LLM’s like Claude and ChatGPT are very good at SEO related information – it is like the new SEO super power. They have clearly been trained on a wealth of information across the web, including SEO best practices, web development concepts, marketing techniques, and user behavior trends. As an LLM – it is part-n-parcel a wordsmith. This is especially important to remember as we move from keyword phrase optimization queries (search engines) to conversational prompt optimizing (Chatbots). Voice query optimization is extremely important going forward.

What can these things really do for you that isn’t writing content? Lets start with some analysis of your existing SEO collateral.

12 Files That Need a ChatGPT SEO Tune Up

1. .htaccess : drop it into ChatGPT and ask it to “analyze and recommend changes for this .htaccess file:“. I’ve done this on five sites and all five came back with really good recommendations. It also found several errors and typos.
2. robots.txt : You can analyze crawl directives for clarity and the LLM can flag areas where stuff might be blocked you didn’t intend. Tip, feed it a listing from your directory tree. Or an image of a Linux ” tree -d” command and ask it to compare to your robots.txt.



3. sitemap.xml: Check for broken links, identify missing priority pages, and ensure structure matches the site’s SEO priorities.



4. schema markup : An LLM can validate schema against best practices, suggest enhancements. It will also find missing types like FAQs, product data, or reviews, and flag potential errors. It works with either HTML or JSON based files.
5. HTML : Drop your home page into ChatGPT and grab a towel cuz you’re gonna cry. ChatGPT can be vociferous in its critique of HTML. Of major importance, is to have a look at the head section of your site for issues. Then ask it about improving your click-through-rate.
6. SubPages : Have ChatGPT review for readablity, SEO-Conversational-Language, content gaps, missing, or excessive keywords. It will suggest optimization opportunities. Ask it how to target featured snippets or show up in an LLM search engine.
7. Analytics Files : Drop log files, or Google Search Console Data Exports into an LLM and ask it about click through rates, conversions, average position for queries, or flag anomalies in the data that suggest needed action.
8. Backlink Data Profiles : Dump a Majestic, Moz, aHrefs, or SemRush link list into an LLM and ask it review anchor text, identify low-quality or toxic backlinks, and recommend links to disavow or outreach targets for link-building.
9. User Behavior Files and Metrics : Microsoft Clarity or Google Analytics data exports are great to spot pages with high bounce rates or low average time on page, identify paths with high drop-off rates, and suggest UX/content improvements based on user behavior.
10. Competitor Content : Here we go now, things like webpage Exports or HTML Snapshots. Compare keyword usage, assess content depth, and identify content gaps where competitors might have stronger coverage. What other creative ideas are there here?
11. Product or Review Feeds : Drop in your RSS or XML feed for review of product data for completeness, identify missing attributes (like reviews, ratings, or pricing), and/or suggest enhancements that can improve search visibility. Drop in a CSV or JSON file.
12. Internal Linking Structure : grab a CSV Export from a site crawler and have an LLM look for logcial flow and link distribution. They can detect isolated pages and a LLM can recommend key areas to add some more internal links too.

bonus 13: Author Content Style Guides : Make sure all this aligns with your SEO strategy. You can spot clusters based keyword priorities. It is also good to spot seasonal changes where you might want to prune some dated content.

Which LLM?

I’ve compared a multitude of SEO files with the different LLM’s, and in general I have found them to be quite different in results and quality. Lets take for example my huge .htaccess file from WebmasterWorld. It is a 350 line beast full of redirects, updates, bot blockers, file blockers built up over 25 years.

• ChatGPT 401Preview: is the winner here. It comments specifically about issues and problems that can be corrected. ChatGPT gladly pumps out specific code changes with explanations and recommended changes.

  

  ChatGPT was smooth as silk for this particular task: “here’s the problems, here’s the code, here’s why“, which is exactly what you need to make these types of changes.

• Google Gemini: While very thorough, it wants to report on the files contents (which is irrelevant – I know what the file is and does), but it did offer some good recommendations, but offered no suggested code changes. Even prompting it several more times did not produce a usable response.

  

• Claude : Was very thorough on .htaccess analysis. Going so far as to open its canvas window and produce an updated .htaccess.

  

  So, it comes down to style differences for me. Claude wanted to do the work for me. It did comment about the changes it made. For example “Increased HSTS max-age to 2 years (63072000 seconds)”, but it didn’t tell me why that was. I had to ask several follow up prompts to understand it. Ultimately, I implemented every change Claude recommended. However, it did not find the mistake of a misplaced colon, that ChatGPT did.

I think the only final suggestion is to use these different models to cross check each others work.

Do some of the above, and it can’t help but increase the quality of your SEO work.

Brett Tabke

As the CEO and founder of Pubcon Inc., Brett Tabke has been instrumental in shaping the landscape of online marketing and search engine optimization. His journey in the computer industry has spanned over three decades and has made him a pioneering force behind digital evolution. Full Bio
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