How To Use ChatGPT For Keyword Research (with Prompts You Can Try at Home!)

Finding the right keywords for your business is hugely important. 

Keywords are the bedrock of your SEO because if no one is searching for what you’re writing about, you won’t get any traffic from Google - no matter how amazing your content is.

So how do you find out what people are searching for in your niche? 

Yup, you guessed it, Keyword Research.

But keyword research isn’t the easiest of things to get started with. Knowing what to do first can be overwhelming, and the potential for falling down rabbit holes is high. It can also take A LONG time, especially when you’re just starting out.

So, today I want to show you how you can use ChatGPT for keyword research to speed up the process of getting your keyword research done, and you can avoid getting stuck in overwhelm or going around in ever more frustrating circles and not making much progress at all!

What is ChatGPT Anyway?

Before we get stuck into how to use ChatGPT for keyword research, I want to talk about what ChatGPT actually is.

ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot developed by OpenAI.

But what does that actually mean? What’s an AI-Powered chatbot?

AI-powered means the content generated by ChatGPT is the product of a whole host of different technologies, all working together to act and learn with human-like levels of intelligence.

And a chatbot is a computer programme that uses AI to communicate, so to say ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot is a bit like calling an ATM an ATM Machine!

But I’m being pedantic.

What does ChatGPT mean?

Well, the Chat comes from the fact that it’s designed to provide answers to you in a human-like way, and GPT means Generative Pre-trained Transformer. 

Ah, yes (I can see you nodding sagely), of course, a Generative Pre-trained Transformer.

WTF is a Generative Pre-trained Transformer?

Well, it’s a deep learning language model or a massively complex algorithm, and when a user “feeds” the model with her prompt, it generates a coherent, human-sounding response based on data from MASSIVE public datasets. 

And Pre-Trained means that ChatGPT was given a big data set, including books, websites, web texts and Wikipedia, and trained to solve problems using that data before it was let loose on everything it has access to know.

ChatGPT 4 is supposed to have over 1 trillion parameters!

Oh, and by the way, It’s trained on data up to September 2021. So anything that happened from 2022 onwards isn’t included.

And What About The Versions?

If we’re using the free version of ChatGPT, you’ve got access to version 3.5. If you are a ChatGPT Plus subscriber, you’ll have access to version 4. 

And the OpenAI thing? 

ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI. It’s an artificial intelligence research laboratory based in San Francisco. It’s part non-profit (OpenAI Incorporated) and part for-profit (OpenAI Limited Partnership)

But that’s enough for now. Let’s get stuck into finding out how to use ChatGPT for Keyword Research.

Creating Your Keyword Long List With ChatGPT

Hands down, THE most helpful thing ChatGPT can do for you is help you put together your keyword longlist. 

So I want to show you how to do that and don’t worry, I include the prompts I use so that you can do the same thing at home.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with kicking off your keyword research brainstorming the old-fashioned way by looking at the results on the first page of Google and looking for seed word ideas in the people also asked, or autosuggest or related searches sections, or even heading over to Answer the Public, but ChatGPT makes it SO much easier.

To start, you can give ChatGPT a seed term representing a broad topic your customer avatar is interested in. 

For example, if you have identified that your avatar is interested in balancing her hormones, you can provide ChatGPT with the seed term "balancing hormones." 

ChatGPT will then generate a list of related keywords and topics that are relevant to the broad topic of balancing hormones.

However, ChatGPT goes beyond just generating a list of keywords. It uses a language model that understands the context and search intent of the user. 

This means that it can generate long-tail keywords that are more specific to the needs and interests of your personas. 

Another benefit of using ChatGPT is its sibling model. This model understands the human search intent behind a query and generates related topics that may also interest your avatar.

These related topics can help you expand your keyword ideas and create content on various topics your personas may be interested in.

So with that theory in mind, let's take ChatGPT for a spin and see it in action.

5 Steps To Creating Your Keyword Long List Using ChatGPT

Step One: Identify Your Customer Avatar

Have your customer avatar at the ready. You might call it your target customer or your dream client.

You might have lots of different customer avatars, but keep one of them in mind for this exercise and repeat the process for each of them.

If you want some help working out who that might be, have a read of this blog I wrote you.

For this article, I will pretend I’m a health and wellness coach whose ideal client, or avatar, is a midlife woman interested in balancing her hormones. 

Step Two: Get Ideas from Seed Keywords

The most basic way to use ChatGPT for keyword research is to enter a seed keyword and see what other ideas it can come up with for you.

A seed keyword is just a broad term related to a subject you’re going to be creating content about.

For example, a seed keyword in the context of someone running a coaching business helping midlife women could be “balancing hormones” or “menopause.” 

If you enter a prompt like “What are the 10 most popular subtopics related to balancing hormones,” you’ll get a nice list of further seed keywords you can dig deeper into.

Step Three: Find out what questions your target audience is asking.

Head over to ChatGPT and start a new chat that asks it to give you the most commonly asked questions your avatar has on the subject you want to talk about.

“What are the 10 most popular questions midlife women who are asking about balancing their hormones”

Step Four: Start Peeling The Onion

If you want to dig deeper into creating your long list, the onion method is my favourite way of getting to grips with creating your keyword long list.

You use layers of prompts one after the other to move deeper into your understanding of the keywords your customer avatar is looking for on subjects specific to your business.

The key is starting with a broad idea or topic and gradually narrowing it down to more specific prompts to get the desired output. 

Let’s see the onion method in action using balancing hormones as our starting point.

The Onion Method Prompt One: What Are The 5 Most Popular Sub-topics Related To Balancing Hormones?

As balancing hormones is at the core of what our imaginary wellness coach does to help her midlife clients, we’ll start with that.

You can expand the prompt to include your avatar, but we’ll leave it simple today.

So, here’s what ChatGPT comes up with.

The Onion Method Prompt Two:  What Are The 5 Most Popular Sub-topics Related To (Sub-topic)?

Let’s dig a bit deeper into one of the sub-topics chat GPT has come up with.

I’m going to ask ChatGPT to look in more detail at the sub-topic of HRT to see what sub-topics I can dig into there too.

So, in the same chat, I’ll put in the prompt, “What Are The 5 Most Popular Sub-topics Related To Hormone Replacement Therapy?" 

Here’s a snapshot of what it came up with.

I’d then go back and repeat these steps for the sub-topics ChatGPT identified for me in Step 1 of The Onion Method. 

The Onion Method Prompt Three:  List Without Description The Top 10 Most Popular Keywords For The Topic Of Balancing Hormones.

List without description is just a way of telling ChatGPT to hold back any extra detail and just give you the keywords you’ve asked for without any explanation.

You can use this prompt to find the most popular keywords related to your core topic or any sub-topics you’ve discovered.

And you can play with the numbers too. Do you want 5, 10 or 20 of the most popular keywords, it’s up to you!

Today, I’ll stick with 10 keywords related to our core topic of balancing hormones and here’s what it comes up with.

Pretty cool, hey!

But now we’re going to take things a step further!

The Onion Method Prompt Four: List Without Description The Top 10 Most Popular Long-tail Keywords For The Topic Balancing Hormones

If you want the best chance of ranking your content well in Google, you should use long-tail keywords.

They’re much more specific and generally easier to rank for. By using these types of keywords, you’ll reach a much more targeted audience who is more likely to click on your content and visit your site. 

So, let’s try this prompt out.

List Without Description The Top 10 Most Popular Long-tail Keywords For The Topic  Balancing Your Hormones

Here’s what chatGPT comes up with. 

You can see the difference in granularity between the keywords this step gives you versus prompt 3, can’t you?

Both are great, but these are keywords you’re more likely to be able to rank for.

The Onion Method Prompt Five: List Without Description The Top Semantically Related Keywords And Entities For The Topic Balancing Hormones.

Now, this is where ChatGPT really comes into its own, and it starts “thinking” laterally. You can get ChatGPT to come up with related keywords that your target audience is searching for, but that aren’t quite directly related to your core search term.

So, let’s give it a go and see what it comes up with.

Interesting, isn’t it? 

So now you’ve got tonnes of keyword ideas you can develop.

Just go back into each response ChatGPT has delivered, copy and paste them into a spreadsheet, and get analysing.

Or, try this sneaky little mega prompt I am totally in love with (thanks to Search Engine Journal for this).

Step 5: Go For The Mega Prompt

So why don’t you have a go with this mega prompt that combines all the steps above and gives you an amazing list of keywords you can work with?

Here’s what I’m going to put into Chat GPT to show you how it works with our Balancing Hormones example.

I like to start a new chat for this prompt.

Here’s what you can put in…

Perform the following steps in a consecutive order Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4 and Step 5. 

Step 1 - Generate an answer for the 5 Most Popular Sub-topics Related To Balancing Hormones.

Step 2 - Generate 5 of the most popular sub-topics related to each answer.

Step 3 – Take those answers and list without description their top 10 most popular keywords. 

Step 4 – For the answers given of their most popular keywords, provide 10 long-tail keywords. 

Step 5 – For each long-tail keyword offered in the response, list without descriptions 10 top semantically related keywords and entities.

If it stops or it looks like it hasn’t finished the full prompt. Give it a gentle push and ask it to continue.

Step 5+ Create Yourself a Table

Now, this is an extra step I feel quite proud of thinking up!

Next, you can take that response and ask ChatGPT to turn it into a table for you if you enter this prompt.

“Using the response above, list all the keywords, as well as the long-tail keywords to target, and put them in a table using columns headed topic, keywords, long-tail keywords and semantically related keywords.”

Here’s a snapshot of what it comes up with using our Balancing Your Hormones example.

A quick word of warning with this step. I usually have to ask ChatGPT to regenerate the response a couple of times, as I’ve found its first attempts usually leave out quite a few of the words in the results.

Then, copy and paste the results into a spreadsheet, give the data a bit of tidying up and then you can get to work on your analysis!  

A Quick Word Before We Finish

I hope this article on how to use ChatGPT for Keyword Research has been useful.

I completely dismissed the idea that it could help with the Keyword Research process to start with, but now I see how quickly and easily it can help me kick off the keyword research process, I’m blown away.

BUT

ChatGPT cannot give you accurate volume or difficulty metrics on any of the keyword word ideas you’ve just found, so it really is limited to helping you - in a most incredible way - create your keyword-long list.

So, your job now is to head over to Ubersuggest, or one of the keyword tools I recommend in my blog on free keyword research tools and work out which of the keywords you’ve longlisted are going to work for your business by identifying which have decent volumes and low SEO difficulty.

Oh, here are those prompts again so you can use them in your business…

“What are the 10 most popular subtopics related to (your topic),” 

“What are the 10 most popular questions about (your topic).”

“What Are The 5 Most Popular Sub-topics Related To (your topic).”

“What Are The 5 Most Popular Sub-topics Related To (one of your sub-topics)?”

“List Without Description The Top 10 Most Popular Keywords For The Topic Of  (your topic).”

List Without Description The Top 10 Most Popular Long-tail Keywords For The Topic (your topic).”

List Without Description The Top Semantically Related Keywords And Entities For The Topic (your topic)

Or you can try out the mega prompt.

“Perform the following steps in a consecutive order Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4 and Step 5. 

Step 1 - Generate an answer for the 5 Most Popular Sub-topics Related To (your topic)

Step 2 - Generate 5 of the most popular sub-topics related to each answer.

Step 3 – Take those answers and list without description their top 10 most popular keywords. 

Step 4 – For the answers given of their most popular keywords, provide 10 long-tail keywords. 

Step 5 – For each long-tail keyword offered in the response, list without descriptions 10 top semantically related keywords and entities.”

And then, you can get chat GPT to turn all the information into a table for you.

“Using the response above, list out all the keywords, as well as the long-tail keywords to target, and put them in a table using columns headed topic, keywords, long-tail keywords and semantically related keywords.”

So, go and enjoy your adventures in ChatGPT and drop me a comment if you have any questions