AI Content Generation for SEO: Pros, Cons & How to Use It

AI content generation for SEO can be a game-changer if you use it the right way.

AI tools help increase the speed of your content production, from brainstorming to drafting. And yes, we’ve built our own AI writer into Ubersuggest to make that process easier.

But here’s the thing: AI isn’t a shortcut to rankings. Without the right prompts and a human touch, AI content can actually hurt your traffic. Google’s recent updates and the rise of AI Overviews in search show just how important quality and clarity are.

So no, AI-generated content isn’t bad, but you need a strategy. Otherwise, it’s just more noise.

Key Takeaways

LLMs won’t cite your content unless it’s structured, trustworthy, and answers real user questions. AI content generation for SEO works, but only with the right strategy and human oversight. AI can speed up all stages of content production, but publishing without reviewing will tank your results. Prompts matter. Clear direction on content structure and audience and strong keyword targeting separate ranking content from noise. Human elements like originality, firsthand insights, and strong E-E-A-T signals are still non-negotiable.

AI VS Humans: Pros & Cons

With AI, we found that you can’t just publish the content it generates and go off to the races.

It still takes time to use AI.

From modifying the content to putting it in your CMS to adjusting the format, creating content takes time whether you use AI or not.

Here’s how long it takes to create content using AI versus a human.

When using AI we found that you can write content, post it into a CMS, and publish it all within 16 minutes.

Humans on the other hand took an average of 69 minutes.

But there are some issues that most people don’t talk about.

The first is AI takes what’s on the web and “regurgitates” the same old info.

People want to read something new…

The second is we found that 94.12% of the time human written content outranked AI-created content.

With that said, there is still a role for AI-generated content in an SEO strategy.

<h2>Does AI-Generated Content Support SEO? </h2>

Our findings aren’t all “doom and gloom” for AI, especially as platforms and LLMs evolve. It can absolutely support your SEO strategy, especially when it comes to scaling content or repurposing existing assets, but AI needs direction. If you feed it a vague prompt like “write a blog post about SEO,” you’ll get generic, surface-level content that won’t rank or convert.

Your prompt is essential in making AI-generated content SEO-friendly. You need to tell the tool exactly what keywords to target, what questions to answer, what structure to follow, and who the audience is. Doing that requires real marketing experience.

This is where human input and oversight still matter. You need to choose the right keywords and guide the AI to meet quality standards. AI is just guessing without that input, and that rarely ends well for SEO.

It’s also worth noting that while AI can help draft content, it won’t replace human editing. You still need someone to review for tone and voice accuracy, and depth. 

<h3>Does AI-Generated Content Help with LLM Presence? </h3>

AI content won’t magically get picked up by LLMs. But with smart prompting and a clear optimization strategy, it can absolutely improve your chances.

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Gemini pull from indexed content to generate answers. This process is known as retrieval augmented generation (RAG)

If your content is well-structured and authoritative, it has a better shot of getting cited or referenced in those answers, but generic content won’t cut it. These models are picky.

To actually earn LLM visibility, you need to create content that matches how LLMs surface information. That means answering specific questions, using structured data where it makes sense, and writing in a way that’s clear, concise, and trustworthy.

AI tools can help here, but again, prompting is key. If your AI-generated content isn’t shaped around real user questions or lacks structure that aligns with LLM output patterns, it’s unlikely to perform.

Digging deeper and learning more about LLM SEO and LLM optimization is a great way to improve your skills in this area. By understanding these concepts, you’ll learn exactly what to include in your content and how to use AI to get there.

Integrating AI Into Your Content Approach (The Right Way)

Used well, AI can help you move faster but it’s the human touches that drive results. You need to start thinking of AI as a starting point, not the whole process.

We ran an experiment across 68 sites, publishing 744 articles—half written by humans, half by AI. Five months in, the average AI article brought in 52 visitors a month.
Human-written articles? 283.

Now, sure, you could scale faster with AI, but pumping out a ton of mediocre content does more harm than good. In fact, when we pruned low-quality posts, we saw an 11 to 12 percent traffic lift.

If you’re going to use a GenAI tool to do your writing, do it with intention:

Start with smart prompts. Include keyword targets and content goals. Feed the tool solid references like existing content, credible sources, or structured outlines. Don’t just hit publish. Run a full human review: fact-check, rewrite weak sections, fix tone issues, and make sure it aligns with your brand.

And here’s the secret sauce: add manual value. Include firsthand insights via screenshots or updated data. Layer in trust-building elements like personal experience or expert sourcing. That’s how you build E-E-A-T—Google’s framework for judging helpful, credible content.

FAQs

Is AI-generated content good for SEO?

Does AI-generated content affect SEO?

Will Google penalize SEO content generated by AI?

Case Study: How We Use AI

AI’s biggest impact on our content writing process isn’t even the writing part.

It’s the research part.

For example, at NP Digital, we used AI to help UTI boost its traffic.

Instead of relying on AI to write extensive content, we leveraged it to create select drafts (which then undergo our human editing process) and assist us in conducting research for all the cities in which UTI has campuses.

This allowed us to scale the creation of their local pages and ensure high quality by leveraging our human content staff to incorporate other elements that would be useful for someone performing a local search.

We even won an award for this work at the Drum Awards.

Conclusion

AI can be used to help you, the issue is most marketers are relying on it to fully create their content for them.

AI is great, but it’s not there yet to just do everything for you.

And even if AI was perfect, if it doesn’t talk about something new that people haven’t seen before it won’t produce the results you are looking for.

So, are you using AI to create your content?