This is Lesson #21 of the ANTIghostwriter course — a free, complete system for creating authentic content with AI assistance.
New here? Start from the full course overview.
Previous lesson: #20: Generate Custom Article Images with AI Tools
What You’ll Learn
Maximize your article’s discoverability with proper SEO metadata. In this bonus lesson, you’ll use a single ChatGPT prompt to generate meta titles, descriptions, URL slugs, Open Graph tags, excerpts, and optimized image filenames with alt text. All the elements you need for publishing on your blog or Medium — generated in seconds instead of written manually.
Time to complete: ~15 minutes per article
If you’re writing articles for your blog or Medium, you’ll need SEO elements. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means elements built into the code that will help your article rank better on a particular website. This could be your own site or a media platform you use for publication.
What is SEO
SEO elements provide information that lets search engines know what your article is about, what it contains, and most importantly, how it relates to the keywords and phrases that people search for.
How does this work? A person enters a search query… This already sounds somewhat outdated, because increasingly, I rarely use search engines anymore, including Google. I now ask artificial intelligence for everything, including current information using the search function available with almost every AI model. Nevertheless, the mechanism continues to work and will definitely remain relevant for search engines for some time. It’s also applicable to AI. Therefore, it would be shortsighted to ignore SEO if articles are one of your content formats.
Here’s how it works: you enter a query into Google. What you entered is called a key phrase or keyword (if it’s just one word).
For Google to provide an answer, it needs to understand which specific website and which specific page contains the answer to this query. If Google has indexed a page (recorded it in its database) that matches the key phrase someone just searched for, then it will display this page in the results.
And that’s exactly what we need to do to make our article show up for a specific keyword query. Ideally, this keyword query should be the foundation for writing the article. This approach is used when writing from an SEO perspective – creating websites that are promoted through search engines and then monetized through advertising.
In this case, the first step is finding key phrases that are popular on the internet or, conversely, ones that aren’t yet dominated by other websites. Then you write articles based on them.
Since we’re starting with ideas for writing articles, we’re doing SEO post-factum – adapting SEO to our already written article. You can also do it the other way around – experiment, as search engine keywords are an excellent content idea generator. You could first set up SEO by finding key phrases, and then ask Claude to include these key phrases in the article, which gives excellent SEO results.
I haven’t been focusing on this yet. I do everything post-factum because SEO isn’t my main promotion channel, though this might be a mistake. I might refine this approach later and supplement this course with a section that will teach you how to first establish SEO requirements and then write articles using those requirements.
If I do, I’ll update the course and remind you that you’ll still have access to it. I’m not promising to do this yet, but it’s a possibility.
Even this preliminary version of SEO will still help with promotion. It works well because I get views from people who find my site through organic search, so it produces good results.
Prompt
<SYSTEM>
You are an expert SEO strategist and human-sounding content optimizer. Your job is to extract and generate SEO metadata from full-length articles, ensuring that each output is optimized for discoverability while retaining the author's original tone and storytelling style. Your outputs are meant for both search engines and real humans — never robotic, never over-optimized.
</SYSTEM>
<CONTEXT>
The user will upload a file containing an article. You must read the full article and generate a complete set of SEO metadata based on the content and core theme. Your task is to:
- Identify the article's core idea and keyword focus
- Maintain the voice, tone, and rhythm of the original writing
- Apply best SEO practices (word count, phrasing, structure) to
each element
- Ensure everything feels natural, clear, and click-worthy
- Ensure not to exceed the required length limits
</CONTEXT>
<INSTRUCTIONS>
When the article file is provided:
1. Read the article in full.
2. Identify the main topic, angle, and tone of voice.
3. Generate the following SEO elements:
1. Meta Title (Title tag)
- 63 characters max
- Include the main keyword early
- Make it specific, clear, and compelling
- No ALL CAPS, fluff, or vague hooks
2. Meta Description — 140 characters max
- Summarize the article with a clear benefit or insight
- Include the main keyword + CTA (e.g., Learn, Discover,
Unlock)
- Do not use the first line of the article
3. URL Slug — max 60 characters or 5 – 6 words
- Use only lowercase, hyphens for spaces, no stop words
- Reflect the core idea in 3 – 6 simple words
- Example: mental-model-systems-thinking
4. Excerpt — 100 – 150 characters
- This is used in blog previews, feeds, and emails
- Write a punchy, curiosity-driven summary
- No links, HTML, or keyword stuffing
5. H1 (On-page Article Title) — up to 70 characters
- This is the headline seen on the page
- Should be different from the Meta Title, more reader-facing
- Include the main theme and use active language
6. Open Graph (OG) Title — up to 60 characters
- Shown when shared on social platforms
- You may reuse the Meta Title or punch it up emotionally
- Prioritize "share-worthiness" and intrigue
7. Open Graph (OG) Description — up to 110 characters
- Must hook curiosity or state a bold promise
- Can be more casual, bold, or surprising
- Do not reuse the Meta Description directly
8. Image Alt Text — up to 125 characters
- Describe what's visually in the article's main image
- Include the keyword if appropriate
- Avoid generic text like "photo" or "graphic"
9. Image Filename — up to 60 characters
- Use simple English keywords separated by hyphens
- No special characters, no uppercase
- Example: systems-thinking-model-illustration.jpg
10. Focus Keyphrase — ideally 2 – 5 words
- This is the primary phrase the article is targeting for SEO
- It must appear in the Meta Title, Meta Description, URL
Slug, H1, and article body
- Use a phrase that reflects actual search intent (e.g., what
people would Google)
- Avoid duplicating keyphrases used on other pages (to prevent
keyword cannibalization)
- Example: systems thinking model
</INSTRUCTIONS>
<OUTPUT_FORMAT>
Output the metadata in the plain-text format with the following
structure:
Focus Keyphrase: [your result]
Meta Title: [your result]
Meta Description: [your result]
URL Slug: [your result]
Excerpt: [your result]
H1 Title: [your result]
OG Title: [your result]
OG Description: [your result]
Image Alt Text: [your result]
Image Filename: [your result]
</OUTPUT_FORMAT>Description of the Prompt
When publishing an article on a website, we need to set several elements like titles, descriptions, and other metadata. If you’re publishing articles on your website, for example, in WordPress (a website creation engine), or on Medium, you’ll find various fields before publication that need to be filled in, such as meta title, meta description, and so on. This is exactly where you’ll need to insert our SEO elements.
This prompt allows you to formulate all these elements based on your article. I use ChatGPT for this. Using Claude here seems like overkill to me, as ChatGPT handles SEO tasks excellently.
All you need to do is send the prompt to ChatGPT and upload your article in PDF format to the same chat. The AI will analyze the article and compile all the SEO elements you’ll need for website publication.
From there, I simply copy and paste them into a separate document alongside the article, posts, scripts, and thread. It will already include the key phrase, titles, description, and so on.
There are also elements called Alt and FileName, which are intended for the article’s key image. You can even use them as an idea to generate an image.
I usually do the reverse. First I generate the image, because I typically have an idea of how I can illustrate it, and then I upload that same image to the chat and ask it to formulate the FileName and Alt. So you add an image to the PDF with your article, and the AI immediately forms relevant filename and alt text.
Alt is an alternative description of the image. If the image doesn’t load when the page loads, Alt will provide a description of what should have been in this image. That’s why it’s important to set it. ChatGPT recognizes images perfectly. It generates a FileName , which is the name of the file that describes your image, its content, and the corresponding text that will serve as Alt. Both elements will contain the key phrase and correspond to what’s shown in the image.
All this boring work that SEO specialists do, ChatGPT will do for us within our subscription fee. Use it and promote your articles with organic traffic too.
