How to create content using AI… and rank on Google?

AI-writing tools are able to take words directly from a business and use them as a starting point for creating new content. This makes it easy for businesses to create new content without spending time researching ideas or writing it themselves.

With the soaring interest in AI content thanks to ChatGPT, many are wondering what are the impacts and benefits of using AI writing tools in their business. This is a post to share my learning from creating AI content in 2022. I will walk you through my process, results and key learning.

Background

Having a copywriter – even a freelance one – is not always feasible for a company with a tight budget. As the client was prioritizing resources for other marketing campaigns, there wasn’t much left to hire a freelance copywriter. That’s when I started to look for alternatives to help create content.

To support an upcoming product launch, I decided to create 3 articles to review competitors’ products. As we already had similar content in place, these new articles can enrich our topic cluster. It can also target more competitors’ keywords and create better internal linking.

Selecting the AI-writing tool – Copy.ai

There are various AI writing tools in the market. I used Copy.ai as it offers a free trial with 2,000 words per month, so you can experiment with the tool before fully committing to it. 

To use Copy.ai, you simply input some basic information about the topic, and the tool will generate multiple variations of the content based on your desired tone, style, and length. If you don’t like the version, you can also regenerate the content (but be aware of the credit on the free plan, it can easily be used up). Afterwards, you can edit and customize the content as you like.

How to create content using AI?

Here are the steps that I took to create blog posts with the help of Copy.ai – from ideation to publication.

• 1. Select the topic
• 2. Conduct a keyword research
• 3. Start with AI content tool of your choice
• 4. Generate the outline
• 5. Generate talking point
• 6. Edit, review and fact check
• 7. On-page optimization and Publish

1. Select the topic

Just like every content strategy, you need to know where to start. Think about your goal with content and decide what you should be after. Don’t create content just because you can – focus on bringing values to your audience while at the same time keeping your business objectives in mind.

It is easy to create content, but if your content is not useful, it might end up harming your site – and it takes more time and effort to fix and undo the damages. Think twice and publish wisely!

2. Conduct a keyword research

Even with AI content, I still do a separate keyword research to make sure I have covered all the topics and questions that my audience are looking for. After all, you are creating content for your readers, not for the search engine.

Keyword research is a great starting point for understanding your target audience’s needs, interests and pain points. Knowing what keywords and phrases they are using can also guide your article structure and format, and refine your prompt when using AI tools. 

How to use Google Search Console for Keyword Research

3. Start with AI content tool of your choice

Copy.ai has a clean and easy-to-use interface, you can head to “Blog Post Wizard” and start entering information, such as title, keywords and tone. They have a default tone of voice but it is possible to add your own.

If you don’t like Copy.ai, then just follow the instruction of your chosen AI writing tool.

4. Generate the outline

Based on what topic and keywords you entered, Copy.ai will generate the structure of the article. If you don’t like the outline, you can generate more. It is also possible to move sections around or add new ones.

In this step, I would add new sections to make sure the content is informative enough for the users. This is why you need to conduct keyword research to understand what your audiences are looking for, so you won’t miss any opportunities.

5. Generate talking point

In the next step, your writing assistant will generate a list of talking points to cover in the particular sections. Here you can input some additional information that is not covered. 

For example, I added some product features to make sure we are reviewing the target product but not just some general review of something else.

6. Edit, review and fact check

To make sure your AI-generated content is useful and informative for your audience, you need to proofread and edit the content. Review the tone of voice and writing styles, also check if all the information is up-to-date by comparing with trustworthy sources and references.

7. On-page optimization and Publish

The last step is publishing the final draft on your website. There is something AI can’t help you with yet – on-page optimization. Even though you have a draft with a nice structure and good copy, there are still some additional SEO tweaks that you should review and implement. 

What I’ve done for my articles:

• Internal linking
• Screenshots and infographics, image alt text
• Meta title and meta description
• Optimize for Featured Snippet
• Schema markup (FAQ in my case)

Result

It is just a small experiment with 3 articles published on the site – however, all the articles are ranking on the first page for the competitors’ branded keywords. The screenshot showed the 3-month Google Search Console data – they were generating clicks and had a positive trend in ranking after one month of publishing.

As I was creating articles from a topic that already had some content written by a freelancer, we can actually compare the differences between human writers and AI. Here is a table summarizing the position and clicks for different products. 

	Written by	Primary KW position	Average Position	Clicks
[Product A]	Freelancer	9.2	24.3	883
[Product B]	Freelancer	6.3	19.3	562
[Product C]	Copy.ai	11.5	21.6	220
[Product D]	Copy.ai	9..9	29.4	70
[Product E]	Copy.ai	6.8	14.7	1210

Considering the popularity of different brands, there are slight differences in positions and clicks. But in general, those are not substantial difference.

Pros of AI-generated content

1. It saves time

The usual turnaround I had with freelance writers is around 1 week for an article – that includes back-and-forth communication, writing and proofreading. Instead of sitting and waiting for the draft, you can immediately start editing and reviewing the draft. Although it still takes some time to edit the content, it greatly reduces the time needed – often shortening it from 1 week to within hours.

2. It saves cost

According to UpWork, a freelance copywriter could charge you anywhere from $50 – $175 per 1000-word blog article. Usually the rate would factor in the experience, niche, article length. 

However, most of the AI writing tools are billed on a subscription-based model. For example, Copy.ai costs only $49 per month for unlimited words while Jasper.ai costs $49 per month for 35,000 words. With the same budget, you can create 10x more articles with AI writing tools.

3. It facilitates writing process

As I’m not a native English speaker, the biggest perks of the AI writing assistant is to help me quickly compile an article together. What I need is to research facts and relevant resources.

Sometimes if I’ve run out of things to say, I can also ask AI for some inspiration and revise from there.

Cons of AI-generated content

1.  Information not up-to-date

It requires a heavy load of research and factcheck to ensure the quality of the content – it could still take up to 1 day to publish 1 article.

2. Potential duplicate content

As AI relies on existing input, if there weren’t enough content to train the machine learning model, the tool would not be able to generate enough different talking points to fill up the content. The text is sometimes irrelevant and too generic. Seems like they are just extracting keywords and putting them into templates.. 

You would quickly notice how repetitive and similar it could be. This problem became obvious as I was creating 3 articles on the same topic. Since I was targeting the same product keyword with different competitors’ brands, they end up looking alike.

3. Lack of brand identity

Even though AI writing tools allow you to define the tone of voice, it is still hard for them to customize everything according to your need. Most of the time you will get a rather flat piece of writing.

If your company has a specific set of glossaries that you need to follow, you would need to manually review everything it writes. And if you are in a heavily regulated market, you would want to make sure the wording won’t get your company into trouble.

Conclusion

From my experience, AI writing tools are great assistants, especially when you are having a writer’s block. However, you need to input the right prompts before you can get some really useful writing. Don’t rely solely on AI writing tools to create thousands of content – instead, prioritize users’ intent and focus on providing value to your audiences.

FAQs about AI Content