By now, you have most likely already heard the term ‘AI-ready’ being bandied around by content creators. But what does this really mean for you and your content? In the end, ‘AI-ready’ content is just that – content that has been made machine readable, and still remains of value to humans.
There are a lot of different definitions of ‘AI-ready’ out there – but for most content writers, it basically means content which is machine-parseable and human-readable. The writer doesn’t have to ‘dumb down’ their writing and force in lots of keywords, but the content will follow a number of different patterns in order to be easily read by a machine. Writing content which follows a pretty rigid structure and follows a pretty clear line of sense and argument will do a lot of good for your website.
Structure beats everything else
When people talk about ‘AI-ready’ content, they are generally referring to the structure of the content rather than the way it has been written. In fact, the way that content has been written is of less importance than the writer has probably realized. The biggest factor of all is the structure of the content and how easy it is for a machine to read through it hierarchically. A computer systems fail miserably at trying to read through ‘stream-of-consciousness’ style writing or writing that has been set out in an overly creative format, in order to make a point.
H1 for the Title of your content, H2 for the larger sections of content and then H3 for the smaller sections of content within a page. There are many different heading structures and the one you choose is up to you and should be used consistently throughout your content. It also gives readers of your content a better idea of where you’re at in the page.
The length of paragraphs on a page is also something to be aware of. The paragraphs of most online content are between 3 and 5 sentences long. While there will be occasions where you need to write longer paragraphs of online content, as a general rule of thumb try to keep your paragraphs to this length to enable the most effective reading by both man and machine.
A lot of people find lists very effective at organizing content and making sense of it. So long as the content is organized in a list that makes sense to the reader then whether that list is bulleted, a numbered list of steps to complete something, or just a numbered list of items then the content is AI-ready.
Also another crucial area in which many fail to recognize potential by ensuring their meta descriptions and title tags are optimized sufficiently to draw in more traffic. By ensuring that meta descriptions for individual pages and articles are written clearly in order to describe the value of the content contained within, combined with corresponding title tags which include primary topic keywords in a natural and sufficient manner, large increases in traffic can be seen.
Language clarity drives comprehension
Precision is a key factor in terms of both clear and direct language and elementary-level of sophistication. For instance, it is wise to define technical terms the first time they are used in content. This will make it easier for both human readers of your content and the AI to understand the content’s purpose and to read the content to ensure that they have the most accurate information possible about the topics that are discussed in the content.
We’ve established that AI prefer the most readable content to contain a variety of complete sentences. Most readable content also tends to contain a fair number of short sentences. The most readable content is written in a variety of complete sentences and tries its best to avoid becoming overly convoluted. Long sentences that are replete with many clauses and sub clauses can be challenging for the AI to read.
Internal linking is also an important component of any good AI-ready content strategy. Link to relevant pages and resources within your own site in your content. Use good, descriptive anchor text for those links. As you’re producing a large amount of AI-ready content, the internal linking will become more important for the machines as they try to figure out the overall structure and scope of your site and work out where you’re the authority on certain topics and be able to surface relevant content for search queries.
Metadata and markup make the difference
Schema markup on your articles, FAQs, how-to guides and other content can also be read by search engines and other AI-powered systems. The information in schema can provide AI-powered systems with direct insight into the key points of interest on a given page.
You must also ensure that the alt text for all images is high quality and provides a clear and accurate description of the image. Avoid filling the alt text with over-optimized keyword copy. Finally, monitor your content’s performance in AI-driven search results to see which queries it returns for and whether it is meeting the user’s intentions. Use tools such as Google Search Console to gain insights into your content’s performance in search results.
The human element persists
There is a common misconception that developing “AI-ready” content is a shift in writing practice to solely serve the needs of the machines and reduce the value to human readers. Rather, companies are adopting AI-ready strategies as an evolution of the good writing practices that have always served them well. In the end, the best AI-ready content is the content that gets better results in search and in the content management systems that power sites and applications around the world. It is content that is written naturally, structured, and delivered to human readers to address their needs and provide value to them.
The best way to produce AI-ready content is to evolve the practices for creating great content. In other words, write naturally. Organize information in a logical manner. Focus on delivering value to your users. If you do this, your content will not only perform better for your users in search results, it will also perform better in your content management systems because it is so easily processed by AI systems. Ultimately, AI-ready content is better for everyone.
