Don’t Rely on ChatGPT for Your Website Content – Here’s Why

by Leslie Farin

ChatGPT is the shiniest, newest tool everyone is talking about. As the publisher of an online magazine, I had high hopes that it would create interesting content quickly and help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Ultimately, I found ChatGPT to be somewhat of a disappointment.

What is ChatGPT?

Most people know about ChatGPT these days, but those who haven’t yet spent time playing with this new AI model may not know how it works. Chat GPT is a language model developed by OpenAI that is part of the broader Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) series of models. The chatbot understands and generates conversational text based on training with massive amounts of data. As a result, ChatGPT has a general intelligence making it capable of amazing feats. For example, it can carry on a human-like conversation, responding to questions and prompts. It can write poetry, recipes, song lyrics, emails, social media posts, and more. I even used it once to pull together a travel itinerary for my family, which it did quite well. However, it’s not perfect, and understanding the limitations before using it for your content marketing is essential.

Why ChatGPT Requires a Heavy Human Touch

I receive queries almost daily from people who want to contribute articles to 50PlusToday. While I appreciate the interest and enjoy helping small businesses gain exposure with published articles, I am uncomfortable with those I receive that appear to have been copied and pasted directly from ChatGPT. While artificial Intelligence (AI) is powerful and versatile, it simply does not work as a replacement for website content. A human is absolutely necessary to oversee the final product.  Based on my experience, here are my three top reasons you don’t want to rely solely on ChatGPT for content.

No personality

Writing a creative and unique article on a trending topic is a time-consuming endeavor, so I understand why people look for shortcuts. However, the information provided by ChatGPT all tends to sound the same after a while. The generated responses lack emotion, empathy, and unique experiences. In other words, they have no personality. All too often, the information provided by ChatGPT is extremely generic, which means it can easily be found online elsewhere. If you hope to attract readers to your website with exceptional content, you don’t want to use ChatGPT to fully create your content.

Out of date

Did you know ChatGPT is generally about two years behind? Information from a couple of years ago doesn’t work well if you want to provide “cutting-edge” information as I do. I want people to visit my website again and again because the content provided is awesome and unique. Keep in mind that ChatGPT’s knowledge is only as recent as its last update. It does not know about current events, trends, or developments beyond its last training cut-off.

Untrue

I noticed recently that the information ChatGPT gave me in response to a query was alarmingly convincing with lots of misinformation. The unfortunate truth is that the insights generated by this tool are often inaccurate or misleading. The reason for the inaccuracies often stems from dated content, or it’s possible the AI model encountered incomplete or biased data during training. It’s also important to remember that AI models might struggle with understanding nuanced or complex queries, leading to responses that don’t align with what you’re looking for. Whatever the reason, you don’t want to share information on your website that is not accurate.

How AI Tools Like ChatGPT Can Be Helpful for Your Website Content

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t use tools like ChatGPT at all. AI can be helpful for some of the more tedious work of content marketing. For example, it can provide ideas for blog posts based on a prompt. Though many of the ideas likely won’t be especially exciting or unique, they can provide a place to start brainstorming. And by all means, once you decide on your topic, let ChatGPT write the first draft for you. Make sure you review it carefully, check the facts, and rewrite it in your own words so it does not sound canned. ChatGPT can also generate post titles and headlines for you. You still need to pick and choose carefully, but it’s a great place to begin if you are stuck. Sometimes I use it to generate meta descriptions too, which can be helpful. My favorite way to use ChatGPT is to ask frequently asked questions (FAQs) on a specific topic to provide insight into the different directions I might take the content.

Is ChatGPT Good for SEO?

Good question. The answer to “Is ChatGPT good for SEO” is no, though many assume it can help with online rankings. Unfortunately, using ChatGPT can lead to ineffective content strategies and low-quality content, ultimately doing more harm than good. Here’s why.

ChatGPT insights are often inaccurate or incomplete.

The insights from ChatGPT do not consider your target audience or the context of your site into account when responding, so you may end up with content that doesn’t resonate with your readers. In addition, the responses are often inaccurate, leading to poor keyword choices and ineffective content strategies. You need current information when researching keywords and phrases.

ChatGPT doesn’t contextualize content.

Contextual content is marketing content that adapts to the current location, channel, and needs of the audience. It provides the information people are looking for right at that moment, even if they don’t realize they need it, Contextual content, key for marketers these days, differs from traditional marketing where you bombard people broadly with brand recognition.

Both content and context are essential for SEO success these days. Content is information, in any form, and context provides meaning and relevance to the content that leads to a connection to the needs of your specific audience. As ChatGPT isn’t able to contextualize content when offering insights about keywords and post topics, you risk producing low-quality content that doesn’t help your website engage readers effectively or rank higher in the search engines. Gone are the days where you can simply add content to your website to attract readers; you need to spend time first researching what readers want and need if you want people to find your post in a search.

Data and keywords are not current on ChatGPT.

Search engine rankings change frequently. It’s hard to keep up, but it’s very important to do so. Various factors influence the rankings such as algorithm updates, user engagement, and backlink profile. When doing keyword research especially, you need up-to-date information. With ChatGPT generally working with metrics measured two years ago, the data is useless. While ChatGPT is fun to play around with, it’s not a good AI tool for tasks that rely on accurate and timely information.

ChatGPT content may be poorly written.

The Google algorithm does not like poor grammar or misspelled words. More often than not, the search engine will pass your website by even if using keywords effectively.

The free version of Grammarly is a great place to start to ensure your website copy meets high standards for grammar accuracy and readability levels and ranks higher for SEO. It uses advanced algorithms powered by natural language processing technology so even subtle errors don’t slip by unnoticed.

So, Should You Use ChatGPT for Content Creation?

Like any tool, ChatGPT can play a role in your content creation as long as you use it as an assistant and not as a replacement for human writers. It can be your best friend when staring at a blank page and a great way to brainstorm ideas when your mind is empty.

Keep in mind that while AI models like ChatGPT can offer valuable assistance, it’s a good idea to combine their capabilities with human oversight and intervention. In this way, you can ensure accurate, personalized, and contextually appropriate interactions on your website to improve the user experience and trust. Alone, ChatGPT can’t write insightful and unique posts in their entirety. Perhaps in five or ten years, artificial intelligence may be able to do that, but we are not there yet.