SEO
How To Stand Out in an Ocean of AI Content
Most content today is arbitrage, simply moving information from one place to another.
Very few blog posts create new information. Most serve to remix, curate, and copycat existing content, transferring the same core information from one website to another.
If all your content does is shuffle common knowledge around, then I have bad news: the robots will eat your lunch. Generative AI is the ultimate arbitrage machine, able to churn out thousands of copycat articles faster than you ever could.
To stand out in a sea of commodity content, you have to go beyond the rote copy/pasting of information and find other ways to add value.
Thankfully, there are three ways you and your squishy human brain are uniquely qualified to add value beyond AI: experimentation, experience, and effort.
The best way to add value beyond AI content is to experiment: to go into the world, test ideas, and collect new information that has never existed before.
LLMs are trained on a staggeringly vast dataset and continue to consume new information on a daily basis. But they are not omniscient. They have gaps in their knowledge: information that they haven’t been trained on, or more importantly, information that doesn’t exist yet.
When you experiment, you create something new and proprietary, unique to you and never seen before. If someone wants the information you have on offer, there’s only one place they can get it. It doesn’t exist in the data available to LLMs (at least, not yet). This is something that you, and only you, can do.
How to do it
This might sound intimidating, but experiments can be big or small, substantial projects in their own right or quick value-adds for otherwise mundane topics.
You can conduct sweeping industry surveys, like Aira’s state of linkbuilding report:
Analyze data generated by your company and its products, like the benchmark report I co-authored using 150MM pageviews of Google Analytics data:
Run tests to understand how things work, like Patrick Stox did to explore the impact of blocking high-ranking pages with robots.txt:
Collect data to prove (or disprove) well-known ideas, like Rand at SparkToro bringing receipts for the idea that email is the most reliable marketing channel:
This has always been a great marketing strategy (and a great link-building tactic—everyone wants to link to original data, as the backlink data for Aira’s report shows).
But it becomes more effective in an era of near-perfect information, when the marginal cost of content creation is virtually zero and the answer to any common problem can be summoned in an instant.
There is no longer lasting value in sharing basic information: the days of getting outsized results from being the first brand to share a basic “how to” or tutorial are numbered. Today, you have to create information as well as share it.
Anything created solely by generative AI is trapped in the realm of theory. It will always be less valuable than the same advice from an authoritative source, someone with obvious and relevant experience.
In a world where it’s easy to get answers to questions, readers will care more about the source of the answer. You can stand out from faceless AI content by proving to the reader that you have dirtied your hands, and actually experienced the thing you are writing about.
If there are fifty websites—or five hundred—offering an answer to their question, readers can afford to be discerning about the source they choose. If they want to learn about budgeting, they’ll probably pick the experienced financial advisor over the faceless CRM solution and a blog post authored by “Content Team”.
If they want to buy a new camera, they’ll prefer the reviewer that bought, used and compared actual cameras:
Over any brand that scraped product descriptions from popular ecommerce stores or wrote in theoretical statements:
The more crowded a topic becomes, the more important first-hand experience becomes as a method of differentiation. Your job is to prove the provenance of your advice.
How to do it
This is something we try to do regularly on the Ahrefs blog.
You can write about topics you have first-hand experience with, like Chris, an experienced agency SEO, writing our beginner’s guide to SEO reporting:
Interview people on topics that you don’t, like Mateusz surveying real-life marketers about their favorite metrics:
Provide concrete evidence of your experience, whether that’s screenshotting the tool, filming the interview, or sharing a photo of the book you referenced:
Share anecdotes and stories that provide context to the information, like SQ reflecting on his experience writing over 100 articles:
Get skin in the game, like my attempt to read and rate every SEO newsletter available:
The inverse is also true: you should avoid writing about topics where you lack any experience, and can’t justify acquiring it.
Most companies I see scaling AI content are cost-motivated. They are not using generative AI to create new, innovative experiences: they are trying to save money, and willing to sacrifice quality for speed of publication and reduction in headcount.
This provides a clear route of differentiation: make better things, expend more energy, and create content that is more than just words on a page.
How to do it
Many of the brands I follow (and products I pay for) earned my attention through big, effortful content campaigns.
There are webcomics, like Postmark’s email deliverability guide (featuring Dunning the super-owl):
Video series, like Paddle’s Netflix-esque documentary series about acquiring a company:
Books, like Ahrefs’ beautifully-illustrated children’s book:
Free tools, like Veed’s TikTok downloader:
Unique on-page experiences, like Typeform’s The Star Wars Guide to Net Promoter Score, complete with hand-drawn AT-ATs:
This kind of content is rare. It is costly and difficult to create, requiring specialized skills and collaboration between different departments. But difficulty is a moat: if it’s hard to create, it can’t be instantly pumped out by any old company with any old AI tool.
Whilst it’s often hard to justify the effort and expense of these projects, it is becoming easier with every passing day. Thanks to generative AI, publishing functional, “vanilla” content—words on a page with a stock image or two—is just not a differentiator.
The more effort you expend building tools, publishing books, or creating unique experiences, the greater the likelihood that real people will remember your brand, care about your company, and eventually buy something from you.
Final thoughts
Generative AI makes it very easy to share fairly well-written, fairly accurate information, on a staggering array of topics. Humans will never beat AI at this game, and frankly, we shouldn’t try.
We need to accept the growing bifurcation of content. Let AI handle the low-end of content—basic informational content, definitions, summaries and synopses, listicles—and focus skilled human energy on the high-end.
In the era of generative AI, there is no edge to be found by simply shuffling common knowledge from place to place. We need to find new dimensions of differentiation and lean into our unique strengths: creating new information through experimentation, getting our hands dirty and sharing first-person experience, and exerting ourselves to create what others won’t.
SEO
How To Write ChatGPT Prompts To Get The Best Results
ChatGPT is a game changer in the field of SEO. This powerful language model can generate human-like content, making it an invaluable tool for SEO professionals.
However, the prompts you provide largely determine the quality of the output.
To unlock the full potential of ChatGPT and create content that resonates with your audience and search engines, writing effective prompts is crucial.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the art of writing prompts for ChatGPT, covering everything from basic techniques to advanced strategies for layering prompts and generating high-quality, SEO-friendly content.
Writing Prompts For ChatGPT
What Is A ChatGPT Prompt?
A ChatGPT prompt is an instruction or discussion topic a user provides for the ChatGPT AI model to respond to.
The prompt can be a question, statement, or any other stimulus to spark creativity, reflection, or engagement.
Users can use the prompt to generate ideas, share their thoughts, or start a conversation.
ChatGPT prompts are designed to be open-ended and can be customized based on the user’s preferences and interests.
How To Write Prompts For ChatGPT
Start by giving ChatGPT a writing prompt, such as, “Write a short story about a person who discovers they have a superpower.”
ChatGPT will then generate a response based on your prompt. Depending on the prompt’s complexity and the level of detail you requested, the answer may be a few sentences or several paragraphs long.
Use the ChatGPT-generated response as a starting point for your writing. You can take the ideas and concepts presented in the answer and expand upon them, adding your own unique spin to the story.
If you want to generate additional ideas, try asking ChatGPT follow-up questions related to your original prompt.
For example, you could ask, “What challenges might the person face in exploring their newfound superpower?” Or, “How might the person’s relationships with others be affected by their superpower?”
Remember that ChatGPT’s answers are generated by artificial intelligence and may not always be perfect or exactly what you want.
However, they can still be a great source of inspiration and help you start writing.
Must-Have GPTs Assistant
I recommend installing the WebBrowser Assistant created by the OpenAI Team. This tool allows you to add relevant Bing results to your ChatGPT prompts.
This assistant adds the first web results to your ChatGPT prompts for more accurate and up-to-date conversations.
It is very easy to install in only two clicks. (Click on Start Chat.)
For example, if I ask, “Who is Vincent Terrasi?,” ChatGPT has no answer.
With WebBrower Assistant, the assistant creates a new prompt with the first Bing results, and now ChatGPT knows who Vincent Terrasi is.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023You can test other GPT assistants available in the GPTs search engine if you want to use Google results.
Master Reverse Prompt Engineering
ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for reverse engineering prompts because it generates natural and engaging responses to any given input.
By analyzing the prompts generated by ChatGPT, it is possible to gain insight into the model’s underlying thought processes and decision-making strategies.
One key benefit of using ChatGPT to reverse engineer prompts is that the model is highly transparent in its decision-making.
This means that the reasoning and logic behind each response can be traced, making it easier to understand how the model arrives at its conclusions.
Once you’ve done this a few times for different types of content, you’ll gain insight into crafting more effective prompts.
Prepare Your ChatGPT For Generating Prompts
First, activate the reverse prompt engineering.
- Type the following prompt: “Enable Reverse Prompt Engineering? By Reverse Prompt Engineering I mean creating a prompt from a given text.”
Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023ChatGPT is now ready to generate your prompt. You can test the product description in a new chatbot session and evaluate the generated prompt.
- Type: “Create a very technical reverse prompt engineering template for a product description about iPhone 11.”
Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023The result is amazing. You can test with a full text that you want to reproduce. Here is an example of a prompt for selling a Kindle on Amazon.
- Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {product), capture the writing style and the length of the text :
product =”
Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023I tested it on an SEJ blog post. Enjoy the analysis – it is excellent.
- Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {text}, capture the tone and writing style of the {text} to include in the prompt :
text = all text coming from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-bard-training-data/478941/”
Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023But be careful not to use ChatGPT to generate your texts. It is just a personal assistant.
Go Deeper
Prompts and examples for SEO:
- Keyword research and content ideas prompt: “Provide a list of 20 long-tail keyword ideas related to ‘local SEO strategies’ along with brief content topic descriptions for each keyword.”
- Optimizing content for featured snippets prompt: “Write a 40-50 word paragraph optimized for the query ‘what is the featured snippet in Google search’ that could potentially earn the featured snippet.”
- Creating meta descriptions prompt: “Draft a compelling meta description for the following blog post title: ’10 Technical SEO Factors You Can’t Ignore in 2024′.”
Important Considerations:
- Always Fact-Check: While ChatGPT can be a helpful tool, it’s crucial to remember that it may generate inaccurate or fabricated information. Always verify any facts, statistics, or quotes generated by ChatGPT before incorporating them into your content.
- Maintain Control and Creativity: Use ChatGPT as a tool to assist your writing, not replace it. Don’t rely on it to do your thinking or create content from scratch. Your unique perspective and creativity are essential for producing high-quality, engaging content.
- Iteration is Key: Refine and revise the outputs generated by ChatGPT to ensure they align with your voice, style, and intended message.
Additional Prompts for Rewording and SEO:
– Rewrite this sentence to be more concise and impactful.
– Suggest alternative phrasing for this section to improve clarity.
– Identify opportunities to incorporate relevant internal and external links.
– Analyze the keyword density and suggest improvements for better SEO.
Remember, while ChatGPT can be a valuable tool, it’s essential to use it responsibly and maintain control over your content creation process.
Experiment And Refine Your Prompting Techniques
Writing effective prompts for ChatGPT is an essential skill for any SEO professional who wants to harness the power of AI-generated content.
Hopefully, the insights and examples shared in this article can inspire you and help guide you to crafting stronger prompts that yield high-quality content.
Remember to experiment with layering prompts, iterating on the output, and continually refining your prompting techniques.
This will help you stay ahead of the curve in the ever-changing world of SEO.
More resources:
Featured Image: Tapati Rinchumrus/Shutterstock
SEO
Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey
Understanding the impact of your content at every touchpoint of the customer journey is essential – but that’s easier said than done. From attracting potential leads to nurturing them into loyal customers, there are many touchpoints to look into.
So how do you identify and take advantage of these opportunities for growth?
Watch this on-demand webinar and learn a comprehensive approach for measuring the value of your content initiatives, so you can optimize resource allocation for maximum impact.
You’ll learn:
- Fresh methods for measuring your content’s impact.
- Fascinating insights using first-touch attribution, and how it differs from the usual last-touch perspective.
- Ways to persuade decision-makers to invest in more content by showcasing its value convincingly.
With Bill Franklin and Oliver Tani of DAC Group, we unravel the nuances of attribution modeling, emphasizing the significance of layering first-touch and last-touch attribution within your measurement strategy.
Check out these insights to help you craft compelling content tailored to each stage, using an approach rooted in first-hand experience to ensure your content resonates.
Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to content measurement, this webinar promises valuable insights and actionable tactics to elevate your SEO game and optimize your content initiatives for success.
View the slides below or check out the full webinar for all the details.
SEO
How to Find and Use Competitor Keywords
Competitor keywords are the keywords your rivals rank for in Google’s search results. They may rank organically or pay for Google Ads to rank in the paid results.
Knowing your competitors’ keywords is the easiest form of keyword research. If your competitors rank for or target particular keywords, it might be worth it for you to target them, too.
There is no way to see your competitors’ keywords without a tool like Ahrefs, which has a database of keywords and the sites that rank for them. As far as we know, Ahrefs has the biggest database of these keywords.
How to find all the keywords your competitor ranks for
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Enter your competitor’s domain
- Go to the Organic keywords report
The report is sorted by traffic to show you the keywords sending your competitor the most visits. For example, Mailchimp gets most of its organic traffic from the keyword “mailchimp.”
Since you’re unlikely to rank for your competitor’s brand, you might want to exclude branded keywords from the report. You can do this by adding a Keyword > Doesn’t contain filter. In this example, we’ll filter out keywords containing “mailchimp” or any potential misspellings:
If you’re a new brand competing with one that’s established, you might also want to look for popular low-difficulty keywords. You can do this by setting the Volume filter to a minimum of 500 and the KD filter to a maximum of 10.
How to find keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t
- Go to Competitive Analysis
- Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
- Enter your competitor’s domain in the But these competitors do section
Hit “Show keyword opportunities,” and you’ll see all the keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t.
You can also add a Volume and KD filter to find popular, low-difficulty keywords in this report.
How to find keywords multiple competitors rank for, but you don’t
- Go to Competitive Analysis
- Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
- Enter the domains of multiple competitors in the But these competitors do section
You’ll see all the keywords that at least one of these competitors ranks for, but you don’t.
You can also narrow the list down to keywords that all competitors rank for. Click on the Competitors’ positions filter and choose All 3 competitors:
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Enter your competitor’s domain
- Go to the Paid keywords report
This report shows you the keywords your competitors are targeting via Google Ads.
Since your competitor is paying for traffic from these keywords, it may indicate that they’re profitable for them—and could be for you, too.
You know what keywords your competitors are ranking for or bidding on. But what do you do with them? There are basically three options.
1. Create pages to target these keywords
You can only rank for keywords if you have content about them. So, the most straightforward thing you can do for competitors’ keywords you want to rank for is to create pages to target them.
However, before you do this, it’s worth clustering your competitor’s keywords by Parent Topic. This will group keywords that mean the same or similar things so you can target them all with one page.
Here’s how to do that:
- Export your competitor’s keywords, either from the Organic Keywords or Content Gap report
- Paste them into Keywords Explorer
- Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
For example, MailChimp ranks for keywords like “what is digital marketing” and “digital marketing definition.” These and many others get clustered under the Parent Topic of “digital marketing” because people searching for them are all looking for the same thing: a definition of digital marketing. You only need to create one page to potentially rank for all these keywords.
2. Optimize existing content by filling subtopics
You don’t always need to create new content to rank for competitors’ keywords. Sometimes, you can optimize the content you already have to rank for them.
How do you know which keywords you can do this for? Try this:
- Export your competitor’s keywords
- Paste them into Keywords Explorer
- Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
- Look for Parent Topics you already have content about
For example, if we analyze our competitor, we can see that seven keywords they rank for fall under the Parent Topic of “press release template.”
If we search our site, we see that we already have a page about this topic.
If we click the caret and check the keywords in the cluster, we see keywords like “press release example” and “press release format.”
To rank for the keywords in the cluster, we can probably optimize the page we already have by adding sections about the subtopics of “press release examples” and “press release format.”
3. Target these keywords with Google Ads
Paid keywords are the simplest—look through the report and see if there are any relevant keywords you might want to target, too.
For example, Mailchimp is bidding for the keyword “how to create a newsletter.”
If you’re ConvertKit, you may also want to target this keyword since it’s relevant.
If you decide to target the same keyword via Google Ads, you can hover over the magnifying glass to see the ads your competitor is using.
You can also see the landing page your competitor directs ad traffic to under the URL column.
Learn more
Check out more tutorials on how to do competitor keyword analysis:
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