Around a year ago, the professional world of content writing blew up with a new technology that everyone said would take our jobs. ChatGPT was a huge technological shift in how people wrote new content. I was asked my thoughts by so many people back then that I wrote this post: Will ChatGPT replace content writers?

Fast forward to today and ChatGPT is now a widely used and accepted way to generate content. Anyone can create a 500-1,000 word blog post in seconds, all at the click of a button. The results can be surprisingly ok if you use the right prompts and add your own twist.

I had my first real wobble about the impact of AI-generated content a couple of months ago, especially when I read what other content writers had to say. Add the increase in popularity of video content, especially short-form, and it seemed like the writing was on the wall for blog posts. I remember a conversation with my husband about focusing more on the case study side of my business, something which ChatGPT can’t replicate because of the 1-1 interviews, quotes, and research needed.

But, in recent weeks, I’ve realised that long-form SEO blog posts still remain an important part of your marketing strategy. And, it takes more than a ChatGPT prompt to produce quality posts which are helpful for both readers and your search results.

Want to know more? Read on to learn:

• Why you should be writing long-form blog content

• Why it’s worth blogging in the first place

• How AI-generated content can trip you up (and what you can do about it)

• The impact of Meta’s no-ad’s subscription model

Why you should be writing long-form blog content

Short blog posts of around 500 words have been used as a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy for years. In the not too distant past, it was believed that the Google algorithm rewarded websites publishing high volumes of content, so these short posts were a perfect way to create posts without too much effort.

But things have changed. If you’re publishing lots of short blog posts simply to fudge the search algorithm, I recommend you stop. Especially if those posts simply summarise or rehash information readily available on the internet. Keep doing it and it could affect the overall ranking of your website.

These short word count blog posts are still a great way to deliver quick snippets of information without people needing to spend too much time reading. Think news announcements, event information, sales discounts.

But, for informational type of content, their lack of depth means they’re not quite as useful in search results as they once were. Google is looking for quality not quantity. The algorithm favours content which answers searchers’ questions and gives a well-rounded perspective which people find helpful.

Google Search Central’s pages even include the following statement:

“Google’s automated ranking systems are designed to present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings, in the top Search results.”

By including longer blog posts (we’re talking 1,500+ words), you can cover a subject in much more depth. When you also add in your personal experience, it gives readers valuable, unique, and insightful content.

I’m not saying ditch the 500 word blog posts altogether. But, I do recommend including these longer, more in-depth blog posts in your marketing strategy too.

Why it’s worth blogging in the first place

We all know that people love fast-moving content. Short TikTok videos and Instagram reels have soared in popularity and keep us scrolling. Our attention spans are shorter too, so it begs the question whether it’s still worth investing time and effort into writing blog posts.

In December 2023, Hubspot published 31 blogging statistics.

Looking at the URL, it’s an old blog post which they update regularly with the most recent data. The stats show that brands prioritising blogging see 13 times more return on investment than brands that don’t.

Importantly though, blog posts are about so much more than search results.

8 reasons why it’s still worth blogging in 2024:

1. Brings traffic to your website

   Writing about helpful topics related to your products or services will keep people coming back to your website to read more.
   

2. Gives you content to share in other places

   When you publish a blog post, you can use short snippets for social media posts, to create videos on YouTube, or to share in your newsletter. You may be interested in this blog post: How to repurpose 1 blog post into 20 pieces of social media content.
   

3. Helps you educate customers

   Blog posts are a great way to share information on how to use your products. You can give maintenance tips, share new features, and pass on details about the best way to dispose of the product at the end of life. In a service business, you can share more about how you help customers.
   

4. Shows you’re an expert

   Sharing your knowledge via a blog post can help people build trust in who you are and what you do. It develops your credibility and turns your website into the go-to place to find information.
   

5. Provides somewhere to share your news

   An active and regularly updated blog that people are reading is a great place to make short announcements. If you have news about your business, discounts, sales, or events, people are more likely to see it because they’re already visiting to read about other things.
   

6. Creates a community

   The comments section of your blog posts is a good way to connect with customers, answer their questions, and build your community.
   

7. Helps you beat the competition

   Get your keywords right and create high quality blog posts, and you’ll be well on the way to beating the competition in organic search results. What does that mean? Organic search means you’re not paying for Google Ads to help your website appear at the top of search results.
   

8. Improves your long-term SEO

   When you publish high-quality, useful blog posts, Google will begin to see your website as a helpful source of information. That means it’s more likely to appear higher up in people’s search results. To give you an idea of how this can work, my outdoor blog had over 17K visits in 2023, which was a 33% increase on the previous year. This increase was completely organic (unpaid).

How AI-generated content can trip you up (and what you can do about it)

Ok, you’re sold on what blogging could do for your business and want to write regular posts in 2024. You can just get ChatGPT to do the work for you, right?

Sorry, it’s not quite that simple.

Yes you can plug in some AI prompts and create a batch of blog posts in seconds. You can schedule those in, and then move onto something else.

In the short term, you may see more visibility on your website. But, if you don’t do a little extra, Google will eventually pick up that you’re just producing generic content that can be found elsewhere. Churning out this type of blog post is not offering the E-E-A-T (Experience - Expertise - Authoritativeness - Trustworthiness) which the Google algorithm now prioritises and that will affect your long term search results.

How to use AI to generate your content

You may think it’s strange for me to cover this. My services include SEO blog posts for clients, so why would I help you use ChatGPT to write your content?

But here’s the truth…

Not everyone reading this will be my ideal client. Some of you may be just starting out and want pointing in the right direction, or there could be another valid reason. But part of my values includes giving help and sharing knowledge where I can.

ChatGPT is great for helping you get started. Use it to ask for topic ideas and blog post outlines. Heck, even get it to summarise information and crunch your data. But then, make sure the final content is yours with a real human backed experience.

What does that mean in practice?

• It means taking the outline you get from ChatGPT and adding your own thoughts, your own experience, and your own expertise.

• It means making sure you’re publishing more than a simple regurgitation of information which ChatGPT can easily summarise from the internet.

• It means you’re producing helpful, reliable information which is aimed at humans first, not search engines.

It also means you:

Never (ever) copy and paste pure AI-generated content to your website.

Google Search Central has a whole page about how it treats AI-generated content.

Right now, we’re at the start of an AI-generated content journey. Over time, Google is likely to develop the algorithm further, rewarding those websites that deserve it. In other words, the ones creating content via genuine experience and expertise, providing helpful and useful information for people.

The impact of Meta’s no-ad’s subscription model

My final thoughts, for now, include the announcement made by Meta towards the end of 2023 in response to EU privacy laws. People in the EU, EEA, and Switzerland have been given the option to pay a monthly subscription ($10 per month) to use Facebook and Instagram without any ads.

You may wonder what that has to do with writing blog posts.

Those who can afford to pay for a subscription model are likely to be higher income earners, people with the disposable income to buy things. But, they’ll no longer see adverts for those products and services, and this will affect the amount of views and clicks.

If your market isn’t in a subscription model location, maybe it’s not relevant. But it’s still worth keeping an eye on what happens, because it’s possible that such a model could be rolled out wider. And, if your marketing relies on social media advertising, that could be a huge blow.

If that concerns you, here are three things you can begin doing now:

1. Increase your organic social growth (ie. find ways to grow your social media without paying for advertising).

2. Look at other content strategies, which includes writing blog posts and producing YouTube videos.

3. Investigate Google Ads - website search advertising - over social media advertising.

Final thoughts

Back in July 2022, I wrote a blog post titled ‘Is blogging dead? The five points in that post are still relevant today, as are the antiquated techniques covered. I invite you to go take a look to find out more.

Nearly 18 months later, the digital world has moved on. ChatGPT and other AI-generated content is now commonly used. The content produced can be great, but it can also adversely affect your credibility and search ranking if you get it wrong.

Always ask whether your blog post is giving useful information and being helpful for people

I’m glad I had a wobble about whether to continue offering SEO blog posts as a service, because it forced me to look in more depth at the arguments for and against blogging. To review what still works, both for human beings (readers, customers, clients) and for Google Search.

I honestly believe that ChatGPT can help people produce better blog posts. But it comes with a warning: always add your own experience to the text generated, and check any facts included.

I also believe that longer blog posts covering topics in more depth are an important step forward. By adding this depth and unique experience / expertise, readers can get more value from your content.

And that’s the real answer.

If you’re simply producing blog posts for search engines to fudge the search results, maybe it’s not really worth the effort any more. But if you genuinely want to provide value to people with your blog posts, I believe it’s still worth the effort.

Do you need to worry about shorter attention spans? Absolutely. But there are ways to make longer blog posts easier to read (think headings, bullet points, images) which can help with shorter attention spans.

Give me a shout if you want to know more.