The 6 Worst AI-Generated SEO Recommendations We Have Ever Seen

We love AI. We use it every day. But when business owners ask AI chatbots for SEO advice without any context or expertise to filter the results? Things get wild.

We’ve collected the worst AI-generated SEO recommendations we’ve encountered, either from clients who followed AI advice before calling us, or from our own testing. These range from “that’s not how it works” to “please, for the love of Google, do not do that.”

1. “Add Your Target Keyword to Every Sentence”

One client showed us a ChatGPT conversation where they asked for help optimizing a page about roof repair. The AI suggested using the phrase “roof repair in Phoenix” in literally every paragraph. The resulting content read like a broken record:

“If you need roof repair in Phoenix, our roof repair in Phoenix team provides the best roof repair in Phoenix has to offer.”

This is keyword stuffing, and it’s been a Google penalty trigger since approximately 2012. The AI wasn’t trying to be malicious. It just took the concept of “keyword optimization” to an absurd extreme because the prompt didn’t include guardrails.

The real advice: Use your target keyword naturally, 2-3 times in a 1,000-word post. Focus on variations and related terms instead. We covered proper keyword usage in detail if you want the right approach.

2. “Create 50 Location Pages With Identical Content”

A dentist asked an AI tool how to rank in multiple nearby cities. The recommendation? Create a separate page for every city within 30 miles, changing only the city name in each one.

So they ended up with 50 pages that were 95% identical, with only “Springfield” swapped for “Shelbyville” and so on. Google detected this as duplicate content almost immediately. Instead of ranking in 50 cities, they ranked in zero.

The real advice: Create location pages only for areas where you have a genuine presence or can provide unique, relevant content. Each page needs distinct content about that specific area.

3. “Write 500-Word Blog Posts Every Day”

An AI tool recommended that a two-person landscaping company publish a 500-word blog post every single day to “maximize content output and domain authority.”

Let’s do the math. That’s 3,500 words per week. 15,000 words per month. For a business owner who also has to mow lawns, manage employees, and handle billing. The result? Three weeks of thin, rushed posts followed by total burnout and no posts for six months.

The real advice: Quality over quantity, always. Two well-researched, genuinely useful posts per month will outperform 30 thin posts every time. We explored this in our content strategy guide.

4. “Buy Backlinks From a Directory Service for $99”

Okay, the AI didn’t exactly say “buy spammy links.” But when asked about link building, it recommended a specific service that turned out to be a link farm selling links from sites with names like “best-business-directory-2024-seo.com.”

Those links don’t help your rankings. They can actively hurt them. Google’s algorithm is very good at identifying paid link schemes, and the penalty is a significant drop in rankings.

The real advice: Build links through genuine relationships, local partnerships, and quality content. Our post on link building for local businesses covers tactics that actually work.

5. “Set Your Meta Description to Exactly 155 Characters With Your Keyword Twice”

This one is technically not wrong, but it misses the point entirely. An AI recommended a client obsess over hitting exactly 155 characters in their meta description and cramming their keyword in twice.

The resulting meta description was an unreadable mess that no human would want to click on. Meta descriptions aren’t a direct ranking factor. Their job is to convince people to click. Writing one that reads like it was assembled by a robot defeats the purpose.

The real advice: Write meta descriptions that make people want to click. Include your keyword naturally, stay under 160 characters, and focus on communicating value. Think of it as a tiny ad for your page.

6. “Disavow All Your Backlinks and Start Fresh”

This was the most dangerous one. A business owner told an AI that their rankings dropped and asked what to do. The AI recommended using Google’s disavow tool to disavow ALL their backlinks and “start fresh with a clean link profile.”

The disavow tool is a scalpel, not a chainsaw. It’s meant for removing specific toxic links, not nuking your entire backlink profile. Following this advice, the business owner would have thrown away years of legitimate link-building work.

Thankfully, they called us first.

The real advice: Only disavow specific links you’ve confirmed are spammy or harmful. And honestly, most small businesses never need to use the disavow tool at all. Google is pretty good at ignoring junk links on its own.

Why AI Gets SEO Wrong

AI tools are trained on vast amounts of text, which includes outdated SEO advice, bad SEO advice, and advice that was correct for enterprise sites but terrible for small businesses.

When you ask AI for SEO help without providing specific context about your business, your market, and your current situation, you get generic advice that may be outdated, overly aggressive, or flat-out wrong.

AI is a fantastic brainstorming partner and time-saver. But it needs human expertise to filter its output. As we found in our AI vs human content test, the best results come from combining AI capabilities with human judgment.

The Takeaway

Use AI tools for SEO ideas and inspiration. Don’t use them as your sole strategic advisor. And if an AI recommendation sounds too easy or too aggressive, it probably is.

Tired of guessing whether your SEO strategy is solid? Talk to a human who can give you advice tailored to your actual business.