How & Why You Have To Humanise AI Content

It’s official: combined AI and human-generated content is the go-to with Google. Here are three simple steps to perfecting the formula.

Ahrefs has released a new study determining that combined AI and human-generated content is likely to experience the highest Google success. The study, which used Ahrefs’ own AI detector and analysed over 600,000 URLs, found that entirely AI-generated content performs woefully on Google, with only 4.6% were high ranking pages. However, purely human-generated content didn’t fare much better, with a meagre 13.5% per cent winning the keyword algorithm’s affections. 

You may think that such a statistic is concerning for a copywriter like me. Sure, we copywriters have been twiddling our overworked thumbs ever since the supposedly Armageddonous advent of ChatGPT back in November 2022. However, if the modern adage is actually true, AI will only change the way we copywriters work, as opposed to putting us all on the Universal Basic Income. 

And, given that it’s now official that combined AI and human-generated content returns the biggest reward, you can get a basic idea of how the copywriter’s job has changed dramatically in the past few years. I’m 32 years old, but I feel like an old head, looking back on my early copywriting career as something from the Dark Ages of Digital Marketing.

But we realise that we must adapt to stay relevant, and this includes combining our brains with the technological wonder devil that is AI. You don’t need a prompt for human-written content for AI - you need to add your own human content to AI.

Here is exactly how you do it to Google’s liking:

1. Use AI to generate your content outline

If there is one thing that AI always had the jump on us humans, it is its ability to produce an awesome content outline in real time. After all, it rapidly analyses top-performing content patterns to know exactly what kind of content users want to see. 

They then present these outlines to you in a matter of seconds, ensuring that you have a compelling intro, body and conclusion to elaborate on without the need to think up the topics yourself.

We copywriters are often AI-averse, but its ability to generate a clean and compelling content outline is pretty awesome. Therefore, we are happy to overcome our fear and hatred toward the machine to generate a content outline that users will probably like more than anything our feeble minds can conjure (and in a much longer timeframe).

2. You can then move on to the human stuff

However, Ahrefs’ statistics indicate something very profound, and that is that purely AI-generated content lacks the depth, emotion and expertise it needs to rank highly on Google. You can’t just go using a prompt for human-written content for AI - you have to add your own human skills.

After all, have you ever used purely AI-driven content? It lacks the data, editing and expert commentary required to create content that truly resonates with readers. It simply tells you things without expanding on their meaning, and this is something that users find superficial. 

What’s more, half of online users can spot AI-generated content, and when they do, it is likely to be game over for the website, as the same study found that most users disengage from content they know is AI-generated. As such, it is imperative to take the time to add your own human influence, using data and expert analysis to create something that still holds a semblance of originality. 

3. Give it your own editorial flair

You have a voice of your own, and so you should use it. After all, the future of AI is conversational, and so your content should reflect the need to write in a way that reflects the user’s needs, one of such is a humanistic response. What’s more, AI content templates and their wording are notoriously dull and uninteresting, furthering the need to give your content a little personal pizzazz.

AI-generated content outlines that are then overtaken with a human touch are far more likely to succeed on Google. Therefore, whilst you don’t have to worry about being penalised for using AI, you can’t solely copy and paste whatever it said in the hope that Google is going to reward your laziness. You still need to add that human touch, and data, expertise and editorial flare are the three key ways to do it.

Of course, you can always contact me to humanise it for you, I’ll optimise it to its highest potential.