--- title: "The Importance of Human Experience in Content" url: https://adtech.lol/articles/669b8611-e852-4ac8-81cd-6996ab2fbf0b source_url: https://searchengineland.com/human-experience-content-differentiator-496574/ source_site: searchengineland author: "Angela Skane" published: 2023-10-03T00:00:00+00:00 tags: ["SEO", "Content Marketing", "Human Experience", "E-E-A-T"] publisher: AdTech Radar --- # The Importance of Human Experience in Content > As skepticism grows towards AI-generated content, incorporating human experience and expertise becomes essential for brands to stand out and earn trust. ## Introduction SEO content was previously judged according to a fairly short checklist: the right keywords, the right structure, and the right depth. Now, AI can do all of that in a matter of minutes. It can generate strong headers, cover the same topics, rank on page one, and tailor an article to a specific audience. What it can’t do, however, is provide a real quote from a real person who’s lived the problem you’re writing about. As people grow increasingly skeptical of AI-generated content, infusing content with human expertise and experience becomes a real differentiator. Brands that publish competent but generic content blend into a sea of other competent but generic content. But brands that inject something only they can provide, like a subject matter expert’s insight, a proprietary data point, or a customer’s actual story, stand out, earn trust, and get cited. Human experience in your content is how you avoid becoming forgettable, and memorability is part of what makes content — and a brand — persuasive. Human experience and expertise are the most accessible tools available, and the material already exists inside your company. ## Average is the baseline, not the bar Average content covers the basics. It answers the right questions, uses optimized headers, and hits the right keywords. It can even be tailored to a specific scenario or audience. But if everyone uses AI to hit that same bar, everyone eventually starts to look the same. The same H2s. The same writing cadence. The same examples. The same telltale phrasing. Just take a look at your LinkedIn feed — you’ve almost certainly seen this. Now imagine being a consumer and trying to make a decision while experiencing this. It’s exhausting and gets you nowhere. Publishing average content isn’t a quality problem. It’s a memory problem: No one’s going to remember average. And a brand nobody remembers loses visibility, trust, and eventually conversions. ## Human-written and human experience aren’t the same Let’s get this out of the way: A human can write a piece of content that lacks human experience. A writer can produce a smooth, accurate, well-structured article with zero unique insights. They can also produce a generic, clunky, and inaccurate article. Functionally, it’s no different from what AI would generate. It just took longer. What makes content stand out has nothing to do with who created the content. It comes down to whether the content contains something no one else could have produced. That’s good news for content teams because it means not every writer needs to be a subject matter expert. Instead, writers need to know how to find an expert and build that into their process. ## What human experience in content looks like Three types of sources cover most of the human experience available to content teams in all industries. ### Subject matter expert quotes While AI can produce something that sounds like expertise, it can’t describe a specific call that came into your support line that inspired a new product launch, or the exact moment someone made a product decision and why. Those specifics make a reader feel like they’re getting something real instead of a general observation dressed up as advice. ### Business statistics This data doesn’t necessarily require a research team. It can be as simple as insight into who your customers are, what they’re buying, or trends you’re uniquely positioned to see. For example, I work for a domain registrar, which means we can report on which top-level domain registrations are spiking. We offer our own numbers — truth only we can provide. ### Customer stories Review platforms, Trustpilot widgets, and testimonials pulled into a blog article or landing page all cover ground AI can’t fabricate or generalize convincingly. People are fatigued by the AI-generated content thrown at them daily. They crave a real human connection, and you can give them that by highlighting what real customers say about you. People buy from people, or brands, they trust, and trust is hard to build when a reader can’t tell if there’s a real person anywhere at your business. ## E-E-A-T isn’t just for YMYL content anymore This claim might start a new debate, but at least we’ll have something to argue about other than the AEO/GEO divide: Every industry should master E-E-A-T signals because that formula will enable brands to stand out among the sea of AI slop. While not a ranking factor (yet), for other industries, these criteria spell out how to make your content better than the rest. If you’re working on a tax advice article, citing a CPA’s advice isn’t optional — it’s required for trust and compliance. Putting a name and title behind a claim changes the nature of that claim, as the content is now advice given by someone with real authority in the space. So why wouldn’t you be doing this in the SaaS space or a beauty space? Those titles, decades of experience, and awards all carry experience and authority — no matter what industry you’re in. ## Content with human experience in action At my company, we built a quote library. This library is a running database that stores every quote made by subject matter experts when we talk to them. It allows us to reuse a quote across multiple pieces of content instead of using it just once and setting it aside. Our highest-converting piece, a guide on what to do after purchasing a domain name, features dozens of quotes from experts across our company throughout the article. We optimized the article for the keywords we were targeting, researched competitor rankings, made sure nothing basic was missing, and tailored the structure to the keyword, but every recommendation also carries an explanation from an expert of how it works, why it works, and what to watch for. This strategy works even when the writer isn’t the expert. Think of how journalists approach a story. They conduct the interview, then they write and work in quotes where they enhance the narrative and land the emotional beat. Your writers can work in the same way. ## Including human experience in content without slowing everything down While this approach might seem difficult at first, it’s achievable if you find the right implementation method. It starts with one person and a system. ### Start with one person Find one subject matter expert inside your company (or on the client side if you’re an agency), and build a relationship. Keep the ask small with just one or two questions at a time, answerable over email. Make it easy enough that they say yes the next time, too. ### Build a shared quote database Give your team a place to log every quote, insight, and expert response as it comes in. This will allow you to reuse each one instead of losing track. We use AI in a supporting role for this. It checks the existing library for anything relevant to a new article and flags where a follow-up question would be helpful. The human element stays human, and AI helps us keep track. ### Make it routine Treat sourcing quotes as a standard part of the research process, the same way you treat keyword research or a competitor scan. Once the database exists, challenge your team to land one expert quote per article. Ask what questions they have or what they want an expert to clarify. If you’re a leader, open the doors for your team to do this. ### Don’t wait on it Sometimes, content needs to publish on schedule before the quote comes back. Go ahead and publish it, then follow up and add the quote later. ### Ask for permission liberally If you’re already on a call gathering background for an article or you’re sitting in on a product call, ask if you can pull a quote from the transcript. Most people say yes, especially when there’s no extra work involved. The worst thing that happens is the answer is no. ## Build relationships that lead to better content A good reporter has sources everywhere: someone at the city commission, someone in the industry, and someone available for a quick reaction. Content teams need the same network, and building it takes deliberate effort. It doesn’t happen as a byproduct of writing enough articles. Content teams can’t operate in isolation and rely only on AI. They need relationships across the business — from product and sales to support and leadership — and someone actively opening those doors instead of waiting for connections to happen on their own. Building those relationships takes time, but the payoff is a steady source of original insights that competitors can’t easily replicate. And as AI makes competent content easier to produce, those insights give readers a reason to choose yours. Source: [https://searchengineland.com/human-experience-content-differentiator-496574/](https://searchengineland.com/human-experience-content-differentiator-496574/)