AI Powered Keyword Research – Uncovering Hidden Opportunities

AI has the potential to revolutionize industries everywhere and marketing is no exception. Figuring out how to leverage AI tools while still maintaining the human touch is the biggest hurdle right now. In this article, I will walk through several ways that you can incorporate AI into your keyword research process to make your analysis and search marketing easier.

Importance of Keyword Research

Regardless of the medium (voice, AI, Search Engine), people need to use keywords and phrases to find what they’re looking for. Keyword research is the process in which you find the phrases that are relevant to your target audience and implement ways that your content can then help that audience. Knowing how your potential customers are searching for your products and services is vital as it can inform the type of content you develop and where you publish that content.

Keyword Research is very time consuming and takes time to master. If this isn’t your main job function, it can be daunting to take this on; that’s where AI can help. There are specific Keyword Research tools out there that already use AI to assist their users (SEMRush and Moz are two that I’ve used frequently) but to unlock their full potential it usually requires a paid subscription. We’ll look at three ways that ChatGPT’s free service can be used to improve your keyword research.

How To Use AI To Improve Keyword Research

While ChatGPT should not be used as your sole source of information when conducting keyword research for numerous reasons (it doesn’t have access to the live web and it doesn’t track keyword usage or user behavior to name a few), it can be leveraged to make your analysis faster and more concise. Here are three uses that I’ve found helpful for AI keyword research.

Analyzing and Sorting Large Data Sets

One of the strengths of AI is its ability to analyze large amounts of data much faster than a human can. Use this to your advantage!

If you’re running a Google Ads campaign, export a list of all of your keywords that have generated leads or sales. Using this list, have ChatGPT group them into content categories. Or if you are not running an Ads campaign, you can export keywords (queries) from Google Search Console. Focus on keywords with a high number of impressions with a low number of clicks (these are likely terms that rank just outside the top positions). Run a similar process, having ChatGPT group these phrases into similar cohorts.

You can now use those groupings to identify ways to improve your site’s content. Find the pages that best align with their respective categories and optimize the content to better support the keyword searches that your prospective customers are using when they search.

Create Supporting Content Ideas

Gone are the days of having one page of a site dedicated to a product or service being sufficient to achieve strong rankings. You might be able to still capture those that are specifically looking for that product, but you’ll miss out on so much more. People looking for information on turnaround times, warranty information, replacement parts and service, etc… That’s not to mention the people that are just looking for a solution to their problem, not knowing exactly what they need.

Ask ChatGPT for a list of frequently asked questions around the product you’re trying to promote. Make sure you include your target audience in your prompt to focus on their specific needs and challenges. For example, “Develop a list of frequently asked questions business owners have when deciding what partner to choose when building a website.”

Using the list generated, determine whether this content is best served in supporting the existing page (e.g. pricing, process) or if it is better off getting its own page (e.g. case studies, problems your product solves). Strengthen your product pages and develop the new content – make sure that you create links between your new pages and the original product page.

Identify Synonyms and Related Phrases

Whether driven by differing industries, regions, or language, your products and services are likely to be known by a bevy of different names. You may know of some of them but utilize the power of ChatGPT to identify others and understand when and where they’re used. Try a prompt like this: “I’m trying to identify alternative phrases or keywords that my target customers may use for the services I provide. Generate a list of alternatives to ‘digital marketing services.’ Include any details about why one phrase would be used over another (i.e. region, industry, etc…)”

You should now have a fairly comprehensive list of synonyms or closely related keywords that you can incorporate into your marketing strategy. While I would advise against trying to cram all of these phrases into the content of your website, you could use them in your advertising and other marketing efforts. For example, if there’s a keyword that is commonly used in a particular region, you could create Google Search and Display ads that cater a message towards that keyword and target only that region with those ads. Or if a phrase is prominent in a particular industry, use it in any advertising or tradeshow collateral you develop for publications and events in that industry.

What’s Next?

AI can be a powerful tool in any marketer’s arsenal. While it shouldn’t be a replacement for human analysis and research, it can be very useful when incorporated into your existing processes. Know its limitations and make sure you validate the information before putting it into practice. And most importantly: Experiment! Try it out for yourself, see what it does well and where it’s still falling short for you.