You would certainly agree with me that, writing blog posts that rank higher is practically difficult than ever before. This is because, you do not only have to write site content; but you also have to look at SEO for blog posts, topic competition, back-links and keeping your readers captivated with quality content.
And according to a study by ahrefs, over 1 billion web pages or nearly 90.63% of published content; get zero organic traffic from Google. However, there is a way to tap in the traffic from search.
In this post, I will share with you two key Semrush content marketing tools that I had the privilege to use in our content strategy. Plus, tips on how to write readable and SEO-friendly posts for more organic traffic every time. Exciting right?
But first of all…
What is SEO-friendly content?
This is simply, website content created in a structured way for search engines to rank it higher – than similar content on the same or related topic.
Search engine optimization is very important; because it enables search engines like Google to organically rank your webpages and posts higher; Rather, than relying on advertising to bring in traffic.
Easy how to: SEO for Blog Posts – step-by-step
To simplify your copy writing and on-page SEO work, which usually demand hours. There are content marketing platforms that most marketers use. These platforms make it easy to write content around proven SEO guidelines that work for both users and search engines. They include: Semrush, Moz, Similarweb, etc. For now we will focus on Semrush.
You can learn more on how Semrush compares with Similarweb here.
What is Semrush?
Semrush is a handy, all-in-one tool suite for marketing insights, SEO, PPC, SMM, Keyword Research, Competitive Research, Campaign Management and Content Marketing.
To combat low traffic, Semrush offers a Content Marketing toolkit for writing good SEO-friendly blog posts.
Of course, when drafting a new blog post, most bloggers just start writing without much research. Which is a bad practice on its own. Personally, the Semrush Content Marketing toolkit is my number one go-to tool for all my topic data collection. It is a tool that I have been using for most of my articles. Together with the ‘steps’ below whenever.
6 tips on how to write SEO-friendly content
- Find target audience
- Perform keyword research
- Do topic research
- Create an SEO content template
- Write and analyze content
Now, let us take a look at the steps in more detail.
1. Find target audience
Identifying and understanding your target audience should be your top priority before you start writing. This helps with staying consistent and guides your blogging strategy. Basically, this applies to every content marketer, no matter what industry your blog’s primary audience is.
The most effective way to target your audience at a personal level, is by using buyer personas. These are their demographics, psychographics, professional status and buying behaviors.
2. Keyword research
Based on your identified target audience, you can now find out the type of content suited for them. Although, keyword research can be a bit challenging to begin with; your main objective here, is to simplify find a keyword or key phrase to optimize content with for search engines.
For keyword analysis, I recommend you to use Semrush’s Keyword Magic and Keyword Overview tools. These tools offer comprehensive insights such as keyword difficult, related keywords, questions and other valuable keyword metrics.
Semrush Keyword Magic Tool
To get started with your research, choose your article’s primary keyword or key-phrase; plug it into the keyword research tool, pick a location and then Search. As an example, I will use ‘content marketing’.
Filter through the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool results by volume, question, related keywords, and other metrics depending on your goal.
Once you find a keyword that works for you, click on it for more insights in keyword overview.
The Keyword Overview tool, gives you more detailed insights. From related keywords, questions, SERP and keyword difficult. So, when you’re writing with SEO in mind, you can further use related keywords to optimize your content.
As you can see from above, since our keyword ‘content marketing’ has a very high difficulty percentage. We can either look at it’s variations and related terms for one which is easy to rank.
3. Topic research
At this point, it’s time to expand your topic ideas based on existing information. The best part is, Semrush has a dedicated Topic Research tool. Which shows you existing topic related headlines and questions.
You can sort through these cards to find questions, existing articles and trending topics from your competitor’s site. The headline are mostly best performing content ideas with a first page dominance in search.
4. SEO Content Template
Staying on top of your competition online; is a task that demands consistent creation of high-quality content that ranks high in Google search. But how can you achieve this everytime you write a piece?
This is where Semrush’s SEO Content Template comes in.
Within a few clicks, Semrush allows you to generate a blog template. That helps you create blog content or pages that are optimized for search engines.
The template is mainly an analysis of top 10 pages in Google search, based on your target keyword. It gives you recommendations on how to optimize; or what to include in your article to be among your top 10 rivals.
The generated template, groups the recommendations into back-links to aquire, text length, semantically related keywords to include and more.
Semrush Content Template parts
- Top 10 Pages rivals – A list of actual content from the Google top 10 rivals for your target keywords.
- Key Recommendations – shows you what you need to do in order to beat your top 10 rivals on Google. These recommendations are categorized into semantically related keywords, readability score and text length and backlinks.
- Basic Recommendations – the SEO Content Template basic recommendations. Are just reminders on how to optimize your page title, meta description and headings around your main keyword.
5. Write and Analyze content
Once you start writing, you can use the SEO Writing Assistant (SWA) which allows you to easily check your article’s SEO potential; readability, Tone of voice and originality of the content as you write.
Semrush makes it even easier for you. See how you can Grow your organic traffic with SEO Writing Assistant Tool. Via its 7-day free trial here.
Benefits of SEO-friendly content
Creating SEO-friendly content offers several benefits:
- Enhanced User Engagement: SEO-friendly content tends to be well-written, structured, and relevant to users. This can lead to increased user engagement, such as staying longer on the site, sharing, lower bounce rates, and more page views.
- Improved or increased Website Visibility: Optimized content helps search engines to understand the website. SEO-friendly content is more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) when people search for relevant keywords. This increased visibility usually results in more organic traffic.
- Higher Conversion rates: Well-optimized or targeted SEO content can attract users who are actively searching for products or information. This is because it can help to persuade visitors to take valuable actions, such as purchasing, subscribing, etc.
Wrapping Up: SEO for blog posts in Semrush
Overall, Semrush comes with powerful tools in pretty much every digital marketing area. Such as the SEO Content Template tool which speeds up the research process for everyone. It makes it easy to create SEO-optimized content and grow your organic traffic. By creating and publishing high-quality, SEO-friendly content, you can attract more organic visitors to your website.
