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The In Search SEO Podcast
Hey and welcome to episode two in a three-part series discussing what SEOs need to know about Chat GPT. In this episode, we’re looking at how SEOs should be using Chat GPT in practice. I’m joined by Julia McCoy from Content at Scale, Ellen Conning from Salience, and Alizée Baudez, SEO consultant.
In this post, our panel explains practical tips on how to use Chat GPT for SEO, including
- Using Chat GPT to create SEO-optimized content
- When using Chat GPT to generate seed terms, how accurate is the information?
- How Chat GPT will change how consumers use the web and how it impacts SEO
- What are the limitations and drawbacks of using Chat GPT?
Using Chat GPT to create SEO-optimized content
Alizée, I asked Chat GPT to provide me with some questions to ask my guests during this conversation. Which one of the questions piqued your interest?
Alizée: The one I’m going to pick is the one about content generation, more specifically, I would go a bit sideways and go on to content ideation. The question is formulated as “How can Chat GPT be used to generate content that is optimized for SEO?”
For this, I actually used the tool in a pretty precise way for a whole content strategy I did for a client a few weeks ago. I had this keyword research to do. And the topic was a bit tricky because I wasn’t really used to that kind of industry. So it was a bit new for me. And I asked it to list the topics. It was all about employer brands, like how you make sure your brand recruits good people, etc. That was the big problem we were trying to solve. And with the whole great resignation movement in the US and things like that, I started doing a little bit of research. So I said to Chat GPT, “Hey, we are trying to go the other way, not go towards the resignation but to go away from this with this brand. What topics should I research for my keyword research? What kind of terms should I use as seed terms to search for in SEMRush? And that would provide content that will provide answers that will actually be useful for candidates.
It was a tricky situation, I have never really worked with this kind of topic before. And it gave me a really interesting list that was just reusing topics of the great resignation, like work-life balance and things like that, and just taking the contrary, but formulating it in a way that users would actually search for it. Because being self-employed, I haven’t been confronted with those issues in a while. So it was interesting for me to see that point of view. And then I use those terms and then I asked it to organize them and to provide synonyms. And from that, I did my whole keyword research with all that data.
Once I had my keyword research, I also had an issue with localization, because we were targeting only the US and we had loads of keywords coming up from other places. So I just gave it the list and said, “Sort out any localization that is not US-based,” which would have taken me hours to do. And it did it for me. And it was so easy. And those little bits of things that made my keyword research super valuable. And from there, I took the main keywords I wanted to use and generated content ideas for the client with a short description for each including the goal for this content is to talk about this, about that, the tone we want, etc. And it all generated it. I just had to reread and correct a few elements but that was it. Breezy and fun.
When using Chat GPT to generate seed terms, how reliable is the information?
D: Alizée, when you are asking Chat GPT for what terms you should use as seed terms, how reliable and up-to-**** is this information? And should SEOs be concerned about missing out on chunks of opportunities?
A: You want to do your research beforehand, which I did. I had checked out articles and research documents about the great resignation movement, for example, just to make sure that it was in line with what I was seeing. There’s always a fact-checking issue. You always have to fact-check everything. And yeah, it’s a *** topic right now but it’s been *** for about two years, and it’s not going away. So I consider this evergreen content. Being at work will always be on the table for candidates. So I’m not really worried about that. If I were to cover something in the future, for example, the Olympic Games in Paris next year, I wouldn’t use Chat GPT for that.
D: Is that because of the cutoff in data that is trained on?
A: Yeah, As of right now, if we were looking to create very targeted content related to the Olympic Games in Paris. It wouldn’t be up to ****. It wouldn’t be reliable. It might not take into account all the details we have about this right now. I wouldn’t trust it that much.
D: And there’s certainly been conversation around Chat GPT being banned in certain countries. And I have heard France discuss that. What’s the latest in that situation?
A: Well, we’ve had other things to focus on, primarily retirement. And I don’t think it’s going to happen so far. They might issue fines or things like that, but it won’t be banned right now as far as I know. Otherwise, we can all get VPNs so it’s fine.
D: Yeah, that’s what a lot of SEOs do anyways most of the time.
Ellen, in terms of the questions Chat GPT suggested that I ask you, which one appealed to you?
How Chat GPT will change how consumers use the web and how it impacts SEO
Ellen: Well, I always like to look at things from a content perspective and you’ve gone over that so brilliantly. One of the other ones that I found really interesting was how it will change the way that consumers use the web and how it impacts SEO.
It’s a bit of a silly story that’s coming out in a couple of different things, a very different sector from what I work in now but something that’s kind of near and dear to my past, I was very briefly a gaming journalist, and there are some online games where people are actually using Chat GPT in the game to have full-blown conversations with people. There’s various other games online where for better or for worse, this is happening to the point where people are somewhat suspecting that they might just be talking to a whole bunch of different Chat GPT clients. That’s a bit of a fun example, which shows just how dynamic and how well-trained these can be to fit into those individual cultures.
In terms of SEO, and in terms of the application that it’s going to have, it’s going to naturally change the way that we interact with content online and the way we interact with sites. When we look at the way that somebody navigates a site naturally, from a content perspective, we look at what they’re engaging with, but also where they’re going from, or at least I do. I spend a lot of time on Google Search Console and Google Analytics looking at behavioral flow, it fascinates me to see how people go for a site. And using Chat GPT to target and research those areas that we might not be as aware of with clients.
For example, in the bedding space, there’s a whole load of traffic that we weren’t fully aware of going through a page that we have worked on, but it’s never been a priority page. And so now we’re looking to build out a whole strategy around that sector, based on some of that data and other aspects as well. And I’ve been using Chat GPT to research areas for content to surround that, where the way that consumers will then interact with that content is by having an area that they wouldn’t have previously been able to explore, they’re naturally going to be able to directly interact with that site.
There are other elements as well. The reason why I mentioned the in-game chat thing is that there are a lot of people looking for the potential of this with chatbots in live responses, improving that experience. Nobody really wants to sit on the phone for hours and hours and wait to talk to a person anymore simply because of the call time. They **** talking to the person usually, but the wait takes forever. So having somebody who can automate that process to a certain degree, which eventually will inevitably have to go to a person. And that’s a good thing in my mind that it does go to a person. But if you can make it so that when they get to that person, they’ve exhausted all the other possible options in the best possible way, that’s going to be an element of it. Not something I’ve had direct interaction with, but definitely one of the exciting areas that come out of any AI lead technology out there.
D: It’s amazing that waiting on phone lines for longer than an hour is a thing nowadays, I can attest to that from recent experience.
Julia, what question from what Chat GPT suggested appealed to you?
What are the limitations and drawbacks of using Chat GPT?
Julia: The limitations and drawbacks question I’d **** to answer. Something that I’m seeing in my role at Content at Scale where we’re doing 50 million plus words per month, which for some context, I used to run a human-only writing agency, ran it for 10 years, and in one year, we did 10 million words. So this is five years of content in one month. Just think about that. But the limitations are a very real thing that it’s easy to look over because of how much time it can appear that Chat GPT saves you.
The truth is it’s still not perfect. And I think with Chat GPT 5 on the horizon, AGI, the potential with Auto GPT… Well, that’s getting into the other question of the future, so we won’t go there. But these things will get better and better. That’s where it’s headed. But right now, what we see in the mix of producing content that is ranking is we have clients that are going from a low DA to a high DA in a matter of months, and it’s all AI content that’s raising their DA. So it’s pretty crazy that you can do this now.
But the limitations are, first of all, if you’re in a new or emerging technology, if you write about AI, that’s one. For example, we had someone use Content at Scale Chat GPT, and I got to see how they were prompting it to write something on AI detection. And what Chat GPT was writing was AI detection is a whole security system. Well, that’s not all what it is so if you were to publish that you’re in a lot of trouble. So you have to fact-check that goes without saying, but it is so critical.
I have a framework I built. I’m teaching writers to use it whenever they’re producing AI content, and it’s called CRAFT. First, you’re cutting the fluff, that’s the C, the R, you’re reviewing it, you’re reading it for yourself, and you’re optimizing it with more keywords, because that’s another limitation of AI. Chat GPT isn’t going to go crawl Google in real-time and get what’s ranking right now. And you need that to inform your SEO, which is a critical part of SEO content. So if you don’t have a tool that does it, and I’ll tell you Content at Scale does, it’s one of the only ones that do, but if you don’t, then you generally need a tool stack like Surfer SEO on top of Chat GPT and human manual research on top of that, as well. The tool stack can be quite a lot if you’re using Chat GPT to write long form. But the limitations are, if it’s an emerging technology, you’re going to have to do a lot more human work to edit that content.
Going back to the CRAFT framework, the F is fact-checking because you have to fact-check this stuff. Chat GPT can say BS sometimes and Open AI has said there is no source of truth, it literally is just picking data points and putting them together in the best way it knows how. Granted that will get better and better and we’ll start to see a more factual accurate model generates and evolve. But right now, the factual inaccuracy is so wild.
It was in this piece, I was trying to have it write on AI detection. It was stating that the client we were writing it for was the inventor of Chat GPT. So I also can’t publish that. So the limitations around factual accuracy are quite real, as well as just the nature of going and looking at the top of Google for yourself and getting those insights. Now, will Google change? Well, that’s another question. There’s a lot of speculation there. And maybe that’s a question we could bounce around here. What will that look like in the future? That’s a crazy question.
D: Yeah, you touched upon the future but that’s for the next episode because Google has released Bard. Google wants to compete more with Open AI and the other technologies coming. Chat GPT 5 is on the way, probably towards the beginning of next year. There are talks of it completing its training by December of this year. But let’s cover that and what the future might look like for SEO in relation to Chat GPT in the next episode.
But just remaining on prompt just for a moment, I think it would be great just to get maybe an additional prompt if possible, or an idea to incorporate as part of a prompt. Shall we stick with Julia? Julia, do you have any additional tidbits that you can provide in relation to prompting Chat GPT?
J: Yes, so I found Chat GPT to be too great for the content generation around SEO content. I haven’t found it great specifically at long form, but for headlines, emails, outlining things, research, and strategy like Alizée and Ellen brought brilliant examples. That’s why I found it incredible at saving time. For example, with our SEO content and traffic increasing, we needed a back-end sequence to capture that traffic and help convert them. It’s called a post-enrollment sequence. So I have to write this five-email sequence and I’m sitting there with a blank draft. I don’t have to do this anymore. So I go to Chat GPT. And I ask it to help me create a series of five emails, and I even asked it for the strategy too. I would prompt it with my customer base. We are a SaaS tool, I gave it the context. And then I’m going to tell it that I need a post-enrollment series that will help them convert over to an offer with this price point. I need it to expire within seven days, and I need you to tell me the strategy on when to send it, the headlines of each email, as well as a synopsis for each email.
Giving it that context, I hit go, the green button. And within minutes, I had an amazing five-email series that I don’t think I could have improved on. Just the actual idea for it, for the writing of it, I’m going to have to create videos and supporting content to make that content good. So the actual content in those emails I’m going to create more content for, but the supporting content for an SEO campaign, I’ve just found it brilliant. It just saves so much time and money. And just the cost of hiring someone to do that was completely eliminated. Which is still crazy to me as a writer of the past 10 years that we’re here. So prompting it with context is big.
D: That really summarizes your advice, context. You mentioned the fact that you have to say that you’re a SaaS tool. This is the offer, this is the price, and if you don’t provide that context is going to be bland, it’s going to be generic, and it’s not going to appeal to your target base. Great advice there.
This is the second episode in this particular series, but we are gonna get Ellen’s and Alizée’s answers to that prompt question in the next episode.
And thank you for listening. Check out all the previous episodes and sign up for a free trial of the Rank Ranger platform over at rankranger.com.
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