Hands-On ChatGPT SEO Techniques from Top Practitioners

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Recently at Pubcon Austin a group of SEO’s sat around at lunch and compared AI stories. Things like how we were using it to do new things, reinvent old things, and generally enhance our services and products. Many were amazed at how others were using AI it their day-to-day work flow. Below is what I took away from those conversations. Thanks to everyone that pitched in to make this article.

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SEO professionals are always hunting for an edge and many have found it in ChatGPT’s evolving toolkit. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has rapidly grown in popularity (reaching 400 million weekly users!) as new power features make it more useful for research, content creation, and strategy. From real-time web browsing and in-depth analysis modes to handling file uploads, image understanding, and extended memory, ChatGPT is transforming how SEOs work. Let’s explore these features and how SEOs are leveraging them to work smarter.

1. SearchGPT: Real-Time Web Search for SEO Research

Live web browsing within ChatGPT has been a game-changer for SEO research. OpenAI launched its integrated web search feature (often called “SearchGPT”) within ChatGPT for Plus subscribers in late 2024 initial launch for subscribers, and by the end of the year it was opened up to all users for free. This means anyone can ask ChatGPT to search the web in real time and get conversational results with source citations, right in the chat.

Unlike a traditional Google search that bombards you with ads and a list of links, ChatGPT’s search gives you direct results with relevant context. You can ask broad questions or specific queries, and ChatGPT will pull information from multiple sources and present a cohesive answer (with references you can click through for verification). Even better, ChatGPT supports a thorough list of advanced search operators (the same ones you’d use on Google or Bing, like site:, filetype:, etc.) for precision querying I Went Six Months Without Google Search.  For SEOs used to crafting pinpoint Google searches, this capability allows similarly granular searches within ChatGPT’s AI answers.

Many SEOs are finding that ChatGPT’s Search mode saves them time during research. For example, Brett Tabke (Pubcon founder and long-time SEO) conducted a 6-month experiment using ChatGPT’s search as his primary search engine. His verdict after six months without Google?

Google felt “tired, old, and difficult to use” compared to ChatGPT, which was often faster at delivering “dead-on answers” without the usual search engine noise.  – Brett Tabke

In his experience, SearchGPT became his daily driver for finding information. While ChatGPT’s results can sometimes be verbose, the ability to ask follow-up questions and get refined answers (instead of doing multiple separate Google queries) is incredibly efficient for research-intensive tasks.

2. Deep Research Mode: AI-Powered Insights at Scale

One of ChatGPT’s newest power features is Deep Research, which takes AI-assisted searching to the next level. This feature (available to ChatGPT Plus users) allows you to generate structured, multi-layered research reports on a given topic with a single prompt. Think of it as an “AI research analyst” that digs through numerous sources and organizes findings for you. Rather than just answering a single question, Deep Research compiles a detailed report with multiple sections, sources, and insights – perfect for competitive analysis, content strategy, or any deep-dive exploration of a subject.

For SEOs, this is a potential goldmine. No more manually combing through dozens of SERPs and piecing together information – ChatGPT will do the heavy lifting. Ask for “deep research on [your topic],” and it will scan what feels like 10+ pages of results, then present the key points and data in a cohesive format. It’s a huge time-saver and a content-planning powerhouse in one. You can quickly get a landscape of, say, “the latest SEO ranking factors in 2025” or “emerging content marketing trends,” complete with summaries of findings and even the sources it pulled from.

In practice, SEOs are using Deep Research to:

• Fuel content ideation and briefs: Instantly generate outlines and talking points for articles or client reports. The AI compiles common subtopics, questions, and stats from across the web, giving you a structured starting point for your content.
• Analyze competitors and trends: Within minutes, get a breakdown of competitor strategies or industry trends. For example, a deep research query on “AI in content marketing” might summarize what top competitors are doing, case studies, and emerging tactics – insight that would normally take hours of Googling.

  Lea Scudamore of AimClear says:
  

  “We’re using the AI to compare publicly available data against client data to, “find the money.” Unboxing the insights to see where people are likely to spend and understand users at the neighborhood level. This helps us avoid ad spend or time on content for neighborhoods that won’t convert. Ultimately we are getting more out of clients’ budgets with AI.“

• Support data-driven decisions: By gathering broader evidence and examples from many sources, the feature helps SEOs back up their strategies with data. Whether it’s confirming the importance of Core Web Vitals or finding statistics for a presentation, the info is compiled for you?

Victoria Shepherd of HealthCare Success says they use it for:

“…internal linking audits that use AI to map crawl paths and suggest smarter anchor text, pulling review themes and matching them to location pages, and even tracking how your brand shows up in tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.”

Early users have found Deep Research to be “eye-popping” in its ability to compare and summarize complex topics side-by-side. It essentially gives you a high-level and detailed view at once – something that would be tedious to create manually. If you have access to this feature, it can dramatically accelerate tasks like market research, strategy development, and comprehensive content audits.

3. File Uploads & Data Analysis: Your Personal SEO Analyst

Another incredibly useful capability of ChatGPT is the option to upload files for analysis. Instead of copying and pasting text, you can feed whole documents or datasets into ChatGPT and let it analyze them. This turns ChatGPT into a personal SEO analyst that can review technical files, audit content, or crunch data for you. One guide on Search Engine World outlines 12 essential files SEOs can run through ChatGPT for an “SEO tune-up,” illustrating just how versatile this feature is? Here are a few examples:

• Server config files (e.g. .htaccess, robots.txt): You can drop in your site’s configuration files and ask ChatGPT to analyze them. It will check for errors, conflicts, or optimizations. It can even compare your robots.txt to your site structure – for instance, by examining a screenshot of a directory listing to see if anything important might be unintentionally blocked.

  GoogleSearchConsole Patterns: Andrew Shotland of LocalSEOGuide says:
  

  “We run an LLM against our GSC data in BigQuery and it reports on anomalies and trend patterns. For example, it can tell us if the site is growing/shrinking for specific topics over a specific time period, spot URL cannibalization issues as they happen, winners/losers over time, etc.“

• Sitemaps and Schema markup: Give ChatGPT your sitemap.xml and it can spot broken links or missed pages, ensuring your important content is included. Feed it your schema (whether embedded in HTML or as JSON-LD) and it will validate it against best practices and even suggest additional schema types you could add for SEO benefit.

  

  Will Scott of Search Influence says:

  We’re using AI wherever we can. One of our best uses is in entity identification for semantic SEO. I recently used Cursor with the OpenAI and Google Knowledge Graph APIs to significantly improve an internal workflow. I created a WordPress plugin that reads a URL, identifies all the entities and outputs Schema.org JSON, the articles salience to the primary entity discovered, and optimization recommendations.

  This was a real human workflow that is now 100X easier thanks to AI and tools like Cursor.

• Site content and HTML: Upload the HTML of a key page (or just paste the text) and ChatGPT will critique it. SEOs have used it to audit homepage HTML for technical issues and to review content for readability and SEO improvements. It will flag things like missing meta tags, keyword overuse, or opportunities to improve internal links and calls-to-action.

  Ash Nallawalla of CRM911 Digital say they use it:
  

  …to write Alternate (Alt) text for images… Title tags and Meta Descriptions are often not well-written. I use a composite crawl tool (Screaming Frog SEO Spider) and the OpenAI API to automate this. This is always followed up with a manual edit where necessary.

• Analytics and log data: Instead of eyeballing spreadsheets, you can input CSV exports from Google Search Console or your server logs. ChatGPT can summarize trends – for example, identifying keywords with declining click-through rate, spotting unusual traffic spikes/drops, or highlighting pages with slow load times. It’s like having an analyst interpret the data for you.

  
  Dave Davies Of Weights & Biases says that the number of hours spent in LLMs is mostly taken up with coding:

  I’m currently working on a tool that uses gpt-4o-mini to analyze pages on a website for topics and phrases to use as anchors to that page from elsewhere on the site, based in large part on the content and search volumes for identified keywords. Basically, an internal link management tool.

• Backlink profiles: You can even feed in a list of backlinks (from tools like Majestic or Ahrefs) and ask ChatGPT to analyze it. It will help identify potentially toxic links, common anchor text themes, or “gaps” in your backlink profile. This can guide your disavow file or outreach by pinpointing which links might be harming SEO and which content could use more authoritative links. Tip 12 Essential Files SEOs Should Run Through ChatGPT for an SEO Tune-Up.

  Ryan Jones, SVP of SEO at RazorFish says:

  “By using the embeddings feature you can embed your pages and do things like auto categorize pages/articles, improve internal linking, find “off-topic” pages, or find too similar pages.”

 

The ability to handle actual files makes ChatGPT a Swiss-army knife for SEOs. Tasks that typically require separate tools or lots of manual work – reading server logs, auditing on-page SEO, scanning for broken links – can be accelerated by simply asking ChatGPT to look at the file for you. Even better, ChatGPT can handle multiple file formats: copy-pasted text, PDFs, spreadsheets of data, you name it. On ChatGPT’s interface, you can now attach files (and even images, which we’ll get to next) to your chat. This unlocks a whole new level of analysis. Imagine uploading a lengthy SEO audit report from another tool and having ChatGPT summarize the key issues, or combining data from different sources (say, a keyword list and a content inventory) by pasting them in together and prompting ChatGPT to find intersections. It’s all possible with file uploads.

4. Image Analysis: Visual SEO Audits and More

Obviously, ChatGPT isn’t limited to text and code – you can upload images and ChatGPT will interpret them. This is a boon for SEOs in several scenarios. For instance, if you have a screenshot of a webpage or an infographic, ChatGPT can OCR the text and describe the image content. Allowing you to instantly analyze screenshots, diagrams, or other visuals as part of your chat flow (think: drop in an image, ask “what do you see here?”)?

How are SEOs using this? One clever example: comparing site structure to crawl directives. An SEO shared that you can take a screenshot of your website’s folder tree (a visual directory structure) and give it to ChatGPT along with your robots.txt. ChatGPT will effectively cross-check the two, telling you if any sections of your site appear in the structure but aren’t allowed in robots (or vice versa)? This can reveal unintended blocking of important pages, all by analyzing an image of a directory listing!

Image analysis also helps in other ways: you could upload a chart or graph from Google Analytics and ask ChatGPT to summarize the insights (“This traffic graph shows a steady rise with a seasonal dip in summer…”). Or use it for on-page SEO audits by screenshotting a webpage – ChatGPT can read the visible text and even note elements like headings or alt text. It won’t directly crawl a site like an SEO spider would, but if you provide the visual or the code, it can analyze it. This feature is still very new, and SEOs are just scratching the surface of what’s possible. But the ability to get AI feedback on images (from design layouts to content within images) adds another tool in the SEO toolkit, especially for those who prefer visual analysis or have reports in image form.

5. Persistent Memory: Conversations that Build on Context

One of ChatGPT’s subtle yet powerful features for SEO work is its memory – the ability to remember context from earlier in the conversation. Unlike a one-off search query, ChatGPT treats your interactions as a continuous dialogue (and recent updates have even enhanced its long-term memory across sessions via “custom instructions”). For SEOs, this means you can carry out multi-step tasks without re-explaining everything. For example, you might start by asking ChatGPT to analyze a competitor’s homepage. After it responds, you can follow up with, “Great, now based on that analysis, what content gaps do we have on our site?” – and it understands you’re still talking about the competitor and your site, using the info it already provided.

This conversational context makes complex research and strategy development much more efficient. You can drill deeper into a topic by asking follow-up questions, and ChatGPT retains all the details you’ve been discussing. As Brett Tabke noted, the ability to refine a search without having to start over is a huge advantage of conversational search – ChatGPT “remembers the context of the search” so you don’t need to retype or reiterate your query each time?

For SEOs, this is like having an assistant who already knows your project. You can analyze one aspect of your site (say, title tags), then seamlessly shift to another (say, internal links) and ChatGPT can draw on the earlier discussion about your site structure or goals. The result is a more cohesive analysis.

Memory also comes in handy for content creation. If you’re using ChatGPT to help write content, it can remember the style or outline you want from earlier prompts. For instance, you can set guidelines (“My website’s tone is casual and I target small business owners”) and ChatGPT will keep that in mind as you generate various pieces of content or copy throughout the session. In strategy scenarios, you might brainstorm a series of keywords in one prompt, then later ask for content ideas around those keywords – ChatGPT already has the list of keywords in context from before. This persistence saves you time and keeps the AI’s output consistent with your intentions. It’s a bit like having a brainstorming session where the AI never forgets what you said 10 minutes ago.

6. SEO Audits

Steve Wiideman ofWiideman Consulting Group says they use it extensively for technical audits:

“Thanks to utilities such as GPT for Sheets, our data collection of topics, entities, and keywords from Google Search Console, Google SERPS and downloaded data from third-party keyword research tools, can all be aggregated and streamlined into topic outlines, taxonomy, and site structure recommendations in minutes, versus the days we used to spend in content gap analysis and keyword research. We also love to drop competitive link reports in ChatGPT for segmented and prioritized link opportunities to assign to various client team members, such as PR and virtual assistants. Honestly, everything we used to put into an SEO audit and strategy has been augmented and streamlined thanks to AI.

Conclusion: A New Era of SEO Productivity

ChatGPT’s power features are rapidly becoming indispensable tools in the SEO arsenal. By integrating real-time search, providing deep research reports, analyzing files and images on the fly, and leveraging conversational memory, ChatGPT enables SEOs to gather insights and execute tasks faster than ever before. Routine tasks – from auditing a site’s technical setup to researching a blog topic – can be accelerated with AI assistance, freeing up time for higher-level strategy and creative work.

It’s important to note that while ChatGPT is powerful, it works best as a partner to the SEO expert, not a replacement. The best results come from guiding the AI with the right prompts, double-checking its outputs, and combining its insights with your own expertise and intuition. Used wisely, however, these features allow you to scale your efforts dramatically. As AI tools continue to evolve, the SEOs who adapt and incorporate them into their workflow stand to benefit the most. ChatGPT is no longer just a quirky chatbot – it’s a multifaceted SEO companion that can supercharge your research, content, and strategy. And as new features roll out (keep an eye out for things like voice interaction, plugin integrations, and more), the possibilities will only expand.

In the end, successful SEO has always been about getting the right information and acting on it. With ChatGPT’s advanced features, SEOs can get that information faster, dig deeper, and execute with greater confidence. If you haven’t explored these ChatGPT power features yet, now is the time – your competitors might already be using them. Embrace the new era of AI-assisted SEO, and let ChatGPT help you work smarter, not harder.