ChatGPT Bad For SEO? What You Need To Know About Generative AI

It may be 2023, but content is still the lynchpin behind search engine optimization (SEO). But precisely because it’s 2023, content creation is undergoing a sea of change — largely because of ChatGPT, the uncannily human chatbot.

Naturally, writers are wringing their hands about being replaced by a large-language model. But should SEO experts hang up their hats, too? After all, real estate agents can just use ChatGPT to create keyword-optimized blog posts instead of hiring a digital marketing team to handle the task. In fact, we’ve seen one vendor offer ChatGPT-written community pages that supposedly give a “huge SEO boost.”

While we’re fans of tools that make real estate marketing easier, it’s worth remembering that if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t. If you think ChatGPT is the answer to your content marketing and SEO woes, it’s worth digging a bit deeper.

What does Google say?

Before we delve into the SEO vs ChatGPT debate, it’s important to consider Google’s take on the matter. It is, after all, the predominant search engine in the world, owning a 91.55% market share as of this writing.

To be clear, Google isn’t against AI-generated content per se. Rather, it cautions marketers against using tools like ChatGPT to create content designed explicitly to game search rankings. More precisely:

“Using automation — including AI — to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies.

Google has many years of experience dealing with automation being used in an attempt to game search results. Our spam-fighting efforts — including our SpamBrain system — will continue, however spam is produced.”

Going back to our earlier point, Google’s spam detection capabilities in 2023 are leaps and bounds better than what it was just a decade ago. At the same time, it has a very old-school maxim regarding what content gets featured in search results first: quality over quantity.

And what exactly does quality content mean for Google? Among many other things, it’s about value, insightfulness, originality, expertise, and accuracy, as you’ll see in the search giant’s own guidelines. It’s certainly a tall order for human content creators, but can the wonders of AI clear these hurdles with ease? It’s worth asking the questions below when weighing the benefits of SEO vs. ChatGPT.

Will it be original?

Plagiarism is perhaps the biggest no-no in SEO. If you have content that’s copied without permission from other sources, your website and pages may be demoted in search results rankings. After all, Google and other search engines don’t want to reward sites that crib content from others. Of course, there are also legal ramifications for plagiarized content since it violates copyright laws. In fact, The New York Times and OpenAI (ChatGPT’s parent company) could end up in court.

It’s important to note that ChatGPT draws from a large pool of information called a corpus. There is no guarantee that it won’t copy-paste passages word-for-word or that it will provide proper citations for quoted text. If you have to run AI-generated content through a plagiarism checker before hitting the publish button, is the convenience really worth it?

Will it be insightful?

That ChatGPT tries to sound human is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. To be more precise, it sounds like every other human. It can’t offer original insights or analysis because everything it outputs is informed by the corpus – the algorithm simply paraphrases existing information from this knowledge database. Award-winning creative director Greg Hahn perhaps puts it best:

“There is nothing wrong with AI-generated content. And right now, I kind of think that’s the issue. It’s almost too correct. All the interesting wrinkles have been ironed out. We’re left feeling slightly more informed and entirely cold.”

As an agent, your expertise is your biggest trump card and your biggest value-add to any real estate transaction. Unfortunately, there’s currently no way for generative AI to tap into your unique and hard-earned knowledge. There’s simply no substitute for human insights.

Will it be factual?

This question requires a two-pronged answer. On the one hand, ChatGPT can generate content with factual errors, which can damage your credibility and authoritativeness. As Euronews reports:

“Since its launch in November [2022], many have pointed out that while ChatGPT can be extremely useful, it can also sometimes give you totally unrelated, false, or incomplete answers.

OpenAI has acknowledged that ChatGPT is far from infallible, explaining it can sometimes ‘hallucinate’ outputs and make up facts. In short, ChatGPT, as any other machine or technology, can make mistakes.”

On the other hand, content produced by ChatGPT can also lack context or information. It’s important to note that ChatGPT’s algorithm is trained with data from January 2022 or earlier. If you ask it to create content about the recent NAR ruling on agent commissions, for example, it will turn up blank because that information isn’t in its corpus yet.

Meanwhile, Google’s own chatbot, Bard, can access the internet and its treasure trove of information, but it’s not infallible either. Take it from the chatbot directly: “...Bard is still under development, and it is possible for it to output text with incorrect facts.” Even the platform advises users to cross-check the facts and details it presents: “Verify the information provided by Bard with other sources.”

How should you create content in the age of generative AI?

While there’s no denying the impact ChatGPT has on content creation, it’s just a tool at the end of the day. However, there are tried-and-tested tenets that will ensure your website and pages remain relevant despite changes in technology.

• Focus on value
  At the end of the day, quality content will naturally drive traffic to your website. Create blog posts, market reports, and white papers that give readers insight into the real estate market and they’ll keep coming back to your site.

• Get your keyword strategy right
  That means including relevant keywords (without overdoing it) into your body copy, headlines, meta tags, and alt texts. Research what keywords drive traffic to your website, including long-tail keywords, which usually have less competition for clicks.

• Optimize your content for voice search
  Yes, voice search is becoming more popular, which means your content should have natural language descriptors that make it more likely to be surfaced if someone does a voice search.

• Prioritize human-made content
  As discussed above, expertise, nuance, and insight are still the domain of humans. After all, real estate requires a human touch – and your website content deserves the same.

• Use generative AI wisely
  ChatGPT and Bard are excellent tools for brainstorming content ideas. You may even use them to create the first draft. But make sure to edit, proofread, and fact-check what these platforms output.

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