The marketing world is buzzing about artificial intelligence (AI) — namely, ChatGPT. Not only is it the biggest of the AI bunch, but it’s also (so far) the most impactful.
Yes, it can generate content. But the real value? Search engine optimization (SEO). With an arsenal of well-crafted prompts and a healthy dose of human creativity, ChatGPT can make your brand more visible than ever before.
What Makes an Effective Prompt?
ChatGPT is a wonderful companion for countless SEO tasks. However, without an effective prompt, it can generate invalid, inaccurate or irrelevant content.
Think of a ChatGPT prompt like you would a homework assignment. Just like in school, broad instructions invite a wide range of answers — many off-base or straight-up wrong.
Here are some tips to make your SEO prompts deliver Grade A results:
- Offer context: ChatGPT generates content based on the data it’s trained on and any information it can process. So, the more context you provide, the better the output. Include relevant details to help it understand what you need — background info, facts, target audiences, etc. This will ultimately make AI-generated content more accurate and useful.
- Use reference material: Looking for a certain tone? Give it an example. As of GPT-4, you can upload documents, like brand guidelines or blogs, to demonstrate what you want. GPT-4o can also browse the internet, so paste links to anything you’d like it to reference. (Note: These features are limited without a ChatGPT Plus subscription.)
- Provide guardrails: Search engines have preferences for character limits and word counts, which sway SEO performance. The best prompt will account for these variables. For example, if you’re writing a meta description, tell ChatGPT to act as an SEO expert and keep it within 155 characters. Likewise, if certain topics are off-limits to your brand, ask it to avoid them.
- Specify format: The newest GPTs can deliver outputs in different styles, like a list, table or snippet of code. Be direct about what format you want. For content writing, you might need concise, detailed paragraphs.
- Iterate and refine: If the results aren’t quite on the mark, adjust your ChatGPT prompt and try again. You can directly tell the model what you didn’t like about the response, which can help it generate a better outcome. Also, keep the same chat thread going for future uses. The model maintains a “memory” of the past instructions, allowing it to retain context and improve responses.
ChatGPT Prompts for Keyword Research
Keyword research is the rudder that steers your entire SEO strategy. Skip this step and you’re more than likely headed in the wrong direction.
The good news? ChatGPT can help. Here are two ways it doubles as an SEO tool for smooth-sailing keyword research:
1. Seed SEO Keywords
A seed keyword is a short, generic term highly relevant to your niche or target audience — a broad category they’re probably searching for. It’s typically only 1-3 words long.
Here’s a ChatGPT prompt you can use to identify seed keywords.
Prompt: I need help conducting seed keyword research. Suggest 15 unique SEO keywords topically relevant to the main category: “content marketing.”
Want to narrow your choices? Ask ChatGPT to identify the most important keywords based on relevance to your target audience. Have it include explanations to understand why those terms are especially significant.
2. Long-Tail SEO Keywords
Whereas seed keywords are shorter and highly competitive, long-tail keywords are usually the opposite. They may have a lower search volume, but fewer domains target them. In other words, you have a stronger chance of landing on Page 1 of the search engine results page (SERP).
Here’s an example…
Prompt: Using “content marketing analytics” as the seed keyword, suggest 15 long-tail keywords.
As you can see, they’re longer and more specific than “content marketing analytics.”
Here’s a tip: Use another SEO tool, like Semrush, to confirm search intent and monthly volume. These are critical factors to consider when choosing a target keyword. Once you have this information, return to ChatGPT and use it to simplify data analysis.
ChatGPT Prompts for SEO Content Writing
When we asked our audience how they use ChatGPT for search engine optimization, 58% of respondents said content creation — which isn’t surprising.
Why? Because content writing takes time. The average blog post takes nearly four hours to write, or about 60% longer than a decade ago. That’s not factoring in keyword research, content ideation or outlining.
Luckily, AI can streamline the effort. Here are a few of the best ChatGPT prompts for to augment your SEO content creation process:
3. Content Ideation
Being a content creator is hard when you’re short on content ideas. Sometimes, we need a push in the right direction — or any direction — to generate momentum.
Think of this next prompt as the jumper cable that starts your creative engine.
Prompt: Suggest five content ideas for SEO-optimized blog posts targeting the keyword “benefits of AI in healthcare.”
Pick an idea, combine it with another or don’t use any — the choice is yours. At the very least, this exercise gets your wheels turning; at most, you’re off to the races with a great SEO topic.
4. Outline Creation
Once you’ve brainstormed ideas, ChatGPT can help you visualize the content in more detail with a fairly robust outline, complete with subtopics, messaging points and more. For example, here’s how I used it to outline the content ideas from the previous exercise…
Prompt: I’m writing a blog post titled “The Future of Healthcare: Potential Benefits of AI Innovations.” Draft an SEO-friendly outline with a logical and sequential structure, noting key topics to cover throughout the article.
Not bad, right? Now we know what the blog could look like, how it might flow and which subtopics we definitely need to research.
5. Intros and Conclusions
I’ll admit it: Writing introductions and conclusions isn’t always easy. Even with a solid outline, piecing together an engaging intro takes time. This next ChatGPT prompt can help ease the process with a helpful example — or, with the right instructions, a ready-to-go paragraph.
Prompt: I’m writing a blog post titled “The Future of Healthcare: Potential Benefits of AI Innovations.” Write an engaging and SEO-friendly introduction that includes the keyword “benefits of AI innovations.” Keep the intro short (less than 150 words) and avoid cliches or repetition.
Not too bad! It needs a little work, but we’re on our way to a full-fledged blog.
6. Content Writing
Perhaps the greatest advantage of content marketing with ChatGPT is its ability to streamline the content writing process. In a matter of seconds, you can generate an entire blog post or landing page to aid your SEO strategy.
But be warned: Inputs always dictate the outputs. The better your instructions are, the better your copy. See how I gave ChatGPT all the necessary information to write an SEO-optimized blog:
Prompt: You’re an expert in AI technology and its healthcare applications. Based on this outline, write a 1,500-word blog post on “The Future of Healthcare: Potential Benefits of AI Innovations.” Incorporate the following keywords throughout to boost search engine optimization.
And with that, our work is done, right? Wrong.
It’s never OK to publish AI-generated content without human oversight. ChatGPT isn’t always right and has no moral code, so you must always check its output for bias, quality and factual accuracy.
7. Google Ads
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimization are often considered opposites. But in reality, PPC boosts SEO performance. How? Driving targeted traffic to a website can lead to higher engagement and improved organic rankings as search engines recognize the site’s relevance and popularity.
Here’s an effective prompt for generating ad copy …
Prompt: You are a Google Ads expert. Write engaging ad copy that adheres to Google Ads specifications, promotes [insert project details] and incorporates these keywords: [insert list].
Best ChatGPT Prompts for SEO Content Optimization
Aside from the content itself, other elements impact SEO performance. Here are some of the best prompts for optimizing these components:
8. Title Tag
A title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of a web page, displayed on SERPs as the clickable headline. It significantly influences both user click-through rates and search engine rankings by providing a concise summary of the page’s content.
Prompt: Write an SEO-friendly title tag for the blog post. Stay within character limits and incorporate the keyword “digital marketing strategies.”
9. Meta Description
Similarly, a meta description sits below the title on a SERP and informs users with a short summary of what the page is about.
Prompt: Based on this article, write a meta description that incorporates the target keyword “digital marketing strategies” and follows SEO best practices.
Best ChatGPT Prompts for Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to your website’s backend architecture. Every site has different technical components that make it easier for search engines to crawl and index them. Let’s look at two SEO prompts that can simplify this process:
10. XML Sitemaps
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the URLs on your website and tells search engines which ones to index. Creating them takes a long time, but this prompt can speed up the effort:
Prompt: My website is: [insert link]. Create a valid XML sitemap for the following pages: [insert all webpage links].
For the purposes of this exercise, I used just three links from Brafton.com. Regardless, the results should look like this:
11. Robots.txt Files
A robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which URLs they can access on your site. For instance, you might not want Google indexing a staging environment because it’s used for testing and development purposes. It could contain incomplete or unpolished content that isn’t ready for public viewing. If indexed, this could also dilute your SEO performance.
ChatGPT can help generate a file that mitigates this risk:
Prompt: Create a robots.txt file that prevents indexing development or staging environments.
In turn, search engines index only the pages you want them to, which can boost technical SEO.
Start Practicing Your Prompts
Prompt engineering is a must-have skill for modern content marketers. Hopefully, these SEO prompts are exactly what you need to get started. As you experiment with ChatGPT for content marketing, remember to keep an eye on the output.
(And maybe throw in a “please” here and there — just in case.)
