Every web owner wants the same thing: higher search engine rankings, more traffic, and more profit. But hitting those goals is easier said than done.
It often takes more time, effort, and manpower than most site owners can afford.
That’s partly why ChatGPT is causing such a buzz in the SEO world.
ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It’s trained to understand and generate human-like responses to so-called prompts, questions or commands entered by ChatGPT users.
This recently developed AI tool can help you automate your link building tasks and get them done in a fraction of the time.
You can use it for almost every part of the process, including finding relevant keywords and sites to pitch to. The best part? ChatGPT is currently free to use.
So, let’s explore how you can use it for link building purposes.
In a nutshell, you can think of ChatGPT as a virtual assistant that can help you automate tasks involving natural language processing (NLP), such as generating content, answering questions, and more.
Using ChatGPT is extremely simple. All you have to do is go to OpenAI’s website and type in your prompts. That’s it!
The whole thing is very similar to interacting with chat bots you’d usually find on commercial websites:
As we’ve already said, prompts are questions or commands you enter in the chat interface. You can enter them in “natural language,” i.e., the language you usually use when talking to humans in real life.
So, using ChatGPT doesn’t require any technical knowledge or skills. It’s accessible to anyone and everyone who speaks a human language – which is another reason it’s such a big deal.
Once you enter your prompt, ChatGPT will generate a response based on it. The response may be a paragraph, a list, or other text, depending on your prompt.
You can even ask ChatGPT to format its response in a particular way:
Using ChatGPT for link building can help you:
Now that you know the benefits of using ChatGPT, let’s talk about how you can actually utilize it for link building.
Finding relevant websites to pitch to is essential to any link building or SEO strategy. ChatGPT can help you do so in probably half the time you’d usually need.
Simply enter a prompt asking for a list of websites related to your industry, and ChatGPT will generate it in a matter of seconds:
However, you should keep in mind that ChatGPT can churn out inaccurate or false information, so you’ll need to manually review the websites before sending your pitch.
Partnering with industry influencers and thought leaders is one of the fastest ways to build links. Finding them, on the other hand, can be a time-consuming process.
So, why not use ChatGPT to identify them more easily?
Besides generating a list of relevant names, ChatGPT can also make sure those names fit your other criteria.
For example, if you can’t afford to work with the biggest influencers in your industry, you can simply instruct ChatGPT to list relevant micro-influencers:
You can also add other criteria. Your prompts – and your results – will come down to your requirements and creativity.
The hardest part of finding relevant keywords is coming up with ideas. That’s where ChatGPT truly shines.
If you give it a specific-enough prompt, it can generate some really creative ideas you may not be able to come up with on your own.
Of course, you should still run all the proposed keywords through specialized SEO tools.
ChatGPT has no idea if the keywords it suggests have adequate search volumes or if you could rank for them in search engines. So, you’ll still have to do the actual keyword-research part on your own.
Even so, ChatGPT can give you a great starting point.
Joining industry-relevant online communities allows you to connect with your target audience, submit your answers or comments, and link back to your website.
Use ChatGPT to find relevant communities faster:
We suggest you check every suggestion manually to confirm that it’s truly suitable for your niche. If so, you can start submitting your own content, commenting on other people’s posts, and building new links to your site.
Speaking at industry events and conferences can often earn you some juicy backlinks from high-authority sites.
The problem? Finding such events is often tricky, especially if you're not sure where to look.
ChatGPT can help you with that, too. Just ask it to create a list of upcoming or annual events related to your industry:
Getting featured on podcasts can immediately up your credibility, but it won’t always earn you backlinks. Many podcast hosts don’t publish the episodes on their website nor link back to their guests.
So, you need to find podcasts that fit these very specific requirements, and a simple Google search won’t cut it.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, can easily find websites that fit all your criteria. Just make sure you include them in your prompts.
As we’ve mentioned, ChatGPT’s suggestions may not always be accurate, so we suggest checking them yourself.
ChatGPT can also write your content. All you have to do is ask.
While it’s perfectly capable of writing an entire blog post on its own, we asked it to write just a short section for the sake of brevity:
You can use ChatGPT for far more than just blog posts. Besides being able to write other forms of content, it can also generate titles, meta descriptions, meta tags, and everything else you’ll need to get your content to rank and convert.
Most people hate writing emails, and building links usually requires writing loads of them.
While ChatGPT is not exactly an outreach specialist, it can still generate some good-sounding outreach emails so you don’t have to.
By now, you probably realize that we’d get a better output if we used a more specific prompt. So, don’t be afraid to include more details about your offer or prospect. ChatGPT is perfectly capable of understanding them.
This can be especially useful when you’re replying to emails sent out to more prospects and not just you. For example, as one user demonstrated, you can use ChatGPT to be the first to answer HARO queries:
While you can’t do competitor analysis with ChatGPT per se, you can still use it to pinpoint competitor websites.
From there, you’ll need to use a separate, specialized tool to identify the sites linking to them. These sites might also be willing to link to you, as they’ve already demonstrated some interest in your niche.
Again, ChatGPT can’t replace broken links with yours for you. But it can help you find sites you can monitor for broken links.
Once you find these sites with ChatGPT, you want to scour them for broken links. If you find them, reach out to the site owners to have them replaced with yours. And don’t forget that you can use ChatGPT to write emails, too!
Scholarship link building is about offering a scholarship and promoting it on other websites that will link back to your site.
However, creating a scholarship is usually the easy part of the process. You just need to come up with a few contest rules and offer an award. That’s it.
The harder part is finding sites that promote scholarships and link to companies offering them – i.e., finding the sites you could pitch to. That’s where ChatGPT comes in.
Again, you can make your prompt way more specific than we did. A good start is including some details about your target industry or subject field.
Getting your interview published on high-authority websites can immediately bump you up in search engines.
Find appropriate sites using ChatGPT and pitch yourself as an interviewee from there.
The list doesn’t end here. There are many more ways to use ChatGPT to build links. Your results will come down to two things: your knowledge of SEO and link building and your creativity.
If you know a lot about SEO and link building, you’ll be able to come up with more prompts and more ways to use ChatGPT. And the more creative you get with your prompts, the better results you’ll get.
Still, you want to be careful about how you use ChatGPT. There are some limitations – and possible penalties – you should be aware of before blindly copying and pasting its outputs.
Regardless of how groundbreaking ChatGPT is, it still has many limitations you should be aware of when using it for link building and content creation purposes.
Considering the many limitations of ChatGPT, it’s clear that you still need human experts to help you throughout the process. Writing prompts alone can take a ton of time, let alone actually checking ChatGPT’s outputs and acting on them.
Our team of link building experts can help. Schedule your free consultation today to find out how we can help you build links on high-authority websites — and why we’re able to offer a lifetime guarantee on all your placements.
Talk to our link building team to see how we can help.