ChatGPT for SEO? You’re using it wrong.

The results may look okay at first glance, but if you paste them into a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, you’ll see just how bad they are. The search demand for all of them is so low that they’re not even in our database of 16.2 billion keywords:

Google Trends shows the same thing:

The reason for this is simple: ChatGPT simply doesn’t have the data. It has no idea how often things are searched for or if a keyword is “long tail”.

Here’s another example of a question that ChatGPT doesn’t have the data to answer:

Once again, we face a similar problem. To rank intent, you really need to search for the keyword and analyze the top pages and SERP features. ChatGPT can’t even browse the web (well, GPT 4 can, but it can’t browse Google results), so it just can’t do it well.

How to fix this error

Be aware of the limitations of ChatGPT and how it works. If you know he doesn’t have the data to answer a question well, either avoid asking or give him the data he needs to give a better answer.

For example, if you want it to rank for search intent, you need to give it something to go on, like the titles of the top-ranking pages. Only then can he even attempt work.

Are you an Ahrefs user?

We’ve built a much more powerful version of this idea into Keyword Research. Just click “Identify intents” and the AI ​​will feed back the results.

ChatGPT rarely gives you exactly what you want on the first try.

Here’s what it gave me:

This isn’t a bad answer, but having the descriptions there (which I didn’t ask for) was annoying because it made it difficult to copy and paste the list of terms.

I ran into a similar problem when I asked it to group keywords into broader categories and it gave me a bulleted list.

I didn’t think much of it at first, but I soon realized that I needed the results formatted as a table so I could paste them into a Google Sheet and filter them.

How to fix this error

Your first thought might be to “prompt engineer” or buy some Premium ChatGPT prompts.

While these things can help, you often won’t get perfect results right away for one simple reason: ChatGPT prompts are like recipes. Even if they have a solid base, you have to adjust them to your taste.

For example, here’s a genuine premium prompt for writing a title and metadata description:

And here is the output:

It’s not bad, but it’s a bit dry for my taste. So I watched and asked ChatGPT to make it “a little less formal and more playful.”

Definitely better, but only a little very playful this time.

Let’s ask him to dial it in a bit.

It is not bad.

From my experience, this iterative process is the key to getting good results from ChatGPT. Keep things simple to start, then improve as you go.

For example, I recently tried to create a UK tax calculator with ChatGPT. Rather than writing incredibly detailed instructions from scratch, I started with a simple prompt: “create a UK tax calculation in HTML, CSS and JS”

Here is the calculator he created:

It’s perfect; No. I wanted it to automatically calculate tax based on UK bands instead of asking for the user’s tax rate. But with just a few iterations, the problem was solved and I had a pretty neat and accurate calculator.

ChatGPT will happily put one word in front of another if you ask it to write something, but the content will just be a jumble of what’s already been said a million times. In other words, boring boilerplate content.

In this case:

(Talk about boring…)

Don’t just ask ChatGPT to “write an article”. Give it more guidance and use it to brainstorm ideas.

For example, let’s say I’m writing a post about link building tips. Instead of asking him to write the entire article without guidance, I can start by asking for some approach tips to get me in the creative mood.

I don’t like any of them, but I think you could combine #1 and #4 for a unique tip: record and include a short video pitch in your email.

Now I have the idea, I can ask ChatGPT to expand it and write it:

Is this perfect? No. But it’s definitely not bad. In fact, if we cut some of the fluff and spend five minutes polishing the copy, it’s pretty decent:

X. Recording Short Video Sources

Personalized video messages add a human touch to your views, and you can create them effortlessly with 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 the issue, why not show them exactly what you mean? Activate Loom and give them a visual description.

1. Please point out the broken link on their page.
2. Show them exactly where it is and why it matters.
3. Suggest a replacement link from your site and explain why it’s a good fit.

Here is an example:

{insert video}

It may only take 1-2 minutes, but it’s extremely helpful and the personal touch can make a big difference to how your pitch is received.

ChatGPT is also great at helping you improve and optimize existing content. Again, you just have to give it the right direction…

For example, we recently found that we were ranking #7 for “blog tips” but we didn’t own the featured quote.

ChatGPT is incredibly powerful and useful—but only if you understand how to use it.

If you’re hoping he’ll write great content without any direction, keep hoping. He can’t do it yet. But it can help with brainstorming, polishing human written content and many other SEO tasks. You just have to keep in mind its limitations.