AI is not the problem. Publishing what AI already knows is the problem. Every week someone shows me a site where the main pages were written by AI and nobody changed a word. Those pages do not rank and they do not convert, because they say nothing the reader could not get from the answer engine itself. Here is how I use ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini every day without that happening.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- An AI answer is a blend of what is already published. A page built only from that blend has nothing new in it.
- Start from your own words: record yourself, then write from the transcript.
- Run the same prompt in two tools, compare, blend, then edit out the AI tells.
- Tell the AI what to include that the ranking pages leave out.
- Measure originality before you publish, not after the page fails.
Why AI-generated content fails in search
When you ask an answer engine a question, it takes a little from my site, a little from yours and a little from a competitor, shakes it up and hands you an answer. There is nothing original in that answer. It is a blend. AI-generated content built from that blend is not a content strategy, because search engines and users both reward pages that bring experience and data nobody else has.
“It’s just a reconstitution.”
Beth Guide, Google Hacks 2025 (Internet Marketing Clinic, June 2025)
So if you ask AI for a page on a topic and publish what it gives you, you are publishing the blend. Google already has every ingredient. The AI engines already have every ingredient. There is no reason to rank you, and no reason to cite you. Getting cited is what AI search optimization is about, and it starts with saying something new.
“you’re just regurgitating what somebody else is saying.”
Beth Guide, AI, SEO and Small Business (Internet Marketing Clinic, November 2025)
If you want to be the source your customers go to, you have to show better, more comprehensive knowledge than your competitors. AI can help you write that down faster. It cannot supply the knowledge.
Which AI tool I use for what content
I pay for all three and I blend them. This is my preference from using them all day, not a ranking of the tools.
- ChatGPT is where I start most things. It is good at first drafts, YouTube summaries from a transcript and images. It likes bullet lists more than I do.
- Claude writes friendlier prose, parses whole documents and lays things out well. For planning a site structure I use Claude Cowork on the desktop, because it works through a task instead of just chatting.
- Gemini belongs to Google, and its deep research is strong. I am careful with it for site planning, because I do not like telegraphing to Google what I have done or where it came from.
Two habits matter more than the tool. Start a new chat for each job, because the conversation remembers what came before and leans on it. And lead it the way a lawyer leads a witness: one question, then a follow-up, then another.
WATCH THE CLASS
AI, SEO and Small Business (Internet Marketing Clinic, November 2025). Beth Guide teaches this live, most months, with HCC and SCORE.
Start your AI content from your own words
Years ago I told this class not to use AI to write blog posts. I have one caveat now, and it is the most useful tip I give.
“if you can’t write it well, then speak it in a video and use the transcript to write your page.”
Beth Guide, AI, SEO and Small Business (Internet Marketing Clinic, November 2025)
When you talk, you explain your process, your sales conversation, the mistake you watch customers make. That does not exist anywhere else. Your audience is not looking for another summary. They want the insight of an expert who has done the work, and that is what earns traffic from search and citations from AI. My clinic recordings are transcribed on the spot by Krisp, with Otter as a backup, and the transcript becomes the draft. When I ran one of those pages through an AI detector, it flagged about 30 percent, and part of that was text already on my own site. The rest read as new, because it came out of my head.
This post was built the same way, from my class recordings. That is the difference between AI content for SEO that ranks and AI content that just sits there.
Prompt for what the search results leave out
The trick is in the prompt. When I wrote about how chambers of commerce help local SEO, I told the AI to include citations and the HCC and SCORE entrepreneur programs, because I knew those would not be in a generic article. I also give it my own website and ask for topics I have not covered, so it builds on what I have instead of repeating it.
Then I run the same prompt in ChatGPT and in Claude. They write different pages. I read both, keep what I agree with, and ask one of them to merge the two in my voice. I trained that voice by giving it old articles from my newspaper days and saying, this is how I write.
Do your keyword research first, then a keyword brief helps. In elev8tor, a keyword brief reads a keyword with no page at all: the Google category of each top result, the entities with suggested mentions, the questions, a word count range, the headings and the schema the ranking pages use. That tells you what page one already covers, so you know where your own experience has to fill the gap.
Where AI-generated content goes wrong
- Facts. I asked for a landing page for Italian group tours for retirees, and it put the Eiffel Tower on it. You still have to read every line.
- Filler closers. Nobody writes “in conclusion” or “bottom line” in a normal article. AI does, constantly. I delete them.
- Decoration. Emojis, hearts and smiley faces. If they do not fit your brand, take them out.
- Lists for everything. Real explanations for a human reader need sentences.
- No call to action. AI will not ask the reader to hire you unless you tell it to.
Check AI content for originality before you publish
Asking a detector whether a page “sounds like AI” is the wrong question. Plenty of hand-written pages repeat what everyone else says, and plenty of AI assisted pages built from a transcript are original. What you want to know is whether the page says something the ranking pages do not.
That is what the originality score in the elev8tor content scanner is for. It reads today’s Google top 10 for your keyword and shows the terms beyond page one, the information gain you bring that the others do not. The scanner checks the rest of our content review too: non-commodity copy (first-hand experience, your own process, real numbers, examples), entity coverage, questions answered and internal links. I built it because we write with AI on client sites as well, and I wanted every page as original as it can be.
When a page falls short, Repair this page fixes the existing page in place from the action plan, and Write a new page builds a full draft from the keyword brief. Both are drafts for a human to review. The ranked list behind them is the SEO action plan, with the points each fix is worth.
If you are new to all of this, SEO software for small business explains what the plans include. If you run content for clients, white label SEO reporting shows the before and after under your own brand. If your structure is still a mess, fix that first, because website structure for AI search comes before any of this. And for who is behind the tool, see about elev8tor.ai.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Google’s guidance is about whether content is helpful, not which tool typed it. The pages that struggle are the ones that only repeat what already ranks. Add your own experience, process and examples, and have someone who knows the business review every line before it goes live.
Beth uses all three. She starts most drafts in ChatGPT, uses Claude for prose, long documents and site planning, and is cautious about Gemini for site planning because it is Google’s own product. Running the same prompt in two tools and blending the results beats relying on one.
Give it your own material. Record yourself explaining the topic and write from the transcript, or upload articles you wrote and tell it that is how you write. Then remove filler closers, emojis and phrases you would never say.
In the elev8tor Content Scanner, originality compares your page with today’s ranking pages for the keyword and shows the terms you cover beyond page one. A strong score means you add something the top 10 does not.
Use one sparingly, if at all. Detectors guess whether text sounds machine written and can flag phrases you repeat in your own work. Originality measured against the ranking pages is the more useful check.
Check your own page against today's top 10
The free demo gives you 5 real Content Scanner scans on your own pages. No card, no sales call.
Related posts and pages
- SEO action plan: why most SEO tools give you data instead of answers
- Keyword density vs entity coverage: targets taken from the ranking pages, not fixed counts
- Content Scanner: originality, entities, questions and links against today’s top 10
- Free demo: 5 real Content Scanner scans on your own pages
elev8tor.ai is developed by Vertical Web and Beth Guide, drawing on more than 20 years of SEO work.
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