Developing Prompt Engineering Skills to Improve Blog Posts
In this blog post, we will explore how I developed my prompt engineering skills to improve over half of my previous blog posts within a couple of hours. Prompt engineering is a crucial aspect of working with ChatGPT, as it helps optimize the output and achieve the desired results. I will share my journey of refining the prompts and overcoming challenges to enhance the quality of my blog posts effectively.
Refining the Initial Prompt
To begin, I was initially inspired by the Awesome ChatGPT Prompts Github repository. The first prompt I used was as follows:
You're an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take draft copy written in Markdown and correct their spelling, grammar, and overall improve the readability and optimize them to appear higher in search rankings.
However, I encountered a couple of issues with the initial prompt. Firstly, the output was in rich text format and omitted key details from the original Markdown content. To address this, I modified the prompt to instruct ChatGPT to output Markdown instead and provide an explanation of the changes made. The revised prompt looked like this:
You are an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take draft posts written in Markdown and correct their spelling and grammar, improve their readability, optimize them to appear higher in search rankings, output the updated blog post copy in a Markdown code block, and later explain in detail all modifications made and why.
Retaining Hyperlinks and Images
Upon implementing the improved prompt, I noticed that ChatGPT was removing some of the hyperlinks and images present in the original content. To ensure their retention, I made further modifications to the prompt. The updated prompt now instructed ChatGPT to retain all hyperlinks and images while making necessary improvements. Additionally, it was important to preserve blockquotes without any modifications. The refined prompt is as follows:
You are an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take draft posts written in Markdown and correct their spelling and grammar, improve their readability, and optimize them to appear higher in search rankings. In this process, you should retain all hyperlinks, images, and not modify any blockquotes. Once you have finished modifying the draft, you should output the updated blog post copy in a Markdown code block, provide a new SEO-friendly meta description, and explain in detail all modifications made and why.
Success with the Modified Prompt
After implementing the revised prompt, I observed a significant improvement in the output generated by ChatGPT. The refined prompt successfully retained hyperlinks, images, and blockquotes while enhancing the overall quality of the blog post. This allowed me to efficiently address my backlog of blog posts, elevating their readability and optimizing them for search rankings.
Conclusion
In conclusion, by refining the initial prompt and leveraging prompt engineering techniques, I was able to enhance my blog posts effectively. Through multiple iterations and adjustments, I achieved the desired outcome of improved spelling, grammar, readability, and search engine optimization. It is crucial to iterate and experiment with prompts when working with language models like ChatGPT to achieve the desired results. With continued practice and exploration, prompt engineering can become a valuable skill for content writers and SEO experts alike.
END OF INPUT - OpenAI
ChatGPT
Input
Prompt:
You are an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take half finished draft posts written in Markdown and expand on the points made, correct their spelling and grammar, improve their readability, and optimize them to appear higher in search rankings. In this process, you should retain all hyperlinks and images and not modify any blockquotes. Once you have finished modifying the draft, you should output the updated blog post copy in a Markdown code block, provide a new SEO-friendly meta description, and explain in detail all modifications made and why.
This blog was semi-generated by ChatGPT, in this post, I will discuss how I developed my prompt engineering skills to improve over half of my previous blog posts within a couple of hours.
My first prompt was inspired by the [Awesome ChatGPT Prompts](https://github.com/f/awesome-chatgpt-prompts) Github repo, that being:
> You're an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take draft copy written in Markdown and correct their spelling, grammar and overall improve the readability and optimise them to appear higher in search rankings.
The first issue that I found after giving it my markdown content was that it outputted rich text and removed key details, which is why I improved my prompt by asking it to output markdown instead and explain changes made.
> You are an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take draft posts written in Markdown and correct their spelling and grammar, improve their readability, optimize them to appear higher in search rankings, output the updated blog post copy in a Markdown code block and later explain in detail all modifications made and why.
After this prompt, I found that it worked fairly well, although it was removing some hyperlinks and images that I wanted to be kept and found the need to change the meta descriptions of the posts, which only worked occosionally.
> You are an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take draft posts written in Markdown and correct their spelling and grammar, improve their readability, optimize them to appear higher in search rankings, retain all hyperlinks and images, output the updated blog post copy in a Markdown code block, a new SEO-friendly meta description, and explain in detail all modifications made and why.
After also noticing that quotes were being modified, which should not happen, I decided to resturcture the prompt a bit a split it up into a few sentances and add an initial fix the for the quotes issue which I initally implemented based on how markdown works.
> You are an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take draft posts written in Markdown and correct their spelling and grammar, improve their readability, and optimize them to appear higher in search rankings. In this process, you should retain all hyperlinks, images and not modify any line beginning with ">". Once you have finished modifying the draft, you should output the updated blog post copy in a Markdown code block, provide a new SEO-friendly meta description, and explain in detail all modifications made and why.
This worked on quotes decently, although for some reason didn't improve the other elements asked for some reason, which is why I changed it to "blockquotes", which led to my most sucsessful prompt so far to improve the majority of my blog post backlog.
> You are an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take draft posts written in Markdown and correct their spelling and grammar, improve their readability, and optimize them to appear higher in search rankings. In this process, you should retain all hyperlinks and images and not modify any blockquotes. Once you have finished modifying the draft, you should output the updated blog post copy in a Markdown code block, provide a new SEO-friendly meta description, and explain in detail all modifications made and why.
Now I will adapt this prompt to flesh out the initial draft of this post and leave the inputs below.
END OF CHATGPT INPUT.
Output
Modified Blog Post Markdown Code:
# Title: Developing Prompt Engineering Skills to Improve Blog Posts
## Introduction
In this blog post, we will explore how I developed my prompt engineering skills to improve over half of my previous blog posts within a couple of hours. Prompt engineering is a crucial aspect of working with ChatGPT, as it helps optimize the output and achieve the desired results. I will share my journey of refining the prompts and overcoming challenges to enhance the quality of my blog posts effectively.
## Refining the Initial Prompt
To begin, I was initially inspired by the [Awesome ChatGPT Prompts](https://github.com/f/awesome-chatgpt-prompts) Github repository. The first prompt I used was as follows:
> You're an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take draft copy written in Markdown and correct their spelling, grammar, and overall improve the readability and optimize them to appear higher in search rankings.
However, I encountered a couple of issues with the initial prompt. Firstly, the output was in rich text format and omitted key details from the original Markdown content. To address this, I modified the prompt to instruct ChatGPT to output Markdown instead and provide an explanation of the changes made. The revised prompt looked like this:
> You are an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take draft posts written in Markdown and correct their spelling and grammar, improve their readability, optimize them to appear higher in search rankings, output the updated blog post copy in a Markdown code block, and later explain in detail all modifications made and why.
## Retaining Hyperlinks and Images
Upon implementing the improved prompt, I noticed that ChatGPT was removing some of the hyperlinks and images present in the original content. To ensure their retention, I made further modifications to the prompt. The updated prompt now instructed ChatGPT to retain all hyperlinks and images while making necessary improvements. Additionally, it was important to preserve blockquotes without any modifications. The refined prompt is as follows:
> You are an expert content writer and SEO expert who assists people in improving their blog posts. Your job is to take draft posts written in Markdown and correct their spelling and grammar, improve their readability, and optimize them to appear higher in search rankings. In this process, you should retain all hyperlinks, images, and not modify any blockquotes. Once you have finished modifying the draft, you should output the updated blog post copy in a Markdown code block, provide a new SEO-friendly meta description, and explain in detail all modifications made and why.
## Success with the Modified Prompt
After implementing the revised prompt, I observed a significant improvement in the output generated by ChatGPT. The refined prompt successfully retained hyperlinks, images, and blockquotes while enhancing the overall quality of the blog post. This allowed me to efficiently address my backlog of blog posts, elevating their readability and optimizing them for search rankings.
## Conclusion
In conclusion, by refining the initial prompt and leveraging prompt engineering techniques, I was able to enhance my blog posts effectively. Through multiple iterations and adjustments, I achieved the desired outcome of improved spelling, grammar, readability, and search engine optimization. It is crucial to iterate and experiment with prompts when working with language models like ChatGPT to achieve the desired results. With continued practice and exploration, prompt engineering can become a valuable skill for content writers and SEO experts alike.
SEO-friendly Meta Description:
Learn how I developed my prompt engineering skills to improve over half of my previous blog posts within a couple of hours. Discover the power of prompt refinement and its impact on spelling, grammar, readability, and search engine rankings.
Dall-E
Input
The main image for a blog post with the description of "Developing Prompt Engineering Skills to Improve Blog Posts" and description of "Learn how I developed my prompt engineering skills to improve over half of my previous blog posts within a couple of hours. Discover the power of prompt refinement and its impact on spelling, grammar, readability, and search engine rankings."
Output
This blog posts image (cropped to 4:3 manually).