ChatGPT has taken the world by storm, and the SEO world is not exempt. This article demonstrates some of the key use cases I've explored for ChatGPT (and thanks to SEO twitter for inspiring some of these), and my opinion as to how SEOs can incorporate the various ChatGPT use cases into our workflows.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is the latest release from OpenAI, and is a chat based text generation AI that operates like an (incredibly) informative version of MSN. You can ask ChatGPT almost anything and it will spout out an answer, to which you can ask follow up questions, where the tech can build on its previous response(s). MSN (and all of its glory) feels like a distant whisper from a past era compared to being in conversation with ChatGPT.
The popularity of ChatGPT since its release is as unprecedented as the tool itself. It took ChatGPT just 5 days to reach 1+ million users, and to gain some perspective on this, twitter users are comparing its rapid ascent to popular social media networks and streaming sites, such as Facebook (10 months), Instagram (2.5 years), Netflix (3.5 years) and Spotify (5 months). Taking Spotify as the quickest of these four, ChatGPT is still nearly +3000% faster in reaching that 1+ million user mark.
Google searches for ChatGPT are (unsurprisingly) through the roof as well, with Google Trends and Glimpse showing there to have been >2 million searches since its release on the 30th November, with predicted monthly search volume for December being double that.
ChatGPT and SEO
ChatGPT has also taken the SEO world by storm, prompting the annual discussion around the death of SEO. People are asking what the release of ChatGPT means for the future of Google itself and whether this new technology means the beginning of the end, not only for SEO professionals, but for the very search engine they optimise for (mainly, sorry Bing).
While the meteoric rise of ChatGPT may be scary for some, I prefer to look at this as an opportunity - we've just been gifted (for free! - for now) an amazing tool that we can incorporate into SEO work streams to make our lives easier, and that can complement (not replace) our skillset as SEOs.
Use Cases of ChatGPT for SEO
Below is a definitely non-exhaustive, but hopefully somewhat thought-provoking, list of use cases that harness the power of ChatGPT for SEO, and my take on how useful each use case may be.
Keyword research idea generation
Say you need to perform a piece of keyword research for a niche you're not super familiar with. You could ask ChatGPT to provide you with a list of keywords for that topic, that can be used as a springboard for further research.
You're now armed with 10 keywords around which you can expand your keyword research around LGBTQ+ history. When I'm approaching an unknown topic, I can see myself using this in conjunction with some good old fashioned internet and competitor research to build out a list of seed terms, as it could bring additional topics to the surface.
Keyword classification
Intent classification
Once you've conducted a piece of keyword expansion around the Stonewall riots, you'll want to start classifying those keywords. Let's say you want to start with Intent classification:
You'll need to feed it with detailed instructions, and give the output a good QA, but it gives you a good starting point to go off. However, when compared with an SEO tool like SEMrush or SEOclarity, who categorise intent at scale (and in a more reliable fashion), this looks rather less impressive, but if you don't have the budget for an enterprise tool, ChatGPT is definitely a good option.
Topical classification
I know we're all desperately scrambling to find a reliable automated solution to keyword categorisation - I'm not convinced it comes in the form of ChatGPT, but I thought I would show you the output anyway:
As you can see, some topical classification takes place - ChatGPT groups all the keywords about books together under one topic, however doesn't group 'stonewall riot' and 'stonewall riots' as one topic, when the intent of the two keywords is the same.
ChatGPT could therefore potentially be used as a starting point for categorisation. You could then apply any categorisation formulas to the groups identified by AI to give you a smaller data set to work with when categorising 1000s of keywords.
Thanks to @DarthNik on Twitter for inspiring this one.
If you're looking to speed up your keyword classification, read my guide on Google sheets named functions and SEO, and download the template to start categorising.
Keyword variation generation
I'm sure no one is unfamiliar with doing a big piece of concatenated keyword research e.g. 'queer venues in {insert city name here}' or 'gay rights in {insert country here}'. Could ChatGPT be the answer to finding that seed list of cities / countries / whatever else your client is asking for, and concatenating it with your seed term?
Short answer, yes, it technically can provide you with this, however whether it is quicker than scraping a Wikipedia table using =IMPORTXML remains to be seen. Given the chatbot nature of this tech, the answers provided flow out of ChatGPT as though being written, meaning that for this specific use case, I think I'll be sticking to my usual methods.
Credit goes to @kksniche for this one.
Page title and meta description ideation
For me, crafting the perfect page title and meta description is not the SEO task that gives me the most joy, so using ChatGPT to do this for me sounds stunning.
I'm sure I could make this command slightly more specific and include the keywords I want to target, but for a first shot at this, I'm sold. Incorporating ChatGPT in this way during the content briefing process would significantly decrease the time it takes to come up with meta data that entices click through.
The output of this ChatGPT command could be used as a springboard to create your own meta data, perhaps mixing and matching from the output of the tool. It is important to be wary of using an exact output from the tool, as this could result in duplicate content issues arising, but more on this below.
Furthermore, it works in other languages!
What is particularly exciting about the command in the screenshot above, is that ChatGPT is working with a mixture of language. Say for example, you need to write German meta titles without speaking German, but you know what the articles are about, you could feasibly use ChatGPT to help.
You could then give the output to a native speaker for a grammar review (and ask them to modify the titles slightly) and there you have it! This is much easier than going to a German speaking colleague in another department and desperately begging them to actually write the titles for you, often in exchange for a pint!
Content briefing
Content briefing is another slightly onerous SEO task that can be quite time-intensive, especially when you're briefing out 100s of pieces of content, is ChatGPT to the rescue?
Similarly to some of the above use cases, using ChatGPT as a starting point for ideation around content brief creation could be helpful. As you can see from this very broad command, the tool spits out one take on what an article about gender identity could look like, but whether it will meet intent for the term 'gender identity' is another question.
Perhaps I'm at fault for not giving ChatGPT a specific enough command - the more you use the tool, the more you realise that specificity is key, and the motto is definitely try, try and try again.
While slightly more helpful, I would still use this in conjunction with competitor research to be sure of creating a really comprehensive brief for an article that will meet intent and have the best chance of ranking.
You also can't rely on ChatGPT for specificities around tone of voice or target audience, given that these will be client/site dependent, however, the 'Objective' of the article outlined by ChatGPT could definitely be used almost verbatim as a summary for a copywriter on what the article aims to achieve.
Content creation
While ChatGPT could technically be used to write whole articles, there are a number of reasons why this should be avoided that are summed up in this SEJ article on ChatGPT for Content and SEO.
Essentially, generating articles using ChatGPT could get you in a whole lot of trouble, potentially working to overturn an 'unhelpful content' classification from Google, which wouldn't be a lot of fun.
However, if you're clever enough, and use ChatGPT in conjunction with an AI-detector tool, or amend the content enough with the help of an expert, it is unlikely Google will actually be able to detect content generated with AI in this way, and you can incorporate ChatGPT (or another AI tool of your choice) into your content creation work streams.
Structured data generation
Say you want to quickly add some FAQ schema markup to a new article but are not 100% sure of the syntax, you can ask ChatGPT for help.
This use case is really handy, you can even copy the code to your clipboard, making it really easy to paste it into Google's Rich Results testing tool to double check the code, which is a must before uploading.
Programming language/concept explanation
ChatGPT is a great tool for improving your understanding of various different aspects of programming languages, that could eventually help you perform SEO tasks better or more efficiently.
Apps script example
I wanted to learn how for loops in Apps Script work, so I asked ChatGPT:
The above is a very generic example, but ChatGPT's capability to do this, would be particularly helpful if you're halfway through a script and are not sure of the next steps. Similarly, you can feed ChatGPT your code and ask it to debug it for you with explanations - incredibly helpful for beginners (like me) who are pulling their hair out over where on earth they went wrong (also like me)!
Regex example
Ever seen the infamous 'domain name extraction' regex floating around the internet, but been puzzled as to exactly how it works - ask ChatGPT:
This comprehensive explanation is great, and will help you become more proficient in writing regular expressions going forwards. You can also ask ChatGPT to write a regex for you if you're stuck, but my top tip is always asking it to explain how the regex works, so that you might be able to construct it yourself next time!
Google sheets formula support
Along a similar vein, if you've hit a wall trying to create a complex Google sheets formula, you can come to ChatGPT for help.
If you want to simply copy the code you can feed in the data from your spreadsheet, use the copy function on the top right of the code snippet, and you're golden! Personally I love the feeling of 'cracking the code' when you find a solution yourself, however ChatGPT could save hours routing around on stackoverflow for help!
Big thanks to @thetafferboy on Twitter for inspiring this one.
Process automation
The pièce de résistance for me after playing around with ChatGPT since its launch, has been getting it to write Apps Scripts for me, where my beginner knowledge lets me down.
While keyword research itself is a while from being fully automated, there are parts of the process that can be much more seamless, and importing into Google sheets multiple exports from Ahrefs (or the tool of your choice) is one of them. The pain of having to import one sheet at a time was palpable to me and writing a script to automate this process has long been on my to do list... Enter ChatGPT.
The script worked like a dream, and I'll be incorporating it into a keyword research template for my team going forwards.
This aspect of ChatGPT is incredibly exciting for automating SEO processes that unnecessarily increase the time it takes to do a task. It makes this kind of automation accessible to those of us who are currently script-handicapped, allowing us to streamline workflows while learning a little bit more about how scripts work.
Limitations of ChatGPT for SEO
Crucially, ChatGPT cannot access the internet. This means no SERP intent analysis or competitor research, and no possibility that ChatGPT will wipe out the SEO community.
If you ask it for the top 10 search results, here's what happens:
While I get a lovely biography of Harvey Milk, what I was looking for was something completely different. While I may be able to scrape the top 10 results for a keyword, feed them into ChatGPT and then perform some analysis on the data, ChatGPT has no direct access to the internet, meaning we can all sleep soundly knowing are jobs are safe (for another year anyway).
Summary
ChatGPT is a shiny new toy for sure, and these use cases probably only scratch the surface. Of the examples above, I see the most useful being its ability to generate title and meta description ideas (wouldn't it be great to do this at scale using the OpenAI API), and in its code generation and explanation capabilities.
For me, in its current state, I am likely to incorporate ChatGPT into my workflows mainly for inspiration and as a springboard for further research, and in using it to help me further my programming ability and in unblocking the automation of processes.
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