Link building and AI: Why Chat GPT Makes Backlinks Even More Important

If you’re a marketer and you only just realized that Chat GPT is changing the way we do things, then you are, with all due respect, behind the curve. 

The current iteration of OpenAI’s Chat GPT (Chat GPT-4), released on March 13, 2023, is the successor to Chat GPT-3.5, which has existed since November 2022. Before that, other AI tools like Jarvis (now Jasper) and Copy.ai were also offering OpenAI-based content writing tools to marketers and copywriters. 

The topic of AI and the future of marketing/SEO dominates the marketing influencer/blogosphere at the moment:

If you are someone who is susceptible to mass hysteria–which, if you earn a living in SEO or marketing, you should be taking this seriously–you might have allowed yourself to be convinced, semi or entirely, that your job and industry are not long for this world. 

Fear sells, so of course, every commentator out there is going to be ginning up Chat GPT fear, and, to reiterate, there is definitely cause for concern and serious thoughts of futureproofing yourself and your business. 

But one of the hopeful things, or silver linings, let’s say, to the whole Chat GPT upheaval, is that it is going to make backlinks even more important for SEO success. 

In the below article, we’ll delve into why we think Chat GPT isn’t armageddon and why link building will almost certainly be even more critical for long-term search engine optimization. 

AI content writing 

To understand why new AI and chat GPT aren’t the ends of everything as we know it, we have to first provide a brief overview of AI content writing. 

AI writing tools, such as, but not limited to, ChatGPT, use a machine learning AI that essentially synthesizes content from a large database (i.e., Google search results) into something new. It takes existing data and then repackages it based on how you instruct and prompt it. 

According to OpenAI, GPT “sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.” 

In our experience, chat GPT is also prone to repetition of phrases, language and sentence structure. There is quite a bit of micromanaging involved with using these AI tools and it is worth noting a few key things: 

1. This AI is not designed for content marketing or SEO
2. It is not designed to automate link building
3. Its database is never fully up-to-date. The current database only extends back to 2021, which means anything it comes up with–references, statistics, etc.--is limited to 2021 and before. 

It is important for SEOs and online business owners to be aware of how AI writing tools can help them plan and enhance their content (which, undoubtedly, ChatGPT can do). But there are definite risks that come with the tool, especially if left on autopilot. 

Google’s views on AI-generated content

Google is getting ready to release its own AI tool, but the company has taken a pretty clear stance on AI-generated content and its spamminess. 

They have noted that not all AI-generated content is bad–done right, AI-augmented or assisted content is, theoretically, capable of being as high or as low quality as the effort you’re willing to put in. 

What they have said, though, is that any content created primarily to rank–low-quality, low-effort content that has been SEO-optimized–goes against their webmaster guidelines. Human readers come first, and human reader are getting increasingly fed up with the amount of SEO-optimized trash that dominates Google. 

People want useful information that satisfies their search intent and wants to keep their attention, not formulaic AI-generated garble with zero aesthetic standards. 

The days of wandering to the PageRank algorithm are now firmly behind us, and Google is not going to reward anything it considers spam. This includes: 

• Keyword stuffed content
• Sloppy translations of existing content
• AI-generated text with zero human oversight
• Text that has been run through paraphrasing or rewriting tools
• Text that has been synthesized from feed scraping, relevance and value are what Google is looking for. 

AI’s shortcomings as a content creation tool

To reiterate, we’re neither luddites or reactionaries. We understand the revolutionary potential of ChatGPT and what it can and should be used for. 

We also know where it seriously falls short. 

Lack of Expertise, Authority and Trust (EAT)

Most marketers likely know how important Google’s EAT acronym is. Just recently, in December of 2022, Google added another letter to the trio–another E (for “Experience”).

We’ve already established that ChatGPT has obvious database limitations with respect to the currentness and accuracy of the data it has access to, so it would follow that AI-generated content is going to have a difficult time satisfying any E-A-T requirements. 

This is even more likely to be the case when you start talking about YMYL (Your Money Your Life) niches–personal finance, health, real estate–where erroneous information has the potential to seriously harm people. 

Using an AI tool to try and churn out quick content in YMYL categories is not only irresponsible but a terrible idea with respect to your SEO. 

Inaccurate information and a lack of quality standards

As we touched on earlier, ChatGPT is only as current as content prior to 2021. That is likely to change moving forward, but as it stands, those are the datasets it’s working with. 

Whatever you get when you hit that generate text button is “publisher beware.” News and information moves so fast that almost anything ChatGPT churns out is going to be unreliable from a factual standpoint. 

It might read like a human being wrote it, but very often, if you do a bit of probing, that human being will be seriously misinformed. 

Why user-centric link building will be even more important with the coming deluge of AI-generated nonsense

With the proliferation of low quality content comes the subsequent growth in link spam. Google is getting a lot more serious about cracking down on link schemes and link spam.

Link building is still, however, a critical part of the SEO equation. High authority backlinks send vitally important trust signals to Google that let the search engine know “other websites respect my website enough to send their traffic to it via a hyperlink.”

Google takes these trust signals very seriously and it will continue to crack down on backlinks that have been created solely to try and game the ranking algorithm.

You can bet the farm that search engines like Google (and others) will become increasingly focused on and adept at spotting unnatural links shoehorned into shoddily written content. 

What is user centric link building?

In a nutshell, user-centric link building is link building whose objective is to promote user experience. Ever read an article or a blog post where the hyperlinks blend seamlessly into the content and, when you click on them, take you to useful articles that improve your reading experience? 

Those are user-centric links. 

The anchor text is chosen to help describe and contextualize the target page and its location makes it clear that the sole purpose of the link isn’t simply to direct you to a commercial page.

This is the kind of link building that dofollow does because, quite frankly, it’s the best way to avoid penalties for unnatural linking and show Google that you are serious about adding value for the user. 

In the face of so much AI-generated SEO spam, your backlinks and backlinking practices are what will set you apart from the masses. 

How companies are making use of AI in ways that fall within Google’s guidelines

In addition to serving as a catalyst for the actual content writing part of SEO, AI also has other legitimate uses for businesses across industries, including: 

• Keyword research
• Website audits
• Proofreading and editing
• Voice search

Keyword research

Keyword research is the foundation upon which all SEO-optimized content is built. 

AI tools are increasingly being used to automate and analyze search intent, offering deeper insight into relevant keywords and natural language so you can create content that satisfies both Google and users. 

Surfer SEO is a good example of this.

It checks thousands of data points across the SERPs top ranked pages, giving you a blueprint for how to design your content–headers, keywords and phrases, content length–so that Google views it as helpful and worthy of showing to searchers. 

Though not ChatGPT (it does integrate with tools like Jasper, however), this is one way in which AI is being used to improve content and user experience. 

Auditing a website

Machine learning is also good for spotting website weaknesses and making improvements based on hard data. While it’s unlikely to replace manual audits by experienced SEOs anytime soon, it is capable of greatly improving the process and identifying gaps. 

Proofreading and editing documents

Grammarly uses AI to identify errors, fix phrasing and make suggestions. It’s imperfect, but it is used by a lot of people to help improve content. 

Voice search

Natural language processing is a major part of AI tech when it comes to voice search. NLP tools help you optimize a website for voice search to ensure you are easily discoverable to voice-recognition tech. 

Building the kinds of links that will help you stand out in a sea of AI-generated drivel

This article is about emphasizing the opportunities that the AI revolution represents for link builders. 

Quality links built around quality content will let digital marketers and online business owners stand out from the crowd. 

There are a few key ways to do this. 

Evergreen content

The majority of the AI-written content out there is written for the short term. People are using AI to generate quick, topical content whose purpose is to cash in on a flavour-of-the-week fad, generate some traffic and possibly a few leads, and then fade away into obscurity. 

This leaves a lot of room for quality, human-written evergreen content. This is SEO-optimized content that is made to stay relevant over the long-term–lists, tutorials, instructional guides, and well-researched reference pages–and which can end up building a ton of high quality relevant links. 

High quality guest blog posts

Guest posting (or guest blogging) is one of the most common ways to build natural links that Google likes. 

You contact a site you are interested in publishing a post on, suggest some topics, and if they like your website and your proposed topic, you write for them and get a link out of it. 

Some websites might be willing to host AI-generated content, but a lot of others will not. If you’re willing to put some effort into your guest posts (which you should be because they have your name attached to them), you can end up with some fantastic link building opportunities. 

Good internal linking practices

The AI content revolution also presents opportunities when it comes to your internal linking. 

Internal links are very valuable for linking (how you direct traffic and Google’s web crawlers around your website). 

Check out our guide to internal linking for SEO if you would like a more in-depth look at how and where to place internal links and how to choose and place your anchor text. 

Riding the ChatGPT wave

If you pay a lot of attention to and put a lot of stock in what marketing and SEO influencers are doing and saying right now, you are likely under the impression that online business and digital marketing will never be the same, and in some ways, that is correct. 

But this sort of automated creative destruction also opens spaces for good old-fashioned manual work to shine, particularly where link building is concerned. 

ChatGPT has lowered or eliminated the barrier to entry when it comes to web content in English–anyone can prompt the AI to write endless articles. 

But what it hasn’t and perhaps even cannot do is make the kinds of editorial and quality decisions that a person can. This is especially true where link building is concerned–one of the most important ranking factors historically, now and, with so much sloppily-written, low-effort AI content on the way, well into the future. 

If you would like to find out more about how an experienced, user-centric, link building service builds high authority natural backlinks, get in touch with dofollow.io and let's talk.