How to Leverage ChatGPT to Improve Your Visibility

ChatGPT is proving useful for a variety of applications—from writing thank you notes to giving marriage advice to explaining the stock market in less than 100 words. It can even pass the Uniform Bar Examination, scoring almost in the 90th percentile.

But how valuable can it be for your local SEO strategy? Well, that depends on how you use it.

Of course, ChatGPT has the ability to churn out a blog post or any other type of content you might want in an instant. But if you want it to have a real impact, don’t expect that content to be ready to publish or to put in front of your customers before a member of your team can thoroughly review it.

Let’s dig into why the success of your AI strategy still depends on the skills of human beings.

Why AI Chat Needs Human Editors

AI can enhance your marketing strategy in many ways, but it can’t replace it.

Alltech Magazine summed it up well by asserting that generative AI mimics human intelligence, but intelligence is separate from consciousness. In other words, no AI is conscious of itself and the world it inhabits like humans are.

Unlike humans, AI has no personal experience to inform its writing. AI chat tools like ChatGPT therefore can't interpret an experience, have an emotional reaction, or apply moral reasoning. They have no intrinsic motivations or personal beliefs unique to themselves. They are only capable of synthesizing and repurposing content that already exists.

Another drawback with ChatGPT is that it is not connected to the internet, and its access to information cuts off in 2021. Plug-ins are slowly rolling out for specific purposes, but still it can’t help you if you want to write about current SEO trends or find out what are today’s top-performing articles for any given subject.

So as a local search marketing tool, ChatGPT and related technologies need human experts who understand the strengths and limitations of the tools they’re using, and who are capable of adjusting the AI-delivered responses according to their own business goals and unique perspectives.

AI Chat Tools on the Market Today

ChatGPT is currently the most popular generative AI product. It was launched in November 2022 as version GPT-3.5, and four months later, developer OpenAI launched an updated version, GPT-4.

GPT-4 is 10 times more advanced than GPT-3.5. It can:

• Respond differently to different perceived emotional tones

• Synthesize information from multiple sources

• Produce a story with a consistent plot

• Describe the content of an image

Chat GPT-4 is available on ChatGPT Plus, OpenAI's paid subscription plan. For those who can access it, this new version is significantly more helpful in creating customer-facing documents, but the content it produces still needs a human eye for numerous reasons. It can't consider context, remember past conversations, or identify false information, all of which can lead to all sorts of trouble if a human editor doesn’t get involved.

Top Uses for ChatGPT in Local SEO

We’ve established that ChatGPT has its shortcomings, but it still has the potential to be a powerful marketing tool in the hands of humans who know how to use it. For local SEO purposes, there are many ways ChatGPT can add value for you and your team. Below are some of the ways ChatGPT can help you execute your local SEO strategy.

1. Keyword Research and Topic Clustering

Research is where ChatGPT shines. It can scour its database for relevant information, synthesize the data it uncovers, and report its findings in straightforward language. These functions can shave off hours from your keyword research. For example, ChatGPT can perform any of the following research functions:

• Generate standard and long-tail keywords

• List subtopics related to a broader topic

• List semantically related keywords

• Group keywords into categories

• Find the most popular websites related to a topic

The advantage you gain here is that ChatGPT puts you on the right track faster than traditional keyword tools. Instead of guessing at potential keywords to research, you simply ask ChatGPT to list ideas. It will even categorize related keywords and help you choose phrases to target.

Of course, the data used to generate these keywords is not current, so you must check the suggestions ChatGPT provides against SEO software. This will help validate those keywords and make sure they align with your search strategy. While some keywords may have faded in relevancy over time, odds are there will be plenty of usable suggestions to get you going quicker than you could have otherwise.

2. Content Ideas and Inspiration

Content development is the foundation of SEO, but it’s challenging and time-consuming process. According to recent research from Semrush, posting content more often is the most effective tactic marketers can use to boost their visibility.

For this tactic to work though, each piece of content needs to be unique, relevant, and helpful for your audience. Unfortunately, coming up with dozens or even hundreds of original topics is challenging even for the most creative SEO professional.

ChatGPT can generate ideas for content that matches your potential customers' interests. For example, it can list frequently asked questions in your industry or suggest topics related to your products or services to help you start producing articles at a faster pace.

Just remember, ChatGPT doesn't have the capacity for originality or interpretation. You still need a human SEO expert with an understanding of your strategy to review and approve ChatGPT's content suggestions.

3. Content Calendar Development

A documented content marketing strategy keeps you on the road to local SEO success. According to the Content Marketing Institute's 2023 B2B Content Marketing report, 64% of the most successful marketers had documented strategies, compared to 40% of all marketers and 19% of the least successful marketers.

Your content calendar is a pivotal component of your content marketing strategy. It keeps your team on track by laying out your content plan daily, weekly, and monthly, showing you which topics you plan to cover and when.

But many teams fail to create a calendar because it can be a time-intensive and quite an elaborate process. You can consolidate these steps using a multipart prompt that asks GPT to do the following:

• Target specific keywords

• Focus on top- or bottom-of-funnel purchase intent

• Optimize post titles

• Schedule posts for different weeks and days

By incorporating all of these requests into a single prompt, ChatGPT can produce a first-draft calendar faster than anyone on your team could have created manually.

4. Content Brief Development

Whether you work with contracted writers,editors, or have an internal content team, content briefs simplify your life immensely. They're a shared resource between the person who planned the content and the team members who execute it, and the goal is to keep everyone on the same page.

A brief typically includes the following details about the piece:

• Overall intent

• Desired message and tone

• Target audience

• Related business goals

• Primary and secondary keywords

• Buyer funnel stage

ChatGPT can help you at any stage of your brief creation process. It can:

• Suggest sections for a comprehensive brief

• Draft an individual section or sections

• Create a first draft of a full brief

Just keep in mind that the more content creation ChatGPT does on its own, the more it needs a human editor. For example, prompting it with something as generic as "write a content brief for an article about SEO" will likely result in a response that requires far more tweaks than responses to a prompt asking for more refined sections on intent, target audience, and keywords.

5. Drafting Original Content

ChatGPT may not be able to create a publication-ready article or blog post on its own, but it can make a first draft that helps you break through your writer's block (also known as the blank page syndrome).

ChatGPT can support you at any stage of the writing process. Even if you only have an idea, you can ask ChatGPT to write an article about that topic, and it will produce a rough draft you can build upon.

More specifics give you better results. For instance, if you have an outline, ChatGPT can expand and write your content based on your outline. And it gets better when you ask ChatGPT to incorporate your targeted keywords in the article as well.

ChatGPT can also rewrite existing articles. This feature is ideal for writers and editors who need to write competing articles on a topic others have already covered. ChatGPT can write a new version of a published article in seconds, giving you fresh words to work from as you develop a new piece of content based on your own unique perspective on the subject.

6. Drafting Location Landing Pages

Location landing pages are crucial SEO tools for multi location businesses. They help search engines match local customers to each of your locations and assist site visitors with finding the right store. But when you have many locations, developing new content for each one can be challenging.

ChatGPT can draft SEO-optimized content for each location page using your business name, industry, and address. You can make the content better if you share your services or products with ChatGPT as it can include this information on each page. It can even create sections such as "Why Choose Us" based on the factors that you tell it set you apart from the competition.

7. FAQ Creation

It's challenging to know what questions your potential customers might ask, especially if you oversee marketing for multiple locations. ChatGPT can generate lists of frequently asked questions (FAQs) that your target audience may have about your service.

FAQ generation is one of the simplest tasks to prompt, and you can walk away with enough questions for multiple pages. The chatbot only needs the topic and your target audience to get started, and there is a good chance that the content it generates will trigger new ideas in your own mind as well.

FAQs are a great tactic to add more highly-relevant content to your local pages that can help search engines rank your page better.

8. Writing Metadata

Meta titles and meta descriptions are other aspects of local SEO that you should not overlook. They help Google identify each of your location pages and identify its purpose. If your location pages have identical or near-identical titles and descriptions, Google will have a harder time matching them with local customers' needs.

ChatGPT can help you generate unique metadata for each location page so you can worry less about your customers finding the right location of your business. In general, more detailed prompts deliver optimal results.

9. Auditing Pages and Content

Google develops algorithms to recognize and prioritize the highest-quality and most helpful content. The most helpful content tends to rank highest on the search engine results page (SERP).

ChatGPT can act as a trained Google Quality Rater and evaluate the authoritativeness, reliability, and expertise of your content. Simply request ChatGPT to conduct an audit of your page based on specific criteria such as the E-E-A-T formula (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness ). Doing so provides a level of objectivity that was once only available by hiring a paid consultant.

How to Write Effective ChatGPT Prompts

ChatGPT is only as effective as the prompts you feed into it, so using the most detailed prompts is crucial. To demonstrate this, our SEO experts have written and tested a set of AI chatbot prompts specifically for local marketers. These prompts are proven effective and ready to help you get started with ChatGPT.

Take your local SEO strategy to the next level with no wasted time. Download our list of the proven, best, and ready-to-use ChatGPT prompts today by clicking the button below.