How to use ChatGPT for technical SEO

In this article, we will explain how ChatGPT can assist with technical SEO tasks.

ChatGPT grew in popularity for assisting with SEO tasks, take a look at the trend for the term “chagpt for seo”.

What is technical SEO

Technical SEO involves improving the technical aspects of a website for better search engine visibility and user experience.

Some of the key technical elements that need to be checked include website structure, website speed and performance, website security, mobile-friendliness, URL structure, sitemaps, robots.txt files, canonicalization, hreflang tags, structured data, and schema markup.

Using ChatGPT for technical SEO

Most of these exercises we did here are oriented toward beginner SEOs but also can be beneficial to seasoned SEOs.

1. Structured Data

Structured data is a type of code that helps search engines better understand the content of your website. ChatGPT can help you implement structured data on your website to improve your website's visibility on search engines.

• Help you identify the structured data types that would be useful for your website.

• Assist you in implementing structured data on your website.

• Provide recommendations for optimizing your website's structured data for better performance.

Generating schema markup with ChatGPT

This is one of our favorite use cases for ChatGPT in SEO, generating schema markup.

One of the more practical uses of ChatGPT for structured data is generating the markup. Here’s an example for generating FAQs and structured data for our target keyword:

First we’re going to generate the frequently asked questions and their answers:

Once ChatGPT has finished generating a response, filter out the questions, modify what you need to modify, select them all and copy them.

Then we’re going to generate the JSON schema markup by asking ChatGPT and pasting all the questions and answers we kept from the previous step, as such:

Once you have the mark-up, you need to test it. Copy the generated markup and go to your favorite testing tool to check if it works. We use both Google’s Rich Results Test and Schema.org’s schema markup validator:

You can also: 

• Ask which type of schema markup is most appropriate for your page.

• Learn more about them in general.

• Learn how you can identify schema markup on a page.

2. Robots.txt

The robots.txt file is a file that tells search engines which pages of your website they can and cannot crawl. ChatGPT can help you optimize your robots.txt file to improve your website's visibility on search engines.

• Analyze your website's current robots.txt file and identify any issues or areas for improvement.

• Help you understand the best practices for creating a robots.txt file.

• Provide recommendations for optimizing your website's robots.txt file for better performance.

We asked ChatGPT to create Robots.txt directives

In the prompt, we asked ChatGPT to write the robots.txt to disallow the Google Mobile bot from crawling the /blog folder. Here are the results:

Be descriptive and accurate in describing what directives you want to include in the robots.txt file and always test before you implement. Find using your favorite search engine a “robots.txt test” tool and you should find some to help you do that.

3. XML Sitemaps

XML sitemaps help search engines to find all the pages on your website. ChatGPT can assist you in creating and optimizing your XML sitemaps to ensure that search engines can quickly and efficiently discover your website's content.

• Help you create an XML sitemap that includes all the essential pages on your website.

• Determine if there are any issues with your XML sitemap and make necessary recommendations.

• Understand the best practices for submitting your sitemap to search engines like Google.

We analyzed Google’s sitemaps with ChatGPT, here’s how you can do it:

1. In your browser address bar type: google.com/sitemap.xml

2. Copy the URL of any sitemap listed

3. Open the sitemap in the browser

4. Copy all the URLs in the window

5. Ask ChatGPT to analyze the sitemap and paste the URLs you copied previously

4. Localization and hreflang tags

Hreflang is a code that tells search engines which language and regional versions of your website to show to users. ChatGPT can help you implement hreflang on your website to improve its visibility on search engines.

• Help you identify the language and regional versions of your website that need hreflang tags.

• Provide and assist you in implementing hreflang tags on your website.

• Provide recommendations for optimizing your website's hreflang tags for better performance.

Creating hreflang tags with ChatGPT

Here's an example of how ChatGPT can help you write hreflang tags so you can implement them on your website if you're targeting multiple audiences in different regions and with multiple languages.

5. Check analytics and other tags

Are you connecting analytics software like Google Analytics to your website? ChatGPT can provide guidance on how to check if analytics and other third-party app tags are properly implemented through various methods: 

• Use tag management tools: Tag management tools such as Google Tag Manager can help you manage and test the implementation of third-party tags on your website. These tools allow you to add, remove, and update tags without having to edit the website's code.

• Check the source code: You can check the website's source code to see if the analytics tracking code and third-party tags are implemented correctly. Look for the specific code snippets associated with the tags and ensure that they are placed in the correct location on the webpage.

• Use browser plugins: Browser plugins such as Google Tag Assistant can help you identify which tags are implemented on a webpage and whether they are firing correctly. These plugins can also detect issues with tags such as duplicate firing or missing tags.

• Check analytics reports: Finally, you can check your analytics reports to see if data is being properly tracked and recorded. Look for any discrepancies or missing data that may indicate issues with the implementation of tags.

We recently implemented the Pinterest tag on our website so people can pin images directly from our pages.

We checked the implementation of our Google Analytics and Pinterest tags with ChatGPT

First go to the webpage source code and copy the section where your tags are

Then, in ChatGPT we asked it to check the code for correct implementation

6. 404 Pages

404 pages are error pages that are displayed when a user requests a webpage that cannot be found on a website. These pages can harm a website's SEO performance by causing crawl errors and frustrating users, but they can also be an opportunity to engage users and redirect them to other pages on the website. It's important to monitor and fix 404 errors to ensure a positive user experience and maintain a website's SEO performance.

• Help you create custom 404 pages that provide users with useful information.

• Provide recommendations for optimizing your website's 404 pages for better user experience

We asked ChatGPT to give us recommendations on how to improve our 404 pages

It came up with a few suggestions that we thought were practical like adding a search bar and linking to other pages. It also provided recommendations to help reduce the number of 404 pages on your website.

7. 301 Redirects

301 redirects are a way to redirect users and search engines from one URL to another. ChatGPT can help you implement 301 redirects to ensure that users and search engines can access the correct page on your website.

• Help you identify pages that need 301 redirects.

• Assist you in implementing 301 redirects on your website.

• Provide recommendations for optimizing your website's 301 redirects for better performance.

We asked ChatGPT to help us identify pages that need 301 redirects

8. Site Architecture

Site architecture refers to the structure of a website and how its pages are organized. ChatGPT can help you optimize your website's architecture to improve its visibility on search engines.

• Help you understand the best practices for organizing your website's pages.

• Help analyze your website's current architecture and identify any issues or areas for improvement.

• Provide recommendations for optimizing your website's architecture for better performance.

How ChatGPT can help you with your website architecture

We asked ChatGPT how we can analyze a website architecture, here are some recommendations

9. Page Speed / Performance

• Help you understand the best practices for improving your website's page speed and performance.

• Help analyze your website's current page speed and performance and identify any issues or areas for improvement.

• Provide recommendations for optimizing your website's page speed and performance for better ranking.

10. Getting Information and explanations for difficult concepts

ChatGPT is an excellent resource for getting information and explanations about complex concepts related to technical SEO and most topics in general. As a language model, it can help you understand complex technical SEO concepts in a way that is easy to understand.

• Help you understand technical SEO terms and concepts.

• Provide explanations for complex technical SEO topics.

• Answer any questions you may have about technical SEO.

• Help you create scripts using programming languages to automate some processes.

A few things to remember: 

1. ChatGPT is optimized for dialogue

One of the things this allows you to do, is refine your prompts according to the answers you get and be able to get closer or achieve your objective.

2. Keep digging

Question what ChatGPT tells, ask for further clarification, ask it to be concise, and tell it what role to play. If it gives you recommendations about something, ask about each of the recommendations.

3. Double check

Always double and triple check the answers you get from ChatGPT doing quick research on the web.

In conclusion

ChatGPT can help you with various technical SEO tasks, from crawling and indexing to optimizing your website's page speed and performance to generating structured data.

ChatGPT is a language model designed to generate responses to text inputs in a conversational style. It has been trained on a large dataset of human language, including written and spoken language, to learn to generate natural and coherent responses to text inputs. However, despite its advanced capabilities, ChatGPT is not human and does not have human-level understanding, reasoning, or emotions.

Therefore, when interacting with ChatGPT, it's important to remember that it is an AI language model, not a real person, and its responses are generated based on statistical patterns in the input data. This means that ChatGPT's responses may not always be accurate, relevant, or appropriate, and it may not be able to understand or respond to certain types of inputs.