Recovery Tips to Increase Web Traffic After Detecting AI Content

For content creators, marketers, and publishers, there’s no doubt that AI offers a number of benefits. Today, you can instantly generate a wealth of content in minutes.

At the same time, AI content is rising in Google search results, and the search engine is starting to penalize sites that mass-produce AI content. This could result in lower rankings or, in some cases, dropping from the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) entirely. 

Whether you’ve noticed an influx of AI-generated content on your site or you want to take proactive steps to protect your ranking and growth, these recovery tips will help you clear out the AI clutter and course-correct to create more user-first content that your audience will love. 

Looking to check your website for AI content? Try the Originality.ai Site Scan to scan your entire website for AI content in 1 click.

Does Google Care About AI Content?

Google’s guidelines are nestled firmly in the camp of content that follows its EEAT guidelines (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).

In our study, Can Google Detect and Does it Penalize AI Content, we found that 151 of 175 sites, which were deindexed by Google, or 86%, likely contained some amount of AI content — up to 30% of these sites were pure AI content. 

AI and ‘Scaled Content’

Tucked under its broad Spam Policies, Google warns against ‘Scaled Content,’ that is, large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little value to the reader. 

From Google’s perspective, it needs pages that follow EEAT guidelines so that it can recommend relevant resources to its searchers. In terms of AI, Google’s spam policies describe ‘Scaled Content Abuse’ as “Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users.”

When AI writing tools generate content, the aim is to rapidly create content based on a prompt. This can cause issues with AI text on websites because it’s not as focused on creating value, engagement, or providing original insight to the audience.

How Does AI Content Impact the Audience?

Audience and user trust is essential to establishing a strong brand reputation.

AI hallucinations can cause an audience disconnect

AI can hallucinate or make up false ‘facts.’ Without a human in the loop to fact-check content, users may feel a disconnect if they come across incorrect information generated by AI.

It lacks the human perspective that boosts audience engagement

For all its sophistication and ability to quickly generate copy (on a wide range of topics), AI struggles to understand the nuance, humor, and emotion that drives audience engagement.

In short, it’s missing the very human touch of an authentic voice, personal experience, and emotional investment that make human-written content so engaging. 

This, in turn, reflects poorly on the overall user experience, making readers feel disconnected. As a result, they’re less inclined to trust the information presented and may seek out other sites. 

It can be wordy without answering questions

AI website content also has a tendency to meander without making its point. This could lead to users feeling as if they’ve wasted their time reading something that isn’t structured well and doesn’t make its point.

How Do I Scan a Website for AI Content? 

With our Website AI Content Scanner, scanning for AI content has never been easier. 

If you’re a content marketer or web publisher and want to avoid penalties in the future, it’s a good idea to scan your website for AI content. The Originality.ai Site Scan will highlight potential instances of AI so you can review it further and edit it to comply with Google’s policies.

I’ve Found AI Content On My Site, Now What?

If you’ve used the Originality.ai Site Scan and its report has flagged potential AI content on your site, the next step is to review website traffic, in particular traffic volume for the impacted pages. Check if there was a drop in traffic volume when AI content was published.

Then, look into metrics like bounce rate, time on page, and pages per session to see how users are interacting with your content. 

• Shorter timeframes may mean that the content isn’t holding the user’s attention. 
• A high bounce rate could mean the user hasn’t found what they’re looking for.

Even if a site doesn’t have AI content, it’s still a good idea to re-evaluate and refresh it. 

• Is what’s currently on your site relevant to your audience? 
• Is the content accurate and factual? Review facts with the Originality.ai Fact Checker.
• Is it easy to read and digest? 

Take the time to make sure that content is optimized and aligned with what your users are looking for. It’s a must for adhering to Google’s EEAT guidelines. 

Cleaning Up Content Guidelines After Finding AI Copy

Once you’ve discovered AI content on your site, what should your next steps be? Here are a few tips and best practices for updating content guidelines to keep contributors and publishers on the same page.

Update your content style guide

Updating your style guide to include how AI should be used (if at all) will help maintain editorial quality standards and transparency.

1. Make it clear whether AI content is allowed (and under what circumstances). If you permit AI content, specify where it appears to maintain full transparency. 
2. Have a human editor review AI content on your site to ensure accuracy and quality in terms of matching the brand voice, style and tone. 
3. Establish proper content standards, including readability, tone, and brand voice. Offer examples that illustrate the type of style you expect.

Create (or edit) content guidelines for contributors

Just as your style guide benefits from an update, so do content guidelines for contributors. This helps create quality content and maintain proper SEO standards. 

1. Outline the proper structure for different types of content, including blog posts, social media posts, and articles, to set audience expectations.
2. If you plan to use AI for content generation, include detailed instructions. That may mean specific prompts, parameters, or best practices to make sure that the content matches quality standards. 
3. Define specific SEO standards, including guidelines for keywords (set a specific keyword density to avoid keyword stuffing), alt text, and meta descriptions.
4. Create an ongoing feedback loop between editors and contributors to refresh and refine the guidelines and style guide regularly.

Rebuild User Trust to Increase Web Traffic

If you’re noticing that users aren’t spending as much time on your pages or are bouncing quickly, it’s time to take steps to rebuild the trust that you’ve so carefully cultivated. 

Refocus on creating user-first content

Next, refocus and double down on your efforts to create user-first content. This is content that’s designed to meet Google’s EEAT guidelines, deliver value, build trust and encourage engagement. 

User-first content isn’t just limited to text, however. You can (and should) incorporate:

• Images
• Infographics
• Videos
• Interactive elements (quizzes and polls). 

If you’re running any sponsored content, be up-front and transparent about it. Additionally, cite reliable sources to increase credibility and trust over time. 

Take it a step further to add value to your content and increase engagement by creating in-depth tutorials, how-to guides, and step-by-step illustrated directions. 

Increase social media presence

Expand engagement with your audience beyond your website through social media.

Increase responsiveness and activity by:

• Hosting Facebook or Instagram live events.
• Actively respond to comments, messages, and posts.
• Highlight new, human-written content on your site. 
• Show the people behind the scenes, including what goes into crafting great content, be it through research, expert interviews, or in-depth walkthroughs. 

This is also a great time to encourage user-generated content (UGC). This could include user stories and testimonials, product reviews, unboxings, challenges, hashtag campaigns, or contests. Getting your audience involved is a great way to (re)build trust, authority and engagement. 

Conduct regular reviews

Last but not least, take time to regularly review content so that it adheres to guidelines and brand voice. 

As you grow and scale your content marketing, be sure to periodically check for AI content with an AI Website Content Scanner so that you can be confident in your organic SEO efforts. 

Final Thoughts

By keeping these tips in mind and adhering to quality content guidelines for people and search engines, you can proactively prevent a drop in web traffic due to AI content or begin to increase web traffic and recover it.

Looking for more information? Check out our guide on using AI website scanners and who AI website scanners are for.