I Published a ChatGPT Article On My Website — Here’s What Happened

You risk getting a penalty for doing this.

The times when ChatGPT was mentioned all over the web have already passed. I still stumble upon posts about ChatGPT, but less frequently. Perhaps, people have already played enough with it.

Nevertheless, I’ve decided to add my five cents and write a story about ChatGPT. However, this story is different.

I am not that interested in what ChatGPT can do.

As an SEO expert, I am more curious about the impact of ChatGPT on SEO.

Why?

Because we won’t get rid of AI.

Every new technology changes people’s lives, and it’s worth being ready for it.

People gossip that content marketing is dead, AI-generated content will take over, and content writers will lose their jobs. It sounds scary at first glance. However, these inner feelings are not backed up by facts.

To conclude that AI-generated content will take over the Internet, you should know its impact on SEO.

No one has conducted an extensive study on this topic yet.

We only know that Google is against using AI tools to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results.

Perhaps, that’s 99% of cases why website owners use ChatGPT and similar tools nowadays!

As an SEO expert, I am convinced ChatGPT can speed up the work if used correctly. I even published an article on how to use ChatGPT for SEO effectively. But relying on ChatGPT for optimized content writing is a big mistake!

Content writers won’t suffer. They can now accelerate their content writing process.

However, website owners will be left puzzled why their websites lose positions even though they build links and publish new content regularly.

I’ve been in the shoes of both because I create optimized content for my website and my clients.

I’ve recently done a small experiment to analyze how ChatGPT content will perform on a healthy website and whether its impact on SEO will be positive.

If you regularly publish AI-generated content on your website or want to start doing it, you better read this story.

My experiment with ChatGPT content in a nutshell

Since the launch of ChatGPT, I have been wondering if it can produce content capable of ranking high on Google. I agree its content is not as good as that written by humans. However, so much garbage ranks well on Google, so why can’t ChatGPT’s content do it?

I ran an experiment to analyze the impact of ChatGPT’s content on organic search results.

Here is what I’ve done.

I picked a low-competition keyword that is easy to target even for a new website with a weak domain rating — “SEO for contractors.”

According to Ahrefs, this keyword has 4/100 keyword difficulty. If I were to write an article on this topic, it would have ranked in the top 10. I even wrote an ebook on how I create content that hits the Google front page.

Can ChatGPT do the same?

Let’s see.

I asked ChatGPT-3 to do the following:

• Generate related keywords.
• Create an outline for the article.
• Adjust the outline based on my requirements.
• Create an article with 2,500 words on the given topic.
• Optimize the article for the target keyword.
• Create a meta title and description.
• Adjust the article to my writing style.

Mimicking someone’s writing style was the most surprising discovery about ChatGPT.

Did you know it can adjust the tone of voice and the writing style based on the provided writing samples?

The quality is tolerable, but I believe it will improve in the future.

It’s exciting but damn scary!

Here are some observations and issues I’ve experienced along the way. If you want to use ChatGPT for SEO writing, this information will be helpful for you.

• ChatGPT could only generate 600 words at a time, even though I asked for a 2,500 words article.
• ChatGPT’s article summarizes the information available on the Internet.
• ChatGPT does not include sources in the article unless you specifically ask to do it.
• ChatGPT can analyze someone’s writing style. However, I doubt it can fully copy it yet.
• ChatGPT can assist you with SEO optimization, but it won’t do the job instead of you.

As a result, I only got 1,200 words article from ChatGPT even though I requested 2,500 words several times.

I published an article on my website on 9th March 2023. It’s available under this link.

Now comes the most exciting part.

How ChatGPT content performs in organic search results

When I looked at ChatGPT’s article, I thought, “This content does not seem to have enough value and insights to read.”

Considering this, I thought my article wouldn’t perform well in organic search results. I thought it would get a few impressions and eventually die.

Here is the data from Google Search Console about the “SEO for contractors” article performance. The report shows the article’s performance between 9th March and 13th April 2023.

My observations:

• The article ranks for the target keywords.
• The article ranks 45th in the USA for the keyword “SEO for contractors.”
• Impressions are not growing. The tendency is negative.

I believe impressions will eventually drop to 0. That’s how AI content performs in organic search results today.

In conclusion

I know what you think about it.

My experiment is not perfect.

Data from the performance of one article is not a reliable source of information.

I agree with you. However, that’s how AI content performs on a healthy website which Google did not penalize for misbehavior yet.

Imagine what would happen to a website that consistently posts AI content.

If you are a solid business with an established brand, publishing AI content is a quick way to lose the trust of your audience. Because AI content has literally zero value for people. It does not add anything new to the table. Instead, it curates available information, creating something “original” on a given topic.

Why should I waste my time reading your article if you did not even dare to write it?

If you want to know my opinion, AI tools won’t replace humans in SEO and content creation soon. These tools are incapable of creating content worth reading yet!

So, rest assured. Your job won’t disappear yet.

However, we don’t know how long “yet” will last.

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