What was the last time you used AI this month? I bet it won’t be a long time ago.
Accept it or not, AI is changing the way we work and make money.
Many tools specially designed for content writers have flooded the market. But ChatGPT is different. It’s become a revolutionary tool by getting 1 million users in only 5 days. To top it off, its revenue in 2023 alone was $1.6 billion. You can’t categorize it as a writer’s tool. But it can pretty much do a lot as a writer’s aid.
I’ve been using it to research posts on this blog. It’s saved me around two hours per post (a total of 52 hours in three months).
Today, we will discuss how you can make the most of this tool to generate content in no time with prompts and tips. You’ll also learn:
- The use cases of ChatGPT for content writing and SEO (with prompts)
- How and when not to use ChatGPT
- Alternatives of ChatGPT
Can You Use ChatGPT for Content Writing?
Though not designed as a content writing tool, ChatGPT can assist the writing process.
It’s important to remember that ChatGPT’s contribution is about 20% in the actual writing. It helps create briefs and outlines, ideate blogs, create meta descriptions, suggest improvements to existing content, etc.
But the actual writing should be human. A 100% ChatGPT-written content won’t help you in any way. Here are the reasons why:
Limitations of ChatGPT
- ChatGPT isn’t designed to generate SEO-optimized content. It won’t give you what you need to rank in searches.
- ChatGPT content has a tell that gives away it’s written with AI. The content has repetitive phrases, a determined sentence structure that seldom varies, and long sentences that don’t suit the needs of online writing.
- It can also produce incorrect and outdated information. For example, the free version often returns links to sites and studies that don’t work. You can’t rely on ChatGPT when it comes to the authenticity of the content.
- ChatGPT is not meant for long-form content. You’ll get the same repetitive ideas and sentences going around the articles. ChatGPT won’t optimize content to get ranking, and the content would be shallow, lacking real-world knowledge, examples, explanations, etc.
ChatGPT is only as good as the input it gets. Put in vague prompts, and the result will be far from what you expected.
That’s why handling ChatGPT needs a prompt master. No worries, later in this article, I’ll give you the exact prompts I use to get accurate results for every use case I’ll show.
Before going there, let’s see if Google allows you to use AI-generated content.
Is It Legal For Writers to Use ChatGPT?
No. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using AI-generated or human-written content. Google doesn’t penalize the content based on who produced it. Google itself has cleared the doubt in its guide about AI-generated content.
As a search engine, Google wants the best content that has user interest in mind. It penalizes fishy content that tries to manipulate the platform. In short, Google can penalize human-written content if it doesn’t follow its content guidelines.
If your AI-generated content has passed through human eyes and has been edited to serve the user intent correctly, you need not fear.
Treat AI as your assistant chef, bringing you all the content in a ready-to-use mode. All you need to do is add your secret ingredient and prepare the final recipe. You don’t need to spend time cutting the vegetables. As the head chef, you focus on delivering the best recipe your audience would want to savor.
| Suggested Reading: Pros and Cons of AI-Generated Content
16 Ways To ChatGPT for Content Writing and SEO
The best use of ChatGPT for content writing is as a brainstorming tool. Here are some use cases of using ChatGPT for content writing and SEO:
1. ChatGPT can Generate Content Ideas and Help Brainstorm Copy
As a writer, you need to work on hundreds of content pieces every month. You can save time coming up with ideas for blogs, social media posts, email newsletters, etc. The first step is to train ChatGPT to get into the role of a writer.
For example, use this prompt:
This preps ChatGPT to take up the role of a writer for any content format you want.
Now, you can give the actual prompt to ideation or tweak the above prompt a bit. For example, here’s the prompt I used to generate email newsletter topics.
Here, you can see the topics ChatGPT gave me. I have enough to last for a good two months.
Since ChatGPT removed my biggest headache of creating content ideas, I can quickly start working on these topics.
2. ChatGPT can Write SEO Meta Descriptions
One thing to note before we begin: Google rewrites most meta descriptions to match its ranking factors.
An example of Google changing meta descriptions:
Since Google goes its way with meta descriptions, many opt to leave it empty. What’s the point of spending time on something that may never be shown on the SERPs?
But if you’re like me and don’t want to leave the space empty, you don’t have to waste time thinking of the best meta descriptions. Simply ask ChatGPT.
Use this prompt to generate catchy meta descriptions that correctly use the target keyword. Make edits as you wish and use the meta descriptions ChatGPT created for you.
3. ChatGPT can Create Rough Outlines for Blog Posts
Once again, prep the tool with the first prompt we discussed. Let ChatGPT know it’s an expert blog post outline generator for the day. Then, use this prompt to get the outline.
Here’s the complete outline ChatGPT produced.
You can see it needs some pruning at places. You can’t use the exact outline for your blog post. Of course, you need to consider SEO optimization. But it’s a good start.
You can change the results by giving a more detailed prompt. Add the user intent you want to fulfill through the blog post. And you’ll get an outline tailored to that.
4. ChatGPT can Summarize Articles
Article conclusions are a place to summarize the article and highlight the key takeaways for the readers. ChatGPT can do that for you.
It can also be used to summarize web pages. Reading entire blogs for research is difficult when you only need to use some key points. You’d better use GPT-4 when you’re doing these tasks.
The benefit of GPT-4 is that it connects with the web and fetches results online, which is not available in the free GPT-3 version.
5. ChatGPT can Become a Keyword Research Tool
Though ChatGPT doesn’t always generate output optimized for search engines, it’s still a great tool to suggest new ideas effortlessly. If you’ve been doing keyword research, you’d know the process can sometimes use some fresh perspective.
ChatGPT can give you a kickstart in finding an initial list of keywords for your seed term.
Use this prompt:
See how ChatGPT aids the process. You can insert these keywords in the keyword research tool of your choice to get a detailed analysis.
