How to Humanize AI Content: Useful SEO Tips

It really is, both for content creators, marketers and small business owners that need to crank out more in a shorter time.

However, there's an authentic problem most people encounter pretty rapidly: Low quality, blocky, unnatural sounding text, that reads as overly formal.

Search engines are getting more and more capable of detecting "spam" content, and audiences are savvy to the peculiar nature of our written words.

Here's a clearly delineated, step-by-step approach for learning how to humanize AI content so it resonates with living, breathing human beings and ranks highly on the search engine results pages.

Follow these three steps and you'll have practical writing tips you can immediately implement into any piece of AI-generated content.

Step 1: Identify Robotic Elements to Humanize AI Content

Even before you make one change to the voice, diction and flow of your draft, you need to identify what you want to target precisely.

AI output features quite predictable syntax, robotic transitions, and overly generic claims that sounds professional but don't say much.

Recognize the telltale signals of overly generic and machine-sounding writing

Read the draft aloud - this simple thing solves a higher percentage of editing problems than any tool is capable of detecting.

When a sentence is difficult to say, people will have difficulty reading it.

Identify these characteristics:

Formats sentences in sequence (starts eight paragraphs in a row with "It is important to"...)
Overused phrases like "in this day and age" or "with that said"
Easy-to-combine-to-easy-to-read stack of passive voice new sentence after sentence
Unbalanced structure, the point, the explanation, the example, the repeat, the wait, the repeat, the wait, the repeat
Abstract statement that could be applied to the overwhelming majority of topics

Utilize this Checklist Before You Proceed

This single editing action will help identify what truly needs fixing in your draft - because you'll already know what parts to focus on.

Checklist: Go through this list for every draft you work through:

Does each paragraph actually say something specific?
Are there at least two words per sentence?
Does it sound like our brand?
Can you use an "it is" or "there are" construction and replace that with a verb?
Are there any instances where a phrase could be said on the moon, on vacation in Madrid, or at your in-laws without changing a word?

Address those areas before addressing anything else.

This one step can help you cut editing time in almost half if you already know what's wrong.

Step 2: Humanize AI Content with Personality

Once the audit stage is complete, the editing stage begins.

This step is essential because we're learning what not to do through auditing, then correcting it through editing.

Chances are, and some parts may be fairly sound; you're not looking to destroy that.

What you want to do is add the human voice, authenticity, personality, and real-world illustrations that no amount of Artificial Intelligence will ever be able to deliver.

Implant your expertise and add examples that won't make your intended readers snooze and login to Facebook.

To call generic content a big, fat FAIL is putting it nicely.

Replace so many sentences with specific facts, figures, instances and situations.

Rather than "a lot of business owners have many invoices at any given time that go unpaid because..." you could write "Before they know it, small business owners have dozens of invoices that need sending, and something else to think about on a day they want to relax."

Specific far exceeds abstract statements every time.

Apply these practical tips to re-write your draft:

Replace those lazy "it is" and "there are" intro sentences with an active verb.
Hook your facts to a number, a time, a real happening in the world
Cut long sentences into two shorter sentences, or join shorter sentences into a more graceful paragraph.
Choose plain language over formal language choices (rather than "disseminate" say "send," instead of "enable" say "help")

Find the tone specific to your audience in your desired content.

All writing has a particular tone of voice.

It's a particular balance of familiarity, formality and technical knowledge.

When someone is just getting to know you, you don't write like Dickens and speak like a rapper.

You write to your readers' existing knowledge base and level of intellect.

Pick up the writing style from places your readership enjoys, and emulate those rhythms.

If they love several newsletters about modern architecture you deliver - then write that level of prose about accounting and invoicing.

Your tone of voice will become noticeably more personalized, already sounding natural and sticking immediately and for the entire length of your draft.

Step 3: Fine-tune Human Content for Search Engine Visibility

This step isn't about sacrificing your tone of voice for a ranking.

It's about logically arranging your humanized content for your sure to be happy ranking placement with Google and Bing.

Most content that reads human doesn't usually miss the search engine boat entirely.

An added bonus: search engine-friendly content that reads easily offers the best possible experience for your humans, too.

Follow these guidelines to help your humanized content show its best face on the SERP:

Use the exact keyword phrase "humanize ai content" in at least one heading, the introduction and again at last count of one or two within the body of the article.

You'll want to sprinkle relatively related keyword phrases like "AI-generated content" and "edit AI drafts" throughout the piece, within subheadings, image tags and blocks.

Structure your humanized content for readability: use paragraphs short enough to not intimidate curious readers with big walls of text, subheadings informing the reader what to expect, sections of bullets points listing actual tips, steps or examples only, and insert the occasional direct address to the reader in the form of a sentence or two.

This formatting combined with your voice will work together for a compelling hybrid-quality article.

Conclusion

The simple truth is that AI drafts and other computer-generated content can give you a structure, some facts, and something to sink your teeth into - but human editing makes those efforts matter.

Because that's where you're human voice, flavor and ability to use real-world illustrations show through.

Take the three core steps here to audit for robotic elements, re-write with real-world voice, and fine-tune for SEO, and you'll have a clear repeatable process for producing compelling results.

Eventually, you'll feel your way through the process faster and faster, knowing instantly where your AI efforts took a wrong turn just seconds after the fact.

Pick one piece of content to humanize this week.

Execute it from start to finish comparing the original with the finished piece.

Notice the contrast with the quality of writing, and hence the audience's appreciation of it, improving dramatically.