SEO
The 10 Best AI Writers & Content Generators Compared
AI Content creation tools are becoming more widely available since the development of GPT-3 (and its release through Open.ai) has made AI much more accessible.
To see just how good AI writers are, we selected 10 of the best content generators and road-tested them by comparing their output on the same topic.
We ran our own mini Turing Test while testing the AI content generators.
We asked our audience if they could tell the difference between machine and human-generated content through social media polls.
Are machines taking over the content industry? Read on and find out!
How GPT-3 Is Shaking Up Content Creation
GPT-3, the language prediction model, was introduced in May 2020 and is widely available for public use through Open AI.
The quality of GPT-3 output was a huge leap forward from GPT-2 toward asking a machine to write intelligible cohesive content.
The downside to the development of GPT-3 and vastly improved content creation tools: How do you keep pace with the output of a machine?
Google has been looking at solving the potential issues of the predicted explosion of AI content to ensure their search results don’t become swamped with low-quality content.
They recently restated that AI content is against their guidelines and updated their webmaster guidelines documentation.
How can they distinguish between a machine and just badly written human content?
The progress and development of AI writers and content tools is only just getting started.
Private investment in AI more than doubled last year to $93.5 billion in 2021.
This means that more machine learning tools are being developed that will become more integrated into the tools we use as marketers and SEO professionals.
Meta recently announced a new research project into next-generation AI.
They aim to create an AI that processes data like humans and would be indistinguishable from a human.
When that might be available is not known.
Machine domination aside, in this article, we will review a selection of the current best content creation tools to see how they compare.
And consider how they can help us do a more efficient job.
Will AI take over the content creation industry? Let’s look at the results of the tools we tested.
AI Content Creation Tools Compared
We fed all the content generator tools we tested were fed the same subject matter to generate a similar length of output.
With a meta self-referential irony, we used the simple phrase, “AI content creation.”
We compared the use of the tool and the quality of the content output. You can see that output in each of the screenshots below.
As part of the comparison, we also ran all the content through Copyscape to check for plagiarism. Only one content generator was flagged with issues.
The difference in styles was most surprising about comparing the output from all the tools.
We half expected more similar results when running the same key phrase through an AI tool, but clearly, every generator has its own variables for how content is written. Much like a variety of human writers.
1. Writesonic
- Free version up to full unlimited price plans.
- Paid version reasonably priced.
- 24 languages.
Writesonic is built on GPT-3 and claims the machine is trained on the content that the brands using the tool produce.
The generator is based around facilitating marketing copy, blog articles, and product descriptions. The generator can also provide content ideas and outlines and has a full suite of templates for different types of content.
We found Writesonic very easy to use and it didn’t take much work to get a full article straight out of the box.
The free plan is an option to try the basic tool with the choice to upgrade to get access to full functionality.
2. Frase
- Paid only.
- Cheap plans, but the credits are expensive.
Frase is a content assistant and targeted to content marketers and SEO professionals for faster and better productivity.
The tool is structured around a framework of content brief, content writing, content optimization, and content analytics.
The tool excels for research and brief outlines and the talking points tool is useful for structuring an article. A content brief can be prepared in minutes.
For content writing, the generator doesn’t produce a full article straight out of the box, and it needs some work to get the results. But, the quality of content output is high.
Frase is a useful tool for content marketers that can help to reduce the amount of time spent on writing with a competent writer in charge.
3. Copy.ai
- Free plan and paid unlimited.
- Paid plans very cheap.
- 25 languages.
Designed to be an antidote to writer’s block, Copy.ai is a cheap and easy-to-use content generator.
Copy.ai provides templates across various content types such as blogs, ads, sales, websites, and social media. The generator also provides translation into 25 languages.
An unusual addition to their range of tools includes a baby name generator, but we didn’t manage to get any usable results for a baby name.
Although easy to use, it’s a tool for anyone producing volume content up to an average level but not for high-end content production.
The free plan is an option to try before you buy.
4. AI Writer
- Free trial and paid plans.
- Flagged in plagiarism checks.
AI Writer pitches itself as SEO-friendly, producing fresh and relevant copy that can save you 50% of your writing time.
From our test, AI Writer is an easy tool to use, and you get an article written within minutes.
However, it was the only tool we tested that our Copyscape plagiarism check flagged.
The articles from the writer were not the most fluid or cohesive, and felt much like an article spinner.
Out of all content generators tested, this tool didn’t feel like it was at the same standard of output as the others.
5. Hyperwrite
Hyperwrite’s claim is to use the most advanced AI generator. It’s one of the most basic tools to use and generate content and the only tool that is fully free to use.
From our test, we found the output to be surprisingly cohesive and fluid.
A useful part of the tool is that it can rewrite a sentence or make paragraphs longer to quickly restructure and build out content where needed.
The text output from Hyperwrite was the one that most people chose as being human written in our Turing Test on social media.
It’s also a free tool that offers some of the better quality of all the tools compared and is the perfect tool to test the ability and constraints of AI content generation.
6. INK
- Free version and full paid plans.
- Chrome extension.
INK is another AI-powered tool targeted at content marketers and SEO experts as a content assistant for faster output and optimized content.
INK has 60 templates based around advertising, growth, website, and writing, including YouTube, pain agitation, catchy subjects, and listicles.
There’s a focus on SEO and getting content to rank with tools that support optimization and a tool scoring system to rate how well your article is optimized.
In the hands of a professional writer, INK can be a useful tool to support output, but it won’t do the job for you.
The tool took some work to get the final output, which was sometimes questionable.
INK generously offers up to 10 articles free in a month, which provides plenty of scope to try before you buy.
7. Rytr
- Free plan to unlimited plan.
- Cheap price plans.
- 30 languages.
Rytr is a full AI content generation tool built on GPT-3, emphasizing generating content that converts.
The tool has over 30 templates for marketing copy, blogs, and product descriptions. It also incorporates AIDA and PAS formulas to get the best results for copywriting.
The tool was quick and easy to use and we had a reasonable quality article in five minutes.
Rytr has a free plan with access to all the tools with a limit of 5,000 characters a month. The paid plans start very cheap if you want to progress and take more advantage of the tool.
8. Snazzy (Now Smart Copy By Unbounce)
- Free plan to paid unlimited version.
Snazzy is powered by GPT-3 and their own proprietary machine learning to create a tool focused on landing page generation.
Unbounce acquired Snazzy and rebranded as Smart Copy and is now structured to complement and support Unbounce for seamless landing page creation.
A full range of tools are available, such as outlines, ad copy, product descriptions, and social media copy. But, the tool is pitched toward generating sales-led persuasion copy.
The results generated in our test for ‘AI content generation’ were somewhat unpredictable and not intelligible enough for an article. However, we didn’t test specifically for landing page copy.
Snazzy/Smart Copy offers a free plan with up to five credits a day to try to see if it works for you.
9. Long Shot
- Free version up to unlimited version.
- Eight Languages.
Long shot pitches itself as an AI-powered long-form content assistant to produce SEO-friendly content built on a combination of GPT-3 and custom AI models.
It includes over 30 tools for keyword research, rephrasing, and fact-checking, and you can write in eight languages.
From our test, we found Long Shot easy to use to produce reasonable quality content.
One interesting point: When comparing all the content output from the range of tools we tested, this was the only generator that included any brand names such as Google’s RankBrain and Buzzsumo.
This detail made the content output quite believable that it could be human-written.
Long Shot offers a free plan with up to 10 credits a day.
10. Jasper
- Paid plans only.
- 25 languages.
Jasper (previously Jarvis) claims it will help you write faster, beat writer’s block, and rank better with SEO-optimized content.
They also claim to have consulted with SEO professionals and direct marketing experts to perfect how the AI generator writes content.
Jasper has over 50 templates for producing content, including AIDA, PAS, blogs, social media, and marketing.
From our experience, Jasper is another writing support tool and not one that writes full articles without input. With guidance, the content generated from the tool is very good.
The tool is easy to use and the quality was good; however, we found the content generated was limited to short articles.
Jasper doesn’t offer any free plans, but it offers a free trial for five days.
Be aware you have to input your credit card and you will get charged if you forget to cancel.
Packages are not cheap, so you would have to max out the five-day trial to see if it was worth the investment.
The Results Of Our AI Content Turing Test
The test we ran was a simple short poll to gauge opinion and not a statistically significant result of large numbers. But, the results we found and the comments were surprising.
We provided three examples of 100 words of content, all based on “AI content creation” and created from some of the tools above. We wrote the fourth snippet.
We asked our audience, “Can you tell which one is human-generated?”
The short result is that no one could distinguish between AI-generated content and the human-written paragraph.
The reasons that people offered to justify those (incorrect) choices were quite interesting:
Out of all the comments, only a few guessed that number 4 was the human-generated copy:
See the full Twitter thread here.
From all responses across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, most people thought that number 1 was the human-written text.
The second text had the least amount of responses. Not surprising as this was not the best quality snippet of generated content.
The actual human-generated text was number 4 and came in third place in votes.
How You Can Use AI In Content Marketing
There’s a lot of experimentation happening with GPT-3 with plenty of fun tools being produced. But, look past these novelty applications to see where they can really have an impact.
Yes, you can machine generate your Twitter feed, but social media is about interaction and engagement.
Yes, you can write an article, but is it good enough to put your name to or represent your brand?
What needs to be considered with AI content generation is that a tool is only as good as the person operating it.
They are excellent for productivity and speeding up content production. But, you need someone who knows their subject and is a good writer behind the wheel to get results worthy of using.
A content marketer can take advantage of AI as an efficiency tool to make repetitive tasks easier and output faster.
In those terms, AI will become more and more seamlessly integrated into marketing.
Where AI Content Does Work
- For product descriptions at scale.
- For meta descriptions at scale.
- Sports results broadcasting.
- To support a writer’s productivity.
Where AI Content Doesn’t Work
- Producing well-researched content.
- Creating data-driven content.
- Having innovative and fresh ideas.
- Thought leadership.
Will AI Take Over Content Creation?
Although it’s now almost impossible to tell the difference between human and machine-generated content, the level of that content won’t win any journalist awards.
A tool cannot make up for a lack of knowledge or ability. It can only enhance it.
The machine generates content output from what is input; therefore, it only regurgitates; it isn’t creating new ideas.
It’s ideal for some tasks, but not for high-level well-researched content or thought leadership. And this is where good researchers and writers will become more valuable.
You can be assured that content creation will go into overdrive with AI.
You can also be assured that good quality journalist standard content with unique data, thought opinions, and insights will become the only way to get visibility and sustain an audience.
Who’s the winner of that game?
More resources:
Featured Image: ProStockStudio/Shutterstock
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SEO
Google Confirms Links Are Not That Important
Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed at a recent search marketing conference that Google needs very few links, adding to the growing body of evidence that publishers need to focus on other factors. Gary tweeted confirmation that he indeed say those words.
Background Of Links For Ranking
Links were discovered in the late 1990’s to be a good signal for search engines to use for validating how authoritative a website is and then Google discovered soon after that anchor text could be used to provide semantic signals about what a webpage was about.
One of the most important research papers was Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment by Jon M. Kleinberg, published around 1998 (link to research paper at the end of the article). The main discovery of this research paper is that there is too many web pages and there was no objective way to filter search results for quality in order to rank web pages for a subjective idea of relevance.
The author of the research paper discovered that links could be used as an objective filter for authoritativeness.
Kleinberg wrote:
“To provide effective search methods under these conditions, one needs a way to filter, from among a huge collection of relevant pages, a small set of the most “authoritative” or ‘definitive’ ones.”
This is the most influential research paper on links because it kick-started more research on ways to use links beyond as an authority metric but as a subjective metric for relevance.
Objective is something factual. Subjective is something that’s closer to an opinion. The founders of Google discovered how to use the subjective opinions of the Internet as a relevance metric for what to rank in the search results.
What Larry Page and Sergey Brin discovered and shared in their research paper (The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine – link at end of this article) was that it was possible to harness the power of anchor text to determine the subjective opinion of relevance from actual humans. It was essentially crowdsourcing the opinions of millions of website expressed through the link structure between each webpage.
What Did Gary Illyes Say About Links In 2024?
At a recent search conference in Bulgaria, Google’s Gary Illyes made a comment about how Google doesn’t really need that many links and how Google has made links less important.
Patrick Stox tweeted about what he heard at the search conference:
” ‘We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.’ @methode #serpconf2024″
Google’s Gary Illyes tweeted a confirmation of that statement:
“I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that”
Why Links Matter Less
The initial state of anchor text when Google first used links for ranking purposes was absolutely non-spammy, which is why it was so useful. Hyperlinks were primarily used as a way to send traffic from one website to another website.
But by 2004 or 2005 Google was using statistical analysis to detect manipulated links, then around 2004 “powered-by” links in website footers stopped passing anchor text value, and by 2006 links close to the words “advertising” stopped passing link value, links from directories stopped passing ranking value and by 2012 Google deployed a massive link algorithm called Penguin that destroyed the rankings of likely millions of websites, many of which were using guest posting.
The link signal eventually became so bad that Google decided in 2019 to selectively use nofollow links for ranking purposes. Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that the change to nofollow was made because of the link signal.
Google Explicitly Confirms That Links Matter Less
In 2023 Google’s Gary Illyes shared at a PubCon Austin that links were not even in the top 3 of ranking factors. Then in March 2024, coinciding with the March 2024 Core Algorithm Update, Google updated their spam policies documentation to downplay the importance of links for ranking purposes.
The documentation previously said:
“Google uses links as an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.”
The update to the documentation that mentioned links was updated to remove the word important.
Links are not just listed as just another factor:
“Google uses links as a factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.”
At the beginning of April Google’s John Mueller advised that there are more useful SEO activities to engage on than links.
Mueller explained:
“There are more important things for websites nowadays, and over-focusing on links will often result in you wasting your time doing things that don’t make your website better overall”
Finally, Gary Illyes explicitly said that Google needs very few links to rank webpages and confirmed it.
I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理/경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024
Why Google Doesn’t Need Links
The reason why Google doesn’t need many links is likely because of the extent of AI and natural language undertanding that Google uses in their algorithms. Google must be highly confident in its algorithm to be able to explicitly say that they don’t need it.
Way back when Google implemented the nofollow into the algorithm there were many link builders who sold comment spam links who continued to lie that comment spam still worked. As someone who started link building at the very beginning of modern SEO (I was the moderator of the link building forum at the #1 SEO forum of that time), I can say with confidence that links have stopped playing much of a role in rankings beginning several years ago, which is why I stopped about five or six years ago.
Read the research papers
Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment – Jon M. Kleinberg (PDF)
The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
Featured Image by Shutterstock/RYO Alexandre
SEO
How to Become an SEO Lead (10 Tips That Advanced My Career)
A few years ago, I was an SEO Lead managing enterprise clients’ SEO campaigns. It’s a senior role and takes a lot of work to get there. So how can you do it, too?
In this article, I’ll share ten tips to help you climb the next rung in the SEO career ladder.
Helping new hires in the SEO team is important if you want to become an SEO Lead. It gives you the experience to develop your leadership skills, and you can also share your knowledge and help others learn and grow.
It demonstrates you can explain things well, provide helpful feedback, and improve the team’s standard of work. It shows you care about the team’s success, which is essential for leaders. Bosses look for someone who can do their work well and help everyone improve.
Here are some practical examples of things I did early in my career to help mentor junior members of the team that you can try as well:
- Hold “lunch and learn” sessions on topics related to SEO and share case studies of work you have done
- Create process documents for the junior members of the team to show them how to complete specific tasks related to your work
- Compile lists of your favorite tools and resources for junior members of the team
- Create onboarding documents for interns joining the company
Wouldn’t it be great if you could look at every single SEO Lead’s resume? Well, you already can. You can infer ~70% of any SEO’s resume by spying on their LinkedIn and social media channels.
Type “SEO Lead” into LinkedIn and see what you get.
Tip
Look for common career patterns of the SEOs you admire in the industry.
I used this method to understand how my favorite SEOs and people at my company navigated their way from a junior role to a senior role.
For example, when the Head of SEO at the time Kirsty Hulse, joined my team, I added her on LinkedIn and realized that if I wanted to follow in her footsteps, I’d need to start by getting the role of SEO Manager to stand any possible chance of leading SEO campaigns like she was.
The progression in my company was from SEO Executive to Senior SEO Executive (Junior roles in London, UK), but as an outsider coming into the company, Kirsty showed me that it was possible to jump straight to SEO Manager given the right circumstances.
Using Kirsty’s and other SEOs’ profiles, I decided that the next step in my career needed to be SEO Manager, and at some point, I needed to get some experience with a bigger media agency so I could work my way up to leading an SEO campaign with bigger brands.
Sadly, you can’t just rock up to a monthly meeting and start leading a big brand SEO campaign. You’ll need to prove yourself to your line manager first. So how can you do this?
Here’s what I’d suggest you do:
- Create a strong track record with smaller companies.
- Obsessively share your wins with your company, so that senior management will already know you can deliver.
- At your performance review, tell your line manager that you want to work on bigger campaigns and take on more responsibility.
If there’s no hope of working with a big brand at your current job, you might need to consider looking for a new job where there is a recognizable brand. This was what I realized I needed to do if I wanted to get more experience.
Tip
Get recruiters on LinkedIn to give you the inside scoop on which brands or agencies are hiring. Ask them if you have any skill gaps on your resume that could prevent you from getting a job with these companies.
Being critical of your skill gaps can be hard to do. I found the best way to identify them early in my career was to ask other people—specifically recruiters. They had knowledge of the industry and were usually fairly honest as to what I needed to improve.
From this, I realized I lacked experience working with other teams—like PR, social, and development teams. As a junior SEO, your mind is focused 99% on doing SEO, but when you become more senior, your integration with other teams is important to your success.
For this reason, I’d suggest that aspiring SEO Leads should have a good working knowledge of how other teams outside of SEO operate. If you take the time to do this, it will pay dividends later in your career:
- If there are other teams in your company, ask if you can do some onboarding training with them.
- Get to know other team leads within your company and learn how they work.
- Take training courses to learn the fundamentals of other disciplines that complement SEO, such as Python, SQL, or content creation.
Sometimes, employers use skill gaps to pay you less, so it’s crucial to get the skills you need early on…
Examples of other skill gaps I’ve noticed include:
Tip
If you think you have a lot of skill gaps, then you can brush up your skills with our SEO academy. Once you’ve completed that, you can fast-track your knowledge by taking a course like Tom Critchlow’s SEO MBA, or you can try to develop these skills through your job.
As a junior in any company, it can be hard to get your voice heard amongst the senior crowd. Ten years ago, I shared my wins with the team in a weekly group email in the office.
Here’s what you should be sharing:
- Praise from 3rd parties, e.g. “the client said they are impressed with the work this month.”
- Successful performance insights, e.g “following our SEO change, the client has seen X% more conversions this month.”
- Examples of the work you led, e.g. if your leadership and decision-making led to good results, then you need to share it.
At Ahrefs I keep a “wins” document. It’s just a simple spreadsheet that lists feedback on the blog posts I’ve written, the links I’ve earned and what newsletters my post was included in. It’s useful to have a document like this so you have a record of your achievements.
Sidenote.
Junior SEOs sometimes talk about the things “we” achieved as a team rather than what they achieved at the interview stage. If you want the SEO Lead role, remember to talk about what you achieved. While there’s no “I” in team, you also need to advocate for yourself.
One of my first big wins as an SEO was getting a link from an outreach campaign on Buzzfeed. When I went to Brighton SEO later that year and saw Matthew Howells-Barby sharing how he got a Buzzfeed link, I realized that this was not something everyone had done.
So when I did manage to become an SEO Lead, and my team won a prize in Publicis Groupe for our SEO performance, I made sure everyone knew about the work we did. I even wrote a case study on the work for Publicis Groupe’s intranet.
I’ve worked with some incredibly talented people, many of whom have helped me in my career.
I owe my big break to Tim Cripps, Laura Scott, and Kevin Mclaren. Without their support and encouragement, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Even before that, David Schulhof, Jodie Wheeler, and Carl Brooks let me mastermind some bonkers content campaigns that were lucky enough to succeed:
I wasn’t even an SEO Lead at that point, but they gave me the reins and trusted me.
So, how can you find your tribe?
- Speak to recruiters – they might hold the ticket to your next dream job. I spoke to many recruiters early in my career, but only two recruiters delivered for me—they were Natasha Woodford, and Amalia Gouta. Natasha helped me get a job that filled my skill gap, and Amalia helped me get my first SEO Lead role.
- Go to events and SEO conferences, and talk to speakers to build connections outside of your company.
- Use LinkedIn and other social media to interact with other companies or individuals that resonate with you.
Many senior SEO professionals spend most of their online lives on X and LinkedIn. If you’re not using them, you’re missing out on juicy opportunities.
Sharing your expertise on these platforms is one of the easiest ways to increase your chances of getting a senior SEO role. Because, believe it or not, sometimes a job offer can be just a DM away.
Here’s some specific ideas of what you can share:
- Share your thoughts on a trending topic – like the latest Google algorithm update.
- Share what you learned during the course of a campaign.
- Ask the community for their thoughts on a certain topic.
I’ve recently started posting on LinkedIn and am impressed by the reach you can get by posting infrequently on these topics.
Here’s an example of one of my posts where I asked the community for help researching an article I was writing:
And here is the content performance across the last year from posting these updates.
I’m clearly not a LinkedIn expert—far from it! But as you can see, with just a few months of posting, you can start to make these platforms work for you.
Godard Abel, co-founder of G2, talked on a podcast about conscious leadership. This struck a chord with me recently as I realized that I had practiced some of the principles of conscious leadership—unconsciously.
You can start practicing conscious leadership by asking yourself if your actions are above or below the line. Here are a few examples of above and below-the-line thinking:
If you want a senior SEO role, I’d suggest shifting your mindset to above-the-line thinking.
In the world of SEO, it’s easy to blame all your search engine woes on Google. We’ve all been there. But a lot of the time, simple changes to your website can make a huge difference—it just takes a bit of effort to find them and make the changes.
SEO is not an exact science. Some stakeholders naturally get nervous if they sense you aren’t sure about what you’re saying. If you don’t get their support early on then you fall at the first hurdle.
To become more persuasive, try incorporating Aristotle’s three persuasive techniques into your conversations.
- Pathos: use logical reasoning, facts, and data to present water-tight arguments.
- Ethos: establish your credibility and ethics through results.
- Logos: make your reports tell a story.
Then sprinkle in language that has a high level of modality:
Some people will be able to do this naturally without even realizing it, but for others, it can be an uphill struggle. It wasn’t easy for me, and I had to learn to adapt the way I talked to stakeholders early on.
The strongest way I found was to appeal to emotions and back up with data from a platform like Ahrefs. Highlight what competitors have done in terms of SEO and the results they’ve earned from doing it.
Sidenote.
You don’t have to follow this tip to the letter, but being aware of these concepts means you’ll start to present more confident and persuasive arguments for justifying your SEO strategies.
When I started in SEO, I had zero connections. Getting a job felt like an impossible challenge.
Once I’d got my first SEO Lead job, it felt stupidly easy to get another one—just through connections I’d made along the way in my SEO journey.
I once got stuck on a delayed train with a senior member of staff, and he told me he was really into Google Local Guides, and he was on a certain high level. He said it took him a few years to get there.
Local Guides is part of Google Maps that allows you submit reviews and other user generated content
When he showed me the app, I realized that you could easily game the levels by uploading lots of photos.
In a “hold my beer” moment, I mass downloaded a bunch of photos, uploaded them to Local Guides and equaled his Local Guide level on the train in about half an hour. He was seething.
One of the photos I uploaded was a half-eaten Subway. It still amazes me that 50,974 people have seen this photo:
This wasn’t exactly SEO, but the ability to find this ‘hack’ so quickly impressed him, and we struck up a friendship.
The next month that person moved to another company, and then another few months later, he offered me an SEO Lead job.
Tip
Build connections with everyone you can—you never know who you might need to call on next.
Final thoughts
The road to becoming an SEO Lead seems straightforward enough when you start out, but it can quickly become long and winding.
But now armed with my tips, and a bucket load of determination, you should be able to navigate your way to an SEO Lead role much quicker than you think.
Lastly, if you want any more guidance, you can always ping me on LinkedIn. 🙂
SEO
7 Content Marketing Conferences to Attend in 2024
I spend most of my days sitting in front of a screen, buried in a Google Doc. (You probably do too.)
And while I enjoy deep work, a few times a year I get the urge to leave my desk and go socialize with other human beings—ideally on my employer’s dime 😉
Conferences are a great excuse to hang out with other content marketers, talk shop, learn some new tricks, and pretend that we’re all really excited about generative AI.
Without further ado, here are the biggest and best content marketing conferences happening throughout the rest of 2024.
Dates: May 5–7
Prices: from $795
Website: https://cex.events/
Location: Cleveland, OH
Speakers: B.J. Novak, Ann Handley, Alexis Grant, Justin Welsh, Mike King
CEX is designed with content entrepreneurs in mind (“contenpreneurs”? Did I just coin an awesome new word?)—people that care as much about the business of content as they do the craft.
In addition to veteran content marketers like Ann Handley and Joe Pulizi waxing lyrical about modern content strategy, you’ll find people like Justin Welsh and Alexis Grant exploring the practicalities of quitting your job and becoming a full-time content creator.
Here’s a trailer for last year’s event:
Sessions include titles like:
- Unlocking the Power of Book Publishing: From Content to Revenue
- Quitting A $200k Corporate Job to Become A Solo Content Entrepreneur
- Why You Should Prioritize Long-Form Content
(And yes—Ryan from The Office is giving the keynote.)
Dates: Jun 3–4
Location: Seattle, WA
Speakers: Wil Reyolds, Bernard Huang, Britney Muller, Lily Ray
Prices: from $1,699
Website: https://moz.com/mozcon
Software company Moz is best known in the SEO industry, but its conference is popular with marketers of all stripes. Amidst a lineup of 25 speakers there are plenty of content marketers speaking, like Andy Crestodina, Ross Simmonds, and Chima Mmeje.
Check out this teaser from last year’s event:
This year’s talks include topics like:
- Trust and Quality in the New Era of Content Discovery
- The Power of Emotion: How To Create Content That (Actually) Converts
- “E” for Engaging: Why The Future of SEO Content Needs To Be Engaging
Dates: Sep 18–20
Location: Boston, MA
Speakers: TBC
Prices: from $1,199
Website: https://www.inbound.com/
Hosted by content marketing OG HubSpot, INBOUND offers hundreds of talks, deep dives, fireside chats, and meetups on topics ranging from brand strategy to AI.
Here’s the recap video:
I’ve attended my fair share of INBOUNDs over the years (and even had a beer with co-founder Dharmesh Shah), and always enjoy the sheer choice of events on offer.
Keynotes are a highlight, and this year’s headline speaker has a tough act to follow: Barack Obama closed out the conference last year.
Dates: Oct 22–23
Location: San Diego, CA
Speakers: TBC
Prices: from $1,199
Website: https://www.contentmarketingworld.com/
Arguably the content marketing conference, Content Marketing World has been pumping out content talks and inspiration for fourteen years solid.
Here’s last year’s recap:
The 2024 agenda is in the works, but last year’s conference explored every conceivable aspect of content marketing, from B2C brand building through to the quirks of content for government organizations, with session titles like:
- Government Masterclass: A Content Marketing Strategy to Build Public Trust
- A Beloved Brand: Evolving Zillow’s Creative Content Strategy
- Evidence-Based SEO Strategies: Busting “SEO Best Practices” and Other Marketing Myths
Dates: Oct 24–25
Location: Singapore
Speakers: Andy Chadwick, Nik Ranger, Charlotte Ang, Marcus Ho, Victor Karpenko, Amanda King, James Norquay, Sam Oh, Patrick Stox, Tim Soulo (and me!)
Prices: TBC
Website: https://ahrefs.com/events/evolve2024-singapore
That’s right—Ahrefs is hosting a conference! Join 500 digital marketers for a 2-day gathering in Singapore.
We have 20 top speakers from around the world, expert-led workshops on everything from technical SEO to content strategy, and tons of opportunities to rub shoulders with content pros, big brands, and the entire Ahrefs crew.
I visited Singapore for the first time last year and it is really worth the trip—I recommend visiting the Supertree Grove, eating at the hawker markets in Chinatown, and hitting the beach at Sentosa.
If you need persuading, here’s SEO pro JH Scherck on the Ahrefs podcast making the case for conference travel:
And to top things off, here’s a quick walkthrough of the conference venue:
Dates: Oct 27–30
Location: Portland, OR
Speakers: Relly Annett-Baker, Fawn Damitio, Scott Abel, Jennifer Lee
Prices: from $1,850
Website: https://lavacon.org/
LavaCon is a content conference with a very technical focus, with over 70 sessions dedicated to helping companies solve “content-related business problems, increase revenue, and decrease production costs”.
In practice, that means speakers from NIKE, Google, Meta, Cisco, and Verizon, and topics like:
- Operationalizing Generative AI,
- Taxonomies in the Age of AI: Are they still Relevant?, and
- Out of Many, One: Building a Semantic Layer to Tear Down Silos
Here’s the recap video for last year’s conference:
Dates: Nov 8
Location: London
Speakers: Nick Parker, Tasmin Lofthouse, Dan Nelken, Taja Myer
Prices: from £454.80
Website: https://www.copywritingconference.com/
CopyCon is a single-day conference in London, hosted by ProCopywriters (a membership community for copywriters—I was a member once, many years ago).
Intended for copywriters, creatives, and content strategists, the agenda focuses heavily on the qualitative aspects of content that often go overlooked—creative processes, tone of voice, and creating emotional connections through copy.
It’s a few years old, but this teaser video shares a sense of the topics on offer:
This year’s talks include sessions like:
- The Mind-Blowing Magic of Tone of Voice,
- The Power of AI Tools as a Content Designer, and the beautifully titled
- Your Inner Critic is a Ding-Dong.
(Because yes, your inner critic really is a ding-dong.)
Final thoughts
These are all content-specific conferences, but there are a ton of content-adjacent events happening throughout the year. Honourable mentions go to DigiMarCon UK 2024 (Aug 29–30, London, UK), Web Summit (Nov 11–14, Lisbon, Portugal), and B2B Forum (Nov 12–14, Boston, MA).
I’ve focused this list solely on in-person events, but there are also online-only conferences available, like ContentTECH Summit (May 15–16).
Heading to a content conference that I haven’t covered? Share your recommendation with me on LinkedIn or X.
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