For several weeks now, the same promise has been looping on LinkedIn: AI to automate content publication and SEO, a blog on autopilot. Writing, images, internal linking, publishing: everything is automated. The proposition is attractive.
A post I came across today sums up this topic well:
RIP manual WordPress publishing. Claude Code + MCP just automated everything. Writing. Optimization. Images. Publishing. Everything is replaced.
And the result is mind-blowing. → 12 SEO articles published automatically → 0 minutes of manual publishing → Images created and optimized → Internal linking managed by Claude → Published autonomously while I work on something else
Free. Open source. 5 minutes to install.
I see variations of this almost every day. But I ask myself: what if, by wanting to automate content publishing for SEO, we were actually killing this very pillar of SEO?
On paper, it's appealing. The workflow is highly efficient:
- Claude Code connects to WordPress via an MCP server.
- It writes the article based on a keyword or a brief.
- It generates and uploads images, with optimized alt text.
- It manages internal linking with existing articles.
- It publishes, without human validation.
And technically, it works and is easy to install. I too have built two MCP servers for my SaaS to connect AIs like Claude to my applications' data and tools.
But the automated publication of content by AI raises the problem of a loss of quality and interest in the content published on the web.
A web filling up with flavorless content
We talk about AI slop, AI-generated content produced en masse, optimized for search engines and recommendation algorithms, but completely devoid of human intent.
WIRED explains that the blogging platform Medium is being overrun by AI posts, with the CEO's stance perfectly summarizing the era: "it's not a big deal as long as no one reads them".
The mechanism is simple:
- The content is calibrated for engines, not for humans.
- It checks all the SEO boxes (keywords, H2s, alt text, internal linking) without bringing anything new to the table.
- It multiplies at a speed no human writer can match.
- It drowns out, through sheer volume, articles that are genuinely thought out, written, and lived.
Each automated article, taken in isolation, isn't necessarily bad. But twelve a week, on every site, from every AI "pro"? We end up just making noise. A lot of noise.
Google didn't wait to react
Alongside this explosion, Google has changed its face.
First, by increasing, year after year, the space given to sponsored ads at the top of the SERP. The "natural" blue links are pushed ever further down.
Then with the arrival of the AI Overview. The numbers are quite staggering: Heroic Rankings reports that the AI Overview now appears on roughly 55% of Google searches. Flowtrix estimates that organic CTR has dropped from 18% to 64% depending on the industry for informational queries. In other words, even when you rank first, you lose two-thirds of your clicks.
And in April 2026, at the Google Search Central Live Toronto, Danny Sullivan (Director of Search at Google) was particularly clear:
Using AI to create content
- Generative AI can be useful when researching a topic and to add structure to original content.
- However, using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users may violate Google's spam policy on scaled content abuse.
- For more, see our "Google Search's guidance on using generative AI content on your website" page.
You can find the full presentation slides in this detailed recap.
Google doesn't say "AI is evil". Google says: producing many pages without adding value to the user is spam. And that is, word for word, what these LinkedIn posts offering automated content publishing are promising.
And ultimately, wouldn't this technique be Google's best argument to promote the AI Overview and kill traditional web search?
The paradox: proving Google right
This might be the cruelest irony of the story.
For years, SEO relied on an implicit contract: I produce useful content, Google sends me visitors. This contract held up as long as the blue links were the best gateway to information.
Today, if the top ten blue links of a search become interchangeable, hollow, and generated by the same AI, why would the user click? They read the AI Overview at the top of the page, get their answer, and close the tab. Google can then say, with a hand over its heart: "we just summarized what the web was already offering".
And behind this, there is another, more vicious loop: the models that power the AI Overview, ChatGPT Search, and Perplexity also feed on the web. When this web fills up with recycled, pre-chewed content optimized for them, the AIs learn on the outputs of AIs. A downward spiral where no one brings any substance anymore.
SEO automation pros are validating Google's vision of providing an AI-generated answer. They are sawing off the branch that SEO sits on.
What now?
I don't believe SEO is dead. But I do believe yesterday's recipe (a well-calibrated article + a few links = visitors) is no longer enough.
What will remain visible, I think, is what AI doesn't know how to do: embodying content. Not stacking keywords, but putting a face, a voice, and an experience behind what is published. Genuine field feedback, a strong opinion, a specific anecdote, an owned mistake. The kind of things that Claude has a hard time publishing for you.
And we need to rely more and more on other channels: LinkedIn, YouTube, podcasts, newsletters. Being present where humans still recognize other humans, rather than in an ocean of interchangeable pages.
Except that the same AI gurus are already flooding these channels. Mass-generated LinkedIn carousels, YouTube videos with TTS voices and avatars, threads written by AIs. The same volume logic, already copy-pasted elsewhere.
So perhaps the only path left is to keep writing, filming, speaking, the way we always have. More slowly, more imperfectly. But authentically.
And you, how do you manage to still be heard amidst all this noise?
📌 If you want to talk about local SEO, content, or visibility strategy in the era of generative AIs, discover my Local SEO consultant services.