AI + SEO: How To Use ChatGPT For SEO Success

If you spend approximately two minutes on the internet nowadays, you’ll almost definitely see someone talking, writing, or raving about ChatGPT.

It’s on everyone’s lips but what exactly is it? And better yet, how can it help us with our SEO?

• Is this the new holy grail for organic growth?
• Is it all hype or just the latest shiny thing?
• Or perhaps it’s the tool that finally kills Google?

That’s what we’ll discuss in this post, as well as how you can get started using this tool to help simplify and improve your own SEO efforts.

Let’s dive in…

What is ChatGPT, and what’s all the fuss about?

ChatGPT is a relatively new AI tool from OpenAI: a Silicon Valley startup that’s not only raised over $1B in early investments but recently had Microsoft adding to that with a further $10B investment in the company.

$11 Billion in funding! Not bad considering ChatGPT only went live in November 2022 (although OpenAI was founded late 2015... so it's been a long-time in the making).

So why all the fuss and attention from investors?

Simply put, ChatGPT is freakin’ unbelievable!

It works like this:

You ask a question, and it’ll give you an answer. But not in a Google way where it shows the top-ranking or paid result.

Instead, it uses Machine Learning algorithms to crowdsource the information, based on tens of thousands of results and hundreds of user hours to teach it to find the correct results.

It’s not completely perfect, as you’re basically talking to a very advanced chatbot, but the more detail you give in your question, the better the response you get:

Not bad right?

It gets better, because ChatGPT is so advanced it can even write and debug code, or solve complex math problems!

The user growth of this ‘chatbot on steroids’ is nothing short of astounding.

Will ChatGPT kill Google?

There are a few schools of thought here, but it's a question that many SEOers - myself included - have been thinking about.

SEOer 1: “OH MY GOD, THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT! We might as well look for new jobs. We’re completely screwed!”

SEOer 2: “Chill out, bro. Humans are safe. We’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Me? I’m of the opinion that maybe we should explore this a bit more.

Why?

Well, on the surface, an AI-powered chatbot that answers questions like the most talented personal assistant ever does looks like a serious competitor to Google. And perhaps it is. Maybe I'll reflect on this blog post in 12 months and think, "What the hell was I on about?"

After all, ask Google a question, and it'll throw all sorts of stuff at you. Facts, images, different websites - recipes even. It tries to figure out your search intent and offers you a bunch of options to choose from.

But the difference of course is that users have to sift through the information to find what they’re looking for. No silver platters here, and that’s just talking about everything on the first page 👀.

Now let’s compare this to ChatGPT.

You can ask it a question, ask it to elaborate, solve problems, and even get it to write rap songs (not even kidding):

A Pokemon rap in under 2.5 seconds!

Not only is ChatGPT fast, and has some seriously wide uses, but the result is right there on the page and there’s no need to sift through ten results or scroll past ads to find what you need.

So is ChatGPT the new Search Engine king, and the death of Google?

Hmm, no probably not.

I don’t know about you, but unless my search is for something simple like “how to boil an egg”, or “what time is X movie showing tonight”, then I’ll often check multiple sources for any answer to a question.

Why?

Because it’s the comparison and context between multiple sources that help provide more detail, and let you find the correct answer.

Add in the fact that nothing gets to the top of Google without links (meaning that those top 10 results need to be trusted, vetted, and then cited by other websites), and it’s clear that Google is safe for now.

But just because it’s not the new search tool that we need to optimize for, it doesn’t mean that we can’t use it right now to improve our current SEO and Google-focused efforts.

Heck… ChatGPT can even map out basic SEO strategies!

Not bad right?

Well, if you think that’s handy, here are 10 other ways you can use ChatGPT to improve your SEO processes and results.

10 ways that you can use ChatGPT to help you smash SEO

Keyword Research

Ah keyword research. The bane of any SEO project, but you can’t even start planning out content to create unless you have an idea of what terms to target.

The bigger problem?

It’s that we’re almost all using and competing with the exact same lists of retroactive keywords (i.e. terms that currently show up in the SERPS). This means high competition and limited targets.

But what if we could find terms that are just starting to trend, or perhaps not even showing up in keyword research tools yet?

Well, that’s where ChatGPT can help…

#1️. Find new and relevant topics to target

For starters, it’s incredibly easy to ask ChatGPT to find you new topics around your focus industry.

“Generate a list of X popular questions related to (keyword) relevant for (specific audience)”:

Boom! Now you have a bunch of new topic ideas for a whole range of articles, or maybe a beast of a blog post with multiple LSI terms.

Either way, you probably have some new ideas that you might not find with normal tools.

#2️. Discover new keyword ideas from different language content translations

Forget being lost in translation. This method is all about ‘found in translation’!

Simply ask ChatGPT to translate common questions from one article's language to another, and see what results pop up.

“Translate the following keywords from (Source Language) to (Output Language) and generate the results in a table with two columns, with the keywords in (Source Language) in the first one and their translation to (Output Language) in the second”:

Find a huge competitor in one country and use it to find keywords and topic ideas almost immediately.

#3️. Or, generate a list of long-tail keywords

Because ChatGPT understands context, you can also ask it to find related long-tail keywords around your topic.

“Provide a list of long tail keywords about (Topic) for my blog”

Content Optimization

It’s not just keywords that it can help you with though. You can actually use ChatGPT to help you optimize your current content.

#4️. Generate titles for your page content

Have you ever been stuck trying to find a way to include a keyword in a headline, without it seeming spammy?

Well, good news! ChatGPT can help you to write that headline and insert that term, without you having to be a copywriter. Simply copy and paste your page content into the tool, and then ask:

"Generate X unique title tags - 60 characters or less - for the following text. They should be descriptive and include the term (keyword) in them:”

#5️. Generate meta descriptions for your page content

I don’t know about you, but when I finally finish an article and need to write a meta description that will show up in the SERPS under my post and drive clicks, my brain is normally pretty fried.

This results in ‘ok’ descriptions but probably not ones that can drive high clicks.

So why not cheat and use AI to help you!

“Generate X unique meta descriptions - max 150 characters - for the following text. They should be catchy with a call to action, including the keyword “Main Keyword” in them:...”

Simple!

#6️. Generate FAQs based on your content

Are you creating FAQ Schema Markup for your article and want to find questions to include in your markup HTML?

Or maybe, you simply want to improve your post by answering common questions in it, for easy traffic and added value?

Well, it’s incredibly easy to use ChatGPT to find questions already inside your page, and then pull the ideas out.

“Generate a list of X frequently asked questions based on the following content:...”

#7️. Generate a summary of your content

Or maybe you just want to write a summary of an article for a tighter introduction or social share?

“Generate an X words summary of the following content:...”

Pretty handy right?

#8️. Further content-writing prompts

We’ve covered some great uses already, but here are 5 other prompts you can use with ChatGPT, to help it find relevant context and help draft out your content:

• Write a detailed article on [keyword]
• Explain the benefits of [keyword]
• Write a detailed article on the history of [keyword] in [geography]
• Explain why a consumer may need [your product]
• Compose a short paragraph on why startups should invest in [product or service]

A word of warning on using this tool to write your content.

Let it help you to find draft ideas, but don’t use the tool to write the entire post (more on this in a second).

Technical Optimization

#9️. Generate Hreflang tags for you to use as templates for your site pages

Want to streamline your current international SEO efforts?

You can use ChatGPT to help create the Hreflang tags for your new pages!

“Generate the hreflang tags to feature in pages targeted to the (X country) in (X language), (Y country) in (Y language), and (Z country) in (Z language) ...”

Et voila!

Link Building

#🔟. Generate popular and relevant sites for outreach

Got an awesome article that you want to share with other site owners, so that they might love it and link to you, but not sure what those sites are or where to find them?

Well, you can use ChatGPT to find those sites for you, and then do your outreach.

“Recommend X popular blogs about (website industry) that cover (X topics), along with their URLs”

Simple!

Alright, so we’ve covered a lot of SEO and ChatGPT use cases, but are there any limitations or disadvantages of using this AI tool?

Limitations of ChatGPT

Let’s start with an obvious one.

Limitation #1: ChatGPT doesn’t pull data from Google or the internet, so its responses may only sometimes be accurate.

Open AI say so themselves:

“ChatGPT is not connected to the internet, and it can occasionally produce incorrect answers. It has limited knowledge of the world and events after 2021 and may also occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content.”

ChatGPT doesn’t currently tell you where it’s pulling information from and doesn’t provide sources. As a result, its responses are questionable. There's only one way to fact-check what it spits out: copying and pasting it into Google, and that kinda defeats the point, though, right?

The results are also linked to the quality of requests. Type nonsense, and it'll do the equivalent of "computer says no":

So Google has the edge on this one. It can decipher your crazy typings and be helpful at spellchecking (although even Google may struggle with the one above).

tl,dr

While future ChatGPT models could ask clarifying questions, the current model is a “best guess”. You have to give the context.

Also, if you tell it that 2+2=5, it will eventually agree with you, so bear in mind that the results may need some further research.

Limitation #2: ChatGPT doesn’t know about current events

At least the free version anyway! This means that the data it uses is based on events before 2021, and there are no daily updates.

This lack of up-to-date data means that you need an alternative if you want to use an AI chatbot to create factual content about current events.

What like?

Well you could try out Chatsonic by Writesonic, which is another similar AI tool.

Not only does it keep up on relevant events, but it can also do similar things as ChatGPT (for a price) and create AI art images!

It’s worth taking a look at if you want to squeeze the SEO performance of your news site.

Limitation #3: ChatGPT content can be identified by Google

Google is hella smart.

It's worth saying this now because some content creators think they can outsmart this tech giant by churning out completely AI-generated content.

I hate to tell you this, but Google knows everything.

It knows when you're writing a unique piece of content and when a tool like ChatGPT is writing it for you. Not only can it find and determine duplicate content thanks to its huge index of over 60 trillion pages.

Add in the fact that ChatGPT was trained on a small section of the exact same public resources that Google has access to (i.e. articles, websites, and books), and it’s easy peasy for the tech giant to find that duplicate content.

Why care?

Because duplicate content is against Google’s guidelines, which can result in deindexed pages and lower rankings.

Here’s what Google’s Search Advocate, John Mueller, said during a Google Search office-hours hangout in April 2022 when asked about AI content:

“… For us, if you’re using machine learning tools to generate your content, it’s essentially the same as if you’re just shuffling words around, or looking up synonyms, or doing the translation tricks that people used to do…

“Maybe the quality of content is a little bit better than the really old school tools, but for us, it’s still automatically generated content, and that means for us it’s still against the Webmaster Guidelines, so we would consider that to be spam.”

Therefore, if Google’s advanced algorithms smell a rat and suspect your content is auto-generated by an AI writer, your website’s SEO will suffer.

So remember that businesses should use AI-based technologies to complement human writers - not replace them.

Editor’s note:

ChatGPT and Open AI are even working alongside Search Engines now to help provide signals to Google of when content has been used to create content!.

This means it will actively identify and alert search engines to the fact that your content came from an AI tool, which I have to imagine, will affect trustworthiness and rankings.

Why?

Because Google is all about authoritative content right now.

Limitation #4: Yawnnnnn

Writing content fodder that no one reads is all well and good, but if you want to write content that people actually share with others, ChatGPT falls short because it just don't have that sizzle!

What do I mean?

Well, while GPT can generate content and readable text, it doesn’t capture the imagination and nuance of human writing. Instead, it’ll struggle to capture your tone of voice or be original.

Don’t get me wrong, ChatGPT is way ahead of other AI when it comes to replicating humans, it’s just that ChatGPT wouldn’t think to toss the word bombastic into a sentence because “why not”.

Limitation #5: ChatGPT can only deal with informational intent

While ChatGPT can easily handle how, where, and why type searches, it needs more fine-tuning before it can work on commercially-focused queries. For example, it can't offer product reviews or price comparisons.

Obviously this leaves a little room to be desired. However, if we search the exact same thing on Google, our world opens up.

We see various hotels with prices, reviews, and images, and this is because Google understands all types of search intent - not just informational.

Simply put, commercial search intent is hard for ChatGPT to compete with right now.

Limitation #6. High demand!

Thanks to it acquiring 1 Million users in 5 days, there’s been a tiny bit of increased demand on the ChatGPT servers.

This has meant wait times and delays but if you’re happy to drop some cash, they now offer a paid subscription option to both jump the free queue, and get early access to new features.

Takeaways and recap

So here’s the killer question: Should ChatGPT be part of your SEO stack?

For content research purposes, knock yourself out!

Writers can use ChatGPT as a research tool that gathers information and spits out ideas. Just remember to fact-check what it says on Google.

ChatGPT can also help with keyword research, content optimization, and some elements of technical optimization, such as writing Hreflang tags.

Should you use ChatGPT as a content writer?

Probably not.

Although writing content with ChatGPT may seem like a clever way to "game the system" and produce content at scale, it will do more harm than good, and Google knows.

They may not penalize you today, but they have a habit of keeping an eye on sites breaking best practices and nuking them to the ground. With this in mind, I strongly recommend against creating AI-written content for SEO. Instead, use it as a tool - not a replacement.

Maybe use the tool to get a rough idea of what to cover in a post, then dive deeper and restructure, but don’t just paste it across. It gets tagged and it won’t be of value to your audience.

Heck, that curated content might not even be relevant anymore. The irony being that ChatGPT would struggle to write about itself, as it’s trained on content from before its own release.

Finally, will AI take your marketing job?

No, not just yet.

Sure, the time may come when some SEOers are out of jobs, but for now, I think we’re safe.

And let’s be honest. If ChatGPT becomes the new search engine, well we’ll figure out how to optimize for that also. And of course, there will always be people who want us to use the tool for them 😉.