Five months have passed since my last post asking, “Can AI-generated content solve a huge pain point for web developers?” But, finally, I found the answer. The answer is “Yes, AI-written content most definitely is the next-gen in website development!” I will explain, but first, here’s a little history lesson:
The Birth of AI
In 1843, Ada Lovelace (yay, a woman!) recognized the potential for computers to create art, and she wrote what is now considered the world’s first computer program; however, it would be more than 100 years before the field of artificial intelligence (AI) we founded as a discipline.
In the 1950s, a landmark paper was published by Alan Turing speculating the possibility that machines could think. He devised the “Turing Test” that allowed him to come up with a convincing argument that it was at least plausible that a machine could think.
Also, in the 1950s, a checkers and a chess program achieved a sufficient skill level to challenge respectable amateurs and were the beginnings of “Game AI.”
In 1956, at the Dartmouth Workshop, a computer program called the “Logic Theorist” was introduced. It was the first program that was deliberately engineered to perform automated reasoning and is considered the first artificial intelligence program.
That conference is considered by many to be the birth of AI.
Today, artificial intelligence is here to stay, and it is being adopted in major industries all over the world.
Most recently, AI-generated artwork was entered into and won an art contest causing tremendous amounts of discussion on Reddit and other platforms over whether or not AI-created artwork should even be considered art.
When the camera was invented in the 1800s, there was similar criticism, and many painters feared that they would be replaced by it. When WordPress became mainstream ten years ago, many web developers thought they would be replaced; now, as AI-written content becomes more sophisticated, writers worry that it will put them out of a job.
It’s no secret that AI is becoming increasingly sophisticated. The simple fact is, as our technologies evolve, we must evolve. AI can either help you or replace you. It’s your choice.
AI uses in web development
There are so many new and exciting ways that AI is being used in web development, such as:
- Algorithms are widely used by web app developers to help simplify the development process by following web design and layout suggestions.
- Automated coding enables developers to build better, more intuitive apps in shorter amounts of time.
- AI is now commonly used to edit and even write articles and other content that is published on the Internet.
- AI-powered chatbots and other communication tools enhance the customer experience and help guide them to the desired action.
- Visual AI is being used to help customers make informed purchases and businesses are better able to analyze a customer’s behavior on their website.
While all of these uses are exciting, the one that excites me the most is AI-written content.
The benefits of AI-written content for web developers
As artificial intelligence becomes more advanced, its capabilities are growing at an exponential rate. One of the latest applications for AI is content writing and graphic design, both essential for web developers.
The benefits of AI-written content are many and varied, but perhaps the most important for web developers is that it can be used to create content quickly.
In the past, creating content has been a time-consuming and often expensive process involving hiring professional writers and editors. However, with the help of AI-written content, this process can be significantly simplified.
With AI-written content, you provide a topic and input parameters to target the keywords and phrases relevant to your audience, and the AI will take care of the rest.
One of my biggest pain points as a web developer has always been writing content. It is my “bottleneck” as I can at most write one decent page a day when I needed to write ten … or even a hundred.
I never actually claimed to be a writer, and I still don’t; however, no matter where I have turned over the past 20+ years, that is one of the hats I consistently need to wear.
I started out as a web developer, which, you guessed it, meant that I needed to write a lot of content.
At first, I would request content from the client. If they sent back anything at all, it was rarely useful, so I would have to write it.
Then, I tried delivering a beautiful website template to the client (Before WordPress) that was ready for them to log in to and add content to … it never worked … so I would have to write it.
Finally, I began delivering websites with content. That was when my web development business took off, and I was launching websites … well, as fast as I could write the content for them. So, not as fast as I wanted, that’s for sure.
(I now subscribe to the belief that your content should dictate your design anyway, so I had it all backward back then.)
Now, with the help of AI, I can unblock that bottleneck.
The impact of AI-written content on SEO
While there are still some limitations to what AI can do, it is rapidly becoming better at creating human-like content. This has significant implications for the future of SEO. As AI-written content becomes more prevalent, the standards for what counts as good content will inevitably change.
Google’s Search Advocate, John Mueller, has said that content generated automatically using AI-writing tools is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and could lead to a manual penalty.
However, Miranda Miller, Senior Managing Editor at Search Engine Journal points out that 1) Google’s algorithms are not able to automatically detect AI-written content, and 2) AI is “being used by media, universities, and other organizations for research automation and cross-referencing, crawling and classifying content in many languages to identify emerging trends, generating article and paper summaries, fact-checking, crunching data, and even writing full articles.”
It’s true that there is already a lot of crappy AI-written content on the web, and I am sure that we are going to see even more of it in the future. However, it does not have to be that way.
Here are five “commandments” that web developers should keep in mind when using AI to write content for their clients to stay in Google’s good graces:
- The content must be well-written and free of grammar and spelling errors.
- The content must be original and not copied from another source.
- The content must be search engine optimized so it can be found by those who are searching for it.
- The content must be written for humans.
- The content must be helpful/useful/interesting/etc. You get the point.
If web developers can create content that meets these criteria, they will be well-positioned to succeed in the future of SEO.
The impact of AI-written content on businesses.
The way we consume content is changing. We live in a world where we can get our news, weather, and even our entertainment from artificial intelligence (AI).
The next logical step is that businesses will begin to embrace the use AI-written content. Businesses should start to prepare for this change now so that they can stay ahead of their competition.
Conclusion
So, yes, I truly believe that AI-written content is most definitely the next-gen in website development … in fact, AI-written websites are going to be my MVP and the future of Websketching!
What does this mean for the future of the web? Will AI-written content eventually take over completely, or will humans still have a role to play?
While only time will tell, it’s clear that AI is here to stay, and it will most certainly play a major role Web3 and Web 3.0 and the Metaverse. [No, none of them are the same, but it will hurt your head to try to discern the differences.]
For this article, I used autoblogging.ai (affiliate link) to write the content, Grammar.ly for first draft edits and plagiarism check, Yoast SEO for optimization, and 20 years of experience to do fact-checking and final edits. It took me roughly two hours, which is about six hours faster than it used to 😀
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