How great would it be for SEOs if we could use AI like ChatGPT to write content that ranks? Over the last few months, we’ve been running some experiments to answer that question. It would make content creation for SEO SO easy.

Here’s what we found.

Using ChatGPT to write blog posts

ChatGPT is amazing at producing high quality content AND it will even include real wold, accurate, examples. The only caveat is that you need to feed it the right prompts.

The first thing we did was find a keyword that we could easily rank for using SEMRush’s keyword gap tool.

Then, we started “writing content” with ChatGPT by asking it to write “10 tips for writing compelling headlines<– that’s the article we had it write FYI. 

After it produced these tips, we verified that they were accurate and aligned with our best practices. From there, we asked it to “Expand on the first tip. It should be approx. 200 words and be broken down into paragraphs”

We did this for every tip, and copied the results into a word editor (Google Docs). We even had ChatGPT write the title tag & meta description!

The article came out to over 2,000 words, which historically would be in-depth enough to outrank the competition.

Then we did the following:

  • Formatted the content.
  • Added the proper heading tags to relevant sections.
  • Added some real world examples where applicable (if ChatGPT didn’t do this for us already)
  • Internal linked out to relevant posts on our website
  • External linked to relevant content on authoritative websites
  • Added a featured image
  • Published the new blog post
  • Internal linked from older relevant posts, to the new one.

ChatGPT Google Search Console Results

We were really hopeful that using AI to write content would be a huge time saver, whilst helping our clients rank. Since we weren’t sure, we did this experiment on our own site rather than testing it on a paying client’s site.

Anyways, here are the results!

chatgpt seo results

At first glance, it’s not great. We chose a very easy keyword to rank for and within the first few months, our average position is 66 with the best position being approx. 20.

We are getting impressions, however we should have 10x more impressions based on the average search volume for this keyword.

Let’s take a look at the keywords we’re actually ranking for.

chatgpt search console results

Again, nothing to write home about here.

We know SEO is a long game so we will be checking in on this article and updating this blog post with our findings as learn more.

Using ChatGPT to write other content

Although we have not had any success with ChatGPT when it comes to writing articles for SEO purposes, we do use it on a daily basis in other aspects of our business.

Using ChatGPT to write SEO blog ideas

After doing keyword research, the brainstorming process to come up with blog topics can be exhausting. Especially when you’re an SEO agency doing this every single day. In this regard ChatGPT has been our saving grace.

We use it to expedite the process of brainstorming headline topics, variations, and tone. You can tell ChatGPT to make your headline more fun, or punchy, or informational.

Using ChatGPT to write social headlines

We highly recommend using AI to write your social headlines and copy. Since we’re not dealing with search engines, it doesn’t matter as much if you copy/paste the copy written by AI into Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. As long as the content is good, use it!

This works especially good for putting together a content calendar. What used to take days now takes hours. And the content is often just as good OR BETTER than we would have written ourselves.

Using ChatGPT to write your Facebook Ads

Please try this out and let me know how it works for you. We always test several variations of our ad copy, so we need a ton of versions. ChatGPT has made this process SO quick and easy. Even if you’re just using it to come up with ideas for your ad copy, you’ll be thankful you used it!

Using ChatGPT to write scripts for social video

I don’t know about you, but scripting sucks. Using AI to come up with an outline, or even write your script is a great place to start from. You’ll definitely need to edit the script to sound like you, but starting from something, is far better than starting from nothing!

Using ChatGPT to make you sound smarter

We work with clients whose primary language is NOT english, and they swear by ChatGPT. They use it to rewrite emails, social copy, and even proposals. Heck! I’ve even used it to make myself sound smarter! – Give it a try! Your coworkers will think you took a writing course!

Using an AI Content Detector – Is your content written by man or machine?

Using Writer.com’s AI content detector is a great way to check if your content sounds like it was written by AI. Currently, you can only measure up to 1500 characters, so you will likely need to do this in batches.

Conclusion: Should you use ChatGPT to write your content?

In certain instances yes. For SEO and blog content, no… at least not with the current version. We have no doubt that AI will get better and better at writing content, and that search engines will have trouble deciphering whether it was written by man or machine, but for now, it’s just not there.

If you need help with writing content for SEO or Facebook ads, let us know! We can help!

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