From its developers, OpenAI, ChatGPT is a sibling model of InstructGPT.
The software’s dialogue format allows it to answer follow-up questions and do tasks based on the previous context it was given. Furthermore, it runs on GPT 3, a language model producing human-like text to get user feedback on InstructGPT’s strengths and weaknesses.
However, this generative AI tool has evolved into something else: a content creation powerhouse for marketers, businesses and all types of people who want to write faster or get answers a lot more quickly.
With its meteoric rise to one million users in just five days (Statista), there may be questions on how exactly you properly chat with GPT 3.
One way to utilize the power of generative AI is through keyword research and content ideation and this nifty guide will help you start getting keywords and topics faster.
ChatGPT as a Keyword Research Tool
With the right prompts, building keyword research strategies with ChatGPT is a great way to generate ideas quickly.
ChatGPT could significantly help with keyword research strategies since they “provide a lot of ideas you can use for your next content,” said Ronnel Viloria, the Demand Generation Lead SEO Strategist at Thrive.
“This AI tool can give you a set of keywords depending on what you ask and it can also give you information based on the popularity and relevance of the keywords you are focusing on.”
Here are some tips for using ChatGPT to find keywords.
Keyword List Generation
Generating keyword lists for your next content piece can take a long time. You’ll scour competitor pages, ask Google different question variations and manually collect keywords. All that manual work is time-consuming.
ChatGPT can make the entire process faster.
Let’s say you’re researching content for how an avocado tastes like. In this case, you can use a simple prompt:
“Make a list of keywords related to avocado taste.”
It will then generate a list of up to 20 keywords related to the term specified.
Generate Long Tail Keywords
ChatGPT is also great at finding long tail keywords for your content.
Long tail keywords are essential to any keyword research and SEO strategy.
Not only do they help you reach a more focused audience, but they also make it easier for search engines to find and rank your content.
Continuing the previous example, you can ask ChatGPT to generate long tail keywords in table format. When you generate long tail keywords, ask ChatGPT for their search intent, so you know how to use these keywords on your content.
Here’s the prompt:
“Generate a table of 10 long tail keywords for avocado taste. Name the first column as ‘Long Tail Keywords.’ Name the second column as ‘Search Intent.'”
The results are impressive:
This list will give you an easier time creating content ideas from long tail keywords.
Extracting Keywords From Other Content
You can also use ChatGPT to compare and analyze page-level keywords and phrases. This makes it easier to identify which keywords your competitors use in their blogs or web pages.
Just make sure to paste the whole content instead of just pasting the link since ChatGPT can’t crawl URLs yet.
Following our avocado example, we’ll be using the top search result as a basis for searching some keywords we could use for your blog.
Here’s a prompt you could use:
“Imagine you’re a food marketer writing a blog on how avocado tastes. Crawl and analyze this content and tell me which keywords I should use and why:” Followed by your chosen competitor blog.
ChatGPT will then respond with something like this:
Finding Latent Semantic Indexing Terms
LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing terms can help you structure your content better and improve its relevance to search engine bots.
ChatGPT can make this process easier by finding related or similar phrases to a particular keyword. You can then incorporate those LSI terms in the body of your blog post or page.
For example, let’s use avocado again as our keyword. Ask ChatGPT something like:
“Find me some LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) terms related to avocado.”
It should then generate at least ten phrases that are highly relevant to the main keyword you provided.
Creating a Complete Keyword Research Strategy
Keyword research strategies take a long time to complete, but ChatGPT could speed up that process for you.
Let’s make a mock keyword research strategy and create four columns, namely:
• Keyword Cluster
• Long Tail Keyword
• Search Intent
• Title
• Meta Description
This way, all you need to do is tweak the content in the Title and Meta Description, but everything else is already taken care of.
Here’s the complete prompt you could use:
“Imagine you’re a food marketer planning to create a content plan, optimized for high-converting keywords for the term ‘avocado.’ Write a complete strategy in a table format using the following columns: Keyword Cluster, Long Tail Keyword, Search Intent, Title, Meta Description. Keyword Clusters are the super categories of the term ‘avocado.’ Long Tail Keywords should contain a long tail keyword for that super category. The Search Intent column contains the human search intent for that keyword. Insert your suggested titles and meta descriptions in the Title and Meta Description columns. The content should be SEO friendly and helpful for the reader. Limit your response to 10 rows only.”
Using ChatGPT With Your SEO Tools
Used alone, ChatGPT is already a powerful keyword research tool. But when used alongside other tools for SEO content writing, it can be even more effective.
For instance, you can feed Ahrefs data about a keyword generated by ChatGPT to check if it’s worth targeting.
You can also use SEMrush to see the estimated search volume for that particular long tail keyword.
The best way to use ChatGPT is to have a strategy first before starting your keyword research. This guarantees that the AI generated content you produce is relevant and valuable for your content creation process.
Brainstorming Content With ChatGPT
More than a keyword research tool, ChatGPT can also be used to produce a wide range of content.
Content ideation is “really about getting the prompt right and experimenting with altering the prompt to fine-tune your search,” said Brandon George, Thrive’s Content Director.
Content marketers and creators are often stumped for ideas, so ChatGPT can help you come up with unique and interesting content topics.
Blog Topic Ideas
The prompt to use when generating blog topic ideas is very simple. Here’s one that you could use:
“Create a list of blog ideas about [Topic].”
In this case, you can ask ChatGPT for blog ideas about the term “avocado.”
The results are actually pretty great:
Generating blog topic ideas allows you to explore topics your readers will find interesting.
Some of these ideas are actually unique, which makes it easier for you to come up with content that will stand out.
If you want to take this one step further, we can use a simpler variation of the keyword research strategy prompt we used earlier here:
“Pretend you’re a food marketer creating a list of blog ideas for the term avocados. Create a table with these columns: Blog Title, Search Intent, Meta Description. The Blog Title column contains the title of the blog. The Search Intent column contains the human intent when searching for the blog. Suggest a meta description for the meta description column. Keep the content helpful, concise and engaging. Limit your output to 10 blog titles only.”
Here’s the output you could get when using this prompt:
As you can see, using the right prompts with this generative AI tool will unlock topics you have not even considered.
Brandon said ChatGPT is great at generating topics that are not necessarily top-of-mind. It is great for brainstorming ideas and coming up with unique content.
Find Topic Questions
Content ideation answers the most basic of questions: what should I write about? But it’s also an opportunity to take a deeper dive and uncover the underlying needs of your readers.
To do that, you can use generative artificial intelligence to generate topic questions for your blog posts or other content. Here’s an example prompt you could use:
“Generate ten topic questions related to the topic of avocados.”
You can then use these questions for your blog posts, FAQ sections or even for your audience research.
Researching for Sub-Niche Content
AI generated content can also be used to research which topics are most talked about in your niche and identify underlying sub-niches
A sub-niche is a specific area within your niche that has its own set of interests and topics. For example, in the avocado industry, one sub-niche could be “organic avocado farming.”
The first prompt you’ll use should look like this:
“What are the most popular avocado blogs and websites?”
Next, ask ChatGPT about the topics and content they’re writing about. Here’s a prompt you can use:
“Using only the avocado websites you gave me, extract high-level categories of content they’re discussing, briefly describe those categories and give me some topic examples that that fit into each category. Use a table format with these columns: High-Level Category, Brief Description, Topic Examples. Limit your output to 10 categories only.”
Here’s what you can get when you chat with GPT 3 using this prompt:
Making Sure Your Generative AI Works Perfectly
As a keyword research tool and content ideation assistant, ChatGPT just makes most of your work a lot easier.
However, it certainly isn’t perfect, and there are still some things that you need to watch out for.
Be Specific With Your Prompts
Generative AI, like ChatGPT, still struggles with understanding all context in your prompts.
For example, you may include too many questions in one prompt, and ChatGPT won’t be able to answer everything accurately.
Therefore, make sure to be as specific and concise with your prompts as possible.
You can also test out different keywords, phrases and questions to ensure you get the most accurate results.
Consider ChatGPT’s Character Limitations
As you can see in most of our keyword research prompts, ChatGPT has character limitations.
This means that your prompt and ChatGPT’s output must be within a specific range of characters, or else ChatGPT will give you an error message. (We actually had a hard time getting the results we wanted because of these limitations)
That’s why you should only ask it to generate, for example, ten long tail keywords at a time to prevent eliciting an error when you chat with GPT 3. You can try bumping that number up to 20, but that’s the highest you could go.
Always Conduct Your Due Diligence
You may be tempted to rely solely on ChatGPT’s keyword research service and content ideation capability, but you should still conduct your own due diligence.
For example, double-check any generated keywords with tools for SEO content writing to optimize your content strategy further, like:
• Google Ads Keyword Planner
• Moz
• Ahrefs
ChatGPT’s capabilities as an SEO content writing tool are best when used with human input, editing and other SEO tools.
Viloria said that ChatGPT does not provide queries based on search volume. That’s why you have to analyze these keywords using SEO content writing services and tools for important metrics, such as search volume and competition.
Also, it never hurts to do some supplementary research just to check if ChatGPT’s responses are accurate.
That way, you have the confidence to identify the best keywords for your content and create top-notch SEO strategies.
Consult With Your SEO Tools and Human Experts
Although generative artificial intelligence can be used as an effective SEO content writing tool, it’s best to consult with other tools and experts before making any big decisions to maximize your search visibility, especially in local SEO.
It’s vital to ensure that all the keyword research you conduct is accurate and up-to-date.
Brandon recognizes the importance of working with specialists when leveraging SEO content writing tools like ChatGPT.
He said that while they do increase efficiencies, “they work best when they are paired with a human who knows high-quality content, knows the subject matter well and knows how to optimize content well to rank on Google.” That’s why “you need a human writer and a human touch to get the highest quality of content.”
This may require additional manual work and some back and forth from yourself and your team, but it will ultimately provide better (and more reliable) results.
Create Consistently High-Quality Content With Thrive
Working with ChatGPT still requires a good sense of what you want to achieve. However, with its help, you can easily create keyword-rich content that ranks well and builds brand trust.
Knowing which prompts to use – and when – allows you to speed up the process by eliminating hours of manual research and crawling tens of websites for keywords and content ideas. Combined with other SEO content writing tools, you can unlock ChatGPT’s real potential and start crafting content plans and keyword research strategies faster than before.
Of course, you can only maximize ChatGPT and other tools for SEO content writing when you partner with professionals.
Thrive Internet Marketing Agency has a team of SEO and digital marketing experts who can help you create consistently high-quality content that meets your business goals.
We offer a robust keyword research service, technical SEO and SEO content writing services that leverage the best tools, technologies and strategies to help you rank higher in search engines.
Start writing stellar SEO content with Thrive today!
