Easy SEO Starter Plan for Google and ChatGPT SEO

If you’ve been struggling to get consistent traffic from Google or ChatGPT, here’s a secret: most people make SEO way harder than it needs to be. It’s not the overwhelming technical thing that you fear. It’s really not going to take that long to do. I know you probably don’t really want to learn SEO because that means you have to do SEO, but let’s be honest, you want the rewards that SEO will bring, and because of that, it’s worth doing the work. If you want your website to be visible online, show up on Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and wherever else your ideal customer searches so you can generate traffic, leads, and sales, then you need to do this. Follow my easy starter plan for Google and ChatGPT SEO, and your business will be more visible online. 

I’ll make SEO as easy to learn and implement as possible. I want you to get results, and my students and clients who do what I teach get good results. They see more traffic coming to their sites, they get leads from Google and ChatGPT, and their revenue goes up. So, let’s walk through what you need to do to get started with SEO today because I want you to succeed, too. 

Step 1: Be Strategic with Your Content Pillars

Before you do keyword research, write a blog post or create content for your website, it’s important to decide what you want to talk about on your website and blog. This applies to your podcast, too, if you have one.

You’re running a business, and you want to be very strategic in your approach to your content. You want to be sure the content you create is going to appeal to your ideal customer. If you get the wrong people to your website, you will get traffic, but they’re not going to stay, you won’t generate leads, and make sales.

I always teach my students and clients to choose four content topic areas or pillars that they’ll write about on their blog or cover on their podcast. It’s important to make sure these content topic areas speak to your ideal customers' needs and tie back to your business. You want to create content that will bring in the right customers. If you don’t think strategically about your customer, products, and service,s you may create a content plan and even do SEO and get lots of the wrong people to your site. I’ve seen it happen many times. It’s often the reason why someone sees an increase in traffic, but it doesn’t tie to an increase in their email list or sales. It’s because they are getting the wrong people to their site, people who aren’t interested in what they sell. 

Step 2: Brainstorm Content Topic Ideas

Once you’ve decided on your content pillars, brainstorm one topic for each one. You can use these four blog posts for your first month’s content. If you brainstorm more than one topic for each pillar (and you likely will), create a list on an Excel spreadsheet, Google doc, or whatever you like that you’ll be able to find in the future.

 I keep an Excel spreadsheet with topic ideas, pillars, and keyword search volume information, and use that when it’s time to plan my next batch of content. You might not have to take time for a brainstorming session next time if you have enough topics on your list.

The key to working ahead is to be organized. Create a filing system now for yourself on your computer. I have a main level content folder with subfolders for each type of content I create (blog, podcast, social), and then within those subfolders, I break them down by quarter and then ultimately by month. I keep the brainstorm list and content calendar in the main content folder because I use the same content across all channels. Spend a few minutes now setting up the structure, and you’ll be able to save yourself frustration and time in the future.

Step 3: Choose your Topics and Keywords

Once you know which topics you’re going to write about in your first four blog posts, you can start looking for keywords for each one.

It’s important to find keywords your site actually has a chance to rank for.

Look for:

• Keywords with some monthly search volume (don’t be afraid of ones with a low search volume, they’re normally easier to rank for and better for small businesses)

• Phrases your ideal client would actually type into Google or ask ChatGPT when searching for information

• Search intent: Think about what someone is looking for when they’re searching with this keyword. Is the blog post you’re planning on writing what they’d expect to find when using that keyword?

• Do you have a chance of ranking for this keyword? If the keyword is too competitive, you can do everything right from an SEO standpoint and still not rank.

Step 4: Create High-Quality Content That Answers Real Questions

Every blog post or page you create should answer a question, solve a problem, or be helpful to your reader. Google (and AI search tools) are looking for the most relevant, thought-out, and helpful content to share with their searchers. They don’t want to share thin content, pieces that have no real value. They want people to have their questions answered and feel that they got a good search result.

There’s increasing competition for search engine use, especially with AI search like ChatGPT, and the search engines are going to be even more particular about which sites they share.

You might have gotten away with creating so-so content a few years ago, but you won’t today. While we’re talking about it, let’s chat about AI content real quick too. Please don’t use ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever tool you like to write for you. The content that’s coming out of AI tools isn’t truly unique, nor is it of great quality. So many people are relying heavily on AI to create their content for them, and you know what, it all sounds the same. I’ve seen it and I’m sure you have too.

I use AI to help me think through what I should include in a post. I’ll ask it to think about my ideal customer and let me know what questions they’d have about the subject. I like to have AI create the outline for my blog posts, but I’ve personally found that I prefer to write them myself rather than have AI tools create a draft and edit that. I have created two custom GPTs for my students, and one of them will write the draft blog post for them. Some love that, but for me, it’s faster to write from an outline than to edit something else. You do whatever works best for you as long as you don’t publish a blog post straight from ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever other tool.

Step 4: Optimize for Both Google and AI Search

Once your blog post is written, it’s time to do the actual SEO work on it. You’ll want to optimize for both Google and AI search tools like ChatGPT. The good news is that our traditional Google SEO is important to AI search SEO. We only need to do a few more things for AI search.

To optimize your content for AI search:

• Use conversational language
• Include common questions your audience might ask
• Make your content easy to skim with headings, bullet points, and summaries

Doing both traditional SEO and formatting for AI SEO will help you be more visible no matter where your ideal customer searches. We’re seeing people start searches in ChatGPT and then go to Google for more in-depth information or to find someone in their local area. I have several students who are regularly getting clients from Google and ChatGPT searches combined.

Step 5: Track, Measure, and Adjust Your SEO Strategy

SEO results don’t happen overnight; they take a bit of time to see, but they work long term once they’re working. You’ll want to track a few things to see how your SEO is working. Use a keyword ranking tool to track your rankings for the keywords you’re using on your website pages or blog posts. As your rankings start to increase, you’ll generally start to see an increase in traffic to the page that is ranking for that keyword.

You may also start to see your site show up more often in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews. If you’re doing AI SEO, you’ll want to watch for increased visibility in these areas. The reporting tools are working on measuring AI visibility, but as of right now, it’s not available yet. You have to kind of watch it manually today. In the future, that will change. You can see how many people are coming to your site from ChatGPT, Perplexity, or other AI search tools by looking for them in your referring traffic report in Google Analytics.

You want to look at your website traffic and keyword ranking reports monthly and pay attention to the trends. Adjust your strategy as needed to maintain performance. Don’t just do SEO once and never look at it again if you want results. You do need to pay attention to how things are working.

Final Thoughts on Using My Google and ChatGPT SEO Plan 

You don’t have to spend months (or years) trying to figure out SEO on your own. It’s much easier with help and guidance.

Right now, start by choosing content pillars that tie to your business, then brainstorm ideas for a few blog posts to get you started. Choose the right keywords for each post, create helpful content for your ideal customer, and then optimize it for both traditional Google SEO and AI SEO, and track your results monthly.

This is what my most successful students and clients do. It’s really simple and straightforward, and if you do this, in about 6-12 months, you should start to see some great results for your work. I have seen students generate an 80% increase in traffic in under a year. Another one saw a 52% increase in her revenue in the first year. Another makes 5 figures from her SEO traffic every year. If you’re ready to get started with SEO today, take Simple SEO Content the next time it opens up for a live cohort, or consider my 1:1 elite marketing coaching, and we’ll work on this together.