For the last several years, American businesses have dealt with a lot of turmoil. From lockdowns and reopening to labor shortages and job hopping, many companies must do more with less. In this context, many business owners have started to consider using AI content generation for their marketing departments.
Right now, one of the most popular options is ChatGPT. It’s well-known for ease of use, but there’re some unrealistic expectations about the results that this technology can deliver on its own. This is especially true if you’re using ChatGPT for SEO. Most SEO content requires specialized work from humans to make it coherent and competitive. This has led to hybrid services like SEOArmy’s AI content generation with human editing service, in which AI is used as an assistive tool, with human experts closely overseeing the work, to ensure the best of both worlds.
To understand why we say this, let’s look at how ChatGPT works and how SEOArmy’s service compares.
How ChatGPT works
Before we dive into the tool comparison, you need to know how the program works. Artificial intelligence generally takes inputs and, based on a complex set of data, algorithms, and neural networks, generates an output. ChatGPT works on two datasets: GPT-3.5, and GPT-4. The GPT sets were designed for AI content generation, where machines write content in response to inputs.
The name ChatGPT also indicates the second aspect of how this powerful program works: it’s a chatbot. Specifically, the ChatGPT chatbot interacts with you like an instant messaging app, which means it can ask you follow-up questions. Once you send your prompt, it’ll generate content for you.
However, ChatGPT isn’t perfect and users must know how to approach whatever’s written to get quality results. The reason is that ChatGPT isn’t human, so it can’t understand context, have first-hand experiences, or “guess” what you’re trying to say and then produce what you need. On the other hand, if you set the right kind of prompt, then you’ll get better results, but you’ll still need a lot of human intervention to make the content live up to its full potential.
Advantages and disadvantages of using ChatGPT for SEO
Even though ChatGPT is a well-promoted tool, it has both advantages and disadvantages when used for AI content generation. Let’s look at a few of them.
Advantage: It can use keywords
ChatGPT does know about keywords. So, using ChatGPT for SEO won’t involve inserting your single keyword later. Also, the keyword itself will help ChatGPT give you a better answer than it would if given a broad topic.
Advantage: You can request a writing style
Most people won’t think of this technique right away, but ChatGPT can emulate a writing style. For instance, you can ask the program to copy Percy Shelley’s poetry style or emulate Harry Potter. Leveraging this technique while using ChatGPT for SEO helps create something that’s less obviously AI-generated.
Disadvantage: It can’t reach human complexity
Because ChatGPT isn’t human, it can’t anticipate what you need, analyze context, have first hand-experiences, or deliver the intricacies and nuances that humans can. Despite recent advances in technology, we don’t yet have machines that can take those initiatives. Machines, including AI content generation apps, still don’t have original ideas or a grasp of the subtleties behind the language. All of this can affect your SEO performance because Google’s algorithms are designed to give the best rankings to unique, nuanced, helpful content.
Disadvantage: It can generate keyword stuffing
Even though ChatGPT can use keywords, it often uses them too much or in ways that feel unnatural for a human audience. This leads to keyword stuffing and strange passages that not only affect the readability of your content but may also get your website penalized.
Disadvantage: You must watch out for inaccuracies
Because ChatGPT can “produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts” as their own disclaimer states. This is so common, in fact, that college professors are learning to use accuracy to catch cheats. One professor in Canada even published in a journal about how he caught a cheater through faulty citations.
Naturally, fact-checking is an important job for human editors, even if people wrote the content. However, it’s even more critical with AI content generation because machines don’t have critical thinking skills that would normally contrast and eliminate bad information, which can definitely be detrimental to your SEO.
There’s a better way to leverage AI
SEOArmy’s AI content generation with human editing is a better way to leverage modern technology. It saves you time and money because you won’t need to research and write every word. Instead, our expert editors will check everything and make the necessary changes to ensure the best possible content. We deliver ready-to-publish SEO content on time, every time.
When delivered, our content will feature the following:
- Headings, including H2, H3, and for longer articles, H4. This creates white space and keeps your content organized.
- Featured images and takeaway boxes that indicate what your topic is about and deliver a quick summary.
- Social sharing links that encourage readers to pass your article on to others.
- SEO aids. These include FAQs that help Google send your article to the right people, internal and external links, and carefully targeted keywords.
- The title, meta description, and address slug are all optimized for SEO.
- Content quality checks, including AI detection and a plagiarism checker. These ensure that your final product isn’t too much like someone else’s, which is more likely with raw AI content generation.
Best of all, we can turn these articles around quickly. Our team of freelance editors is large enough that many hands make light work. You can even ask us to post the content for a small upcharge.
Final thoughts
Using ChatGPT for SEO sounds intriguing to many. However, this particular AI content generation tool isn’t ready for the type of content that ranks at the top of Google. At least, not without a lot of human help and content editing. Fortunately, SEOArmy’s hybrid service combines the best of both worlds with AI-based rough draft creation and a human expert finish. At the same time, our service is cheaper than paying someone to write content completely from scratch.
Contact us today for a free consultation.