What’s up man! Let’s face it: getting your content to rank on Google is a bloodsport. Every business is vying for those coveted top spots using the same keywords as you. It’s a brutal competition, and if your articles aren’t up to scratch, you might as well be invisible. But what if I told you that you could conquer the SEO landscape without a huge budget, using free tools and a sneaky AI-powered process? This isn’t some BS hype. This is a real, actionable guide to writing quality, SEO-optimized content that not only ranks but also keeps readers hooked. The secret lies in a strategic blend of free tools, AI assistance, and good old-fashioned effort, all focused on making your content the best answer on the internet for the questions your audience is asking.
Part 1: Keyword Goldmine: Unearthing the EXACT Questions Your Audience is Asking
Forget expensive keyword research tools. Google itself is giving you the goods for free! Here’s how to find your content’s “sweet spot”:
- The Incognito Advantage: Always conduct your keyword research in incognito mode. This ensures that your search results are unbiased by your browsing history and add-ons, which means they are more neutral.
- Google’s “People Also Ask” Section: This is your secret weapon. When you search for a keyword (e.g., “Webflow”), Google shows you a list of questions people are actually typing into the search bar. This is pure gold because you’re getting the exact questions that people are actively looking for answers to.
- Infinite Article Ideas: Click on any of those questions, and Google will reveal even more questions. It’s like an endless well of content ideas!. These are not just random ideas, they are the exact questions your target audience is trying to find answers to.
- Video Potential: And here’s a bonus: these “People Also Ask” questions aren’t just for articles. You can also create videos to answer them, especially because Google is increasingly showing YouTube videos as answers in search results.
- Google’s Suggestions: When you type your main keyword into the search bar in incognito, pay attention to Google’s auto-suggestions. These are also based on real search queries and can provide great article topic ideas.
Part 2: Spy on Your Competition: How to Beat the Best
Okay, you have your keywords. Now, it’s time to see what the top dogs are doing. Here’s how to analyze and surpass the competition:
- Target the Top Ranked Articles: Search for your chosen keyword and identify the top-ranking articles. These are the articles you want to beat. Don’t just grab the first one – sometimes the second or third option will be a better-structured article.
- AI Summarization: Your New Best Friend: Install the free “Merlin AI” Chrome extension. This tool can summarize articles and perform other useful functions. It’s like having a research assistant. This is a free tool that can also be used to summarize YouTube videos and to do many other things to improve your productivity.
- Don’t Just Summarize – Ask!: Instead of simply summarizing an article, ask the AI to create an outline of the article to help you create a better article.
- Detailed Outline is Key: Ask Merlin AI to provide a detailed outline of the article that you are trying to beat to help you see how to improve on what the competition has done. This is a crucial step to making sure that you are not just copying your competitor, but understanding how to create an even better article.
- Outline Verification: Once the AI generates an outline, verify that it is relevant and useful to your needs. This is key to creating high-quality content.
Part 3: Level Up Your Outline: Add Your Personal Touch (and Steal from Competitors!)
An AI-generated outline is great, but it’s not enough. You need to add your own unique flavor and insights.
- Personal Knowledge: What do YOU know about this topic that others might not? Add your own personal experience, case studies or anecdotes that can provide value to your audience. This will make your content more credible.
- Secret Spy Tip: Check out the top 2-3 articles, as well as other articles you find on the web. Look for unique points that your main competitor has not used or might be missing from their article.
- AI Rephrasing: If you’re struggling to incorporate your new content into the outline, use the AI to rephrase the outline to accommodate your new points.
- Content is King: Now is the time to determine how much content, i.e. how many words, the competitor has used in their article.
- Multimedia is Important: Note how many images, tables, videos, and lists your competitors have used in their article. Your goal is to do better than them.
- Links Matter: Check how many internal and external links the competitor’s article has. This will guide you in adding links to your article.
Part 4: AI-Powered Content Creation: From Outline to Awesome Article
Now that you have a great outline, here is how to use AI to transform it into a blog post.
- Google Docs or Obsidian? Copy the outline to a Google Doc or Obsidian. Obsidian is especially good for writing in markdown, while Google Docs is better for collaborative work.
- The Magic Prompt: Craft a detailed prompt for ChatGPT. Your prompt will determine the quality of your content.
- Expert Persona: Tell the AI to act as an expert blog article writer. This will ensure that the AI is focused on your specific need.
- Define Tone and Voice: Specify the tone and voice you want the AI to use. You can choose to use a friendly or professional style. You can also look online for examples of tone and voice guidelines for blog writing to help you define your approach.
- Adapt Guidelines: Make sure that your tone and voice guidelines match the objectives of your article, and that you adapt them to your needs.
- One Section at a Time: Don’t ask the AI to write the whole article at once. Feed the AI your outline sections one by one to get better results.
- The “Deep Breath” Technique: In your prompt, include the phrase “take a deep breath and proceed step by step”. This phrase helps improve results from the AI.
- AI Output is a Starting Point: Remember that AI-generated content is not perfect. It might contain old or incorrect information. You need to improve on the output from the AI by comparing it to your competitor’s article.
- The Rewrite: Take the text from your competitor’s article, paste it into the same document, and ask the AI to rewrite the competitor’s content using your brand’s voice, tone, and style and your outline.
- Read and Compare: After you get the new content, read what the AI generated and compare it to your competitor’s content. Does the AI output respect your tone and voice? Make sure that you are happy with the content before proceeding to the next step.
- Formatting: Make sure that you use bold text and proper headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) in your document.
- Fresh Start: For each new section, start a new chat with the AI. This will make sure that the AI has a fresh start each time, and it will help avoid the AI getting lost in the conversation.
- Repeat: Repeat the process for each section of your outline.
Part 5: Polish and Perfect: Adding the Finishing Touches
The hard work is almost done. Here’s what you need to do to prepare the article for publication:
- Original Images Only: Don’t just download images from your competitors. Take your own screenshots, create your own images, and use fresh content. This will make your article unique.
- Readable Layout: Make sure that your article is easy to read by breaking up long sentences, using shorter paragraphs, and a clean layout.
- Internal and External Links: Add relevant internal and external links to your content.
- Free SEO Analysis: Use the free version of SEMrush or One Affair to analyze your completed article.
- Copy-Paste into Analyzer: Copy and paste your complete article (not just a URL) into the SEO analyzer.
- Keywords Are Key: The SEO analyzer will highlight keywords and show you if your article is optimized for Google. You are aiming for a high score to improve your rankings. A good score is 80%, and some top articles get scores between 20% and 70%. If your article has a 98% rating that is even better.
- Optimize and Improve: Add the suggested keywords to your text. The goal is to create an article that is both readable for people, but also appealing to Google’s algorithms.
Conclusion
Writing a quality SEO article might sound like a daunting task, but with this step-by-step approach, it’s totally achievable (and free!). The key takeaways from this method include a focus on writing quality, unique, and human-friendly content. By combining Google’s free keyword data, AI-powered tools, and your own unique insights, you can write articles that rank high and offer genuine value to your readers. Always remember that the goal is to answer real user questions better than anyone else, and with this method you can generate thousands of words of high-quality, SEO-optimized content in just a few minutes. Whether you’re a small business owner, a start-up, or just getting started in SEO, this method can help you get better results.
FAQs
Is it okay to use AI to write articles? Yes, according to Google’s documentation, the most important thing is the quality of the content, not who or what wrote it. AI can be a powerful tool to improve productivity, so long as you are not just copying content from other websites. Use AI to improve and accelerate your writing process!
How long does it take to see results from SEO? It depends. As seen in the case study mentioned in the source, an article went from position 90 to position 10 or 14 in a matter of days after applying the methodology in the article.
What if I don’t have a website yet? While a website is definitely beneficial for SEO, you can still use these techniques to create high-quality content for other platforms like Medium, LinkedIn, or even YouTube descriptions.