Why You Shouldn’t Trust ChatGPT for SEO or Website Advice
AI can be an incredible time-saver in your business — but it’s not a replacement for strategy, research, or real-world experience. In this episode of Elevate Your Practice, I break down where ChatGPT can help with SEO and website work and where relying on it too heavily can actually hold your business back. From keyword research that doesn’t reflect real search behavior to generic design advice that ignores the realities of local practices, this episode walks through the limitations practitioners need to understand before handing over their marketing decisions to AI. If you’ve been wondering why “doing everything right” according to ChatGPT isn’t moving the needle, this episode will help you course-correct — without throwing AI out completely.
Key Takeaways
ChatGPT is a helpful brainstorming tool, but it shouldn’t be trusted as your SEO strategy.
AI-generated keywords often don’t reflect what real people are searching for.
SEO titles and descriptions still need human review to meet character limits and best practices.
ChatGPT can’t see your website, so its design advice is often generic and incomplete.
Local practices need SEO and design strategies that reflect how people actually choose care.
The best results come from combining AI support with research, testing, and human expertise.
Resources
Transcript
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: I am Samantha Mabe, website designer and founder of Lemon and the Sea, and this is Elevate Your Practice. If you're a holistic health practitioner ready to grow your practice without wasting time on things that don't work, you're in the right place. Each week I share a website, SEO, and marketing advice along with guest experts so you can bring in the right clients and feel confident about how you are showing up and serving the people that you help. Let's get started.
[00:00:38] Using AI can save you time and make things go a lot quicker in your business, but it doesn't always mean that is the best option when you're trying to get things done. In this episode, I'm going to be sharing why you shouldn't trust ChatGPT for all of your SEO and website advice.
How Samantha Uses ChatGPT
[00:01:01] I use ChatGPT for quite a few things in my business. I use it to help me make sure the blog posts that I just wrote actually make sense. I use it to help me write SEO titles and descriptions that at least get close to the right length. And I use it to help me brainstorm ideas for blogs and podcasts. But that doesn't mean that it's great at everything.
[00:01:33] In fact, many of the clients that I've worked with have reached out because they are trying to follow ChatGPT's advice for SEO and AEO, or showing up on ChatGPT. And even if they've implemented it, it's not really making a difference in their business. The thing is, even if you've shared detailed information about your business and ChatGPT has looked at your website, it can't really tell you everything that you need to know. It's not a substitute for talking to actual people and doing research on your own.
Where ChatGPT Falls Short for SEO
[00:02:17] The first place that I see ChatGPT really fail is in actual keyword research. I have a custom GPT that I have written that I use for my clients when they want help with their SEO. And I always start with this because it's a good place to help me brainstorm. I'll tell it about their business and where they're located and who they work with, and I'll ask it to give me some keywords. It will spit out a bunch of keywords for me. These will be long tail keywords, that means they have multiple words that are trying to talk about what you do or who you work with.
[00:03:00] But none of them are actually going to get traffic to your website. If you take the keywords that ChatGPT spits out and you search for them on Google using a plugin like Ubersuggest it's going to tell you that that keyword doesn't get any traffic because ChatGPT doesn't know what actual people are searching for. So while it can be a good starting point, it's never going to be the place you rely on to find your keywords. It also tends to give you really basic information or things that are really specific and no one's ever going to type in.
Real Keyword Examples from Local Practices
[00:03:43] In fact, when I did some research for an OT, occupational therapist, and assumed that they were in my location of Richmond, Virginia, I asked it to give me keywords. It spit out 20 of them for me, and only two of those had any search volume. That means that if I had optimized a website for those search terms, it's not really going to be bring traffic. What I found instead was that I needed to look at different terms. They might be related to what ChatGPT said, but they're not going to be the exact ones that it gave me. For example, 'pediatric OT in Richmond, Virginia' had zero searches. But if I looked for 'occupational therapists in Richmond, Virginia', there were 140 or 'OT Richmond', again, 140 searches. So you have to do a lot of work if you still want to use ChatGPT to help you with your SEO.
Why AI Struggles with SEO Titles and Descriptions
[00:04:49] The other thing that it's also really bad at character limits. So if you were trying to use it to write SEO titles and descriptions for your site, even if you were to give it your keyword research information about your business and the pages that you want to optimize, it is going to write titles and descriptions that are either too long or too short, which means that you can't trust it to be the final go-to. You still have to go in and make sure that those word counts are correct because you do want your entire title to show up on Google and not to be penalized for it being too long.
Generic SEO Advice vs. Real Human Connection
[00:05:31] Another thing that I see a lot of people do is that they will ask ChatGPT how they can show up in search results or in AI search. And it tends to tell them to include either basic information about what they do or to use words like best, top or number one, which don't actually speak to the real people who are visiting your website. It does tell you that ranking can be helped write writing blog posts, which is good advice, but it sticks to pretty generic topics unless you give it a lot of guidance.
[00:06:07] So what I have found when using it for SEO and AEO advice is that you can use it as a brainstorming starting point, and sometimes it'll get things right, but you have always got to go in and double check things for yourself. Make sure the keywords that it's giving you actually have people searching for them. Make sure that the advice it's giving you on content makes sense and sounds like a real person would actually also enjoy reading your website and that any blog posts you are writing are relevant to your topic, your audience, and are going to give you a chance to highlight your expertise and what makes you and your practice different.
Why AI Falls Short on Website Design
[00:06:54] The other thing I see people ask AI for is design advice, and while it can recommend general design best practices and styles that might work for your brand, it can't actually physically see your website. It can read it sometimes, but it can't see the design. So the advice it's going to give is pretty basic. Even if you do share your URL, it's not a designer and it doesn't know how people use websites. It also tends to add a lot of sections to a website if you ask it to write your copy without any kind of guidance.
[00:07:31] It has good advice like make sure your buttons stand out, that you follow accessibility guidelines, and that you have plenty of white space. But it can't actually show you what that looks like or how that works in the real world. So while you can look at a checklist, it doesn't give you a visual example of how that applies to your site and what you might need to do differently.
[00:08:01] It also can't really take into advice the difference between an online coach and a local service-based practice and so while it's pulling design advice from everywhere online, it's not helping you specifically reach the clients that you want and speak to those people. It's going to give you what it would give to anybody else, and that is going to be pretty generic advice that gives you an okay website, but not something that's going to stand out and really help you reach the right people and convert them into clients and patients.
How to Use ChatGPT Without Hurting Your Website
[00:08:40] That's not to say you shouldn't use ChatGPT at all. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I like to use it as a starting point for brainstorming keywords or SEO metadata and design changes. It's a good place to get my brain thinking instead of staring at a blank page, trying to come up with everything on my own.
[00:09:03] The key is that you always have to follow up by checking its work. Don't trust what it says the first time, or that it's actually giving you the best advice. You want to check with other programs, other plugins, and other people to make sure what it's telling you is actually going to be beneficial for your business.
[00:09:26] You also want to make sure you audit your site after implementing any changes. That means that you want to look at it on both desktop and mobile from a design perspective. And then you want to keep checking in every month to see are the changes that I made actually having an impact? Is the SEO work that I did actually bringing me more traffic and helping me rank higher? Are the blog posts that I'm writing resonating with the people that I want to work with?
When Expert Support Makes a Bigger Impact
[00:09:56] It can also be really helpful if you have the money to invest, to work with an SEO strategist or designer who understands your industry. That's going to get you the best results. And and as somebody who does work as a designer, I can say that it's going to save you time and overall it's going to save you money to work with somebody who can understand your business and who knows all of the little details that have to go into designing a website, writing copy, and implementing an SEO strategy that's actually going to help you to grow your practice.
[00:10:37] A lot of what I do in my design work is making sure that the SEO that we are implementing and the design that we are creating fits the practice that I am working for, speaks to their audience, looks great, and actually works. I do a lot of research and prep beforehand to make sure that my clients have the right keywords, the right images, an optimized color palette, and a design that they are going to love. And then after a project is wrapped up and all of that stuff has been implemented and it's all ready to go, I run lots of tests to make sure all the links are working, the buttons go where they're supposed to, and that the SEO work that we're doing actually is effective and doesn't have any issues.
[00:11:30] I have an entire checklist on the back end of my business of things that I need to think about when I am doing my design projects so that my clients don't have to worry about their websites. They know that it's built on a really strong foundation, and that means they can concentrate on their other marketing channels, whether that be social media ads, blogging, and let the website work in the background to get more traffic and to convert people from their marketing into clients in a really simple way so that they can grow their practice and spend more time helping the people that they got into business in order to serve.
[00:12:14] Thanks for listening to Elevate your Practice. If you enjoyed today's episode, follow the show and leave a review. It helps more practitioners find these tips and start growing their practices with confidence. And don't forget to check out the show notes for links and resources from today's episodes. I'll be back next week with more strategies to help you build a thriving practice.
