So, you want to perform keyword research to create higher quality content for consumers in your area? I’m just so damn proud of you right now. Fire up your laptop.
Now, there are a lot of paid tools out there that will help you in your keyword research, and we use any number of them depending on our goals, but I’m going to show you a free one, and it’s something that we’ve actually talked about a couple weeks ago. Surprise…it’s Chat GPT.
That’s right. You don’t even need to use the paid for version. You can use the free one and still expect some good results. Now, let’s remember if we look at the bottom of ChatGPT’s homepage, we see the little warning note that says ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts. Luckily, we’re not asking about those things. We’re actually going to start by throwing them a slow pitch…and it starts with our prompt.
With generative tools like ChatGPT, the prompt is everything; so much so that, ‘Prompt Engineer’ is already a growing field of expertise within the marketing industry. That said, there’s more than one school of thought as to how a prompt should be structured to help ChatGPT deliver the best results, the first time around – and that process will inevitably evolve over time but – in this case- we’re putting on our ‘Volkswagen Dealership Marketing Director’ hat and keeping it simple. All we want is for ChatGPT to ‘list ten keywords related to the Volkswagen Tiguan for use in SEO’.
Now, we want to specify “for use in SEO” because it’s an important piece of context, when popular keywords might mean a different thing, depending on the capacity in which it’s being used. Then, we hit “go” and wait.
The response consists of ten short tail keywords that include: ‘Volkswagen Tiguan’ ‘Tiguan SUV’, to start. Now, those are pretty basic, and a bit too obvious, so we’ll toss them out. However, ‘Tiguan Features’, ‘Tiguan Price’, ‘Tiguan Specifications, ‘Tiguan Interior’, ‘Tiguan Exterior’, Tiguan Review’? These provide a far better starting point but remember, ChatGPT is designed to offer an iterative process so we’re going to ask it to ‘list ten longtail keywords related to the Volkswagen Tiguan for use in SEO’.
Now here, we’ve got something real to chew on.
- ‘Best Compact SUV for family trips’. If that’s not a perfect headline for a piece of content you’d want to optimize, I don’t know what is.
- ‘Volkswagen Tiguan versus Honda CRV, a detailed comparison’. That’s going to be a really useful piece of content for potential buyers that are looking to compare the two models.
- ‘Top safety features in the Volkswagen Tiguan’. Another good one, and the list goes on, giving us more ideas to start working with, and I kinda like them all.
While it goes beyond keyword research, you can even ask ChatGPT to ‘give [you] an outline for what that piece of content might look like’. Informed by the structure of the countless pieces of content available to it, it may provide you with a great place to start, especially considering that it’s a free tool. Now, if you’re looking for information like keyword difficulty, traffic, you’re going to need to use a paid tool, like SEMrush, MOZ, or Mangools. There are a number of them out there, but the three that I’ve listed are among the best.