SEMRush SEO Content Template & SEO Writing Assistant Tutorial

SEO Content Template & SEO Writing Assistant Tutorial

I’m just going over the webinar that I’ve done recently, which was on both SEO content template and the SEO writing assistant, which I have done with Fabrizio Balladini. I’m just going to go over my part of the webinar again, just so that you can understand fully how the tool works, and what the tools actually do.

semrush seo content template

First thing’s first, where do you find that tool? As always, with SEMrush, in the top left-hand corner, you’ve got All Tools, and then you can break that down into Content Marketing Kit. And once you break that down, you’ll be able to see the SEO Content Template and the SEO Writing Assistant are both here. I’m just going to click on the SEO Content Template, and you can see exactly what the tool does and how it works.

how to create seo friendly content semrush

The first thing it tells you what the tool does. “We analyze your rivals’ content and give you ideas to writing winning optimized content.” You enter the keywords you want to target. SEMrush will analyze the content on the top 10 ranking pages, and it will give you recommendations on how to create SEO-friendly content. So it’s not something that’s super hard to do.

semrush content analyzer export

Now, here you can enter your target keywords. And here, you can select the correct database. So make sure if you’re in the UK and whatever else, then you select all the correct options, or change them to suit yourself.

semrush content marketing

I’ve already got a pre-existing template here, where I’ve just gone for the keyword, SEO Glasgow because that’s where I’m based and stuff like that.

It will give you recommendations, which this big green button you can see below which will allow you to export them to a document if you wanted to export those to show to a client.

semrush topic research

The analysis is based on the top 10 rivals, which lists all the top 10 rivals there. And basically what SEMrush does is give you key recommendations. So it’s given me semantically related keywords, so we’ve got SEO company, SEO consultants, Glasgow-based SEO services, all that kind of stuff.

seo content template semrush

It’s also given me a place to try and acquire backlinks from as well. So you’ve got here your number of different well-known websites such as Screaming Frog, Backlinko, Bruce Clay etc. and there are some other websites in there as well, which I’m assuming that the top 10 rivals have got links from as well, which is why SEMrush is telling me to potentially get those links too.

Average readability score of the top 10 URLs is 54. And the recommended text length is 558 words. Now, these are kind of just guides. Now there’s no certain guideline you have to have  a specific amount of keywords, a specific amount of words to rank well, but this is all just based on what the competition’s got and it’s great to use as a guide.

semrush content template

It’s also got some basic recommendations here as well, so it’s telling me to add at least one of my target keywords to the title tag. Don’t use each target keyword more than one time, and optimal title tag length, 55 characters. Meta description, 160 characters. It’s also telling me to use the keyword in the header tag, and within the text at least one time as well.

Lots of people on the webinar are going to say, “How many times do you need to have the keyword within a bit of content?” You want to write your content so that it looks good for the customers, but you also have to add keywords with a bit of common sense there as well. You can’t expect Google to just assume what the keyword’s going to be. You have to show it what the keyword’s going to be, and then you use other semantically related keywords as well.

seo content template review

They’ve also got this part here, Real-Time Content Check. And this is where it’s going to check the content on my SEO Glasgow page. Now, I don’t actually have an SEO Glasgow page, it’s my home page, I don’t really do client work, so it’s not something I focus on in a huge way. But it’s given me a low score, 3.8 out of 10, which I’d fully expect because my targeting on that page is not what I want it to be. Readability it’s given me 54, and the target’s 53.9, so I’m probably quite good in terms of the readability score.

seo content template tutorial

Your score definitions are here, very difficult to read if it’s a college graduate stuff. Understood by university graduates, it’s a lot of terminology relating to that kind of level of education. You probably want something in the middle here. Fairly easy to read or whatever.

Mine’s is apparently fairly difficult to read. Probably because I’m talking about SEO and I’m using words that general people might not want to understand. But that is the readability score, again just a guide. I’ve only used 407 words on that page. Don’t really target the keywords. I’ve not got any kind of recommended keywords in there.

It’s telling me the tone of voice is fairly formal and stuff like that as well, so that is what the Real Time Content Audit is, it gives you a score and it gives you a readability score and how many words are in there, and various other things.

content template guide

You can also set a writing task here as well. You can also create a Google document, as long as you’ve got the add-on and everything installed, and you can create a writing task, and make sure that you’re writing some SEO-friendly content which we’ll go onto in a minute.

That is what the SEO Content Template is in a nutshell. There’s no other major special tricks or anything that it does. It just gives you a good overall comparison compared to the other competitors in terms of recommended keywords, semantically related keywords, readability, the volume of words on a page and stuff like that. So it’s giving you good basics there.

On the top right hand side here, if you feel that there’s anything else that this tool can do, you can send feedback into SEMrush if you feel it could do this, that or the next thing. So that is what the SEO Content Template does. It does go hand-in-hand with the SEO Writing Assistant.

semrush seo writing assistant

You’ve got two options for the SEO Writing Assistant, and it basically is a tool that allows you to follow the best recommendations. You can get an add-on for Google Documents or you can get an add-on for WordPress, whatever suits you.

My recent template, I’m just going to go in here and check, I can send that to Google Docs, and I’ve got the add-on already installed.

Now basically what can happen here, is I can open the Google Document just by pressing the button. I can copy and paste the content in here.

seo writing assistant

Then I can click on the add-ons button here. And it’s going to give me the SEO Writing Assistant, and I’m going to click Show. It’s going to give me this option on the right-hand side, which it’s going to tell me that the overall score of this particular piece of content on the Google Document.

semrush topic research

 

As you can see it’s showing the same information as the tool within SEMRush. Meaning you’ve always got access to it throughout any content you write.

It’s given me recommendations just as the SEO Content Template does, but you can use Google Docs, or you can get the WordPress plugin. So it’s quite a cool feature to have.

On the right-hand side here as well, we’ve got plagiarism, so check your text for plagiarized content, and you do have to log into your SEMrush account to check that out, which I’m going to do. Improve. So as you can see it’s given me a check there just now. Just takes a second to check, it shouldn’t be too long given that it’s not a huge amount of content.

So if you’re outsourcing your content to someone, they give you it on a Google Doc, then you can go in here and use the SEO Writing Assistant, or get them to use the SEO Writing Assistant, and they can do all of these checks themselves, before it comes to you for adding to a website. So that’s what the plagiarism checker does. It’s taking a bit of time there to load, but the SEO Writing Assistant basically is a guide as to what you can or what you should be writing. Now, there’s a lot of other things we can talk about in terms of Writing Assistant, and a lot of other ways that you can use the tool to benefit yourself.

seo writing assistant wordpress

A lot of these content tools then go hand-in-hand with topic research and stuff like that as well, so you’ll use the Topic Research and all the SEMrush tools do kind of work hand-in-hand as well, but in terms of this tutorial, that is what the SEO Content Template is, and that’s what the SEO Writing Assistant is, and you can get the add-on. Just click on the blue buttons here, get the add-on for Google Docs or get the add-on for WordPress, and you can download it. It’s very easy to do, very easy to install.

So that is the tools in a nutshell, and hopefully, that gives you an overview of how to use them. If you’ve got any questions, do give get in touch with SEMrush or myself and we’ll be more than happy to talk you through anything that you’re struggling with.

author avatar
Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years. In this time I have gained extensive knowledge in the subject of SEO and have build up a wealth of experience in SEO and other digital marketing services.

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Craig Campbell

I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.

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