In 2025, I'm more confident than ever in the power of content to drive results for our clients and here's why: Google has always been working to outsmart hack SEO tactics in order to prioritize quality content for its users.
Whether it was keyword-stuffing, microsites, or backlink farms, trying to game the algorithm has always ended in defeat. Today's AI revolution, then, simply means it's game over for the "quantity over quality" school of SEO. AI slop will no longer move the needle.
More specifically, generative AI like Google's Gemini will not choose other AI-created content to use for its primary sources. If you want to rank high in SERPs and take a crack at the AI widget, you need to write by humans, for humans.
Roger Montti from Search Engine Journal puts it succinctly in his latest article: "AI in Google’s ranking algorithms are making decisions based on opaque signals of helpfulness, authority, and, ironically, whether content created by humans is intended for machines or people. That’s the part that matters."
Understanding SEO means understanding this: Writing quality content for humans has always and will always win out - from the days of boolean search to whatever lies in the future of the web.
We are already seeing definitive data that shows Google is favoring human authors. Check out this graphic from Neil Patel (probably my favorite graphic of 2024):
That's why, when a prospective client asked me yesterday how much of our content is written by AI, I was happy to say, "None of it." AI has its role in data analysis and other agency tasks, but especially in behavioral healthcare, the human voice is essential in all content. For all of us in this field, I consider it an ethical mandate.
It is our ethical duty to provide the information that people in search of help need - to connect with them emotionally in their time of crisis. The good news is, it's not an either/or between writing quality content for humans, and writing for SEO.
Writing quality content for humans is the same thing as writing for SEO value - now more than ever.
