If you're one of the many businesses treating SEO as a magic wand, stop. There are countless examples of poorly optimised websites and uninteresting blog posts that have been written solely for SEO purposes. We're in 2025, and search engine algorithms are far too advanced to reward poor content.

What Is Poor Content?

The quality of a piece of content is subjective. But when it comes to search engines, content may be considered poor or low quality if:

  • It is thin, short and lacks depth around a certain topic
  • It has been duplicated from another website
  • It has been written by AI or contains grammatical errors
  • It contains examples of poor SEO practices like keyword stuffing

Can SEO Fix Poor Content?

In short, no, you cannot use SEO strategies to fix poor content. There are several reasons why but here are three of the main reasons why SEO won't fix bad content.

SEO doesn't directly impact conversions

Let's imagine a best case scenario where your poorly written, uninteresting, valueless blog post is ranking first on Google. You may argue that SEO has fixed your poor content in this instance, but what is going to happen once users land on your piece of poor content? They're probably going to bounce, and that's if the meta title is interesting enough for them to click on the post in the first place. Simply put, poor content won't drive conversions, whether it's ranking first or not ranking at all.  

Poor content will be punished by Google

Gone are the days of being able to outsmart Google and other search engine algorithms. Recent updates give preference to content which is created for humans rather than search engines, so content must be optimised while still offering value to those who consume it.

You could partner with the best SEO agency in the world, but if you are providing them with content that has been written by AI or stolen from elsewhere, they won't be able to stop it from being penalised by Google.

Google understands when people aren't interested in content 

If you are using titles as clickbait which leads to boring or generic articles, your content may have a clickthrough rate to be proud of (this is a percentage found from dividing impressions by clicks). Unfortunately, this will be nullified by a lack of user engagement. 

Google is smart enough to understand when users are interested in a certain piece of content, and content that isn't driving interest will likely struggle to gain visibility. That's why it's important to create original content and consider creativity as well as SEO optimisation.

How to fix bad content

The simple solution is to create content for users rather than search engines. But it is also important to consider ranking factors, so you'll need to find the balance between the two. If your budget allows, consider handing your content reins over to a content marketing agency that will be able to ensure your content hits the mark in terms of quality and visibility.