7 Efficient Ways to use ChatGPT for Keyword Research

As SEOs and content strategists, it is crucial to make a well-packed content brief with all the potential keywords that the writer must target. 

This is especially true if you work for a large organization where things move slowly. You never know when you will get the writer’s bandwidth again to revamp the content which makes it essential to come up with a complete gap-free brief in the first shot — One that gives the article the best chance to rank on the SERPs.

But what is a gap-free brief? Is it even possible to come up with one? Probably not, but you can create an almost perfect brief by sourcing the power of ChatGPT for keyword research. With this viral tool, you can not just come up with keywords but also put them on the most relevant pages, thus preventing the ranking of incorrect URLs for important keywords.

You can go as error-free as humanly possible by using ChatGPT while coming up with keywords and topic ideas. You can also speed up your workflow.

It’s not to say that other tools including the most important one – your judgment take lower precedence. In fact, ChatGPT is just a tool, not the brains behind the brief.

Here are the 7 ways to use ChatGPT for keyword research:

1. Coming up with keywords for different stages of the funnel

One of the most straightforward ways of using ChatGPT for keyword research is by commanding it to drop 20 topics for a keyword. 

You will get a decent topic list but in my experience, it’s too generic. You get the most obvious suggestions and even the long-tail keyword in the list would be too competitive. Plus, every competitor knows this prompt so you have no competitive advantage. Here’s the prompt in case you want to use it anyway but it’s best left ignored.

And here’s an example. This is what ChatGPT shows when you use the prompt for the keyword – lead generation campaign. 

Not too shabby, but a similar list is accessible to all your competitors. Plus, most of these super long-tail keywords are either too competitive or have no search volume.

So what to do instead?

Get more specific with your prompts. This forces ChatGPT to come up with more relevant topic ideas than what you see above. One way to do that is by asking ChatGPT to come up with keywords split across the TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU stages of the funnel.

You can use this prompt for that:

Here’s what ChatGPT returns for this prompt.

It’s hard to define how ChatGPT categorized the topics and that’s the biggest limitation of this prompt. Let’s make it better by giving it more direction. 

In our definition, TOFU content is any topic that targets the ‘What is’ category of search queries. MOFU answers the ‘How to’, and BOFU topics have the word ‘software, system, platform, or tool’ as a part of the phrase. 

You can use any qualification criteria you like, what we will add to the prompt is the bare minimum that you must include though.

Here’s the updated prompt:

And here’s the response:

It’s much better than what we had with the previous prompt but there’s still a lot left to be desired. For example, the benefits modifier sounds more TOFU than BOFU. I would ideally write another prompt to iron that out and include only high intent keywords. But I hope it gives an idea of how to modify the prompt to make the output more relevant.

2. Writing regex for Google search console

We talked about some methods of finding new topics to cover but one of the most powerful SEO strategies that get you quicker results is revamping old content. To update your existing blog post, you need to identify keywords that either rank well but return a lower click-through rate, or rank low but have a high search volume.

You can find those keywords in Google Search Console. In fact, that tool can even help you find new topic ideas. For example, if you want to create more MOFU content or just discover ‘how to’ and ‘what is’ category of keywords that have the potential to drive relevant traffic, you can use the Regex function in the search console.

Suppose, you want to see only those keywords that have the words – What, How, Where, Why, Why, Who, Which, etc. I can ask ChatGPT to give me a Regex function for Google Search Console that will display only those relevant keywords.

Use this prompt:

Here is what ChatGPT gives as output.

You don’t just get the formula but also how and where to apply it in Google Search Console.

3. Copying content ideas from the competitor sitemaps

Want to steal competitors’ topic ideas but do not have a budget for paid tools? No worries, the free version of ChatGPT can help. All your competitors will have a public sitemap URL — without one, they would find it difficult to get indexed on Google.

Your competitor’s sitemap URL will have this format – 

https://competitor_domain_name.domain_extension/sitemap_index.xml

For example, if Forbes were your competitor, https://www.forbes.com/sitemap_index.xml is where you can find their sitemap.

You can find the URLs to all their indexed pages in the sitemap. Copy them all because ChatGPT is going to filter out all their primary keywords. 

Let’s jump to ChatGPT. There, we will ask the tool to keep the part of the URL that appears between the last two forward-slashes and return the phrases without the hyphens.

Here is a sample of blog post URLs from a random website’s sitemap:

Now you have the list of topics that your competitors covered. Yes, we do rely on them using the right URL slug, but this strategy works more often than not.

Here is the prompt we used:

4. Exploring the pillar-cluster structure

The pillar-cluster structure, also known as the hub and spoke model is instrumental in building topical authority. If you want to rank for highly competitive keywords, you must create a high volume of quality content and add internal links among them.

While asking ChatGPT to come up with topics, you can also ask it to suggest the internal linking structure.

The below prompt…

Generated this response:

After listing out topics from #1 to #30, ChaatGPT proceeds to show which buckets of topics can logically link to each other.

Again, you can’t rely on ChatGPT solely for this, you need to intervene and decide what structure works the best for your internal links, but this prompt can come in handy.

5. Trying keyword combinations

ChatGPT can easily mix and match a disparate set of keywords to come up with a combination. This is particularly useful when you are trying to target competitor keywords. Suppose you have five competitors and you want to create a list of comparison pages — competitor 1 vs competitor 2. Without ChatGPT, you will need to type out all 10 combinations.

You can ask ChatGPT to come up with all the combinations, each a potential primary keyword. For example, if Mailchimp’s marketing team wants to target Sendinblue, Moosend, Convertkit, HubSpot, or Mailerlite, here’s the prompt they may want to use:

And here’s the sample of the response that ChatGPT may generate.

They can plug each of these keywords into their favorite SEO tool to check the search volume and target those that make sense. 

On a side note, you can also consider targeting two competitors while subtly pitching in your value proposition. For example, Convertkit vs Moosend keyword does not mention Mailchimp but Mailchimp can target this keyword and highlight where both the competitors lack and how they can fit in.

6. Asking ChatGPT for keyword gaps in completed drafts

ChatGPT is a cool tool that can read the text and understand context just like a human would. It does a great job with roleplay as well. You can ask ChatGPT to play the role of your target audience and suggest if a piece of text can be improved.

To cite an example, we asked ChatGPT to suggest edits for our guide to increasing brand search volume. We specified what role it must play before suggesting improvements. Here’s the prompt:

And here’s what ChatGPT suggested:

There were some (not all) solid tips that we did cover in our guide. Again, it’s important to remember that ChatGPT is just a tool, more of a writing buddy, not the decision maker. That’s you — you own the piece and call the shots. ChatGPT can merely make suggestions and obviate the need to find words.

You can also ask ChatGPT more specific questions like – Suggest some FAQs or Is the copy too salesy. You will get a decent response with some suggestions. We can’t cover all potential prompts because what you will encounter is situational, so you need to modify the prompts and even come up with some new ones on the go.

Things to consider while using ChatGPT for Keyword Research

1. Being very specific with the prompts

We are probably sounding like a broken record by now but it is crucial that you are direct and descriptive with your prompts. Remember, ChatGPT is a phenomenal text generator but it does not have enough context on the content that makes you unique.

Give it the right context, tell it how to approach the prompt, ask it to assume a role, and keep modifying your prompts if you don’t get results in the first few attempts.

2. Patience is the key

ChatGPT will have a different answer for the same prompt on different days. That’s just how it works. Some days you will find that it obeys your prompts and gives you exactly what you need, in other instances, it will fail to get context for at least the first 6-7 attempts. Don’t get discouraged, keep at it.