EO’s Guide to ChatGPT Prompts //
Marketers have heard about ChatGPT and its applications to content and SEO for weeks.
Even now, a prompt engineer is a job.
While I don’t claim to be an expert on digital marketing functions ChatGPT or AI software can replace, I will say that I do not know the exact SEO and digital marketing functions ChatGPT or AI software can replace. However, being able to create prompts for these tools is a valuable skill that can be acquired over time.
This article will talk about what to remember when creating ChatGPT prompts that are SEO-focused and provide a comprehensive list of prompts that you can use in your daily work.
ChatGPT prompt engineering strategy
Before we get into the details, it’s helpful to have an overall approach to ChatGPT prompts and AI chat/writing prompts so you can create prompts specific to your applications and keep track of great SEO prompts that others have created.
It’s important to first understand ChatGPT limitations.
- ChatGPT was trained using a large data base and completed training in early 2022. This means that not all the information it has been trained on is correct and not all the information will be up-to-date.
- ChatGPT doesn’t crawl the web. Although it has information about the web since its training, ChatGPT will not visit a page to crawl it. However, its responses may lead you to believe that it did.
- ChatGPT can make a number of errors: code, math problems and facts.
- Although it can access a lot data and organize it in interesting ways it is unlikely to be an expert-level “taste” or knowledge on any particular subject.
- ChatGPT was not designed to be an SEO tool. You can create prompts for keyword research, clustering and link building, but ChatGPT isn’t meant to be that. Keep in mind that ChatGPT’s suggestions and responses will not use the same data sets (driven by search popularity or competition) as other SEO tools.
ChatGPT will not curate a list if you ask. It is not enough to assume that it can write code if you ask it.
Ask it to write an article. Don’t assume it will.
QA is your friend!
Prompts are something I prefer to think about in the same way I think of tasks such as creating a content short, using a search operator, creating an SOW.
These are some tips to help you create a great prompt.
- Your prompt should be as precise and clear as possible
- ChatGPT should be able to do what you ask it to.
- You can refine your prompt as you view output. ChatGPT will allow you to use your experience with ChatGPT for future prompts.
- It is important to anticipate the areas that may be tripped up and make sure you address them with the prompt.
ChatGPT’s best and worst SEO prompts
Many people share great information on ChatGPT prompts that you can use to SEO, as with many other topics. There are also some sharing prompts that are mediocre to downright dangerous.
Below are examples of prompts that I consider largely “good” or helpful. I also list prompts I believe are “bad”.
These examples provide specific suggestions for prompts that will help you be more efficient and some that can cause you to lose your time or get in trouble.
The good
Let’s start with some prompts that can be used. This is it! QA is the output of all ChatGPT.
Information can be dangerously wrong or misleading, and code can fail in the most infuriating ways. (More on that later).
Although Google claims that AI-generated content is not in violation their search guidelines, it is possible for your site to be in trouble.
Topic and keyword brainstorms
ChatGPT is a useful brainstorming tool that I use for many tasks, including keyword research, due to the potential downsides.
This is especially useful for generating ideas for keywords or topics early on.
Let’s say I create a website to provide information on coaching youth basketball coaches.
This is a good place to start if you are looking for youth basketball drills.
I added the note about popular websites to my list, and not asking for suggestions, which gave me additional layers of topics and examples of sites that fit the niche. These sites are available from 2022 (or earlier).
Let’s dig a little deeper into keywords:
OK, interesting. ChatGPT seems to have a way of determining which are “popular” and which are “low competition.”
Wow! ChatGPT uses Ahrefs and Moz to generate keyword ideas. It took only a few seconds!
I felt that my Twitter and LinkedIn timelines would be flooded with this information, so I decided I’d ask another follow-up:
This is not the answer I was looking for. I get a ChatGPT “Did these cookies you eat?” You know that cookies are …”. But let’s clarify.
Ah! Ah!
Let’s quickly examine whether these terms actually have low competition according Ahrefs. Ahrefs is the tool ChatGPT initially claimed to have used (tough break for Semrush, and other tools).
Yeesh. Although there isn’t much search volume, let us check the competition, especially against this initial claim.
- “SERP Analysis”: I did a manual Google search for each keyword to determine the types of results that would be displayed. It’s a sign that the keyword is highly-competitive if the top results come from websites of high authority with strong backlink profiles. It’s also a good indicator that the keyword is less popular if the top search results come from lower-authority websites with weaker backlink profile.
Although this isn’t impossible, it is unlikely that my site will be able to compete for this term. I can see that the pages rank for similar terms to this one, which suggests there is likely to be a lot of search volume in this region.
ChatGPT is often asked to respond to a prompt as “an X”, where X refers to a person who has a particular job, level or expertise.
Let’s look at how this impacts the situation.
They look great again. Let’s look deeper. Perhaps the combination of volume & competition has tripped up the tool. This time, I will ask for volume terms:
Let’s now see data via Ahrefs about this round:
Not much better! ChatGPT also takes my prompt history into account. So, if I had opened a new chat that focused on volume, ChatGPT might have been a little better.
ChatGPT is a tool that can help you get the answers you need.
These prompts and answers are a great way to summarize ChatGPT’s many functions:
- This initial set of results provided a good starting point for websites to look at and general topics.
- Things got more complicated as I narrowed my focus and had to create specific plans that were actionable with search-specific data.
- These terms aren’t very popular in terms of traffic, so my site isn’t ranked for them. ChatGPT also told me something that was not true about how it generated these suggestions. It also explains everything clearly.
This might have been useful if I was looking for general topics ideas.
I could have saved a lot of time and money if I hadn’t checked ChatGPT’s suggestions before I started writing or paying writers to create content that targeted these phrases.
Title ideas
While you should have your own ideas for creating titles and tag descriptions for blog posts, ChatGPT is a great place to get some inspiration.
List ideas
Similarly list types like X examples, tips, quotes, etc. It takes some digging to find ideas. ChatGPT can help you quickly gather ideas for your list.
FAQ ideas
The tool can also be used to quickly find FAQ ideas for articles – again, layering in specific instructions or a persona may help.
Content outlines
This holds true for content outlines. Remember that Clearscope, Content Harmony and Market Muse create briefs and outline based on search results ranking, while ChatGPT doesn’t.
Here’s the prompt I used
-
“Create a outline for an article on teaching middle school students how to move off the ball. This article is intended for someone who is new to coaching basketball, but has a good understanding of the sport. It’s aimed at beginners. It should cover topics such as: types of offenses that encourage movement and specific examples of movements players should make off the ball (cuts or picks, etc.). There are some drills coaches can use to encourage movement .”
Here’s the final product:
Although not perfect, it is a decent framework.
Keyword clustering
The standard caveat: Search-specific tools such as Keyword Insights and similar will not be able to cluster. You can create clusters semantically or based on levels of intent.
You can also add search intent to an additional column.
Summarizing
These summaries can be “flagged” over time as low quality or AI. If you have a study or long article you would like to include in your content (and let people know that you were featured in outreach), you can find help there.
If you need to quickly understand an article, you can request a summary.
Technical SEO: Code Snippets (schemas, hreflangs, etc. ), robots, and more
Code snippets are one of the most dangerous ChatGPT prompts. These are great time-savers but QAQAQAQAQA, QA,
You can copy the code by simply typing “Wrap FAQ Schema around these Questions and Answers” into the prompt.
Similar for other types of schemas, such as organization schema:
ChatGPT has sent me several schemas that did not work on a live page.
A robots file can also be created
Create rewrite rules. But be careful! (Learn more about this later).
Meta descriptions
Many SEOs and people who are responsible for maintaining many pages dislike creating meta descriptions. This is a great function for ChatGPT.
Google Tag Manager , Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console and Looker Studio
These platforms can be troubleshooting tips:
Learn how to build specific reports
You can even obtain code to interface with their APIs
Translation
To create pages specific to a country, you can translate text
Formatting
ChatGPT is a great tool for SEOs who need to perform simple formatting tasks. Converting a page to (or vice versa) HTML is one example.
Take links from a page and extract them:
(It did not distinguish between external and internal links.
You can also extract URLs from a list and convert them into HTML links, or vice versa.
Depending on your skills with spreadsheets and your workflow, you may also be able to perform certain functions that you would normally perform in spreadsheets.
Instead of having to concatenate, or needing to find a number of cities/copy and paste a number of states:
You can substitute VLOOKUP/IF functions with a prompt such as:
- “Create a list of drills for basketball from sites A and B. Show me A) what drills they cover, and B) what drills are missing from each one.
Code to create simple widgets and tools
As I demonstrated in this article you can use ChatGPT for simple tools such as calculators. These can be used to enhance content, rank for specific terms (like the subject calculator), or give you something to promote through outreach.
Rewrite content
ChatGPT can assist you in rewriting or fleshing out content if you give it specific instructions about tone and what you want to include.
Outreach assistant
ChatGPT is unable to locate contact information for you, but it can do specific outreach tasks.
You might like to create a list with ideas for places you would like to guest post.
You can also create a template for your outreach email. This can be especially valuable if English doesn’t speak your first language.
To ensure that your template is consistent with your usual outreach emails, you can infuse the prompts with your tone and content preferences.
You can even create an entire autoresponder sequence.
You could also create other types of outreach lists.
As you go through the outreach process, ChatGPT will likely offer you more opportunities.
The bad
ChatGPT is a great tool for solving problems.
- Instead of asking for specific functions, ask the tool to complete a task.
- Insufficient oversight
Publications were already accused of publishing AI-generated content with errors , and plagiarized material.
We wouldn’t have gained much traction if ChatGPT had done all our keyword research.
If you attempt to assign tasks such as strategy to it, you will often receive the same boilerplate advice that you would get from a beginner’s X tips article on Google.
Without a lot more human input (specific prompts and editing and possibly a mixture of AI and human content), it’s likely that you will get warmed-over material.
That may be acceptable depending on your purpose and your risk tolerance.
Your meta descriptions, FAQs, or some articles or pages may not be required to be “10x”. However, make sure that you fully understand what you are getting.
The ugly
Some areas of your site, such as content that is health-related , or critical tasks, can be sideways.
ChatGPT was used to resolve a.htaccess issue in a side project.
It did not deindex a part of my site. Instead, it indexes the whole site. It only took me 5 days to realize this.
ChatGPT was able to find the error easily when I asked it
— Thomas Jepsen (@JepsenThomas)
February 13, 2023
ChatGPT’s limitations should be taken into consideration
You should exercise caution when it comes to SEO and ChatGPT prompts.
You can learn how to create your own prompts or sourcing inspiration (or productivity improvements) from prompts shared by others.
These are some great articles that include additional SEO prompts for ChatGPT.
- Joe Hall’s list technical SEO prompts.
- Authority Hacker’s List has some great prompt ideas that I haven’t seen anywhere else.
- Aleyda Solis provides a complete list.
- Kristin Tynski regularly shares great ChatGPT prompts, scripts, and templates for different content and SEO-related tasks.
Search Engine Land first published the post A SEO’s guide for ChatGPT prompts.