{"id":950,"date":"2023-04-27T20:33:44","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T20:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lowfruits.io\/?p=950"},"modified":"2023-04-27T20:33:44","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T20:33:44","slug":"case-study-2-month-5-using-ai-for-programmatic-seo-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lowfruits.io\/blog\/case-study-2-month-5-using-ai-for-programmatic-seo-content\/","title":{"rendered":"Case Study 2, Month 5: Using AI for Programmatic SEO Content"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hey, everyone!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dim here with another update for the programmatic SEO site I\u2019m building with Yoyao.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start this one off with a story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less than a lifetime ago, elevators had two features they no longer have today.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside each elevator stood a uniformed man or woman \u2014 the operator \u2014 who would open the doors from floor to floor and greet elevator goers on their way in and out of the cabin. There was also a mechanical lever on the wall, which the operator used to control the cabin\u2019s movement and speed manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The job wasn\u2019t for everyone.<\/strong> To be an elevator operator, you had to like being around people and maneuver the cabin with precision, patience, and skill. Building owners had to hire carefully<\/em>; they looked for responsible, composed workers who could keep a smile on their faces all day while working the elevator like clockwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the 1970s,<\/strong> hiring elevator operators was a non-problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every elevator was automated, and the once-omnipresent elevator operator was replaced by the less welcoming but more efficient mechanical buttons on a metal panel on the wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure that if you and I could walk into a futuristic-looking booth and travel back in time to an elevator operator union meeting in the 1950s when elevator automation technology was still in its nascence, we\u2019d hear a union rep say that no machine would ever be capable of operating an elevator as safely and as smoothly as a human could \u2014 with everyone in the room nodding heads and clapping hands in agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will people in the future be saying the same about you and me? More importantly, how far off is <\/em>this future?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you think about it, ChatGPT <\/strong>is already doing this to content writers. To write, one used to need a computer \u2014 the lever \u2014 and the ability to type out structured, coherent thought \u2014 the skills \u2014 on the keyboard. Now, all they need is a prompt \u2014 the button \u2014 and the machine does the writing \u2014 controls the elevator \u2014 for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What made elevator automation technology so consequential wasn\u2019t the fact that they replaced a mechanical lever with an automated panel. No, it was the fact that this small change allowed anyone who had never worked an elevator before to push a button and get to the floor they needed to go to without needing somebody in the cabin to do it for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working an elevator used to be a job, a career. Now, it\u2019s something you do on your way somewhere else, a means to an end rather than the end itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photographers <\/strong>are facing the same existential crisis thanks to Midjourney and DALL\u00b7E.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One needed a camera \u2014 the lever \u2014 and a working knowledge of photography \u2014 the skills to take photos. Now, a photographer can generate an award-winning photo<\/a> with just words. So can anyone else with a bit of imagination and ingenuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photographers are plagued by the same question people had about operator elevators in the mid-50s: if we can generate lifelike pictures by ourselves, do we really need photographers to do it for us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It gets even weirder when you add artists <\/strong>to the mix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anyone can train an AI model on Gordon Freeman\u2019s image or Kanye West\u2019s voice and produce movies or songs<\/a> without them, you could say that actors no longer \u201cown\u201d their image\u2026 just like singers no longer \u201cown\u201d their voice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if you\u2019re skeptical about the rate or pace of change AI can introduce to our business. It only takes a few Google searches to realize this reality isn\u2019t as far away<\/strong> as you think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a chance that AI will do to entertainment, journalism, media, and the entire white-collar economy what the Industrial Revolution started for manual labor in the 1870s (and what computers finished in the 1960s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just look at the share of the labor force employed in agriculture over time \u2014 where machines, first operated by humans and now increasingly more autonomous, replaced manual labor:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"share<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Who gets to profit from this change is a big, open question.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are we elevator operators? Is Google less like the building owner and more like the union?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we think of ourselves as the building owners, is generative AI then allowing anyone to spawn buildings just like ours with a few prompts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a world of done-for-you answers, what\u2019s the future of websites, let alone search?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will consumer habits \u2014 slow to change \u2014 and industry inertia \u2014 always a drag on change \u2014 be enough to counter, or at least slow down, an unprecedented shift in how we interface with information and use computers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember, the World Wide Web was created by humans, for humans. With AI, we\u2019re about to introduce something radically different into the mix, and we have no idea (yet) how it will pan out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Darwinian evolution guarantees the survival of the fittest in life. In business, business models that are no longer efficient enough to keep growing and remain profitable eventually wean off and die. However I look at it, I can\u2019t shake off the feeling that the way we create content today will be seen as grossly inefficient in tomorrow's weird world of content creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only rational thing left for business owners like you and I to do is the clich\u00e9: stay on top of change, cash in on some of our chips, and keep milking the cash cow<\/strong> for as long as we can \u2013 while remembering not to keep all of our eggs in one basket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advice for Using AI in Programmatic SEO Content Creation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For all of you building programmatic SEO sites out there, here are a few tips:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • Start thinking about how you can use the likes of Midjourney and DALL\u00b7E to generate images<\/strong>. They don\u2019t have to be lifelike; you can prompt for sketches or color drawings. By keeping the outputs simple and stylized, you compensate for the lack of accuracy of the AI models in their current form.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Insert the variable keyword \u2014 and as many variations of it as you can \u2014 in every sentence. <\/strong>(Seriously, in every<\/em> sentence.) Doing so makes your sentences and paragraphs \u201cmore unique\u201d from one article to another, which supposedly helps indexation and ranking. If you do it right, you won\u2019t be penalized for keyword stuffing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Research, research, research.<\/strong> The time and money you save from writing should go to making your content richer with facts and quotes. Don\u2019t just regurgitate the already-regurgitated content by everyone else on Page 1; try to do proprietary research or tap into better and more authoritative sources<\/strong> for your posts than your competitors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    March 2023 Metrics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Now, onto the programmatic SEO case study!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    March was the least productive month I\u2019ve had in years. I caught the flu, then a virus, and then dragged a cough and the unrelenting need to keep napping for three weeks. That, and one of my writers is running on low capacity because he did the right thing for his family and got a proper job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Content<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Now that I\u2019ve set your expectations low (keep them that way for April), you won\u2019t be disappointed to read that we published 8 articles on our programmatic SEO site based on 1 new template for 1 new cluster in March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This brings our total to 10 templates live and 96 posts published across 2 clusters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The new topical cluster<\/strong> is semantically related to the first one. Think of it as a subcategory <\/strong>of a broader category, if you will. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We continue to expand the entity coverage and, consequently, the topical authority of this site horizontally (more of the same) rather than vertically (more of something different).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Topical Clusters<\/strong><\/td>2<\/td><\/tr>
    Entities Covered<\/strong><\/td>9<\/td><\/tr>
    Templates Live<\/strong><\/td>10<\/td><\/tr>
    Posts Published<\/strong><\/td>96<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Still, progress is progress \u2014 and the purpose of this case study, after all, is to test out how well programmatic SEO content will perform on a Web written by humans\u2026 and now bots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Traffic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    We bought the domain name on October 23, 2022, exactly 181 days ago. Here\u2019s what the last 12 months in Google Search Console\u2019s performance tab look like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"performance<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The site survived Google\u2019s algorithm updates in Q4 \u201822 and Q1 \u201823<\/strong> (in contrast, some of the websites in my portfolio were hit by 10 to 40%) and kept growing, albeit slowly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That one post is still killing it, and a few others are finally starting to pick up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"impressions<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Indexing <\/strong>has been somewhat stable but stuck at plus\/minus 60 pages \u2014 roughly 36 pages less than the index-worthy pages on the site:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"indexing<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    All in all, not bad, but it could be better. The fact that the site has managed to stay on the good side of Google and not suffer a major blow in an algo update is encouraging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We\u2019re not pouring everything we can into this programmatic SEO website, at least not yet. But as it keeps growing, the site is making a stronger and stronger case to get more and more of our teams\u2019 time and attention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    To be determined!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Even so, I don\u2019t have the same appetite I used to have for this business. I have reduced the investment in new written content significantly across the board and am focusing on optimizing what I already have so that it ranks higher and converts better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We\u2019re at the point where AI is devaluing content on the web<\/strong>, and the law of diminishing returns is eating away at our moats the same way printing money is causing inflation in the economy to rise and making everyone poorer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s a good time to keep and optimize or buy and flip quickly<\/strong>, and a bad one to build for the long run. Of course, I may be wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And even if I\u2019m right, this may change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

    [ratemypost]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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