What do we do with content & SEO in the age of AI?
So this might be the Twitter doom scrolling fears talking, but with the introduction of AI, and specifically GPT, what is the role of custom content now?
As I build Eurotripr, I have been writing travel tips as blog posts and interviewing other travelers to share their experiences traveling in Europe. I do this for a few reasons: provide more advice for new travelers, show wannabe travelers that everyone has the same fears and anxieties about their first trip, provide insights to help new travelers know what things to do and to look out for, etc.
But a big part of these written forms of content is for SEO as I build the website. I want to start the organic lead generation early - before I am done with the site - so hopefully I have traffic to the site when it's "done".
But if anyone can now ask ChatGPT for a TAILORED answer to any of their questions written in a voice of their favorite travel expert, what is the role and point of my own content?
I am the first to wax poetic about the benefits of ChatGPT and the OpenAI API. It has helped me curate many ideas for my site, many ideas for articles and content, and even rewritten some of my poor rough drafts.
Today I read that Google's AI tools and advances will change the SEO game and our content on site will have less, if any, impact on drawing traffic to our own websites. If this is true, and if the search engines will simply provide custom answers to everyone's questions, I am having a hard time understanding what the point is for continuing to write, or even generate, content for my own site.
I even started building a GPT-powered travel itinerary builder for users to build and customize their own trips. This seems like a waste of time now.
Today's fear is really more about my own inability to have completed Eurotripr sooner. I knew things like this were coming. I knew I had no moat. I knew bigger players would be able to do cooler things. But I didn't think my attempts at content creation to draw organic traffic would be threatened by the very company I anticipated indexing my content and sending me the traffic to that content.
What is everyone else doing if the rules of SEO really are about to change and Google really is about to negate the benefits of Content creation?
Am I paranoid? Did I read something wrong? Do I just need more sleep?
I'd love to hear your thoughts and plans for SEO in this age of AI.
My initial take is that businesses will need to stop siloing content by platform and focus on purpose.
Instead of writing an search engine optimized blog, you'll need a search optimized one. Your content should be capable of serving whoever or whatever is doing the searching.
We're also going to have to invest more in mixed media pieces. This is already a trend. We see podcasts getting show notes and webinars accompanied by documents or transcripts. The current advice is to embed videos into your blogs. Content creators need to think about serving up the same information in different places and formats to serve the preferences of each audience member.
The downside of this is that brands will need to use humans or AI to create that content in different formats. As a writer, this is frustrating for me. I don't do video or audio editing. But I realize that a short video or audio snippet summarizing or illustrating parts of a long form blog piece would definitely add value for the searcher.
I'm not sure whose responsibility it will be to coordinate all those different assets? The content manager? Marketing manager? A new title?
I am sure change is coming fast. Very fast.