For those of you unaware of the popular emerging AI chatbot, we would like to give ChatGPT the floor to introduce itself (content below is the actual ChatGPT answer to “What is ChatGPT?”).
I am ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI based on the GPT-3.5 architecture. I have been trained on a vast corpus of text data and have been designed to respond to a wide range of prompts and questions from users. My goal is to provide human-like interactions and assist users in generating text for various purposes, including but not limited to, answering questions, generating creative writing, and even carrying on casual conversation.
Positive impact for SEO specialists
While it seems like everyone is talking about ChatGPT these days, its human-like interface is already making its imprint in the marketing field. The chatbot’s advanced language processing capabilities have made it useful for a variety of applications, including Google search, writing product descriptions, and content marketing tools (Forbes).
Here are some of the areas where ChatGPT can help SEO specialists:
- Improved Website User Experience: ChatGPT's ability to understand user queries and provide helpful responses can aid marketers in improving user engagement on a website and reduce its bounce rates, ultimately leading to higher search engine rankings. (Entrepreneur)
- Streamlined Keyword Research: ChatGPT's machine learning algorithms can help marketers identify and target relevant keywords and topics, providing insights into user intent and content opportunities that can lead to improved search engine rankings. While most SEO specialists already use keyword research tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, this is always a nice supplementary backup. (Search Engine Journal)
- Enhanced Content: ChatGPT can assist marketers with blog outlines, topic ideas, copywriting, and other SEO content to improve organic traffic to a website. However, a human should always be writing content that is unique and not generated by AI in order to avoid penalties (Making Science).
The Risks of ChatGPT for SEO
While ChatGPT may seem like it checks all the boxes; there are some drawbacks to using the innovative AI tool. ChatGPT is just one tool in an SEO specialist’s toolbox. It’s important to still utilize common SEO best practices and techniques when incorporating AI-generated results. Below are some limitations ChatGPT presents when it comes to SEO.
- Uncertainty with Google: Google looks to present the best search results to users, along with preventing “spammy” content. With its search engines algorithms constantly evolving, it becomes difficult to predict how Google will handle AI-generated content. Google could potentially detect ChatGPT content by analyzing patterns and statistics of language in a text through tools like Giant Language model Test Room (GLTR). However, if Google’s algorithms are not designed to evaluate AI-generated content, it could result in a penalty or decreased visibility for the website (SEO.ai).
- Limited Control Over Content: When using ChatGPT to generate content, website owners and SEO professionals have limited control over the output. This makes it difficult to ensure the content aligns with the business’s brand voice and messaging, which can negatively impact search rankings and a visitor’s website experience (Search Engine Land).
- Over-reliance on AI: Relying too heavily on AI-generated content can take away some of the critical human aspects marketing professionals specialize in: originality and uniqueness. This can lead to responses from ChatGPT being received as machine-like and unnatural. Poorly written content can not only harm your website’s credibility, but it can also harm your SEO rankings. (TechTarget).
- SEO Success is More Complex: SEO best practices include much more than content optimization and meta tags. Great design, clean code, load time, backlinks, authority, and other technical SEO best practices all contribute to SEO success. AI tools, like ChatGPT, simply don’t have the background or experience to ensure these best practices are being met (Making Science).
