Everything You Need to Know About ChatGPT and Its Role in Content Marketing

Intro

1 million users within a week of launch. What is this new ChatGPT tool that’s taking the internet by storm? How does it work? What’s the technology behind it? Is it compliant with Google and other search engines’ guidelines? What tips and tricks should you follow to use it in your content marketing efforts?

Well, here’s everything you need to know about ChatGPT and its role in content marketing. My team and I have dug down the internet, on every social media platform, on every media publication, and did our own experiments — and prepared this blog post that will help you understand what this tool really is, how it can help SEOs and marketers, and every possible questions you might have in your mind right now.

If there’s one thing you need to know about this tool, it is this: _It is scary good! _

Let’s continue.

What is ChatGPT? And How Does it Work?

To put it simply, ChatGPT is a computer program that uses artificial intelligence to have conversations with people. It’s another AI project by Open.ai.

Joe Manier, Founder of No Code Academy says, “It's like having a really smart robot friend who can understand what you're saying and respond in a way that makes sense.”

Kind of like Alexa, but except for browsing answers on the internet live, it’s already been trained and fed _a plethora _of data to answer people’s questions.

And how is it able to answer that almost feels like talking to another person…but smarter and faster than us? Well, ChatGPT uses something called natural language processing.

Which is a fancy way of saying it understands human language and talks back to us using the same words and phrases that we use.

This tool is different from most computer programs in a sense that they act on very specific instructions — that we have to give them in a very specific way.

For instance, MS Excel. We can do wonderful things with Excel using a set of formulas, but Excel cannot understand _anything _other than those formulas. Because it is not designed to do so — it’s only designed to perform specific tasks when given specific commands.

But the technology behind ChatGPT makes it understand exactly what you’re asking, so it’s able to give you answers based on your questions.

Here’s an examples of ChatGPT in action:

I asked ChatGPT to explain what is SEO, but pretend I’m a 7 year old — so the answer is so simple to understand. And, as I said earlier, it’s scary good. It explained to me exactly how we would explain SEO to a 7-year old, with basic examples and explanations.

Next, I asked the same question from ChatGPT, but this time, I asked the tool to make it sound professional, formal, and something higher-level. And it did an amazing job, by explaining it in ‘corporate-like’ language. (See image below). This just shows that it really understands you, and answers however you’d like to have.

So basically, ask almost anything, and it answers you based on the data it’s trained on. The extensive list of chatgpt use cases proves its versatility across different scenarios and applications. But this tool also has some limitations, which we will talk about later in the post.

Let’s just understand the importance of this tool in content marketing and SEO. How can this tool help marketers, SEOs, and online businesses?

(Talking about helping online businesses, check out our website audit tool that tells you SEO health of your website, and lists the things that need improvement. Instantly.)

Can You Use ChatGPT for Content Marketing or SEO?

Here are some possible application of ChatGPT in content marketing and SEO:

1. Streamlined content creation process

ChatGPT makes it super simple and super fast to generate article outlines, and even write content based on that outline. Which can easily 10X the productivity of your team.

For example, I asked ChatGPT to write me an outline on the topic of “10 Best SEO Practices”, and within seconds, I have a full outline to work on.

But, wait, till you hear this:

I also asked ChatGPT to expand the point no.1 in the outline, and again, within seconds, it did for me:

I could easily go on and create a full-blast blog post on the topic — all within minutes. Zero plagiarism. Zero grammar errors. This is so, unbelievably, crazy-impressive.

And not just blog posts, you can write emails, ads, whitepapers, stories, customer objection handling scripts, SOPs for specific tasks, brand guidelines,...you name it.

Almost anything.

SEOs are already using automation to speed up their SEO processes, and this tool will definitely be helpful in generating outlines and even writing content.

Alex Armstrong-Paling, Managing Director of Toolfit, says, “This new tool is going to be a game-changer for content marketers. I’ve used other AI writers before, but this is on another level. It’s super-fast, and 80%-90% of the time accurate. I can only imagine what this tool will be able to do when they release its fully improved version”.

2. Need some niche ideas to start a new website?

Yes – just say it. ChatGPT will instantly generate some decent niche ideas, based on your interests that you ask for.

For instance, I asked ChatGPT to write me some niche ideas about gardening. And it did.

Now are these niche ideas trustworthy, data-based, or really something you can look into to start a website? That’s up to you – a human – to decide, based on your best judgment and expertise.

Let’s say, you pick a niche idea, then you need to validate and explore some keywords to check the difficulty of the niche, and possible scalability of your website.

You can do that via our keyword finder tool, to explore new rank-worthy topic ideas that are based on data.

So, yes, ChatGPT is great for not only generating outlines and writing, but also for exploring new topics or niche ideas.

Candace Hoener, Founder of Neo Candle, says, “ChatGPT is amazing for kick-starting your writing game. Just ask for ideas, and it displays within seconds. Which you, otherwise, had to brainstorm for hours or research and take inspiration from countless sources.”

The Bigger Question: Should You Use it for SEO Content?

“ChatGPT is great for helping writers and editors to streamline the content creation process by taking inspiration from the ideas generated by the tool, making outlines super fast, or letting AI write obvious or mundane content”, says Steve Pogson, Founder & E-commerce Strategy Lead at FirstPier.

But should you just simply copy and paste the content generated by AI? Absolutely not. Because, to create SEO content that ranks on top in 2023, is no easy feat. Competition is soaring, and to rank, you need credible, well-researched, and engaging content.

Even though the tool is super impressive at what it can do, it still has some limitations, which we’ll talk about below in the post in detail.

But, for now, understand that Google dislikes spamming readers with AI generated content. John Mueller, Google Search Advocate, specifically said that:

For us these would, essentially, still fall into the category of automatically generated content which is something we’ve had in the Webmaster Guidelines since almost the beginning.

And people have been automatically generating content in lots of different ways. And for us, if you’re using machine learning tools to generate your content, it’s essentially the same as if you’re just shuffling words around, or looking up synonyms, or doing the translation tricks that people used to do. Those kind of things.

My suspicion is maybe the quality of content is a little bit better than the really old school tools, but for us it’s still automatically generated content, and that means for us it’s still against the Webmaster Guidelines. So we would consider that to be spam.”

Google even introduced its helpful content update just recently to take action against the spammy, AI-generated text, and promote helpful, human-generated text.

Miriam Domer, Content Marketer at Legal Finders, says, “At the end of the day, it’s not about whether you’re using tools like ChatGPT to write and publish content. It’s more about helping your website visitors. Is the content factually correct? Is it entertaining and engaging? Is it providing the most useful advice? If yes, then I don’t believe using AI is bad. You just need human supervision.”

Again, the question also arises: can Google detect ChatGPT or AI-generated text from other tools like Jasper or Ryter? Google isn’t fully transparent about it.

It’s hard to say that Google can’t detect because there are already third party tools that are detecting AI-generated text. And Google’s technology is surely way ahead.

Jon Gillham, Founder of Originality.ai came up with a tool to detect whether the content is written by humans or AI tools. It’s built on such technology that can specifically detect content by ChatGPT-3 — by giving you a spam score of 0-100, with an accuracy of 94%.

To cut the story short, yes, you can use ChatGPT for content and SEO, but don’t just copy and paste. Use it like it’s meant to be used: like a tool. Gather some ideas, inspirations, and/or generate some outlines. Then let the human experts sprinkle their magic.

Let’s look at the limitations of the new ChatGPT tool:

5 Limitations of ChatGPT Tool You Should Know About

Here are 5 limitations of ChatGPT:

1. Even Though it Has Vast Knowledge, It’s Fixed

ChatGPT tool does not have the latest data; based on the new research, events, or trends. It has a specific cut off date, which is around 2021 — after that date, this tool does not know anything about the world. Even if it says something after 2021, it’s often factually incorrect.

2. It Does Not Browse Internet

Like Alexa or Google, ChatGPT cannot browse the internet and look up for answers live. Which also means that it cannot link to external resources for its answers. For instance, if you ask it what websites are ranking on top right now on a certain keyword, it won’t be able to help you. (But our SERP checker tool sure can. Just enter a keyword, and it reveals everything about top 10 sites instantly)

3. It’s Generic…At Least Yet.

It cannot assist you with specific questions. For instance, it can’t provide you with the answer of a specific business’ delivery or return policies. Or, in the same way, it cannot write codes for your website to enhance its functionality. It also does not understand your specific business’ audience and goals — so whatever answer it gives you, chances are, it won’t be fully aligned with your brand guidelines, goals, or voice.

4. It Requires Detailed Prompts for Better Services

To make the most out of ChatGPT, you’ve to give detailed, specific prompts. Which can be hard for average users. For instance, if you’re a marketer, and you want to write a blog post on a marketing related topic, you already understand marketing principles, so you’d give detailed instructions to extract the best possible answer. At the same time, if someone is completely new, they will need to go through learning curves.

5. It’s Sometimes Inaccurate…Wildly Inaccurate, to Be Specific.

You cannot trust it blindly. Even though it’s trained, it still sometimes provides wrong answers. That’s why, each content piece must be fact-checked before publishing.

Concluding: How Powerful ChatGPT is for Businesses Today?

ChatGPT is great for online businesses and marketing professionals. Its ability to generate high-quality, human-like text can be valuable for creating engaging and compelling content that can help to improve a website's ranking on search engines.

But remember that ChatGPT has its limitations, such as a fixed knowledge base and lack of access to external and latest information, which will affect its ability to provide answers to certain questions or provide specific advice.

Despite these limitations, ChatGPT is still a valuable tool for SEOs and the content marketers. We asked Pat Ahern, Partner at Intergrowth, about the adaptation of ChatGPT, he said: “It’s better to embrace these technologies, include them in your tech stacks, and make the most out of them. If this tool can do amazing things today, imagine what this tool would be able to do after a short 3-5 years? Don’t say no to these tools. Just figure out how you can make the most out of them”