for that, you need to include original quotes and case studies, interviews, personal anecdotes and proper research.

But what about using a human to edit AI content?

Yes, this is doable. I still feel there is more value in a human writing content from scratch and using AI to get insights and suggest improvements. However, if you do want to use AI to write content and then edit it yourself, here are my recommendations:

• Rewrite at least 70% of it so that it is in your own voice.
• Check all the facts. AI can literally make stuff up.
• Add human stories, quotes and research.
• Write your own headlines (don’t use the auto-generated ones).

UPDATE: Big news. Claude is embedding an AI watermark that will travel with AI-generated text. This will make it easier and cheaper for Google to pick up on AI content…Just a word of warning. This seems to suggest that change is coming and you won’t be able to use AI copy and claim it as your own any longer, at least not without Google knowing.

This article was put together by myself and Sarah, as we wanted to write it from both a content and SEO perspective.