How does ChatGPT Affect SEO?

There exists an AI bot that is used by a number of SEO professionals to build whole websites that create massive amounts of search traffic because of its capability. If I told you that you can use this software right now for free, how would you feel?

Well, you’re in luck.

Because it is indeed free to use. And you can, in fact, rank first page for a ton of keywords by piggybacking on its capabilities.

Say hello to ChatGPT – an artificial intelligence chatbot that could understand and do the different prompts and requests you give to it.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI. It is trained to answer questions or perform certain tasks that users give to it in a surprisingly human-like way. Some of the tasks it can efficiently do are writing essays, creating solutions for math problems, and even writing scripts for plays or video production.

How does ChatGPT Affect SEO?

But all those possibilities are backed with limitations – so know that this artificial intelligence is limited to the data it was trained on. As of writing this article, the latest data sets that were fed to the AI date back to 2021. Therefore it cannot answer questions or do prompts that are post-2021.

So if you’re thinking about just using ChatGPT rather than Google for your questions and research, you may find yourself still having to verify the data in Google’s search database.

How could ChatGPT affect SEO?

If you’re considering using ChatGPT to replace your entire content writing team, you will be like a hundred percent of all SEO specialists who have come upon ChatGPT for the first time.

UNTIL you read my article about the predictions on AI content and how it would negatively impact your rankings long-term.

It is important for us to know that tools like ChatGPT are not designed to replace human professionals, but rather to assist and help us improve our work.

As more and more SEO professionals began to see the benefits of using ChatGPT, it has been severely abused. However, as with all things that are automated and abused by unethical SEO practitioners, Google would soon catch up and outrun these strategies and tactics. It is only a matter of time before articles published with the body of the content coming solely from AI output will be given a significant drop in rankings.

And here are some of the SEO-related tasks I think where ChatGPT could be useful:

• Idea generation – it can be a helpful tool in the creative writing process by suggesting ideas or helping writers generate new content about a certain topic quickly and efficiently.
• Language translation – it can be a big help in translating your content from one language to another, making it easier for both search engines and people who speak different languages to understand your website.
• Content optimization – it can create whole short write-ups for a website’s SEO content (we recommend that you still edit at least 60 – 80% of the final publication) such as meta descriptions and title tags.

 As magical as all this sounds to be, I reiterate that ChatGPT is NOT a replacement for human creativity and expertise. While it can generate ideas for content that is coherent, it may not be able to produce content that is at the level of a person who has been perfecting the skill of writing for a long time. 

What is the future of ChatGPT and SEO in the future?

In my honest estimates, ChatGPT is being used thoroughly by SEO specialists and savvy business owners around the world to replace mediocre content writers, researchers, and perhaps even SEO specialists.

With this in mind, I do believe that ChatGPT will keep on updating its database to reflect current data sets, perhaps even do it in real-time. If that does happen, I believe that systems and processes would be built by smart business owners around it so that the requirement for manpower would be less across industries.

Software and AI are a lot more predictable, faithful, and reliable compared to human beings. This is the sad reality of things, especially today when a lot of younger professionals hop from job to job without consideration for the people and work they would be leaving behind.

Overall, it is likely that ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence-trained software will continue to play a role in the world of SEO, but not in the role of a content writer but more of a tool that could help gather data in research and analysis.

Key Takeaway

ChatGPT is NOT and WILL NEVER be a threat to highly skilled and knowledgeable professionals and practitioners in digital marketing, specifically the SEO industry. Tools like these can help us in doing tedious work easier and more efficiently, however, the big picture strategy should always be directed by someone who is a master in the profession.