Key Takeaways About Using ChatGPT and Claude for SEO Writing
- Don’t assume AI-generated SEO advice is accurate or right for your situation. ChatGPT and Claude can sound confident even when their recommendations are too general, outdated, or simply not a good fit.
- Use AI to support your SEO writing—not to drive the strategy. AI can help brainstorm keyphrase ideas, develop personas, and review content against your target audience.
- Treat AI-generated keyphrases and content recommendations as a starting point. They still need research and an experienced human eye.
- Good SEO writing requires strategic judgment. Knowing what to target, what your audience needs, and whether the content can position in Google and AI search takes more than a well-written prompt.
- AI doesn’t suddenly become an SEO expert because you asked it an SEO question. Use it as a tool, not as your SEO strategist.
Friends don’t let friends use ChatGPT or Claude for general SEO writing advice.
Why?
Because AI can send you down SEO rabbit holes that consume hours of your time without moving the visibility needle.
Can ChatGPT and Claude do amazing things? Absolutely.
But there’s a big difference between using AI as an SEO writing tool and expecting AI to be your SEO expert.
That’s where I see people get into trouble.
Is AI Good for SEO Content Writing?
Whether I’m chatting with business owners at Lake Oswego networking meetings or talking with people on LinkedIn, I keep hearing versions of the same question:
“Wouldn’t ChatGPT already know how to do SEO?”
I understand why people think that.
ChatGPT and Claude have been trained on an enormous amount of information. Ask them an SEO question, and they’ll happily give you keyphrases, content recommendations, article outlines, subheadings, and even a completed article.
There’s something cozy about thinking, “Well, ChatGPT says my SEO is good, so I must be doing this right.”
Having access to a lot of SEO information doesn’t mean it’s current or correct. And even when the information itself is accurate, it may not be the right advice for your particular site, audience, topic, or search goals.
AI can also hallucinate, generating information that sounds plausible and authoritative but is simply wrong. That’s especially problematic with SEO advice because if you don’t already know the subject, you may have no reason to question the answer.
It’s hard to create people-first content when you’re relying on a bot to provide the expertise and experience.
Why ChatGPT and Claude Can Give Bad SEO Writing Advice
I’ve seen ChatGPT and Claude recommend general keyphrases, create fluffy article structures, and suggest content that starts steering an article away from its original topic.
The problem is that the recommendations can sound perfectly reasonable—unless you know enough to question them.
You know how you can sometimes tell immediately that something was written by AI?
The writing is flat. The structure is formulaic. The subheadings sound like every other AI-generated subheading you’ve seen. There’s nothing technically wrong with it, but there’s not much that’s particularly good, either.
So why would you assume the SEO writing advice behind that content is any better?
If ChatGPT needs an experienced writer to recognize and fix flat, formulaic copy, it also needs someone with SEO expertise to recognize when a keyphrase is too broad, a content recommendation doesn’t make sense, or an optimization strategy isn’t right for the situation.
AI doesn’t suddenly become an SEO expert just because you asked it an SEO question.
AI Can Suggest Keyphrases That Are Too Broad
Ask ChatGPT to choose a keyphrase for an article, and it will give you one.
That doesn’t mean it’s a good one.
I’ve seen AI suggest keyphrases that are too broad, off-topic, or have the wrong search intent. That matters even more for local search, where an overly broad keyphrase may completely miss how potential customers are actually searching.
AI can be useful for brainstorming possible keyphrase directions. I use it that way myself.
But those ideas are a starting point for further analysis—not a replacement for keyword research and SEO strategy.
AI-Generated Content Can Drift Off Topic
Another problem I see is content that starts with a reasonable topic and slowly gets more general as AI expands it.
Suddenly, you’re covering every possible angle simply because ChatGPT decided it should be included.
That can dilute the content’s focus.
I’ve seen this myself when I use ChatGPT to draft articles. An article that should be 1,000 words suddenly bloats into 2,000 or more.
Good SEO writing isn’t about cramming everything you possibly can into a page. The content needs to stay focused on the search intent while giving the reader the information they actually need.
AI-Generated Subheadings Can Miss the Search Focus
And then there are the subheadings.
AI-generated subheadlines tend to be incredibly general and fluffy.
They may technically describe the section underneath them, but they don’t always help reinforce what the page is about or make it easy for someone to scan the article and immediately understand what they’ll learn.
A good subheading isn’t there just to break up a wall of text or to be “good for LLMs.” It should help organize the information, keep the article focused, and make the content easier to understand.
Does Giving ChatGPT Google’s SEO Guidelines Improve the Content?
You’d think giving ChatGPT Google’s own guidelines would solve some of these problems.
I’ve seen firsthand that it doesn’t necessarily work that way.
I talked with a developer who had created a process where he gave ChatGPT Google’s guidelines as source material and then used it to create articles for clients.
On paper, the process made sense.
If ChatGPT was specifically instructed to follow Google’s guidelines—and had those guidelines right there in the prompt—surely the resulting content would be well optimized.
Except it wasn’t.
One of the posts I reviewed was around 250 words. The word count itself wasn’t the problem. There’s no magic number of words that makes a page rank.
The problem was that the content was incredibly general and poorly written.
Giving ChatGPT Google’s guidelines didn’t give it the strategic judgment to determine what that particular article needed.
Google’s guidelines are important. But they’re not a step-by-step recipe for creating a well-positioned article.
Does Google Penalize AI-Generated Content?
Google doesn’t have a blanket ban against AI content. Its guidance focuses on whether the content is helpful, reliable, and created for people, not whether a human or AI wrote every word.
But there’s an important catch.
Google also rewards content that demonstrates first-hand experience and expertise. AI can’t create that on its own.
ChatGPT can help organize your ideas, brainstorm questions, or even help you put your expertise into words. But it doesn’t have your customer conversations, your years of experience, your opinions, your stories, or the insights you’ve gained from actually doing the work.
AI can help you communicate your unique know-hpw. It can’t manufacture the experience and expertise that makes your content worth reading in the first place.
How Can You Use ChatGPT for SEO Writing?
None of this means you shouldn’t use AI for SEO writing.
Quite the opposite.
I think ChatGPT and Claude can be fantastic tools when you use them for the right things.
Use AI to Brainstorm Keyword and Content Ideas
AI can be a great brainstorming partner when you’re trying to figure out how people might search for a topic or what questions they may have.
Don’t assume the phrases ChatGPT gives you are the phrases you should target. Treat them as ideas to investigate further using actual keyword and competitive research.
Use AI for Customer Persona Development
This is one of my favorite AI uses.
If you already have good information about your customers, AI can help you flesh out personas, think through their questions and concerns, and explore what they may need at different points in the buying process.
That information can help you focus your content and bring out the exact messaging your target audience needs to see.
Use AI to Review Content Against Your Target Audience
You can also give ChatGPT or Claude detailed persona information and ask it to review something you’ve written from that reader’s perspective.
What questions haven’t you answered?
Is anything confusing?
Are there opportunities to make the content more useful?
That’s a very different task from saying, “Optimize this article for SEO” and trusting whatever comes back.
Why AI Still Needs an Experienced SEO Writer
The biggest difference between an SEO expert using AI and someone asking AI to do their SEO is knowing how to evaluate the output.
I’ve worked in SEO copywriting for decades, so when I use AI for SEO work, I don’t assume its answer is correct. I’m evaluating its recommendations against years of hands-on experience with search strategy and content.
I know how to give it the context it needs and make it specific for the reader. I know how to test its assumptions. And when it gives me an answer that’s incorrect—or simply doesn’t make sense for the situation—I know enough to recognize it and change course.
That judgment matters even more today because we’re not just writing content to position in Google’s traditional search results.
We’re also thinking about whether content is specific, useful, authoritative, and original enough to earn visibility and citations in AI search.
Generic AI-generated content also makes it harder to contribute something distinctive enough to be worth citing or mentioning in an AI-generated answer.
You can spend hours following AI-generated SEO writing recommendations, tweaking your keyphrases, changing your subheads, and creating content. It feels like you’re doing something good for your site.
But if the underlying strategy is wrong, you’re just doing more work based on so-so information.
So yes, use ChatGPT and Claude.
Use them to brainstorm. Use them to better understand your audience. Use them to generate ideas and speed up parts of your SEO writing workflow.
Just don’t mistake a confident answer for good SEO advice.
Use AI as a tool.
Don’t mistake it for an SEO strategist.
Want to Know How Your Content Is Performing in Google and AI Search?
If you’re wondering whether your current content is helping—or hurting—your visibility, my Brand Visibility Assessment can help.
I’ll review how your brand and content show up across Google and AI search, identify visibility gaps and opportunities, and give you clear recommendations on what to focus on next.
And if you’re local to the Portland area, I’m happy to meet you at a West Linn or Tualatin coffee shop and talk through the findings together. ☕