How AI Changed the SEO Content Game (And What Still Matters)

For years, producing SEO content has been a grind. Companies aiming to dominate organic search faced an uphill battle to meet the demand for fresh, high-quality content. 

You’d find CEOs or other team members thinking they could squeeze blog writing into their already packed schedules. Or you’d hire writers who’d inevitably burn out after a few months of churning out pieces that never quite hit the mark. By the time a few posts were up, the enthusiasm would fizzle out, and what you were left with was content that barely scratched the surface. 

That’s what SEO used to be: an exhausting manual grind that wasn’t scalable, and brands who couldn’t keep up simply missed out on organic search market share.

Phase 1: The Early LLM Gold Rush

Then came the big shiny toy: GPT-3. Early adopters saw this as a silver bullet to finally scale content production. The promise? Endless content with a fraction of the effort. 

Overnight, companies pushed out hundreds or thousands of AI-generated pages. I can’t blame them for getting excited; the hockey-stick traffic growth was hard to ignore. They thought they had cracked the SEO code—until they hadn’t.

Sure, these early movers saw traffic surges. But that AI-generated content was, at its core, generic. It didn’t engage users, didn’t build authority, and certainly didn’t turn visitors into leads or customers. It was the kind of content that looked good on the surface but lacked any real substance.

Then Google caught on. We can’t say if it was manual penalties or algorithm tweaks, but sites built on mass AI content were suddenly crashing as fast as they had risen. The message from Google became crystal clear: don’t think you can game the system with content that adds no real value.

Phase 2: Tactical LLM Users Get Competitive, But Everyone Else Does Too

So, brands got smarter. They started using LLMs more tactically—combining human input with AI to create thoughtful, nuanced pieces. But the game had already changed. The floodgates were open, and now, everyone had access to these same tools. What was once a competitive advantage quickly became table stakes.

The problem is LLMs are consensus machines. They don’t offer new, unique insights; they pull from the same body of knowledge available to everyone. As a result, everyone’s content started to sound the same. No matter how much you tried to add “brand voice” or “personalization,” the core of the content remained average. When everyone’s producing the same average content, no one wins. 

Instead of getting easier, SEO became even more competitive, and ranking well required more than just content volume.

The Pivot: Quality Over Quantity, Hero Content Is Key

At this point, creating a large portfolio of pages is the bare minimum. If you don’t have a robust content library, you’re not even in the game. But to stand out, you need hero content—pieces that dive deep, offer real value, and differentiate your brand in a way that AI alone can’t.

Hero content isn’t about volume; it’s about impact. It’s the kind of content that takes time, resources, and real human insight. The kind of content that builds trust, authority, and engagement. In a sea of LLM-generated noise, these hero pieces are what help you stand out, rank better, and ultimately, convert.

The Key: Human Insight Remains the Bottleneck

Here’s the bottom line: SEO still has a choke point, and it’s not content volume. The choke point is human insight. It’s the stuff that LLMs can’t replicate—your unique perspective, your expertise, and the little nuances that come from real-world experience. These are the things that make your content stand out. It’s the stuff that would be good marketing even if search engines didn’t exist.

Sure, LLMs can help with production. They can even make the process more efficient. But they can’t provide the kind of differentiated thinking that gets people to stay on your page, read your content, and take action. The brands that will win in the long run are the ones that lean into their human advantage and produce content that can’t be copied by the next guy with access to ChatGPT.

The Casualties: Low-Value, Low-Margin Businesses

Now, let’s talk about who’s losing in this new world order. If you’re running a business with a low customer lifetime value (CLV), SEO might not even be worth it for you anymore. The cost of creating competitive, high-quality content has gone up. 

If you’re selling low-margin products or services, you’re probably not going to get the return on investment you need to justify the spend. For these businesses, the game is changing, and SEO might no longer be a viable strategy.