Research & editorial work
SEO with AI: support needs a clear workflow
AI can help collect questions, structure information and revise drafts. Whether this produces a good website depends on the sources, business information and professional review. Using AI as a working tool is different from visibility in AI answers.
Where AI can help editorial work
A language model can organise longer information, suggest alternative wording or reveal unanswered questions in a draft. For planning, it can help group known customer questions by topic and distinguish suitable page roles.
The suggestions are starting material. The model does not automatically know which services your business actually offers, whether a certificate is valid or whether a reference may be published. Such details must come from reliable documentation.
A practical workflow in six steps
- Define the task: Specify the audience, page purpose and question to answer.
- Provide facts: Collect approved business information, relevant specialist sources and existing content.
- Create a draft: Develop a complete explanation with a suitable structure.
- Check statements: Verify figures, names, features, and legal or specialist claims.
- Add original value: Include decision-making questions, actual processes or relevant examples.
- Check the output: Check links, headings, mobile presentation and contact options before publication.
The reviewer should be identifiable and able to trace changes. A new timestamp alone does not demonstrate a content update.
Identify typical errors early
Plausible but unsubstantiated information is particularly problematic. Examples include invented clients, false sources, outdated product features or services the business does not provide. Fluent wording does not make a statement correct.
Interchangeable pages can also result when only a place name or search term is changed. Check which distinct question each page answers. If two drafts serve the same purpose, a single, better page may make more sense.
Review the image, ALT text and message together
An automatically suggested ALT text also needs editorial review. Google explicitly mentions the accuracy of content, metadata and ALT texts in AI-assisted content work. An image must not be presented as evidence of experience, a person or a reference that is not actually documented.
| Image purpose | Appropriate decision |
|---|---|
| A stock photo shows hands on a laptop. | Describe the visible subject and its function. Do not turn it into “our team” or a real client engagement. |
| A chart contains important comparison figures. | Also provide the figures and their significance as readable text or a table; a long ALT text does not replace this explanation. |
| A linked image is the only identifiable control. | Clearly name the link destination or action, such as “Get in touch”, if that is its actual function. |
| The image is purely decorative and provides no additional information. | Use an empty ALT attribute alt="" ; assess the image’s purpose in the context of the page. |
The W3C decision tree for image alternatives helps with this classification. Google recommends descriptive ALT texts that match the image and warns against keyword stuffing. Before approval, the subject, the meaning it actually conveys and its use on the page are reviewed together.
Assess ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude against the task
Compare AI tools against your actual work. For research on current topics, what matters is whether the function used makes sources accessible. For a draft, adherence to the brief and the quality of the subsequent review are important. For internal documents, permissions and permitted data use are decisive.
| Task | Useful review question |
|---|---|
| Research | Can I trace statements back to sources that were actually opened? |
| Text drafting | Are the tone, facts and purpose of the page respected? |
| Document work | Which documents are actually taken into account? |
| Collaboration | Are approvals and access to work in progress clear? |
A blanket ranking of the systems does not replace this test. Functions and access can differ and change.
Handle company information deliberately
Use only data needed for the task and permitted to be processed in the chosen environment. Passwords, confidential client matters and personal enquiry details should not be included in a general prompt without review.
Approved service descriptions and factual examples are often enough for website drafts. If an example is invented, it must remain recognisable as illustrative. It must not pretend to be a real case study.
Quality is the aim of publication
Using AI makes a text neither automatically helpful nor automatically unsuitable. What matters is whether it reliably answers a relevant question and provides value of its own. Mass-produced pages without that value are not a sound SEO strategy.
Checking AI sources supports this process. If the aim is to make your company visible in answers, the GEO guide explains the other side of the topic.
Evaluate an AI editorial trial against the full effort involved
Whether AI assistance makes work easier only becomes clear once the content has been fully reviewed. Compare a clearly defined workflow using the same subject task and the same acceptance criteria. A fast draft alone does not answer the question of value.
Use the same complete brief for an internal trial: audience, page purpose, approved facts, sources, tone and intended next step. Then document all the effort actually spent on research, prompts, source checks, corrections, approval and implementation. Include discarded drafts and errors that only emerged during the subject review.
- Quality: Are statements supported, qualifications preserved and specific user questions answered?
- Effort: Where did the work become easier, and where was additional checking or revision needed?
- Responsibility: Can a named person stand behind the published statement on the basis of their expertise?
- Maintenance: Do sources, input data and later changes remain traceable?
Record the result as a decision about this workflow. It is not a general assessment of every AI tool’s performance. If drafting becomes faster but significant errors become harder to spot, a higher volume of text is not sufficient reason for wider use.
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