How to Use Ahrefs and ChatGPT to Improve Your SEO

Here are some of the best use cases.

If a page is outranking you, it could be because it covers important subtopics searchers want to see (while you don’t).

Here’s how to find these subtopics:

1. Enter your target keyword into Keywords Explorer
2. Scroll down to SERP Overview
3. Check three relevant top-ranking pages
4. Click Open in and choose Content gap

The Content gap report shows you the common keyword rankings among these top-ranking pages. Export all keywords from the report. Then, go to ChatGPT and write a prompt like:

I’m going to give you two things. 

#1. A blog post on the [topic]

#2. A list of keywords that are related to the topic

I need you to tell me which keywords, entities, or subtopics I’ve missed in my content based on the keyword list.

ChatGPT will tell you what’s missing:

You don’t have to update your content with every “gap” ChatGPT identified. It’s only a suggestion, so identify which ones are most appropriate for your target keyword and refresh your content accordingly.

ChatGPT’s pretty good at creating blog post outlines. But you can make sure ChatGPT’s creating search-optimized outlines by providing it with important subtopics searchers want to see.

Do the same as above by exporting keywords from the Content gap report. Then enter this prompt into ChatGPT:

I’m going to give you a list of keywords related to [topic]. Create an outline for that topic based on these keywords.

Voila! Your outline is ready.

Search intent is the why behind a query. If you want to stand the best chance of ranking, you’ll need to align your content with search intent.

Typically, search intent is identified by looking at the top-ranking pages for your target keyword.

You can ask ChatGPT to do this for you. Enter your keyword into Keywords Explorer and export the SERPs from SERP Overview.

Copy the top 10 ranking titles and give ChatGPT a prompt like:

I’m going to give you a list of titles. These are the top-ranking pages for the keyword [keyword]. Can you identify the search intent for me?

ChatGPT will analyze the search intent for you:

Too troublesome? Good news: We’ve incorporated this use case directly into Keywords Explorer. Just click Identify intents, and we’ll do it for you:

Seed keywords are words or phrases you can use as the starting point in a keyword research process to unlock more keywords.

There are obvious seed keywords for every niche, like “coffee” if you own a coffee site. But you may miss out on terms like “moka pot” or “aeropress,” especially if you’re unfamiliar with the space.

ChatGPT can help with that. Just ask it to give you terms.

Give me terms related to [topic]. Skip the descriptions.

You can then use these as seed keywords in Keywords Explorer to find more keyword ideas.

TIP

We’ve integrated AI into Keywords Explorer to help you find seed keywords easily. You can skip the entire ChatGPT part now.

If you do SEO for multiple markets, you may want to target the same keywords in different languages. This is no biggie if you’re a polyglot, but some of us struggle with languages. Fret not: ChatGPT can help.

Take your list of keyword ideas and ask ChatGPT to translate them.

I have a list of search queries in English. If a native Spanish speaker searched for these queries on Google, what keywords would they use? Please suggest one to five of the most common alternative local expressions for each query that reflect their meaning, considering both colloquial and formal terms.

Paste these terms into Keywords Explorer and set the country you’re researching to see if they have any search volume.

A common issue affecting many websites is missing titles, H1 tags, or meta descriptions. You can find out if your site has these issues by running a crawl with Site Audit.

Click the number to see the affected pages. Then click Export to get all the URLs.

Take these URLs to ChatGPT and ask it to create meta descriptions for you.

I have a list of URLs that do not have meta descriptions. Create meta descriptions for them. Keep them under 160 characters and use an active voice.

Branded keywords contain your company, service, or product name. Knowing the breakdown between branded and unbranded keywords is useful because:

• If you’re analyzing a competitor, you’ll want to know how much of their traffic is branded (which you can’t replicate).
• Branded traffic may not be directly controlled by SEOs, so you may want to be clear about the attribution.
• Bigger brands get more branded searches (duh!), so it could be a good proxy to see how well your brand is faring.

To see the breakdown, enter your site (or your competitor’s site) into Site Explorer, go to the Organic keywords report, and click Export.

Upload the file to ChatGPT and give this prompt:

Label each keyword in the “Keyword” column as branded or unbranded. Then, create a pie chart that shows the sum of “Current organic traffic” for both categories. Include a legend on the pie chart.

Final thoughts

Ahrefs is not just an SEO tool—it’s a big data machine. So, it’s all about extracting and exporting the most relevant data from our toolset and then using ChatGPT to help with the analysis.

Did I miss out on any cool use cases? Let me know on XTwitter or LinkedIn.