SEO
Lead Generation: How To Get Started
Today’s consumers have an almost limitless amount of information at their fingertips. Podcasts, videos, blog posts, and social media – are just a few of the sources that can drive them toward one brand over another.
If it’s your job to attract these potential customers, you know the struggles of generating high-quality leads.
In this piece, we’ll take a closer look at lead generation, discussing the different types of leads you could attract and providing some strategies and examples for lead gen that you can put to use right away.
What Is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is a marketing process of capturing potential consumers who show interest in your product or service.
The goal is to connect with people early in the buying process, earn their trust and build a relationship so that, when they’re ready to make a purchase, they buy from you.
But lead generation also serves secondary objectives, including building brand awareness, collecting customer data, and fostering brand loyalty.
With this in mind, it’s important to remember that not everyone who visits your store or website is a lead.
That’s why successful lead gen goes after specific targets, using a variety of platforms and strategies including:
- Landing pages – Using a tracking pixel, landing pages collect information about visitors you can later use to target them for sales.
- Email – Email is a great lead generation tool because the recipients will have opted in, which means they’re already familiar with your brand.
- Social media – With unmatched opportunities for engagement, your social media accounts are a great way to encourage your targets to take action.
- Blogs – A great way to establish authority and provide value, blogs are also a great place to promote specific offers.
- Live events – When it comes to qualifying leads, live events are a great way to meet your target audience and quickly identify the ones more likely to make a purchase.
- Coupons and other promotions – Offering a discount or free item is a great way to encourage targets to provide their contact information.
What will ultimately work best for you will depend on your niche and your audience.
As you experiment with different lead generation strategies, you may find one more successful than the others. This means you should probably make that channel your priority, whereas others may not be of any use at all.
But we’ll get to all that later.
First, let’s talk about leads.
The Different Types Of Leads
Sales is the engine that drives any business. Without sales, there’s no revenue. Without revenue, there’s no business. So, it’s kind of important.
But it’s a massive field. The approach a medical monitoring sensor salesperson takes is going to be very different from a used car salesman.
But both of them – and every other sales professional for that matter – have one thing in common: they need to spend most of their time pursuing the people who are most likely to buy.
In general, leads fall into seven categories:
- Hot Leads – These leads are ready to convert. They are qualified and interested in your offering, and are the most likely to convert to a sale. For example, this might be the purchasing director who has had several conversations with you and received a product demo. They have purchasing authority and a timeline.
- Cold Leads – These are potential customers who may be unfamiliar with your brand or offering. As of yet, they have shown no interest in what you’re selling. Generally speaking, these are the hardest leads to convert to sales.
- Warm Leads – A middle ground between the two previous types of leads, these are people who are familiar with who you are and what you offer. They’re the type who watch your videos or read your blogs, but haven’t contacted you directly. Your goal is to warm them up into hot leads.
- Information Qualified Leads (IQLs) – This is the kind of lead who has already shown some interest in your company and has followed a call to action. Maybe they signed up for your email newsletter or filled out a lead generation form. They are often looking for more information and will react positively to a nurturing campaign.
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) – MQLs are one step further down the pipeline from IQLs. They are actively searching for a solution that fits their needs, and are trying to discover if yours is the right fit. These are the types of leads who will download your whitepapers, watch your videos, and attend your corporate seminars.
- Sales Ready Leads (SRLs) – Sometimes called “accepted leads,” these are the bottom-of-the-funnel leads who are almost ready to pull the trigger on a purchase. It’s important to understand their budgets, purchasing authority, needs, and timeframe.
- Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) – These leads are ready to buy and should be in communication with your sales team. They are considered very hot, however, you should be aware that they are likely still considering some of your competitors.
The Lead Generation Process
As you have probably gathered by this point, lead generation is a multiple-step process.
Yours will vary, depending on whether you’re focusing on inbound or outbound generation – but both should follow a similar pathway.
Step 1: Do Your Research
Before you start trying to collect leads, you need to gather as much information as possible about your target audience. You want to know not just who they are, but where they live, what’s important to them, and most importantly, what their pain points are, particularly those that are the most pressing.
It’s often a good idea to create customer personas, in which you define the demographics, budget, and needs of typical customers. You may want to consider social habits, professional experience, and even psychological traits.
Once you know who you’re going after, it’s time to identify where they are. Are they active on Facebook, or more likely to respond to an email? Again, this will vary depending on your specific circumstances.
This is also the stage where you should check out the competition. What are they doing? What differentiates your offering from theirs? And most importantly, why is it better?
Step 2: Create Great Content
By now, you should know what needs your offering fills for your potential customers. Use this information to create content that solves it.
Your choice of medium will affect your content format. For example, videos work great on social media, but you can’t embed them in an email.
Likewise, if you’re going after your target audience on Twitter, your lengthy blogs are going to need to be linked to, or at the very least truncated.
Never forget your focus is on adding value. Each piece of content you create should serve a specific purpose, whether that’s educating your audience about your offering, building brand awareness or promoting a sale.
Step 3: Develop A Lead Generation Database
You can have the hottest leads on the planet, but they won’t do you a bit of good if you don’t handle them the right way.
You should create and use a lead database where you can record, study, filter, and segment your potential customers.
Ideally, you’ll want to get an automated CRM system to dramatically reduce the labor involved with this.
Most of these will allow you to tag leads based on the type and how hot they are. This allows your sales team to work through their lists in a more efficient manner, dedicating the most attention to those with the biggest chance of converting.
Step 4: Qualify And Score Leads
Not all leads are going to be in the same place in the sales funnel. Some will be ready to buy today, while others may just be getting an idea of what’s out there.
You need to adjust your approach based on this.
Most companies use a lead scoring system of 1-100, which indicates approximately where the lead is in the customer journey. They are assigned points based on their actions, with more serious actions resulting in more points.
For example, following your Facebook page could be worth 10 points, filling out a “Request a demo” form might be worth 20, and opening and reading an email could be 5. If a lead does all three of these, their lead score would be 35.
These numbers will give you a general idea of where they are from the following stages:
- New leads, who have just made initial contact.
- Working leads, with whom you have had contact and initiated a conversation.
- Nurturing leads, who are not interested in buying right now, but might in the future.
- Unqualified leads, who are not interested in your offering. These are sometimes called “dead leads.”
- Qualified leads, or those who want to do business with you.
Obviously, you should focus more time and energy on the leads that have a higher probability of converting.
Lead Generation Strategies And Examples
The ways you can generate leads are practically endless, but in this section, we’ll discuss some of the more common strategies you can employ, plus give you examples of them at work.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the practice of creating engaging and informative content that provides value for leads and customers, thereby generating interest in a business.
This can span both traditional and digital marketing, and is an important part of any successful marketing strategy. It can include things like newsletters, podcasts, videos, and social media.
You can use content marketing for any stage of the sales funnel, from growing brand awareness with timely blogs, creating demand or demonstrating thought leadership with white papers, driving organic traffic via SEO, building trust, and earning customer loyalty.
To make the most of yours, offer many opt-in opportunities and make them more enticing by adding discounts, guides, or something of value in exchange.
Email Marketing
Email remains a popular choice for lead generation for a good reason: it works.
A study by Mailchimp found 22.71% of marketing emails were opened, with some industries seeing even higher rates.
Whether you’re sending out a monthly newsletter or a cold outreach email to a potential prospect, email remains one of your best bets for generating new leads.
One of the more cost-effective means of generating leads, email marketing also allows you to segment your targets with customized content that promotes maximum engagement.
Another reason email marketing is a favorite for so many organizations is that it provides incredible opportunities for tracking. A quality CRM will give you a lot of useful data, including open rate, engagement time, and subscriber retention, allowing you to fine-tune your campaigns.
Social Media Marketing
Almost everyone is on social media these days, which makes it the ideal place to hunt down leads.
Social media platforms not only allow you to directly interact with your followers, but they also let you create advertising targeted at highly specific audiences.
Interaction is simplified thanks to multiple user-friendly CTAs like Instagram Stories’ skip option and truncated URLs on Twitter.
Social media is also a great place to run contests or share gated content.
You can use paid ads like the one above to target new leads, share content that will generate them organically, or ideally, a mix of both.
Coupons, Discounts, And Free Trials
If you’re like many people, you may be reluctant to provide your email address to businesses in case they start spamming your inbox.
As a business, however, this can be a problem.
The way to overcome this trepidation is to offer people something of value in return for their contact information.
A risk-free trial or discount code is a powerful tool for overcoming sales barriers. And once a target has tried your offering, you can retarget them with additional offers to encourage a sale.
Give them a free gift, offer a coupon, or allow them to take your product for a test drive, and you’ll find many more people willing to give you their info.
Screenshot from author, January 2023Online Ads
Display advertisements are videos and images that pop up as you’re browsing websites, apps, and social media.
They, along with paid search and PPC, are a great way to reach your intended customers where they are.
Display ads are particularly useful for targeting leads across the buyers’ journey, as well as promoting awareness and sales, promotions, or new products.
Screenshot from Google, January 2023Remarketing ads are a great way to reengage leads who have stopped short of a purchase, while non-intrusive native ads are perfect for extending your content marketing efforts.
Referral Marketing
A great way to find new leads is to let your existing customers find them for you. Encourage them to write reviews or recommend friends in return for a discount or something else of value.
Image from AAA Insurance, January 2023This is an excellent way to fill your funnel of leads – and make more sales. Referrals and online reviews give you an authenticity and trust level that no in-house marketing campaign can ever duplicate.
Did you know that when shopping online, more than 99.9% of people read reviews? Or that 94% of consumers acknowledged positive reviews made them more likely to support a business? And that’s not even including the power of personal recommendations from friends and family.
Referral marketing is a great tool for lead generation because it presents your brand in a positive light to more people.
Best Practices For Lead Generation
To ensure you’re getting the most out of your lead generation efforts, keep these tips in mind:
Use Your Data
You likely have a lot of information about leads and the types of strategies that work for them already at your fingertips.
Gather yours by looking at previous pieces that have worked well, whether it’s blogs that get a lot of reads, emails that have a high open-rate, or display ads that bring in a lot of traffic.
Look for general themes or things you did differently on high-performers. This will give you insight into the kind of things that resonate with your audience.
Be Consistent With Messaging
Make sure it’s very obvious to any web visitor or email recipient what action they should take next. Offer them a reason to click your links and keep your messaging clear and consistent.
You should maintain the same tone of voice across channels as you move prospects through the sales funnel. Remember, you’re not just interested in capturing data – you’re trying to create a customer.
A/B Testing
Every marketer knows the importance of testing different versions of collateral. This is because, no matter how well something is performing, it could always do better.
You should experiment with different headlines, images, body copy, etc.
Just remember to only test one aspect at once, lest you miss which change made a difference.
And again, don’t forget the opt-ins.
Use The Power Of CRM Technology
To ensure your sales and marketing teams are operating as efficiently as possible, but a lead generation platform to work for you.
The right tool can help you gather information about your targets, monitor their behavior on your website and identify what’s driving them to you.
Armed with this data, you can then optimize your pages and campaigns to better target your audience.
Create Enticing Offers At Every Stage
People at different stages of the purchasing journey want different things.
Someone who is just curious about seeing what’s out there isn’t likely to respond to a free demo offer, but someone who is further along the funnel might.
Make sure you’re offering something for every buying stage and that you have clear CTAs throughout your materials.
Integrate Social Media
Social media is the ideal platform for initiating conversations and interactions with leads at all stages.
While many marketers typically think of it as primarily for top-of-funnel targeting, by strategically using proven offers and other things of value, you can also go after those leads who are closer to making a purchase.
Clean Up Your Landing Pages
Users want information presented to them in a clean, easy-to-understand manner. No one is trying to read “War and Peace” to find a new vending machine supplier.
Put your important information at the top, and make it clear where visitors can input their information to contact you or get content.
Use Your Partners
Co-marketing is a great way to generate new leads because it allows you to piggyback on the efforts of partner companies.
Create mutually beneficial offers and you’ll spend the word about your brand to a larger audience, which will attract new leads.
Bring Your Sales Team In
Marketers prime the pump, but sales drives the action. Make sure to loop your sales team into the lead generation process early and often.
They will likely have personal insight into what works best to move targets along the purchasing path.
This will also ensure you remain on the same page as far as what terms mean.
Remarket, Remarket, Remarket
Almost no one makes a purchase on first contact, particularly in B2B sales. That makes remarketing an important arrow for your quiver.
It helps turn bouncers into leads and abandoners into customers – and it amplifies all your other marketing activities.
Make Lead Generation A Priority
No one ever said it was easy to find, score, and qualify leads, but it’s an important part of ensuring the growth and financial health of your business.
Nurturing customers and potential customers is hard work. But without it, you’ll struggle to make new sales.
This piece only covered lead generation from a high level, but hopefully, it has equipped you with some strategies you can employ to attract new leads and nurture existing ones.
If you only take a single thing away from this make it this: Put most of your efforts into higher-quality leads, because they’re the ones who are most likely to make a purchase.
And remember – lead generation is an ongoing process. You’re not going to see results overnight, but if you put in the work, you’ll start to generate the results you want.
Happy hunting.
More resources:
Featured Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
SEO
56 Google Search Statistics to Bookmark for 2024
If you’re curious about the state of Google search in 2024, look no further.
Each year we pick, vet, and categorize a list of up-to-date statistics to give you insights from trusted sources on Google search trends.
Check out more resources on how Google works:
Learn more
SEO
How To Use ChatGPT For Keyword Research
Anyone not using ChatGPT for keyword research is missing a trick.
You can save time and understand an entire topic in seconds instead of hours.
In this article, I outline my most effective ChatGPT prompts for keyword research and teach you how I put them together so that you, too, can take, edit, and enhance them even further.
But before we jump into the prompts, I want to emphasize that you shouldn’t replace keyword research tools or disregard traditional keyword research methods.
ChatGPT can make mistakes. It can even create new keywords if you give it the right prompt. For example, I asked it to provide me with a unique keyword for the topic “SEO” that had never been searched before.
“Interstellar Internet SEO: Optimizing content for the theoretical concept of an interstellar internet, considering the challenges of space-time and interplanetary communication delays.”
Although I want to jump into my LinkedIn profile and update my title to “Interstellar Internet SEO Consultant,” unfortunately, no one has searched that (and they probably never will)!
You must not blindly rely on the data you get back from ChatGPT.
What you can rely on ChatGPT for is the topic ideation stage of keyword research and inspiration.
ChatGPT is a large language model trained with massive amounts of data to accurately predict what word will come next in a sentence. However, it does not know how to do keyword research yet.
Instead, think of ChatGPT as having an expert on any topic armed with the information if you ask it the right question.
In this guide, that is exactly what I aim to teach you how to do – the most essential prompts you need to know when performing topical keyword research.
Best ChatGPT Keyword Research Prompts
The following ChatGPT keyword research prompts can be used on any niche, even a topic to which you are brand new.
For this demonstration, let’s use the topic of “SEO” to demonstrate these prompts.
Generating Keyword Ideas Based On A Topic
What Are The {X} Most Popular Sub-topics Related To {Topic}?
The first prompt is to give you an idea of the niche.
As shown above, ChatGPT did a great job understanding and breaking down SEO into three pillars: on-page, off-page & technical.
The key to the following prompt is to take one of the topics ChatGPT has given and query the sub-topics.
What Are The {X} Most Popular Sub-topics Related To {Sub-topic}?
For this example, let’s query, “What are the most popular sub-topics related to keyword research?”
Having done keyword research for over 10 years, I would expect it to output information related to keyword research metrics, the types of keywords, and intent.
Let’s see.
Screenshot from ChatGPT 4, April 2024Again, right on the money.
To get the keywords you want without having ChatGPT describe each answer, use the prompt “list without description.”
Here is an example of that.
List Without Description The Top {X} Most Popular Keywords For The Topic Of {X}
You can even branch these keywords out further into their long-tail.
Example prompt:
List Without Description The Top {X} Most Popular Long-tail Keywords For The Topic “{X}”
Screenshot ChatGPT 4,April 2024List Without Description The Top Semantically Related Keywords And Entities For The Topic {X}
You can even ask ChatGPT what any topic’s semantically related keywords and entities are!
Screenshot ChatGPT 4, April 2024Tip: The Onion Method Of Prompting ChatGPT
When you are happy with a series of prompts, add them all to one prompt. For example, so far in this article, we have asked ChatGPT the following:
- What are the four most popular sub-topics related to SEO?
- What are the four most popular sub-topics related to keyword research
- List without description the top five most popular keywords for “keyword intent”?
- List without description the top five most popular long-tail keywords for the topic “keyword intent types”?
- List without description the top semantically related keywords and entities for the topic “types of keyword intent in SEO.”
Combine all five into one prompt by telling ChatGPT to perform a series of steps. Example:
“Perform the following steps in a consecutive order Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, and Step 5”
Example:
“Perform the following steps in a consecutive order Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4 and Step 5. Step 1 – Generate an answer for the 3 most popular sub-topics related to {Topic}?. Step 2 – Generate 3 of the most popular sub-topics related to each answer. Step 3 – Take those answers and list without description their top 3 most popular keywords. Step 4 – For the answers given of their most popular keywords, provide 3 long-tail keywords. Step 5 – for each long-tail keyword offered in the response, a list without descriptions 3 of their top semantically related keywords and entities.”
Generating Keyword Ideas Based On A Question
Taking the steps approach from above, we can get ChatGPT to help streamline getting keyword ideas based on a question. For example, let’s ask, “What is SEO?”
“Perform the following steps in a consecutive order Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, and Step 4. Step 1 Generate 10 questions about “{Question}”?. Step 2 – Generate 5 more questions about “{Question}” that do not repeat the above. Step 3 – Generate 5 more questions about “{Question}” that do not repeat the above. Step 4 – Based on the above Steps 1,2,3 suggest a final list of questions avoiding duplicates or semantically similar questions.”
Screenshot ChatGPT 4, April 2024Generating Keyword Ideas Using ChatGPT Based On The Alphabet Soup Method
One of my favorite methods, manually, without even using a keyword research tool, is to generate keyword research ideas from Google autocomplete, going from A to Z.
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Screenshot from Google autocomplete, April 2024
You can also do this using ChatGPT.
Example prompt:
“give me popular keywords that includes the keyword “SEO”, and the next letter of the word starts with a”
Screenshot from ChatGPT 4, April 2024Tip: Using the onion prompting method above, we can combine all this in one prompt.
“Give me five popular keywords that include “SEO” in the word, and the following letter starts with a. Once the answer has been done, move on to giving five more popular keywords that include “SEO” for each letter of the alphabet b to z.”
Generating Keyword Ideas Based On User Personas
When it comes to keyword research, understanding user personas is essential for understanding your target audience and keeping your keyword research focused and targeted. ChatGPT may help you get an initial understanding of customer personas.
Example prompt:
“For the topic of “{Topic}” list 10 keywords each for the different types of user personas”
Screenshot from ChatGPT 4, April 2024You could even go a step further and ask for questions based on those topics that those specific user personas may be searching for:
Screenshot ChatGPT 4, April 2024As well as get the keywords to target based on those questions:
“For each question listed above for each persona, list the keywords, as well as the long-tail keywords to target, and put them in a table”
Screenshot from ChatGPT 4, April 2024Generating Keyword Ideas Using ChatGPT Based On Searcher Intent And User Personas
Understanding the keywords your target persona may be searching is the first step to effective keyword research. The next step is to understand the search intent behind those keywords and which content format may work best.
For example, a business owner who is new to SEO or has just heard about it may be searching for “what is SEO.”
However, if they are further down the funnel and in the navigational stage, they may search for “top SEO firms.”
You can query ChatGPT to inspire you here based on any topic and your target user persona.
SEO Example:
“For the topic of “{Topic}” list 10 keywords each for the different types of searcher intent that a {Target Persona} would be searching for”
ChatGPT For Keyword Research Admin
Here is how you can best use ChatGPT for keyword research admin tasks.
Using ChatGPT As A Keyword Categorization Tool
One of the use cases for using ChatGPT is for keyword categorization.
In the past, I would have had to devise spreadsheet formulas to categorize keywords or even spend hours filtering and manually categorizing keywords.
ChatGPT can be a great companion for running a short version of this for you.
Let’s say you have done keyword research in a keyword research tool, have a list of keywords, and want to categorize them.
You could use the following prompt:
“Filter the below list of keywords into categories, target persona, searcher intent, search volume and add information to a six-column table: List of keywords – [LIST OF KEYWORDS], Keyword Search Volume [SEARCH VOLUMES] and Keyword Difficulties [KEYWORD DIFFICUTIES].”
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Screenshot from ChatGPT, April 2024
Tip: Add keyword metrics from the keyword research tools, as using the search volumes that a ChatGPT prompt may give you will be wildly inaccurate at best.
Using ChatGPT For Keyword Clustering
Another of ChatGPT’s use cases for keyword research is to help you cluster. Many keywords have the same intent, and by grouping related keywords, you may find that one piece of content can often target multiple keywords at once.
However, be careful not to rely only on LLM data for clustering. What ChatGPT may cluster as a similar keyword, the SERP or the user may not agree with. But it is a good starting point.
The big downside of using ChatGPT for keyword clustering is actually the amount of keyword data you can cluster based on the memory limits.
So, you may find a keyword clustering tool or script that is better for large keyword clustering tasks. But for small amounts of keywords, ChatGPT is actually quite good.
A great use small keyword clustering use case using ChatGPT is for grouping People Also Ask (PAA) questions.
Use the following prompt to group keywords based on their semantic relationships. For example:
“Organize the following keywords into groups based on their semantic relationships, and give a short name to each group: [LIST OF PAA], create a two-column table where each keyword sits on its own row.
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Screenshot from ChatGPT, April 2024
Using Chat GPT For Keyword Expansion By Patterns
One of my favorite methods of doing keyword research is pattern spotting.
Most seed keywords have a variable that can expand your target keywords.
Here are a few examples of patterns:
1. Question Patterns
(who, what, where, why, how, are, can, do, does, will)
“Generate [X] keywords for the topic “[Topic]” that contain any or all of the following “who, what, where, why, how, are, can, do, does, will”
Screenshot ChatGPT 4, April 20242. Comparison Patterns
Example:
“Generate 50 keywords for the topic “{Topic}” that contain any or all of the following “for, vs, alternative, best, top, review”
Screenshot ChatGPT 4, April 20243. Brand Patterns
Another one of my favorite modifiers is a keyword by brand.
We are probably all familiar with the most popular SEO brands; however, if you aren’t, you could ask your AI friend to do the heavy lifting.
Example prompt:
“For the top {Topic} brands what are the top “vs” keywords”
Screenshot ChatGPT 4, April 20244. Search Intent Patterns
One of the most common search intent patterns is “best.”
When someone is searching for a “best {topic}” keyword, they are generally searching for a comprehensive list or guide that highlights the top options, products, or services within that specific topic, along with their features, benefits, and potential drawbacks, to make an informed decision.
Example:
“For the topic of “[Topic]” what are the 20 top keywords that include “best”
Screenshot ChatGPT 4, April 2024Again, this guide to keyword research using ChatGPT has emphasized the ease of generating keyword research ideas by utilizing ChatGPT throughout the process.
Keyword Research Using ChatGPT Vs. Keyword Research Tools
Free Vs. Paid Keyword Research Tools
Like keyword research tools, ChatGPT has free and paid options.
However, one of the most significant drawbacks of using ChatGPT for keyword research alone is the absence of SEO metrics to help you make smarter decisions.
To improve accuracy, you could take the results it gives you and verify them with your classic keyword research tool – or vice versa, as shown above, uploading accurate data into the tool and then prompting.
However, you must consider how long it takes to type and fine-tune your prompt to get your desired data versus using the filters within popular keyword research tools.
For example, if we use a popular keyword research tool using filters, you could have all of the “best” queries with all of their SEO metrics:
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Screenshot from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, March 2024
And unlike ChatGPT, generally, there is no token limit; you can extract several hundred, if not thousands, of keywords at a time.
As I have mentioned multiple times throughout this piece, you cannot blindly trust the data or SEO metrics it may attempt to provide you with.
The key is to validate the keyword research with a keyword research tool.
ChatGPT For International SEO Keyword Research
ChatGPT can be a terrific multilingual keyword research assistant.
For example, if you wanted to research keywords in a foreign language such as French. You could ask ChatGPT to translate your English keywords;
Screenshot ChatGPT 4, Apil 2024- The key is to take the data above and paste it into a popular keyword research tool to verify.
- As you can see below, many of the keyword translations for the English keywords do not have any search volume for direct translations in French.
Screenshot from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, April 2024But don’t worry, there is a workaround: If you have access to a competitor keyword research tool, you can see what webpage is ranking for that query – and then identify the top keyword for that page based on the ChatGPT translated keywords that do have search volume.
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Screenshot from Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, April 2024
Or, if you don’t have access to a paid keyword research tool, you could always take the top-performing result, extract the page copy, and then ask ChatGPT what the primary keyword for the page is.
Key Takeaway
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ChatGPT can be an expert on any topic and an invaluable keyword research tool. However, it is another tool to add to your toolbox when doing keyword research; it does not replace traditional keyword research tools.
As shown throughout this tutorial, from making up keywords at the beginning to inaccuracies around data and translations, ChatGPT can make mistakes when used for keyword research.
You cannot blindly trust the data you get back from ChatGPT.
However, it can offer a shortcut to understanding any topic for which you need to do keyword research and, as a result, save you countless hours.
But the key is how you prompt.
The prompts I shared with you above will help you understand a topic in minutes instead of hours and allow you to better seed keywords using keyword research tools.
It can even replace mundane keyword clustering tasks that you used to do with formulas in spreadsheets or generate ideas based on keywords you give it.
Paired with traditional keyword research tools, ChatGPT for keyword research can be a powerful tool in your arsenal.
More resources:
Featured Image: Tatiana Shepeleva/Shutterstock
SEO
OpenAI Expected to Integrate Real-Time Data In ChatGPT
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, dispelled rumors that a new search engine would be announced on Monday, May 13. Recent deals have raised the expectation that OpenAI will announce the integration of real-time content from English, Spanish, and French publications into ChatGPT, complete with links to the original sources.
OpenAI Search Is Not Happening
Many competing search engines have tried and failed to challenge Google as the leading search engine. A new wave of hybrid generative AI search engines is currently trying to knock Google from the top spot with arguably very little success.
Sam Altman is on record saying that creating a search engine to compete against Google is not a viable approach. He suggested that technological disruption was the way to replace Google by changing the search paradigm altogether. The speculation that Altman is going to announce a me-too search engine on Monday never made sense given his recent history of dismissing the concept as a non-starter.
So perhaps it’s not a surprise that he recently ended the speculation by explicitly saying that he will not be announcing a search engine on Monday.
He tweeted:
“not gpt-5, not a search engine, but we’ve been hard at work on some new stuff we think people will love! feels like magic to me.”
“New Stuff” May Be Iterative Improvement
It’s quite likely that what’s going to be announced is iterative which means it improves ChatGPT but not replaces it. This fits into how Altman recently expressed his approach with ChatGPT.
He remarked:
“And it does kind of suck to ship a product that you’re embarrassed about, but it’s much better than the alternative. And in this case in particular, where I think we really owe it to society to deploy iteratively.
There could totally be things in the future that would change where we think iterative deployment isn’t such a good strategy, but it does feel like the current best approach that we have and I think we’ve gained a lot from from doing this and… hopefully the larger world has gained something too.”
Improving ChatGPT iteratively is Sam Altman’s preference and recent clues point to what those changes may be.
Recent Deals Contain Clues
OpenAI has been making deals with news media and User Generated Content publishers since December 2023. Mainstream media has reported these deals as being about licensing content for training large language models. But they overlooked a a key detail that we reported on last month which is that these deals give OpenAI access to real-time information that they stated will be used to give attribution to that real-time data in the form of links.
That means that ChatGPT users will gain the ability to access real-time news and to use that information creatively within ChatGPT.
Dotdash Meredith Deal
Dotdash Meredith (DDM) is the publisher of big brand publications such as Better Homes & Gardens, FOOD & WINE, InStyle, Investopedia, and People magazine. The deal that was announced goes way beyond using the content as training data. The deal is explicitly about surfacing the Dotdash Meredith content itself in ChatGPT.
The announcement stated:
“As part of the agreement, OpenAI will display content and links attributed to DDM in relevant ChatGPT responses. …This deal is a testament to the great work OpenAI is doing on both fronts to partner with creators and publishers and ensure a healthy Internet for the future.
Over 200 million Americans each month trust our content to help them make decisions, solve problems, find inspiration, and live fuller lives. This partnership delivers the best, most relevant content right to the heart of ChatGPT.”
A statement from OpenAI gives credibility to the speculation that OpenAI intends to directly show licensed third-party content as part of ChatGPT answers.
OpenAI explained:
“We’re thrilled to partner with Dotdash Meredith to bring its trusted brands to ChatGPT and to explore new approaches in advancing the publishing and marketing industries.”
Something that DDM also gets out of this deal is that OpenAI will enhance DDM’s in-house ad targeting in order show more tightly focused contextual advertising.
Le Monde And Prisa Media Deals
In March 2024 OpenAI announced a deal with two global media companies, Le Monde and Prisa Media. Le Monde is a French news publication and Prisa Media is a Spanish language multimedia company. The interesting aspects of these two deals is that it gives OpenAI access to real-time data in French and Spanish.
Prisa Media is a global Spanish language media company based in Madrid, Spain that is comprised of magazines, newspapers, podcasts, radio stations, and television networks. It’s reach extends from Spain to America. American media companies include publications in the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama. That is a massive amount of real-time information in addition to a massive audience of millions.
OpenAI explicitly announced that the purpose of this deal was to bring this content directly to ChatGPT users.
The announcement explained:
“We are continually making improvements to ChatGPT and are supporting the essential role of the news industry in delivering real-time, authoritative information to users. …Our partnerships will enable ChatGPT users to engage with Le Monde and Prisa Media’s high-quality content on recent events in ChatGPT, and their content will also contribute to the training of our models.”
That deal is not just about training data. It’s about bringing current events data to ChatGPT users.
The announcement elaborated in more detail:
“…our goal is to enable ChatGPT users around the world to connect with the news in new ways that are interactive and insightful.”
As noted in our April 30th article that revealed that OpenAI will show links in ChatGPT, OpenAI intends to show third party content with links to that content.
OpenAI commented on the purpose of the Le Monde and Prisa Media partnership:
“Over the coming months, ChatGPT users will be able to interact with relevant news content from these publishers through select summaries with attribution and enhanced links to the original articles, giving users the ability to access additional information or related articles from their news sites.”
There are additional deals with other groups like The Financial Times which also stress that this deal will result in a new ChatGPT feature that will allow users to interact with real-time news and current events .
OpenAI’s Monday May 13 Announcement
There are many clues that the announcement on Monday will be that ChatGPT users will gain the ability to interact with content about current events. This fits into the terms of recent deals with news media organizations. There may be other features announced as well but this part is something that there are many clues pointing to.
Watch Altman’s interview at Stanford University
Featured Image by Shutterstock/photosince
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