MBA2393 Q&A Wednesday: Should I use AI for my blog post and site content?

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, the business lessons you need to build a business you want, served to you on a silver platter. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is Q &A Wednesday. On Q &A Wednesdays, we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, just email me over at omar at 100mba.net. Today's question is from Sherry, and Sherry asks, Should I use AI to create content for my blog and my website? It seems too good to be true, but I heard murmurs that it doesn't rank well for SEO when you use AI.

0:49Would love your advice. This is such a solid question because things are changing so quickly. Just in this past year, ChatGBT has just basically broken the internet, making it super simple for people to create content with artificial intelligence. So companies like Google have to counteract that and actually slap pretty big penalties for those who just spin content, create content with AI just to rank for keywords. Does this mean that AI is useless when it comes to your blog content, your website content? No. There are ways to use it properly. Ways that can help you rank higher. Ways that can help your readers get more from your content and convert better on your website.

1:30And I'm going to show you how in today's lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I've been following this AI revolution for some time now. and particularly this last year very closely. I've read a lot of articles and watched a lot of videos when it comes to this topic, how AI ranks on search engines, the penalties that might happen if you try to just put up an AI-generated blog post on your website, and how to use AI properly. The first thing I want to say is that you just can't trick Google and the search engines. These sites, these search engines are highly sophisticated. They are essentially the internet, right?

2:07They index so much data. They know what's real. They know what's written by a human. They know what's written by AI. AI can improve, can evolve to the point where Google is going to have a hard time differentiating. But for now, they can. But let's not throw out the baby out with the bathwater. There's the right way to do this that can help you actually, one, create better content so your readers get the most out of your blog posts and your site. But also to rank well and to improve your free traffic or SEO. First things first, asking ChatGBT to write you a blog article on a topic with some guidance and then just copying and pasting it and posting it on your website is not what you want to do.

2:47Same thing with your website copy or pages. Do not do this. In fact, I recommend not doing this for anything you actually produce, whether it's emails, whether it's one-on-one emails or transactional emails or newsletters. This is a quick way to lose touch with your audience and lose touch with what you're trying to do. Really build a relationship with your customers. It also doesn't actually create any kind of nuance or any kind of character or voice to your content. People should recognize your writing, your brand, because it has your voice in there. It has your vibe. And unless you have a lot of content out there, it's hard for ChatGBT to actually mimic your vibe.

3:31Now, there are exceptions, like people like Joe Rogan or Ryan Reynolds, you know, people that have a lot of information out there. I even tried it with myself, and it gets kind of close because I have over 2 ,300 episodes of this podcast published. I have blog posts. I have videos. I have lots of content out there in the world that it could scrape and get an understanding of who I am. But I still wouldn't do it because SEO, because these search engines know when it's generated by AI. It gets an understanding of the type of writing and they can penalize your cipher, meaning that you'll drop in the rankings and be very hard to find on search engines.

4:09So what do you do if you don't copy and paste? Well, AI is actually brilliant at improving content, optimizing content. This means always write the first draft. Write the first draft of the blog post. Write the first draft of that email. Write the first draft of the copy for your sales page. even if it's super rough but has your own ideas your own messaging your own voice and then you pop it into chat gbt and say hey i'd like to improve it in this ways give me a few versions like this tell chat gbt what the purpose of this blog post is what you're trying to do what's the call to action what do you want them to learn and i learned this from neil patel who's one of the biggest seo experts out there they optimize all their content with ai and it works brilliantly And I've tried this myself, and especially when you tell AI you want to optimize this for search engine optimization.

4:58These AI models, ChatGPT, Bard, all these different kinds of chat interface AI, they work best when you give it the right prompt. So make sure you tell it what you want out of it based off your draft. So to answer Sherry's question directly, it's great for improving your blog posts, whatever you drafted in Word or in your Google Docs. Same thing goes with your sales copy on your website. Copy and paste your current sales website, your homepage, and say, this is my homepage. I want it to convert better. I want the call to action to be XYZ. This is the purpose of this page. Tell ChatGPT all these instructions and ask them to optimize it for conversions.

5:38Now when you copy and paste it and edit your website page or your blog posts in the earlier example, the DNA of this content is yours. And Google knows the difference in other search engines. These don't get penalized and these actually get preferred because you're actually following best practices for SEO. There's a lot of things you have to do to optimize a blog post or a page that you may not know if you're not an SEO expert. This is where AI can help you. They become your assistant. They become your SEO assistant. But you wouldn't ask a real SEO person to write you the post. You need a writer for that, which might be you or the writer on your team or the one that you hired.

6:17They can optimize it for you. And that's what AI does and does very well and can help you and your business get more free traffic via SEO. So as a good exercise, take a look at some of your top ranking posts, look at your Google Analytics, and then just go ahead and try to optimize them through AI. Run them through the courses, give them the prompts, and then go ahead, make those changes on your blog and then track the results. See how you're ranking next month with those blog posts. See how it's doing. You might be surprised with the result. Now, AI is not just for text. It's also for multimedia.

6:55Midjourney is on the forefront of this, creating images, videos with AI that you can enrich your blog posts with, with real rich media that support your article. Synthesia.io is an AI video creation tool. And search engines love multimedia in blog posts. It really helps you rank better when you have a rich blog that has images that relate to the blog posts, that have videos, you're catering to different modalities, and you can create these pretty easily with these tools. Now, right now, a lot of these tools are paid, but Canva just released an AI tool that allows you to write text and it'll create an image or even video based on your text.

7:41It's incredible. And there's a lot of features, especially if you're on a pro account, but you can give it a try with their free trial or even their free plan. These are easy ways for you to make your blog posts, make your website, your pages a lot more interesting because these images are going to look unique to what you have written or prompted the AI to put together, like Omar's at home riding a bicycle in Thailand. I actually gave this a try. It was pretty fun. So if you use AI the right way, if you use it in a way that basically allows you to come up with the IP, the ideas, the intellectual property, if you come up with that information and then give AI that information to improve upon it, then it's a fantastic idea to use it for your blog posts and your website pages.

8:29thanks sherry for asking today's q a wednesday's question if you got a question you want to ask i can answer it right here on q a wednesday we can keep it anonymous you can just use your first name just let me know in your email go ahead and email me at omar at 100mba.net i'll make sure to answer right here on the show speaking of the show if you want to support the show the best way to do that is just to hit that subscribe button or follow on your favorite podcast app go ahead and do that right now thank you in advance for doing that by doing that you let the algorithm know hey the The show's pretty good and allows us to reach new audiences.

9:00You keep listening and we'll keep on providing great business lessons for you. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. AI is just another tool that can help you in your business. But at the end of the day, it's you that's behind the tool. When I got started 20 years ago, there was no payment processors, no PayPal, no easy to build websites, no WordPress. Heck, I think spellcheck just came out. I'm aging myself here. But the point here is that a lot of tools have developed over time in the last few years. And again, they're just tools. But if used properly, you can make your life easier. You can create better products and services.

9:38You can create a better experience for your customers. But you are the secret sauce behind it. You're the one that's coming up with the direction you should use this tool. So ideas, strategy first, then tools second. Thanks so much for listening. And I'll check you in Friday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Thank you.