LinkedIn told you to sack your SEO tools and just use ChatGPT. Cute.

 This is SEO Fu*king What. I'm Nikki, and I help business owners like you to get found in search and make money from your website

In this episode, I break down the three biggest ChatGPT SEO myths — fake volumes, fantasy Keyword Density (KD), and imaginary competitor analysis. I also give you a budget-savvy playbook that actually works: using GSC, manual SERPs and free tools.

And I share exactly where AI belongs (and where it doesn’t).

Click play to learn how to use ChatGPT for SEO the right way...

Timestamped summary

00:00 "ChatGPT vs Paid SEO Tools"

03:58 "Ahrefs vs. ChatGPT: SEO Reality"

08:23 "Budget SEO Tips Exposed"

10:42 SEO Success Requires Time & Data

This episode is all about not letting Chat GPT totally fuck up your SEO.

But you'll have even better results from your SEO by having me in your corner - https://nikki-pilkington.com/seo-training/

Want to check out more episodes? https://seofuckingwhatpodcast.co.uk/

Some dickhead on LinkedIn just told you to bin your SEO tools and use

ChatGPT instead. That's how you fuck your entire

website. Let's talk about it.

This is SEO fucking what? I'm Nicky and I help business

owners like you actually get found in search and make money from

your website. And today I'm really pissed off

because LinkedIn is currently drowning in dangerous

bollocks from people who've discovered ChatGPT and think

they've cracked the entire SEO code. If I was

younger, I might say, dude, what the fuck?

Let me paint you a picture. You're scrolling LinkedIn, probably

procrastinating from actual work, and you see a post.

Big numbers, thousands of followers. The post says,

goodbye, paid SEO tools. I saved eight and a half thousand

pounds a year using these seven ChatGPT prompts

and you think, fuck me, that sounds brilliant. Why

should I carry on paying For SEMrush or SE ranking or

Ahrefs? Well, I'll tell you why. Because that post

is written by someone who knows just enough about SEO to

be absolutely fucking dangerous. They

figured out how to get ChatGPT to spit out keyword lists

and they think that makes them qualified to give strategic advice.

It really doesn't. And these posts are everywhere. Right

now they're telling small business owners, people like you, that

you can replace professional SEO tools with a fucking

chatbot. So you can just type act as an

SEO professional with 20 years of experience into a prompt

and suddenly you've got expert level strategy and

oh my God, it's bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.

Now look, I use AI tools. I'm not some luddite

standing here screaming about robots taking our jobs. But there's

a massive fucking difference between using AI as part of your

toolkit and pretending it can replace actual

expertise, real data and proper SEO

tools. So let's take a look at why these LinkedIn gurus are

talking absolute bollocks.

First up, there's a data problem. These prompts tell

ChatGPT to estimate search volume.

Estimate as in make it up.

ChatGPT doesn't have access to Google's actual search data.

Can't that data is proprietary. So when it gives

you a number, oh, this keyword gets 2 1/2 thousand searches a month.

Where the fuck do you think it got that number from? It made it up

based on patterns it learned during training is an educated guess

at best and complete fabrication at worst.

Are paid SEO tools perfect? No. Different

tools give you different numbers because they're all sampling data differently.

But at Least they're sampling actual search data. They're using

real metrics from real searches. ChatGPT

is just guessing. And basing your entire content

strategy on guesses is like navigating with a map you drew

from memory on the back of a soggy beer mat while you were pissed.

Secondly, keyword difficulty is bollocks without

context. One of these genius prompts asked ChatGPT

to rate keyword difficulty on a scale of 1 to 100.

But based on what? What's it measuring? Link

profiles, domain authority, content quality,

freshness signals, SERP feature features? It can't

measure any of that because it can't see the actual info it

needs. It's just making up a number that sounds plausible.

And you're supposed to base your content decisions on this

off. When Ahrefs gives you a keyword difficulty score

is analyzing the actual ranking pages, how

many backlinks they have, the authority of those links, the content

depth. It's not perfect, but it's based on real data,

not vibes. The thirdly is the

analyze my competitor fantasy. We saw one

prompt that said analyze competitor.com and predict their

top traffic driving pages Predict, not

look at their actual traffic data. Because ChatGPT can't do that.

It'll just guess based on what pages exist and what looks important.

But you know what actually tells you which pages do drive

traffic? Tools like Ahrefs and

SEMrush and SE ranking tools that have actual

crawl data and can see real organic traffic

estimates. ChatGPT is just looking at your competitor's

sitemap and making shit up.

And you might be wondering why these posts have me so pissed off.

Because they're not just wrong, they're dangerously wrong.

Because they're aimed at people who don't know enough about SEO to spot the

bullshit. If you're an experienced SEO, you can use

ChatGPT to speed up certain tasks. You know what's

realistic and you know what's bullshit. You can fact check its

output. You know when it's hallucinating, or at least have a

good idea. But if you're a small business owner trying to DIY your

SEO, you don't have that bullshit detector. You see

SEO strategists with 20 years of experience in the prompt

and you think the output is actually that good. But it's

not. It's a chatbot pretending to be that good.

And the people posting these prompts, they're not taking

responsibility for the damage they're causing. They're not following up with the

business owners who tanked their rankings because they followed the advice

you've got their engagement, their followers, their little hits of

dopamine, the likes and the shares. And they fucked off.

So let's talk about what these prompts actually miss from

a technical SEO point of view. ChatGPT can't crawl your

website. It can't tell you that your site speed is dogshit,

your internal linking structure is a mess, or that you've got hundreds of

orphaned pages. Screaming frog. Does that se

ranking? Does that semrush? Does that ChatGPT

doesn't? For backlink

analysis, you can't ask ChatGPT to find

backlink opportunities and get actual link prospects. It'll give

you generic categories of sites that might link to you. That's not link

building. That's a year seven brainstorming session.

For real competitor data, you need actual traffic

data, actual keyword rankings, actual serp

positions, not ChatGPT's best guess about

what might be working for your competitors. And For SERP analysis,

ChatGPT can't see that Google is showing video results for your

target keyword, or that there's a featured snippet you could target.

Or that the entire first page is dominated by news articles

and that context is fucking critical to your strategy. And you know

what the worst part is? These LinkedIn twats always have the

same defense. But it works for small projects. Not everyone

can afford ahrefs, right? So your solution for people with

small budgets is to give them completely unreliable data

and let them waste months creating content based on made up

numbers. That's your big helpful contribution.

If you can't afford professional tools, there are other options.

Google Search Console is free and gives you actual real data

about your actual real traffic. Google Keyword Planner within

Google Ads is free. You can do manual SERP analysis.

Just google your target keywords and look at what's ranking. It

takes more time, but at least you're working with reality,

not ChatGPT's cheese dreams. These posts make it

sound like paid SEO tools are some kind of scam. Like we're all

just throwing money away on unnecessary subscriptions.

Polluts. These tools exist because doing SEO

properly requires actual data. You

can't just prompt engineer your way around that fundamental truth.

And you know what? The people writing these posts, they know that.

They know the limitations, but they also know that

ditch your expectations expensive tools is clickbait gold.

They know that business owners struggling with tight budgets will lap this

up. They're exploiting people's financial stress to get

engagement. That's not being helpful. That's being a

fucking charlatan. So what should you do if you

can't afford the full suite of SEO tools? How do you get

decent keyword research and competitor analysis without either

breaking the bank or or relying on ChatGPT's bullshit?

I'll tell you in just a moment

right how do you get decent keyword research and competitor

analysis without either breaking the bank or relying on

ChatGPT's bullshit? Here's what you should do if you're

working with a tight budget. Number one Start with

Google Search Console. It's free. It shows you what

queries you're already ranking for, which pages get traffic,

and where you're showing up in search results. This is real data

about your actual website. Use it.

Number two do some manual keyword research.

Google your topic. Look at the People Also Ask and the Related

Searches sections. Look at what questions people are asking

in Reddit threads and Quora. Yes, it takes longer than

a paid tool, but it's based on what people search for,

not what a chatbot thinks they search for. 3.

Analyze the actual search engine results pages. The SERPs

Google your target keywords and look at what's ranking, what

type of content is it, how long is it, what angle are they

taking? What questions are they answering? You can learn a

massive amount just by paying attention to what Google is

already rewarding. 4 Use free

tools strategically Google Keyword

Planner is part of Google Ads. It gives you rough search

volumes for search phrases. Ubersuggest has a limited

free tier. Ask the Public is free for

basic use. These aren't as comprehensive as paid tools,

but they're based on actual data. Number five

if you're going to use ChatGPT, use it for what it's

actually good at generating content outlines once you know your

target keyword and the intent of your searcher, helping you

brainstorm title ideas, drafting meta descriptions. Just

don't use it to decide what keywords to target or what your

strategy should be. For that, you need real data. And this is the

thing that nobody wants to hear. If you're serious about

SEO, if it actually matters to your business, then you're going

to have to invest something, either time

or money. You can do SEO on a budget by

investing more time in manual research, or you can pay

for tools that speed up the process with better data. What you

can't do is replace expertise and data with chatbot

prompts. Anyone telling you otherwise is either lying to you

or doesn't know enough about SEO to realize they're wrong

I get it. These LinkedIn posts are seductive.

They promise you can have professional level SEO without the

professional level cost, but there's no such thing as a free

lunch. There's definitely no such thing as free

accurate SEO data from a chatbot. So if you

see one of these posts, just remember if it sounds too good

to be true, it probably is. And if someone with

50,000 followers is giving you SEO advice,

check whether they actually do SEO for a living or whether they just

post about productivity hacks and AI prompts all day.

Well that's me done ranting for this week. If this helped make sure you're

following SEO fucking what? Wherever you listen to your podcasts. And

if you want to send me the worst SEO advice you've ever seen on

LinkedIn, you can find me via my website or on

LinkedIn. Until next time get found, make

money. And for sake, don't trust ChatGPT to run

your entire SEO strategy.