Using AI for SEO-Rich Content Creation – Proven Strategies to Save Time and Money

How should you be using a AI services like ChatGPT to give your SEO strategies a boost? Let’s talk it over in this episode of Closing Time. Thanks for tuning in to Closing Time the show for Go to Market Leaders. I’m Val Riley, head of Content and Digital Marketing at Insightly. Today I’m joined by Mitch Causey. He is CEO of Demandwell, an SEO growth platform. Welcome to the show, Mitch. Thanks, Val. Great to see you and happy to be here. Awesome. Well, let’s jump right in. Mitch, theseAI tools have just come on strong in the last couple of months. How do you see them changing the game with SEO? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It’s an exciting time in the world of. SEO and in the world of AI. The interesting thing is, AI and SEO together, is really not quite as new as some may think. I actually did a project about ten years ago with an AI content creator. And the difference, though, is that project we published 12,000 pages on a website over the course of only six months. So that’s a lot. But we paid nearly $300,000 to this, a AI company to create that content. And so just contrasting the advancements in technology since then have so incredibly dramatically reduced the amount of cost and increased the amount of accessibility. You know, most people weren’t doing AI content back then ten years ago. And a big reason was because of the cost. And so I’m actually so excited about right now in the world of AI plus SEO because it is so approachable, thanks to, I will say, mostly open.ai and the billions of dollars and billions of I don’t know how many thousands and thousands of hours of work that have gone into creating an accessible and inexpensive way that we can all experience the power of AI when we’re executing SEO. Gotcha. So really just democratizing it, kind of making it available to the masses is that big shift? Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. So here at Insightly,. I will admit on camera we have been using AI tools to do like a first draft of some of our writing work and you mentioned it as a tool to rewrite and refine your work. So can you talk me through that? And then what other writing related uses that you’ve seen? Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. So I am a huge fan of using AI to create a draft, just like you mentioned. But you know, myself,. I’ve been involved with SEO for about 15 years now, which is mildly depressing. I started when I was still in college back in 2008, was when I first got into it. So it was about 15 years. And so I’m involved with content creation a lot, but I do not fancy myself a writer. You know, I very much believe that like a lot of people in the world of writing and creating content are a lot more creative than I am. And so what has been really beneficial for me personally is if I’m creating a piece of content and I want to change the tone, for example, you know, in the past, that’s another one of those advancements where in the past it took a lot of time to train any kind of machine learning content creator. But now the level of knowledge and understanding of things like tone, not just, you know, tone of an individual, but tone of a website, you know, using as reference, all of that stuff is really helpful. So for me, you know, if I’m creating content for a customer that’s in like the financial technology space, that has to be like pretty buttoned up and professional. If I’m creating content for a customer in, let’s say, a cosmetics space where the target market does not necessarily look like me, both of those would be very difficult for me to create content around. And so what we can do is create a draft, but then use AI to translate that draft into something that the audience on the other end is going to have a much better experience with. That’s super interesting. I was just playing around with with AI this morning actually, and I asked it to write a report and approach it as an auditor would approach it. And it absolutely gave me a report that sounded like it was written by an auditor. So I really love that use case and that’s something that I think, you know, we should absolutely be taking advantage of. So there is that temptation to just let the machines do their thing with no human intervention. But I think you said you caution against that. Can you explain why? Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure most of the folks listening to this or watching this have have dabbled with AI. And, you know, there are there are certain things that are factually accurate no matter what. They’re just like absolutely true. Like, what’s the definition of a tornado, Right? Like, there’s just like one definition. But when it comes down to things, especially when a business is being innovative and creative and pushing the boundaries on things, which I hope you know most, again, most folks listening to this are doing, there is no one and no thing in the world that can understand your business and the unique qualities and the unique mission and passion and, you know, emotions going forward that, you know, no one can know that more than someone on that team. And so if we only trust the robots to go solo and and do that, they’re going to be all over the place and sometimes they’re going to be spot on. But that’s not going to be every time. There’s going to be times where they say stuff that you would disagree with. So it’s creating that, you know, it’s taking, again,. I think the word draft is so important in all this, is taking the draft and then putting the spin of your specific company on it that only you would ever be able to do. Right. So maybe the CEO for his monthly or her monthly letter to the employees, maybe not using AI. for that right? Yeah, absolutely. I do feel like all of the CEOs, CROs and CFOs are like, Hey, we should be using this for everything. And it takes someone to tap the brakes a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I have asked it to create an investment pitch for our next round of investment for me, and it did a good job. But there is maybe 30% of it that if I if you delivered that to an investor, it would have gone terribly so. Yeah. So maybe proceed. But proceed with caution. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I read over a recent blog post that you had up and it had five factors, and I thought maybe I would read those five factors and then you could just kind of put some context around them. You had mentioned giving AI outline that is going to set the article up for success, sharing key words and instructions. You’ve got to check for plagiarism, which I didn’t know. I didn’t know AI was a bad guy, but I guess it could be. Make sure the article meets your word count and keyword requirements and then editing the piece. And this kind of ties back to what we just said to make sure it sounds like your brand relays the information. But the spirit of what matters to your company and to your employees and your customers. So that’s kind of like your checklist. Yeah, Yeah, exactly. And I think that last part is by far the most important part to get to that end, though, in an easier and less painful way, the more work on the front end, you know, the better. So that’s kind of, you know, that process flow of, you know, ordering content or setting up your prompts, however you want to call it, to set up the. AI for success. And success is not defined as like some objective thing. It’s very subjective, but one way that I define it is how long it takes to edit it. You know, if I create a draft, but then it takes me 2 hours to edit it, it’s not really so much time, but if I do, you know, 10 minutes of really thoughtful prompting, that leads to an article that only takes me 20 minutes to edit. You know, now I’m much more efficient. Right. So just like you would set up a writer or a freelancer for success, you still have to do the same thing with the robot. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You know, I think it all comes down to especially that last point is and you made this point,. Google is always going to prioritize what it says is an excellent search experience. Right. And so kind of guiding the robot to create content that meets that standard for Google. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, if you read the guidelines within Google, it’s it’s all about serving the customer what they want to see. It’s fulfilling, the language they use, it’s fulfilling the need of the user. And so, you know, a big part of that is actually even like a format of an article. You know, if someone is searching for a story and their goal is to be entertained, then you should make sure that you’re prompting the AI to say it in a funny or engaging or, you know, as a as a comedian would write it or something. But if someone’s looking for, you know, something more serious like a medical issue, then it needs to be written in a way that is a certain format of telling them, you know, what to look for, like the symptoms and all that stuff. Like those are very serious things that not only from a tone perspective need to be true, but they need to be factually accurate as well. So, you know, making sure that when you think about a user going to Google and searching for something, they have a need and it’s because of that need that they’re taking their time that none of us have you know much of and they’re trying to find something. So if you can match whatever you’re producing for the specific need that someone is searching for, that will create a great search experience and that will help from an organic search. You know, SEO rising in the rankings perspective as well. Got it. So I’m going to put you on the hot seat a little bit here because you said you’ve been in the SEO game for 15 years. Yes. Two parter. One is I the most disruptive thing you’ve seen in the last 15 years? And then two, what do you see in the next 15? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I definitely do think that the iteration of AI that we have seen, that we are seeing right now is the most exciting or disruptive change. Personally, I believe a huge indication of that is watching Bing and Google and how they are interacting with each other right now. You know,. Google has not been threatened by Bing for an extremely long time. And they really are. And you read the statements and you can tell that they are definitely reacting strongly. So that’s fantastic. And then I I think the next 15 years is the same as the last 15 in terms of that search experience perspective. You know, all of this works not because of robots and it never has. It’s only all worked because of humans. The only reason that search engine optimization matters is because there are humans that are taking their precious time plugging in and trying to find an answer. And so I think it will look, differently maybe in the what’s. But I think the why’s will remain the same. And I think if we can focus on that and make sure that we’re always understanding our audience well, what their problems are, providing them with solutions in the best way, I think it will work out. All right. Sage advice, Mitch. Thank you so much for joining us today on Closing Time. Absolutely.. Thank you so much for having me. All right. To all our viewers out there tuning in, remember to like this video. 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