AI is a powerful tool for rapidly generating words and ideas. However, speed and efficiency aren’t everything. A skilled writer’s touch transforms AI outputs into meaningful, authentic stories that resonate with real people. Without human touch, you risk your articles risk becoming mere echoes in the digital void. 

Below, we outline 10 actionable techniques that breathe life into AI-generated text.

What Is AI-Generated Content?

AI-generated content is any text, image, or video created by artificial intelligence systems. 

AI writing assistants are like inexperienced writing apprentices. They can research topics, draft outlines, and write at speed. Just as a junior writer demonstrates raw talent but needs constant guidance, AI-generated content requires an expert touch. Left to its own devices, an AI writing assistant may pepper content with misinformation and telltale signs of AI-generated text.

Human insight, careful editing, and creative storytelling transform AI drafts into content that feels genuine and inspires action. 

Check out our article on the top 10 AI content creation tools.

Why is so much AI content bland and detached?

Large language models,  such as ChatGPT, are nifty tools, but they have limitations. One of the most glaring problems with AI-generated content is a bland and generic voice and tone. 

Here are a few reasons why engaging AI content remains elusive:

• Reliance on patterns: These tools learn from vast amounts of existing text. As such, they tend to generate content that’s distinctly average, lacking a unique spark and individual voice. This also means telltale words, phrases, and structural patterns show up in its output. 
• Lack of nuance: AI-generated text can’t capture the subtle complexities of human emotion, humor, and persuasion. As such, the basic text it generates feels generic and uninspiring.
• Missing context and factual errors: LLMs don’t possess real-world knowledge and can’t put themselves into the shoes of your target audience. Without these elements, output often misses the mark and contains random factual errors. Oh, and LLMs double down on mistakes instead of owning up to them — so you can’t use AI to fact-check itself.
• Difficulty with originality: AI remixes existing information. To pique an audience’s interest, content needs fresh insights, expert perspectives, and a human-crafted narrative.

Recognizing these shortcomings is the first step to knowing how to humanize AI text.

Why Do I Need to Humanize AI Text?

You should humanize AI text because your content won’t rank on search engines otherwise. AI can generate content quickly, but that doesn’t equate to quality. Google prioritizes articles that are helpful, authoritative, and informative for users. Content that’s low-effort or designed to trick search engines will be banished to obscurity as spam. 

Since Google’s helpful content update, it’s become necessary to create content that fills knowledge gaps and provides web users with value.

To ensure your content achieves its goals, consider these key points:

• User-first content: You have to focus on the readers’ needs to write something compelling. That means conducting deep research so you can solve problems, answer questions, and provide value. AI struggles to achieve this depth without expert input. 
• Search engine alignment: Google and other search engines aim to connect users with the best possible answers. Superficial, low-effort, and repetitive content — AI- or human-generated — won’t rank well.

What makes human writing unique and relatable?

Human beings are driven by emotion, and emotion is the magic marketing ingredient that sparks connection. Without emotional experience to draw from, AI struggles to produce authentic content.

Let’s explore why human oversight remains essential for crafting content that connects:

• Empathy: Humans intuitively grasp the nuances of emotion, allowing them to write with a warmth and understanding that resonates on a deeper level. AI systems may analyze sentiment, but they can’t replicate the genuine feeling that builds trust with a reader.
• Context: People bring a lifetime of experiences and knowledge to their writing. This allows them to precisely tailor content and address real challenges while catering to cultural nuances and the target audience’s needs.
• Originality: Ideas are derived from unique perspectives. AI may recombine existing information, but true originality comes from the human ability to think creatively and develop fresh insights.
• Storytelling: Human beings are natural storytellers who craft narratives that captivate and persuade. AI may follow basic structural forms, but it’s the human ability to weave emotion, surprise, and take readers on a journey that moves audiences.

How to Humanize AI Content 

The human touch remains essential to creating exceptional content that resonates with your audience. Success lies in transforming those initial AI outputs into content that feels uniquely yours.

Here’s a roadmap for infusing your AI-generated drafts with the emotional depth and authenticity readers crave.

1. Leverage AI for research and drafting — not publishing

AI excels at the legwork of content creation, but it’s never publish-ready in its raw form. It can sift through information, identify trends, and provide a rough draft or framework. But remember, AI-generated drafts lack the critical analysis and creative spark that elevate content from informative to engaging. 

• Original analysis: Use AI-generated research as a foundation for your deeper research. Look into authoritative sources from the past year and use your industry knowledge to elevate the draft.
• Real-world examples: Connection is built on shared experiences and emotions. Weave in relatable examples, personal anecdotes, or a compelling narrative arc to make content unforgettable.

Assess AI-generated information for accuracy and bias and fill it with unique, expert insights. It’s down to you to shape the final piece so it resonates with your audience. AI is a tool that accelerates the workflow, not a replacement for your mastery.

2. Learn how to prompt AI like a pro

Transform your AI output by injecting details about your audience into prompts. Your prompts have the power to program emotional intelligence into your AI assistant. The better you understand and specify your reader’s pain points and desires, the more likely your AI-generated text will connect with them.

Here’s how to guide your AI assistant:

• Tell it about the reader’s aspirations: What does your audience hope to become? How do they want to feel?
• Example: “Write a blog post that inspires amateur bakers to feel confident tackling their first layer cake, emphasizing the joy of the process.”
• Acknowledge vulnerabilities: Explain readers’ fears or insecurities so the AI can generate content that speaks directly to them, making them feel seen and understood.
• Example: “Write a social media post acknowledging the anxieties of jobseekers, providing practical tips to boost their confidence.”
• Use vivid imagery: Sensory details help the AI understand you’re seeking a response that demonstrates empathy and detail.
• Example: “Describe a decluttered workspace to help the reader envision the sense of calm and focus it brings.”

3. Cut the fluff

AI tools are prone to producing text that feels overly wordy, with redundant words and phrases. Creating impactful content means sharpening your editing skills. Content writing should be concise, focused, and packed with value for your reader.

Here’s how to identify filler:

• Empty phrases: Look for words or phrases that add no real meaning, such as “at the end of the day” or “in order to.” Cut these ruthlessly.
• Rambling sentences: If a sentence takes too long to get to the point, break it into shorter, more powerful ones.
• Repeated words: AI gets attached to certain words. Examples include “specific,” “dive in,” “delve,” “it’s about,” and “meticulous.” Just as you’d make sure your content uses fresh vocabulary throughout, you must edit AI-generated copy for repetition.
• Redundancy: Does your text repeat the same concept in different ways? Consolidate for clarity.

Why conciseness matters

Here’s why you should avoid unnecessary wordiness and repetition:

• Engagement: People are busy. Get to the point quickly to hold their attention.
• Clarity: Filler words and phrases obscure your core message, and eliminating them makes your writing more powerful.
• SEO: Search engines favor clear, focused content. Editing out fluff can improve your rankings.

Every word should earn its place. When editing AI-generated text, be merciless about cutting anything that doesn’t serve your audience or your core message.

4. Embrace storytelling

Facts and figures inform, but stories invoke emotions and inspire relatability. Even the most cutting-edge AI tool can’t compete with the age-old tradition of storytelling. 

Imagine your article as a journey. Instead of listing features, guide your readers through and paint a picture they can put themselves into. 

Here’s how to unlock the power of storytelling:

• Anecdotes: Use brief, relatable stories that illustrate the pain point your content tackles.
• The hero’s journey: Even in short content, you can create a sense of transformation. Frame your reader as the hero, overcoming a challenge with the help of your product, service, or resource.
• Sensory details: Engage the reader’s senses with vivid descriptions. This immerses them in the narrative so they feel part of something bigger.

Stories matter because they create an emotional bond between the reader and your content.

Thanks to the connection between memory and emotion, narratives are more likely to stick in a reader’s mind than plain facts and figures. Put simply, when readers are emotionally invested, they’re more likely to take the desired action.

Turning facts and figures into stories 

Let’s look at some examples of turning facts and figures into stories. 

Example 1: Product feature to story

Factual statement: Our software offers real-time collaboration features.

Story: Ever felt the frustration of endless email chains and conflicting edits? With our tool, your team sees the same document, updates appear instantly, and ideas flow effortlessly. That’s the power of real-time collaboration.

Example 2: Statistical data to story

Factual statement: Studies show customers prefer self-service options for simple questions. That’s why you should invest in our AI chatbot. 

Story: Put yourself in a tired customer’s shoes, late at night, searching for a quick answer. They don’t want to sift through long help articles or leave a voicemail. An intuitive chatbot guides them to the solution in minutes, capturing the lead and building trust and loyalty. What’s more, studies show customers prefer self-service options for simple questions. Who doesn’t love convenience?

Storytelling is an age-old superpower. Use it to inject your AI-generated content with the magic that makes it unforgettable.

5. Prioritize emotional intelligence and use active voice

Emotional intelligence in writing goes beyond acknowledging a reader’s feelings. It means empathizing with the deeper aspirations and feelings driving their behavior.

AI excels at analyzing patterns and generating language. But it can’t truly grasp the power of an active writing style. It’s down to you to ensure it demonstrates emotional intelligence.

Along with emotional depth, an active voice makes your writing more dynamic and engaging. Instead of blandly stating what happened, active voice puts the focus on who or what is driving the action. This creates a sense of immediacy and places the reader closer to the heart of your content. 

Here’s an example of active vs. passive voice:

• Passive voice: The phone was answered promptly.
• Active voice: Sarah promptly answered the phone.

The first one is bland and doesn’t inspire a reaction. It sounds like a complete and finite statement. However, placing “Sarah” in an active position piques the reader’s curiosity. They may start asking questions and perhaps even making assumptions about her motivations. Once engaged, they want to keep reading and find out more.    

6. Capture your brand’s unique voice

Your brand has a unique personality. People should be able to recognize it the same way they’d recognize a trusted friend. LLMs generate text, but you need to tailor the content to align tone and voice with your brand identity.

Think of your brand voice as a filter all your content passes through. Is it playful and friendly, authoritative and informative, or bold and disruptive? 

Once you’ve clearly defined this voice, here’s how to integrate it with your AI tools:

• Training data: Feed your AI a curated selection of existing content that embodies your desired tone. For the best results, this should include a mix of blog posts, social media updates, and marketing copy.
• Fine-tuning: Many AI tools allow you to adjust settings or provide feedback to refine the output’s tone. Experiment until you achieve the desired balance.
• Word choice: Create a list of words and phrases that do and don’t fit your brand voice. Reference this list when editing your AI-generated content.

Tailoring tone for different audiences

While your core brand voice must remain consistent, subtle shifts in tone may make content resonate with certain audience segments. Consider:

• Formality: Technical audiences demand a more formal tone, while a casual demographic prefers something more conversational.
• Humor: When used sparingly and tastefully, humor is a powerhouse. That said, it must align with your brand personality and the audience’s expectations, or it will feel jarring and out of place.

7. Train AI to write like you

Training AI tools on your style encourages consistency across content outputs.

Think about your favorite author or influencer. You recognize their voice through their choice of words, mannerisms, and the themes they explore. Similarly, a distinct style in your content establishes a recognizable brand identity and keeps readers coming back for more.

AI content personalization works best if you use a single AI tool and have an established brand voice. Feed your AI with a curated selection of your writing, such as previous blog posts, articles, scripts, or social media captions. The more data you provide and the more specific your prompts, the better an AI writing assistant becomes at replicating your writing style.

8. Showcase your experience and expertise

AI can’t replace a subject-matter expert’s depth of knowledge and real-world experience. 

Expert collaboration levels up your content creation process. Working with an SME brings fresh perspectives, access to industry data, and the topical authority Google craves. This translates into accurate content that addresses your audience’s pain points and questions.

Let’s look at several ways to integrate expert knowledge:

• Interviews: In-depth interviews with SMEs allow you to tap into their experience and share it in an engaging, conversational format.
• Direct quotes: Even short, impactful quotes from experts add credibility and weight to your content.
• Guest authorship: Inviting SMEs to author or edit articles positions your brand as a hub for thought leadership.

Want to build trust and position yourself as a reliable authority in your field? Demonstrating expertise in your content is essential. When you feature expert voices, you let readers know you go the extra mile to provide them with well-sourced information. 

9. Include user-generated content 

User-generated content is the strongest form of community-building because it encourages your audience to interact directly with each other. 

Reviews, testimonials, social media comments, and photos of customers sporting your product or service showcase the value you deliver to real people. Social proof is powerful. It fosters trust in an environment where readers can be skeptical of polished marketing messages.

Want to learn more about user-generated content? Take a look at our article about UGC, with examples. 

10. Fact-check and AI-detect

AI-generated text is often full of inaccuracies and biases. Rigorous fact-checking is vital for maintaining the integrity of your content and keeping your audience’s trust.

Here are some strategies for fact-checking AI content:

• Identify the source: Always trace AI-generated information back to its original source. Evaluate the source’s credibility and double-check for potential biases.
  
• Cross-reference: Verify facts across multiple reliable websites, publications, or databases.
  
• Be skeptical: Approach AI output with skepticism, especially when it comes to complex or controversial topics.
  
• Use primary sources: Go directly to primary sources, such as research papers, government data, educational resources, and original expert interviews.

Utilizing AI detection tools to guarantee content accuracy

AI detection tools are still an evolving technology, but they can help identify potentially problematic content. They analyze text patterns to flag content likely to be AI-generated. While far from foolproof, they add an extra layer of protection. This signals your commitment to transparency with your audience.

Humanizing Your AI Content Journey 

AI writing techniques will continue to improve. For now, you have to know how to humanize AI content for it to stand out and rank in searches. Embracing storytelling, infusing content with brand voice, prioritizing emotional intelligence, and incorporating expert insights transform AI text.

The most effective content creators see AI as a powerful tool, not a replacement for their expertise and creativity. Following these strategies helps you unleash AI’s full potential. Use it to create content that ranks high and establishes your brand as a trusted voice in a crowded digital world.

Bridge the gap between technology and human connection. Discover how our copyediting services can transform your AI content into engaging narratives that delight target audiences and capture your brand’s unique voice.

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AI isn’t here to steal your creative thunder; it’s a secret weapon you can use to brainstorm fresh angles, conduct deeper research, and refine your writing with precision. In today’s digital marketing battleground, understanding AI-powered content creation isn’t just a clever move — it’s a necessity. 

Savvy marketers are already using AI to unlock new levels of efficiency and transform their workflows. But like any powerful tool, AI has a learning curve. Understanding how to navigate its complexities is key to harnessing its power and staying at the top of your game.

The Evolution of AI for Content Creation

The evolution of AI in content creation was slow and steady until the turn of the millennium, when technological advancement suddenly skyrocketed. The idea of AI might feel cutting-edge today, but the groundwork has been laid for decades. 

Let’s break down the key milestones:

• Early days (1950s-1990s): The foundation for AI was initially laid with Alan Turing’s 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, and the development of Eliza, a rudimentary chatbot. Basic spell-checkers and grammar tools later hinted at AI’s potential.
• Natural language processing (NLP) advances (2000s): Significant strides in NLP led to more sophisticated language understanding for AI. This paved the way for tools offering summarization, synonym suggestions, and basic sentence structuring assistance.
• The rise of large language models (LLMs) (2010s-present): Google developed transformers in 2017 and revolutionized NLP. LLMs such as OpenAI’s GPT-3 emerged around 2020, demonstrating impressive language generation, translation, and content optimization capabilities.

These days, AI isn’t just about automating small tasks. It can partner with you at every stage of the content creation process, including research, ideation, writing, and refinement. And the pace of innovation shows no signs of slowing down, with new tools coming out each year.

AI Tools for Enhancing Content

Deadlines loom, and you’re buzzing with ideas. What if you had a digital assistant to kick-start creative flow, streamline research, and polish prose until it shines?

That’s the power of AI-powered content creation tools. Actually, they’re more like content enhancement tools at the moment. They aren’t going to write your viral blog post with the click of a button, but they are valuable partners in your content journey. 

Gemini

Gemini scouts out competitor content, locates authoritative sources, and highlights gaps for you to fill with insightful and original copy. 

When you’re done writing an article, paste it into Gemini and specify areas you’d like it to analyze. It offers suggestions for improvement and tells you what you’ve aced. Detailed and specific prompts always inspire the best outcomes.  

SEO evangelist, George Varkey, shares his Gemini prompt for brainstorming content ideas.

What it does best: Research and analysis

We’ve all been there. Drowning in tabs and buried in PDFs, trying to piece together the big picture. Gemini does the heavy lifting — well, part of it. Asking it to do research on your behalf is risky, as it’s prone to hallucinations. 

However, it can summarize studies, web pages, and posts that would take you hours to read yourself. It can also analyze vast data sets to reveal hidden connections and patterns that might have slipped past you, giving your content a strategic edge.

How does Gemini compare to Google Search? 

Sure, Google Search is a knowledge powerhouse. But it’s similar to a massive, unorganized library. Gemini is your personal research assistant within that library. It fetches the right books, summarizes key sections, and highlights critical insights.  

Copy.ai

Copy.ai is a go-to tool for short, punchy content creation. Think marketing slogans, snappy social media posts, and persuasive product descriptions. Need fresh angles for an ad campaign? Copy.ai brainstorms ideas, suggests catchy headlines, and helps you achieve the right tone. Plus, it can whip up basic research summaries to get you started.

Don’t expect it to write your next thought-leadership article, though. Accuracy is hit-or-miss, and you’ll need to think carefully about plagiarism. Tech Report’s William Baxter offers some crucial advice:

What it does best: Content inspiration 

Copy.ai excels at generating a flurry of ideas quickly. Its strength lies in its ability to generate creative variations, helping you break out of a rut or find the perfect word choice. It’s your brainstorming buddy, always ready to bounce ideas around.

How does Copy.ai compare to CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer?

While a headline analyzer scores your headline and recommends improvements, Copy.ai does the whole thing for you. It helps you craft short-form content pieces and offers research assistance.

Grammarly

Grammarly hunts down typos, suggests word replacements, and flags potential grammatical errors. Plus, it analyzes tone and overall clarity. Need feedback on a draft’s readability? Grammarly has your back. However, don’t rely on it to catch complex factual errors, offer creative ideas, or help structure your content strategy.

What it does best: Helps you catch spelling, grammar, and awkward phrasing

Grammarly excels at boosting the clarity and correctness of your writing. The tool is particularly adept at catching the sneaky typos and awkward phrasing that tends to slip past human eyes. Each week, it gives you a report with insights into your writing that you can use to improve your writing in the future. 

How does Grammarly compare to spell-check?

Grammarly is like Windows spell check on steroids. The premium version can even help you find weak adjectives and better alternatives. This type of feature helps you improve as a writer over time. 

Can LLMs check for grammar and spelling?

Keep in mind that even advanced LLMs, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, aren’t capable of reliable copy editing or grammar checking. While they can give you an overall analysis of your content’s grammar, style, and punctuation, they can’t do what Grammarly does.

For example, if you ask Gemini to fix your punctuation and grammar, it will likely give you a more concise version of what you wrote. However, it probably won’t make sense.

You’ll notice it has amended the text a little but hasn’t added anything in terms of grammar. In fact, it’s taken two sentences and joined them together into one giant mega-sentence.  

Always double-check facts, figures, and everything else in AI-generated content. Accuracy is crucial for maintaining trust. Without your human spark, content won’t demonstrate E-E-A-T, and Google will consider it spam — yes, even if it was written by Google’s own Gemini. If you become overly reliant on AI for content creation, expect your engagement metrics to fall drastically. 

Engage Your Audience With AI Personalization Tools 

Through analysis of your audience’s preferences and behaviors, AI personalization tools help you craft content that feels tailor-made, leading to deeper engagement and stronger connections.

Albert.ai

Albert.ai is an autonomous AI marketing strategist, specializing in personalized content and ad campaigns. It analyzes vast swathes of customer data, identifying patterns and trends within your audience. Based on this, Albert.ai tweaks ad targeting, optimizes content delivery, and even suggests new content formats to maximize engagement.

That said, it requires a significant amount of data to function effectively, and setup can be complex for smaller businesses without dedicated tech support. It’s also incredibly expensive. 

What Albert.ai does best: Tailoring marketing efforts at scale

This tool excels at analyzing data to identify highly specific audience segments, and then dynamically adjusts content or bidding strategies across multiple platforms in real time.

How does Albert.ai compare to audience segmentation tools?

Albert.ai’s personalized ad campaign management is similar to the audience segmentation tools on platforms such as Mailchimp, but it has a broader reach and more advanced automation capabilities.

Although Albert.ai is a powerful tool, it still clearly reinforces the importance of human-AI collaboration.

Rytr

Rytr is a low-cost AI writing assistant that includes several personalization tools. It generates alternative text variations so you can test what resonates with different audiences. Impressively, the tool can rewrite content in various tones, such as formal or casual. 

What it does best: A/B testing 

Need to tailor social posts, emails, or ads for different audiences? Rytr quickly generates variations in your chosen tone, from formal to friendly. In turn, you can test which versions resonate best with your target audience. All in all, it’s an easy-to-use platform that introduces you to the benefits of AI content personalization, without any complex setup.

How does Rytr compare to Buffer’s A/B testing tools?

Rytr’s personalization features are comparable to Buffer’s A/B testing tools, allowing you to see how different word choices impact engagement.

As a writing assistant, it can also create content on your behalf. However, like any LLM, it generates basic, uninspired content that’s full of errors. Regie Njoki Kibugu’s example of what Rytr can do showcases its limitations as an actual writer:

Remember that Google indiscriminately flags low-effort content as spam. Even with the best intentions, it’s impossible to rank without expert writing, editing, and strategy guiding your efforts.   

Climb the SERPs Using AI Tools for SEO

While user intent has always been important, the latest upgrades to Google’s algorithms mean it’s now front and center. These AI-driven technologies have a deep understanding of context, signaling a shift toward more conversational content that directly answers users’ questions.

SurferSEO

SurferSEO is a powerful AI-based content optimization tool. 

Take a look at our in-depth review of SurferSEO to learn more about what it can do.

QuestionDB

QuestionDB is one of the best free AI tools for capturing user intent and turning it into content. Learn more about it in our AI tools for SEO article.   

What AI-driven SEO strategies can content creators adopt?

AI can help you analyze what competitors are ranking for, spot gaps you can fill with killer content, and suggest the best conversational keywords. What’s more, Google adores well-structured content that’s easy to navigate — AI tools can help you get the formatting just right. 

How is AI influencing SEO practices in content creation?

The influence of AI means analyzing search trends and understanding user intent should go way beyond keywords. It’s about deciphering what people truly need. AI can crunch enormous data sets, identifying patterns and subtle nuances in how people search. This reveals the questions they’re asking, the problems they’re trying to solve, and their emotional state.

Access to this type of information gives you a serious edge. Yes, you can optimize for high-traffic keywords, but that’s table stakes. To win at SEO and rank high on the SERPs, you must craft content that resonates deeply with your audience while aligning with search engines’ understanding of context. 

A Guide to Building Your AI Content Strategy

Integrating AI into your content strategy isn’t about replacing your existing processes. Instead, aim to strategically enhance them. Here’s how to strike the right balance:

• Start with goals: Don’t adopt AI for the sake of it. What specific bottlenecks does AI address? Are you aiming for faster ideation, deeper research, or more efficient editing? Define your goals to guide your tool selection.
• Choose wisely: Consider budget, team skills, and content needs. A powerhouse such as Albert.ai is overkill for a small blog, while Rytr lacks the depth required for in-depth articles. 
• The human touch: AI is a powerful teammate, not a replacement for your team — unless you’re prepared to significantly increase your own workload. Use AI for its strengths, such as data analysis, content ideation, and creating content briefs. Leave strategy finessing, nuanced understanding, and consistent brand voice to human experts.
• Do and learn: AI and content landscapes evolve rapidly. Regularly reassess how your tools are performing against your goals. Don’t be afraid to experiment and keep looking for new solutions.

Innovative approaches to using AI for content planning

Beyond efficiency gains and research assistance, AI unlocks novel possibilities for content planning.

• AI-assisted content briefs: You’re juggling multiple clients and projects as a content agency. AI tools can analyze a client’s existing content, competitors, and target audience. This provides a strong foundation for content briefs. Add your expertise and refine the brief, saving hours on research and strategy while leveling up your content game.
• Predictive analytics: Say you run a travel blog. AI tools can monitor trending destinations mentioned on social media and competitor websites. This gives you first dibs on emerging hotspots, positioning you to create timely content with a better chance of ranking high on the SERPs.
• Hyper-personalization: AI tracks user interactions, identifying their areas of interest. Using that intel, you can suggest personalized content journeys and strategically show relevant articles, videos, and resources, deepening their engagement on your site.
• Repurposing with a twist: You’ve written a comprehensive industry report for your tech company. AI can break it down into digestible, catchy social media posts, create explanatory infographics, and even generate a basic webinar script.

AI Will Continue to Transform Content

Technology keeps marching forward. Don’t get left in the dust. It’s time to experiment, adapt, and harness the power of AI to elevate your content. 

Sign up for our newsletter so you can stay updated on AI’s impact on content creation and tap into the resources and ideas you need to thrive in the age of AI-powered content.

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Today’s AI landing page creation tools leverage emerging artificial intelligence tech to significantly speed up the process of producing stunning pages, saving you time and effort in the process. They also make your production routine more efficient by reducing the potential for human error and bridging any possible design or copywriting limitations. 

The individual benefits AI landing page builders bring to the table vary from tool to tool, but some key examples to keep in mind include:

• Features like A/B testing tools to optimize layouts and smart copywriting assistants to craft compelling headlines and CTAs
• Help creating or fine-tuning written copy
• Seamless integration with your existing digital marketing stack
  

Whether or not you decide to make AI part of your ongoing strategy, making multiple landing pages part of the mix is always advisable. Doing so significantly boosts search engine visibility while giving your conversion rates wings, and using AI wisely is one way to take the hassle and tedium out of the process.

However, it’s also crucial to understand that while AI tools like landing page builders are genuine game-changers, they should always be approached as tools. Even the best AI-generated content requires a round of human-powered editing, fact-checking, and polishing to ensure accuracy, proper brand messaging, and alignment with your long-term business goals.

Why AI Landing Page Builders Are Game-Changers

Putting together even one high-converting landing page that successfully drives traffic and converts visitors frequently takes hours, even for experienced marketers. Producing multiple pages, each as efficient as the last, naturally takes even longer. 

Today’s cutting-edge AI technology streamlines this process by speeding it up, removing the guesswork, and saving you a fortune in time and money. Here are some key examples of how.

Automation

As any experienced digital marketing professional already knows, automating repetitive tasks changes the game entirely. An AI landing page builder saves you time and reduces the likelihood of human error by automating tasks like image optimization, filling pages with content, swiftly inserting keywords, etc.

Effective personalization

In 2024, audiences expect more from the content they consume than thin, generic information, landing pages included. They want relevant, personalized content that feels on-target when it comes to their needs and goals. AI builders bridge this gap by analyzing user behavior and suggesting appropriate improvements.

Dynamic variations

The more landing pages your campaign calls for, the harder it becomes to keep each one as distinctive and engaging as all the others. AI helps facilitate the different variations on a theme that you need for your campaign to be truly successful.

Improved efficiency

Whether you’re working solo or with an entire marketing team, the right AI tools fill in the gaps in expertise. They allow you to create high-performance landing pages without needing specialized skills in design, copywriting and layout. You can achieve awesome results without being a design or marketing expert.

Helpful insights

AI page builders often offer users additional insights into each page’s efficiency. Instead of crossing your fingers, publishing your page, and hoping for the best, these tools offer predictive analytics and performance suggestions to help you optimize future performance.

Naturally, it’s not impossible to create high-conversion landing pages without AI. But adding AI to your workflow can make it easier to accurately personalize your user experience and make your pages more engaging. When brands make consumers feel valued and understood, they earn sales and win customers.

Top AI Landing Page Builders on the Market

AI is red hot in 2024, and getting hotter by the second. As a result, there are numerous page builders and helpful tools on the market today, making it tough to choose the right option for you. Check out our comprehensive AI landing page software comparison round-up below for a closer look at some of today’s best, most widely trusted options.

Sitekick

Superlative

Best for businesses of all types and sizes

Intro to the builder

Sitekick’s biggest claims to fame are its speed and versatility. Designed to serve businesses of various sizes and types, Sitekick leverages cutting-edge automation tech to produce stunning landing pages that are both aesthetically pleasing and fully optimized with conversions in mind.

Pros and cons

Sitekick’s user-friendly interface makes it easy to customize the tool to suit your needs. You can customize your dashboard and analytics tools to better match your business goals and preferences. It also integrates seamlessly with popular platforms like Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Shopify, and WordPress.

However, some users report having issues using Sitekick on older devices or with niche browsers. It’s also less focused on key digital marketing factors like SEO, website accessibility, and website performance than other options may be, so you’ll want to adopt additional measures to cover those bases.

Special features

What features set Sitekick apart from the rest of the options out there? Let us count the ways:

• One-click landing page creation lets you create your next page in just seconds.
• Conversion is front and center thanks to high-performance design, development, and copywriting options.
• Sitekick users get ongoing access to DALL-E 3, which means endless original AI-generated images that are just right for your pages.
• Integrated AI is the result of high-level training on over 1,000 top-performing landing pages for maximum results.

Pricing

At the time of this posting, there isn’t a free trial available. However, Sitekick offers three different pricing tiers, the better to suit a wide range of businesses. Monthly rates come in at $20 for the Basic package, $49 for Pro, and $99 for Agency.

What we’ve heard

“Sitekick has helped me save time and money,” says Andy Matthews of Nicely Network. “I’m able to quickly build great-looking, conversion-focused landing pages with just a few clicks of the mouse!”

Use case and best practices

Sitekick’s interface is fairly foolproof, even if you have little experience creating landing pages. Additionally, you can maximize the quality of your initial results by accurately describing your product or service in detail. It’s also a good idea to further polish and refine your copy via a human touch to ensure accuracy, tone, and flow.

Headlime

Superlative

Best for easy customization

Intro to the builder

Featuring a user-friendly drag-and-drop system, Headlime is a solid choice for would-be landing page designers who want to create genuinely unique landing pages regardless of their skill level. Think hundreds of pre-built templates, stunning fonts, and unique features to help your page stand out.

Pros and cons

Headlime goes beyond simply helping you generate compelling copy with AI to fully integrating it into an optimized HTML template. The extensive range of available templates and customization options takes the guesswork out of helping your pages look sleek, original, and unique. You can also try Headlime out for free when you sign up for a trial.

One possible drawback is that Headlime operates on a credit-based system for individuals and smaller businesses, which may not suit everyone. There are also only two tier options to choose from with a significant price difference between them.

Special features

What features help Headlime stand out and make it a particularly solid choice? Here are some examples:

• A streamlined algorithm-based interface ensures all generated copy is properly personalized to suit your audience.
• The highly user-friendly editor lets you drag and drop various elements to create unique designs, choose from a wide range of colors, select unique fonts, etc.
• Headlime’s AI is designed with conversion in mind.
• The page builder is ultra-fast, choosing and optimizing ideal templates based on the provided product description in just seconds.
• Besides the landing page builder, Headlime offers a document generator and an AI blog assistant.

Pricing

Headlime offers two different user tier packages — the individual package for $59 per month or the business package which scales starting at $399 per month based on number of users. You can try either package on for size before committing via a free trial, with no credit card necessary.

What we’ve heard

“A fantastic little gem,” says speaker and author Robin Good regarding his Headlime experience. “It truly does what it promises.”

Use case and best practices

Headlime isn’t just great at taking the hassle out of generating beautiful, effective web pages in instants. It can also help you give important portions of your content some pop. Be sure to try out the headline generation option for some eye-catching ideas, as well as all of the customization choices.

Unbounce

Superlative

Best for boosting conversions

Intro to the builder

Unbounce is true to its name with a strong focus on maximizing conversions and lowering bounce rates. It accomplishes this by routing web visitors to the most appropriate of your landing pages for their needs. Features like personalized recommendations, popups, and sticky bars make the creation process easy, too.

Pros and cons

Unbounce is ideal for marketers looking to improve user experience (UX) thanks to features that ensure mobile responsiveness, a simple A/B testing option, and various personalization approaches. It also comes equipped with a suite of highly effective conversion tracking tools.

However, prospective users should be aware that split-testing options are only available via the higher tiers. There are also monthly conversion limits to consider. Some users report minor alignment issues between the standard and mobile versions of the builder, as well.

Special features

The following are just a few examples of features that set Unbounce apart for those looking to build fantastic landing pages with AI:

• You can easily create proven standout page features with Unbounce, including pop-ups, sticky bars, and similar options.
• Templates are industry-optimized to maximize results and make getting started easy.
• Dynamic text options let you adjust the copy of your landing pages to better match with the search terms that bring in visitors.
• A/B testing takes the guesswork out of improving your pages over time.
• Advanced copywriting tools let you expand and remix content, in addition to generating it.

Pricing

You can try Unbounce free for fourteen days, making it a great option for those looking for the best free AI landing page builders. From there, you can choose from four different pricing tiers. Monthly fees are $79 for the Build tier, $149 for the Experiment tier, $249 for the Optimize tier, and $649 for the Concierge tier.

What we’ve heard

Nick Heim of Hotjar reports a major jump in new users after integrating Unbounce into the company workflow. “We’re getting 60-70 new users per month as a result of Unbounce popups,” he says.

Use case and best practices

Get the most out of Unbounce’s exceptional potential for boosting conversions by taking full advantage of its customization tools. Creator recommendations guide you through the building process step by step, regardless of your skill level. Take advantage of the A/B testing feature to help ensure all of your pages are measuring up to their full potential.

Canva

Superlative

Best for builders who need a free option

Intro to the builder

Canva is a long-time favorite among bloggers, marketers, and content creators everywhere for its user-friendly selection of design tools. These include a free AI landing page builder that simplifies processes like building newsletter audiences or showcasing key products.

Pros and cons

Canva’s unparalleled popularity is largely due to its ease of use and low learning curve. Creating landing pages is simple, intuitive, and easy to facilitate via mobile devices, making it a great choice for content creators and marketers who frequently work this way. There are plenty of dynamic, beautiful design options to explore for various purposes, as well.

However, Canva may not be the best fit for marketers in search of an advanced SEO-forward option. There are also limits to what Canva can accomplish when it comes to important factors like web responsiveness and advanced optimization.

Special features

Thinking of giving Canva a shot at helping you generate your next collection of landing pages? Here’s a closer look at some of the key features you can look forward to exploring:

• Choose from a free catalog of thousands of customizable templates.
• You can easily use Canva to put together a stunning color palette based on any image — perfect for matching branded assets you already have.
• Canva is extremely share-friendly with lots of tools for exporting and distributing content.
• Access a wide range of free imagery, icons, graphics, and other visual assets with Canva.
• You can use Canva to customize tables, charts, and similar features with ease.

Pricing

Canva users have four different pricing tiers to consider. The first is the free tier, which is available to single users. When you’re ready to upgrade, monthly rates for additional tiers shake out to $14.99 for Canva Pro, $15.99 per person for Canva for Teams, and a case-by-case pricing system for Canva Enterprise.

What we’ve heard

“Canva has become our one-stop shop,” says Expedia Group’s own Molly Martin. “Just being able to be in one centralized place and grab a logo, photo, or template is incredible.”

Use case and best practices

Canva is terrific for creating landing pages that blend seamlessly into your ongoing approach to branding. Be sure to take advantage of options like the color palette creator to ensure your creations make it clear your brand is behind them. Experiment with additional features to add elements like video, vectors, icons, and textures for added creativity.

Writesonic

Superlative

Best for high-quality written copy and headlines

Intro to the builder

Marketers looking for an AI landing page builder that can handle copy like a champ are great candidates for Writesonic. Top-tier text-generation tools take the confusion out of generating options like dynamic headlines, calls-to-action, feature-benefit breakdowns, and pain point-focused copy.

Pros and cons

Writesonic is truly impressive when it comes to AI-generated copywriting. Not only can it help you generate amazing headlines, conversion-focused calls-to-action, and well-structured copy, but you can also adjust voice or style and seamlessly integrate target keywords into generated text. It’s also a great tool for content creation teams due to its collaborative features.

But as effective as Writesonic is on the copy front, it’s somewhat limited when it comes to other advanced editing features, especially as compared to other options on the market. Some users also say it has a steeper learning curve than average.

Special features

Need a closer look at some of the individual features that make Writesonic such a popular choice in 2024? Here are a few examples to consider:

• Writesonic guarantees 100% original content 
• It can create  everything from blog posts, to advertising copy and dynamic meta descriptions.
• Summaries are also easy to create, thanks to a one-click article summarizer feature.
• Need to adjust existing copy to better suit your needs? Try the text expander to flesh out or otherwise lengthen your copy.
• Choose from a wealth of content-generation templates designed for optimizing website copy, social media content, product descriptions, blog posts, standalone articles, and ads.

Pricing

Writesonic features a good range of usage tiers and pricing options, so there’s truly an option here for everyone. (Different tiers grant access to different Writesonic features.) There’s a free tier available for single users who’d like to try it on for size. Monthly fees for additional tiers are $15 for Chatsonic Pro, $20 for Individual, $30 for Teams, and custom case-by-case pricing for Enterprise.

What we’ve heard

Writesonic’s Wall of Love is full of testimonials from happy customers who love it. Verified Writesonic user Kevin Mooney loves the quality level of Writesonic’s output and says, “The AI sometimes generates better ideas and writes better than me.” Other users praise the product for its impeccable grammar, accuracy, and versatility.

Use case and best practices

Writesonic is best used to help out with copy-focused landing pages and features, like headlines, meta descriptions, basic blog posts, and advertising copy. It can also help with overcoming writer’s block andgenerating new content ideas. 

For best results, consider adding Writesonic to a broader workflow that also includes page design tools and professional copy editors who can help add a human touch to your content.

Take Your AI Landing Page Builder Results to the Next Level

In 2024, it’s safe to say that AI tools are more than just a fad or a passing trend. This is revolutionary technology capable of making brands and marketing teams significantly more productive while also helping them maximize creativity.

Top AI landing page builders like Sitekick, Headlime, and Writesonic help compensate for knowledge gaps and democratize the ability to create genuinely stunning landing pages that convert. Comparing AI landing page builder features and pricing before pulling the trigger on a purchase ensures a choice you’ll be happy with.

However, pages that rocket to the top of key search engine results pages (SERPs) should also pass through the hands of expert human copy editors to guarantee high quality, pinpoint accuracy, and consistent brand voice. The key to succeeding with AI isn’t to treat it as a replacement for human creativity but to leverage it to make talented human creators more productive.

Don’t have a full-time copy editor on the payroll? Let Crowd Content’s copy editing team take your AI-generated content and transform it into something absolutely unstoppable. Take the next step, learn more about our trusted copy editing services today, and treat your online presence to the polish it deserves.

The post What Are the Best AI Landing Page Builders on the Market in 2024? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

But, amidst the hype and noise, there’s a burning question: Can Google, the digital gatekeeper, tell if content is created by steel and silicon instead of a human mind?  Join us as we reveal the depths of Google’s AI content detection powers and empower you to harness the full potential of your new AI sidekick. 

Can Google Detect AI Content? 

Google’s technology is far too sophisticated to be fooled by AI content — and for readers with a trained eye, AI-generated content can stick out like a sore thumb. But does that mean Google punishes you for utilizing it?

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and helpful. This quest means a relentless battle against low-quality content designed to manipulate search rankings — AI-generated or not. 

The search engine is transparent about spam policies for Google web search. Some of its flagged criteria include keyword stuffing, cloaking, and hidden links. Just as keyword-stuffed articles written by humans are penalized as spam, so is spammy AI-generated content. In other words, AI-generated content has just as much opportunity to be flagged as spam as content typed straight from the hands of creatives.

Google uses algorithms to determine an article’s creator. Let’s explore how Google’s algorithms have flourished in recent years and how these procedures affect whether AI ranks in the SERPs.

The evolution of Google’s algorithms

Google has developed complex algorithms designed to separate the wheat from the chaff to deliver reliable, helpful content to users. In recent years, the advent of AI has bolstered its ability to detect and penalize spam content — and reward high-quality, original content.

These upgrades had the most significant impact on AI detection:

• Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) in 2019: This model helps Google understand conversational queries and search intent.

• Multitask Unified Model (MUM) in 2021: 1,000 times more potent than BERT, MUM can generate comprehensive search results across various languages and formats and understand the context behind complex queries. This advancement considerably improved accuracy and depth, delivering more relevant results to intricate searches.  

• SpamBrain in 2022: This AI-based system targets behaviors that manipulate search rankings, such as keyword stuffing and link buying to give users better results. It identifies and penalizes websites that engage in tactics deemed to be search-first instead of people-first. 

• MUM’s rollout in 2022: Boosting search accuracy and speed, MUM uses a T5 model that leads to more precise and relevant search experiences and dooms low-effort content to oblivion. 

Other Google algorithms impacting SEO and relating to AI-generated content include:

• Freshness systems, which show recent content where appropriate
• The helpful content system, which prioritizes useful, human-written content
• PageRank, which analyzes links for relevance, authority, and integrity
• Neural matching, which connects user intent to content context 
• RankBrain, which helps Google understand the context behind words
• Reliable information systems, which help elevate quality journalism and demote low-quality writing

If you’re relying too heavily on AI, you may have plummeted into a pit of low-ranking content and irrelevancy. However, not all AI-generated content is created equally. 

What’s Google’s Official Stance on AI-Generated Content?

Google’s official stance on AI-generated content has shifted dramatically in a short space of time. You’re forgiven if you think Search Advocate John Meuller‘s words from April 2022 still stand.

But note that guidance about AI-generated content on Google’s website reveals a different picture. Today, the company’s official stance reflects a dual commitment to search quality and user experience. 

These guidelines highlight the need for content to prioritize originality and user-centricity. If you’re using AI, you can’t slam a few prompts into ChatGPT and copy and paste your way to success. 

If you’re using AI to create original, high-quality content that demonstrates expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, Google rewards you — however the content is produced.

Our VP of Content Operations, Rick Leach, expands on the principles behind E-E-A-T:

“With E-E-A-T, Google has all but ensured that pure AI content and low-effort human content won’t stand much of a chance in the SERPs. Content that succeeds has insights, advice, and opinions that come from what the people in your business have learned by doing a job, performing a service, or creating a product day in and day out. You can’t fake that stuff, and you certainly won’t get it from quick, one-prompt AI outputs.”

How Does Google Detect AI Content?

Google can detect AI-generated content because it understands how generative AI works.

Dr. Vivek Pandley, CEO of Vrata Tech Solutions, explains what sets modern AI tools like ChatGPT apart. “These models are trained on massive datasets, learning patterns, styles, and contextual cues to generate coherent and contextually relevant content,” Pandley says. “Unlike traditional AI models that follow predetermined rules, generative AI has the ability to generate novel outputs, making it a powerful tool for tasks ranging from content creation and natural language processing to image synthesis.”

So, how does Google know AI wrote your content? While the search giant keeps its secrets notoriously close to its chest, we know the following methods:

• Pattern recognition detects unusual language structure, grammar, syntax, and semantics.
• Google trains machine learning algorithms on massive data sets of human and AI-written content, helping it learn subtle cues that indicate AI or human writing. 
• Ensemble deep learning combines multiple detection models, strengthening Google’s ability to detect AI content. 
• Natural language processing analyzes semantics and context, highlighting differences between human and AI writing patterns. 

Despite Google’s advancements, AI models constantly up their game, getting ever-closer to looking and sounding indistinguishable from human writing. Plus, with AI-driven adversarial attacks on the rise, there’s a battle underway to keep AI as a force for good.

Thanks to advanced neural network architectures, Google appears proficient at recognizing complex patterns suggestive of AI-generated content.  

AI’s Impact on Engagement and UX

AI is here to stay, and Google is on board, provided you “produce original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating qualities of E-E-A-T.” But what does that mean? Ultimately, it boils down to crafting content focused on user engagement and experience — and having relevant, demonstrated expertise.

Bankrate taught the world a valuable lesson about focusing solely on scaling up and neglecting to optimize AI content for E-E-A-T. Futurism’s Jon Christian exposed the CNET sister site by writing a scathing piece listing all the factual errors in a single AI-generated Bankrate article.

Following public outcry, Bankrate pivoted on its AI policy.

Anyone who’s used generative AI knows there must have been little — if any — human input into Bankrate’s AI-generated articles. Inaccurate information, absence of expert writers, and focus on pumping out reams of content eroded away at E-E-A-T.

AI alone isn’t enough

In April 2023, Google released a statement: “AI and automation can be a useful tool to create helpful content, but if AI is used for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings, that’s a violation of our long-standing policy against spammy automatically-generated content.”

You need to apply E-E-A-T principles, engage users, and provide them with a memorable experience that compels them to return. You can use AI to create it, but here’s the kicker — AI is a powerful, fantastic tool for making content, but it can’t create it for you. Every sentence of every article needs human involvement to meet Google’s exacting standards. 

Bankrate prioritized search over people and had to unlist 6 months’ worth of content as a result. While embarrassing for them, it could push a smaller company into the red. That’s why human touch is crucial when producing AI-generated content.

If you’ve used AI to generate articles and you’re on the brink of banishing them to the recycle bin, stop! Use them as foundational pieces, adding expert quotes and opinions, valuable graphics, and a consistent brand voice. 

Tips for Using AI to Craft Content That Converts

To make sure your content doesn’t fall short of Google’s quality standards:

• Know Google’s rules. Keep yourself in the loop with Google’s quality guidelines. Your AI content should tick the boxes for originality, relevance, and user-friendliness, in line with Google’s playbook.
• Mix in human flavor. AI can churn out bland content, but people add the seasoning. Experiment with an AI-generated draft, then sprinkle in personality, expertise, and authenticity.
• Serve value. Give your audience something worth reading by never rewriting someone else’s article. Your content should solve problems, answer questions, and offer fresh insights to keep readers coming back for more.
• Keep it readable. Avoid making your audience work too hard. Use precise language, short sentences, and tidy formatting to make your AI-generated content a breeze to read and understand.
• Shake things up. Don’t be a one-trick pony. Try different content types, including articles, blogs, infographics, videos, and podcasts. 
• Test and tweak. Watch your AI content’s performance, and listen to what your audience says. Use the data to find ways to make your content even better.

Creative uses for AI in content creation

With these AI-powered tricks up your sleeve, you can craft content that works for you without breaking a sweat:

• Tailored recommendations: Use AI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini to determine what your audience wants, and serve up personalized content recommendations that hit the spot.
• Visual content enhancement: Spruce up your visuals with AI tools for special effects — it’s a whole lot cheaper than licensing stock photography. 
• Natural language generation: Effortlessly generate content such as product descriptions and social media posts. But never forget to match it with your brand’s style and tone, or it’ll get lost in a sea of similar posts.
• Voice search optimization: Stay one step ahead by writing AI-optimized content for voice search queries. Use conversational language and long-tail keywords to make sure your content gets heard loud and clear.

What Does the Future Hold for Google AI-Detection?

As we navigate AI’s impact on the world of SEO content, one thing remains clear: Adaptability is key. AI marches forth, as do Google’s detection methods, ensuring that only high-quality, user-centric content prevails. The future holds endless possibilities for AI-driven content, but it has yet to find a workaround for Google’s standards. 

To stay ahead, content creators need to adhere to Google’s guidelines, blend AI with human creativity, and prioritize their audience over quick fixes to climb the SERPs. 

Ready to transform your AI-generated content into pieces that embody E-E-A-T principles? Try out Crowd Content’s expert editing services.

The post What’s Google’s Stance on AI-Generated Content? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

To help you along, we’ve compiled a comprehensive guide to the AI tools we love to use all through the content-creation process.

Use Cases for AI Content Creation Tools

AI content creation tools leverage the many intricacies of natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to create content that looks and sounds human but originates deep within the inner workings of the World Wide Web.

Over the past couple of years, the majority of public focus has been on AI’s increasing role in content generation. With the help of a human operator, artificial intelligence tools draw on existing content, data, and other inputs across the internet to create new copy used for everything from blog posts and news articles to product descriptions and About Us pages. But the written word is far from the only way to utilize AI.

AI tools are also invaluable for:

• SEO: AI can help with search engine optimization, by identifying quality keywords and generating metadata that appeals to Google’s algorithm.
• Social media management: Platforms such as Hootsuite and FeedHive tackle vital social media tasks, such as identifying the best time to post a meme and using social listening to track and analyze consumer conversations.
• Email marketing: Creating content for emails can be especially tricky because you have to pack a lot into a relatively small space. AI can draft personalized email content, improving your marketing campaigns without taxing your brain power.
• Translation: Looking to break into a new market? Use AI to translate existing content into another language without losing context and tone.
• Chatbots: Providing 24/7 customer service can be expensive, which is why so many companies are training chatbots to interact with customers and answer their questions when human agents are unavailable.
• Graphics: AI image generators can create images based on prompts, reducing reliance on those generic stock images people love to hate.

And those use cases are just the tip of the iceberg. AI can also help with editing content, analyzing data, scripting, creating quizzes, crafting how-to guides and tutorials, drafting legal documents such as contracts, aiding developers in generating code snippets, scheduling appointments, and hundreds of other useful things.

Top 10 Content Creation Tools

Using AI content creation tools to improve your business practices or to lighten your personal workload is a clever play. But the even more brilliant move is learning which tools are the best overall for the task at hand.

1. ChatGPT

Classification: Broad-spectrum content generation

Overview: Large language models (LLMS) are used to power platforms such as ChatGPT, creating a methodology that generates blogs, social media updates, content summaries, and just about every other content imaginable based on text data originally used to train the LLM’s neural network. In other words, ChatGPT has learned how to create content just like a human would (or pretty close, anyway).

You can use ChatGPT in multiple ways, depending on your role and your goals. Are you a writer who needs help brainstorming? A content strategist building a content map with pillar pages and spokes? A content manager tasked with generating briefs and outlines? You can do all this, plus tons of other jobs, from one chat interface — you just need to tweak the copy before sending it down the pipeline to the next person.

Features: ChatGPT has the ability to answer questions, summarize text, translate content, generate code, etc.

Pros: ChatGPT’s prompt and response format is easy to use and works for everything from writing blogs to figuring out how to fix your washing machine.

Cons: If in the hands of a novice user, long-form writing can easily come off as formulaic (or, dare we say robotic?). Also, because these models train on potentially outdated data, you still need to fact-check everything the platform generates.

Pricing: The basic model is free, but a $20/month subscription provides faster responses and more consistent access when the site is overloaded with users. 

2. ClickUp

Classification: Project management and AI writing assistant

Overview: This productivity-boosting tool empowers teams that can benefit from having multiple utilities all under one umbrella. Functionality is the name of the game, and the completely reconfigurable setup means each user or organization can find a way to make ClickUp fit their needs — even if those needs continuously change.

ClickUp’s tagline is “One app to replace them all,” and it makes sense. Instead of flipping back and forth between apps used to monitor tasks, write content, track goals, and chat with team members, ClickUp puts it all in one place and creates new connections powered by all-knowing AI. It’s like having a personal assistant who knows what you need before you do.

Features: ClickUp has hundreds of features on tap, including tools for task management, marketing campaign management, visual collaboration, real-time reporting, content ideation and creation, editing, and checklist generation.

Pros: The platform is customizable and built to integrate with over 1,000 other tools. It also has a library of customizable templates for work-ready shortcuts.

Cons: AI features are available only through higher subscription tiers.

Pricing: Subscriptions range from free (best for personal use) to business accounts for $12/month. Larger enterprise-level accounts are priced by request.

3. Narrato Workspace

Classification: End-to-end AI content creation and planning

Overview: Narrato Workspace isn’t a single tool — it’s an entire workspace that puts research, planning, and content creation all in one applause-worthy box. It doesn’t matter if your to-do list includes automating publishing for a couple dozen blogs, coming up with ideas for video scripts, or writing a press release for that upcoming product launch. Narrato can do it all — and add some custom AI images for good measure.

Features: Narrato’s SEO content brief generator is a total powerhouse. Other features, such as workflow automation that streamlines repetitive tasks, AI image generation, and built-in content planning and organization tools, are equally indispensable.

Pros: The all-in-one workspace saves time, and the template generator helps users keep dialing in their own processes.

Cons: Users report few cons, but the content editor can lag a bit when processing larger docs.

Pricing: Plans start at $36/month for a base Pro subscription and increase to $76/month for a larger business account.

4. Lately

Classification: AI social media post generator

Overview: Turning long-form content into easily digestible nuggets suitable for social media can feel like a slog. Lately generates social posts in a jiffy, which serves several purposes: You can reuse existing content, populate your social feeds, and generate more engagement all at once. And you don’t have to strain your bandwidth to do it. With Lately, you can create dozens of social posts with a simple click of a button, and that’s not limited to text. The platform also distills audio and visual content.

Features: Lately’s solutions list includes tools that generate content and transcripts, create clips of videos and podcasts, and build social posts with all the necessary elements (copy, images, tracking links, etc.) intact and ready to go.

Pros: As easy to use as it is focused, Lately gives small businesses and busy marketers a way to power up social media without getting distracted by other functionalities.

Cons: The platform’s narrow focus means you’ll need other tools for other tasks.

Pricing: Pricing depends on the number of social channels linked; subscriptions start at $49/month for four channels.

5. Jasper

Classification: AI content generator for blogs

Overview: Jasper is kind of like ChatGPT’s lesser-known cousin, but don’t let marketing make your decision for you. Jasper is adept at understanding tone, something that’s often missing in AI-generated content. Cross-app integrations make it easier to transfer content between Google Docs and the Jasper platform, and you can even use the built-in API to create new integrations that aren’t automatically supported.

Features: Use Jasper’s Boss Mode to create more detailed long-form content. SurferSEO integration helps finished content rank, and with 30-plus languages available for translation purposes, that content is poised to reach an even bigger audience.

Pros: Jasper’s ability to understand and replicate tone is ideal for branded content, and Boss Mode helps avoid some of the pitfalls that usually come with content built off AI-driven templates.

Cons: Like other AI content generators, Jasper isn’t built for nuance. Have specialty and sensitive content reviewed by human subject matter experts for the best results.

Pricing: Creator-level subscriptions start at $39/month and go up from there. Enterprise pricing is available on request. 

6. Copy.ai

Classification: Freestyle AI writing tool

Overview: Copy.ai is another content generator, but this one responds well to additional guidance. Instead of entering a general prompt, such as “zoo animals,” you can provide more context, such as “zoo animals most prevalent in the United States, written from 2nd person POV, geared toward kids, with a humorous undertone.” Similar to ChatGPT, Copy.ai has a chatbot interface that assists with research by answering questions and hunting down data in response to prompts.

Features: Unlike other AI content generators that require you to copy output and paste it into a third-party word processor for further work, Copy.ai has an in-line doc editor so you can polish as you go. You can also build email sequences, translate copy, and use the AI prompt library to help cut to the chase.

Pros: Real-time data collection helps improve factual accuracy and prevent copy from being out of date, and the in-line editor streamlines workflow.

Cons: Copy.ai doesn’t check generated content for plagiarism, and pricing is relatively high once you bypass max inputs for a free account.

Pricing: Basic accounts are free; Pro accounts start at $36/month.

7. Synthesia

Classification: AI video generation

Overview: Video production can be a pricey endeavor. Between equipment, casting, post-production editing, and time off from all the other tasks on your plate, you can easily rack up five-figure costs. Synthesia makes video creation more accessible by using AI to generate videos based on plain-text prompts. Instead of human leads, videos are led by an AI-generated avatar that also handles narration. This tool puts the power of video creation in the hands of small businesses and solopreneurs who might not otherwise be able to share pro-level explainer videos or support their blogs with advanced visual aids.

Features: There are over 140 stock avatars and 120-plus languages available to help you speak to your core audience. Use customization options to dial in your branding and the 60-plus video templates to jump-start “filming” if you feel stuck.

Pros: All the plug-in-play type features make it easy for total newbies to get up and running quickly.

Cons: The editing process takes some time and practice to master, and some features (such as the number of scenes you can include) are limited, depending on your subscription level.

Pricing: Start accounts are $22/month, with an annual billing discount; Enterprise account pricing is available on request. 

8. Murf

Classification: AI voice generation platform

Overview: Murf helps you create AI voiceovers in record time, using the scripts you provide to bring life and an almost-human touch to everything from new client introduction videos to how-to guides. You can choose what type of voice you want and even which accent you prefer, matching your finished voiceover to your business or target demographic.

Murf has also solved the once-universal issue with computer-generated voiceovers: stilted, robotic speech. Use the built-in editing feature to eliminate strange pauses, and switch up vocal emphasis so your end product is less William Shatner and more relatable for the average customer.

Features: Text-to-speech input creates voiceovers from written content; multilingual support increases diversity; and AI cloning can even mimic inflections that indicate emotions.

Pros: If you can write something (or have someone write it for you), you can create a voiceover using Murf.

Cons: Editing is possible but requires oversight by someone who understands speech patterns and knows how to achieve a more natural result.

Pricing: Basic accounts are free; paid accounts with additional features and support start at $19/month.

9. Canva

Classification: AI image generation and graphic design

Overview: What-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editors changed how the average person created, organized, and published blogs, and now the same tech is revolutionizing image and graphic generation. You don’t have to be a graphic designer to use Canva — the knowledge and taste level are already there. No-code editors offer multiple menus of design elements, along with templates that act as a foundation for almost any type of imaging possible. Create business cards, presentations, posters, videos, social media posts, whiteboards, and animations — as soon as you catch up, Canva will have something new to announce.

Features: Canva has stacked the deck with features such as a huge library of free stock photos, graphics, design elements, fonts, and templates galore. You can export in a variety of formats, and there’s a built-in sharing mode to get finished designs up ASAP.

Pros: It’s useful for everyone from complete newbies to design pros, as templates can stand alone or be tweaked down to the tiniest details.

Cons: Many of the best graphics, fonts, etc., are only available via a paid subscription.

Pricing: Basic accounts are free. Canva Pro is $14.99/month, and Canva for Teams of five people costs $29.99/month. 

10. Podcastle

Classification: Blog-to-podcast conversion

Overview: Approximately 42% of Americans age 12 and up say they’ve listened to at least one podcast in the past month. Podcast formatting is increasingly popular, and Podcastle is helping content creators and businesses step up to the plate, thanks to software that turns blogs into podcast-ready scripts. The technology also works to create audiobooks and other audio-based content. You can also do the creation process in reverse and turn your existing podcasts into blogs. It’s a win-win situation that multiplies functionality.

Features: The platform provides studio-level sound without studio equipment, plus there’s an audio editor you can use to enhance tone, edit recordings, and remove background noise.  The AI tech makes it possible to create digital copies of your voice.

Pros: You can go from text to voice and back again using one utility, and there are a lot of customization options up for grabs.

Cons: The platform is still a bit clunky. But updates keep coming, and the interface should be more user-friendly soon.

Pricing: Basic membership is free for a single creator; multi-creator subscriptions start at $11.99/month per creator; and Pro-level subscriptions cost $23.99/month per creator. 

Top 4 AI Content Creation Tools – Bonus SEO List

AI is also storming the SEO castle, and these tools can help you conquer the SERPs without scouring content for keyword placement manually — and really, who wants to do that?

1. Semrush

Overview: Semrush is all about SEO, with a slate of 55-plus tools on hand so you can optimize content from every possible angle. While basic keyword tools just look at phrases you need to include, Semrush takes a much wider view. Content marketing, PPC, competitor research, and social media marketing — you can do it all with Semrush.

With Semrush, you have a market research tool that also does SEO, making you more competitive and eliminating lag time between seeing a content problem and finding a solution.

Features: Use the AI-driven site auditor to pinpoint gaps in your SEO strategy, then act on the bot’s recommendations. The keyword magic tool rates short- and long-tail keywords by search volume and difficulty.

Pros: So many utilities, so little time! Semrush does a lot, and much of it is available for free.

Cons: Higher plans can get pricey, and with many functions on tap, those new to SEO could get confused.

Pricing: Basic searches are free; paid plans start at $129.95/month and go up to $499.95/month for large agency and enterprise accounts. 

2. SurferSEO

Overview: SurferSEO’s main strength is in content optimization. It uses data-driven insights to create suggestions users rely on to improve their on-page SEO. The goal is to improve visibility and SERP rankings based on the targeted keywords, current search engine algorithms, and lengthy competitor analysis. AI can see patterns the average human won’t notice, increasing the likelihood that SurferSEO’s recommendations can give you a competitive edge and improve your ranking more than you’d be able to achieve on your own.

Features: SurferSEO has its own on-platform content editor, plus analytics tools that track performance and generate reports. It also has a robust resource library, including tutorials, to help you get the most out of your subscription.

Pros: Multiple integrations increase utility, and it has a user-friendly interface that minimizes the scare factor for newbies.

Cons: SurferSEO’s basic plans have limited functionality, and higher plans are expensive. There’s also a learning curve, and those new to SEO may have to dedicate time to reading guides and familiarizing themselves with the platform.

Pricing: Essential AI plans start at $119/month; Advanced AI costs $239/month; and full Surfer AI power requires a Max AI account for $419/month.

3. Diib

Overview: Diib is like a scaled-down version of SurferSEO and Semrush, but smaller doesn’t mean less than. In fact, Diib’s focus is one of the platform’s biggest benefits. Small businesses looking to scale can jettison the noise that comes with too many features and concentrate solely on SEO and traffic insights designed to automate SEO and promote growth.

With Diib, you get a clear growth objective you can work toward, along with alerts that let you know how you’re doing with SEO, social media, mobile conversions, and overall UX. Instead of checking up on your website 800 times a day and neglecting other tasks, Diib does it for you.

Features: Daily health scores keep your finger on the pulse of your website’s well-being. Diib’s 12-metric system ensures a holistic view of your progress, and AI-powered SEO gap checks and competitor monitoring buoy your success even further.

Pros: Diib is affordable, focused, and easy to understand, and the mostly hands-off daily operations are perfect for bootstrapped startups.

Cons: If you need a lot of extras, such as a built-in content editor or lots of templates, you’ll have to supplement Diib with another platform or tool.

Pricing: Self-service plans are free. Pro plans with unlimited access to Diib tools cost $7.99/month.

4. RankIQ

Overview: RankIQ is another specific SEO tool. This one only cares about blogs. The utility’s sole goal is to help businesses and enterprising individuals write blogs that rank on the first page of the SERPs. It does that by handpicking low-competition, high-traffic keywords niche by niche and generating content briefs and outlines that put those keywords to work.

Features: The software uses a call-and-response formula — you enter a keyword, and RankIQ comes back with everything you need to know. It also prepares detailed AI-generated SEO reports and checks rank regularly.

Pros: The interface is remarkably straightforward, and all you need to know going in is your original target keyword.

Cons: There are no advanced features or customization options here. It’s bare bones, and if you want help with website content or social stuff, you won’t get it from RankIQ.

Pricing: Plans start at $49/month.

Is It OK to Use AI Content Creation Tools?

AI content tools are pretty darn useful. From fueling ideation and assisting in research to creating briefs and publish-ready prose, AI plug-ins and platforms are indelibly woven into the future of writing. But, an over-reliance on these tools can lead to lower-quality content, something that can negatively impact your brand and your SERP ranking. That’s why it’s so crucial that you learn how to balance the potential of AI with frequent reminders of the importance of human oversight.

There are legal and ethical considerations, too. It’s your responsibility to ensure everything you publish and put your name on complies with copyright laws and ethical standards. Saying “AI did it” won’t fly.

The Future of AI Tools and Revolutionary Content

From increasing efficiency and offering new insights to giving professional assists that would otherwise cost companies tens of thousands of dollars a year, these platforms are stepping up to make life easier and content better. In many ways, AI content-creation tools are the wingmen we need at a price we can (usually) afford. It enhances our creativity, improves our outcomes, and puts voice and image creation in the hands of people who have never held a microphone or video camera. It’s magical — but even an enchanted bunny needs a person around to pull it out of the hat.

As you scale your business, keep experimenting. But always think of and treat AI as an enhancement, not a totally hands-off alternative to people-first processes.

The post Top 10 AI Content Creation Tools appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Yes and no. A single scan is ultimately a roll of the dice, with results varying drastically among tools. And each new AI model further reduces accuracy as generative text becomes more human-like. But with larger sets of articles to analyze, the accuracy gets a bit better. 

In the future, popular AI detection apps will likely pivot toward fact-checking and ensuring artificially generated content offers tangible value to readers. Until then, current technology does have a role in your workflow as long as you understand its limitations and how it works.

What Are AI Content Checkers, and How Do They Work?

At a basic level, AI content detection tools examine word probability and sentence structure. However, it’s easier to understand what they do by first looking at how AI writes content.

Large language models, such as Open AI’s ChatGPT, Google’s BERT, and Anthropic’s Claude, function similarly to a librarian. When you ask these librarians a question, they synthesize an answer based on all the knowledge available from the library — the AI’s training data.

Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that, as large language models use parameters to adjust how they use the information. More parameters mean more ways to work with the training data, and ChatGPT-4 has nearly eight times as many parameters as GPT-3, showing just how fast this technology is evolving.

ChatGPT leverages its enormous training data and over a trillion parameters to predict what it expects to come next in a sentence. It answers questions using probability like a highly sophisticated version of your phone’s autocorrect — albeit with fewer mistakes.

However, it never truly understands the information.

AI content detectors also use probability

Like ChatGPT, AI detectors use machine learning and probability, except they attempt to reverse the process that generates content. They look for text with low randomness, predicting the words generative AI will use in any particular sentence.

However, most tools also check for highly uniform sentences and paragraphs — a characteristic called burstiness. Human writing generally has high burstiness. 

For example, human writers may even use single-sentence paragraphs for emphasis.

AI, on the other hand, writes more methodically. The text has a predictable flow and a beautiful conformity that makes it structured, easy to read, and well-organized. However, AI text detectors — and even perceptive humans — can spot this lack of burstiness.

If you scan text with a detector, the tool scores it, typically with a percentage rating. It may also highlight specific sections it believes may be artificially generated.

The percentage rating is usually a confidence score. It’s how certain the tool is that AI text is present, not a measure of how much of the content is artificial, so even a high rating of 70% shows a lot of uncertainty.

Review of Top AI Content Detection Tools

So, where should you start if you need to check the credibility of AI detectors? We think by testing them. We compared 100% human content, 100% AI content, and a mix of human and AI content across multiple AI detectors to evaluate how each one reacts — then we took a closer look at five of the most popular tools.

As you can see, no tool was perfect, but some tools performed better than others. 

5 Top AI Detection Tools

Winston AI

Winston AI touts itself as the most accurate detection tool, and it certainly seemed sure of itself when we tested it. It had a low tolerance for AI-written text, even when edited. However, it correctly identified human-written text — albeit with a lower confidence level than other tools.

Overall, Winston AI has many valuable features. For example, its project and document storage lets you check previous scans and organize content. Uniquely, the tool utilizes OCR technology, which lets you check whether text in images is AI-written.

Pros:

• Image scanning
• Downloadable PDF reports
• Team management functions
• API access for integration with other marketing tools
  

Cons:

• Limited free access
• False positives due to the strict algorithm

Price: $12 per month for 80,000 words

Originality.ai

Originality.ai is another robust AI detection platform with many features to unpack. Besides the scanning tool, which lets you check whether content might be AI-written, you get plagiarism checks, a readability analysis, and fact-checking.

Compared to other tools, Originality has a low tolerance for AI. It rated each test article, including human-written articles, as AI-written with 100% confidence. The tool seems to place additional weight on burstiness, leading to false positives from highly uniform text.

Pros:

• AI, plagiarism, fact-check, and readability scans in one tool
• Team management features to help scale content production
• API for bulk scans

Cons:

• No free functionality
  

Price: $14.95 per month or $30 pay-as-you-go

GPTZero

GPTZero is one of the most straightforward tools we tested — especially if you only need to check a few pieces of content. This is because you don’t need a subscription or account for a basic scan. Simply paste your content into the web interface. GPTZero also has a novel feature that recreates typing behavior in Word or Google docs, which is a nifty way to be certain that a human typed rather than pasted content. 

During our scans, GPTZero identified each type of content relatively accurately. The tool was quite confident when it saw full AI content, with predictable decreases in its confidence rating when presented with mixed content. Compared to Winston AI, GPTZero was also less uncertain about the purely human content.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Chrome extension available
• Writing reports to certify human writing
• API access

Cons:

• No readability scan
• Account required for more advanced features 
• Character count for individual scans limited on free version

Price: Free (50,000 characters/10,000 words per month scan limit)

Sapling

Sapling works differently from other tools on this list. While you can perform a content scan through its web app, the tool also integrates directly into browsers and Google Docs.

Another unique feature of Sapling is its spelling and grammar check, which works similarly to Grammarly. You also get AI-powered writing assistance, recommending ways to complete and enhance content.

When we tested Sapling, it didn’t differentiate well between AI and partially human content. However, it did identify the fully human content.

Pros:

• AI assistant and grammar check included
• Multiple integration options
• User-friendly interface
• API for batch processing

Cons:

• Low non-English accuracy
• Limited free AI detection

Price: $25 per month

Crossplag 

Crossplag is primarily a plagiarism detection tool, but the platform also offers free AI detection through a web app. However, you need to sign up for an account to use it.

When we tested Crossplag, the tool correctly identified pure AI content, but it also gave the mixed-origin text a 100% confidence score. Crossplag shows this confidence level as a handy color-coded scale on the dashboard but doesn’t highlight individual sentences like GPTZero and Winston AI do, so there’s no way to know how much potential AI the mixed article had. 

Pros:

• AI and plagiarism detection in one tool
• Free AI detection
  

Cons: 

• Limited features
• No detailed scan stats

Price: Free AI detection but $9.95 for a plagiarism check of 5,000 words.

Real-World Application and Case Studies

Given the discrepancies among AI content detection tools, adoption has been somewhat inconsistent. After all, when one app says AI wrote an article but another says the opposite, how can you base decisions on the results?

Universities have had to ask the same question. While many adopted Turnitin’s AI detector early to address academic cheating, this overzealous uptake led to false-positive scans. That’s why prominent institutions such as Vanderbilt and Michigan State inevitably turned the technology off.

Surfer conducted a case study using Originality.ai that also revealed insight into the accuracy of AI content detection. The company ran 100 human and AI-written articles through the tool. Results showed:

• The detector was only 50% confident it found generative text across 78% of AI-written content.
• About 10% of human content received a confidence score lower than 50%.
• Only 28% of the human-written articles received confidence scores of 90% or higher.

What does this tell you about the capabilities and accuracy of AI detection tools? Unfortunately, they’re not reliable at all.

It’s best to take what content checkers tell you with a grain of salt. Use them, absolutely, but only as part of a broader content audit to confirm existing suspicions. Also, don’t just use one tool; use several and cross-reference the scan results. 

If content flags across most tools, a false positive is less likely. However, you’ll never completely eliminate false positives.

Alternative Evaluation Methods: Identifying AI Content Without Tools

While AI detection apps can be helpful, it shouldn’t be your only method of determining the authenticity of human-written content. If you review content regularly, it’s a good idea to become familiar with AI-generated content. Read enough of it, and you’ll start to see that even AI has habits. 

There are several things to look out for.

• Lack of depth: Granted, writers can’t cover everything about a specific topic. However, unedited AI content skims the surface of topics. More importantly, it rarely shows the firsthand experience or expertise that E-E-A-T compliant content has.
• Unusual phrasing: AI uses specific buzzwords like “meticulous” and too often tacks “-ing” phrases onto the end of sentences that don’t need them, looking a lot like the phrase you’re reading right now. It also sometimes uses phrases that sound odd, such as advising you to delve into the world of toothpaste flavors or embark on a journey to discover dishwasher settings. These phrases lend too much grandeur to mundane topics — something a human would typically avoid.
• Repetition: A talented human writer will avoid repeating ideas unless necessary, but AI often repeats itself in a single article.
• Overly clean structure: AI adheres to a highly predictable flow and uniform sentences. It lacks spontaneity and reads more like academic text structure-wise. Of course, sometimes a project calls for this style from humans, so it’s not definite. 
• Way too much voice: If instructed to inject some form of personality into the writing, it often goes over the top, dumping the full salt shaker of voice when just a sprinkle was needed. 

When you audit content to confirm suspicions of AI use, look at multiple articles, including those written pre-2023, when generative AI was more primitive. Do you see any dramatic changes in a writer’s style or grammar? Human writers work hard at their craft, and false positives are a common occurrence. A reasonably confident decision requires ample data.

The Limitations of AI Detection Tools

AI detectors play a role in content production but have limitations. Their accuracy is fairly high when detecting verbatim use of AI text. However, the number of false positives from human text should cause you to pause before relying on them.

There’s also a widespread misconception that if human text scans as AI through detectors, they’re probably not valuable. However, this ignores the tools’ emphasis on sentence variation and Google’s overwhelming desire for content matching the E-E-A-T guidelines.

We cover this misbelief — and several others — within our webinar on the myths and realities of AI detection. Watch the webinar, and you’ll discover key insights into how AI detection technology works and how generative AI will continue to evolve in the future.

We also take a deep dive into how we audit content, what we look for during a manual review, and how to address client concerns over AI usage.

The post Do These Top 5 AI Content Detection Tools Really Work? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

When ChatGPT burst into public consciousness in late November 2022, the tech seemed to draw a line in the virtual sand, separating the earlier times of content from the robot age. But in reality, the rise of AI content has been a slow burn, and those within the content marketing industry have seen both the potential and the pitfalls on the horizon for years. The big question now isn’t just how AI text generators can be used but whether they should be used at all by anyone hoping to get (and stay) in Google’s good graces. 

One of the reasons Google has been so successful is its commitment to total world dominance. Just kidding (mostly). But really, Google dominates because it’s willing to constantly reevaluate its position on hot-button topics and what constitutes the general standard of excellence. However, changing standards can lead to an overload of confusion.

The doubt and uncertainty are real, but the key takeaway is just as potent: Combining AI with practical SEO strategies (and a heaping helping of human insight and oversight) is a recipe for success, and even Google agrees.

Does AI Content Rank in Google?

Google doesn’t penalize AI content simply for being produced by artificial intelligence. But to truly understand whether AI-generated text could affect your ranking, we have to dig a little deeper. It isn’t a yes or no answer but an analysis of how AI-generated content actually performs, what role human editorial oversight plays, and what Google’s official stance is. Because, at the end of the day, that almighty Google algorithm remains king.

The importance of EEATing

Google has confirmed (several times now) that AI-generated content gets a big, fat A-OK as long as it follows the same E-E-A-T guidelines used to evaluate content overall. In September 2023, Google updated the wording of its philosophy on valuable content, changing “helpful content written by people, for people” to “helpful content created for people.” That short edit made it clear Google was more interested in whether content delivered value — according to E-E-A-T — than in who created the content in the first place.

So, if you can use ChatGPT to generate a blog that meets Google’s standards for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, your content should be in line to rank well.

But there are also other factors that influence how content, AI-generated or not, ultimately lands on Google’s results pages.

SEO: Perception vs. reality and what works when you want to rank

How content is produced is only one piece of the SERP-y pie. Even if your content is strong, your SEO game has to be just as impressive, and that includes knowing the truth about search engine optimization.

Timeframes

• Perception: SEO is a one-time-only production.
• Reality: There’s no end to search engine optimization. Even if your AI-generated content ranks well now, you may need to tweak it in the future to answer Google algorithm updates.

Keyword stuffing

• Perception: The more keywords you include, the better your ranking.
• Reality: Google looks down on and penalizes articles with obvious keyword stuffing — even if it’s AI’s fault.

Links are links

• Perception: All links feed into the algorithm and boost your content’s rank.
• Reality: Quality is paramount. Google likes high-quality, highly relevant links from sources with proven authority.

Your content determines your ranking

• Perception: All you need is a solid blog and decent meta tags, and your SEO is done and dusted.
• Reality: AI content won’t get your site to rank if you aren’t paying attention to other factors, including social media, linking, and online reputation.

AI + human editorial oversight = magic

By this point, you’re hopefully convinced that AI text generators can be useful, but they can’t be left to operate completely independently. After all, the robot overlords don’t need to get it in their heads that we humans are totally superfluous, right? But how does that human oversight manifest?

In most cases, you’ll use yourself or other members of your human team in three ways:

• Editorial assistance: Use human editors to refine AI-generated content briefs, edit content drafts, and otherwise provide insight and polish that isn’t possible with 100% reliance on technology.
• Subject matter experts (SMEs): AI content-generating programs rely on existing data points and can only respond depending on what they know and when that data was input. This could lead to inaccurate or outdated content, which is less than ideal since Google looks for signals of reliability to help weed out content that propagates misinformation or contradicts popular consensus on certain topics. As of November 2023, many ChatGPT responses lead with, “As of my last knowledge update in January 2022…” Human SMEs can go through content with a fine-toothed comb, ensuring accuracy — something that’s especially important for companies in sensitive industries, such as healthcare and fintech, that can’t afford to disseminate erroneous content. 

• Off–page SEO: You need all the off-page SEO in place to support your content. Even if you use technology as part of your SEO strategy, you need a human to review the checklist and help knit everything together.

And if you need any more convincing that AI isn’t ready to go it alone, listen to the wise words of John Mueller, Google’s search advocate. When tagged on X (formerly Twitter) in a post asking, “Should we use ChatGPT from now onwards for publishing content on our website??? It giving 80% unique content.” [sic], Mueller’s response was epic: “It’s like food with only 20% toxic chemicals? Sounds tasty.”

Content Generated With AI

Digital guru and NP Digital Co-Founder Neil Patel put AI-generated content to the test following Google’s fall 2022 spam update, analyzing data from 100 experiment sites populated exclusively with AI-written content. His findings are more than worthy of a gasp and well-timed clutching of pearls:

• Sites that used AI-generated content with zero human oversight dropped eight positions in the SERPs and lost an average of 17% in traffic.
• Sites that paired AI-written content with some type of human oversight dropped just three positions in the SERPs and lost only 6% of their traffic.

It’s confirmed that problems arise when content creators expect AI to meet E-E-A-T standards independently. The human element may not be sacrosanct any longer, but it also isn’t extinct.

Boosting traffic thanks to artificial intelligence

Content Growth Founder Jake Ward is no stranger to building and scaling businesses. So, when Ward ran an experiment with sites brimming with AI-generated content, people took notice — especially when he published the results.

Ward’s barrage of AI content — paired with human oversight and revisions — helped take a website with zero traffic to 750,000 hits per month. The experiment involved 7,000 pages (all created using Byword.ai), and the growth took about a year to realize. At the end of the year-long study, that same site had 4,000 keywords in positions 1-3 and 13,000 keywords in positions 4-10.

Why Is High-Quality Content Important?

Most of us remember our elementary school teachers drilling grammar rules into our rapidly growing brains. I before E, except after C, right? But even as objective or mechanical writing quality remains integral to producing content of value, the definition of quality content has expanded.

• Does the content satisfy intent?
• Does it provide actionable insights?
• Are there unique perspectives?

It goes back to Google’s E-E-A-T principles. When you’re sharing experience, showcasing expertise, stating facts with authoritativeness, and proving your trustworthiness, you can’t help but churn out quality content that gives people what they want. This is true whether you’re prioritizing AI-generated content or writing everything yourself.

If you’re blending human and AI input, you have the best opportunity to produce content you and Google will love:

• Relevancy: AI ensures content is relevant to search intent, while humans ensure the emotion is intact.
• Credibility: AI uses existing data points to generate strong, quality content, and humans review that content for accuracy. This builds authority, too.
• User engagement: AI can dig up tidbits that might take humans days to unearth and put together an outline that reduces knowledge gaps and increases coverage of the given topic. Humans add entertaining language and emotion that keeps text from being robotic and helps forge connections.

It’s almost a matter of left brain vs. right brain, but you have to let the creativity and uniqueness run free without trampling on the information and complexity the topic is due. And if you do all that while avoiding comma splices, all the better. Otherwise, Google’s SpamBrain will notice, seeing the patterns that indicate poor-quality content created to influence rankings rather than to please people.

Tactics to Integrate AI Into Your Content Creation Process

Adding AI to your existing content creation process takes planning and a deft hand. You should proceed with the following tips with one overarching thought in mind: AI is only successful in content when you use it to improve your processes, never when your sole goal is to make content generation cheaper.

• Prioritize AI on the front end of content creation. AI is a research powerhouse, and ignoring that is almost criminal. Ask AI tools about trends and then use them to conduct research and generate outlines that can spark ideation and guide your writing teams.
• Optimize existing content. What better way to go toe-to-toe with Google than to use AI to optimize existing content, looking at ways to improve keyword usage and metadata? You can even use AI to analyze the behavior and preferences of your target audience and rework old blog posts to speak to a new demographic.
• Proofread and polish. Grammarly and ProWritingAid are just two of the AI-driven editing tools that can help you find errors and improve the style and quality of your content. These tools aren’t perfect (please don’t accept every suggestion), but they’re worthy grammatical wingmen.
• Infuse content with your brand voice. You can actually train AI models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, to understand and utilize your brand voice so it can replicate what it sees.
• Create custom images and videos. AI-powered visual content platforms haven’t made as big of a splash as text-generating platforms, but they should. Plug a request into Deep AI or Hotpot, and you can have a picture of a unicorn dressed as a cowboy sitting in a pile of spaghetti in mere minutes.

Evaluating the Impact of AI on SEO Trends

As AI grows and continually fine-tunes itself, it has a parallel increasing impact on SEO. Artificial intelligence was woven throughout Semrush’s predictions for SEO trends in 2023, including:

• Generative AI creates new content based on data it was fed during training, such as formulating summaries that answer search queries. Think of it as Google’s featured snippets on steroids.
• Accelerated content creation, thanks to AI’s ability to produce words at record speed. The more content there is, the more competitive SEO can be, and the harder it may become for startups with limited bandwidth to gain traction.
• Google continues to remind us of the importance of people-first content that meets search intent. AI-generated content is included and must meet the same standards — and yes, Google is watching.
• Microsoft Bing has integrated ChatGPT into its search engine, making it a serious contender for the title of the World’s Top Search Engine. Eventually. It’s worth watching because how we use AI may one day no longer completely depend on Google’s input and guidelines.

But the SEO industry isn’t a monolith, and expert opinions on AI and SEO vary.

• “AI is one of the most profound things we’re working on as humanity. It’s more profound than fire or electricity.” – Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, via an interview with Verge
• “The future of SEO will be heavily influenced by two key factors: the continued rise of mobile search and the increased use of artificial intelligence in the search industry.” — Neil Patel

And then there’s ChatGPT’s say-so. When asked, “Will AI kill SEO?” the platform first hedged its bets (“As an AI language model, I cannot predict the future . . .”) before underscoring the need for adaptable SEO strategies. It then stated, “SEO will not be killed by AI . . .  it will evolve to become more sophisticated and data-driven, with a greater emphasis on quality content, user experience, and technical optimization.” Mic drop.

Future Outlook: AI in Content Marketing and SEO

AI hasn’t reached its peak — not in terms of efficacy or accuracy or in the ways in which it can affect content production. There will be more applications joining the ranks in the years to come. Some may help with strategy and ideation, while others might pave the way for more efficient brief and content creation. We will, one day, be able to rely even more on artificial intelligence as a standalone tool to generate, evaluate, and refine content.

Now, imagine these tools connected to existing workflows, perhaps via a single, umbrella-like chat environment — increased visibility, a user-friendly format, and a gradually declining need for your team to stand over the apps like helicopter parents. Is your spine tingling yet?

The idea that AI could spearhead trend forecasting, conduct in-depth data analysis, deliver hyperlocal content, automatically analyze backlink profiles, and identify opportunities to improve all of the above isn’t just exciting. It promises an age in which anyone can use content to build their business without being a whiz with grammar or spending years learning the ins and outs of SEO.

AI: Writing and Ranking, With a Little Help From Your Friends

AI-generated content has the potential to rank as well (or even better) than content written entirely by human hands. But favoring artificial intelligence over human expertise, or vice versa, is like trying to sail across the Atlantic with only half a boat. You can keep doggy paddling, but why do yourself such a disservice? By combining AI with editorial oversight and SMEs, you can serve up high-quality text with a distinctly human touch.Step up your content efforts with an assist from Crowd Content’s managed services. We help businesses, agencies, and publishers across a wide variety of industries generate quality content at scale. Whether you want to explore the possibilities of AI-generated content or desire a fully human experience, our content managers can help you understand your options and build a process that expertly serves your needs.

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