Project: Building the TS Celestial Creations Website

The Project

The project was to see if it were possible to rank a website with A.I.-generated content. The goal was to create, edit and post 100 pieces of content over two-weeks. I came to this idea late in the class so there was a massive time crunch involved. The website and the content would follow current SEO rules and, if there was time, would boost on social media to help with the ranking process.

What Does the Research Say About Ranking A.I. Content?

Well the easiest thing to do is to see what the Big Daddy of search engines has to say about ranking A.I. content. Here is what Google has to say about the issue:

Google’s ranking systems aim to reward original, high-quality content that demonstrates qualities of what we call E-E-A-T: expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. We share more about this in our How Search Works site.

Our focus on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced, is a useful guide that has helped us deliver reliable, high quality results to users for years.

For example, about 10 years ago, there were understandable concerns about a rise in mass-produced yet human-generated content. No one would have thought it reasonable for us to declare a ban on all
human-generated content in response. Instead, it made more sense to improve our systems to reward quality content, as we did.

Focusing on rewarding quality content has been core to Google since we began. It continues today, including through our ranking systems designed to surface reliable information and our helpful content system. The helpful content system was introduced last year to better ensure those searching get content created primarily for people, rather than for search ranking purposes.

There are no real surprises here. This has always been Google’s stand on content. As they stated, they spent many years de-indexing what they considered low-value or spam content that was human written.

However, anyone who has been in this space long enough knows that what Google says and what Google does is not always the same thing. For those who do SEO and content marketing for a living, what are they finding when it comes to ranking A.I. content in the search engines?

Well, Nathan Gotch of Gotch SEO Academy, a former SEO who now teaches others how to be an SEO expert, says his own research shows there is a penalty for using A.I. generated content:

In the video he discusses how his company researched 487 Google search engine results for competitive keywords to see if Google penalizes A.I. content. He goes on to say that Google did add manual penalties to websites that uses spammy A.I. content in one of their most recent updates. He also noted that his company’s research found 83% of the websites ranking in the top of the search results for those competitive keywords didn’t use A.I. generated content.

The entire video is worth a watch, but the major flaw with much of what Gotch discusses here is that he doesn’t make much distinction between A.I. content that is detailed, high-quality, useful and human edited, with content that was written by A.I. with a simple prompt and posted with no editing at all.

Google currently uses A.I. content generated by their own LLM (Large Language Model), Gemini, to answer search inquiries. Using their own A.I. to generate content would seem to suggest that Google doesn’t have an issue with A.I. generated content but with simple spammy posts that searchers won’t find useful, no different than when they penalized similar content that was human written several years ago.

HubSpot, a leader in all things content marketing and SEO, makes the point that whether A.I. generated content ranks or not all comes down to the value it provides:

Now, more than ever, the value of content hinges on the authenticity of its creator and the underlying value, meaning, story, and perspective of the content they’re creating. – Josh Blyskal, Associate Marketing Technical Manager at HubSpot

The primary takeaway from all of this is that taking Google at it’s word that content being A.I. generated alone isn’t enough for it not to rank, however you better make sure it is of high-quality, high-value and likely touch with human hands before being posted to your website or blog.

What about Content Volume and Velocity?

The second part of the project was to focus on content volume (100 posts) and velocity (posted over two-week period) as a way to help the content ranking. But what does the research tell us about these ranking methods? Do they work or are they ultimately a waste of time and not make any difference when trying to rank your website.

IFOUNDATION.CO asked just that question in their 2023 BRICKS Report where they “analyzed the total number of blog posts being published by the top SaaS & B2B brands in the world and cross referenced it against the estimated organic traffic these blogs were generating.”

So what were the results? Well, I’d hardly call them surprising for anyone who has been in the content marketing space for any length of time:

“More blog posts = more traffic.“

They found when a B2B site posted a 100 blogs a year they received double the traffic than those that posted 50 blogs a year. The combination of a lot of content over a short period of time was the best way to maximize traffic to your website or blog.

So, How Successful was I with My Project?

Short answer: Not very.

The initial plan was quite ambitious: 100 pieces of A.I.-generated, human-edited content posted over a two-week span.

Well for a variety of reasons hat didn’t happen. With that said I did manage to generate over 100 pieces of A.I. generated content, I just wasn’t able to edit them all. I contemplated just posting them as is, to focus on the content volume and velocity aspect of the project, but decided against it because I thought it would harm my website in the long term and this is not just a project for me, but my actual website for my online store.

What I did manage to do is get 25 pieces of content edited and I built an SEO optimized website that I’m overall quite proud of and, with time, will rank well in the search engines. Because of the short time span the site isn’t currently ranking for any of its chosen keywords. I do think this result would be different if I’d been able to get at least 50 pieces of content up, even in the short time-frame. But building out the website took a lot more time than anticipated and having a good foundation for the content was more important than just getting a lot of content up on what would have been a poorly built website.

Ultimately this will be an ongoing project for me that includes more content, social media, video and just an overall content marketing strategy that will get me the rankings and traffic I want and need to increase my e-commerce sales.

Resources

Videos

Web Articles