Why Write AI Content for SEO?
84% of marketers already using AI to enhance their marketing efforts. SEO writing with AI presents a groundbreaking opportunity to streamline and enhance the way content is produced, optimized, and consumed. It also has the advantage of being able to cut down content creation time by around 85%, so marketers that aren’t using AI cannot keep up with the cutting-edge anymore.
By using AI platforms, businesses can efficiently create branded content that ranks high on search engines while meeting the needs of their audience. AI tools facilitate the ideation, design, writing, auditing, and publishing processes, seamlessly blending the artistry of storytelling with the precision of technology.
This blog will guide you through optimizing AI content for SEO, breaking down the steps to elevate your digital content strategy and helping you capture the competitive edge in your industry.
Best Practices for SEO Writing with AI
With how easy it is to generate AI content for SEO, the natural question is “Is AI-generated copy bad for SEO?”. With Google’s updated content guidelines, the simple answer is, Google does not penalize AI-generated content in 2024. With the Helpful Content update, Google has clarified that they will continue to rank content based on how helpful it is for the users’ search query. Read our blogs on Google’s AI guidelines to know more.
Before you get started with writing a top-rank ready article, there are a few best practices to follow. We’ve already covered sticking to Google’s AI content guidelines, but there’s a lot more to the game to get your content in front of the right readers. Some best practices you can follow include:
1. Do Thorough Keyword Research
Keyword research remains a cornerstone of effective SEO writing, even with the growing use of AI tools. It involves identifying the words and phrases that your target audience is most likely to use when searching for information related to your content.
Start by using tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Yarnit’s Keyword Insights app to gather a list of potential keywords. Evaluate their search volume, competition, and relevance to your topic.
Additionally, consider the use of long-tail keywords, which tend to have less competition and can attract highly targeted traffic. You can also look at autocomplete results or questions commonly asked by users with your search query. Then, you can integrate these into your article for a higher chance to appear in Google’s generative search experience’s (GSE) AI summary, which vastly increases your visibility on search.
2. Make Sure Your Content Has Substance
AI can be a powerful ally in generating content efficiently, but it's crucial that the output provides real value to the reader. Quality content should answer questions, solve problems, or provide unique insights. Make sure you’re bringing in these points to ensure your content isn’t just another AI blog that gets lost in the results.
Use AI-generated outlines to organize ideas effectively, but always refine and edit the content to ensure depth and accuracy. Engaging and informative content not only satisfies readers but also improves metrics like dwell time and reduces bounce rate, both of which are positively viewed by search engines.
What’s more, informative content can get you in the featured snippet box; the next best thing after being featured in the GSE. To know more about getting in this coveted box, check out this in-depth study by Ahrefs.
3. Add Alt Tags to Images
Images can significantly enhance the visual appeal of your content, but they also offer an opportunity to boost your SEO. Alt tags, short for alternative text, are used to describe the content of images. This text is not only beneficial for accessibility, helping visually impaired users understand visual content, but it also allows search engines to index the images properly.
When adding alt tags, ensure they are descriptive and incorporate relevant keywords naturally without keyword stuffing. Effective alt tags can help your images appear in image search results, driving additional traffic to your site. You can use tools like GPT-4o, Claude, or any chatbots that have vision capabilities to quickly generate alt tags for your images.
4. Avoid Over-Optimization
While incorporating keywords is critical, over-optimization can be detrimental to your SEO efforts. Over-optimization refers to the excessive use of keywords to the point where it disrupts the natural flow of content, sometimes referred to as keyword stuffing. This practice can lead to penalties from search engines, negatively impacting your rankings.
When writing with AI, pay close attention to keyword density and ensure that it aligns with natural language use. To double-check that you aren’t stuffing keywords into your content, use a tool like SmallSEOTools’ keyword density checker. There isn’t any hard and fast rule for keyword density, but we recommend keeping a density of around 1-2%.
5. Do Fact-Checking and Cite Any Sources
AI writing tools can assist in content creation, but they are not immune to errors, particularly when it comes to factual accuracy. Always take the time to fact-check any information included in your content, verifying details against reliable and authoritative sources. This is especially important for data, quotes, or statistics.
Citing your sources has 3 main advantages
Boosts the credibility of your content
Shows transparency and integrity
Adds back-links for better SEO
This practice helps build trust with your audience and can enhance your reputation as a knowledgeable and reliable content provider.
6. Use AI to Identify Link-Building Opportunities
Link-building is an essential component of a robust SEO strategy. AI apps like GPT-4o can uncover link-building opportunities by analyzing competitor link profiles and suggesting potential partnerships. A study reveals that AI-powered link-building can result in a 30% boost in referral traffic. By identifying websites with strong domain authority that complement your brand, AI not only simplifies the link-building process but also amplifies your online presence.
A Guide to SEO Writing with AI
Whether you're a seasoned writer looking to streamline your workflow or a beginner eager to understand the fundamentals of SEO, this section will serve as a comprehensive resource. From topic ideation to creating a content brief to content generation and optimization, we'll explore how AI can be your invaluable partner in producing high-quality, SEO-friendly content.
Step 1: Using an AI Topic Generator to Ideate SEO-Friendly Content
Starting with a solid foundation is essential in content creation, and that means brainstorming SEO-friendly topics. An AI topic generator can automatically suggest topics that align with current industry trends and fit your brand's goals. Moreover, studies have also found that using AI in brainstorming results in increased productivity and fresher ideas.
You can use an off-the-shelf chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude to get your creative juices flowing and get a few ideas on the board. However, there is no way of ensuring that these ideas are SEO-friendly and ready to rank, unless you’ve done your own research.
That’s why you need to try Yarnit's Content Ideas app. This app does the SEO research for you, going through search engine results page and relevant keywords to suggest content ideas that are sure to rank. It also customizes the output based on your brand, so you get ideas relevant to your audience while still targeting your keywords.
Simply navigate to the app from the Yarnit home page and use any one of the 5 methods to generate fresh ideas relevant to your target audience, brand, and keywords. To get the most out of this app, check out our blog on a step-by-step tutorial to fresh content ideas.
Step 2: Create an SEO Content Brief Using AI
An effective SEO content brief acts as your roadmap, detailing the keywords, audience insights, and strategy for your article. AI tools simplify this step by analyzing vast amounts of data to craft content briefs quickly.
Yarnit's Blog Outline use case gives you a great starting point. By taking in insights from our vast datasets and articles on the web, the blog outline feature gives you a breakdown of each part of your blog, so you can decide what you want to include.
Plus, it also intelligently suggests ways to integrate more of Google’s SEO best practices to help you get into that featured snippet spot, like commonly asked questions and popular subheadings. This is also a good place to add some knowledge nuggets from the context booster, which you can learn more about here.
From the idea generator, you can simply click the “Create Post”, which will pre-fill the content brief in the blog’s content instructions. From here, click on the “Generate Outline” button, which will take you to the content outline screen.
Here, you can tweak the headings and subheadings with your inputs to align it closer to your SEO objectives. Are you looking to be helpful, or express a thought leadership opinion, or answer people’s questions? This is where you need to guide Yarnit towards your intended marketing outcomes.
Step 3: Craft SEO-Ready Blog Articles with AI
Armed with your SEO-ready content outline, the next step is to create enriching, long-form content. AI can be the writer's trusted partner in this task. Thankfully with Yarnit, this step is as simple as clicking the “Generate Blog” button. In a few minutes, you’ll have your SEO-ready content, but what goes on behind the scenes to make it rank–worthy?
First, Yarnit takes your input and refines it even further to fit with SEO best practices. From integrating keywords naturally into headings and sub-headings, to scouring our database of syndicated data sources like Statista for some juicy statistics, to figuring out how best to integrate any company knowledge you have mentioned in the context booster.
What’s more, you’ll find that our platform is a lot more adherent to your instructions than publicly available chatbots, thanks to the secret sauce we’ve baked into our fine-tuned usecases. Using Yarnit’s blog writer ensures your blog is not only detailed and insightful but also SEO-optimized, increasing its visibility and impact.
Step 4: Enhance Your Content Using AI
Writing is only the beginning, but every human+AI tutorial tells you to add a human touch. It might seem good on first read, but using AI content without edits runs the risk of giving your audience what we like to call AI fatigue. Reading an article that begins with “In a world of…” and has words like “unlocked” or “unleashed” in the title is a dead giveaway that an LLM wrote it.
Instead, take the time to read through it, add some useful links, bring out some more statistics, and add a few examples to make it easier to read. Yarnit’s full-featured editor is your best friend here, as it checks grammar, tone, and flow, ensuring the resulting text is polished and professional.
You can also add more content where necessary, remove content where its not, summarize, shorten, expand, generate with instructions and much, much more. It also has an in-built auditor to know how the content is going to land with your audience, allowing you to tweak and fine-tune your messaging to hit the right notes.
Enhancing the content with AI is just another step in making sure your message is clear, enticing, and meets the high standards you’ve set for your audience.
Step 5: Generate SEO Meta Title and Descriptions with AI
The meta title and description are crucial elements of SEO success; they are your first impression. Generating these with AI ensures you capture the essence of your content succinctly and effectively. AI is a good way to get some fresh SEO meta details, but the issue is that these might not be the most compliant to SEO guidelines.
Enter Yarnit's SEO Meta Details use case. Not only is this feature updated and fine-tuned with Google’s ever-evolving standards, it also helps you craft compelling, keyword-rich meta details tailored to attract clicks and improve search rankings. Also, just like all of Yarnit’s other use-cases, it sticks to your brand guidelines to maintain consistency.
This tool maintains consistency and quality across content pieces, underlining the importance and impact of these small but essential parts of SEO.
Embrace SEO Writing with AI
Embracing AI in your SEO strategy is not just advantageous, it's necessary. This technological ally allows you to produce content swiftly, maintain high standards, and achieve significant SEO results.
By following the outlined steps and taking advantage of Yarnit’s SEO-ready content creation engine, businesses can leverage generative AI to its fullest potential. Are you ready to quickly and easily craft content that performs, captivates, and drives engagement, and optimize your content creation process?
Reach out to us for a demo on Yarnit's comprehensive suite of AI-driven tools today!
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