Using ChatGPT for SEO

ChatGPT is considered the most potent practical AI tool of today. The self-learning model and the development pace of this OpenAI-developed tool are astonishing.

How can you apply ChatGPT for SEO? In simple words, it can make it better, faster, and cheaper! Artificial Intelligence is applicable to all areas of search engine optimization and marketing practices. Yet, it is especially good in strategic planning, research, and data gathering, which means it has great potential to save a lot of resources for you!

We have already written about how to use AI for content generation and AI-based search optimization before. So, this article will become the next step in diving into this topic deeper. ChatGPT does not only help with SEO analysis and content structuring but can also be useful for boring detailed jobs like formatting, meta tags generation, searching for particular images for a ready article, and much more.

What Is ChatGPT?

How to Start Using ChatGPT?

How to Use ChatGPT for SEO?

 -Keyword Research with ChatGPT

 -Writing SEO-Optimized Article with ChatGPT

 -Improving Existing Content with ChatGPT

Technical SEO with ChatGPT

Areas Where ChatGPT Will Not Help Much

Can You Use ChatGPT-Generated Content without a Google Penalty?

Conclusion

So, what is ChatGPT everyone is talking about today? And how is it going to change the future of marketing and SEO? This is an artificial intelligence assistant, something really new and revolutionary game changer. If it took Facebook 10 months to reach its first million users, ChatGPT reached it in 5 days!

This chatbot offers an open-source programmable model which has access to the knowledge of the whole world. ChatGPT can answer any question in any language. Just to give you an idea, ChatGPT was not coded to answer questions in a particular way. On the contrary, this is a self-learning model which is designed to interact with a user in a conversational way. This creates a feeling of having a true, human-like assistant for any general or professional area!

Luckily, ChatGPT is still a free tool, so you can register a free account. To do that, you need to follow the steps below:

1. Go to the dedicated webpage of OpenAI website and click the “Sign Up” button (mind using VPN in a country where the service is not yet available). Follow the wizard providing the information listed below.

2. Provide your email address and create credentials.

3. Provide your first name and last name and verify your phone number.

4. Ask your first question to the bot to check its work.

After your registration is finished, you will see the below main screen of ChatGPT, which explains its capabilities, offer examples, and mentions limitations (which are all clickable):

The left menu from top to bottom offers:

• A button to create a new chat

• A history of your previous chats

• A button to clear your interaction history

• A list of available settings and configurations

The central part of the screen also allows one to immediately start a new conversation with ChatGPT by asking a question in the search field and clicking enter. Examples of questions to ask are:

• What is the best SEO tool?

• How to change the world with AI?

• How to cook pancakes?

• What are the most important XXX topics to write about?

• What are the most popular questions people ask about YYY?

ChatGPT is useful for keyword research, writing an SEO-optimized article and improving existing content, creating featured snippets for articles, and analyzing backlinks. It can also help with technical SEO such as ULRs, multilanguage, page speed, and code analysis. Lastly, ChatGPT can help create microtools for improved user engagement on the webpage.

Keyword Research with ChatGPT

As always, the first step to start SEO using ChatGPT is doing your keyword analysis. Keywords help understand what content should be prepared, what is exciting and useful for the website visitor, and what content will have sufficient search volume. To make ChatGPT help here, what we need to start with is typing the question “What are the most important topics to write about THEME?” where THEME is the main knowledge area of your business, your service, or the topic of your website. And to push the enter button.

In this step, what ChatGPT will answer with is the list of topic ideas, which can be used as blog content ideas for full articles or just as headings within a content block. These ideas can be applied when you are creating your content plan for the next period or just as an inspiration for the content writer and existing content updates.

To continue with keyword research from here, use a keyword phrase from each line and insert them into your SEO analysis tool currently in use to check how much traffic volume each of them generates. When finished with gathering volume data, export your analysis results into an Excel sheet for the comfort of use.

Of course, you can do vice versa, too. Put each keyword spotted to the table, and check its search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC (cost per click), PPC (pay per click) competition, and social domains where it is used the most. This information gathered in one place will allow you to make your decisions about what to write, how to write, and also how to promote it if you are going to include paid SEO strategies for the article in the future.

When done with keywords from the first list, go back to ChatGPT and ask, “What are the most important keywords when writing about SUBTHEME1” for each line of the previous AI response, so that you get an even longer list of keywords for your keyword ranking analysis. Continue your analysis of the keywords until you feel you gathered enough material.

The more detailed questions you generate with each repetition, the longer search phrases you can spot, ultimately gathering the long-tail keywords which fit your end users’ intent when they are really close to a point-of-purchase. In addition, the “Tell me more about XXX” question answer from ChatGPT can truly be used as a basis for your future article and save a lot of copywriter’s time.

Remember that the better query your prepare for ChatGPT, the better article you get as a result. A “tell me more about XXX” will most probably result in just a single wiki-like informative passage. So, don’t hesitate to add extra requirements and list more details to be included in the text to get a better outcome.

Similarly, you can ask ChatGPT to help you plan and structure your content for various snippets. Ask it, “What are the most popular questions people ask about THEME?” or “What are the most popular questions people ask about SUBTHEME?” and use the obtained response for your website’s FAQ section. Remember to format it properly, so that Google could display it as a featured snippet in SERP.

Moreover, you can even ask ChatGPT to help you generate content for the FAQ section’s answers. Ask it, “Please answer question 1” and use the response as a base for your writing, saving time from manual research.

One more, but not the last, option of how ChatGPT can be useful for content topic generation is inserting the list of existing articles published on your website into the chatbot and asking to offer more topics based on this input. Here, you can be more creative and also insert the list of articles’ titles prepared by your competitors or experts in the field, etc. same is applicable if to ask ChatGPT to generate ideas of how to update an old article in the blog or expand a limited content plan. Feel free to request to “regenerate response” any time you don’t like what ChatGPT responded to.

In addition, you can similarly apply ChatGPT for press releases and/or ask the chatbot to analyze current Google Trends in a particular region.

Writing SEO-Optimized Article with ChatGPT

Generating an article

Another area to apply for ChatGPT assistance is content generation. Using the keywords generated before, we can create a list of required subtopics and insert them as a request to write an article about. Mention you want to have it SEO optimized. Feel free to expand the initial request for article generation by checking LSI requests, FAQ questions, or even referring to an existing piece of content such as a competitor’s published blog post or a YouTube video. Extra requirements added can include a bullet-point list with advice, a certain number of subtitles, or whatever you feel creative to ask for. Mind mentioning the desired length of the article and making it SEO-optimized for the browser(s) of your choice.

Of course, it takes a while of sitting and watching ChatGPT to write the article like a true human content writer would be typing it live for you. The article does not appear fully at once, you need to be patient. Yet, the speed of content generation is obviously higher than anywhere else. You will doubtfully find a person being able to create content as fast as chatbot ChatGPT does, and does for free!

If the AI bot stops in the middle of writing your article, the reason might be a limited amount of content or a limited duration of generation allowed per user per period. While some experts recommend just waiting, we advise you to type “continue, please” and ChatGPT will go on finishing your article immediately. If you don’t want to ever face this issue, upgrade your chatbot plan to ChatGPT for $20 per month and enjoy faster response speed, priority access, and increased service availability.

Optimizing the article

After the main part of the article is ready, ask ChatGPT to generate meta tags: a meta title, a meta description, a short description for social media, etc. Social media preparation for posting might also include the generation of a short introduction or a teaser/subheader. So, feel free to ask your new intelligent assistant to generate an intro for Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. After ready, these can be used during article publishing and the sitemap generation.

One of the disadvantages here is that ChatGPT does not know that the meta title should be 60 characters maximum, and the meta description - 160 characters maximum. If you asked it to generate meta tags without an extra remainder, it is recommended to check the resulting length.

Then, ask to search for images to be added to the article to make it look nicer to the visitors. Of course, you could use DELL-E directly, or you can save your time and ask ChatGPT to do that for you instead.

If you are not ready to explain what images you need for the article, or having just pictures is not enough, you can add an extra step of asking ChatGPT to create an assignment of generating infographics for the article to enrich the content's usefulness. Then, you can copy-paste this assignment either back to the chatbot or go to another external service.

After the images are found and chosen, you can also ask ChatGPT to optimize them by generating image titles, alt tags, and descriptions.

One of the extra steps in this process can also be a request to generate 3-10 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for your article as well as answers for them. A valuable feature available is the subsequent creation of an SEO-friendly markup for this FAQ section. Ask ChatGPT to do so, and you will get a ready code.

Because ChatGPT is still a beta-version software, we recommend rechecking the markup correctness with a Google service. There are no mistakes in the current version, so it can be published on the website right now.

Following the same principles, you can request “People Also Ask” section content, a product description, a product or service review, re-organizing the content you already have, and much more.

Proofreading the result

Unfortunately, the quality of custom-written articles prepared by ChatGPT still needs improvement. So, it is highly recommended to proofread them thoroughly, check for plagiarism and fluency of consumption for the end-reader, and general professionalism if it should look like an expert opinion in the field. Use tools like Grammarly for improved writing style and readability, if this article will be published in your website’s blog. Save your time, money, and resources and publish as is, focusing on a very good task setting in the beginning, if it’s just a link-building article.

Now, your article is ready to be published where intended.

Improving Existing Content with ChatGPT

For existing articles, you might want to improve and SEO-optimize, you can just copy and paste the full text into the ChatGPT window and ask to revise, proofread and make it more professional.

What you will receive as a result will include better wording and formatting, an improved introduction and overall content structure, and even added a section with extra content.

When and if you are happy with the article quality reached, you may proceed by asking some SEO questions. One of them is: “Please tell me which keywords and LSI keywords were missing in the previous article for good SEO?” The response obtained can be used then for

Last but not least, you can request to generate a schema markup for this article and ensure that its current formatting is correct and up-to-date for today’s SEO.

Technical SEO is probably the most complicated part of SEO knowledge and activity. You have to understand coding, and different programming languages like HTML, PHP, CSS, AJAX, JavaScript, JAVA, etc. There is a server side of your website, a user-side, and much more, and what are Google’s expectations about website technical functionality, health, and performance to enable successful crawling.

In this area of expertise, ChatGPT is still emerging. Definitely, paid SEO services that have been existing on the market for a long time do this job much better. Yet, there are some tasks that can fairly be outsourced to this AI tool. These include questions like:

• Is this URL optimal for SEO? <pasted URL> (You will get a recommendation about using certain domain types, hyphens, and keywords, and ChatGPT will also comment on its length and complexity/simplicity.)

• What is technically wrong with webpage <pasted URL> for SEO and how to make it crawled? (You will get results of technical diagnostics)

• What can I do with this page <pasted URL> for better technical SEO performance? (You will get recommendations about any technical issues, webpage load speed, how to optimize code for SEO, etc.)

• Are my “hreflang” tags okay on the website <a list of pasted URLs with language tags>? (If correct syntax: You will get recommendations about how these tags should be properly used. If incorrect syntax: You will be told what attributes are missing or used incorrectly.)

Honestly, these tasks are usually already embedded into SEO tools SEO professionals use. So, ChatGPT’s assistance with technical SEO will be more beneficial for small businesses which cannot afford to pay much. Of course, another important benefit here is that you can analyze a single website and ask why it is not being crawled well and how to fix that.

The SEO areas where the ChatGPT chatbot does not help much yet are backlink analysis, deep technical SEO analysis of the website, full SEO diagnostics, full keyword analysis, and keyword clustering. One should not expect the chatbot to provide detailed analysis of keyword frequency, keyword competitiveness, and popularity, the search intent of a search query, or any other sort of deep SEO analysis and diagnostics

There are weird things that can happen when you ask ChatGPT to generate content for you. The tool can make mistakes that decrease content correctness. Especially low quality is noticed for regional and local-specific assignments. The reason for that is, the chatbot is more concerned about the presentation form than about the facts behind it. Moreover, if you ask for sources of data provided, ChatGPT will always provide the sources. However, if clicking on the links, you may find out that the mentioned research simply doesn’t exist. Correspondingly, it is rather risky to use autogenerated content for your website even not from a technical but a reputational perspective. This is also why several educational institutions across the world have already prohibited its use for the study process - ChatGPT is associated with inaccurate information and plagiarism at the same time.

With regards to Google, the same approach is valid here, as ever before. Automatically generated content obtained from a chatbot will not be ranked high because it is inaccurate content. Don’t copy-paste articles created by ChatGPT. Check the facts, let a human proofread and revise them, and ensure the article has new information and is useful for the reader. Then, this content will be ranked high and Google will reward you for high-quality information provided for its users.

To sum up the above, AI ChatGPT offers numerous opportunities for SEO specialists. Its topic analysis can be used for content plan creation and content structuring as well as input for your primary SEO keyword analysis.

As usual, we recommend you keep experimenting and continuously seeking new ways how you can benefit from SEO ChatGPT in all areas of your professional and even private activity. Search engine optimization is a creative profession, and so is AI development. While artificial intelligence continues its self-learning, we should go on with checking where its assistance saves our time and where it is to be further developed before the quality is sufficiently high. Don’t forget that, while ChatGPT is actively gaining popularity today, your competitors start using it, too. So, don’t be in a rush to automatically generate and publish low-quality articles which were never proofread by a human. At least, this approach will not demonstrate respect to your visitors and potential clients for now.

Experts say that while this OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT isn’t a direct competitor for Google, it is changing the SEO landscape because it introduces a new way of search performance. Microsoft is already actively integrating ChatGPT into its products, so one may soon expect a changed search behavior in known Bing browsers and more.