To see what ChatGPT’s strengths and weaknesses mean in practical terms for search marketers, let’s look at some examples of what happened when we tested it for different SEO tasks.
We’ve tested ChatGPT for every task we could think of – everything from writing content to generating code. For SEO specifically, we feel these three tasks give the fairest representation of what ChatGPT can and can’t do:
- Content ideas
- Content generation
- Ad copywriting
1. Using ChatGPT to get content ideas
Generating content ideas is probably rcs data ChatGPT’s biggest strength as a search marketing tool. For example, we prompted the tool to come up with ideas for one customer on the topic of refinancing in the hospitality industry.
One simple prompt generated the following response with 10 ideas:
- “Maximizing Savings: How Hospitality Businesses Can Benefit from Refinancing”
- “Navigating the Refinancing Process for Hotel Owners”
- “The Impact of Low Interest Rates on Hospitality Refinancing”
- “Consolidating Debt: How Hospitality Businesses Can Use Refinancing to Streamline Finances”
- “Exploring the Pros and Cons of Refinancing for Hospitality Businesses”
- “The Role of Technology in Simplifying the Hospitality Refinancing Process”
- “Experts Share Strategies for Securing the Best Rates on Hospitality Refinancing”
- “Using Refinancing to Expand or Renovate: A Hospitality Business Guide”
- “From Mortgages to Business Loans: How Hospitality Businesses Can Refinance to Meet Changing Needs”
- “Overcoming Obstacles: How Hospitality Businesses Can Succeed in Refinancing Despite Economic Uncertainty”
Note that suggestion #3 refers to low interest rates, which is a good practical example of how ChatGPT’s information isn’t up to date. Even still, we’re only trying to get some content ideas from this interaction and all we have to do is change the topic to high interest rates.
In this particular case, ChatGPT was genuinely useful and it’s pretty good at coming up with title ideas. You can also use this to come up with subheading ideas for individual pieces or come up with some new keyword ideas.
2. Using ChatGPT to generate content
Generating content ideas is one thing these bonds require project managers and but writing a full piece of content is something else entirely. You can test this with a variety of prompts, such as “write a 500-word blog post on the top SEO trends for 2023”.
For this, ChatGPT will generate ~500 words of content on the topic you specify. In terms of relevance, the content is generally spot on and it rarely stutters with grammar errors or spelling mistakes.
However, as we touched on earlier, it runs into several key problems:
- Accuracy
- Originality
- Depth
We asked ChatGPT to write a blog post on SEO trends for 2023 so, before we look at snippets from the content itself,
let’s see which trends it decided to write about
- The rise of voice search
- The importance of E-A-T
- The continued europe email growth of video content
- The increasing importance of user experience
- The rise of visual search
- The importance of local SEO
- The growing role of artificial intelligence
These selections aren’t too bad and you get a sense of how ChatGPT can suggest ideas for subheadings in your content. The only problem is several of these trends are a little dated in 2023 and they’re all very generic. There’s nothing here that really stands out from the thousands of other articles published on the same topic.
If we take a closer look at the content ChatGPT generates, bigger issues become obvious.