4 Tips for Creating Digital Content That AI Can't Replicate

Intro

AI is one of the most common buzzwords in marketing right now. Detractors say AI writing tools are going to render human content creators obsolete. There are fears artificial intelligence writers will make the internet less helpful. That’s all to say, the outlook is bleak.

It means it’s worth rethinking how you approach SEO content. What you want to do is to focus on producing work that provides real value to your audience. We’re talking about content that solves a problem without reading like generic AI copy.

None of this means AI is an enemy. Artificial intelligence tools and quality content aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, if you use it well, it can help you serve up better content in less time.

What follows are four tactics available to you to build an online content operation that readers - and search engines - trust.

1. Optimize for Information Gain

Each piece of content you publish must make a new contribution to the conversation.

Originality is an important element of high-quality content, and here’s where the information gain concept is useful. In a patent filed in 2020, Google speaks about an information gain score for online content. The filing established the importance of a unique angle when writing online.

Simply put, if you have something new to say when compared with competing content, you stand a better chance of ranking. What this means is that in a sea of copycat-SEO content, a post highlighting a fresh perspective is rewarded.

There are a few ways to apply this technique.Check the SERP to review the angles of ranking content. Consider the ideas they’re missing using the following questions as a guide:

• Is there anything the reader needs to know before trying these strategies?
• Do any of the articles feature the writer’s experience with the topic?
• Does ranking content speak to your audience specifically?

As part of this process, consider doing original research, bringing in first-hand experience, and aligning your article more closely with your readers’ search intent. For example, let’s say your target audience is small business owners. Where other posts are more general, you’d hone in on the concerns specific to entrepreneurs. Say you’re trying to rank for the below search query “ecommerce software”. Your piece would focus on the best options for entrepreneurs.

To collect this information, you might want to survey a group of small business owners. Try survey methods like LinkedIn polls or free survey software like SurveyMonkey.

2. Highlight Topic Expertise

Back in 2015, a version of Google’s Quality Rating Guidelines was leaked online. The document described a new concept known as EAT, an acronym for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. And so a new framework for quality content was created.

Google’s search raters use EAT to evaluate the quality and usefulness of a web page. By 2022, EAT evolved into E-E-A-T to include experience. E-E-A-T provides insight into the factors that Google deems good content.

Let’s break down these concepts and share E-E-A-T best practices:

• Experience: Convey your first-hand experience as it relates to the topic. A product review, for instance, should stress how the writer tested the product, detailing their pain points and use case. My health blog regularly catalogs remedies I’ve tried and their results.
• Expertise: To create expert-level content, reference your expertise in the field. Set up an author bio and an about page highlighting your credentials. For my writer site, I make mention of my accomplishments and qualifications.
• **Authority: **Authoritative sites are seen as leaders in their niche. Secure quality backlinks and press mentions to up your authority.
• Trust: A website conveys trust signals when its information is reliable and credible. Cite trustworthy sources - use an app like Consensus to find peer-reviewed articles to support your arguments. In addition, link only to reputable sites when sharing statistics, e.g.,Statista.

One note on expertise: if you lack domain expertise, borrow some. For example, have a doctor medically review a health-related article. You can find experts for hire on a platform like Kolabtree. One way to use Kolbatree is to have a subject matter expert review your content. Add the reviewer’s credentials to the byline and link back to LinkedIn. It’s a proven SEO tactic and one I used to increase traffic for a competitive keyword in the health niche.

3. Account for Information Foraging

Online readers use a specific set of standards to decide which piece of content to read. Everything you publish should meet this criteria. Collectively, these principles are known as information foraging.

Researchers formulated the information foraging theory at the Palo Alto Research Center in the late 1990s. The core idea is this: like wild animals use certain cues when deciding where to eat, human readers search for specific signals when selecting content to read.

To account for information foraging, your content should give off the right information scent. Put another way, your readers need a good reason to believe that your content deserves their attention - and clicks.

Applying information scent principles to your draft means using relevant SEO keywords, title tags, images, and meta descriptions. Adding relevant and high-quality external links can also enhance the information scent, as it demonstrates that your content is well-researched. In the below example, the recipe creator uses a clear headline and URL.

More generally, your article must be easy to navigate and the information presented in a clear manner.

Implementing these tactics increases the likelihood that your audience will stop scrolling once they see your article in the search results.

4. Use Smart AI Prompts

AI isn’t out to get you. If you use it well, it will help you write more efficiently.

And crafting thoughtful prompts is one of the best things you can do to make the AI-powered tools’ output more closely align with your audience’s needs.

Here’s the thing: if you use the same prompts as everyone else, you’ll get the same content. Being very specific about your audience and the goal of your article avoids this scenario.

ChatGPT developers OpenAI offers a set of best practices for creating a good prompt, which includes:

• Be specific about the desired context, format, and style of the output
• Provide examples of the desired output
• Focus on what you want the AI tool to do - instead of what you don’t want

Putting this practice into action might look like this:

I’m writing an article about the best tea subscription services for busy mothers. The keyword is “best tea subscription service”. Please brainstorm ten headlines that focus on a clear health benefit for the reader. Provide a mix of list-post type and how-to headlines. Limit headline to 100 characters.

When I’m using AI to brainstorm headline ideas for my health blog, I’ll tell the AI writer about my reader’s motivation, state of mind, and expectation. Combined with these, I’ll explain how much my ideal reader already knows about the topic.

Conclusion

Everyone’s worried about how artificial intelligence keeps changing online content.

And it’s true: sooner or later, generative AI writers will impact the type of content you publish.

But creating quality posts has nothing to do with trying to outsmart AI. Rather it's about providing valuable and original information to your audience. Once you identify your audience’s key issues, you can deliver different content types to solve these problems. This can take the shape of super practical how-to guides that guide the reader through a process or compelling think pieces highlighting a new way to think about a topic.

AI doesn’t need to be absent from your writing process to achieve any of these goals.The trouble begins when we try to outsource our thinking to AI writers. For now, these tools are great at performing simple tasks related to writing. The kind of work that doesn’t demand lived experience and complex thinking. Viewed through this lens, AI takes on the role of a writing assistant.

Following this approach sets you up to create content that makes the internet a tiny bit better than it was before you decided to hit publish.