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Is the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant worth it? We’ll let you be the judge.
With so many SEO tools on the market today, it can be difficult to pinpoint the best fit for you. Whether you are a newbie to this concept or a self-proclaimed expert, the right tools can make your digital marketing life a whole lot easier. And here at Tanzek Media, we want to help.
In today’s post, we will be reviewing the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant as well as their SEO Content Template tool to help you make an informed decision on whether or not its worth your time and investment.
No fluff. No BS. Just straight honesty is the name of the game here. So let’s get into it.
Post contains affiliate links. Disclosure can be viewed here.
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What is the SEO Writing Assistant?
Essentially, the SEO Writing Assistant is a tool content creators can use to check the originality and SEO of a piece of work as you write it. It also assists you with boosting readability which is very important to SEO!
Below, you will see a breakdown of each of the areas that are considered as part of your overall score in the Quick Checker.
Overall Score
The writing assistant scores the quality of your piece based on 4 elements: Readability, SEO, Originality, and Tone of Voice. The closer your score is 10, the better optimized the text.
The image below shows a screenshot of the overall score I received for a blog post I wrote for Tanzek Media. As you can see, I received a 7.6/10 which is considered a Good rating. If I followed more of their recommendations, I could’ve gotten the score even higher. But I was in a “good enough” kind of mood so here we are.
You can click the different sections on the graph to expand each element and view more detailed notes. I will break down each of those sections below to give you a better idea of what this looks like.
Readability
According to Semrush, “Readability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text.” Check out the image below for a more detailed description of the Readability element.
The score I received for readability on the particular piece I mentioned earlier was 64.6 and according to Semrush’s chart, that means my content would be easily understood by a 13 to 15-year-old child which is on target with my other content. I want my blog posts to be simple and easy to read for my audience.
There were a few suggestions that I could have considered in order to boost my score even higher including:
- Increasing my word count
- Making the title shorter than 60 characters
SEO
The next element that the writing assistant focuses on is SEO or search engine optimization. You can see a couple of the suggestions I received from the writing assistant in the image below.
As you can see, it does break down target keywords and recommended keywords, and the words/phrases that are highlighted in green are the words that I included in my content.
This feature takes the extra work out of finding the most beneficial keywords to target as it shows you both the volume and level of difficulty for each keyword when you hover over it.
Additionally, there is an option to download extended recommendations from the SEO content template as a Word doc to give you that extra boost.
Tone of Voice
Another element that is measured in the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is your tone of voice. You can see the screenshot below to learn more about how Semrush measures your tone.
My content initially fell into the Neutral category although I was aiming for more of a “somewhat casual” tone so I made a few minor changes to add more of that casual feel to the piece. The writing assistant also pointed out inconsistencies in my tone which I really thought was awesome!
Originality
Lastly, the originality element points out any signs of plagiarism in your text.
The assistant will highlight any plagiarized pieces of text directly in the document. It will even cite the source of the original content.
Another feature I love is that you can exclude certain domains from the plagiarism check. This is particularly helpful when you are updating a piece of content that is already live on your website.
How to Use the SEO Writing Assistant
Now that we’ve discussed all of the different aspects of the scoring system, let’s talk about how to actually use the SEO Writing Assistant. There are a few different ways to take advantage of this tool and I will discuss each of those options below.
SEO Content Template
You can use the SEO Content Template to help you create SEO-friendly content. This template gives you a list of recommendations based on your target keywords and can integrate with Google Docs as part of the SEO Writing assistant.
There are some limits depending on your subscription:
- Free accounts- only get 1 SEO Content Template
- Pro accounts- only get 1 SEO content template
- Guru accounts- 800 SEO ideas units per month
- Business accounts- 2,000 SEO ideas units per month
Note: When Semrush says “ideas units” this refers to all of the units shared between the SEO Content Template, SEO Writing Assistant, and the On-Page SEO Checker. Any time you generate a template for a particular keyword, that counts as ONE UNIT PER KEYWORD
Quick Checker in Semrush
If you log in to your Semrush account (you can sign up for a free account if you want to test the waters) and click on the Content Marketing tab in the menu and then select SEO Writing Assistant, it will take you to a screen that has a Quick Checker text box.
With the quick checker, you simply copy/paste your content in the text box to start the analysis. You will then receive a score and all of the necessary suggestions and recommendations right there beside the text. You can also edit directly in the quick checker box to receive suggestions in real-time.
WordPress Plugin
There is also a Semrush SEO Writing Assistant Plugin for WordPress available for those of us who use WordPress for our websites.
To get started, all you need to do is log in to your WordPress account, download this plugin, activate it, and then click “Connect SEO Content Template” when editing a blog post or page on your website. Then, all you need to do is log in to your Semrush account to get the ball rolling. It is really quite simple! Gotta love WordPress plugins.
Google Chrome Extension
Another option is to download the SEO Writing Assistant Google Chrome Extension to begin using this tool directly in Google docs.
How Can This Tool Help You?
It’s quite simple. If you are totally clueless when it comes to SEO, this tool can help you craft high-quality content without having to become an expert in search engine optimization. It just simplifies the process.
Even if you are an SEO expert, this is a quick and easy way to check over your work.
And it’s truly just so easy to use.
Some Things I Would Like to See Improved
Of course, nothing is perfect. There is always room for improvement. So let’s talk about some things that I would like to see improved.
I would love to see a more detailed description for each metric so that newbies can have a better understanding of why that metric matters and how it applies to the writing. I feel like this would be very beneficial for those wanting to better understand SEO.
There are options for “score definitions” which give a brief explanation, but I guess a more detailed guide available for beginners would be useful. And if this is available, I overlooked it which means it isn’t necessarily easy to find if indeed present.
Other than that, I would love to see the limits increased for paid users.
Conclusion
Overall, this tool can be very useful and it is crazy simple to use.
However, is it much more different than a tool like the Yoast plugin? Eh. Essentially, they both do the same thing and you can reach the same result with either.
Ultimately, my writing did improve by using the SEO Writing Assistant and it didn’t take much effort to make that improvement.
I do recommend giving this tool a try for free before making a final judgment, but hopefully, this review was helpful as you decide your next steps.
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