Can You Use ChatGPT For SEO?

Can You Use ChatGPT For Content And SEO?

If you have any sort of online presence, or are interested in SEO, you have probably heard the name ‘ChatGPT’ floating around. This artificial intelligence chatbot from OpenAI has taken the SEO world by storm over the last few months, offering a new way of creating content. 

The bot aims to optimise language models for dialogue, providing users with responses that have a conversational, ‘human-like’ tone. And the quality of ChatGPT’s latest instalment has been highly coveted – with people speculating that it could be the future of content creation, replacing copywriters and bloggers with its ability to create long-form content. 

But is ChatGPT capable of writing high-quality SEO-optimised content for various purposes? Or does it still fall short of its human predecessors? 

Let’s explore the capabilities of ChatGTP and what impact it could have on the SEO industry.

An Introduction To ChatGPT, By ChatGPT 

For the sake of this article, using ChatGPTs ability to take directions from humans, we’ve asked ChatGPT to introduce itself:

Aside from the incredible technology that makes responses like this possible, one of the most interesting parts of this response is that the AI claims to be ‘human-like’. 

How Does ChatGPT Write Like A Human?

ChatGPT has been trained to sound like a human by a large dataset of text from the internet. This includes thousands of resources such as conversations, articles, blogs and other texts written by humans. 

ChatGPT incorporates a language model called InstructGPT, developed to help the AI take directions from humans, including complex questions. It can use these questions to help it pick apart thousands of sources into a long-form answer. 

To top this off, OpenAI also gave the model some general knowledge, which helps it connect with other types of data, providing more human-like, conversational answers based on real-world knowledge. Much like a child learning to form sentences, the AI has learnt about context and conversation – developing its vocabulary and written speech pattern.

Just like most writers have their narrative tone of voice, ChatGPT has constructed a voice of its own. 

How Does ChatGPT Differ From A Search Engine?

ChatGPT differs from a search engine because it is an AI model instead of a database you can search. 

This means that while you can type a question into a search engine such as Google and get millions of articles from different sources to pick from yourself, when you ask a question to ChatGPT, you will get one answer that the AI has formed based on the information it has found online. 

What Are The Limitations of ChatGPT? 

We know what you’re thinking – this seems like the perfect time-saver for writing content. However, before you decide to swap out your copywriters for AI, there are some important limitations to ChatGPT to be aware of.

ChatGPT Is Unaware Of Current Events 

Although its developers did provide ChatGPT with some real-world knowledge, it can’t keep up with real-world events. It has yet to be made aware of content after its launch in 2021. 

This can lead to issues regarding sensitivity in content writing, as real-world events can often influence public perception, especially in marketing. It also means the responses you get might be outdated – especially in industries with constant change and development. 

Likewise, this prevents your content from taking advantage of trends. An actual copywriter can observe events as they happen in real-time – helping you make the most of what people are talking about when they’re talking about them.

ChatGPT Does Not Understand Branding 

While ChatGPT is programmed to understand some aspects of what makes up a company’s branding; there are certain factors that it struggles with, such as emotion and personality.

While a copywriter can look at your style, tone and branding to make your brand’s copy feel unique and build a relationship with your customer base, the AI can’t create a piece with ‘personality’.

It may be able to create something that reflects your usual vocabulary or sentence structure, but it won’t be able to make content that uses language intentionally to create an impression on your audience. 

A professional copywriter can create content for various brands, covering a wide range of industries and topics without sounding inauthentic. Human connection and discussion is paramount here, as it allows for the brand to really connect with their target demographics. 

AI Can Detect AI 

Years ago, this would have sounded like a borderline dystopian problem, but now AI systems have been created specifically to detect content not written by humans. But don’t take our word for it; let’s ask ChatGPT directly:

We tested this theory by checking the above AI-generated text in Kazan SEOs GPT3 Detector. The results showed Kazan’s tech believed it to be at least 93.63% fake. 

The above text also scored 12% for plagiarism on Grammarly, which can be a red flag for search engines which penalise content for being too derivative or plagiarised from other sources. If ChatGPT gives multiple people the same answers to use in their content, it could cause major plagiarism issues if they don’t rework them. 

ChatGPT Cannot Optimise Your Content For SEO

When you work with an SEO agency like Boyd Digital, we complete detailed keyword research to help ensure our copywriters have the tools they need to write content that will help them rank higher on search engines. A Boyd Digital copywriter can provide you with:

• Content which has readability taken into account
• Content which is grammatically correct
• Content which contains high-quality links
• Content which is written in your brand tone
• Content which is within Google’s good content guidelines

Understanding customer search intent is a big part of ensuring your content ranks well; unfortunately, this is not something that ChatGPT can do. It cannot conduct keyword research and, therefore, will not incorporate relevant keywords into your text. 

It also can’t build the same personal relationship with your customers using tone of voice and can’t optimise the content to read well on a mobile or desktop page. When you ask ChatGPT for content, it comes back as a statement – it is not formatted with a title, subheading and other relevant reading and formatting devices. 

Can SEO Agencies Work With ChatGPT? 

One of the most interesting things about the development of ChatGPT is that it can be a helpful tool to assist with copywriting, even if it’s not the sole writer. 

If we think of ChatGPT more like a helpful colleague, we can work with it to create high-quality content which isn’t flagged as AI-written. For example, let’s pretend we are using it to help us with an FAQ section for an iPhone:

Question: “What is an iPhone 12 best at?”

ChatGPT: “The iPhone 12 is a smartphone produced by Apple and is best known for its combination of advanced technology and intuitive user experience.”

This snippet of ChatGPT’s answer scored 90% for AI detection. We got one of our Boyd Digital copywriters to rework it. 

Boyd Digital: “The Apple iPhone 12 is best known for its advanced IOS technology and intuitive user interface. Compared to previous models, it is faster, has a lower charging timer and features a new high-resolution OLED display.”

This above human-written rework scored 85% real – meaning it didn’t detect that an AI had written it. 

ChatGPT can give writers a great springboard to work with, lessening time spent on Google searching for specific points and helping to gather information quickly from multiple online sources. 

However, to keep in line with Google’s E.E.A.T. content guidelines (which want you to demonstrate reliable experience in your topic) and to reduce any risk of plagiarism and AI detection, it is vital to have a human perspective and experience on your side. 

What Does The Future Of SEO Look Like With AI?

Quite frankly, AI isn’t slowing down. Though ChatGPT can’t do everything, it is a highly complex learning machine which has demonstrated tremendous potential for the capabilities of AI. But, just as we did in our intro, let’s ask ChatGPT its opinion:

The future of AI is uncertain, but for now, we can work alongside them to create high-quality content that combines expert human knowledge, voice and research with the complex information AI can summarise. 

Hire An Expert Copy Team Today

As a tech-driven company, Boyd Digital understands the demands of keeping up with new technologies and AIs whilst maintaining the important human touch that customers and clients value. 

If you want to work with a dynamic team which prioritises high-quality content, we can discuss how we can help optimise your content for search engines using expert keyword research and analytics. 

Get in touch with Boyd Digital today.