Let’s get the obvious out of the way, shall we? Yes, we offer digital marketing services, and yes, those services involve content writing, so naturally, we have a bias towards quality human-written content over AI produced content.
AI content may serve some purpose, but for a robust long-term strategy, it simply isn’t a good enough substitute for content produced by humans today. We have the experience to know that AI content will limit your business potential. Read on to find out why…
How AI Content Is Impacting SEO Today
As a lead generation and digital marketing agency, we work with a broad range of clients across a full spectrum of industries, many of whom make use of our SEO services. These services include a comprehensive content strategy that helps get your products, services and website in front of customers. Lately, we’ve noticed a change in the clients coming to us for help with their SEO content – and AI is often to blame for their poor performance.
Many of our new clients come to us because they’re struggling with SEO. Their websites aren’t ranking where they want them to be and every new blog post and service page they create just seems to make no impact. An increasingly common reason for that is AI content, and Google’s lack of interest in the low-quality, often-inaccurate or out-of-date content AI produces.
Below we’ll explore AI vs human-written content, their pros and cons, and ultimately make the case to all business owners dabbling in written content that human-written content will get you the results you’re after in a way AI simply can’t.
What Is AI Content?
AI content is content produced by artificial intelligence. It can be any content from social media posts to blogs, service pages to website homepage copy. AI models such as ChatGPT are becoming increasingly popular for everyday writing, and many businesses are relying on these models for SEO content writing, too.
Here, someone would ask AI to produce content using X amount of words for a specific keyword or search query, and in seconds the AI model will fire back a blog post or service page matching your prompt. A quick scan of the content will usually follow to ensure it makes sense and then the content will be put live on the website. Then all that’s left to do is sit back and hope Google thinks your content is relevant and accurate enough to sit near the top of the search results page.
What Is Human-Written Content?
Human-written content is the exact opposite of AI. Rather than having a machine produce content for you in seconds, a human being sits down, plans, researches, drafts and edits the content. For SEO purposes, that human ought to keep user intent in the back of their mind the whole time, asking themselves what the user needs when they search for a certain thing.
High-quality content will then be produced to match those needs, indicating to Google that the service page/blog post produced is exactly what the search engine user was looking for. This encourages Google to place the content higher in the search results, which ultimately leads to more interested customers for the business.
AI vs Human-Written Content: Pros & Cons Of Both
At Lead Pronto we’re not allergic to modern innovations. In fact, we’re always looking to the latest software and tools to maximise results for our clients when it comes to lead generation, digital marketing and ultimately helping the businesses we work with make more money. So, whilst we don’t like AI for SEO content writing if you want to see real, long-term results, we’re not blind to the merits of AI and the potential benefits it can bring.
Below we’ll give a fair and honest comparison of the two types of content. We’ll look at each type of content for key aspects of content creation to ensure a full deep-dive:
Content Quality
Ultimately Google focuses on one factor above all others when deciding on where content will rank on a search results page: quality. If your content is poorly written, then it will simply not appear on the first page or two of the results, meaning users won’t find your content and business organically, and you’ll struggle to get new custom this way.
Even champions of AI have to admit that when it comes to quality, human-written content is best. It allows for anecdotes, comparisons, and deeper descriptions and explanations than AI content does. That means the content is ultimately more interesting for the user and Google recognises the higher quality work produced by a person vs an AI model – and rewards those pieces handsomely.
Production Speed
Producing new content fast can be a huge benefit if you’re a new business that’s just starting out. The appeal of a quick win is often just too seductive for new businesses, so we understand why you might choose AI content here. After all, what might take a human 3-4 hours to write can be produced in seconds with an AI model.
In terms of SEO performance, the rapid production of content could be helpful initially as your business establishes itself and starts to build a reputation and online presence. However, over time, Google will weed out AI content that simply rehashes what’s already out there, and your SEO performance will dip. It’s often at this point that our content team is called upon to save the day.
And whilst they might not don a cape whilst rescuing your website’s search rankings, they’ll certainly seem like superheroes to you as their in-depth understanding of SEO best practices and natural writing prowess swoops in and sends your content soaring to the dizzying heights of Google’s first page of results once more.
Scalability
When it comes to scalability AI does it best. AI models can produce vast amounts of content in record time – and humans will never be able to keep up with AI in that regard. For example, if you ran an ecommerce business that relied heavily on selling products online, then product descriptions are really important.
AI can produce a boat-load of them in the blink of an eye, but it will lack some insight into the products themselves. Human’s can pick out what really matters to customers and highlight the unique features and benefits that catch people’s attention. This will ultimately lead to content that users find useful and Google prefers.
Cost
AI is free. Quality human-written content isn’t. AI wins this round hand’s down when you only look at the money.
But what about how much AI could cost you in terms of search results and SEO performance? When you look at it through this lens, you can see that just because AI content is free doesn’t mean it won’t cost you dearly.
Spending the money and investing in high performing human-written content will provide you with the results you’re looking for. That means more potential customers looking at your site and, ultimately, more sales for you. More sales = more money, and that means, in the long term, your human-written content pays for itself!
Ability To Think Creatively
Humans, by our very nature, see the world differently to other humans. Not to get too philosophical here, but we all have our own unique, lived experiences and that forms the way we think. It’s this difference in how we think that makes human-written content such a unique and interesting thing.
All AI models are built on content that’s already available online. That means, they take all the old information and just rework it into ‘original’ content. Humans are different. We’re able to take ideas and information and add to it, highlighting the key points we think are most relevant and structuring a piece in a way that’s truly unique based on experience as well as knowledge obtained through research.
AI isn’t capable of any of that, leaving the content that’s produced feeling flat.
Content Accuracy
Accuracy is a huge issue when it comes to AI content. It tends to write blog posts and service pages based on the prevailing information online. If more content than not says something is one way, then AI will take that as fact. But what if the majority of content available is wrong?
For example, we’re just into a new tax year and some things have already changed. From the 1st April 2025, minimum wage in the UK became £12.21 for those aged 21 and over. This is up from £11.44. As information is updated slowly online, AI content is likely to think that the minimum wage is still £11.44 despite the change, until most information online is updated in line with the change.
This is just one example, but it’s a problem AI simply can’t overcome. Humans, however, have the ability to look at information and determine the accuracy for themselves. That way, only quality, correct information is included.
Is AI Content Bad For SEO?
Short term – no. If you’re looking for a quick win and need to build an online presence fast, then AI content can help you there. But be warned. Google will catch up to you, and if your content is of poor quality (and it very likely will be), then your content will plummet through the rankings and it won’t recover if you don’t have a human rewrite it for you.
For a successful, long-term SEO content strategy you need real people at the helm. You need a team of talented writers who can create content that’s optimised for search engines and meets your customers’ needs. Thankfully, we have just the team ready and willing to help.
AI vs Human-Written Content: Final Thoughts
AI is in no position to replace human writers when it comes to SEO content. It simply doesn’t allow for the nuance and creativity that makes copy compelling and interesting to readers and authoritative and original enough for the powers that be at Google.
In short, if you want results that are long-lasting, then using a human is your only option. AI might win on production speed, cost and scalability, but this only produces immediate wins, and doesn’t allow for a steady, continuous, long-term strategy that’s actually sustainable. AI content is effectively handicapping businesses right now, whilst human-written is reaping the rewards. It’s time your business got in on the action too!
Ready to jump in with a lead generation and digital marketing agency that can actually get you the results you’re looking for? Check out our SEO marketing services today or contact a member of our team.
