ChatGPT: Is SEO - As We Know It - Dead?

avatar
by Anna Munhin Mar 25, 2023 News
ChatGPT: Is SEO - As We Know It - Dead?

Google And OpenAI Photo Illustrations

There are two logos on a phone screen and a website on a laptop screen. The photo was taken by Jakub Porzycki.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

The world has taken notice of the phenomenon. Is it the new way to do a search? The impact on the search engine business space is something that is intriguing. However, that is not the question I ask - in this article, I explore a related question - if you have a business that has relied on Search Engine Optimization for traffic and relevancy, where does it leave you.

There is a difference between chat and search.

The intent of the user is different between chat and classic search. In classic search, multiple answers are ordered in the way the search engine thinks is most relevant to the question. Search results can be a lot. More than one answer is often returned when a question asks for more than one option. Today, both approaches are provided by search.

I looked for a good cauliflower pizza crust recipe on the internet. It returned a number of websites with recipes and other information. One specific recipe was returned with a message that hoped I would enjoy it.

Either could be better for consumers. If I wanted to find several recipes and do the work to choose between them, the first would be better. The second is better if I just want to make a recipe. The first is the basis of Search Engine Optimization. If my business is focused on getting traffic from people looking for cauliflower crust recipes, and possibly selling them other things such as pre-made cauliflower crust, it's important to rank higher on the first page of search engines. Businesses can use best practices, monitoring tools, and entire industries to achieve this goal.

The second approach leaves businesses if customers decide to use it. There was no indication of the source of the recipe. A follow-up question revealed that the answer was made from many pieces of information gathered by the artificial intelligence.

This means something for a business.

  • If your goal is to be found on a search - how to get a tool like ChatGPT to return your website as an answer is not clear. For classic SEO - there are well defined guidelines (backlinks, appropriate content, well-formed pages etc.) that businesses can follow to get their pages ranked higher on searches of selected keywords.
  • For those businesses who help others optimize SEO - what would they optimize for ChatGPT? Many tools and resources have popped up explaining how to use ChatGPT for writing SEO-optimized content (and whether that is even a good idea), but these are about using ChatGPT to make your website friendly to traditional search, not to get a tool like ChatGPT to return your website.

What are you able to do?

  • It is too early to know definitively what can be done. Anecdotal evidence suggests that these models learn from massive repositories of information, so being known in as many online places may help the model identify your brand. However, till we have more knowledge, or guidance from the producers of these models, it will remain a challenge.
  • Monitoring data on what fraction of queries, and what types of queries shift to these approaches vs. traditional search, may help businesses understand if a continuing investment in SEO is worthwhile over time.

Conclusions.

As the chat approach becomes more popular, it is worth looking at your search marketing strategy and trying to understand how it fits in with these trends. It's for example:

  • Has your strategy been to create pages that answer important questions (for example in a blog) and use those search hits to bring people to your site? If so - what will happen if a chat interface decides to answer the question on its own?
  • On the other hand - if your goal is for people to find very specific content (such as a cauliflower recipe-making class starting next month) - that is less likely to see interference from a chatbot.

Time will tell how this plays out. If there is a noticeable change as these technology start to expand in volume, it's worthwhile to keep an eye on yourseo statistics.