We’ve only begun tapping into the potential for using machine learning and artificial intelligence in SEO and marketing.
ChatGPT is capable of participating in discussions and answering questions in a manner that’s scarily close to a human.
It can write essays, fictional stories, poems, and even ad copy – which is enough to make professional writers and content creators a little worried.
It can be used to create content accurately enough that the New York City Department of Education has already banned its use amidst fears of cheating.
It can also be used as a search assistant, providing answers to queries in clear and concise formats to save users from combing multiple web pages to find answers to their questions.
As an SEO professional, this may sound a little scary.
But embracing AI technology rather than worrying about it could be a good move.
There are many ways you can use it to streamline your work and make redundant or repetitive tasks more efficient.
Let’s look at how cutting-edge SEO pros are already using ChatGPT.
Ways That SEO Pros Are Already Putting ChatGPT To Work
1. Creating Content
Creating content can be a hassle, particularly if you don’t have a skilled writer on staff.
Can ChatGPT do this for you? Well, it can, but you should probably avoid using it to write webpages and blog posts. So don’t go firing your writers just because you think you can save a buck by just using ChatGPT for all your content needs.
In 2022, Google Search Advocate John Mueller said in no uncertain terms that the search engine views content created using artificial intelligence to be spam, a violation of the company’s guidelines.
At the moment, Google algorithms can identify and penalize AI-generated content, even that which uses anti-detection algorithms.
This is because AI-generated content has a digital watermark attached to it, much like how a stock image has a watermark logo before you license it.
However, everyone can safely use ChatGPT to create content for social media posts, email pitches, landing page copy for PPC, or even ad copy. It can also be a great brainstorming tool.
As long as you’re careful, ChatGPT could help streamline many redundant content tasks like ad variations, but you must always carefully check any generated content, as it may contain inaccuracies.
2. Keyword Research And Analysis
Okay, so you’re not willing to risk the penalties of getting caught using ChatGPT to create content. That doesn’t mean you can’t leverage its power as part of your content strategy.
ChatGPT makes keyword research practically effortless.
All you need to do is open the chatbot and type in a few of your target keywords, and ask for related ones. ChatGPT will crank out a list of related keywords based on its understanding of search results.
To try out this functionality, I searched a list of keywords relevant to a banking software provider.
A short while later, the chatbot presented me with a list of keywords and phrases that might have taken me much longer to come up with via traditional keyword research.
You can also use it to determine the competition for various keywords.
3. Content Strategy Development
While it doesn’t return granular plans (though you could probably ask for those), it does provide a high-level set of tactics for content related to a specified field.
One caveat that springs to mind about employing a chatbot-created content strategy is the concern that your closest competitors may do the same thing. Thus, you’re all creating nearly identical blog posts about “the benefits of AI,” “how AI SaaS can improve efficiency,” etc.
While AI such as ChatGPT is extremely efficient for time, it also turns your piece of art (content) from a hand-painted Picasso to a page from a printer.
4. Generating Good SEO Titles
Ask any writer, and they’ll tell you titles are one of the most difficult things to write, particularly for SEO purposes. All too often, they end up as dry things like “How To Build Backlinks” or some boring equivalent.
To spice things up, I asked ChatGPT to give me a list of titles for a page on backlinking, and it responded with ten options, all of which were more interesting than my “how to” line.
ChatGPT is an extremely impressive tool. And it’s easy to get carried away in the excitement, or fear, of what it offers and could eventually do in the future, particularly for SEO.
Just with the small sampling of the functionality discussed above, it could potentially save you hundreds of hours every year.
However, it’s not without its drawbacks. For one thing, as it is currently operating, it draws on data from no later than 2021, which means it’s unable to provide any information on current events. And let’s be real. If you aren’t up-to-date on digital marketing trends, you’re already losing.
It’s probably safe to assume that a later version of the chatbot will remedy this issue, but we still don’t know how long it will take for the AI to learn about new events and relate them to other topics.
Finally, being someone who grew up watching the Terminator movies, there is always the worry of ChatGPT becoming self-aware and enslaving humanity. To be on the safe side, I confronted it directly.
ChatGPT is cool, and all signs indicate that it is only going to get better.
It shows the potential to make search engine optimization much faster and more efficient. But you are still going to need that human element for your SEO, so if you need help with that, don’t hesitate to reach out to us for a free consultation.