Good Enough Is Dead
AI made competence cheap. The only thing left that wins is perspective, experience, and proof.
THANK YOU to this week’s sponsors: CDSEO Shopify Plugin and North Star Inbound. Please support these sponsors as they keep this weekly content free.
AJ Kohn wrote about “Goog enough” back in 2023, and he was right then. Fast forward to 2026, with AI everywhere, and it’s even more true now.
Rewind a bit further to 2012. Wil Reynolds stood on stage at MozCon and told everyone to do “Real Company Shit.” The room loved it. People nodded along. Then most went right back to checklist SEO the moment things got hard.
That’s the pattern. We recognize what matters, we just don’t follow through.
Which brings us to today. Good enough is dead.
So what’s your differentiator? What are you doing that AI can’t replicate?
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by CDSEO Shopify Plugin
CDSEO is unlocking the full potential of Shopify SEO
“I get pitched tools all the time. Most of the time, I pass. Not because they’re bad, but because I don’t have the time. I made an exception here, and I’m glad I did.
CDSEO is a must-have if you’re running on Shopify. It doesn’t just surface issues; it actually lets you fix them at scale. No more clicking into page after page to make the same update.
What stood out most was the ability to create and inject content directly into product and collection pages. That alone is a game-changer.
CDSEO is unlocking what Shopify SEO should have been all along.”
The Floor Got Lifted Overnight
AI didn’t suddenly make people smarter. It made baseline output easier.
Everyone now has access to good-enough copy, ideas, image generation, and my personal favorite: an on-call editor. Things that used to take time, effort, or experience can now be generated in seconds.
The result is a massive flood of “good enough” content. It reads fine. It checks the boxes. It looks polished… but it ALL. FEELS. EXACTLY. THE. SAME!
That’s the shift most people are missing. The advantage isn’t in using AI. Everyone has it. People are still celebrating quality standards from years ago, before AI leveled the playing field.
The reality is the bar has risen. Good enough doesn’t cut it anymore.
The gap between average and great didn’t disappear. It became a lot more obvious.
Most People Are Playing the Wrong Game
Most people aren’t competing on outcomes. They’re competing on tools.
Everyone is flexing the same stack. Same platforms. Same prompts. Same “AI-powered” workflows like it’s some kind of differentiator. Don’t believe me? Open your favorite social platform and scroll for 30 seconds. Someone is selling you the dream of becoming an instant millionaire with AI. Just buy his course!
That’s the noise.
The real shift is this: the target is no longer quality. It’s not about publishing 10 blog posts a month or covering every keyword your tool spits out.
Quality is now the baseline. The challenge is differentiation.
No, prompt engineering isn’t differentiation. It’s table stakes. Saying “we use AI” isn’t a value prop. It just tells me you’re doing what everyone else is already doing.
That’s the problem most people still don’t get.
If your pitch sounds like everyone else’s, it doesn’t matter how you got there. No one cares how the work was produced. They care if it stands out, drives results, or actually says something worth paying attention to.
Right now, too many people are focused on how fast they can produce something instead of whether it’s worth producing at all.
No one cares how you made it. They care if it stands out and performs.
What AI Can’t Replicate
So what does differentiation actually look like?
If you’ve followed me on Twitter/X or LinkedIn, you’ve probably heard this story before.
I got fired. Then the next role was eliminated because of COVID-19.
If you want the full version, I wrote about it here: FIRED to 165k in 8 months. For everyone else, here’s the TL;DR.
Getting fired sucked, but it also opened my eyes to how business really works. It was a hard lesson, but an important one.
A few weeks later, right after Christmas, I landed another role. For a short stretch, I was collecting two paychecks. Then COVID hit, and that job disappeared too. Same lesson, second round.
That was the point where I decided I was done letting other people control my ability to provide for my kids. It pushed me into freelance SEO consulting with a goal bigger than survival.
I wanted to build something that could support my family, create real upside, and give me control over my own calendar. I haven’t missed a kids’ event since.
Fast forward to 2023. Peter Askew, yes, the onion guy, reached out about partnering on SEOJobs.com, and I was instantly hooked. I wanted to help build the resource I wish had existed when I got my ass fired and laid off years earlier. Funny enough, we initially connected over the shared experience of losing our jobs.
By 2025, as the sole owner, SEOJobs.com drove more than 200,000 sessions. And the message behind it has stayed the same across social posts, podcasts, webinars, and anywhere else I get to talk about it:
I never forgot what it felt like to lose a job, and now I’ve built something meant to help people going through that same situation.
Notice how none of that came from a prompt.
The worst professional experiences of my life became part of my brand, my perspective, and my credibility. That’s the point. The things that actually differentiate you are usually messy, personal, and earned.
Why “Safe” Content Is Losing
Safe content used to work.
Follow best practices. Cover the keywords in your copy. Don’t say anything controversial. Hit publish.
Safe now means generic. And generic is exactly what AI is great at producing. Clean, structured, technically correct… and completely forgettable.
What used to drive clicks at scale now often doesn’t get shared, cited, or remembered. It doesn’t stick. It blends in with everything else competing for attention.
And both search and LLMs are evolving to reflect that.
They’re not just looking for “quality” anymore. They’re rewarding signals of trust, uniqueness, and perspective. Content that gets referenced by people. Content that gets talked about. Content that actually adds something new to the discussion.
If your content could be written by anyone, it will be ignored by everyone.
Playing it safe used to feel smart. Now it’s the riskiest move you can make.
The New “Quality” Standard
You don’t get credit for being “solid” anymore.
Solid is expected. Solid is baseline. Solid is what everyone can produce now.
If you want to stand out, you need to say something clearly, back it with real experience, and make it worth someone’s time.
That’s the new bar.
If your content doesn’t teach something, challenge someone, or actually stick in someone’s head… It’s not good enough.
Not because it’s wrong. Not because it’s poorly written. Because it’s forgettable and forgettable doesn’t win anymore.
“Good enough for Google” used to work for rankings.
It doesn’t anymore.
Everyone agrees with this… right up until it requires more effort than a simple prompt. Then it’s back to “10 blogs a month” and calling it strategy.
~Nick
North Star Inbound runs one integrated growth system:
Strategic SEO and GEO, Digital PR, and Conversion copywriting
Case study proof: our top 5 posts drove 144,712 sessions in a 9-post pilot and led the blog for conversions, including 224 conversions and 217 phone calls from one post!