AI writing tools make it easier than ever to publish lots of content, but does it actually rank on Google? 

Moreover, will producing AI-generated content improve your brand’s visibility on AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity?

To address the first question, Google has made it clear that it does not discriminate against content created by AI. Instead, it has a universal set of quality criteria that all content must meet in order to rank well – whether it’s written by humans or not. 

This means that it’s possible to rank on page one with AI-generated content, but it has to be truly valuable and high-quality. 

Most of the time, this means using human editors to spruce up AI content and add original insights. 

For the second question about AI-powered search, that’s where things get tricky. 

AI tools like ChatGPT rely on training data (mass amounts of information from books, the internet, and other sources) and accessing information from the web. 

When doing so, they prefer human-written content, and will even tell you when asked:

As you can see, ChatGPT prefers human-written content for its generated summaries (and sources). 

However, it also mentions something interesting. 

If you want to improve your GSO content strategy, thinking like an AI is valuable. 

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to get the most out of AI-generated content for SEO and GSO, so keep reading!  

The Risks of Overusing AI Content for SEO/GSO 

Before we dive in, let’s address the risks involved with relying on purely AI-generated content. 

If you recall from the intro, ChatGPT told us that it and other AI tools do not reference AI content when browsing the internet for sources. 

This is because AI-generated content does not contain original insights and only summarizes information that’s already available. 

Because of this, GAI tools like ChatGPT specifically avoid AI content in their responses, meaning that it’s not good for GSO. 

On the SEO side, you still don’t want to publish content that’s 100% AI-generated, as it can contain inaccuracies and often won’t align with things like brand voice. 

Having said that, Google does not punish AI-generated content, and it is very much possible to rank well using it (including in its AI Overviews) – you just have to implement certain quality control measures. 

Namely, it’s crucial to use editors to fact-check AI outputs and freshen up the content (i.e., adding first-hand experiences and insights, using the right tone for your audience, etc.). 

Doing this will significantly increase the chances of:

  1. Ranking higher on Google 
  2. Getting your audience to consume and engage with the content 

In short, AI writing tools can really come in handy, you just have to know how to use them. 

Our recommendation?

Use AI-generated content (edited by humans) to enhance your SEO strategy. Here are some ways you can do that:

  • Rank for more keywords by generating content for trending search terms 
  • Cover emerging topics quicker than competitors 
  • Build up your blog with helpful content aimed to convert 

These are all viable ways that you can leverage AI’s speed and efficiency without sacrificing quality. 

What about using AI content for GSO?

To improve your visibility on AI tools, we don’t recommend using AI-generated content. 

This is because, as you’ve seen already, GAI tools don’t like to cite it, so you’re much better off creating content manually to improve GSO. 

Models for AI and Human Collaboration 

Next, let’s learn some ways to marry the speed and efficiency of AI tools with human creativity and proofreading. 

In our opinion, this is the most effective way to leverage AI-generated content. 

You’ll still publish content twice as fast (or more), but you won’t sacrifice quality or accuracy. 

There are lots of ways you can approach the AI writing process, but we think the best way is to think of AI as a tool for brainstorming, outlining, and drafting pieces instead of fully automating content from scratch. 

Let’s take a look at how AI helps with each phase (including examples). 

Using AI to brainstorm new ideas and find relevant keywords 

Tools like ChatGPT and Claude are absolutely fantastic for brainstorming. 

Whether you want to write a blog post, case study, or video script, you can always turn to AI to start sparking some ideas. 

Once you have some suggestions, we recommend using tools like Google Trends, Ahrefs, and our free keyword planner to vet each idea. This will ensure that the topic is indeed trending and relevant to your target audience, so it’s a necessary step. 

Let’s put this into practice with a fictional scenario. 

Imagine that you run an E-commerce store that sells clothing and accessories for runners, and you want to publish blog content to generate leads. 

All we have to do is tell ChatGPT our situation and ask for some ideas, and it delivers:

We now have plenty of content ideas to get the ball rolling, but it’s crucial to vet each idea using the methods we mentioned before. 

Let’s take one example and see if ChatGPT is giving us accurate information. Under Trends & Lifestyle, it recommends Running Retreats & Travel Destinations for 2025, and it adds that “lots of people are planning running vacations now.”

Using Ahrefs, we can see that the keywords ‘running tours’ and ‘running vacations’ have decent search volume (and relatively high difficulty scores, meaning lots of businesses are trying to rank for them). 

There are also numerous Reddit posts and existing articles online discussing running trips and tours, so it seems to be a popular topic for the niche. 

Thus, we can conclude that ChatGPT’s content idea was valid and worth pursuing, but it was crucial that we verified it first. Blindly accepting an AI’s suggestions can cause you to publish inaccurate information that will harm your reputation on search engines (and with your target audience). 

Using AI to outline content 

Now that we have a valid content idea, we can use AI again to create an outline for us. 

Outlines make the writing process 100x easier since they provide a clear roadmap for the entire content piece. 

An outline consists of:

  1. A title
  2. Intro
  3. Subheadings
  4. Conclusion 

Drafting article outlines is often a tedious process for marketers, but they’re a necessity for producing high-quality, consistent content. 

This is especially true when working with a team of freelance writers. In that scenario, your outlines ensure that freelancers will A) remain on topic and B) maintain the proper brand voice and style. 

Since we already verified ChatGPT’s idea about running retreats, let’s have it create an outline for us:

As you can see, it provides us with a title, intro hook, and subheadings for the main content. We can’t display the entire outline here, but it does wrap things up with a conclusion:

Now, we’ve got a complete outline that we can either use ourselves or send to a freelancer to produce the content. 

For this example, let’s continue using AI to help with the drafting phase, too. 

Drafting content with AI 

Writing content can be difficult even with a complete outline ready. The good news is writer’s block is never something you have to experience in the era of AI. 

If you’re having trouble getting started, you can have AI start to draft the article for you, and then you can add your personal touch afterward. 

Even if the AI-generated content seems fine to you, it’s still worth adding a few insights of your own to add some originality. 

Let’s see how ChatGPT handles the intro:

This intro isn’t bad, but it lacks clarity and original insight (it’s also quite long and doesn’t use a readable format). Its copy is very generic and doesn’t mention specifics, so let’s brighten it up a bit:

For runners like us, 2025 is the perfect year to lace up and take our passion beyond our usual routes. 

How?

By booking a runner’s retreat that blends travel, training, and excitement! 

Running retreats are currently booming, and they offer everything from high-altitude training camps to coastal yoga runs. 

Whether you want to push yourself to new limits or unwind in beautiful scenery, there’s a runner’s destination waiting for you somewhere. 

In this guide, we’ll explore the top running retreats and travel hotspots where you can log miles, build community, and make 2025 your most inspiring year yet.

There, now the copy is shorter, much easier to read, and feels more human. At the same time, we didn’t have to do much editing at all to get it there. 

Content Creation Workflows That Scale 

To summarize, AI content creation tools are incredibly powerful, but they still require a human touch at the moment. 

Publishing content that’s 100% AI-generated is never a good idea, so be sure to do some editing, proofreading, and fact-checking (just like we did in this article). 

If GSO is your ultimate goal, then we recommend using talented writers instead of AI tools. 

However, if you’re in desperate need of a lot of content to start ranking on Google for relevant keywords, using AI as a power boost is extremely effective. 

Do you need to produce high-quality content at scale?

AI Content Plus marries AI’s speed and efficiency with our expert team of editors, so don’t wait to sign up!