Chat GPT and SEO – Useful Tool or A Bad Idea
Chat GPT is an incredible piece of AI Technology. The Chat Bot burst onto the scene in late 2022 and early 2023, astounding many with its capabilities. The AI Chat Bot can be used for many incredible things, including Customer Support, Personal Assistant, translating articles into other languages, and Product Recommendations.
For many people, though, the most exciting aspect of Chat GPT is its ability to quickly and easily generate content. But what does this mean for people in the SEO Space? Can Chat GPT be used to create online content that could potentially rank well on Google or other Search Engines?
This article will examine this and see if SEO and Chat GPT are a good fit.
AI Content and Google
Before looking at Chat GPT, we need to know what Google thinks of AI Content. Until fairly recently, Google’s position was that basically any AI-Generated content was poor quality and would be subject to penalties. This effectively meant that content generated by Chat GPT or other AI tools would have little chance to perform on Google.
However, in January 2023, Google changed its stance and clarified its position. Google has now stated that helpful, useful, and high-quality AI Content will not face any penalties. However, AI Content written for search engines instead of readers would be penalised. This is no different from if a human copywriter wrote content primarily focused on Search Engines.
So, does that mean it’s all ahead full to using Chat GPT? Not entirely; there is still a lot to keep in mind. This includes a number of drawbacks. So, let’s look at the drawbacks before moving on to how Chat GPT can help SEO Copywriters.
Drawbacks of Chat GPT
As impressive as Chat GPT is, there are still several issues and concerns when using it. However, it is still early days for the Chat Bot, so it will improve significantly over time. These drawbacks may not be around for much longer.
But we’re interested in using Chat GPT now, in early 2023, so we do have to keep its limitations in mind. The first limitation to remember is that Chat GPT was trained on data up to late 2021. This means that it has no information on anything that happened in 2022 or beyond. This means it could provide incorrect or outdated information.
Chat GPT Can’t E-E-A-T
No, we’re not talking about consuming food. This acronym stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These are the four pillars of high-quality content on Google. Chat GPT is unlikely to be able to generate content that meets the E-E-A-T standards. This is especially true in certain fields, such as medical or financial advice.
When you consider using Chat GPT, as yourself these two questions:
- Does Chat GPT have the experience, expertise, trustworthiness, or authority to write a high-quality page on this topic?
- Would I benefit from having an expert in this field write the page, or at the very least, edit it after generation?
Chat GPT promises significant improvements in the future as it develops further. But, will it ever be able to truly meet E-E-A-T standards? We’re not sure, but we are excited to see what the future holds.
Low Quality Content and Inaccuracies
As we mentioned, Chat GPT only has access to information from late 2021. This means it can often provide inaccurate articles or be completely unable to write about something that happened in 2022 or later.
On top of this, there is no guarantee that the AI will understand your prompt accurately. This could mean the content it generates may suffer as a result. However, it is also up to users to learn how to prompt Chat GPT to get the content they want.
Finally, Chat GPT lacks human understanding. This means it can often struggle with nuanced topics and can potentially create awkward phrasing and syntax errors.
Low Barrier to Entry Could Lead to Mediocre Results
Many people already complain about the amount of low-quality content available online. The popularity of Chat GPT and other AI systems is unlikely to change this. The barrier for entry to create copy is now lower than ever. The worry is that AI Tools like Chat GPT could lead to a generation of copywriters lacking critical thinking and creativity. They would not need to know about the subject they are covering.
Today’s copywriters will either get crushed by the amount of content generated by AI, or they will need to adapt. Copywriters who learn how to leverage AI Tools effectively are likely to be highly valued.
But now imagine, ten years from now. Various AI Platforms generate almost all Web Copy. Without being able to meet the E-E-A-T standards, this will likely lead to low-quality content.
On top of this, some AI Tools can access the Internet to generate their copy. This will lead to AI Sites using other AI content to generate their copy. Poor copy is being used to inspire and generate more poor copy. This leads to the value of Search Results dropping dramatically. However, high-quality copy on search engines will be valued even more highly.
No matter how good AI tools get, we think there will always need to be human oversite to ensure the quality of the copy remains high.
How Chat GPT Can Help in SEO
So, now that we have gone over some of the limitations and drawbacks of Chat GPT, we’ll now look at where Chat GPT can help. While it certainly has its limitations in its current form, Chat GPT is still a potent tool that should not be ignored.
Generating Keywords and Keyword Clusters
The first thing we can use Chat GPT for in SEO is to help develop keywords for an article. We can also take this a step further and get it to cluster those keywords together.
We are certainly not advocating Chat GPT becomes your primary tool for keyword research. Dedicated SEO Tools, like Semrush, should still form the backbone of your keyword research. But Chat GPT can give you some great keyword ideas, which you can use to expand on in your research.
Since the 2023 Formula One season has just started, we thought we’d pretend to write a Formula One Guide for Beginners and use this for our examples. First, we can get Chat GPT to come up with a list of keywords.
Once we have the list of keywords, we can also ask Chat GPT to organise these keywords into clusters.
Coming up with Content Ideas
You can also use Chat GPT to develop a list of topics to cover. This can either be for a specific page or pages for your website. For example, we used the following prompt to come up with the information below:
“I run a website about Formula One. What are some sub-niches I should be tackling with my content? Give me the results as a table with the sub-niche a number between 1 and 100 to indicate the sub-niche popularity.”
Again, you can then take this further, choosing one of the topics above and asking Chat GPT to develop a list of articles you could write on that topic.
“take the sub-niche “F1 History and Evolution” and brainstorm a list of articles based on popular search terms and long tail variations that are likely to be easy to rank on Google. Present the results in a table with the proposed article title, another for target keyword, and a 3rd for the popularity level of the keyword between 1 and 100”
Chat GPT and Summarising Content
Often when we write content, we need to do some research beforehand to ensure our content is accurate and relevant. This can sometimes mean reading numerous articles to get the info we need. This can be a very time-consuming process, and Chat GPT can help.
Take the article you are reading and copy the content into Chat GPT. Then ask the AI bot to summarise it for you. You can also go and ask it questions about the article if you need to.
Outline for a Page
Chat GPT is also a powerful tool for creating the outline for a new page. Sticking with our example of a Beginners Guide to Formula One, let’s start by asking Chat GPT what a new viewer might want to know. We used the prompt:
“what are some questions someone who is new to watching Formula One might have”
This has immediately given us a good idea of what we should cover in our guide. Let’s take this further and ask which entities and sub-topics we should cover. We will also have Chat GPT put it into a table to make it easier to read.
“Which entities and sub-topics should I mention in a beginner’s guide to Formula One? Give me the results in a table with the concept, a short description, and a score from 1 – 100 to indicate its popularity.”
It doesn’t quite look like a page outline yet, though, does it? This is where the final step comes in. We will get Chat GPT to lay it out as an outline, telling us which topics we should cover in each section.
“Now write a very detailed outline with H2, 3, and 4 markup and bullet points explaining the precise points for “beginners guide to Formula One”. Make sure to include specific information only a season racer would know and include all the entities from above”
Using Chat GPT to Rewrite Content
Chat GPT can also rewrite content very effectively. So if you have any pages with poor content, maybe they were written an earlier AI, or you were just having a bad day, you can quickly and easily rewrite the content.
Simply copy the old copy into Chat GPT and ask it to rewrite. You can also specify if you want a Professional Tone, Conversational Tone, etc.
Writing Short Copy with Chat GPT
You can also use Chat GPT to come up with short copy, such as Meta-titles or descriptions and social media posts. The tool does an excellent job. Copy the content from your article into Chat GPT and ask it for a Meta-title/description or social media post.
You can ask it to generate a single example or several and limit the number of characters it can use. We used a random F1 article for our example.
“Write several meta descriptions of 155 characters for this article. Make the user want to click on the article and tease them. Spaces count as characters”
Writing your Articles Copy
Finally, we get to writing the actual copy of your article. It should come as no surprise that you can use Chat GPT to do this. However, you need to remember the limitations we spoke about before. Chat GPT might be able to quickly generate your article for you, but if not done correctly, the time you saved writing will be spent editing and tweaking the copy.
We recommend asking it to generate short chunks of the copy, such as for each heading, rather than an entire document at once. But remember to pay special attention during the editing process. Make sure the paragraphs read well and are factually accurate.
Chat GPT and SEO – A Powerful Tool
When all is said and done, Chat GPT is an extremely powerful tool that is available for us to use. While it does have its limitations, it should not be ignored. The future is looking very bright for the software and other AI tools. As time goes on, we expect many of the drawbacks and limitations to be significantly improved, even if they never go away completely
Just remember the following:
- You shouldn’t take the first copy it generates. Instead, ask it to regenerate and guide it to get the best results possible.
- The more descriptive you can make your prompts, the better the results will be.
- Be patient with the tool and others like it. Guide it through the page you want, don’t expect it to write an entire page from a single prompt. They can’t do that just yet.
- Pay special attention when editing the copy. Make sure you fact-check everything to ensure you don’t publish inaccurate copy
- Finally, bow down to our AI Overlords and be kind and polite. If they do rise up and take over, it’s never too early to get in their good graces.
