SOP: Create Quality Content With AI
Use this process to create quality content with the help of AI. The emphasis is on maintaining
quality while making the writing process more efficient.
Goal
The goal is twofold:
1. Maintain high quality in content creation to deliver SEO results.
2. Use AI to become more efficient, remove bottlenecks, and deliver better ROI.
Why It’s Important
Quality content is an essential pillar of SEO success. But the longer it takes to create, the more
it costs a business.
AI can help you bridge the gap to create more efficient, high-quality content.
Tools to Use
● Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer
● Ahrefs’ AI Content Helper
● Ahrefs’ Free AI Writing Tools
● (Optional) An editing tool, like Grammarly
● (Optional) A large language model, like ChatGPT
When It’s Done / Frequency
Follow this process for each piece of SEO content you need to create. It will take between 2 and
4 hours for an average article. Time varies depending on how much research and editing is
needed.
Who Does This
Writers, SEO specialists who create content
Prerequisites or Requirements
Ask your boss or client for a content brief or instructions so you understand what they expect.
Anything they directly ask of you that conflicts with this SOP takes priority and overrides the
process below. Always follow what you’re asked to deliver, then use the process below to
supplement any gaps.
Steps to Follow
1. Find relevant keywords your content can rank for
The success of any piece of SEO content depends on the keywords you’re targeting.
If you have not already been given keywords to target, use Ahrefs Keyword Explorer to help you
find some.
There are two approaches you can follow here…
If you have not been given a topic and need to find one…
Use the AI keyword suggestion feature in Keywords Explorer to generate ideas quickly.
Instead of entering a generic topic, use the AI prompt at the bottom. It has twelve presets that
can help you find specific types of keywords for the brand you’re writing for, or you can write a
custom prompt:
For instance, if you’re writing for a gardening website, you could try searching for “emerging
trends related to gardening” to get ideas like:
Pitch a few of these to your boss or client to get sign-off if you need it before you start writing.
Then, follow the steps below when you have an approved topic.
If you’ve been given (or approved) a clear topic…
Enter your topic into Keywords Explorer like how “xeriscaping” has been entered in this
screenshot:
Take a look at the metrics to get a sense of how easy it will be for your content to rank for the
keyword. Here are the stats for “xeriscaping”
Since the keyword difficulty is “hard,” and there are over 500 keyword ideas about this topic,
you’ll need to refine your target keyword a little more and pick an angle that stands a better
chance of succeeding with SEO.
Go to Matching Terms (in the left panel). Set the volume filter to display from 100, and the
keyword difficulty (KD) filter up to 10:
This will narrow your list to easy keywords with decent search volume.
Select an angle that best fits the brand you’re writing for. In this example, here are the top
keywords we can select from:
Keep these handy for the next steps.
2. Identify the searcher’s intent for those keywords
Search intent is the reason that motivates a searcher to type a keyword into a search engine. It
alludes to the thing they hope they will find in the search results, like:
● The type of results: information, a direct answer, recommendations, business info etc.
● The type of content: news articles, ecommerce pages, how-to guides etc.
You’ll need Ahrefs to uncover a keyword’s search intent and the best type of content to create
for it.
If you do not yet have the exact keyword to target in your content…
Looking at your keyword list, scroll to the right until you see the “SERP” button:
Clicking this will show you what content is ranking for the keyword on Google. Then you can
click the “Identify Intents” button in the top right corner:
It’ll give you an AI summary with a percentage breakdown of the common types of content
Google is ranking for the keyword:
It also gives you an idea of what types of content you can create to meet these intents.
If the kind of content that’s ranking is something you cannot reasonably create for the brand
you’re writing for, then move to the next keyword. Repeat this process until you find a good
keyword to create content for.
If you have the exact keywords to include in your content…
Once you have the target keyword, either because it was given to you or you verified it in the
previous step, open Ahrefs’ AI Content Helper and add your keyword:
After you click “create document”, make sure the switch for “group by search intent” is on:
3. Select accurate competitors to identify essential topics
Once you choose which intent you’ll be optimizing for, it’s just a matter of ensuring all the
competitors selected are appropriate to include in the report.
You can easily exclude any competitors you like:
Only use this option to remove competing content that is not similar to what you intend on
creating. For example, exclude it if it’s:
● A directory website
● A social media page
● A government website
● A site in a different industry
It’s rare you’ll need to do this. Apply necessary and strict discretion here so you don’t
accidentally remove essential competitors needed for an accurate report.
Then, create the report. It’ll take a moment to process all the data you’ve entered.
4. Come up with a unique angle and ideate a handful of titles
Once your report is created, it will look like a standard content editor with a menu on the right
side:
Start by browsing the topics to find unique or interesting angles you could focus on in your
content. For example, you’ll see a handful of topics like this:
It’s a good place to brainstorm unique angles and ideas to add in your content.
For instance, in this example, we could center the content around cost-effective ideas:
Or Mediterranean-inspired ideas:
Pick the angle you think best fits the brand you’re writing for. Then, move to the “Title tag”
section in the menu to ideate some titles with the help of AI.
If you want even more creative title ideas, you can also check out Ahrefs’ free AI Writing Tools
which include two title generators:
Add your keyword:
Select the title type that best fits your content idea:
Adapt the tone:
Then generate some ideas:
It never hurts to write up a few titles with different angles and let your boss or client pick the best
one. Or you could even run split tests to see which performs best and gets the most clicks.
The trick is to make the title formats and message completely different. It’s easy to reword them,
but say the same thing. Like these three headings:
● How to Combine SEO and Content Marketing (The Ahrefs’ Way)
● The Ahrefs’ Guide to Integrating SEO and Content Marketing
● How to Combine SEO and Content Marketing (Follow Our Blueprint)
Instead, aim to offer a different take with each title in your list, like:
● A strong opinion: These xeriscaping ideas are the only ones worth implementing
● A thought-provoking question: Can these xeriscaping ideas keep your garden alive
this summer?
● A desirable result generated: 7 xeriscaping ideas that survived the worst drought since
1902
● An informal or funny one: 7 xeriscaping ideas that don’t completely suck
You get the idea. Get creative here; it will help your article stand out against competitors.
5. Structure your content, covering any competitor gaps
Now that you know the topics you’d like to cover and have some working titles, it’s time to start
structuring your content.
The goal of this step is to figure out what sub-sections your article will include, which you can do
in the “Headings” tab in AI Content Helper:
You will be able to see each competitor’s headings and insert any of the ones you’d like to also
write about in your article.
The idea isn’t to copy their headings exactly, rather it’s about choosing the things you want to
cover and figuring out the order you want to do that in.
That will help you know what needs to be said in your article and makes writing a whole lot
easier.
Then, as you start writing, you can reword each of these headings to fit the flow of your content.
Also, make it a habit to add a few headings that none of your competitors have. It’s best if they
directly align with the unique angle you chose for your title. You can fill these in later as you get
a more concrete idea of what you want to say in the final article.
6. Add something new, unique, or interesting
The best way to improve the quality and intrigue of your content is to do something that AI
cannot easily copy. Most content today is arbitrage, simply moving information from one place to
another.
Very few blog posts create new information.
If you can create something with AI, so can your competitors. Thankfully, there are three ways
you are uniquely qualified to add value beyond AI: experimentation, experience, and effort.
You can use these to help you create sections your competitors don’t have and cannot easily
copy.
This step is where it’s worth putting in the manual effort needed to make your content shine. In
fact, it helps to think beyond simply “writing content”. As a task, all that requires is putting words
on a page, and they don’t even have to be good ones at that.
Instead, try approaching your task as one of these:
● Brainstorming a new idea with your audience
● Being the first to break the news on an important topic
● Challenging common assumptions that could use a refresh
● Running experiments and supplying up-to-date data on a topic
● Collecting first-party data to help enlighten your industry
● Interviewing prominent people in the industry
● Sharing personal stories and experiences
Thinking in this way will lead you down interesting paths where your content becomes thought
leadership. It goes from being words on a page to providing tangible value.
For example, let’s look at the topic of Advanced SEO that we published on our blog. It contains
a graph that did quite well on social media:
We could have copied the style of content others were creating and contributed to the sea of
sameness.
Instead, we received feedback from the community and used AI to help comb their responses
for insights. We also used ChatGPT to create the rough draft of the graph above.
It wasn’t perfect (or pretty) but it helped save a lot of time!
In short:
● Put in manual effort for things that add value
● Focus on things that cannot easily be copied by AI
● Use AI to help with analysis or ideating how to best present the information you uncover
For more ideas, check out the post How to Stand Out from AI Content.
7. Start filling in each section, using AI as needed
By now you should have a few things ready to go:
● The keywords you’re targeting
● A unique angle to write about
● A rough outline or structure you want to follow
● Some interesting data or insights that AI (and competitors) cannot easily replicate
● An edge over your competitors
Now, it’s time to put the pieces together and start writing. But AI makes it very easy to make bad
content:
Instead, break things down one section at a time and adapt any AI-generated content to
accurately reflect what you want to say.
In your Ahrefs AI Content Helper report, start filling in content for each heading in your content.
Using the in-built AI, it conducts a topic-level analysis of your article against the top 10 SERP
competitors, and scores it out of 100—both for its overall theming, and its coverage of individual
subtopics.
You’ll see the score adjust as you add more content:
You’ll get topic-specific AI recommendations for improvement when your content hasn’t quite hit
the mark…
And if you want to quickly modify or improve any of your content in the editor section, you can
Ask AI.
Just select a paragraph or two, choose an action from the presets or type in your own request.
You can also check out 15 AI Content Creation Tools to Add to Your Tech Stack for ideas on
other ways to integrate AI into your writing process.
8. Humanize any content written completely by AI
If you’ve followed the process so far, you should be:
● Writing your content in chunks, even when using AI.
● Adapting it as you go so no large chunks will be completely AI-generated.
● Incorporating elements no AI tool can replicate, baking quality right into the structure.
If there are any large sections in your content that are completely written by AI, it’s best to
humanize them so they appeal to your readers.
● Make sure the sentences don’t start with the same words or sound repetitive.
● Remove any filler words commonly used by AI, like “in a __ landscape”.
● Adjust any bland or mediocre-sounding sections. AI is notorious for this.
● Improve the tone used so it’s not the standard generic tone AI tends to lean on.
● Add images, quotes or other visual elements to break up the content.
● Insert stories, first-hand experience or unique expertise.
9. Complete edits and checks before submitting it for review
As a last step, read through the final article to make sure it flows well, and there aren’t any
glaring errors.
Before you submit it to your boss or client for review, check for:
● Readability and brevity: The Hemingway Editor is a great app to check out.
● Accidental plagiarism: Grammarly and Copyscape can both handle this.
● Spelling or grammatical errors: Grammarly is great for this.
● The SEO score: This is built into Ahrefs’ AI Content Helper. It’s always worth checking
there aren’t more improvements to make.
