A guide to SEO-friendly content writing with Semrush

Are you thriving to build a strong online presence? Do you aim to improve your site visibility and traffic volume? If yes, then here are two amazing SEO-friendly content writing tools by Semrush. Before diving into the details, let’s get a brief about what is SEO writing.

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Ranking on Google needs a perfect amalgamation of high-quality content and state-of-the-art on-page SEO optimization. 

Thus, your content should not be confined to writing. You need to walk a step ahead and go for “SEO writing”.

SEO content writing is about creating and optimizing content with the goal to rank it higher on Google. To help you with this, Semrush has come up with the “SEO Writing Assistant” and “SEO content template” tools. 

This article covers the versatile functions and features that these tools have to offer for your content to appear on the topmost pages of the search engine.

Semrush SEO Content Template – An overview

The Semrush SEO content template is a simple tool that works on a single input from your side. You just need to enter your target keywords and the tool will analyze the top 10 pages (competitors) that rank higher on Google for the keyword. And within no time, you get the SEO recommendations specific to your blog. These recommendations altogether make a content template that you can readily use to write SEO-friendly content.

Guide to using the SEO Content Template tool

Under the content marketing section of Semrush, you can find the Semrush SEO content template tool. The tool consists of 3 main sections that you need for operation:

1. The section to enter target keywords (You can add one or more keywords)
2. The section to choose the target country
3. The button to create an SEO template

An additional section below this panel is to access your past SEO templates using the history tab of the Semrush SEO content template tool that appears right below the search tab.

Once you enter the target keyword and choose the target country, click on the “Create SEO template button”. The tool will display a complete SEO guide to writing your article. You can view it on the Semrush window or export the template to fit into your Word/google doc file.

Features of the Semrush SEO content template tool

Semrush SEO content template tool gives a detailed SEO guide for curating your content. Here are the features offered by the tool:

1. The list of top 10 competitors in your niche:

The tool identifies the top 10 rivals according to your keyword inputs. The results have links to these sites that can help you access their content and plan yours accordingly.

2. Key SEO recommendations:

The content recommendations also include a guide for semantically related words (that mean the same as target keywords), useful backlinks, the readability score of the rivals’ content, and their text length. This can give you an idea about how to write SEO-friendly content/blog.

3. Usage of keywords:

Apart from the keywords, it is also important to know about the usage of keywords. Hence, Semrush also displays the pattern of accommodation of keywords by your competitors.

4. Some basic recommendations for SEO-friendly content:

The tool also provides you with guidelines regarding the page title, meta description, heading tags, and text formats that can enhance the SEO quality of your content.

Pros of using Semrush SEO content template

• The content template can help you generate winning content 
• Improves your site’s visibility and traffic volume with accurate SEO guidelines
• Saves the time that goes into manually optimizing the content for SEO
• Presents 10 competitors that rank for your target keywords within no time

SEO Content Template Pricing

You can generate 800 SEO content templates by subscribing to the Guru ($229.95/month) plan and 2000 templates by purchasing the Business ($449.95/month) plan of Semrush.

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant (SWA)

Once you get the SEO content template, the next step is to create and optimize your content. Several factors, right from readability, searchability, and keyword placement to the tone of the content, contribute to SEO-friendly content.

It is also available as a Google document add-on/chrome extension. If you are using WordPress, you can also download SWA as a WordPress plug-in. Here are the details of this versatile content checker offered by Semrush:

Guide to using SWA for SEO content writing

The Semrush SWA has a separate space for pasting your content where you can check it for SEO. You can also download the Google Chrome extension or WordPress Plug-in for real-time content checking. Here are the steps to install the plug-in:

1. Under the content marketing panel, click on the SEO Writing Assistant
2. If you want to use the in-app content checker, click on the “Get recommendation button”
3. To download the SEO writing assistant Chrome extension, click on “Get add-on for Google Docs”. For WordPress add-on click on “Get add-on for WordPress”.
4. You can also find the SWA extension on Google Workspace Marketplace

Locating an SEO-Writing Assistant

After installing the extension, you can locate the SWA tool under the “Add-on” tab of Google documents. While using WordPress, you can find SWA in the “Installed plug-in” section. Activate the tool and it will start working on every content that you put up on your page.

Working with SWA 

Step-1: Type in the target keywords that you want to rank for

Step-2: Fill in the details for the target audience (Country, state, region, and language)

Step-3: Choose from the desktop and phone options for which you want to optimize the content

Step-4: Click on the “Get recommendations” button and the tool will display SEO-content writing guidelines for your write-up

Interpreting the results

The total score given by the SWA for any content ranges from 1-10, where 10 represents good quality SEO content. The results panel shows you particular metrics that affect your scores. Clicking on any one of them will give you suggestions regarding that particular component.

Features of Semrush SEO-writing assistant

Semrush SEO-writing assistant provides exceptional guidelines for SEO optimization of your content. The features it has to offer are as follows:

1. Readability analysis:

Readability is the ease with which a reader can read and comprehend the content. The tool analyzes some essential components of readability, i.e. word count and issues with the title as well as the content. You can also know about the reading time for your content using this feature. The readability scoring can be manually adjusted using the pen tool as per your requirements.

2. SEO analysis:

SEO analysis covers a wide spectrum of factors, ranging from keywords to backlinks and content titles. The Semrush SEO-writing assistant analyzes almost all of these factors and gives suggestions about the additional keywords and attributes (images, snippets, videos, graphics, etc.) that can be added to make the content SEO-friendly.

It also addresses the issues with the content titles as well as links. You can also download the extended SEO suggestions in the form of an SEO content template through the download option in this section.

3. Originality:

Originality is basically a measure for checking plagiarism in the content. The tool determines overall plagiarism, along with the count of copied words in the content. If the percentage of copied words is higher than per the tool, you can work on the content and make it more unique. It also provides the option to recheck the updated content.

4. The tone of voice:

This feature of SWA can gauge the tone of the content. It ranges from casual to formal, depending on the choice of words, rhythm, and use of sentences. The tool shows a pointer that indicates the tone of your content. You can also select the tone that you want to add to the content and get suggestions on updating the content accordingly.

Pros of using SEO-writing Assistant by Semrush

• Quick guidelines for on-page SEO optimization of the content
• The tool also displays additional suggestions for keywords
• Managing the tone of your content is possible using this tool
• The optimization allows you to upload highly competitive content that increases your traffic volume and strengthens your online presence

Cons of using SEO-writing Assistant by Semrush

• The tool charges one SEO idea unit every time you add a target keyword. 
• Changing the target keywords in SEO writing assistant to generate a new template can cost you additional SEO idea units
• The SEO-writing assistant also has some limits regarding the plagiarism checker tool

SEO Writing Assistant Pricing

You can avail yourself of 5 plagiarism checks under the Guru plan and 10 checks under the Business plan of Semrush.

Conclusion

Thus, Semrush provides state-of-the-art SEO content writing tools. The SEO-content templates are based on thorough research done on the topmost sites on Google. You can use these templates to write an SEO-friendly article/ content.

Another tool is the SEO-writing assistant which checks the readability, SEO, originality, and tone of voice of the content. Optimizing the content according to the suggestions can also increase the chances of ranking higher on search engines.

Frequently asked questions about Semrush Content Template and SEO-writing assistant tools