How to beat the AI content detectors
By Martin Jones
Digital marketing consultant and web development business owner with 21 years running Red Design. In this series, I’ll be describing the new AI marketing tools and how they can help your business.
If Google doesn’t have a policy banning AI-written content, why does it have an AI content detector?
Does Google punish AI content?
So, I like Chat GPT at least as much as the next person and it’s been a great help to myself and my industry. It helps fill content gaps and write blogs for SEO purposes. However, tools are being developed and deployed to detect AI-written content, including by Google. And when Google develops more tools or updates their algorithm, it means more work on your content to keep up.
Here’s what we know:
- AI content isn’t against Google’s policy… yet
- But it will penalise you if it’s written for SEO purposes
- They already have several systems to detect AI.
If you don’t keep up:
- your organic rankings will drop
- your pay-per-click campaign costs will increase
- potential customers won’t reach your website.
Google insists that the purpose of all its updates is to ensure better content* see below. That also means that you’re more likely to fall behind your search engine competitors and turn to pay-per-click. But that’s another topic for another blog.
“…original, high-quality content that demonstrates qualities of what we call E-E-A-T: expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.”
In short, Google is saying that AI-written content may not be authentic or trustworthy. And in my opinion, this is big a step towards banning AI content.
For now, this means basic, AI-written content could harm your SEO-relevant pages.
What do you need to do?
In order to satisfy Google, you will need to do some or all of the following:
- Add ‘author bylines’ stating “Who wrote this?”
If you don’t rewrite it, at least then you’re being honest about the provenance of your robot content. - Only use AI as a starting point
None of us like starting with a blank sheet of paper, so get Chat GPT (or similar) to get the ball rolling. - Make it sound human
Read through and change anything that sounds clunky. Add some human content, even if it’s only the first paragraph. - Check it’s factual
You probably already know that these tools get things wrong and don’t get context, so add some. - Check if your content was AI-written*
If someone is creating content for you, chances are they’re using AI to do so. Try Content at Scale - If it was… rewrite it**
At least you haven’t started from scratch. - Check if your content passes the AI detection test
Drop it back into an AI detector to make sure it passes.
Try some rewriting tools!
Content at Scale works pretty well as an AI Detector. Use it on your existing content to make sure it wasn’t written by AI. then check it again after you’ve rewritten it. Make sure to recheck if you’ve rewritten it also. This is essential if the page the text belongs to ranks organically.
SpinRewriter works well for getting your copy past the AI content detectors. It might be a bit clunky, but it works. Rewriting tools mainly rely on altering sentence structures, rephrasing paragraphs and changing out the synonyms** in your text. Bear in mind that the rewritten article or paragraphs will still need checking and the human voice adding.
**Synonym Definition & Meaning
– noun. syn·o·nym ˈsi-nə-ˌnim. Synonyms of synonym. 1. : one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or …
