Intro
If you go (or have been) on the marketing side of the internet for a minute or more, there’s one common topic among conversations you’ll find — and that’s ChatGPT.
Here are a few examples to illustrate what we mean:
Since you’re already on this article searching for smart SEO ChatGPT prompts, we’re going to go out on a limb and assume you know the basics of ChatGPT and how it works.
The All-in-One Platform for Effective SEO
Behind every successful business is a strong SEO campaign. But with countless optimization tools and techniques out there to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start. Well, fear no more, cause I've got just the thing to help. Presenting the Ranktracker all-in-one platform for effective SEO
We have finally opened registration to Ranktracker absolutely free!
Create a free accountOr Sign in using your credentials
So, onto the meatier bits — let’s explore what it can do for your SEO game!
What SEO tasks can you do with ChatGPT?
1. Low-stakes tasks
Eric Doty, content lead at Dock, employs ChatGPT for low-stakes activities like writing meta titles and meta descriptions.
He feeds ChatGPT blog intros and asks it to come up with meta descriptions that are under 160 characters.
If he’s looking for titles, he asks for title ideas that include a keyword he’d like to target and the kind of tone he’d prefer the title to have (e.g., a pun in the title).
After this, Eric relies on his gut feeling to choose a title/description that best serves the articles he’s produced.
(Screenshot by Eric Doty)
(Screenshot by Eric Doty)
2. Finding keywords
Another use case of ChatGPT vis-a-vis SEO is finding relevant keywords. Here are the different prompts SEO experts feed to ChatGPT to find the keywords they need:
- Samuel Park from TechMaestro: “Please find more semantically-connected keywords related to the following set: keywords 1, 2, and 3. Do not repeat any and make it into a list format.”
- Sankit Javiya from Mailmodo: “These are keywords I extracted and filtered from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer: insert keywords
Please create different clusters for the above keywords in the following format:
- Name of cluster
- Page title of this cluster
- Keywords in this cluster
- Buyer journey of this cluster: TOFU, MOFU, or BOFU
- Reasons for why this is TOFU, MOFU, or BOFU.”
The All-in-One Platform for Effective SEO
Behind every successful business is a strong SEO campaign. But with countless optimization tools and techniques out there to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start. Well, fear no more, cause I've got just the thing to help. Presenting the Ranktracker all-in-one platform for effective SEO
We have finally opened registration to Ranktracker absolutely free!
Create a free accountOr Sign in using your credentials
Another keyword-related use case of ChatGPT is to submit both your blog content as well as your keywords and ask it to integrate all keywords organically.
3. Searching for content ideas
Aside from just finding keywords, you can also use ChatGPT to find content ideas (either new content ideas or topical coverage of existing content).
To find new content ideas, Cynthia Davies uses the prompt, “Generate a list of blog topics including titles and keywords specific to LLC business formation.”
Side note: She found that her website traffic increased by 4% after publishing the topics suggested by ChatGPT.
To get topical coverage, Taylor Scher uses the prompt, “These are the current topics I have on my website. Can you think of any other topics that fit in with X topic?” Say you have a business coach in Miami, FL, and you need to create a comprehensive article for them. You can use these prompts to help you easily create that.
4. Generating FAQs
Most experts agree that a well-written FAQ section can boost a site’s SEO score.
Here are a few simple prompts you can feed to ChatGPT:
- Here is the blog topic I plan to write: insert topic. Please provide a few relevant, frequently asked questions around this topic.
- Create a list of 10 frequently asked questions about keyword and provide answers for each one of them considering the SERP and rich result guidelines.
5. Creating slugs
The more easy-to-digest your URL slug is, the more brownie points you receive for SEO.
Just take a look at this Zomato vs. Swiggy case study to understand the importance of URL slugs and structure.
So, another effective way you can use ChatGPT is by showing it your article titles and asking it to produce SEO-friendly URL slugs, like this prompt:
"ChatGPT, generate a short and descriptive URL slug for an article topic."
And if you’re sharing a bunch of topics, you can also ask it to share how you should structure your URL slugs.
6. Generating outlines
Young Pham, the project manager at BizReport, uses ChatGPT to create outlines (which, btw, is something a lot of marketers use it for).
You can simply feed in the name of the article topic you’re writing about and ask it to produce an outline. Here’s an example prompt:
“Generate a blog post outline about topic that's 10x better than what already exists.”
And if you wish to be more specific from there on, you can ask it to integrate specific keywords in sections you want (e.g., integrate keywords X and X for Heading 1).
7. Correcting grammatical errors
If your content has grammatical errors, search engines will assume the content is low-quality, and you’ll fail to rank highly. Plus, you could lose the trust of your readers.
You can ask ChatGPT to catch and correct grammatical errors in your copy. You can also download editGPT in your browser to get the same results.
8. Generating SEO-friendly Python scripts
Taylor Scher shared another prompt that’ll help you automate small tasks (aka meta descriptions, meta titles, alt texts, etc.) that can help improve your SEO score.
Here’s how it goes: “Can you create a Python script that will help me automate creating meta descriptions?”
Side note: You can also use ChatGPT to find bugs in your code, find improvements in your website’s UI/UX, reduce page redirects, etc. (aka, all tasks that are created via programming and have a direct effect on your site’s SEO).
9. Searching content gaps
Emanuel Petrescu, an SEO consultant, who’s used ChatGPT to create a repository of ideas, shared one prompt that stands above the rest, and that's finding content gaps.
Here’s his two-step process you can replicate:
#1: Copy and paste the links of the top-performing articles on a topic.
#2: Ask ChatGPT to read them and find content gaps in your own article (i.e., ask, “What can I say in my article that these articles don't mention”).
You can do this for published and unpublished content. Additionally, you can also ask ChatGPT for areas of improvement in your current article.
10. Doing competitor analysis
Here’s a prompt that might uncover some hidden insights: asking ChatGPT to do competitor analysis.
Full credit to Sarah Jameson for sharing this one. Here’s a little more explanation from her:
“Share a few of your top competitors' websites or URLs. ChatGPT can analyze their top competitor’s on-page SEO strategies and suggest improvements for your site.”
11. Keeping up with algorithm changes
Another smart SEO prompt you can feed ChatGPT is to ask it to analyze recent changes in a search engine’s algorithm.
“By doing so, you'll get extremely relevant suggestions for how to improve your site based on complex new algorithm changes,” says Dan Gray, CEO of Vendry, who uses this prompt to keep up with the factors that are being prioritized by search engines.
However, to get relevant answers (aka, up-to-date answers, not pre-2021 answers), please ensure ChatGPT is connected with the necessary extensions, such as WebChatGPT.
12. Developing an SEO strategy
Kevin Miller, an SEO specialist, shared an interesting prompt that other SEO folks might find helpful, and that’s asking ChatGPT to develop your SEO strategy for you.
For example, you can feed it the prompt: “Imagine you are the owner of a local pet store that specializes in natural and organic pet food and supplies.
Develop an SEO strategy to increase your online visibility and attract more local customers to your store. Format your answer into a personable, concise essay.”
13. Finding areas of improvement
To improve your overall SEO ranking, you can also share your website’s URL with ChatGPT and ask it to find:
- Areas of improvement in your website that’ll help you improve your SEO score.
- Elements that are reducing your website’s SEO score.
You can apply the same strategy for individual articles, content pieces, and subdomains, too.
14. Searching relevant data
ChatGPT might also be a helpful resource to search for relevant data for the SEO articles/content you write.
Obviously, because ChatGPT (at the time of writing this article) only shares information that’s pre-2021, there’s a high chance the information you find might not be up-to-date.
So, we highly recommend you only search for evergreen content.
15. Finding the topics your site ranks for
Taylor also recommends using ChatGPT for finding regex questions for Google Search Console.
Regex stands for Regular Expression (also abbreviated as RegEx). It’s mainly used for identifying specific character patterns from data sets. Google Search Console, Google Data Studio, and Google Analytics can produce these data sets.
Simply put, RegEx is commonly used by SEO folks because it provides more context on user search intent and helps them rank websites to the first page of the search engine results page (SERP).
The All-in-One Platform for Effective SEO
Behind every successful business is a strong SEO campaign. But with countless optimization tools and techniques out there to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start. Well, fear no more, cause I've got just the thing to help. Presenting the Ranktracker all-in-one platform for effective SEO
We have finally opened registration to Ranktracker absolutely free!
Create a free accountOr Sign in using your credentials
In Taylor’s words, “This strategy helps me identify questions my site ranks for.”
Improve your SEO game with Ranktracker
While these prompts will help you with small SEO tasks, the experts will agree with us when we say that ranking for SEO goes way beyond ChatGPT, and you need to constantly reinvent your strategy to ensure your content ranks on the first page of SERP.
Ranktracker understands this. This is why we’ve specially created tools to help SEO folks superspeed their processes.
We have solutions like:
- Rank Tracker
- Keyword Finder
- Backlink Checker
- Website Auditor
- SERP Checker
And lots more tools that’ll simplify the work for beginners and seasoned experts alike.
To know more about what Ranktracker can do for you, simply go ahead and create a free account!