How to Use AI Tools to Level Up Your SEO Game
Introduction
The past year has seen AI tools bring about a major shift in the way that many marketers approach certain aspects of their marketing strategy. Currently, the jury is still out on just how large this shift actually is, whether it’s here to stay, and how it will continue to impact the industry in the years to come. For now, it’s evident that almost every platform is trying to incorporate some kind of AI functionality into their current offering, whether it’s AI generated content, automated journey building, keyword generation and so on. Time will tell how many of these initiatives are themselves marketing gimmicks, and how many will actually enable platform users to increase their efficiency.
One area of marketing that has seen a major impact from the use of AI tools, is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Most posts I see on LinkedIn discuss how AI tools can help expedite the entire SEO process, from keyword research to landing page optimization, to content generation. When used correctly (emphasis on the word correctly), AI tools can indeed help improve your SEO efforts whilst saving time and effort. It’s worth noting that a good chunk of SEO involves keeping up with how Google changes their search engine algorithms, and adapting your website and featured content to maximize upon those changes. In my experience, the correct use of AI tools involves the right mix of human input (creativity, ingenuity, originality of the initial prompts) and AI input (efficiency and optimization of the process steps) to generate the best possible results.
As AI generated content becomes more prolific, there is a fundamental risk that the same content will be ingested and regurgitated numerous times across multiple sites, potentially resulting in Google adjusting the way they detect and rank AI generated articles in their search engine. To offset this, the tools suggested in this article should be used with the aim of generating engaging, useful, and most importantly as original content as possible. Going the extra mile where needed will ensure you remain at the top of the search engine results page (SERP), enabling you to keep driving high-quality, organic traffic to your website, even amongst a sea of auto-generated content.
Let’s get into how you can use different AI tools to get the best out of your SEO.
Recommended Tools:
Chat GPT 3.5 or Chat GPT-4
Google Baird
Bing’s Chat-GPT
Using AI Tools for SEO Keyword Research
The importance of keywords and keyword research isn’t to be underestimated. Keywords are the words or phrases used in your article that indicate (both to the reader and search engines) what your content is actually about and match up your content with related search queries. When used properly in your content, keywords improve the ranking of your article, allowing for greater traffic and better performance.
Keywords can be short-tail, broader terms like ‘running shoes’, or longer-tail, more specific phrases like ‘how to clean running shoes’. The broader terms often drive a larger number of searches, but are usually highly competitive, whilst the long-tail keywords target users with more specific intent, including those that may be further along the purchase funnel. Using a balance of both short-tail and long-tail keywords is the best way to boost your SEO performance, and that is exactly where tools like Chat GPT can come in.
Try using the prompt below with ChatGPT-3.5/4 to see what results you get:
“Act as an SEO expert who knows how to get websites to the top of search engine results pages. Provide me with a list of keywords that will help my site rank on the first page of a search engine. For reference, my website is {...} and my intended target audience is {...}. Provide me with the most relevant and high traffic keywords to optimize my website's content for search engines. List the keywords in terms of their importance and relevance. Also give me suggestions for long tail keywords and analyze the competitiveness of each as well as provide recommendations on which ones to target to maximize my search engine visibility.”
You can replace the ellipses in the curly brackets with your own website and target audience to build out the query. If you need any further information, you can follow up with a request for more long-tail or short-tail keywords, or change the focus to add a different spin on search intent (e.g. Please give me more long-tail keywords on the theme of {...}).
If you still want more keywords, you can look into actual keyword generating tools from the likes of Ahrefs or SEMRush that can give more insight on potential keywords for traffic generation.
Use AI to Determine Which Sites Rank Well for Keywords
When you’re looking for current results that draw information from the internet, it’s best to use the Bing version of Chat-GPT as it has access to web results. You can use Bing’s ‘precise’ mode to deliver more straightforward results, giving you a direct, unembellished response to your query. You can try out the following prompt:
“Please find me the sites that rank highest for these {keywords}. Please give your response as a list, with each list entry providing the website URL, the name of the website, and suggestions as to how best to outrank it.”
Using an example that’s related to one of my hobbies, photography, you could adapt the query using the following:
Keywords: ‘street photography classes in Hong Kong’
Once you have your results, you can examine each of the pages in more detail and use free tools like SEO Meta, and Ubersuggest to check things like keywords distribution, domain authority, and layout. These things can help add to your understanding of why these pages rank where they do, and how you can compete with them.
Create a Content Plan Using AI Tools
Content still plays a vital role in driving traffic. It also serves as a foundation for marketing campaigns, giving you a basis on which to build your graphics, social media, email marketing, advertising, and more. Once you have a rough idea on what you’d like to post about, having a content plan can help you organize your thoughts and your content into a calendar. We use Notion to plan and organize content for our clients, but GPT-4 can offer a tool for a basic content framework. It also helps if your content plan is linked to your SEO strategy, so be sure that you think about how the content will be hosted on your website, then rolled out across other platforms in your digital ecosystem. Using the correct prompt with Chat GPT, you can use the AI tool to put together a content calendar, suggest posting schedules on different platforms, and recommend topics and formats for each one. Here’s a prompt you can try with Chat GPT.
“Act as an SEO expert who knows how to get websites to the top of search engine results pages. Provide me with a one-month content plan based on {keywords}. The aim of this content plan and strategy is to drive my SEO performance by boosting my site ranking and domain authority. From today’s date, provide a list of suggested content that accounts for my {posting frequency} across my {digital platforms}.
You can substitute the items in the curly brackets with the relevant information for your business, for example:
Keyword: my sports shoe business
Posting Frequency: 5 times a week
Digital Platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Written Blog
You’ll see that the results are actually a good starting point for your SEO strategy. It’s worth repeating that it’s the combination of human and AI input that delivers the best results, so it’s worth adding your own ideas into the mix to add an element of uniqueness and creativity to your content. Add your own ideas to the content calendar and use a tool like Notion to display it in a clear and consistent way.
Optimize your Content for SEO with AI Tools
Once you have your content plan, getting started writing your content can be an ominous first step. It’s hard to actually manifest content from thin air, and it’s even harder to be able to express yourself clearly and coherently whilst also addressing the answers to queries that have ultimately directed users to your site. Once again, AI is here to help do a lot of the heavy lifting.
Using ChatGPT, you can use the following prompt to get a good first draft. You should always double check the output, add additional elements where possible to differentiate the content, and expand on the initial content to make it more detailed.
“Act the role of an expert SEO copywriter with rich experience in writing SEO-friendly copy that ranks well for specific keywords. I want you to use {bullet points} and create 800 words of copy that performs well for keyword {keyword}. In your response, include <h1>,<h2> and <p> tags. Where possible, include the keywords in the headlines and titles, and add them to the copy in a natural way. Write in a friendly, conversational style.”
{keywords}: street photography classes
{bullet points}:
- what are street photography classes
- can street photography classes improve photography
- participating in street photography classes
This will give you a good, SEO-friendly output that will help you in creating a fully fleshed out article. Be sure to spell check, content check and embellish your results with your own input to push the AI recommendations even further.
Make an Email for Link Building Outreach with AI tools
Link building is an essential practice in search engine optimization (SEO) because it plays a significant role in improving a website's visibility and authority. When reputable websites link to your site, search engines consider those links as endorsements of your content's quality and relevance.
High-quality backlinks from authoritative sources can boost your website's credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of search engines, leading to higher search engine rankings. Additionally, link building expands your website's reach, driving referral traffic and increasing the likelihood of attracting new visitors. In order to secure those links, some outreach effort is required. AI tools can help you craft the messages you need and create personalized emails or messages that are more likely to result in links to your website. Try out this prompt to do the heavy lifting for you - you’ll save yourself time and effort in the long and short run. You can use it in ChatGPT, but the compose function in Bing offers a good way of getting tailored results.
Act the part of an expert SEO copywriter who is good at persuading other site owners to include links to our site or content on their websites. Please write an email addressed to {their website/company}, and follow the structure below.
Begin with a casual greeting.
Mention that you enjoy their website/company and provide a reason for doing so. (Provide me with a link to their website that I can use as support for this reason.)
State that I work for {my website/company} and how it could be useful or interesting to their website visitors.
Finish with a casual conversational statement and let them know we look forward to their reply.
Replace the data in the curly brackets and hit enter. Enjoy the results and the time saved from using these tools.
Coming Up in Part 2
Stay tuned for Part 2 where we’ll be looking at AI prompts that can help you generate schema data, analyze website data and performance, and help you optimize your social for optimal SEO results.
About Nodal Marketing:
Nodal is a pioneering marketing agency offering strategic and digital consulting services for businesses looking to take the next step with their marketing strategy.
Using key insights and research, the aim of Nodal is to analyze consumer and technology trends to provide companies with a strategic direction and a practical methodology to achieve their goals in marketing to target consumers.
