Content editing tools for blogs?

I received the following question on Twitter a couple of weeks ago:

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“Do you use any content optimization tools, such as Surfer or Neuron Writer, when writing blogs?”

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My answer:

Up until a few weeks ago, the answer was no.

We’ve switched over to Semrush (from Ahrefs), and it comes with a friendly tool called Semrush Writing Assistant.

Basically, it integrates directly into your Google Docs and functions the exact same way as Surfer SEO or any other SEO tool.

It’s pretty good and helpful, but... it’s a tool more than anything, and I think too many SEOs fail to understand that and treat it as a crunch.

If you have tools like Ahrefs or Surfer SEO (or whatever tool you’re using), then that doesn’t mean that your website is going to rank on page #1.

They're just content editing tools, and that’s the only way they function.

They tell you which keywords to use and where to use them.

But if you aren’t an expert on a subject, then you're never going to rank.

Because you cannot offer value on something you don’t know about.

Sure, it can tell you what keywords to use.

If you spend enough time on it, then you can become an expert or at least fake your way into being an expert with those tools.

Google wants to rank only valuable content and in some niches, you can use AI to rank content, but as Google decides to continue rewarding only valuable content, AI is going to fall.

And content that is strictly written to satisfy these kinds of tools and language learning models is not going to be valuable.

At our agency, here’s how we write such high-quality content:

We draft, we edit (our Head of Content manages this; she’s a killer), and then we use the tool to make sure we’ve nailed all the related keywords, semantics, and everything else.

Let’s say we spend 2-3 hours writing a blog. and maybe 15 minutes of that includes the use of the tool, and it’s the last 15 minutes.

But if want to learn SEO content writing the easy way then watch this video. I’ve shared the exact same strategy that we use at our agency.

Watch here:

Until next time,

Kai Cromwell