Is ChatGPT an effective SEO tool?
Is ChatGPT an effective SEO tool?
ChatGPT and other AI tools have become very popular throughout 2023. Many people use these tools due to personal interest in how AI works, others are using them to aid them in their businesses and marketing practices. AI can be incredibly useful in many different situations:
- Improving image quality
- Image editing
- Research
- Automation
- Content writing
But how does ChatGPT and AI handle SEO tasks? Is it possible?
Creating Content with ChatGPT
At I Do Marketing we set out to research how well ChatGPT performs in terms of SEO compared to our own content writing.
We first researched a keyword/topic that was fairly competitive, but still achievable to some degree. We chose our articles to be centred on the 7 Ps of marketing, which is a popular subject across the web, within the marketing industry. To make things fair, we decided that the word count of each article should be the same, and metadata should contain the same amount of keywords and keyword variants.
We prompted ChatGPT to “write a 700 word article summarising the 7 ps of marketing”. Out of the 700 words we wanted, ChatGPT wrote an article with 553 words. We then generated some metadata to fill in the title and description of the article. The only human input included were the images present on the blog post.
Afterwards we planned and drafted our own article, including the same word count and the same amount of images.
Here are the two results:
Human: The 7 Ps of Marketing
AI: The 7 Ps of Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide to Building a Successful Strategy
Once both articles were published we submitted their links through Google Search Console in order for search engines to crawl these pages and index them on the web.
SEO Performance: Human V ChatGPT
After a few months of these new articles being made live, we decided to see if either of them had any progress in terms of their SEO rankings.
Using an online SEO tool we could determine that the article written and optimised by ourselves were ranking for 3 keywords related to the article:
- “7 ps” (which has a monthly search volume of 3,600) ranks at 59
- “Marketing ps” (which has a monthly search volume of 210) ranks at 47
- “seven ps” (which has a monthly search volume of 70) ranks at 77
Although these rankings aren’t particularly high up on Google search results, they rank fairly well within the time frame of this SEO experiment. The longer content is present on the web, the more likely it is to have a higher ranking on search results pages.
In the case for the ChatGPT article, our SEO tool determined that it did not rank for any keywords. We also found that the traffic generated from the ChatGPT article was lower than the traffic achieved by our article.
- ChatGPT’s blog had 9 users that viewed the page 17 times in total
- Our blog had 17 users that viewed the page 23 times in total
This could be due to the writing style differences between humans and AI, and the fact that, as content writers, we tend to go back and amend the way we present information. SEO and keyword optimisation is a deliberate practice that usually requires content to go through several alterations. This includes spacing out keywords in your content evenly and amending keywords so that keyword variants can be used instead (Google can rank you for a keyword, even if you use synonyms as alternatives).
Are ChatGPT and AI still useful?
With content writing and SEO, AI can be a useful tool but it shouldn’t be used on it’s own. Tools like ChatGPT reiterate information that is currently present on the web, and can’t always be deliberate in its actions.
ChatGPT isn’t always accurate, even though it may come across as confident when it presents you with an answer. ChatGPT uses data throughout the internet up to the year 2021, so it’s answers will only ever be accurate for information that hasn’t changed in two years.
If you want to write content with ChatGPT, we recommend using it to help you with your content structure. Use it’s AI generated content as a basis for the information you want to convey. You can use ChatGPT for research also, but make sure to fact check any information it provides.
Although ChatGPT can save you a lot of time, the performance it achieves isn’t always going to get you the results you want. And if you pump out content at a high rate, you run the risk of having your website feeling bloated.
Content Writing & SEO
Whether you are looking for a website audit or SEO friendly content for your website, the I Do Marketing team can help. Click below to view our SEO services, or get in touch:
Written by Denham Thompson
Web Developer & SEO Specialist
Denham maintains and updates our current clients’ websites, as well as designing and developing brand new professional sites for new clients and their businesses. He has 8 years experience working with clients in varying industries and loves applying his knowledge to help our clients succeed.
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