The AI revolution is in full force, and marketers are among those reaping the benefits of advances made over the past six breakneck months. With the release of ChatGPT last November, opportunities to enhance productivity and scale SEO efforts have grown exponentially. These gains are not just limited to experts; business owners, as well as sales and marketing directors, can now implement a variety of SEO tactics independently without the need for SEO experts, copywriters, designers, and developers.

This article presents eight ChatGPT prompts designed to save you hours when analyzing and optimizing your business website. For the purposes of this article, I assume that you have used ChatGPT before and are familiar with its high-level capabilities. When using the prompts provided, it’s helpful to understand some key differences between the two most recent versions of the GPT large language model (LLM) that power ChatGPT.

Key differences between GPT-3.5 (the only model available for the free version) and GPT-4 (an optional choice for the ChatGPT Plus paid subscription) include:

1. GPT-4, the current version, was officially launched on March 14th,  and is believed to be up to 10 times more advanced than its predecessor. It has a token limit of 8,192, compared to 4,096 for GPT-3.5. This means GPT-4 can process prompts that are twice the size and output data that is twice as large as GPT-3.5. It’s not only more advanced at understanding and responding to prompts, but it can also work with larger data sets like long-form blog posts.
2. GPT-4 has demonstrated human-level performance in academic and professional settings, scoring significantly higher on some medical, legal, SAT, and GRE exams.
3. This complexity comes at a cost, as GPT-4 is much slower when responding than GPT-3.5. If you have a simple task, it may be more convenient to use GPT-3.5.
4. OpenAI currently imposes a usage limit for GPT-4 through ChatGPT. Users are limited to 25 prompts in a 3-hour period. There is no such limitation for GPT-3.5.
5. Other differences between the two models can be found in this article.

SEO Prompts for ChatGPT

The rapid evolution of GPT models has significantly impacted productivity gains, accuracy, and the reliability of ChatGPT for marketing tasks. When it comes to SEO, the revenue impact of search engine optimization for many businesses is undeniable. However, it’s often one of the last channels to receive attention and resources due to a lack of expertise, a longer period of time to achieve results, and the extensive planning, technical implementation, content creation, and promotion often required.

ChatGPT can assist with all these aspects. From keyword research to content strategy and link building, there are nearly limitless use cases for ChatGPT in SEO. Let’s discuss some foundational uses that can be implemented by almost anyone, even those with little to no SEO expertise.

Maximizing the Quality of ChatGPT Responses

Before diving in, there are some important considerations when prompting these powerful large language models. The quality of your prompts is directly proportional to the quality of the output (aka “garbage in, garbage out”). The prompts included in this article have undergone many iterations of fine-tuning, but the output can still range from satisfactory to problematic at times. The exact same prompt entered by the same person at different times or by different people at the same time can yield significantly different results.

Results typically vary depending on the model you use (GPT-3.5 vs. GPT-4), the specific input you’ve added to the prompt, and the amount of thinking you’re asking the model to do. There are two key considerations to keep in mind when trying out these prompts for your own use cases:

1. Be mindful of the limitations for each prompt. If there is too much data to process, the model may provide inaccurate or useless responses. Limitations have been provided for prompts that require keyword lists.
2. You’ll likely have to type “continue writing” frequently when the model is outputting a long response. Due to the token window size for both versions of the model, ChatGPT’s response may cut off mid-sentence. Simply type “continue writing” for it to pick up where it left off.

With those considerations in mind, let’s get started with some prompts that are guaranteed to save you hours of precious time.

8 Essential SEO Prompts

These eight prompts were chosen due to their simplicity, broad range of use cases, and significant potential to save time for business owners and marketers alike. They have been grouped into three categories: Research & Analysis, Planning, and Content Creation.

Research & Analysis Prompts

Prompt #1 – Extracting Keywords from Competitor Content

A great place to get ideas for keyword targeting and content is by referencing your competitors. Did you know that you can extract keywords and phrases from a competitor’s live webpage? Once you’ve identified a target keyword and a competitor that is ranking above you in the search results for that keyword, grab the URL for that ranking page.

Copy and paste the prompt below, followed by the competitor URL. Note that ChatGPT will sometimes tell you that it can’t analyze companies. If this happens, you can reload your web browser and try again, or switch between the GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 models for another attempt.

ChatGPT Prompt:

Ignore all previous instructions. You are an expert at competitive SEO analysis with more than 10 years of experience. You want to identify all the potential keywords a page could be targeting. Identify all the keywords along with their likely search intent, the density of the keyword on the page and the most likely stage of the customer journey the person using the search query would be in based off the search intent. Use the values “Awareness”, “Consideration” and “Decision” for Customer Journey stages. Output the data into a markdown table and order the columns as follows from left to right: Keyword, Keyword Density, Search Intent, Customer Journey Stage. Order the table by Keyword Density descending and then alphabetically by Keyword ascending. After outputting the table, provide explanations of the different Search Intent and Customer Journey Stage values in paragraph and bullet point form. This is the page to analyze:
[Paste URL of competitor page]

Here is a partial response from a GPT-3 prompt with the URL: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/

Prompt #2 – Analyzing & Grouping Your Own Keywords

In this task, you’ll analyze your own keyword data. You can export query data from your Google Search Console account or use a paid tool like Ahrefs/SEMrush. Search Console is preferable as it provides more accurate, comprehensive data than paid tools that rely on different data sources.

Any source will suffice as long as you have a large number of keywords that are either currently driving traffic to your website or have the potential to do so. You don’t need keyword volume, competition, or any other metrics. Once you’ve exported your keywords, you can paste them below the following prompt to group your keywords into clusters and add search intent.

ChatGPT Prompt:

Ignore all previous instructions. You are an expert at keyword research with more than 10 years of experience. You want to group together semantically similar keywords into topic cluster groupings. Cluster names should be based off the pillars for each cluster and specific enough to be useful. For each cluster, specify the function of each keyword, whether it should be mapped to articles that are “nodes” or the “pillar”. The pillar article is often less specific than the nodes, and has higher search volume than the nodes. All nodes in a cluster link to the pillar to transfer some SEO equity to the pillar article. For each keyword, suggest an example article title that will incorporate the target keyword. Make the title enticing, less than 60 characters and it should follow SEO best practices. Output the data into a markdown table and order the columns as follows from left to right: Cluster, Keyword, Function, Example Article Title. Order the table by Cluster ascending alphabetically and then alphabetically ascending by Keyword. Nest the node articles below the pillar article in the table. After outputting the table, explain how topic clusters are mapped to content and how they help with SEO. Remove any duplicate keywords. This is the list of keywords to analyze:

[Paste your list of up to 5,000 keywords]

Here is a partial response from a GPT-3 prompt with ~300 keywords downloaded from a popular 3D printer manufacturer website.

Note that the language model sometimes has difficulty understanding the semantic relevancy of some keywords so you’ll have to check for any issues. 

Planning Prompts

Prompt #3 – Creating Topic Clusters Based on Keyword List

After analyzing your keyword groupings from Prompt #2, you can elevate your strategy by building comprehensive topic clusters that help your site develop topical expertise in different niches. To learn more about how topic clusters work, click here. This next prompt will help you plan SEO-focused content for six months or more by strategically publishing and interlinking content for different clusters. Before you can do that, you need to define the clusters from your uploaded keywords. It’s best to work with a large list of keywords, which can consist of hundreds or even thousands. This prompt also has a limit of 5,000 keywords.

ChatGPT Prompt:

Ignore all previous instructions. You are an expert at keyword research with more than 10 years of experience. You want to group together semantically similar keywords into topic cluster groupings. Cluster names should be based off the pillars for each cluster and specific enough to be useful. For each cluster, specify the function of each keyword, whether it should be mapped to articles that are “nodes” or the “pillar”. The pillar article is often less specific than the nodes, and has higher search volume than the nodes. All nodes in a cluster link to the pillar to transfer some SEO equity to the pillar article. For each keyword, suggest an example article title that will incorporate the target keyword. Make the title enticing, less than 60 characters and it should follow SEO best practices. The title must include the target keyword. Output the data into a markdown table and order the columns as follows from left to right: Cluster, Keyword, Function, Example Article Title. Order the table by Cluster ascending alphabetically and then alphabetically ascending by Keyword. Nest the node articles below the pillar article in the table. After outputting the table, explain how topic clusters are mapped to content and how they help with SEO. Remove any duplicate keywords. This is the list of keywords to analyze:

[Paste your list of up to 5,000 keywords]

Here is a partial response from a GPT-3 prompt with the same ~300 keywords downloaded from a popular 3D printer manufacturer website.

And another clip with different clusters

Here you can see that the AI decided to add quotation marks around the titles for some reason after I continued the first time.

Prompt #4 – Content Brainstorming for a New Website

Brainstorming the initial structure for a new website can feel like a nebulous sprawling experience. When building a new website, it’s best practice to define an information architecture (IA) that guides the hierarchy, layout, and content creation for the site. This can be a time-consuming process when done correctly. Fortunately, ChatGPT can expedite the process and provide a starting foundation for a new site.

The next prompt will suggest web pages, target keywords, and a brief outline for 15 pages of a new website. It will do something similar for the first 10 blog posts for the same site. Feel free to adjust the number of pages created in the prompt. To get started, simply enter some information about the products and services you provide, your location, and your target audience at the end of the prompt.

ChatGPT Prompt:

Ignore all previous instructions. You are a business strategist, SEO and content marketing expert. You will create a content plan for a new website tha is based on the products or services provided, company location and target audience. Output two markdown tables: (1) Website Information Architecture and (2) Blog Posts . The first table is for planning webpages. Conduct keyword research based on the business details provided and choose 15 keywords that are core to the business. Assign each of these keywords to one of the pages. Create a relevant, keyword optimized and compelling page title for each. Choose the keyword that is the most relevant to the page content and is likely to have the highest search volume. This will be added to a “Primary Keyword” column in the table. Order the columns as follows from left to right: Page Title, Primary Keyword, Page Outline. In the second table for blog posts, conduct keyword research once again and choose 10 blog posts that are most relevant to the pages from the previous table, the products/services of the business and the location. These blog posts will have internal links pointing to the webpages in the previous table so they should be semantically relevant. The table should include the following columns from left to right: Blog Post Topic, Primary Keyword, Blog Post Outline, Internally Linked Page. Keywords and topics should only be used once between both tables. The keywords targeted by website IA pages and blog posts should be 2-5 words with no duplicates. These are the products/services offered, company location and target audience:

[Add the products or services you offer, location of your company and target audience]

Here is a partial response from a GPT-3 prompt with the addition: “A company that provides cyber security services to private and public-sector enterprise IT companies. Services include threat protection, remediation, and monitoring. We also have a cloud-based monitoring platform. The company is located in Houston, TX.”

The content provided isn’t perfect but it’s a reasonably good start. The pages discussed can be edited and you’re one step closer to developing your new site. This is a nice hack for a smaller company with very limited resources. Proper go-to-market research, customer journey mapping and persona development will yield better results if you’re looking to build a best-in-class website that drives conversions and provides an exceptional visitor experience.

Content Creation Prompts

If there’s one area where truly ChatGPT excels it’s content creation. There is no shortage of GPT model-powered apps specifically designed for this purpose, such as Jasper, Frase.io, and Copy.ai. If you plan to create content at scale, you may want to evaluate paid tools that offer specialized features for SEO, PPC, email, and content marketing. However, ChatGPT remains a powerful tool on its own and offers extensive functionality before requiring a subscription fee.

Prompt #5 – Brainstorming Titles

If you’re not a copywriter or blogger, brainstorming article titles is likely a time-consuming affair. Titles need to be relevant, enticing, unique, and optimized for SEO. Luckily, these are all criteria you can provide to the model when asking it to generate 5 title options based on a target keyword or topic you provide. To use this prompt, simply add your target keyword or topic at the end of the prompt.

ChatGPT Prompt:

Ignore all previous instructions. You are an expert SEO and Copywriter with more than 10 years of experience. Provide 5 titles that are optimized for SEO based on the keyword or topic provided. Titles should be under 60 characters and include the target keyword. Titles should be enticing to the reader so they will elicit a high click through rate on the search results pages. Incorporate title best practices when possible. Be specific, use numbers, symbols, and dates when relevant. Titles should appear to be written by a human for human readers. Output the 5 title options into a markdown table with the following columns ordered from left to right: #, Title, Characters. The “Characters” column should include a numeric count of the number of characters for the relevant title. Do not provide any explanation about the output at the end. The target keyword or topic I want you to write titles for is: 

[enter target keyword or topic]

Here is the response from a GPT-3 prompt I received using one of the target keywords,“3d  printed dental crowns”, from the 3D printer manufacturer. The prompt criteria were followed closely and there are some nice choices here.

Prompt #6 – Creating an Article Outline

With an enticing, keyword-optimized title in hand, you can have ChatGPT generate an article outline. While it’s possible to have the AI write the blog post directly, there are benefits to using this intermediary step. You gain more control over the article’s structure, can further optimize it for SEO, and make it more unique. To generate a comprehensive article outline, paste in the prompt followed by your title and target keyword.

ChatGPT Prompt:

Ignore all previous instructions. You are an expert SEO and copywriter with more than 10 years of experience. Create an outline for a long-form article that has a minimum of 15 headings and subheadings. Use the title provided as a basis for the content. Do not alter the title that is provided. This article should comprehensively cover the topic and use detailed subheadings. Include the target keyword provided once or twice in the subheadings. If a target keyword is not provided, suggest your own and incorporate it into the outline. Do not write the article, only create the outline. Create a short list of relevant FAQs at the end. The target keyword should appear at least once in the FAQs section. Ensure that there is no repetition among sections and that the flow of the content is intuitive and easy to understand. The title of the article should be:

“[add title here]”: and the target keyword is: “[add target keyword here or leave blank]”

This is a partial response from a GPT-3 prompt using the target keyword “3D printed dental crowns” with the title “How 3D Printed Dental Crowns are Transforming Dentistry”. You may want to compare several generated outlines to choose the best one, or combine elements from different versions, as they can vary significantly. Feel free to add, modify, or remove subheadings as desired.

Prompt #7 – Creating an Article and Meta Description from an Outline

The outline you’ve created can now be used to produce a comprehensive article or blog post. This is where the real time savings come in. The article might not be perfect, but it could replace hours of writing a long-form piece with just 30 minutes of editing. To use this prompt, paste your target keyword and the entire outline after the prompt. 

ChatGPT Prompt:

Ignore all previous instructions. You are an expert SEO and copywriter with more than 10 years of experience. I will add a target keyword and article outline and I want you to write a comprehensive article based on the outline and target keyword provided. The article should have a minimum of 1,000 words. Incorporate the target keyword into the article in a way that appears natural. It should not be overused. The article should be engaging, informative and provide value to the reader. It should contain minimal redundancy, cliche’s and generic content. Use a tone that is relevant to the content of the outline. For example, if the outline appears to be informational, use an educational tone. If it appears to have a narrative, use more of a story-telling style. If it is academic, use a slightly more formal tone. Proofread your work and fix any grammatical issues. Format the article to use bullet points, numbered lists, h3 and h4 subheadings when relevant. It should be easy to skim-read. This article should not appear to have been written by AI. Use a writing style that has sufficient “burstiness” and “perplexity” so that it appears to be written by a human. The goal of the article is to provide value to the reader and drive traffic to the website by ranking well in the search results. After writing the article, create 5 meta description options are that are optimized for search engines, will generate a high click through rate and are between 140 and 160 characters. Include the word count of the article and character count of the meta descriptions at the end. After the Word Count, add the target keyword along with the number of times it was used in the article. Do not use keyword density.

The target keyword is: [target keyword] and this is the article outline: [paste outline with title]:

This is a partial response from a GPT-4 prompt using the title and outline generated in the previous tasks.

For optimal results, use GPT-4 instead of GPT-3.5, as it handles complex prompts more effectively. Depending on the length of your article, this process may require several “continue writing” prompts and take five minutes or more to complete. To avoid keyword spamming, consider adding a maximum usage cap to the prompt, especially when the target keyword is longer-tail.

If you’re responsible for publishing the article in WordPress or another CMS, ChatGPT can also write the blog post using HTML markdown. This will save you time when formatting the content in your HTML editor. To convert the post you’ve just created, paste in this bonus follow up prompt:

Bonus Prompt:

Convert the complete article you just wrote into html markdown so I can paste it into my code editor.

This is a partial response from a GPT-4 follow up prompt. Once again, you may have to paste together a few of these in your HTML editor, but this is a time-saver nonetheless.

Prompt #8 – Proofreading & Editing

In some cases, writing the content yourself may be preferable. For those situations, you can use ChatGPT to proofread your copy and correct grammar and spelling errors. This prompt can be used to edit your copy and provide recommendations for improvement. To use it, paste your copy at the end of the prompt.

ChatGPT Prompt:

Ignore all previous instructions. You are an expert copy editor with more than 10 years of experience. Edit the text that I input for grammar and spelling. After editing, provide a short summary of the changes you made and the readability of the edited copy. Provide up to 5 recommendations to improve the content. This is the copy to edit: 

[Paste your copy here]

Here is a partial response from a GPT-4 prompt when I got the model to proofread and edit the intro paragraph from one of my older blog posts.

Wrapping Up

These eight prompts are merely a starting point for achieving SEO performance gains while reducing analysis and content creation time. Additional analysis, planning, and content creation tasks can be accomplished with ChatGPT, along with link building and technical SEO tasks. In the future, we plan to create more posts and resources showcasing the application of generative AI in SEO and other traffic channels.

Jason Kamara

Jason is the Principal & Fractional Growth Marketer at HardSplash Media. A staunch advocate for insights-driven decision-making, he works with B2B tech companies to generate inbound leads and optimize marketing processes.