To "write" an article in ChatGPT, Jasper AI, Surfer AI, or any one of the new AI content generation solutions springing up each week, involves copying a pasting a quick ready-to-use "prompt" into the AI software, inserting the topic into that "recipe", and clicking a button. That's it! After a few seconds, AI spits out its article and the so-called writer copies and pastes it into your blog with a hastily-selected free photo, from a few low grade images often suggested within the AI software. It takes 5 to 10 minutes. Let's say you pay this so-called AI "writer" $50 for the post, that works out to about $10 per minute ($600/hr for not researching or writing).
Now, if you spent a few minutes on Google, you could find a ready-to-use ChatGPT prompt or recipe for writing your article, copy and paste it into ChatGPT, sub in your topic, click the button... and it would cost you absolutely nothing.
What goes into a professionally written article that has the potential to rank well?
- keyword research and a competitive analysis,
- researching your 2000+ word article and compiling a library of source materials for reference,
- writing, several edits and proofreading the article,
- quality on-page SEO,
- hand-coding the Schema markup and testing the markup in Google's Structured Data Testing Tool,
- a carefully chosen photo that supports your article's content, from a premium stock agency (I pay for the image use license out of my own pocket, as a value-added bonus)
... about 18 hours on average.
If content is viewed as nothing more than a commodity, a $50 AI-generated article sounds less expensive than a $400 well-researched, SEO optimized article with the proper hand-coded structured data.
The forums are buzzing with AI "writers" complaining about their articles being de-listed on Google. It makes perfect sense. Why would Google or Bing list low value AI-generated content in their search engine results pages (SERPs) when their own Google Bard and Bing ChatGPT AI engines can spit out results on the fly that are up-to-the minute and more relevant?
More than ever, real high-value human content is needed to secure a position on page one of Google and Bing.