How to Use Ahrefs and ChatGPT to Improve Your SEO

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General SEO

Portrait of Si Quan Ong

By Si Quan Ong

SEO & Marketing Educator at Ahrefs

Reviewed by

Joshua Hardwick

February 1, 20245 min read

21 Linking websitesArticle performance data from Ahrefs

Contents

  1. 1. Fill missing subtopics in existing content
  2. 2. Create a search-optimized outline
  3. 3. Identify search intent
  4. 4. Find seed keywords (and then find more keyword ideas)
  5. 5. Translate keywords
  6. 6. Fix missing titles and meta descriptions
  7. 7. See branded and unbranded keywords breakdown of any site

If you’re an Ahrefs user, you can combine our data with ChatGPT to improve your SEO.

Here are some of the best use cases.

Contents

  1. 1. Fill missing subtopics in existing content
  2. 2. Create a search-optimized outline
  3. 3. Identify search intent
  4. 4. Find seed keywords (and then find more keyword ideas)
  5. 5. Translate keywords
  6. 6. Fix missing titles and meta descriptions
  7. 7. See branded and unbranded keywords breakdown of any site

If a page is outranking you, it could be because it covers important subtopics searchers want to see (while you don't).

Here’s how to find these subtopics:

  1. Enter your target keyword into Keywords Explorer
  2. Scroll down to SERP Overview
  3. Check three relevant top-ranking pages
  4. Click Open in and choose Content gap

The Content gap report shows you the common keyword rankings among these top-ranking pages. Export all keywords from the report. Then, go to ChatGPT and write a prompt like:

I'm going to give you two things.

1. A blog post on the [topic]

2. A list of keywords that are related to the topic

I need you to tell me which keywords, entities, or subtopics I've missed in my content based on the keyword list.

ChatGPT will tell you what’s missing:

ChatGPT suggests missing subtopics my content could cover

You don’t have to update your content with every “gap” ChatGPT identified. It’s only a suggestion, so identify which ones are most appropriate for your target keyword and refresh your content accordingly.

Further reading


I Tried to Rank #1 on Google in 24 Hours to Prove a Point

Republishing Content: How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO


ChatGPT’s pretty good at creating blog post outlines. But you can make sure ChatGPT’s creating search-optimized outlines by providing it with important subtopics searchers want to see.

Do the same as above by exporting keywords from the Content gap report. Then enter this prompt into ChatGPT:

I'm going to give you a list of keywords related to [topic]. Create an outline for that topic based on these keywords.

ChatGPT's suggested outline, based on a list of keywords I provided

Voila! Your outline is ready.

Search intent is the why behind a query. If you want to stand the best chance of ranking, you’ll need to align your content with search intent.

Typically, search intent is identified by looking at the top-ranking pages for your target keyword.

You can ask ChatGPT to do this for you. Enter your keyword into Keywords Explorer and export the SERPs from SERP Overview.

Export for SERP Overview

Copy the top 10 ranking titles and give ChatGPT a prompt like:

I'm going to give you a list of titles. These are the top-ranking pages for the keyword [keyword]. Can you identify the search intent for me?

ChatGPT will analyze the search intent for you:

ChatGPT's analysis of search intent for the keyword “how to improve SEO”

Too troublesome? Good news: We’ve incorporated this use case directly into Keywords Explorer. Just click Identify intents, and we’ll do it for you:

The “Identify intents” feature in SERP Overview, in Keywords Explorer

Seed keywords are words or phrases you can use as the starting point in a keyword research process to unlock more keywords.

There are obvious seed keywords for every niche, like “coffee” if you own a coffee site. But you may miss out on terms like “moka pot” or “aeropress,“ especially if you’re unfamiliar with the space.

ChatGPT can help with that. Just ask it to give you terms.

Give me terms related to [topic]. Skip the descriptions.

List of terms related to coffee, suggested by ChatGPT

You can then use these as seed keywords in Keywords Explorer to find more keyword ideas.

Keyword ideas generated from a list of terms suggested by ChatGPT

TIP


We’ve integrated AI into Keywords Explorer to help you find seed keywords easily. You can skip the entire ChatGPT part now.

Ask AI to suggest seed keywords, a feature in Keywords Explorer

If you do SEO for multiple markets, you may want to target the same keywords in different languages. This is no biggie if you’re a polyglot, but some of us struggle with languages. Fret not: ChatGPT can help.

Take your list of keyword ideas and ask ChatGPT to translate them.

I have a list of search queries in English. If a native Spanish speaker searched for these queries on Google, what keywords would they use? Please suggest one to five of the most common alternative local expressions for each query that reflect their meaning, considering both colloquial and formal terms.

ChatGPT translates terms into another language for keyword research

Paste these terms into Keywords Explorer and set the country you’re researching to see if they have any search volume.

List of keywords and their search volume, based on what is translated by ChatGPT

A common issue affecting many websites is missing titles, H1 tags, or meta descriptions. You can find out if your site has these issues by running a crawl with Site Audit.

Title and meta description issues found by Site Audit

Click the number to see the affected pages. Then click Export to get all the URLs.

Export button in Site Audit

Take these URLs to ChatGPT and ask it to create meta descriptions for you.

I have a list of URLs that do not have meta descriptions. Create meta descriptions for them. Keep them under 160 characters and use an active voice.

Suggested meta descriptions by ChatGPT

Further reading


What Are Title Tags? How To Write Them for SEO

How to Write the Perfect Meta Description


Branded keywords contain your company, service, or product name. Knowing the breakdown between branded and unbranded keywords is useful because:

  • If you’re analyzing a competitor, you’ll want to know how much of their traffic is branded (which you can’t replicate).
  • Branded traffic may not be directly controlled by SEOs, so you may want to be clear about the attribution.
  • Bigger brands get more branded searches (duh!), so it could be a good proxy to see how well your brand is faring.

To see the breakdown, enter your site (or your competitor’s site) into Site Explorer, go to the Organic keywords report, and click Export.

Export button in Organic keywords

Upload the file to ChatGPT and give this prompt:

Label each keyword in the “Keyword” column as branded or unbranded. Then, create a pie chart that shows the sum of “Current organic traffic” for both categories. Include a legend on the pie chart.

Generated pie chart for branded vs unbranded keywords

Further reading


Branded Search vs. Non-Branded Search: What's the Difference?


Final thoughts

Ahrefs is not just an SEO tool—it’s a big data machine. So, it’s all about extracting and exporting the most relevant data from our toolset and then using ChatGPT to help with the analysis.

Did I miss out on any cool use cases? Let me know on X~~Twitter~~ or LinkedIn.

Portrait of Si Quan Ong

Post bySi Quan Ong

Si Quan is a content marketer at Ahrefs. He has been involved in digital and content marketing for the past 5 years. Before he joined Ahrefs, he was content marketer at ReferralCandy, a 7-figure ARR SaaS company.

Si Quan has spoken at some of the industry’s largest conferences in the Asia region, which includes TIECon and Digital Marketing Skill Share. He has also written for some of the industry’s most popular blogs like Sumo and SmartBlogger.

His earliest work was marketing a product on Kickstarter, which eventually raised $150,000, more than double the original funding goal. The product was also featured on prominent tech websites, including Engadget, CNET and Digital Trends.

Reviewed by

Portrait of Joshua Hardwick

Joshua Hardwick

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