AI is all the rage these days. In 2025, it’s projected to hit nearly $200 billion in market value. By 2030, that will leap to $15.7 trillion according to one projection. Naturally, AI SEO tools are similarly seeing an explosion in popularity and interest.
This is even more pronounced given that ChatGPT seemingly has all the tools right now to produce well-researched, high-value content to populate your website.
But is it all it’s cracked up to be? Are AI SEO tools better than humans? If you can get AI to write your content, do we even need human writers anymore?
SEO AI Tools – Benefits and Shortcomings
I’ll admit, I’m a bit biased (I am a human writing SEO-friendly content, after all), but AI is not ready to replace people when it comes to producing content – yet.
Honestly, it will at some point. It’s already very sophisticated and has the ability to pump out millions of words in minutes.
And a lot of that content is great! . . . but a lot of it is, well, not so great.
ChatGPT, for example, likes to make stuff up. It fabricates the Guardian articles. It manifests academic references from thin air. On balance, it’s more likely to return false information according to one study.
In marketing, if you release an article that is full of errors, that’s going to tarnish your brand. And it will make people less likely to read your blogs/website pages in the future and just generally impede trust.
AI’s Future State
But of course, these kinks will be worked out eventually. But then we have a new problem: if AI can produce terabytes of written work in seconds, then won’t that bloat the internet? And won’t it all come out looking more or less the same?
Bingo!
That’s the big issue: AI is necessarily iterative. It can’t create new ideas or new perspectives (yet). It can just combine already existing information.
And since everyone will have access to AI, we’ll end up with an internet that is clogged full of near-identical content.
That’s not something that people or Google wants.
So, for now and likely for the foreseeable future, Google’s search algorithm is going to prioritize human-written content, if not directly, then indirectly by favouring well-written, well-researched, fresh content that adds value to the person experiencing/consuming the content.
Where AI Really Helps
Instead of looking at it as a binary (sorry for the pun) choice, you should really look at SEO AI tools as supplements to human writers.
AI large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are fantastic at creating an outline of an article, helping to get you started, writing a particularly technical passage, etc.
In other words, these tools are just that – tools. A hammer is way better than a person at hitting a nail into something, but you still need a hand to wield it.
AI is the same way – it’s better than any human writer at producing volumes of work quickly. But unless it’s not being used by a competent, living, breathing person, it’s going to return a bunch of false information, or return writing that sounds the exact same to what everyone else has.
And seeing as how Google prioritizes relevancy and the richness of the content itself, that can only be accomplished when a human is involved at least somewhere in the process.
Could this change in a year, two years, ten years? Absolutely. But for now, SEO strategy necessitates a human hand being involved in the process.
AI SEO Tools and Human Experts – the Perfect Combination
If you’re ready for informative, SEO-friendly, rich content that will drive leads to your business, Growth Engine is your best bet. We use both expert SEO writers paired with some of the best SEO AI tools on the market to produce relevant, high-ranking content that drives leads.
We’ve generated $100s of millions worth of leads to our clients over the years, and we would love to do the same for you.
Find out how we help some of Canada’s biggest businesses maximize sales opportunities online. Talk to us.
