I Ranked a ChatGPT-Written Article On Google in 24 Hours

On the first page

Image by Author via Jasper and Canva

I recently ran an experiment to see if I could rank an article on Google that is 97% written by ChatGPT.

Spoiler: it took less than 24 hours.

That’s the total time it took to:

• Choose the keyword
• Research the subject
• Generate the article with ChatGPT
• Make the cover image (with Jasper AI)
• Edit the article (with my secret sauce😉)
• Publish it (I’ll tell you where and how in this article)
• Google to find it (boo ya!)
• Google to rank the article on the first page of search results

Hold onto your digital britches because I’m going to tell you exactly how I did it.

How I Chose the Keyword for My ChatGPT Article

I recently wrote an article about using ChatGPT and Jasper Chat for keyword research.

That’s not how I found the keyword for this article, however.

Instead, I used Ahrefs (an uber-expensive SEO tool). To get the keyword, I plunked “Reddit.com” into the Ahref Site Explorer tool.

Then I clicked on Organic Keywords.

Next, I filtered the results for only the keywords where:

• Reddit showed up in the top 1–3 spots on Google search
• The term “Reddit” was not in the keyword
• The keyword difficulty was 0

Yeah, I wanted something easy. No reason to come out swinging with the first ChatGPT blog post ranking test.

Maybe I’ll do that on another day.

For now, my goal was to see if I could rank an AI-written article as fast as possible.

In retrospect, I would have gone after an even easier keyword that no other website had created an article about yet. But that’s not what I did.

There were other articles.

So there was (and is) competition. But those articles are short so I thought I just might be able to edge them out.

At the very least, I’d make it to the first page of Google for the search term.

If I was lucky.

What keyword did I choose, you ask?

Here it is: “What Do You Call a Deer With No Eyes?”

How I Researched the Topic for the Ranked ChatGPT Article

You’d think researching a joke would be easy.

Yeah, me, too. But it was a bit more involved than I first expected. I needed to know the answer to the question/joke.

Then, I needed to somehow expand that into an article of about 1,000 words or so.

Not easy.

I started my research (and did most of it) on Google.

I read most of the articles on the first page of the search results. Simple enough.

Then I read some more, clicked through some related search questions, and read even more. I watched some YouTube videos, too.

Boooring.

But that’s what I did and how I made a simple outline that I fed into ChatGPT. I think I also asked ChatGPT to come up with an outline to give me other ideas.

Here’s a screenshot example:

Screenshot by the author of the ChatGPT outline for the Deer Joke Article — Credit

Then I tweaked the outline so that it made more sense and was more likely to rank (because all the subsections were more related).

The Prompts I Used to Generate the Article With ChatGPT

I used a series of simple prompts (instructions) to get ChatGPT to write the article for me.

These are the prompts I used:

• You are a professional blogger. Create an outline for a blog post about [BLOG POST TITLE]
• Write a short and catchy introduction for this blog post about [BLOG POST TITLE]
• Write a paragraph for each subheading in the outline for this post.
• [PASTED IN TEXT] Expand this section into several paragraphs.
• Give me a bulleted list of [TOPIC]
• Give me a text prompt to make a relevant image for this blog post.
• Create a meta description for this blog post

5 Key Things I Did To Edit the ChatGPT Article (Don’t Miss This)

Here are five ways that I edited the ChatGPT-written article to rank it on Google:

1. Applied basic SEO (keyword in the title, first paragraph, image alt text, etc).
2. Created a custom AI image for the blog post using Jasper Art.
3. Formatted the article with clear subheadings and short paragraphs.
4. Answered the main question right up front. It’s a joke so I explained it in the introduction. People don’t want to wait.
5. I inserted some kind of eye-catching design every so often (bolded information, bullet points, a section change, a video, a quote, etc.)

How and Where I Published the GPT-Written Article

As you might have noticed, I published the article on this platform (the one you’re on right now — it rhymes with “Smeeteeum”).

Why?

Because the platform has a very high domain authority in the 90s.

In general, the higher the domain authority of a website, the easier and faster an article can rank on Google.

For comparison, one of my personal websites has a DR that fluctuates as high as 16 to 20. Not very high but topic-related articles on low-competition topics usually rank within a day or two.

Ok, back to the ChatGPT article.

I simply uploaded the article to the platform on one of my own publications (so I knew it would get published quickly) and added a short AI-written disclaimer.

Then I formatted the article for the platform and hit publish.

Fewer than 24 hours later, the article showed up on the first page of Google. Rankings are fickle, so it might still be there now (go ahead and check if you want) or the article might have dropped to some other ranking.

Who knows?

The key is that it ranked and did so fast. Hopefully, it will stick. I made a comprehensive and helpful article, so (artificial) fingers crossed.

Here’s How You Can Do It, Too

If you want to run the experiment yourself, here is what I suggest:

1. Choose a very low-competition keyword (the lower the better). Use the Google autocomplete method, free keyword tools, or paid ones.
2. Check the competition. Ideally, there is none. Make sure you know how to beat any other content that exists. Usually, for me, that means creating a longer and better piece of content.
3. Use my prompts (or your own). Ask ChatGPT to make an outline, write a blog post, expand sections, rewrite sections, give you bullet points, come up with examples, etc.
4. Copy and paste the article onto a blogging platform. This can be your own website or some other platform. Just make sure you add the disclaimer that the article is written by AI.
5. Format and edit the content. Each platform is different. Format the blog post for the platform. Follow the rules and guidelines. Also, add your own personality, experience, and self to the content. Even just a little. Add a relevant image to the blog post.
6. Publish the article. In the end, you must hit publish.

One More Thing

I’m editing a video I made of my process for generating this article. Once it’s ready, I’ll add it to this guide.

Update: Here’s the video!

YouTube video by Writing Secrets — Credit

Oh, and in case you were wondering, ChatGPT did not write this article.

This is me, right here, right now, reaching out to you, right there, connecting.

Unless you are reading this article on a hand-written piece of parchment someone transcribed for you with fire-seared lettering, we all used a bit of tech to get here.

Thank you deeply for taking the time to read this article.

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More articles you might like:

• I Tried Doing Keyword Research With AI Chatbots (Jasper & ChatGPT)
• How I Get ChatGPT and Jasper AI to Use My Keywords
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