Does AI-written content kill your SEO?

With companies now having the ability to write - or perhaps "write" - an almost unlimited amount of prose using Gen AI, it’s worth keeping a cautious eye on search engine optimisation.

When I posed the title question to Google's Gemini, its response was not entirely reassuring:

"The relationship between AI-written content and SEO is complex and evolving. It's not accurate to say that AI-written content inherently "kills" SEO. However, how it's used significantly impacts SEO performance."

By way of explanation, Gemini added:

• “If AI-generated content is low-quality, repetitive, or lacks valuable insights, it can negatively impact SEO.
• “Content that is purely AI generated, and not edited or enhanced by a human, can often lack the human element that search engines are looking for.”

Gemini concluded with the following observation:

“It is vital that AI content is edited, and enhanced by people...relying solely on AI-generated content without human oversight can lead to low-quality content that harms SEO performance.”

This is worth bearing in mind. We are still in the early days of Gen AI. As its writing becomes more and more prevalent, it is likely that search engines will tweak their algorithms to seek out words that have the imprimatur of a human being.

This may mean writing that avoids the eerily impersonal sheen of AI content, or that is personalised in some way to the writer, for instance by using the first-person voice.

In which case, an old saying may gain a new meaning: "Perfect is the enemy of the good". Writing that is overly polished could become detrimental to SEO performance, if algorithms suspect it has been electronically generated. In this case, being “you” may prove to be an advantage when it comes to cutting through the mass of online wordcount.