Auto blogging is all the rage I guess.
I keep seeing these goofy YouTube videos about how you can “create 500 blog posts in under 10 minutes!”
So are these platforms some magic bullet or are they selling dreams of passive income at the click of a button?
Hey, maybe I am missing out by not using these auto blogging platforms, and you can get decent results.
…….
In short, I’m not sorely unimpressed.
I find auto blogging to be the latest dumb trend in a long line of trends for people looking for a shortcut.
To be clear, I’m not against using AI to help create content.
Emphasis on *help* – AI is great for writing out headlines, meta descriptions and being used to create a general outline of an article.
It’s also useful for non native English speakers who need help phrasing their English correctly.
AI writing tools can also give you inspiration for how to phrase a paragraph and so forth.
I have helpful guides on how to use AI as a writing assistant for tools like Jasper AI and Chat GPT.
I do think however it’s a huge mistake to rely on these tools as an alternative to hiring experienced writers. People, not robots are actually going to be reading your site.
7 Reasons to Not Use Auto Blogging Platforms
All these auto blogging platforms promise to publish hundreds of “high-quality blog posts that will rank” as simply selling a dream.
Effort still matters, and there are no shortcuts. Let’s get into my list of why you want to avoid using these tools.
- Very surface level content that requires editing.
- Excessive fluff content to pad the article.
- I don’t live giving access to my WordPress admin.
- If these tools are so great, why are they being shared?
- Expensive overall.
- You still have to create a feature image and do internal linking.
- Can get better results using AI as a writing assistant
1. Very surface level content that requires editing.
Auto-blogging tools rely on static data, algorithms, and content that already exists and has been published elsewhere.
These tools scrap existing content and use the same formulaic prompts, templates, and generative AI, resulting in repetitive and unoriginal content. Content that is sometimes borderline plagiarism and worthy of a DCMA takedown.
Numerous tools I tested all added a “key takeaways” at the top of the blog post as an example and a very generic FAQ at the bottom. While this makes sense for some pieces of content, it’s weird that it’s in every post generated.
The idea behind adding this section in is to answer the search intent right away.
Like how I do with my review posts like my best camera for YouTube content. Right under the first few paragraphs I give my hot take on the best overall cameras for YouTube based on your specific use case (vlogging, film making, talking head narration, streaming).
But for every single piece of content?
It’s only sometimes appropriate, and your blog will look weird with many posts written in the same template way.
2. Excessive fluff content to pad the article.
Every single article I had auto generated with these various AI auto blogging tools all added an extreme amount of fluff content to the point where it barley answered the search intent:
The above article is about the best websites to find ESL jobs. ESL is teaching English abroad jobs. 70% of the article is this padding of answering random questions. For the actual search intent, it simply listed out a few websites with a 1-2 sentence description.
On top of that, it listed out websites that don’t even exist and websites that you would never use to find an ESL teaching job. The keyword “esl jobs websites” is pretty generic and is right up the proverbial alley of an AI tool. Yet it failed to meet even 20% of my standard.
Finally, all these tools put at the bottom an FAQ which sometimes did not even make sense:
Who should wear the best teacher shoes? Oh, I don’t know, maybe teachers. This padding and repetitive layout make for silly, low-quality content that won’t rank.
3. I don’t like giving WordPress admin access
To auto-post or auto blog (as it’s called) to your blog, you must give your website username and password. You can and should create a separate user role if you intend to take advantage of all these website’s auto blogging features.
But I prefer to avoid giving this sort of access to random websites on the internet. On top of that, you will have to set up a scheduling plugin. Otherwise, you’re going to blast your blog with a bunch of content that looks very suspicious. If you’re curious, the most popular plugin is auto post scheduler.
But again, I would not use any of these tools for creating content, and I would not give these random websites access to publishing content on my site(s).
4. If these tools are so great, why are they being shared?
I can’t believe I have to state the obvious, but if these tools are so excellent at creating high-quality content that ranks and makes a lot of money, why are they being sold to the public?
If you had a competitive advantage where you could create 500 blog posts at the click of a button and dominate numerous topics at will, you would keep the tool to yourself and do exactly that – build up a portfolio of websites that make money hand over fist.
The reality is that these tools are available to the public because they produce mediocre content, and the owner makes more money from selling the tool than actually using it.
5. These auto blogging tools are expensive
All these tools operate on a credit basis.
You exchange your money to buy credits and then use credits to generate articles.
You can get the same results using ChatGPT for free with the right prompt.
The only advantage these auto blogging tools have is their ability to bulk-create blog posts based on a list of keywords you input.
This is where the whole “create 500 blog posts in 10 minutes” comes from.
You give these websites access to your wp-admin, then give the tool a list of keywords to generate, and then it auto posts to your website (which is why you need the post scheduler plugin so you can drip content out in a more natural way).
6. You still have to create a feature image and do internal linking.
It’s very easy to bulk produce low quality content with these tools and have them auto post to your blog. One issue though, you still have to manually add in a feature image f for each individual blog post.
On top of that, you will still have to internally and externally link as needed. It’s very odd for a blog to have no internal and external links.
These tools auto post and auto blog, but they don’t link between content. You have to do that yourself. You can use a tool like Link Whisper to help if you like.
Link Whisper
Internal linking helps your on-page SEO. This plugin helps you quickly optimize your internal links for top performance.
These two simple things cancel out the speed at which you can post because you will still have a ton of work to do manually. Blogs need internal links and you need feature images and there is no way to automate this creative process.
7. Can get better results using AI as a writing assistant
Finally, you can get better results using AI as a writing assistant.
There is no reason why you can’t publish one high-quality article a day now with the help of AI. Sure, some content will take a long time to write, like how to create a website post or how to start a blog post.
But most content can be created with the help of AI and your experience.
AI is perfect for generating titles, meta descriptions, outlines and a few paragraphs for inspiration here and there but that’s really it.
Legal and ethical issues
Since blogs scrape existing content to source from, there is an inherent copyright infringement risk.
These tools also have the risk of suggesting content that is harmful, incorrect, and not accurate. Like the blog post I created on the “best ESL job websites.”
It literally made up a few websites that don’t exist and recommended websites that are poor choices while ignoring some of the most popular ESL job websites in the world.
SEO Impact
Easy come, easy go as they say.
This auto blogging stuff seems like it will work until it does not. If you want to try it on a test site for fun, then sure have at it. But to use these tools on a website you’re trying to build into a successful, highly profitable brand?
No way.
You run a huge risk of setting yourself up for a massive SEO penalty due to creating low quality, auto generated content. Instead, why not just do the work, build a brand and reap the rewards?
Lack of trust
Apart from SEO penalties, people don’t trust lazy, AI content. If you have been putting in the effort to create quality content that’s helpful and useful and then all of a sudden you start posting a bunch of content that’s clearly written by AI you’re going to ruin your brand.
Are there any use cases I can see?
NO.
Stop being lazy, if writing content is not part of your skill stack then either hire someone or don’t blog.
Auto blogging platforms conclusion
Effort still matters.
Auto blogging platforms make for good entertainment on YouTube and I’m sure there are websites that have used these tools to great effect and success.
My main competitor to my ESL teaching site used AI content to build a website to over a million visitors a month which has since crashed down 90%.
But the current quality of these auto blogging platforms are mediocre at best and I would not ever consider publishing this sort of content online on a website I cared about.
