Artificial intelligence isn’t going anywhere and ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. We’ve even asked ourselves, how will ChatGPT affect SEO?
Whether you’re hesitant or have already hit the ground running and incorporated it into your digital marketing strategy, here’s what a few of our subject matter experts at Hennessey Digital have to say about AI and ChatGPT:
Advantages of ChatGPT and other AI tools
“Although it has felt like this was coming forever, it seems we are finally at the point where it’s easy to imagine handing off some tasks to artificial intelligence. Examples are writing a standard business letter, troubleshooting software code, and analyzing data. Just as the introduction of machinery increased productivity for farmers by orders of magnitude, widely available AI-driven applications have the potential to make knowledge workers far more productive in their jobs.”
Scott Shrum, President & COO
“It’s proving to be an amazing tool to help identify ‘content gaps’ and opportunities in existing content that even the most knowledgeable strategist may not be able to identify. For example, discovering topics we might not have written about that are relevant to a page’s core message. Plus, it’s a ton of fun — I am amazed every time I use it!”
Steve Guberman, Vice President of SEO
“I’m seeing how handy this tool can be to help generate ideas for social media content, blog, or email content. Human expertise will always be important in marketing, but using AI tools like ChatGPTwill allow marketers to more easily discover and answer the questions their audience is looking for.”
Amy Heigel, Marketing & Communications Manager
“ChatGPT can be useful for filling out information on Google Business Profiles. Marketers can easily gain inspiration for filling out the product and service definitions and get ideas for making questions to answer for the Q&A section.”
James Cant, Local SEO Team Lead
“Since it functions as a knowledge base with some similarities to search engines, it’s easy to take an up-close view of it from the world of marketing. But imagine a world where it can gather and deliver knowledge that impacts diagnosis and treatment in health and medicine, the engineering potential for transportation or aviation, or helps solve a global challenge. I think we’re only starting to scratch the surface on the impact ChatGPT and AI will have.”
Cindy Kerber Spellman, Senior Director of Marketing
Disadvantages of ChatGPT at the moment
“I don’t recommend using ChatGPT for Google My Business posts. These types of posts should be news and updates to generate excitement about your business. Currently, an AI program isn’t able to assist with knowing about the internal excitement of a business.”
James Cant, Local SEO Team Lead
“Of course, every new wave of AI will result in some efficiencies or capabilities beyond human ability and ChatGPT is no exception. Although we can be impressed by what AI is capable of, it is evolving far more quickly than us, making the biggest risk to be what might happen if AI eventually surpasses the human mind and spirals out of control.”
Ghulam Nabi, Paid Media Manager
“ChatGPT is one of the most impressive and exciting pieces of software to be released in decades, but it is still a tool that tries to simulate how a human would write a thought or answer a question. As a simulation, it will still get things wrong a lot (although this will surely keep getting better), so I would caution anyone against taking ChatGPT’s output and using it without a lot of human-based fact-checking and editing right now.”
Scott Shrum, President & COO
“As a society, we have to be mindful of what shortcuts or solutions ChatGPT and AI are used for. Its computer-based knowledge naturally will do things that exceed human capability, but the human element will always be important not only in marketing, but broadly in everyday life. Reliance over time can be detrimental to learning and development among school-age kids who rely on the tool, or advancing human thought, communication skills and critical thinking abilities as a society.”
Cindy Kerber Spellman, Senior Director of Marketing
Will ChatGPT and AI affect digital marketing?
The use of AI language tools like ChatGPT or Google’s new AI service, Bard, will continue to grow in popularity as companies begin utilizing it. The ability to personalize helpful responses to customers while streamlining digital marketing efforts is a win-win for businesses. Our team of experts chimed in with their thoughts:
“A tool like ChatGPT can be leveraged to generate new ideas and ways of analyzing content if you know how to use it right, and our VP of SEO Steve Guberman has made himself into a master of AI “prompt-ology”! However, as an SEO tool, it also shouldn’t be used in isolation. ChatGPT doesn’t look at real-time search data or competitive insights, and we’re especially wary of using AI in the legal industry. Legal content (considered “Your Money, Your Life” content) is held to a higher standard under Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines; relying too much on AI for content creation could put your site at risk of future penalties.”
Jessica Rowe, Director of Content
“The generative model was only trained up to 2021, so it might not have the most up-to-date information available. Accuracy may always be a challenge a service like ChatGPT faces.”
Steve Guberman, Vice President of SEO
“ChatGPT and AI are only going to become more sophisticated over time. One question — especially for digital marketing firms like Hennessey Digital — is whether AI will run into other issues, such as Google explicitly banning (and being good at detecting) AI-generated content, or if Google will be able to distinguish between helpful content and content that was written solely for search engines. The answer so far seems to be that Google does differentiate — even if content was generated by AI, as long as it is useful for a user, it is okay. But, this is a moving target, (what does Google consider to be useful?), and Google’s capabilities, their own AI service, and policies will surely keep changing!”
Scott Shrum, President & COO
Closing thoughts on ChatGPT
Just like with anything new, there are some current hesitations or setbacks, but the future is riddled with possibilities. This technology is new and it’s only going to grow and learn more, so it’s hard to determine what the end result will be. Its potential seems clear that there will be benefits to streamlining processes and generating content at scale. Don’t just take our word for it, take ChatGPT for a spin and try it out for yourself. Experimenting with new technology is the best way to discover what’s possible and where innovation is taking us.