SEO Next Gen: the dilemma of human-created content vs AI

More than ever, SEO content strategy is at the heart of business concerns. In 2024, the need to stand out in a saturated digital environment becomes crucial. The emergence of AI offers unprecedented opportunities, but also raises critical questions: how to fully exploit these technologies while ensuring the quality of the content? What content should humans create and what content should AI generate? and finally, how do you align your content strategy with Google's expectations and requirements?

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During our last workshop on SEO content strategy in 2024, presented on Wednesday September 18, 2024 at Paris Retail Week, we explored these themes in depth, addressing the fundamentals of SEO, the impacts of AI on content creation, and the new strategic approaches to adopt. In this article, we provide you with a detailed account of the crucial points we covered, in order to help you define an effective and relevant content strategy for this year.

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Fundamentals of the SEO content lever

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The right content for the right keyword

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One of the key principles of SEO is to produce relevant content that targets not only one main keyword, but all of its variants. That's where the concept of semantic cocoon come into play. It allows you to organize your content around a keyword and its synonyms.

For example, the keyword “garden furniture” is searched an average of 165,000 times per month according to Semrush data. However, taking into account all the variants (facets), such as “wooden garden furniture” or “metal garden furniture”, this represents more than one million cumulative searches per month. Thus, the challenge of SEO is not only limited to capturing traffic around the main keyword, but also to find a way to recover traffic from all its facets, which requires the creation of hundreds of pieces of content behind the creation of hundreds of contents.

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Which page for which Intent?

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As a reminder, every search done on Google is motivated by a specific intention, and it is essential to identify this intention to create relevant content.

Here are the four types of intentions:

1. Navigational : The user is looking for a specific site, such as “Amazon” or “Wikipedia.”
2. Informational : The user is looking for information on a subject without the intention of buying immediately. This may include queries like “How do I maintain garden furniture?”
3. Transactional : The user is ready to make a purchase. He can search for terms like “buy wooden garden furniture.”
4. Commercial : The user compares products or services before making a choice. For example, a query such as “best garden furniture”

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Aligning the type of content with the search intent of users is essential for optimizing a site. Each intention corresponds to a specific page format and the mapping is done quite naturally.

Here's how it works:

1. Home pages : They are associated with navigational searches, when users seek to access a site directly.
2. Blogs, product pages and marketplaces : These pages are linked to informational searches, where users are looking for specific information.
3. Product pages and marketplaces : They are also connected to transactional searches, when users are ready to make a purchase.
4. Pages, categories and facets : They are associated with business research, when users compare different product or service options.
5. Local pages : They are also associated with commercial research, often oriented to services or products available in a specific geographic area.

By structuring your content in this way, you ensure that each type of page meets the user's search intent.

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Distribution of traffic and SEO efforts

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The distribution of traffic and SEO efforts can vary considerably from site to site, depending on the strategies put in place. For example, according to data from Semrush in known areas, the share of navigational traffic can fluctuate between 5% and 30% of the total traffic of a site. The more well-known a brand is, the more the percentage of navigational traffic increases, which means that users are looking to go directly to that site.

On the other hand, some businesses are taking a much more information-based approach. Sometimes, up to 60% of their traffic and their SEO efforts can come from informative content. As a result, these businesses are investing more in blog posts, guides, and other content formats that appeal to users looking for information.

Conversely, other retailers focus primarily on transactional pages, seeking to convert that traffic into sales. These businesses can allocate up to 40% of their efforts to create pages for the purchase of products, with 20% additional for commercial content.

Thus, the strategy for distributing traffic and SEO efforts should be carefully developed, as it has a significant involvement in the potential monetization of your site.

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The transition to a new era in SEO: AI

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Generic AI vs custom AI

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SEO is entering a new era with the advent of AI, which has considerable impacts on content creation. Basically, this technology is designed to generate texts in an automated way. However, it is crucial to make a clear distinction between two types of AI: generic AI and personalized AI.

THEGeneric AI, which many are familiar with, is often characterized by a lack of brand identity. The training data used to generate content is not always controlled by the user, which means that the texts produced may lack relevance and specificity. Moreover, this approach does not usually follow a particular brief or specific requests, resulting in the creation of very generic content that then requires manual rewriting. This is typically what you experience when using tools such as Playground ChatGPT to generate text, which you then have to rework by hand.

On the other hand, theCustom AI is designed to produce directly publishable content. When you use this technology within Incremys, the engines are built according to your brand identity. In addition, personalized AI makes it possible to control the data used. You can provide it with files, URLs, and other data sources that are taken into account to generate content. This ability to integrate specific input data makes it possible to obtain texts that precisely respond to the instructions in your brief. So, if you give instructions for a given keyword, the content generated by custom AI will respect all the guidelines provided.

For our part, when a new Incremys customer is signed, meticulous work is done by the marketing department to position the engine in such a way that it is in line with the brand.

This approach guarantees unique and publishable content, very different from what we have been able to achieve with generic generative AIs up until now. The quality and relevance of content produced with custom AI is much higher because it is designed to meet specific and strategic needs.

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Custom AI meets Google guidelines

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A year or two ago, there was some apprehension about creating content using AI. Many questioned whether this would lead to penalties from Google. However, it is essential to remember that Google has always said that what really matters is the quality of the content, whether it's generated by humans or by AI.

When using personalized AI, the content produced has a very high added value.

The results speak for themselves:

In 2023, measured results were observed following content publications generated by personalized AI in 2022. These results come directly from an Incremys customer. By analyzing their off-brand traffic and comparing pages, they observed a strong increase in impressions (+130%) and clicks (+63%), and that in the same way internationally.

The explosion in the use of personalized AI among Incremys customers is a good example of the effectiveness and relevance of generated content. Businesses can therefore approach content creation with personalized AI without fear of penalization, as long as the content meets the quality standards that Google requires.

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SEO Content Strategy 2024

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The problem: a lot more opportunities than the available budget

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When talking about content strategy in 2024, a fundamental problem arises for many businesses: there are a lot more opportunities than the available budget. This observation is both simple and worrying.

Let's take the example of the databases of some of our customers on our platform. We have customers with keyword lists that vary considerably: some have 50,000, 35,000, 10,000, 15,000 or even 20,000 key words. Each keyword represents a content creation opportunity. However, the budget allocated for this content creation is often limited, which means that it will not be possible to produce the desired number of pages for each keyword.

So even if a company can identify a large number of opportunities to exploit, the ability to realize them will depend on Budget allocation. In other words, the content strategy should be designed with a clear awareness of available resources.

It is crucial to take a step back and consider this problem at the business level. The key lies in optimizing your content strategy in order to maximize the impact of the resources you have at your disposal. This means prioritizing the most relevant keywords and defining a targeted approach to creating content that will generate the best return on investment.

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Prioritization criteria and false beliefs

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Historically, several prioritization criteria have been suggested in SEO. Among these, we find:

1. Business and marketing priority : This means giving a clear direction on the products you want to work with based on the company's marketing challenges.
2. Reinforcing existing pages instead of creating new ones : This approach recommends first working on content that is already online before creating new ones.
3. Work according to the expected ROI potential of each keyword : Identify the most valuable keywords and start with them.
4. Research intent : Each keyword must be analyzed according to the search intent it conveys, thus making it possible to make trade-offs.

However, there are limitations to this approach. Two of these criteria are particularly problematic and even erroneous..

Existing vs new

First, the belief that “It is more useful to work on existing ones than to create new pages” is a false belief. This vision is based on the idea that you have perfectly optimized your existing content, which is often far from reality.

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When you look at all the keywords that are relevant to a business, you realize that there are endless keywords that you may not have considered yet. Believing that simply focusing on existing content is ignoring the potential for new keywords and content opportunities.

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Let's take a few concrete counterexamples:

Chez Green range, for example, we can observe a list of keywords where some have already been worked on, while others remain unexplored. The same can be seen with customers like CBD Discount or Fleury Michon, where relevant local words have not yet been integrated into their content strategy.

So why do some SEO tools seem to lock users into this existence-based approach? There are several reasons for this phenomenon:

1. Fast update : Modifying an existing page by changing its content is often faster than creating a new page. This gives a false impression of efficiency and relevance because Google reacts quickly to content changes on a page that is already indexed.
2. Use of Google Search Console (GSC) data : Many tools rely primarily on GSC data, which, while free, does not always provide quality information. This data may lack precision on real-time positions and has limitations in terms of semantics.
3. Limited solutions : For an SEO tool to be truly effective, it must be able to analyze not only existing content, but also all other keyword opportunities. However, many tools are still too focused on what already exists, thus neglecting the full potential of exhaustive research.

In conclusion, it is crucial not to be trapped by tools that favor an approach that focuses solely on existing content. To truly optimize your SEO, you need to broaden your perspective and explore every keyword opportunity available.

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Work according to the expected ROI potential of each keyword

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The second criterion, which is now obsolete in the field of SEO, is the work according to the Expected ROI potential of each keyword. Indeed, the notion of choosing a keyword based on its potential return on investment is no longer applicable as it was before.

With the emergence ofCustom AI, this concept has completely changed. THECustom AI has a profound impact on content production costs.

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To illustrate this, let's take a concrete example: a human writer would take around three hours to write an article, which could cost several hundred euros. On the other hand, with personalized AI, in just three hours, it is possible to generate hundreds of items for a marginal cost, sometimes as low as one euro.

This means that the ROI criterion traditionally applied to content creation, which consisted in prioritizing one keyword over another based on its return potential, is now obsolete. Personalized AI offers incredible power, making it possible to produce hundreds or even thousands of pieces of content at the click of a button.

Now, it is no longer necessary to engage in complex trade-offs between keywords. Businesses can explore every facet of their content opportunities without worrying about the immediate profitability of a specific keyword. This approach allows for a much more comprehensive content strategy, where you can generate content at scale without having to focus only on the most valuable keywords.

In conclusion, personalized AI represents a real turning point in the way we think about content ROI. Instead of limiting ourselves to choices based on cost-performance analyses, it is becoming possible to fully exploit all keyword opportunities, thereby transforming our approach to content creation.

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The new paradigm

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So how should you approach SEO today?

It is undeniable that the business priority should remain at the heart of your strategy. Indeed, defining a clear direction on the products or services to be promoted is essential.

Then, it is crucial to hand Research intent at the center of your thinking. You need to ask yourself fundamental questions: do you want to attract users looking for information or those ready to make a purchase? Reintegrating search intent into your strategy helps align content with user expectations, increasing the chances of conversion.

From this understanding, you have two capabilities within Incremys:

1. Content creation by your internal teams : When your team produces content, they usually focus on specific keywords. However, this approach may be limited by the content creation capacity of the team, which often has a limited number of ideas to exploit.
2. Custom AI content creation : Our technology allows you to generate content at scale without having to worry about human constraints. With custom AI, you can massively and quickly produce all the content you need to capture all keyword opportunities.

By adopting this duality, you will be in a position to develop a robust and flexible content strategy that can adapt quickly to market changes and user needs. By combining the strengths of your team and those of personalized AI, you maximize your ability to respond to all facets of research conducted by your potential customers.

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What content created by humans vs what content generated by AI

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The critical question today is to determine what should be produced by humans and what we can automate with custom AI.

Home page: For starters, it's obvious that some critical pages, like the home page, need to be created by your internal team. These pages are fundamental to the identity and strategic direction of your site, and they require special attention.

Category pages: They represent a large volume of content and are often focused on purchases. Here, the collaboration between humans and personalized AI becomes very relevant. For example, for the keyword “garden furniture” and all of its variants, which attract over 1 million searches annually, it makes sense to take advantage of custom AI to quickly generate the content you need. This makes it possible to cover all the facets associated with this keyword effectively and on a large scale.

It is not a question of considering humans and personalized AI as competing entities. On the contrary, personalized AI should be seen as an extension of human capabilities. When your team writes the main page for a product or category, they can then use custom AI to generate any additional content they need. For example, after developing the content for the main page, your editor can ask custom AI to create all associated text for product variants and facets in one click.

Product pages : It is preferable for Bestselling items to be made by humans, as this ensures high quality and a strategic approach. However, for the rest of the catalog, automation with custom AI is entirely appropriate. The reality of the market often requires creating a large number of pages quickly, and custom AI makes it possible to do this without sacrificing quality.

Local pages : These pages can be largely automated, especially when the differences between locations are not significant. For common services in several cities, personalized AI can generate content adapted to each location without requiring extensive human intervention.

Marketplace pages : The approach is generally fully automated. Marketplaces, like Amazon, require meeting a set of specific constraints, such as format and content requirements. In these cases, businesses delegate content creation entirely to automated systems based on a precise brief.

Blog pages : The strategy can involve both humans and personalized AI. New articles on current or inspiring topics can be created by human writers, while updates and improvements to existing content can be achieved through custom AI. This keeps content up to date without overloading your team.

In short, a mixed approach between humans and personalized AI makes it possible to optimize content creation in 2024. By clearly defining roles and using each of the assets strategically, businesses can maximize their effectiveness and market relevance.

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An example of delegation... for Incremys customers!

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Thanks to the use of a custom AI model specially configured for his project, this client was able to produce 742 pages products, with an average of 740 words per page. This shows how AI can transform the way businesses approach content creation at scale. Instead of spending weeks manually writing hundreds of pages, custom AI made it possible to complete this task in record time, while respecting the specific criteria established during the initial brief.

This shows that you can now capture all your traffic and truly maximize your online impact. This is typically the kind of success we see regularly with our customers, who use the Incremys platform to generate content independently.

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To summarize: how to define a content strategy in 2024

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To summarize, let's remember that a content strategy is based above all on a budget allocation. At the beginning of the year, every business has a certain budget that they need to plan carefully. It is crucial to think aboutsearch intent during this allocation. For example, it would be a good idea to set a goal where maybe 30% of the content would be information-oriented, while the rest would be 70%, would be dedicated to transactional and commercial intentions, especially if one is a merchant.

As part of our offer at Incremys, this budget allocation is divided into several elements. First there is a Incremys software license, and we offer word envelopes for automation. In general, the start is done with an envelope Of a million words, but some customers choose to take a lot more depending on their needs.

So, it's critical to distinguish human-generated content from automated content that you can delegate to custom AI. For example, you might decide to produce 50,000 pages of products, allocating a significant portion of your budget to this automation.

Ultimately, the objective is to work optimally with a mixed approach between humans and personalized AI to maximize the visibility and relevance of your content on the market.

Today, we are seeing a significant acceleration in the use of personalized AI by all our customers in order to save time in creating content. More and more brands trust @Incremys to support them on their SEO challenges.

Feel free to get in touch with our team to discuss how our custom AI can specifically meet your needs.

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