The SEO Heist made big news – there were thousands of reposts, Business Insider weighed in with their opinion and people were angry.
Look at the post below? Wouldn’t this trigger you?
Well, if you didn’t know already Google threw the website Jake was working on into the trash.
Yes, that’s right. The SEO Heist gone wrong.
People looked at Jake’s downfall, and said it’s over for AI content. “AI content works until it doesn’t” is the theory.
(That’s also how most things in life work – the dishwasher works until it doesn’t. The washing machine works until it doesn’t etc etc).
In their list of 2024 predictions, many SEO’s think AI content won’t get them far.
But that’s not the case.
I’m here to tell you that there’s other websites pulling heists of their own (and if done properly you can leverage AI-powered content to your advantage too).
If Jake wasn’t (as the kids say), chasing clout, then it’s quite likely that Causal would still be flying high. The website survived HCU, and the plethora of updates Google made over the past few months.
Causal was slapped with a manual action – only they can tell us what kind of manual action that was, we can only look at their traffic chart and wonder.
But now enough of them – lets get to Heist 2.0.
For privacy reasons, I’m not going to out their domain. I wasn’t raised like that.
I’ll let them do their AI-thing in peace, but what I will say is that a website I’m about to show you is in a similar niche to Causal.
An AI-Powered Heist (That’s Still Active).
Look at that traffic chart. Thing of beauty right?
If Google’s algorithm was handing out “penalties” to AI content, then in Causal’s field, more than one site would of been affected.
Just look at those keyword rankings for SEO Heist 2.0.
So there you have it, an AI-powered SEO Heist that’s still active.
SEO Heist 2.0.
But I know you have more questions, so let’s look at some steps you can take – so you can create AI content that ranks on Google for yourself.
Using AI To Create World Class Content – 6 Things To Consider
#1. Do Not Steal Other People’s Content
That’s rule number 1, we can use the world “heist” lightly, but I’d never recommend stealing someone else’s content.
Sure you can use other website content for inspiration and ideation, but don’t do what Jake did and just plug-in URLs of a competitors sitemap into an AI tool.
It’s likely that you’ll either get garbage results, or the AI won’t change enough of the content to be unique.
Research, but don’t copy.
#2. Set Quality Benchmarks & Goals
Before you get started you need know what “good content” looks like. What is good content in your industry? Think benchmarks in terms of readability, tone of voice, length (yes word count), answering a question, engagement etc.
If you have access to SEMRush, one way to do this might be to take the top articles ranking for said keywords and looking at the score their quality assistant gives them.
When your content is ready, you’ll want it to beat the content that’s ranking in terms of quality score.
Also set benchmarks in terms of what you want your content to achieve. Check out my guide to creating an industry glossary. Creating an industry glossary of “low hanging fruit” keywords is a good way to win and show growth quickly.
There’s not point using AI to create content for a 99% difficulty keyword – you’re going to fail.
Go after the lower difficulty terms, create good content for them, rank your website, send positive signals to search algorithms.
#3. Use Quality Content Briefs
Just because you’re using AI, doesn’t mean you don’t need a content brief.
Make templates, make briefs and make them as detailed as you can.
Support your chosen AI tool so that you have the best possible chance of ranking at the top of Google.
Do proper keyword research, what you put in is what you get out. You reap what you sow.
Here’s a content brief template you can use.
#4. Review. Review & Review.
Thoroughly review your AI-generated content against your benchmarks and goals.
Run it through readability tools, get humans to read it, and run it through a plagiarism detector tool.
Would you be okay if your name is associated with the quality of the content? Or would you be embarrassed?
#5. Include Multimedia
Don’t just write an essay. Make sure of multimedia – images, videos etc.
#6. Push Live & Don’t Forget About Trust Signals
How would you feel if a story you’re reading was authored by AI? Would you still read it? Would you leave?
If you’ve human reviewed the content – then tell that to your users – if it’s not been reviewed, tell your users.
Make sure there’s a human author or reviewer associated with your content.
Here’s the message that SEO Heist 2.0 use on their website. They tell people that the content may be garbage because they’re using AI.
#7. Don’t Forget About Regular SEO
What’s regular SEO? Updating internal links to topically relevant pages, page titles, making sure headers are coded properly, making sure there’s a self referencing canonical tag, etc etc.
Don’t set it and forget it.
The Bottom Line
The summary is that AI-powered content is not all bad – you can use AI to your advantage, you just need to use it wisely and with care.
You also shouldn’t be ashamed to use AI to create content – it’s a means of being more efficient, and if you don’t compromise quality, then I see no issue.
There’s bigger problems in the world to worry about.
