Death of a Copywriter: The Rise of the Automated Content Spinners

As automated content spinners become more and more advanced, an SEO copywriter could be forgiven for starting to worry about his or her future job prospects. I'm not going to disclose too much personal information here, but I'm sure you won't be surprised to discover that my annual wage is significantly larger than $47 a year.

Just this morning, I've been shown a content spinner with a user-updatable database of synonyms. The software identifies all words in a document for which a synonym exists in its database, and allows users to choose an appropriate word from a list of suggestions. This is a far cry from the standard free spinners, which turn sentences like this:

"With a particular focus on getting you good results in Google, our SEO consultants offer you the full complement of SEO services."

Into sentences like this:

"By means of a fastidious spotlight on understanding you first-rate marks in Google, our SEO consultants tender you the jam-packed balance of SEO armed forces."

Can a Content Spinner Replace an SEO Copywriter?

No. Absolutely not. I know what you're thinking, "you would say that," so I'll not only make this assertion, I'll jolly well prove it.

Whilst I would never advocate such spammy tactics, I can see how online content spinners could be useful for SEO consultants interested in submitting 'unique' content to article sites for the purpose of securing links.

However, when it comes to the bread and butter of an SEO copywriter's day, and by this I mean blogging, creating content for client's websites, press releases and so on, your average (even your above-average) spinner would be completely useless.

As a client, you can't give a content spinner a brand brief; you can't make revisions to its work; you can't ask it to think again, because it didn’t think in the first place. Crucially, to actually take advantage of the time-saving nature of a content spinner, you need the raw materials to spin in the first place.

For instance, if your business employed no copywriter, but had a content spinner, and you needed to create a new page of content for a solicitor's homepage, first of all you would have to find a page of content online from a solicitor advertising exactly the same services as your client. You would then have to use the software to create a page of copy that matched the tone and quality your client had specified and submit it to them for approval. If they weren't happy with the results, you would have to make further revisions in light of their comments - by which time you may as well have written the content yourself. Any benefit of the content spinning software you have purchased would be completely lost.

We Will Soldier On

As is true of many situations in life, there's no substitute for a human being (if you've ever used a robot cashier in a supermarket, you'll know what I'm talking about). Unless content spinners become infinitely more advanced (we're talking A.I.), they're no substitute for a copywriter.