In the fast-paced world of SEO, adaptability and the adoption of emerging technologies are essential to stay ahead of the curve. In this context, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a driving force behind search engine optimization. In particular, the arrival of ChatGPT, a conversational AI language model, has caused quite a stir in the digital marketing industry. But just how significant is its impact? In this article, we will break down how SEO Alive is using ChatGPT and other forms of AI to power advanced SEO strategies. We will explore the role this technology plays in improving online visibility, user experience and search engine rankings, and how these developments are shaping the future of SEO. Join us on this journey to find out whether ChatGPT is, in fact, the path to the future of SEO.
Does that paragraph sound clichéd or robotic to you? It is the exact answer ChatGPT gives to the prompt “Please act as if you were a copywriter specialized in SEO and write the introduction for a post titled Is ChatGPT the future? How we use AI at SEO Alive”.
Is artificial intelligence a threat to SEO content creation, or is it just one more tool we can use to maximize our creativity and productivity? We share our opinion in this post.
Table of contents
How we use AI at SEO Alive
ChatGPT and similar tools are no longer news: almost everyone has had the chance to try them and be amazed by the things they can do, or horrified by how far off the mark some of their answers are. At SEO Alive we have tried out different AI tools, played around with them, built them into some of our routines and waited until we had a firm opinion before writing this post.
Why? Because in an industry where immediacy is the norm, there are times (like this one) when you need to stop for a second, take a breath and think, especially if the revolution is as big as the one artificial intelligence promises. We could not agree more with Maïder Tomasena when she says that AI is to content creation what the calculator is to maths: it makes the work easier, of course it does, but you still need people behind it.
AI provides the knowledge (with certain limitations: if you are using it, we recommend that you check the data it gives you, because it can make mistakes) but not the soul, the creativity, the spark… In short, everything that turns a flat text into an appealing, enjoyable post.
So does that mean we do not use AI at SEO Alive? Of course we do! We are well aware that it has incredible practical applications and the ability to multiply our team's productivity by 1,000, but for us it is one more tool among all the ones we use to offer our clients the best possible service, not a replacement for the wonderful human talent that makes up our agency.
Things we do use artificial intelligence for
ChatGPT and similar tools have incredible potential in the digital marketing and SEO industry and are able to make our lives enormously easier, especially by taking the simplest and most repetitive tasks off our hands. At SEO Alive we have built them into some of our working protocols, sometimes after months of studying and developing the most effective prompts, in order to cut down the time we spent on certain tasks and devote more attention to the ones we consider most important.
Keyword research
As things stand today, artificial intelligence still falls short when it comes to running complete keyword studies, since it does not include up-to-date data as important as the search volume of each keyword, but it can be a good starting point for projects in their very early stages.
That said, for the research to be worth anything you have to take ChatGPT's results for what they are: the first step in a much broader process, through which you will discover which keywords you need to work on to rank your project and generate leads.
Content ideas
Content creation is one of the key pieces of any SEO strategy, but when a project is already well developed it can be hard to find topics of interest.
Depending on the stage you are at, what you can get out of AI and the questions you need to ask to get it will be different:
- If the project has barely been worked on, generic topics targeting less specialized long tails can be a good way to start.
- As you write about certain topics, you will need to cover more specialized angles that allow you to position your blog as a benchmark in the industry.
- Creating a cluster of related content will help you rank on Google and drive traffic to your website.
Of course, this is not as simple as asking ChatGPT for a list of topics and starting to write: for the strategy to succeed, you will need to analyze the keywords for each of the topics suggested and the traffic they have the potential to generate, possible cannibalization with content you have already written, how the competition is tackling them… And that is something no artificial intelligence can do for you just yet.
Background research
This is one of the best uses you can put AI to and, without a doubt, one of the tasks we use it for most at SEO Alive: ask ChatGPT to expand your information on any topic. At first it will give you very general information and, as you ask more questions about the results or ask it to go deeper into specific aspects, it will offer you more specific data about the subject you want to look into.
On a second question, the information provided is more relevant
As we dig into interesting aspects, the information becomes more specific
Of course, this is only the beginning: every day we find new applications, which we test before adding them to our working protocols. The idea is to hugely increase the productivity of our team, which can now carry out many more actions on our clients' projects in the same amount of time.
What we do not recommend using artificial intelligence for
But there is one thing that, in our view, no artificial intelligence is ready to take over from a qualified professional just yet: content creation, especially SEO-oriented content. Would you leave your website in the hands of someone who offers you no guarantees when it comes to their experience and expertise?
We have seen it already: writing a well-researched, well-written, enjoyable post with the right tone for your target audience is no simple task (if it were, writers and copywriters would not exist). Leaving it in the hands of an artificial intelligence that, at best, is still in the process of learning can be a very serious mistake that undoes the rest of your efforts. These are some of the reasons why we do not recommend writing your content with AI:
- Lack of creativity: creativity is a uniquely human trait, through which we are able to invent, that is, to create objects, ideas or abstract representations out of prior knowledge, feelings, sensations or memories. What does that mean? That an AI can take ideas from here and there and pull them together into a single text, but for the time being it is not capable of creating something completely new, original and unique, the way a professional writer can.
- Flat texts: for the same reason, the tone and the structures of AI-written texts end up looking suspiciously alike, even when they deal with completely different topics.
Examples of introductions in posts on different topics with a very similar structure
- As we have already seen with the mortgage example, ChatGPT tends to stay on the surface of any topic without going deeper into it. To write a text with the depth your target audience demands, especially when we are talking about highly specialized subjects, you will need to consult several sources and, of course, AI can be one of them, but never the only one.
- ChatGPT itself is aware of its limitations regarding the information it provides and, based on our work with the tool, we can confirm it: always check the data it gives you before taking it as valid, because it may not be correct.
The latest Google algorithm update (March 2024) focused precisely on detecting and tackling spam and low-quality content, especially content generated automatically and semi-automatically, with the aim of penalizing in the search rankings those results created only to rank and which do not give the user what they are looking for.
This is what Google's official documentation says about content generated automatically with AI
And what about you, how do you use AI day to day? If you do not want to depend on ChatGPT to generate the content for your project, get in touch with us: we can help.
