What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT has been a major milestone in the world of AI and has had a big impact on the SEO industry too. The chatbot quickly gained widespread attention and popularity for its ability to provide thorough and accurate answers to a wide range of questions.
ChatGPT is a language processing tool that lets you have real conversations with a machine. Yes, with a machine! It’s like having your own personal robot to chat with about all sorts of topics, including local SEO. You can learn new things and it can even make your computer work a whole lot easier. It’s really a unique way to interact with technology.
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How can ChatGPT be utilized for Local SEO
There are so many local SEO use cases for ChatGPT you can’t even imagine. I’ve collected a few of them in this article. You can expect much about local keyword research, on-page optimization, location page creation and planning, and a lot more. If you need any more information about prompts and ideas on how to use ChatGPT you should check out Aleyda Solis’ general article about SEO and ChatGPT.
1. Create a Google Business Profile Description
Check out my blog article: how to create the perfect Google Business Profile description in order to know what you need so that ChatGPT can be of help to you.
I basically gave ChatGPT instructions to include specific types of information in my description. First, I fed the AI with some information about the business. I included placeholders so you can just replace them and try the example yourself. Then I gave ChatGPT instructions about 750 words and that it should use the info provided. (you don’t necessarily need to do that though) What it returned was really fascinating to me.
Here is the command:
My business name is [name placeholder]. The business is located in [town + state]. It’s [number of years in business] years old. The industry is [industry]. The main service is [main service/s]. Our vision is to [insert vision – max 1 sentence]. Our unique selling proposition is [insert unique selling proposition].
Please create a 750 characters Google My Business business description using the information provided.
2. Extract Geo-Modifiers from text
This example is really helpful if you want to create location pages and need local landmarks or general local indications to keep the page relevant to the local area. So what I did was, I went to Wikipedia, searched for a specific town, and then copied the whole text from the first paragraph and pasted it in ChatGPT. I used the following command: “Filter out all geographical words from this text”. The results made me smile 🙂
3. Create Local Business Schema
I just told the AI to return schema for a business and use placeholders as values. What’s interesting is that it even gave me further guidance on how to use this code. Brilliant!
4. Title Tags for Location Pages
This makes it just so easy to collect the data you need for location pages about adjacent towns and areas. I was actually sure it wouldn’t provide me with that sort of information. But see for yourself, I even used “please” – hopefully it pays me back at some point or maybe that was the only reason it gave me an appropriate answer in the first place 😉
5. Data collection and structuring
Now that I had my list of title tags for the location pages I also would like to have a list of those towns so I can use it for other pages as well. Obviously, the closest towns are the most important which is why I wanted them to show up first on the list. The good thing is, it remembers what you chatted about before. Makes it easier to adjust your commands.
6. Create meta descriptions based on provided information
I wanted ChatGPT to consider one USP and the title tags I’ve created earlier. Obviously, it should stick to the rules and only use 160 characters.
7. Create content for a blog article
You can do this for a whole blog article if your briefing is more detailed. However, it is not advisable to rely solely on AI for content writing. It has the ability to put some human touch in the text but it reads differently when an actual human being has written it. Not sure how Google will treat that kind of content. They say it’s not in their best interest but we never know.
8. Local content ideas
Obviously, it can just spit out some ideas to warm up your brain a bit 😉 However, I found that most of the ideas are very generic and you can certainly find them anywhere online already. If you want to create unique stuff that excites your readers, you may just see this as a brainstorming session with your best friend, a machine. (an SEOs best friend anyway, right?)
9. Local Keyword Research
If you really have no idea what local keywords could be relevant, ChatGPT can help you with that too. By leveraging ChatGPT’s capabilities, you can identify relevant keywords to enhance your local SEO strategy.
10. Local Backlinks, Citations & Directories
And by “local”, I mean local and not general/global. The directories that ChatGPT spits out are really local. Just like what I wanted. I don’t need the tool for all sorts of directories and sites. If you get more specific it will return you with all sorts of directories from the local area.
11. Near Me Research
This is quite nice. I wanted it to return many variations of the often used “near me” phrase in combination with our industry. I tried to include “near me” but it didn’t really want to give me the list I was searching for. Only “near” did, however. See for yourself:
12. Reply to Google Reviews
First, feed the machine with the review, then give instructions on how to answer. This should be a game changer for many people that don’t want to take the time to respond or simply don’t know how they should do it. Obviously, you need to review and edit the texts – it’s not always a perfect response.
13. Guest Post Outline
If you want to get some quick content for a possible guest post this is a great way to get it. In this example I’ve only added 2 more facts but you can fill it with as many as you like.
14. Research Competitors
It’s very interesting how the AI tool can find competing businesses in the local area. This is a great way to do a quick evaluation or audit of a business on local search. If you want to impress your future clients with a fast delivery, use ChatGPT and send them the audit back in no time.
15. Website Navigation Structure
I did not use the plumbing company example for this point because it only produced basic results. However, this example includes individual services and does not require much consideration of future structure. BOOM!
16. Google Business Profile Products and Services
You can let the AI create product descriptions for your business. The good thing is that those descriptions aren’t indexed and Google doesn’t really care if that’s AI-generated or not. Many product descriptions are used by the manufacturer – this way you can spice it a little up and make it more unique to your needs. You can obviously use this for products and services alike.
17. Google Post Ideas
This is a great way to come up with special offer ideas for your Google Business Profile. If you have no idea what you could offer your customers, this is the perfect way for you to get started.
18. Driving Directions
It can even come up with driving directions that you can use for your location pages or homepage to provide an even better user experience and stay relevant to Google.
19. Frequently Asked Questions
If you don’t want to do much research, just get the AI to tell you what people ask the most about your business.
20. Press Release
Ok, obviously you could have the AI write you a full press release about your business. But what I find more interesting is that it could give you ideas on what kind of information you could include in your press release that’s really relevant to your business.
21. Create a content outline
You can streamline your service page outline process using ChatGPT. It’s incredible how extensively thorough the AI creates a content outline for a plumbing service page.
Summary
After all, ChatGPT is designed to help users efficiently find the information they need, without having to spend a lot of time researching on Google. It significantly speeds up the process of researching, brainstorming, structuring, and collecting information.
Some of the chats I’ve created for this article can certainly be shortened, but I wanted you to really understand what I wanted the tool to do.
Don’t use it without using your brain. It can be such a powerful tool, but you should always review the content yourself and think about it before you use it. Right now it’s a bit limited in its ability to perform tasks. It can’t really crawl real-time information from sources across the web. However, it’s the first version of ChatGPT that’s publicly available. Imagine a 20th version.
You should try ChatGPT yourself and tell me about your experience.
