SEO-friendly content is easily searchable online, drives relevant traffic, brings value to your audience, and as a result improves your website’s overall visibility.
If you manage a group of copywriters or work with freelance writers who are not strong at SEO and you’re responsible for SEO performance of your content, Semrush will give you a hand:
- SEO Content Template will ease your briefing process, and
- SEO Writing Assistant will help you to check how SEO-friendly copy is to adjust it before publishing.
Using the tools, you’ll get actionable recommendations for your writers on how to create optimized content from scratch and save your own time: a brief is generated automatically and is presented on a single Doc page when exported, while you can check how optimized copy is in a Google doc and get tips on how to adjust it step by step.
How can this be done?
- First, go to SEO Content Template, type a keyword or a group of keywords you want to focus your article on, select your location (up to city level) and device type.
- Click on the ‘Export to Doc’ button, download the template, and send it to your writer.
- When you receive a draft from your writer, create it as a Google doc.
- Install the SEO Writing Assistant add-on to your Google Docs using Google Workspace Marketplace. You can also add it to your Microsoft Word using Microsoft AppSource. Another option is to install it as a WordPress plugin or access the tool directly in Semrush interface.
- Run the add-on for the same keywords and click on the ‘Get recommendations’ button.
- Check your copy’s overall score. The higher it is, the less editing work you need to do. The score is a real-time metric, which is based on all the copy’s characteristics tracked by the add-on.
- Get tips on improving SEO for this copy: make sure that semantically related keywords are added (if not, add them to your text). Make sure they don’t overuse your keywords (remove keywords if there’re too many of them). Add alt attributes to images. Ensure your links are not broken (change them). Make sure you use your target keywords in the title.
- Adjust your copy’s readability to readers’ expectations: check the readability score - the lower the score is, the more difficult your text will be. Check if the word count is okay (write more text or cut down the excessive text). Make sure the title is present and has enough words. Make sure your text is easy to read: rewrite hard-to-read sentences identified by the tool. Replace excessively complex words and make sure that all paragraphs are properly sized (break them down).
- Make sure your copy is original: check the total percentage of copied sentences in your text and identify original sources of content from across the internet. Check the sources with similar text and find the words that are related, similar, or identical. Make sure you rewrite those sentences or exclude some parts entirely. To simplify this process, use the Rephraser feature.
- Ensure your tone of voice stays consistent: detect the most casual and most formal sentences that stand out from the overall text and modify them.
- Use the Rephraser tool to rewrite bits of text from your articles to improve the writing quality and repurpose your existing content.
Next Steps
Before you publish the copy, go back to the SEO Content Template once again and add a video to your page if the tool suggests doing so. If your competitors feature a video, this may indicate that your target audience will expect one for your keyword.
When you’ve finished improving your article, publish it.
Try to acquire backlinks from the domains listed—when your copy is published, reach out to them and persuade them to add a link to your page.