All SEOs use ChatGPT. But even after many months, I still see many people using it incorrectly.
Let’s take a look at three common mistakes and how to fix them.
It’s never a good idea to believe everything ChatGPT says, but trusting answers to questions you don’t have data to answer is a recipe for disaster.
For example, this is a question for easy ranking. Long tail keywords:
The results may look fine at first glance, but when you paste them into a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, you’ll see just how bad they are. All of these have such low search demand that they are not even included in our database of 16.2 billion keywords.
Google Trends shows the same thing.
The reason is simple. Because ChatGPT has no data. We don’t know how often people search for it, or if the keywords are “long tail.”
Here’s another example of a question that ChatGPT doesn’t have data to answer.
Once again, I run into a similar problem. To classify intent, you need to actually search for keywords and analyze the top pages and SERP characteristics. ChatGPT can’t even browse the web (GPT 4 can too, but you can’t browse Google results), so you can’t do this well.
How to fix this mistake
Be aware of ChatGPT’s limitations and how they work. If you know you don’t have the data to successfully answer a question, either refrain from asking the question or provide the data needed to provide a better answer.
For example, if you want to categorize search intent, you need to give it something to follow, such as the title of the top pages. Only then will you be able to even perform the task at hand.
Are you an Ahrefs user?
We’ve built a more powerful version of this idea into Keyword Explorer. Just click “Identify Intent” and the AI will feed back the results.
Similarly, if you want ChatGPT to detect gaps in your content, you need to feed the content of both pages to ChatGPT and ask it to identify the gaps. Or, instead, Run a content gap analysis in Ahrefs, export your keyword gaps, and ask them to summarize them for you.
With ChatGPT, you almost never get what you want on the first try.
For example, I recently asked for some coffee-related terminology to use as seed keywords. Keyword Explorer.
Here’s what it gave me:
This isn’t a bad reaction, but having the explanation there (which I didn’t ask for) made copying and pasting the list of terms difficult and tedious.
I faced a similar problem when I asked to group keywords into broader categories, but I was given a bulleted list.
I didn’t think much of this at first, but I quickly realized that I needed to format the results as a table so I could paste them into Google Sheets and filter them.
How to fix this mistake
Your first thought might be “prompt engineering” or purchasing premium ChatGPT prompts.
While these can be helpful, they often don’t give you perfect results right away, for the simple reason that ChatGPT prompts are like recipes. Even if the base is solid, you will need to adjust it to your own taste.
For example, here are some real premium prompts for writing titles and meta descriptions:
And the output is:
It’s not bad, but it’s a little dry for my taste. So I followed up and asked ChatGPT to make it “a little less formal and a little more playful.”
It’s certainly gotten better, but a little Too This time it’s full of fun.
Let me turn the dial down a little bit.
not bad.
In my experience, This iterative process is the key to getting good results from ChatGPT. Keep it simple at first and refine it as you go.
For example, I recently tried using ChatGPT to create a UK tax calculator. Rather than write out very detailed instructions from the beginning, we started with a simple prompt: “Create a UK tax calculator in HTML, CSS, and JS.”
The calculator I created is as follows.
Is it perfect? No, I didn’t want to ask the user for their tax rate, I wanted it to automatically calculate the tax based on the UK band. But after just a few iterations, the problem was solved and we had a very neat and accurate calculator.
Want to use AI to create meta titles and descriptions?
ChatGPT will gladly put one word in front of another if you ask it to write something, but what it says is just a collection of things that have already been said a million times. In other words, boring boilerplate content.
Case in point:
(Boring story…)
How to fix this mistake
Don’t just ask ChatGPT to write an article for you. Give further guidance and use it to brainstorm ideas.
For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about link building tips. Instead of asking them to write an entire article without guidance, you can start by asking for a few outreach tips to get your creative juices flowing.
I don’t like any of these, but I think you can combine #1 and #4 to get some unique tips. That means recording a short video pitch and including it in your email.
Now that you have an idea, you can ask ChatGPT to expand on it and write about it.
Is this perfect? No, but that’s never a bad thing. In fact, if you cut out some of the fluff and he spends five minutes polishing the copy, it comes out pretty decent.
X. Record a short video pitch
Personalized video messages add a human touch to your pitch and are easy to create using an inexpensive webcam and a free Loom account.
For example, let’s say you’re running a broken link building campaign. Instead of sending a long email explaining your problem, why not say exactly what you mean? Launch Loom and outline it visually.
- Please point out broken links on the page.
- Please indicate exactly where it is and why it is important.
- Suggest an alternative link from your website and explain why it’s the best one.
An example is shown below.
{insert video}
It may only take a minute or two, but it can be very helpful. And a personal touch can make a big difference in how your pitch is received.
ChatGPT also helps you improve and optimize your existing content. Again, all you need is to give it the right direction…
For example, I recently discovered that I don’t own any featured snippets, even though I’m ranked #7 in “Blogging Tips.”
Sam In particular, we theorized that this was because the subheadings on the top ranking pages clearly communicated the content of the tips, whereas many of our subheadings were vague.
He decided to have ChatGPT rewrite it for clarity.
Did it work? You’ll have to watch the video to find out, but honestly, it doesn’t matter. It is clear that what ChatGPT is “optimized” for is much more obvious than what it used to be. This means that ChatGPT has improved your content.
ChatGPT is also great for proofreading, simplifying unnecessarily long texts, and anything along those lines. As you know, all of this improves the quality of your content, and it definitely affects user signals indirectly.
final thoughts
ChatGPT is very powerful and useful, but only if you know how to use it.
If you’re hoping that you can write great content without any direction at all, keep hoping. That’s not possible yet. But it’s useful for brainstorming, polishing human-written content, and many other SEO tasks. However, you need to be aware of its limitations.
do you have any questions? Please give me a shout twitter X.