With AI disrupting everything from coding to marketing, it’s no surprise that some business owners are rethinking hiring an agency for content writing services. AI promises businesses quick results—on-demand website content with a simple prompt and the push of a button. But is AI-generated content really the answer, or will it prevent you from reaching those all-important top search positions?
Is AI Content Harmful for SEO?
AI tools are everywhere these days, powering everything from virtual assistants and chatbots to medical diagnostics and self-driving vehicles. For businesses, AI-powered products can theoretically create an entire marketing funnel, including blog posts, email newsletters, social media posts and images. However, the speed and convenience come at a cost for businesses trying to appear in search results.
As we discussed in our post on selecting a content writing service, professional content writing needs to mirror a brand’s voice and also be carefully optimized for search. However, AI articles created without precise prompts and considerable human editing will fail on both counts, more than likely resulting in a poor user experience and content that fails to meet Google’s EEAT (expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trust) metrics.
Why AI Content Can Damage Your Website’s Search Rankings
If you’re partnering with an SEO agency, understanding how they use AI content for your website is vital for long-term SEO success. Google can recognize patterns common in writing from tools like ChatGPT, even when they’re not immediately obvious to readers.
Of course, that doesn’t mean ignoring AI entirely – ChatGPT and other products are useful for research, article outlines and fact-checking. There’s an important distinction between leveraging AI’s many benefits and mass-producing blog posts that have little to no value for the reader or SEO.
Meaningful website content that builds brand authority and engages readers directly impacts your SEO performance. And while Google may say they don’t directly penalize AI content, the downsides of much AI output – mechanical writing, frequent inaccuracies, no alignment with EEAT metrics, plus a lack of differentiation from everyone else using ChatGPT – means that your content likely will not be rewarded in search rankings for high quality and originality.
How to Create SEO-Friendly AI Content
If you are going to use AI content for your website, the following tips can help you minimize the potential for a drop in search rankings.
- Review all content for repetition, errors and a lack of brand voice.
- Heavily edit the content to add a personal, human tone.
- Pay close attention to Google’s SEO updates and announcements.
- Use Bill Hartzer’s list of AI words to avoid.
- Add stats, personal opinions and stories to increase originality.
- Use Google Analytics to track results and adjust your strategy.
- Run the content through multiple AI checkers to ensure it will pass as “likely written by a human.”
The instructions you give to AI will need to be fine-tuned. And if you want to use AI to write your content, writing a powerful prompt is really important. The more information, goals and guidelines you provide, the better the outcome will be.
AI is undoubtedly a transformative technology in many areas of business, but the benefits of hiring a professional SEO service remain largely unchanged. With Google still focused on rewarding quality and authoritative content, creating meaningful posts for readers continues to drive SEO results—and at Rocks Digital, this is our number 1 priority.
When Using AI to Write Content Is Acceptable
There are times when using AI to write website content is acceptable for the most part. This includes meta descriptions for blog posts and service pages. These are not a direct ranking factor. If you have a bunch of old blog posts that need closing call-to-actions added, using AI to write them can speed up the process. Having AI write image alts for you is acceptable as well.
Utilizing AI to write service descriptions for your Google Business Profile (GBP), GBP product descriptions, or even GBP posts is fine as well. AI is good for writing social media posts, responses to comments posted on your social media channels, or even for writing review responses on Google or Yelp—this is all fine.
You will still want to have these thoroughly edited, weeding out repetitive words and awkwardness, and so on. And because these items impact click-through to your website and phone calls (and so much more), you’ll want to ensure you deliver a positive user experience.
Contact Us for Results-Driven SEO Services
Rocks Digital provides leading SEO and content writing services for businesses to increase search visibility and reach more customers. Speak with our team for expert SEO, content writing and web design solutions. Call (214) 989-7549 or request a website evaluation.

Lissa Duty
Lissa Duty is Social Media Coach, Author, Speaker & Trainer. 20 years of marketing, administrative and management experience working to grow your business.