What ChatGPT (OpenAI) Is, How It Works, and How It Relates to SEO

President & CEO at B&FPS
Daniel is a Search Marketing Consultant with 20+ years of expertise in Search Engine Optimization and Brand Development. He has a Master’s (MS) in Interactive Technology from the University of Alabama, a Bachelor’s (BPA) in Public Administration from Barry University, General Business from the University of Michigan-Flint School of Management; specializations from the University of Michigan, professional development from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and is a proud Belen Wolverine!
Daniel P. Borbolla
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Is content created by artificial intelligence the wave of the future? ChatGPT is all the rage, with millions of downloads.

This open-source natural-language processing chatbot is the latest creation from OpenAI, a nonprofit intelligence research laboratory whose mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all humanity. 

ChatGPT uses the power of GPT-3 to create content. It’s also called a Large Learning Model, which uses data to predict the next word.

It has developed capabilities that let it learn as a human does. The knowledge in the database can be used for multiple tasks.

Simply put, you type a question into the chat and receive a response. This query could be for a list, blog post, an article, and more.

Unlike Google, which returns a series of relevant websites, articles, and ads, ChatGPT’s response is a reasonably well-crafted answer to a question.

In theory, that sounds great, but there are concerns. First, though, a few words about AI in general. 

What Is Generative AI?

Generative AI uses text, images, and audio files to create content. It scours sets of data and extrapolates information. Machine-based learning has enhanced AI and taught it to be less biased.

Generative AI enables depth predictions without sensors of human-created search engines. Finally, generative AI enables localization and regionalization of content through deepfakes.

AI has a plethora of applications in many industries. If you’re a journalist, you can use AI to protect your sources with a computer-generated voice crafted through audio synthesis. If you’re creating a video, you can use AI to narrate.

If you have an image that’s in low resolution, AI can upgrade it to high resolution, making it clearer on webpages. A step further is AI’s application in film restoration. You can add color to old footage and make sharper images that work better with today’s technology.

The advantages for health care are almost limitless, from creating prosthetic limbs to speeding up diagnosis.

Why ChatGPT?

ChatGPT takes generative AI to the next level through its ease of use and many applications. We already mentioned that it gives an answer, rather than a list of sources that may or may not be relevant.

Because it’s an open-source application, there are no ads. It’s under limited release and very popular — you may not even be able to download it at this point due to capacity issues. 

ChatGPT is programmed to avoid sensitive content such as graphic violence, explicit sex, and content deemed harmful. You can think of this as protection or censorship.

Aside from that, you can ask it to write you articles on most subjects that fulfill SEO requirements that you can post to your blog page (more SEO-friendly tips in just a moment).

Chat GPT gives a quick answer that’s dialogue-based. It will remember your last search and let you build on it. Plus, if you need code, ChatGPT can write that for you too!

It’s Not Perfect

ChatGPT has a few flaws. Data isn’t current — it’s sourced from books, web texts, websites, research articles, Wikipedia, and more, but only up to 2021. ChatGPT also mixes up facts and fiction. 

While it gives you valuable information, it will need fact-checking. One of the limitations of ChatGPT is a lack of sources. There doesn’t seem to be a way to verify where the information came from.

Google provides a million search returns per query, but ChatGPT has only one source of information. With those search return pages, Google offers options, whereas ChatGPT offers one answer.

There are no reviews of products or services, and there are ways to get around ChatGPT’s built-in ethics standards. That makes it vulnerable to fraudulent uses.

Plus, Google doesn’t like AI content and is getting better and better at spotting it. As a result, your blog post could be downgraded if you rely too heavily on AI content. 

ChatGPT is in the beta stage with a limited knowledge base and an overload of users. It lacks nuance and critical thinking skills. 

ChatGPT for SEO

Despite its limitations and precautions, ChatGPT has many valuable uses in SEO, including:

  • Keyword Research: Ask ChatGPT to give you a list of long-tail keywords and it pops out a list of articles. 
  • Creating an Outline: Type in your title or topic and ChatGPT returns an outline with relevant topics to create your article.
  • Creating Titles: Whether you need a catchy clickbait title or a keyword-optimized title, ChatGPT can return a dozen options.
  • FAQ Section: Pop your entire article into ChatGPT and ask it to create questions and answers.
  • SEO Optimization: Paste your entire article into ChatGPT and ask it to provide a list of semantically relevant topics that are missing from your article.
  • Creating Content: From writing the introduction to the whole article, ChatGPT can generate entire documents.
  • Improving Content: ChatGPT can perform grammar functions and rewrite sentences in a more positive light. 
  • Topical Maps: Once your article is written, you can plug it into ChatGPT and generate a list of related articles that you can use to ramp up your content and build links.
  • Writing Guest Posts: Another way to add content to your website is to have someone write a guest post. You guessed it, ChatGPT can create a blog post in the style of a particular writer. But be aware that ChatGPT is trained to be without bias, so if your guest writer doesn’t match these parameters, the AI might not get this right.
  • Email Generation: To promote your article, you can generate an email through ChatGPT.
  • Social Media Posts: ChatGPT can also create social media posts directed toward an article or write an article summary.
  • Creating Snippets: Use ChatGPT to write featured snippets in an NLP-friendly format.

YouTube video

Use ChatGPT as a Starting Point

While ChatGPT can write entire articles optimized for SEO, you should check facts and use a good editing process to fine-tune your optimization.

If you need information that’s up to date (after 2021), you’ll have to do more research.

The more detailed instructions that ChatGPT gets, the better the results. While you should always test for plagiarism, ChatGPT will likely choose unique words. How unique the article is will depend on your initial input. 

The ability of Google to detect AI-written content is lagging a bit, but it’s improving. Interestingly, OpenAI has developed a way to mark the article as written by AI. It’s not in use yet, but it’s coming. 

Because Google doesn’t like AI content, use ChatGPT for tasks such as content idea generation or to get you started. Then apply your editing prowess and SEO talents to make it your own.

We hope you learned something today about ChatGPT. Visit our blog for more articles and subscribe to learn more about search engine marketing!