Does AI Actually Reward Quality Content?

For well over a decade, SEOs and marketers have debated the importance of high-quality, original content. After just about every major update, the message from Google was clear: If you want to rank, cut it out with the derivative listicles and other quick-churn assets that are big on keywords and light on substance.

More recently, our current understanding of how LLMs select which sources to cite in responses has SEOs and content marketers championing high-quality, original, and in-depth content with renewed fervor. If you want AI to identify your content as the best source with which to answer a user’s query, logically, it must be among the best online content available on the topic.

While that’s all great in theory, I’m sure many of you reading this have experienced that crushing disappointment on publishing, only for it to sink like a stone with barely a ripple. Somehow, your magnum opus languishes on page 4 of the relevant search results, outranked by content that, in your humble opinion, isn’t that remarkable.

Can we really call something high quality if it doesn’t achieve the strategic outcome that led us to create it?

Even when our content succeeds, there’s still the nagging worry that we might perhaps be investing too much time and money trying to achieve content perfection. Did that white paper really need to be 10 pages? Or would a simpler, five-page version have done just as well?

Might it be possible to achieve the same results with a little less quality? How do we find the sweet spot? In short, what’s the minimal viable product?

I’m not going to pretend to have the answer. And that’s because the question isn’t clear on what we mean by quality content.

A Question Of Quality

I’m as guilty as anyone of writing about the need for high-quality content as if it’s obvious what it is and how to achieve it without any further explanation. It’s a form of industry shorthand that has become increasingly meaningless through overuse.

Ask 10 CMOs, SEOs, and content marketers to define what they mean by high-quality content, and you’ll probably get 15 different answers.

Is “quality” determined by thought leadership and subject matter expertise? Or can a few average thoughts be elevated to high quality with skilled writing, a strong layout, and some clever design work?

Is “depth” characterized by longer word counts and more detailed research? Or is it really about demonstrating a superior understanding of a topic by exploring more nuanced or highfalutin’ ideas? Never mind the graphs, can you somehow weave in some Ancient Greek philosophy to get the point across?

And how much originality adds up to “original”? If you reference someone else’s work, are you somehow detracting from your own originality score?

While I can’t confidently give you a single, unambiguous definition of what high quality is, I can tell you what it isn’t: While it may be important, high-quality content is no silver bullet.

Just…