How to create AI content the right way

Many internet content creators are unaware of this, but Google provides documentation detailing best practices for creating content using generative AI.

The core idea is simple, if a piece of content is useful, accurate, and written for people, it can perform well, regardless of how it was created. On the other hand, content produced purely to manipulate rankings has always been a problem, with or without AI.

Where issues start to appear is with scale. Publishing large volumes of low-quality content falls under Google’s spam policies, which can lead to manual actions and a noticeable drop in visibility.

The general recommendations are to publish only content that is relevant, authentic, and of high quality. E-commerce sites have specific guidelines regarding the use of AI.

Below is a breakdown of the key points from Google’s documentation, along with additional context and insights based on our experience producing SEO content at Nona Digital Marketing.

Why most AI content fails to meet Google’s standards

It’s easy to assume that clean, well-written text is enough, but that’s not how Google evaluates content. Grammar is just the starting point. The real quality signals are far more nuanced, and often overlooked.

If you want AI-generated content to perform well on Google, you need to understand what helpful content actually means.

Google doesn’t rank content as “good” just because it’s well-written or grammatically correct. Those are baseline expectations. What really matters are deeper signals, ones that evaluate value, originality, and usefulness to real users.

To compete, your content must meet a few essential criteria:

• It should have a clear, intentional purpose
• It must show genuine effort and original thinking
• It needs to fully satisfy the user’s search intent
• It should transparently identify who created it

Simply generating text with ChatGPT and publishing it as-is won’t deliver results. Even lightly rewriting AI output to “sound human” isn’t enough if the content remains shallow or generic.

Since the rollout of its Helpful Content updates, Google has increasingly rewarded pages that go beyond recycled information, content that introduces unique insights, real experience, or a distinct perspective.

AI tools alone can’t achieve this. Strong performance comes from combining AI efficiency with human expertise, judgment, and originality.

Generative AI does not replace original authorship. At Nona Digital Marketing, we advise our clients to avoid relying on AI for precisely this reason. If it is to be part of the process, it should serve as an assistant, never as the lead creator.

Google’s documentation acknowledges these tools as useful for “researching topics and structuring original content,” but advises exercising caution during the actual production phase.

What E-E-A-T means

E-E-A-T acronym stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust. These are four elements that Google considers fundamental for content to be deemed high-quality.

Why it matters more with AI

The role of E-E-A-T signals in assessing whether or not content will rank on Google is crucial.

Ideally, every page on your website should demonstrate that you are trustworthy and possess authority regarding the subject matter. Content generated by AI is no exception to this rule.

Precisely for this reason, a human presence is essential. AI does not “create” in the same way that we do; it merely reproduces information and concepts based on its training data and the pages within its index.

This makes it significantly more difficult to demonstrate E-E-A-T, particularly “Experience.”

If you create content using AI, review and edit the pages until it becomes clear that:

• The content contains insights grounded in the writer’s personal experience;
• The text reflects the author’s technical knowledge;
• The website or the author is recognized as an expert in the subject area;
• The content cites reliable sources to support its claims.

What to avoid when using AI

Among Google’s quality guidelines and spam policies, content that misrepresents expertise, experience, or trustworthiness may be treated as low-quality or misleading. This occurs when websites attempt to fake authority, trustworthiness, expertise, and experience. With generative AI, this type of strategy has become much easier.

Fake authority signals

Examples of false E-E-A-T include:

• Content that includes inaccurate or misleading information
• Product recommendations lacking first-hand experience or original insight
• Artificially generated author profiles, including fabricated images and biographies

When such pages are identified, Google may demote them in search results or choose not to index them.

How does Google evaluate quality?

Google recommends reviewing its Quality Rater Guidelines, a document that outlines how human evaluators assess web pages based on multiple quality factors. This feedback helps inform and refine Google’s algorithms over time.

Three criteria determine the fate of AI-generated content: effort, originality, and added value. Miss all three, and the page earns the lowest rating.

Google also penalizes the abuse of scaled content, the mass creation of pages using generative AI. Ease of creation is not a green light, not everything an AI generates deserves to be published.

Specific criteria for evaluating the quality of AI-generated content include:

• Shallow information, content that is obvious, superficial, or constitutes common knowledge;
• Content that closely resembles pages on high-authority websites, such as Wikipedia;
• Content that appears to merely summarize a topic without offering any added value;
• Content that simply synthesizes information already available on other pages, such as forums or product reviews;
• Content featuring paraphrased AI boilerplate, such as the phrase “Sure, here is a text formatted as a blog post” that often appears before a ChatGPT response.

Importantly, Google does not make exceptions, this content is considered low quality whether created by humans or AI. It’s simply more often associated with generative AI due to how commonly these traits appear in it.

Does Google penalize AI content?

Google won’t come after you just for using AI to write content, but it will push down anything it considers low quality, and a lot of AI-generated text ends up in that bucket.

You might see some early wins in search rankings, but they tend not to last. Beyond that, AI content rarely does much to build a real connection with your audience or strengthen how people perceive your brand over time.

In practice, AI text can rank, but it rarely sticks, and it does little to build a brand people trust.

Create content that meets Google’s quality standards

Google’s initial guidelines regarding AI-generated content, published in 2023, remain valid: the search engine aims to index content that appeals to visitors.

If you are able to achieve this using generative AI, that is not a problem; you will not be penalized.

The search engine’s reasoning was as follows:

• It is impossible to stem the mass creation of content;
• Attempting to identify the use of AI may not be the best approach;
• The best strategy is to prioritize original, high-quality content that truly offers value to the reader.

Google’s execution is debatable, but this logic is exactly what sits behind E-E-A-T and the helpful content updates.

AI’s role in supporting page elements

Guidance from Google makes it clear that standards for quality, accuracy, and relevance apply to every part of a page, not just the main content, but also elements like meta descriptions, titles, structured data, and alt text.

Before publishing AI-generated elements on your site, review them. Make sure they reflect the actual content, if they’re too generic or read like a template, revise them.

E-commerce sites must pay attention to a few additional guidelines.

AI-Generated Content on E-commerce Sites

In addition to concerns regarding page quality, e-commerce sites must disclose whether, how, and when Artificial Intelligence was used. This is not optional—it is a requirement from Google designed to protect consumers.

Merchant Center has specific rules regarding product images and data. See below for how to ensure compliance.

Images generated using generative AI

You must use metadata to indicate whether an image was generated using AI. To do this, you must use structured data such as DigitalSourceType: TrainedAlgorithmicMedia.

The examples cited in the guidelines are:

• TrainedAlgorithmicMedia: The image was created using a model derived from sample content.
• CompositeSynthetic: The image is a composite that includes synthetic elements.
• AlgorithmicMedia: The image was created purely by an algorithm not based on sample training data (e.g., an image created by software using a mathematical formula).

Product Data

AI-generated text used for product titles and descriptions must be clearly indicated. To do this, you must use attributes that differ from the standard ones.

For titles, you must include the structured_title attribute, comprising two sub-attributes:

• [digital_source_type] set to trained_algorithmic_media, indicating the use of AI in the writing process;
• [content] containing the AI-generated title.
• The same applies to descriptions, using the structured_description attribute as follows:
• [digital_source_type] set to trained_algorithmic_media;
  [content] containing the AI-generated description.

Should You Disclose AI Use?

Google recommends that you explain how your content was created, which includes disclosing the role of generative AI.

Transparency best practices

The recommendation published in the new guide is as follows:

Sharing information about how content was created provides additional context for your visitors. If you are generating content automatically, explain how this was done in a way that makes sense to your audience, for instance, by detailing how the information was used and by adding IPTC metadata.

How does Nona Digital Marketing use Artificial Intelligence to generate content?

Our digital marketing agency in Orlando does not use AI as part of its editorial process. We do not recommend it to our clients, nor do we use it ourselves.

AI tools play a role in very specific stages of content production, mainly as a support layer, For example, they can help with gathering reference material, exploring unfamiliar technical topics, or handling basic tasks like spell-checking.

To give a couple of concrete examples:

For this article on client-side vs. server-side rendering, I had a quick chat with ChatGPT to gain a more detailed understanding of the use cases for each, given that I don’t have extensive day-to-day exposure to technical SEO.

Conversely, for our e-commerce SEO guide, I was looking for examples of online stores that incorporate a blog into their strategy. I couldn’t find any via Google, but ChatGPT provided me with the correct results.

This is purely a matter of personal opinion, but I feel that using AI to write significantly limits one’s reasoning and sentence construction. The resulting style tends to be overly uniform—a quality that doesn’t appeal to me.

In any case, keep in mind that AI serves as an assistant, never the protagonist. It makes the work (much) easier, but it should never become a crutch.

If you are struggling to adapt to the evolving AI landscape within SEO, get in touch with Nona Digital Marketing. We closely monitor market trends and transformations, and we possess over a decade of experience in implementing strategies designed to boost visibility, generate leads, and drive sales.