Transcript
Welcome to the Bloggy Friends show.
What's up my bloggy friends?
Famous Ashley Grant here and today I want to talk about how to write a blog post properly
using AI.
And I know everybody's talking about it.
Everybody's been talking about Claude and chatGPT and Writer's End and all the things.
And before you come at me, I should state that I'm a writer and make a living from
creating content every week.
I'm not team AI, but I'm not exactly team no AI either.
And hopefully by the end of this episode, you'll understand why I'm talking about blogging
with AI at all.
Because the truth is, it's here to stay.
Yes, there's a lot of lawsuits that are going on right now, but I definitely believe that
we're going to keep seeing some form of LLMs continue being in the space.
So we might as well learn how to lean into it and use it to help make our writing jobs
easier so that we can make more content and do the things that we need to do with our
websites.
And for those of you who've been living under a rock, what exactly is AI?
What is AI writing software?
Tech Target refers to AI or artificial intelligence as the simulation of human intelligence processes
by machines, especially computer systems.
By extension, AI writing software is supposed to simulate content that's been written by
human writers.
And with the use of algorithms, suggestions, and a lot of complicated computerized ones
and zeros, AI writing software should theoretically be able to take a prompt that a user gives
it and deliver text and deliver text content back to the user.
The reason it's causing such a stir though in the writing world is because it can generate
large bits of text.
I mean, I'm talking full on books in mere seconds.
And what's taking content writers hours to complete can be created in seconds without
breaking a sweat.
Of course, that's not to say that what's generated is accurate and it's also not even necessarily
great content.
However, as I've been playing with different writing tools at this point, I have to admit
it is certainly impressive that different software can spit out pretty decent content
depending on which one you're using and the prompts you're giving it.
So if we're being honest, what can AI accomplish?
I think that what AI can accomplish depends largely on your goals.
The different functions that I've seen it being used for include but aren't limited
to writing your first draft, writing your intros, writing your conclusions, generating
a list of blog topics, creating different heading and title options for your blog post,
summarizing your points of an article or a blog, generating product descriptions for
e-commerce stores, writing entire blog posts, articles, essays, poems, even songs.
So it can also be used for like writing ad copy, brainstorming ideas, answering questions,
but keep in mind that the answers you get may not be factual.
And it can even break down complicated ideas into easier to digest ones.
For example, if you're taking large bits of text that you don't quite understand, you
could put them into something like quad and it'll spit back out an easier to understand
version of that thing for you.
So you could put an essay that has been written by a college graduate into it and say, break
this down in a way a five-year-old can understand and it actually does it.
But this isn't just for the writing portion of blogging.
I've seen it used for so many different use cases, but for the purposes of this episode,
we're going to mainly focus on AI in writing because after all, this is a blogging podcast.
So let's talk about the ethical considerations of writing blog posts with AI.
They're talking about carbon emissions generated because of the computing power that AI tech
is causing.
So some people are nervous about how many computers are being used to generate these
LLMs and make them work.
And the other thing that people are concerned with in terms of ethical considerations is
what a lot of people refer to as AI plagiarism.
I spoke with SEO and copywriting expert Ryan Brock.
We had him on the show recently and I will definitely leave that episode in the show
notes.
When I spoke to him, he was basically talking about whether we like it or not, chat-shippy
tea, all these other writing programs, they're just plagiarism, period, at least in his opinion.
And a lot of other people share this opinion with him because basically the way that these
programs have been built is they scrape the internet and then they repackage it into slightly
different structure and it gives it back to you.
So no matter how you look at it, he says, it's plagiarism and it's not cool.
And he went on to say that by scraping other people's content, you're not providing any
new value to anyone.
And that's not how you build trust factor if you're trying to establish yourself as
a thought leader.
And it's one of the big reasons that right now one of the big things we're seeing that's
actually getting populated on Google is real use cases, real experts that are talking about
things they have done that are working in their industries.
So where you used to be able to get all these listicles about 10 ways to make a guy want
you or 10 ways to make a cake or take a cake mix and make cookies, like all these different
things, all these listicles are now being replaced by people that are experts in their
field talking about what they're doing in those fields.
And those are the things that are starting to ring faster and more, especially after
Google's useful content update.
They are not diminishing AI and they're certainly not, I wouldn't say they're penalizing people
that are using AI.
They did definitely walk back on that saying they will not penalize websites.
However they will give the websites that are giving more content, better content, useful
content, higher rankings.
So it'll be interesting to see what happens in 2024 and beyond with all of this content
that has definitely been AI written.
And people can tell, let's be honest.
People can tell that it's happening and it has similar sentence structure.
It has similar sentences even.
Sometimes it'll have certain words.
Like I was just reading an article on Medium Today that certain words make it obvious that
your text is written by AI.
This article was written by, I'm going to totally butcher this guy's name.
It's James Presbitero Jr., I believe.
I'll leave a link to that in the show notes as well.
Basically the seven things that he says make it obvious you are using AI are words like
transformative or foster, tapestry, a tapestry of, this is about, all about, think of X as.
And the example he gives is think of influential blogs and forums as your digital mentors.
So it's all these words and phrases that we're starting to see over and over again.
Like one of the things that I'm seeing that keeps popping up is the word coincidentally
or if a sentence starts with the word by.
Like by using this program you can have all your dreams come true.
Whenever you see a sentence like that, it's a red flag to me that it's probably been written
by AI.
And so I just think it's interesting that the more we look at the different articles
that are being written, you can kind of tell that they're AI written.
And there's even programs that will tell you if it has been AI written that you can plug
it into like your copy leaks or there's all kinds of different programs.
I'll have to put them in the show notes, but the big one I've been seeing lately is copy
leaks.
And it's kind of fascinating that even though we all know it's being used, it's still being
used.
So back to how to use it properly.
So let's talk about SEO considerations if you're using AI writing tools.
If you're writing blog content, can you make it rank in search results at all?
And based on all the research I've done for this episode, yeah, you can, but there's a
major caveat.
You have to add a lot more to the post that's being generated with AI before you can ever
hope to rank with it.
In other words, if you just copy and paste the content that's generated from your favorite
AI writing solution into WordPress or whatever CMS you're using, no, you probably won't
rank well for it.
But if you take that piece, that base piece, and you improve upon it, make it much better,
yes, you can rank with it.
And here are the steps you need to take an AI-generated article and get it to rank, if
that's your goal.
First thing you'll do is you'll research the keywords, whether you're using SEMrush
or WriterZen or AATrust or whatever it is, start researching all of the keywords that
you want to use.
You shouldn't generate a single bit of text until you have done a thorough keyword research
session.
While you're researching these keywords, consider your ideal customer or your ideal reader and
what they're actually going to be looking for that will ultimately lead them to your
page.
Consider the questions that they are asking and the pain points that they are looking
to solve and how your product or service can solve them.
Next I want you to come up with your article ideas.
Go to your favorite AI writing solution, whatever it is, and add a simple prompt.
For example, let's say you are a personal trainer and you're trying to get more clients
in Scottsdale, Arizona.
So we're going to assume that you're trying to rank for best personal trainer in Scottsdale.
In this case, your prompt could be something as simple as give me 10 article ideas for
the best personal trainer in Scottsdale.
From there, I want you to generate an outline.
Using one of the prompts that whatever your program of choice gives you, generate an outline
for the post and in this case, we'll use something like 10 reasons to hire a personal trainer
in Scottsdale, benefits and results.
And again, you can go to any writing solution you like and prompt it to create an outline
for that specific topic.
From there, write the post.
Now you could technically keep reprompting into your writing software of choice and address
each of the points that were given to you in your outline and you could create a pretty
decent article that actually looks kind of good.
But the better option is to write the post yourself and address each of these outline
ideas, adding in real examples and testimonials from people that you've worked with that show
off your expertise and your authority on the subjects.
Because remember, Google is all about eat right now.
They want your expertise and your authority and that you're a subject matter expert on
whatever it is you're talking about.
Next you're going to go back and refine and optimize your post.
So you're going to edit it and make it even better.
Do things like add an FAQ section to include more of the keywords that people are looking
for.
Don't keyword stuff the post.
However, don't keyword stuff the post.
However, don't keyword stuff the post.
And then you're going to include some images that are optimized with proper alt tags and
descriptions.
Don't forget to compress your images before you load them into your post so you can increase
your, I'm sorry, so you can decrease your page load time.
Then I want you to break up larger paragraphs into easier to read shorter paragraphs.
You have to think about adding subheads and making it easier for a skimmer to read your
article because you want to include stuff that someone who's standing in a checkout
at Walmart or Target can just flip through on their phone and get the gist of what it
is you're trying to say.
Then you'll include things like links to authoritative sites, links to your own blog posts that expand
on the ideas that were presented in the post.
And don't forget to create a solid meta description that tells the search engines exactly what
your post is about.
So that's kind of the Reader's Digest version of how you're going to use AI properly.
Notice nowhere in there did I say you actually should take it, write it, ask your software
of choice to write it, and then just publish it.
If you just do that, yeah, okay, you're going to have content on your website and you'll
be able to constantly be able to update your website.
The problem is you're not going to have good content.
It's going to be obvious.
Everybody's going to start seeing that we're all using the same phrases.
So instead, use actual use cases, actual things that build up your expertise, authoritativeness,
and your trustworthiness.
And trust me, if you focus on what it is the person who's ultimately going to read your
article wants to see rather than just, oh, I need to get content out this week, you're
going to have a much better chance of getting ranked on Google or whatever search engine
you like than you would with any other method.
And Demand Jump, Ryan Brock, who works for Demand Jump, he says that he recommends writing
around 16 posts that are centered on that same subject so that you can rank higher than
your competitors.
He refers to this as a pillar-based marketing campaign, and it's very similar to HubSpot's
topic cluster's way of writing.
And that involves writing long-form content about several subtopics that are all related
to one central topic.
So in this case, you could go back to step two of the how to use AI and come up with
more article ideas and maybe write about all of them that are all related to whatever topic
it is that you're trying to rank for.
So I hope this was helpful.
I know it was a lot, but I hope that in using these ideas, you can maybe make friends with
the AI overlords, but still have original content.
Because yes, you can use AI to make it easier on yourself to do things like brainstorming
and coming up with headers and meta descriptions and content briefs and email subjects and
all the things.
But don't just take whatever it is that AI gives you and hit publish.
Because we've all experimented with it, I'm sure.
I know that I've seen Neil Patel has done it, the guy from Fat Stacks Blogs, Nish Pursuits
has even done it.
There's been so many different creators that are trying to see how they can use AI effectively.
And I've been playing with it too, just to see what would happen.
And the reality is that things that are ranking better are the things that I either wrote
myself or that I added my own human element to, to be able to actually tell a story rather
than just pump out more content.
So like I said, I hope this was helpful.
Until next time, may your page views be high and your bounce rate below.