Before you copy a prompt
A prompt is only as good as the facts you put into it and the check you do afterward. The prompts below are templates. Anything in square brackets is for you to fill in with real details. Without those, ChatGPT fills the gaps itself, and what it makes up can read as true.
Each prompt comes with a line on what to check. That line matters more than the prompt. If you want the background on why, our guide to using ChatGPT for SEO covers what it does well and where it fails. And if you reach the point where you want hundreds of pages and cannot check each one, a managed option may suit you better, which our overview of managed AI search help explains.
Two habits make every prompt below work better. First, paste in the page or the data you want it to work on, instead of describing it. Second, ask for one output at a time. A prompt that asks for a title, a description, an outline and a keyword plan at once gives four mediocre answers.
The shape of a good SEO prompt
Nearly every prompt here uses four parts.
Context. Who the business is, who the reader is, and what the page is for. One or two sentences.
Facts. The material it must use, pasted in. Add a line: use only these facts, and tell me if something is missing.
Task. One clear job, such as write three title options under 60 characters.
Format. How you want the answer: a table, a numbered list, plain text with no headings.
That structure is what separates a useful reply from a generic one. The facts line is the most important, because it narrows what the tool is allowed to say. It will still sometimes drift, which is why each prompt below ends with a check.
One more point on style. Do not ask it to write like an expert or to rank number one on Google. Those phrases add nothing, since it has no ranking ability to switch on. Say what you want the reader to be able to do after reading, which gives it something real to aim at.
Prompts 1 to 5: page copy
1. Title options
Prompt: "Here is the text of a page: [paste]. Write five title options under 60 characters. Each should say plainly what the page is and include the phrase [target phrase] once. No clickbait."
Check: Count characters. Confirm the title describes the page honestly, and that two pages on your site do not end up with the same title.
2. Meta descriptions
Prompt: "Using only the page text below, write a meta description of 150 to 160 characters that tells a searcher what they will find. End on a complete sentence. [paste]"
Check: Character count, and that nothing in it is missing from the page. A description that promises what the page does not contain hurts you.
3. Answer-first rewrite
Prompt: "Rewrite the opening paragraph of this page so the first sentence directly answers the question [question] in plain words. Keep every fact. Add none. [paste]"
Check: Compare facts before and after. This is the single most useful rewrite for pages you want an assistant to cite, because it gives a clean sentence to lift.
4. Collection or category intro
Prompt: "Write a 90 word introduction for a category page selling [products]. Use only these details: [materials, sizes, delivery, returns]. The first sentence should say who this category suits."
Check: Every detail against your product data. Delete any sentence that could appear on a competitor's page unchanged.
5. Image alt text
Prompt: "Here are descriptions of 10 product photos: [list]. Write alt text for each under 125 characters, describing what the image shows. Do not stuff keywords."
Check: Look at each image. Alt text should describe the picture, not guess at it.
Prompts 6 to 10: research and structure
6. Group a list of searches
Prompt: "Here are search phrases exported from Search Console: [paste up to 200]. Group them by what the searcher wants to do. Name each group in a few words. Put any that do not fit in an Other group."
Check: Skim each group for misplaced items. Do not rely on its sense of volume, since you already have the real impression counts in the export.
7. Question list from a topic
Prompt: "A buyer is choosing [type of business or product]. List 25 questions they would ask before deciding, in their own words, split into broad, specific and comparison questions."
Check: Cross-check against real searches, customer emails and what your staff are asked. Drop any nobody asks. This list also works as your tracking set for AI answers.
8. Page outline
Prompt: "Draft an outline for a page that answers [question] for [reader]. Each heading should be a question or a plain statement. Under each, list the facts from the material below that belong there. [paste your notes]"
Check: Does each section say something specific to your business? Fill the thin ones with a real example from your work.
9. FAQ draft
Prompt: "From the support emails below, write six FAQs with answers of 40 to 60 words. Use only facts stated in the emails or in my policy text. [paste]"
Check: Policy details, such as time frames and prices, against your actual policy. This is a place where made-up details cause refunds. See FAQ schema if you plan to mark the section up.
10. Competing page gap check
Prompt: "Here is my page and the text of a page that ranks for the same question. List topics the other page covers that mine does not, and topics mine covers that it does not. Do not suggest copying anything."
Check: Judge each gap yourself. Add only what is true and useful for your reader.
Prompts 11 to 15: technical and measurement
11. Internal link suggestions
Prompt: "Here is a list of page titles and addresses on my site: [paste]. For the page [title], suggest five other pages it should link to, with the sentence in my page where each link would sit naturally. Use only pages in the list."
Check: The addresses exist and the sentence reads naturally. Our guide to internal linking explains how to tell a helpful link from a forced one.
12. Structured data draft
Prompt: "Write JSON-LD markup for a local business using only these details: [name, address, hours, phone, services]. Do not add ratings or fields I did not provide."
Check: Paste it into Google's Rich Results Test. Confirm every field matches reality. Invented review ratings in markup break Google's rules.
13. Redirect map pattern
Prompt: "I am moving from addresses like [old pattern] to [new pattern]. Write a rule or formula to convert a list of old addresses to new ones, and explain it step by step."
Check: Test five addresses by hand, then the whole list in a spreadsheet, then open a sample of the results. A wrong redirect pattern can break many pages at once.
14. Explain an audit finding
Prompt: "An SEO audit says: [paste the finding]. Explain in plain words what it means, whether it is likely to matter for a site of my size, and how I would fix it on [platform]."
Check: The fix steps against your platform's official help pages. Instructions for one platform are often wrongly applied to another.
15. Summarize AI answers you collected
Prompt: "Here are the answers an AI assistant gave to 20 questions: [paste]. List each business named, how many times, and the reason given for naming it. Quote the wording."
Check: Spot-check five rows against the raw text. This is a handy way to read results from the manual routine in our page on tracking AI Overviews.
What no prompt will fix
It is tempting to think a cleverer prompt is the missing piece. It rarely is. Three limits are worth stating.
A prompt cannot add facts you did not supply. If your page has nothing specific to say, no prompt will make it say something real. The fix is to find the specifics: a measured result, a detail from a job, the real answer your staff give on the phone.
A prompt cannot make other sites speak well of you. When an assistant decides which business to name, it leans on what independent sources say. No wording on your own pages changes that.
A prompt cannot replace the check. The reply is a draft. A named person should read it before anything goes live.
If you want to see how the writing side connects to getting named, read our guide on writing for LLMs. LLM stands for large language model, the kind of software behind ChatGPT. The page covers what makes a paragraph easy for an assistant to quote.
A final tip is to keep a log. Save the prompts that worked, with the facts you gave and what you had to correct. After a month you have your own playbook, better than any list online, because it reflects your business and your check.
Follow-up prompts that make every reply safer
The first reply is a draft. These short follow-ups, used after nearly any prompt above, reduce the chance that something wrong slips through.
List your assumptions. "List every assumption you made that was not stated in the facts I gave you." This brings out the invented details so you can delete them.
Mark what is unverified. "Which statements in your answer would a reader need to confirm from another source?" It will not catch everything, but it often flags the riskiest claims.
Shorten it. "Cut this by a third without losing any fact." Padding is the most common flaw in a first draft.
Make it specific. "Replace every general statement with a specific one from the facts, or delete it."
Play the skeptic. "What would a doubtful customer ask after reading this that the page does not answer?" This is a good source of extra FAQ questions.
These do not replace your own check. They shorten it by pointing you at the weak spots first.
Keep a prompt log
The people who get the most from prompts are the ones who keep notes. A simple log, in a spreadsheet or a document, pays for itself within a month.
For each prompt that gave a good result, save four things: the prompt text with the blanks marked, the kind of facts you supplied, what you had to correct afterward and how long the whole loop took. After ten entries you will see patterns. Perhaps it always invents delivery times, or it keeps writing introductions that start with a question. Those patterns become standing instructions you add to the top of every prompt, such as never state a time frame unless it appears in the facts.
The log also tells you which jobs are worth giving to the tool. If a prompt consistently needs 20 minutes of correction to save 10 minutes of writing, drop it and do that job by hand.
Finally, note the date when you publish something produced this way. A month later, check how the page is doing, using the questions it was meant to answer. That closes the loop between a prompt and a result, and it is the only way to find out which of these prompts is worth your time. Our page on AI SEO agents shows what changes when software runs that loop for you.
How RunOctopus handles this
Prompts help one page at a time. RunOctopus runs the whole loop for you, from research to published pages.
RunOctopus is a done-for-you service. Its AI, Ollie, researches your business, then writes and publishes pages directly on your own website. A team plans, writes, reviews and publishes alongside Ollie. It works with Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce and Wix.
There is nothing to install, nothing to approve, nothing to upload and nothing to schedule. You do not approve each page. Pages go live on their own. In the first week you get 8 long-form articles, 6 pages and a custom interactive tool built for your niche. After that it is 175+ pieces of content a month, written, published and linked. You also get reports on where ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini name your business.
There is a 90-day promise: more visibility on Google and in AI answers within 90 days, measured against the 90 days before you joined, or every dollar back. Paste your address into the free site read and Ollie reads the site and shows the plan. No account, no call.