We know it’s really tempting to fire up ChatGPT and ask it to pump out words for your latest website or blog. You imagine all the time you’ll save by not having to really think about what you’re putting out into the world, and not having to pay for a professional copywriter. But it turns out there’s a great irony to AI generated copy – Google doesn’t like it and neither does ChatGPT.
It turns out that they’re all about serving up human generated content. It’s because what real people write is authentic and meaningful and will satisfy their searchers. Auto-generated words spewed out in the hope of snagging a few unsuspecting clicks just doesn’t cut it.
So let’s compare AI generated copy and human copywriting in detail, and see why AI doesn’t like AI.
The big four – Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust
Google places enormous importance on a website’s E-E-A-T signals. The stronger these signals are the higher your site will rank in Google organic results, and the more likely you site is to be quoted and linked to in the AI Overview at the top of the Google page and in ChatGPT.
Having a site written by real people tells both Google and your readers that the content is credible and trustworthy. At Pinnacle&Co. our writers bring experience, unique perspectives, insight, and expertise to written content that AI is simply unable to replicate.
Consistency of Brand Communications
Maintaining a consistent writing style and tone of voice are important aspects of developing an enduring brand that attracts and retains customers. AI struggles to keep a consistent tone across multiple items of content. And if your customers perceive that your content is all over the place, that inconsistency is going to damage your brand.
SEO that’s good to go
Human written copy can boost local SEO performance with references to location, cultural context, or industry specific insights and experiences that AI will probably miss.
Human writers can also create tactical topic clusters, with internal linking strategies, and strategically placed Calls To Action that AI typically makes complete a mess of. All AI’s mistakes can be fixed of course – but that just eats up the time you thought you’d be saving when you chose to use it in the first place
Fast and good are two different things
AI might be a lot faster initially, but speed doesn’t equal intelligent customer focused strategy. Our copywriters bring years of industry knowledge, customer insight, emotional intelligence, and the ability to precisely align your content with your brand’s tone of voice and your business’ goals.
Risky Business
AI works by scanning the web and then regurgitating existing information. So by definition anything it produces will be completely generic. Even worse, your AI copy bot might have blatantly plagiarised content from your competitor’s websites – and as we know Google is not impressed by duplicate content. Your competitors won’t be too stoked either, especially if AI innocently hands you data or intellectual property that doesn’t belong to you.
On the whole AI isn’t the most trustworthy when it comes to facts, and giving good advice. That means you’ll need to spend time combing through fact and sense checking. Miss something and say goodbye to your trustworthiness rating on Google.
On the other hand, the copy we write for you will include original insights, anecdotes, testimonials, and accurately reflect your personality and thinking – all supported by direct quotes obtained from person to person interviews with you.
What’s more because its genuine human written content engages with the reader better.
A lot of people have their AI radar up now, and go out of their way to buying from businesses who still care enough about their brand to employ real people to create their content…
Good copy converts visits to customers
Because we work closely with our clients, we understand their businesses and know what makes their customers buy from them. That helps us craft content that’s highly relevant to their needs and how their focus might change along the path to purchase – which is especially important for bigger ticket purchases, with longer decision cycles.
So while AI might be able to generate text that sounds more or less right, usually it misses the customer’s deeper intent, leaving them unsatisfied by the bland, generic information presented on the website. And apart from losing you sales it’s also disastrous for your Google rankings because high bounce rates and short times spent lingering on your webpages indicate to Google that your website is not worthy of a high search ranking.
But good copy isn’t about rankings, it’s even more important for converting readers into customers. Human writers can help close the sale by writing compelling CTAs, targeting their pain points and providing meaningful solutions in ways that AI just can’t match.
AI can’t do empathy, or emotion
Well written human copy naturally feels more conversational, and emotionally engaging – like there’s another person somewhere in the equation. Your readers are more likely to share, comment on, or link to content that’s real and relatable. And as an added bonus, those backlinks and social signals give your SEO a massive boost.
We’ll say it again – Google doesn’t like AI content
Google hasn’t banned AI text as such, but it definitely does do its best to ignore shallow, spammy, auto-generated content that adds little value. And that’s yet another AI delivered kiss of death for your Google search results. Human copywriters easily avoid that by ensuring you have quality, relevant, individual, and creative writing.
And while it’s clear that while AI has its place, its place is definitely not anywhere near your written advertising and marketing communications.
For expert authentic human copy writing that nails it every time get in touch with us.