Whether you run a blog that’s B2B or B2C, write about healthcare or horse grooming, have a hundred readers or millions, and have been blogging for twenty years or two days, there’s one thing all successful content creators share in common… an SEO content strategy.
My SEO content strategy (which we’re breaking down here today) is responsible for bringing more than 859,960+ unique visitors to my blog in the last 30 days alone:
SEO may not be the lifeblood of your business if you have other acquisition channels, but it’s impossible to ignore that more than 8.3 Billion searches happen daily on Google alone. SEO still represents an incredible traffic opportunity. People who come from search engines like Google (for the right queries) are still some of the best, most highly qualified leads for business owners today.
Despite what many think, SEO is not dead in the age of AI—but it has evolved. What remains true, is that deep down, we’re all just content marketers, standing in front of our audience, asking them to love us… errrrrr or at least trust us, and eventually buy from us.
But, how successful we are with our SEO content strategy, depends on much more than just great content.
A few technical improvements to your content (SEO) can significantly affect:
- Whether and how high up your content appears on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)
- Who sees it and how many of those people actually click through to read your content
Sounds like a pretty big deal to nail this SEO content strategy thing, doesn’t it? That’s exactly what we’re covering in this guide, but first…
What is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Content Strategy?
🔑 An SEO content strategy is a step-by-step system for creating content and getting it to rank high in organic Google search results, for your target audience’s key pain points. A successful SEO content strategy will have your content appearing on page 1 for many things your audience searches for online. This helps you drive targeted traffic back to your site, and fuels your related business growth.
Search engines like Google don’t just trust any ol’ website to recommend to their users, it’s a complex system that makes determinations behind the scenes.
They rely on a number of ever-changing ranking factors to determine worthiness, and if your website (or content) falls short, you’ll be as good as invisible. That makes getting this equation right, pretty important.
It’s crucial to optimize your content, so that it can (hopefully) make its way to the first page of search results, where it stands a fighting chance of being clicked on, read, and has the opportunity to build a long-term relationship with your new potential audience.
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Why You Need an AI-Enabled SEO Content Strategy in 2025
You can do SEO without AI, but considering that AI tools can help every step of the way—from keyword research and topic mapping to content creation and editing—cutting them out of your SEO content strategy altogether goes beyond protectionist, and into archaic territory. Like insisting on using rocks & twigs to start a fire when you have a flamethrower in your pocket.
Nobody’s asking you to put AI in the driver’s seat for SEO and let it churn out piece after piece of uninspired, cookie-cutter content. Trust me, that ain’t it either. But I’ve been using AI to rank my content and drive significant SEO traffic for almost two years now…
What we’re talking about here is AI-enabled SEO research and content planning. Where you set the goals and design the deliverables, and AI just helps you deliver them with more ease and efficiency.
The other commonly cited rebuttal is that these tools can negatively impact your ranking, but to the powers that be (read: Google), the use of AI isn’t a dealbreaker, only its poor use is.
So if you want to get your content to rank higher, faster, here’s a guide explaining the steps to create an SEO content strategy—with AI.
My Step-by-Step Guide to Creating an SEO Content Strategy Using AI
Uncomplicate SEO by following these steps—you’ll walk away from this guide with an SEO content strategy that’s ready to be implemented.
1. Set Your SEO Goals
Before you lace up your boots and head out into the vast wilderness that is SEO these days, you’ll need to set some expectations for your SEO strategy. You can’t get to where you wanna go, if you don’t take the time to clearly define that destination.
Here are a few starter SEO goals I recommend considering (as they support your greater business goals):
- To increase organic traffic by 3x by the end of the quarter
- A conversion rate higher than last year
- To rank in the first 10 results for your 50 most important keyword phrases
From the get-go, be clear about what you expect to achieve. That way, you won’t get caught up in chasing vanity metrics.
Because an uptick in traffic, however massive, means little if it’s not from your target audience or it doesn’t convert well.
Create killer content that matches search intent to attract more of your ICPs (ideal customer profile) and drive real revenue from the people you bring to your site. That’s the point, right?
Depending on your goals, assess factors like your:
- Previous rankings
- Traffic patterns
- Conversion rates
Then, you can use SEO forecasting tools (like Exploding Topics) to set achievable targets for growing your most important metrics, moving forward.
For example, if you want to increase organic share of voice, use a tool that lets you analyze competitor performance (more on that later). Then use Google Search Console to track your overall website rank or for specific keywords. Or check your competitor’s and your domain authority on a platform like Moz.
This kind of knowledge empowers you to set realistic, time-bound targets to bridge the gap.
2. Do Smart Keyword Research
Keywords might not generate the frenzy they did once upon a time (remember reading random keywords jammed in the middle of sentences like fruit loops in baklava?), but they’re still widely considered important enough to be the first step of drafting any SEO content.
Let’s say we wanted to plan an article for the Hunter blog, as part of their SEO content strategy. One of their main offerings is an email finder, so we’ll input that as a short-tail keyword in the Keyword Tool and see what it generates.
We found a keyword phrase early on, but if you don’t, toggle the filters till you find one with decent search volume, low to medium competition, and a neat cost per click.
The next step in keyword research is to create a cluster of long-tail keywords centered around our short-tail keywords. We can use these in the same article to rank for multiple search queries, or use them as topic inspiration for new content, but topic clustering signals site authority to search engines.
To capitalize on trends, browse through industry or trade journals, forums and social media groups.
Look up the topic’s rising popularity on Exploding Topics or Google Trends and filter by time or region to spot emerging trends.
3. Analyze Your Competition
SEO’s been cutthroat for a while now, but ever since AI snippets happened, competition has intensified for citations and the top three spots.
Apart from basic website ranking comparison (that we discussed above), backlink profiles can provide important glimpses into your competitors’ most traffic-generating blog posts.
You can use this free backlink checker or, to get a more comprehensive report on competitor backlinks, the paid version of the tool over on RightBlogger.
For competitive analysis, RightBlogger has another ace up its sleeve — the Content Gap tool.
Note: This is different from Ahref’s Content Gap Analysis tool which tells you which topics are covered by your competitor, but not you. Right blogger’s Content Gap tool provides an in-depth analysis of two versions of a specific piece of content — yours and the competition’s.
Manually, that takes hours, but we compared a Hunter blog article on email authentication with one of the top three results on Google in ten seconds.
One of the first changes suggested is the inclusion of a 2024 policy update from Google and Yahoo.
Hunter’s article was written in 2023, and this small revision could make it more competitive.
The other suggestions also come in the form of actionable advice, something most other tools wouldn’t offer.
4. Create High-Quality Content for Your Target Audience
SEO is commonly misunderstood to take away from the quality of content. But when done right, it refines, enriches, and highlights the best parts so that search engines spot it.
Even human reviewers at Google assess content quality using the E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness).
AI writing tools like RightBlogger, SEMRush, and Ahrefs can help you create SEO-optimized blog posts that meet these four parameters.
For this example, I gave my AI Article Writer inside RightBlogger a spin, and the level of customization really helps me dial in a stellar first draft SEO blog post:
Start by deciding these key features of your content piece:
- Topic
- Tone
- Article length
- Primary keyword
- Target audience
Once you’ve loaded those details into the tool, you’ll be presented with an SEO outline and then, a fully baked first draft article.
We’d still need to add our insights and opinions to the piece, along with a few structural edits here and there, but the advanced prep reduced the turnaround time for SEO content to just an hour or two. Check out my detailed AI blogging process and this tutorial on how to write a blog post with AI for more.
Other tools from the RightBlogger line-up that deserve an honorary mention:
- Content Filler: When writing each additional word feels like wading through molasses
- Make Text Punchier: To give your content an attitude makeover
- Improve Writing: For overall flow and clarity revisions
- *personal favorite – Explain Like I’m Five: A godsend for situations where you know little about the topic you’re writing on, and you’re yet to find a guide that doesn’t make your eyes glaze over. It can also be used to rewrite complicated concepts and enhance readability.
5. Use On-Page SEO to Scale Your Content Marketing
On-page SEO simply means the optimization techniques applied to the page your content is hosted on, to get it to rank better.
These are internal, controllable improvements and include things like:
- Eye-catching titles and headlines
- Keyword phrase placement
- The overall header structure
- Readability and skimmability
- Page URL
- Meta descriptions and meta tags
- Internal links
Search engines use these factors to determine if your content matches the search intent their users have.
Most of these modifications can be made or sped up using AI. For example, an AI-drafted or updated SEO outline, with headers containing most or many search terms, can help your content rank better.
Meta title and meta description writers (like my free tools) can create click-worthy content that appears on SERPs and increases site visits.
Internal link-finder tools can find relevant linking opportunities to distribute link equity and provide context to search engines as to what your article is about.
6. Build a Content Calendar
So far, we’ve focused on the content planning and creation aspects of the SEO journey. But where the rubber really hits the road is when your articles go live.
And once you’ve started generating traffic, you don’t want to lose the momentum you’ve got going.
A content calendar keeps your SEO strategy from going off the rails.
You can use it to plan keyword research sessions, create topic clusters, set deadlines for first drafts, edits, and publication, and identify gaps in your strategy.
Take advantage of a day when you’re in a creative mood and knock out the topics for the next couple of months.
If you’ve run out of ideas, my free blog post idea generator can come to your rescue:
After deciding blog topics, schedule them to correspond with company announcements or generate interest in an upcoming event.
A content calendar also makes cross-channel posting and collaborations easier.
7. Amplify Results with Link Building
Off-page SEO is another key element of a strong content marketing strategy. It’s less controllable, but at least as much, if not more, rewarding.
And link building is one of the most surefire ways to get higher rankings.
Use tools to find competitor backlinks as described earlier. You can also track unlinked brand mentions with tools like Google Alerts and Ahrefs Content Explorer.
Hunter offers a directory of B2B businesses where you can apply filters to find companies in non-competing but complementary niches for partnerships.
The database includes contact information for key decision-makers, like content editors.
Compile a list of companies and their key contacts in a separate sheet for outreach. Then use Hunter’s Email Finder to get email addresses, and send personalized outreach emails to prospects.
Mention their blog, an article you liked, or potential collaboration ideas between {Company} and yours to make your message more authentic.
Of course, this process goes much faster if done through cold email automation software. Hunter Campaigns is designed for sending cold emails and allows you to create, track and manage your link building outreach.
Tip: Use the auto follow-up feature to set behavioral or time-bound triggers to maximize chances of landing a backlink.
8. Monitor Metrics to Improve Your Content Performance
To improve SEO content performance, continuously monitor these key metrics:
- Organic Traffic: How many people found your website via search engines? Traffic should ideally increase over time. Analyze the sources of traffic to improve content marketing performance.
- Reading Time: How relevant and useful did searchers find your content? Low dwell times or session duration, especially combined with high bounce rates, indicate unengaging content and a poor user experience. Improve readability with bulleted lists, visuals, infographics, or interactive elements.
- Clicks: How many users clicked on your content based on its title and meta description? Rewrite using the meta description writer to for a higher click-through rate.
- Traffic Quality: Are the people visiting your website potential customers? A low conversion rate calls for content edits to make it match search intent.
- Keyword Rankings: Are you ranking in the top results for your main keywords? If not, perform a Content Gap Analysis and, if needed, a site audit to address pain points.
- Website Ranking (Overall): Known as Domain Rank (Moz) or Domain Authority (Ahrefs), this reflects your site’s overall SEO health. Improve it with a consistent publishing schedule and commitment to E-E-A-T content.
Other slightly less essential, yet still directionally helpful metrics to track include:
- Total monthly visitors
- Bounce rate
- Heat map
- Leads
- Conversions
- Sales
And there you have it—developing an SEO content strategy, in a nutshell.
Don’t overcomplicate this process, just start taking action to the best of your ability today. You’ll learn, grow, improve, and see increasingly more results over the coming months (and years) in growing your SEO traffic.
Taking Action: Bringing Your SEO Content Strategy into the Real World (with AI) Today
For better or for worse, AI-generated content is impossible to escape across all the major search engines in 2025 (and beyond).
Google itself is actively continuing to implement more AI summaries at the top of their own search results, and you can expect this to pick up pace on topics and search terms that have easily answered queries.
But here’s the thing… you don’t have to beat AI at content creation. You only need to beat the other companies, content creators, and marketers that are using AI to create content for the same target keywords & topics you’re pursuing. You are still what matters most here.
And to win at this game, you need an SEO content strategy—and the SEO tools that can work with you to create genuinely great content.
The tools we’ve covered in this guide will help you produce better, more engaging, organized, and SEO-optimized content in minutes.
Give them a try, especially all the tools I’ve built inside RightBlogger. They’re a package deal with a ton of other powerful tools, education, and community, which is the exact combo you need in this fast paced environment.
Empower tools to become your assistant, and you’ll free up precious hours to work in your zone of genius—and create better content for your audience, today.
Create SEO Blog Posts in Minutes with RightBlogger
Join 17,058+ creators, bloggers, marketers, writers, freelancers & entrepreneurs in using my very own kit of powerful tools for content creation: RightBlogger. You’ll unlock 80+ blogging, SEO, marketing, sales and productivity-focused tools to create content faster & more effectively today.
