As AI technology continues to be heavily integrated into business models, there has been a lot of interest in its use cases when automating and improving digital marketing processes. One of these elements is SEO.
Due to the significant effort required in creating and improving an online presence, AI-driven SEO tactics are becoming commonplace. However, in trying to simplify and speed up as many search engine optimization tasks as possible, many businesses make inevitable mistakes when implementing AI into their marketing workflows.
In this article, we’ll discuss 10 of the most common AI SEO mistakes businesses make, why they’re problematic, and how you can avoid them.
1. Over-Relying on AI Tools
While some businesses may only leverage AI tools for certain SEO processes, others try to maximize its potential and may rely on its use for too many essential operations.
Why It’s a Problem
Although AI can be incredibly helpful in certain use cases, it’s important to remember that software programs aren’t able to capture the nuances of a branded voice or the unique characteristics of a more diverse audience. Because of this, AI-driven tools will often generate more generic content or responses that can dehumanize the brand.
How to Avoid It
AI tools should be used as an “assistant” to marketing teams and not viewed as their complete replacement. While you can get away with leveraging AI to help you brainstorm, conceptualize article outlines, or analyze large amounts of information, it’s always important to also have access to real human editors who can help refine the information.
2. Ignoring Output Quality Assurance
Speed and automation are the key characteristics of AI SEO processes. This increased efficiency, however, can often lead companies to use whatever outputs are generated by AI tools without putting them through a quality assurance check.
Why It’s a Problem
One thing to remember about AI models is that they’re constantly evolving and improving over time. This means that on occasion, they may hallucinate certain types of information due to confusion over the sheer amount of information they’re collecting and analyzing. If this happens and you don’t catch it, you could be spreading irrelevant or even harmful information to your audience.
How to Avoid It
It’s essential to have strict QA processes in place following the use of any AI-driven data you collect. Make sure you fact-check any statistical references or claims before quoting anything as valid information to share with your audience.
3. Prioritizing Quantity Over Quality
A popular draw of AI-writing tools is their ability to turn out a large amount of content for websites or blogs in a significantly shorter amount of time than human writers can. This makes it easier to scale production, but next to impossible to control the quality of output.
Why It’s a Problem
Depending on the types of AI writing tools being used, turning out too many articles on similar topics at once can make them all sound the same. It also leads to much shallower writing styles that lack personality or readability. Both of these issues go against Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) guidelines.
How to Avoid It
Whenever planning out any content marketing campaign, quality always trumps quantity. It’s much better to have one or two quality pieces of writing as opposed to 10-15 mediocre or poorly constructed articles or blogs on your site.
4. Skipping Plagiarism and Originality Checks
When relying primarily on AI tools to write their content, many businesses skip out on confirming whether or not the information is original enough or is actually being plagiarized from other sources online.
Why It’s a Problem
AI models primarily source information already accessible online when trying to generate new content. However, many times the content that’s created may copy exact phrases, paragraphs, or even entire articles that were already published. This can create plagiarism issues and be a source of ranking penalties when trying to gain more visibility on Google.
How to Avoid It
Carrying out a level of due diligence is essential before publishing any type of content on your branded website. This can be done in various ways, including leveraging AI verification tools like Copyscape or one of the many AI checkers available. However, keep in mind that while these tools on their own can be helpful, they themselves aren’t always accurate, and they should be combined with human editing teams whenever possible.
5. Ignoring SEO Fundamentals
AI technology was designed to be very task-based, but its intelligence has its limitations, especially when navigating more complex processes often found in SEO-based workloads. Because of this, it may at times ignore certain SEO fundamentals when carrying out its automation.
Why It’s a Problem
Even if the AI tools being used are high-quality and turn out better-than-average content, it won’t bring a tremendous amount of value for the website’s visibility if it ignores technical SEO elements. For example, publishing great content on a site that’s riddled with performance bugs or isn’t mobile-friendly does little for the user experience and will still negatively impact search rankings.
How to Avoid It
Pairing AI-driven content generation with human SEO expertise is key to ensuring that all SEO fundamentals are taken care of. This ensures that marketing strategies have a good mix of task efficiency and real-world SEO experience to maximize the returns on investment.
6. Misunderstanding AI Tool Capabilities
AI tools are powerful resources, but a common error is expecting them to operate like a seasoned SEO strategist. This leads many companies to misunderstand the capabilities and what they can expect in the way of results.
Why It’s a Problem
While certain AI SEO tools are designed to be more assistive when helping businesses plan and execute certain marketing initiatives, many times, they use a pre-configured format for doing so. Unlike human SEO specialists, AI can't analyze unique business landscapes or user behavior without a lot of manual oversight. This not only wastes time but can also lead to inaccurate results if not properly managed.
How to Avoid It
When trying to carry out various SEO activities, it’s important to leverage AI only when there are repetitive, consistent tasks to be carried out. You should reserve the complex problem-solving and overarching strategy for your human experts. This augments your team's efforts without outsourcing the most critical elements.
7. Using the Wrong Tool for the Job
There is no shortage of AI tools companies can use today. However, a common mistake is using a more generalized AI tool for every SEO task. Unfortunately, this can lead to problems down the road when trying to adapt this strategy and scale SEO efforts.
Why It’s a Problem
Generative AI platforms, which have become increasingly popular over the last few years, weren’t necessarily built to perform technical SEO audits or handle more complicated keyword clustering. Using the wrong tool for a more specialized SEO task can lead to inaccurate results and inefficient workflows. This means you’ll possibly end up with poor-quality output that doesn't actually move the needle on your goals.
How to Avoid It
Building a dedicated AI toolkit is critical when trying to leverage AI-enabled SEO automation. There is a wide range of SEO platforms available that are specifically designed to help businesses carry out technical audits, optimize their content effectively, and even plan and execute various paid marketing campaigns. The key is to invest in the right combination of solutions that help you achieve each goal you’re looking to accomplish while still staying within budget.
8. Poor Prompting Techniques
Businesses can often become complacent when using AI tools, trying to copy and paste the same prompts for different types of marketing campaigns. However, the output generated from AI tools is typically only helpful when they’re given descriptive prompts.
Why It’s a Problem
Writing simply AI prompts, such as "write about SEO,” doesn’t give the AI tool enough context on how it should format the content itself. This means the AI model then has to guess the type of tone you want to use and may not even fully understand your intent. This can lead to having to redo prompts, wasting additional time and resources that could have been saved with a more efficient prompting process.
How to Avoid It
You should take the time to create detailed prompts that include a target audience, a clear goal for the piece, a desired tone of voice, and specific keywords to include in the writing. Providing this level of context and structure guides the AI to produce a relevant, high-quality first draft that requires minimal editing.
9. Over-Optimizing for Keywords
When leveraging generative AI tools, it can be tempting to prompt AI to include as many keywords as possible in the text, assuming this will help to increase search rankings. However, this often turns what could be an insightful piece of information into a confusing and unhelpful block of text.
Why It’s a Problem
Google has significantly improved its algorithms over time and prioritizes content that makes use of natural language without trying to game its ranking systems. Forcing keywords into your text not only makes it look unnatural and as if you’re just trying to rank the content higher, but it also leads to poor user experiences. This is a major red flag for Google and often leads to it penalizing those sites and hurting their online visibility.
How to Avoid It
To avoid over-optimizing content, you should be more focused on topic relevance, not keyword density. Use AI to help you create good-quality content that naturally includes related terms, synonyms, and long-tail phrases without forcing them. The goal is to thoroughly answer a user's query and demonstrate expertise without too much concern for the exact words used.
10. Avoiding AI Entirely
While being cautious with AI is smart, avoiding it altogether is also a mistake. Ignoring these tools out of fear or skepticism means you'll more than likely be falling behind competitors leveraging the technology to help them scale their SEO efforts.
Why It’s a Problem
Many businesses rely on AI tools to help them work faster and more efficiently, especially when it comes to content marketing and SEO. By avoiding AI tools altogether, it puts other businesses at a significant disadvantage, forcing them to rely strictly on their internal staffing resources.
How to Avoid It
Adopting AI technology into your SEO initiatives doesn’t mean you have to jump straight into the deep end. The better practice is to start small with low-risk tasks and scale your AI use from there. By taking this approach, you allow your team to learn the technology in a controlled way while minimizing errors or developing poor habits.
Final Thoughts
AI can be a powerful amplifier for your SEO efforts, but it shouldn’t be considered a direct replacement for your marketing teams. The most successful companies leverage AI SEO as
an intelligent “assistant” that gets paired with direct human oversight.
By following this strategy, you’ll ensure your business gets the best of both worlds and sets itself up for improved online visibility and long-term growth.