Writing a Blog Post Start to Finish With ChatGPT

I’ve tested quite a few different AI article writers. None of them have impressed me enough to use in place of ChatGPT. This is because ChatGPT gives you a greater level of freedom, which is necessary to create valuable and unique blog content.

Here’s how I created an article from scratch using GPT-4.

1. Ideation

Here’s the first prompt I used to prime ChatGPT and get some ideas for the new article:

You are a professional blogger and SEO marketer. We're going to work on writing a new article for my website. My business provides marketing services to people, including SEO, email marketing, and social media marketing. The first task is going to be brainstorming ideas for our new article. If I share a link to my SEO blog category, can you suggest a few new ideas?

Your goal here is to provide some context about your business and marketing goals.

I shared the link with GPT and got these 10 article ideas:

I chose idea #10, but most of these article ideas match would fit right in on my blog. The next task is to create an article outline.

2. Article outline

I like idea #10. Create an outline for the article.

The outline should be long and detailed. Since this is a more competitive topic, the article needs to include some unique and interesting things that our competitors aren't talking about in their content.

Please outline this article: How to Manage SEO for E-commerce Websites: Specific tips and strategies for managing SEO for e-commerce websites, which have their unique challenges.

ChatGPT gave us an article outline with an intro, 8 H2s, conclusion, and 2-4 bullet points under each heading. But, the outline isn’t ready quite yet. I always ask a follow-up question like this:

That's a good start. Are there any other important topics we should include? Or any FAQs to add to the end of the article?

That gave us 3 additional H2s and 10 FAQs.

Depending on the article and outline I have, I’ll ask for more ideas to include in my article to make it more helpful for the reader. In this example, the outline doesn’t need any additional information.

I prompted GPT to rewrite the outline with a few suggested edits:

Rewrite the blog outline with the following changes: Replace the local SEO section with the SEO tools section. Remove the section about social media. Don't include the international or voice search sections in the new outline.

3. Writing the article sections

Now we can start writing the article based on our outline. Since I want the article to be long and detailed, I’ll prompt GPT to write 1 or 2 sections at a time.

Great, let's start writing this article.

In total, the article should be about 2,500 words. The writing should be long and informative, providing clear strategies and tips the reader can apply to their website.

Start by writing the introduction:

I. Introduction
A. Brief overview of the importance of SEO for e-commerce websites
B. Mention of unique SEO challenges for e-commerce businesses

GPT wrote the introduction. Then we wrote the following sections of the article using this prompt:

Continue writing the article in a long, informative manner. Write these two sections next:

II. The Importance of Keyword Research for E-commerce SEO
A. Explanation of keyword research and its significance for e-commerce
B. Introduce tools specifically designed for e-commerce keyword research
C. Discuss long-tail keywords and their importance in e-commerce SEO

III. The Role of User Experience in E-commerce SEO
A. Discuss the impact of website design and navigation on SEO
B. Importance of mobile optimization for e-commerce websites
C. Discuss how website speed affects SEO and user experience

We ran into one issue writing a section about a case study. GPT tried browsing the web, searching for a case study to reference. Then I shared a link to a case study I found. Unfortunately, GPT couldn’t write that section of the article. No worries there– I didn’t expect it to do that.

I was also surprised to see that ChatGPT made references to some of the articles I shared earlier. One article wasn’t super relevant, but the other 3 references were appropriate and valuable.

4. Adding internal links

I haven’t used ChatGPT to add internal links before this, but it worked decently.

I need to add relevant internal links to this article. Please find 3-5 articles from the SEO category page I shared earlier (https://nick-nolan.medium.com/list/seo-niche-websites-d73316f326cf), and tell me where to add the links.

The article about expired domains isn’t relevant, and I hoped that GPT would go back to some older articles. It focused too much on my recently published articles.

5. Content distribution

Now that the article is written, we need some help promoting the article.

OK, now we've got the article written and ready to publish. Can you outline a plan to market and distribute this article to my audience?

ChatGPT gave 10 suggestions for promoting the article.

Let's focus on social media. Write a caption based on the article to post on LinkedIn. And write a few Tweets I can share with my audience.

That gave us a LinkedIn post and 5 tweets about our article. The tweets aren’t great, so I’d suggest giving ChatGPT a few examples of good tweets in your niche.

Results

Here’s the full (unedited) blog post that ChatGPT wrote for me:

Overall, the quality of this is fine– maybe even slightly above average compared to some of the human-written articles I’ve read. But, I’d still spend some time editing the article and ensuring the info is accurate and up-to-date.

Let me know what you think about this process!

- Nick

Chief Everything Officer @ Marketing Hz

ps. move this email to your Primary Inbox so you don’t miss the next one!