Published Date:
June 13, 2025

How to Write for SEO That Ranks & Converts [2025]

Co-Founder & CEO, MotionGility

Writing quality SEO content isn’t a piece of great advice anymore. Writing content that’s both optimized for search engines and LLMs is what is required today.

Examining how Google is transitioning to offer users a more enhanced user experience through AI Overviews and its latest launch featuring AI Mode, it’s time to adopt a more inclusive content strategy.

Firstly, let’s understand what SEO writing means and the process behind it in detail:

What is SEO Writing?

SEO Writing is the practice of creating content that is valuable and relevant to human readers and search engines.

It’s the process of planning, writing, and optimizing content that ranks well on SERPs and keeps visitors engaged upon landing on your website.

Ever since AI has become mainstream with content writing and marketing, the ‘How to write for SEO’ process has completely transformed.

Today, in 2025, SEO Writing also includes writing for AI tools and LLMs [GPT, Claude, Gemini, etc] as it helps them interpret and feature your content in their results.

To fully understand how SEO writing works, explore our SEO guide – a detailed resource covering the basics of SEO, optimization, and content strategy.

How to Write for SEO? Step-by-Step Process

There are multiple parameters that SEO writers and content strategists must consider before writing or planning content.

Here’s the exact process that you can follow to create SEO content:

1. Perform Keyword Research

Before you begin writing, it’s important to research your main keyword and find out its volume.

Because if users are not searching your desired keyword, there’s no point in writing any type of content on that topic.

For performing keyword research, use tools like Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, Semrush, Google Keyword Planner, UberSuggest, etc., to identify:

Target Keyword
Search Intent and Volume
Keyword Difficulty
Related Terms
Competitors, etc.

Let’s understand this through Ahrefs. Enter your focus keyword here, and Ahrefs will generate hundreds of keyword variations based on search intent.

Further, you can even click on ‘Branding’ and choose to view a bifurcated list of all branded and non-branded keywords, as well as based on location.

If you’re unable to access the Pro Plan, you can leverage Ahrefs’ Free Keyword Generator Tool, which produces a bunch of free keyword variations and related questions.

Using these keywords in your headings, subheadings, and inner content will allow you to write & optimize your content for semantic relevance—as Google now focuses more on intent rather than just keyword matching.

Next, explore Gen AI tools like GPT, Claude, etc., to uncover long-tail, NLP-friendly keywords for your blog. However, it’s advisable to cross-check their respective volumes on tools, as AI is known to hallucinate with its results often.

2. Identify & Match Search Intent

Google’s job and primary agenda is to provide the most relevant search results to users.

As a content publisher, your job is to identify the best possible search intent and pick relevant keywords that semantically match the search intent.

Popular AI SEO tools like Ahrefs offer the ‘User Intent’ feature, where you can pick your desired intent and discover related keywords for your SEO writing.

Getting your search intent right is necessary if you want your SEO content to rank on Google. Here’s a quick example explaining how to identify the right search intent:

Upon searching for the keyword – how to grow wealth, this is what the SERP looks like:

Despite the keyword carrying the ‘How to’ intent, search results are dominated by blogs & articles stating tips and strategies.

Therefore, writing a ‘listicle’ here instead of a full-fledged guide could be more beneficial.

3. Build a Content Structure [Outline]

Preparing a content outline is like preparing a blueprint for the house to be constructed.

An outline guides you with writing your headings and subheadings. It helps you grab a complete overview of the content that you intend to cover under the H2s, H3s, H4s, etc., in your blog.

Create a logical outline that highlights different headings. Plan your content by selecting questions, phrases, and semantic phrases, and insert visuals, quotes, and other elements that provide comprehensive keyword coverage.

Make use of AI tools like GPT, Claude, Gemini, etc., to create semantically-rich and comprehensive blog outlines.

Here’s a quick snapshot of an outline generated by ChatGPT:

However, despite AI helping augment different content generation processes, it’s important to note that AI can hallucinate or generate irrelevant headings at times.

Ryan Velez – Sr. Content Production Lead at NP Digital, emphasizes the usage of AI tools for generating outlines –

However, despite AI helping augment different content generation processes, it’s important to note that AI can hallucinate or generate irrelevant headings at times.

Human input is vital here, as it helps refine your outline for optimal SEO. If you want your site to generate impressions and rank on Google, your subheadings should reflect your primary and secondary keywords

4. Go Deep Into Content [Beyond Just Keywords]

Quality SEO writing isn’t about simply covering keywords, sprinkling variations in headings or subheadings, and attempting to please search engines.

It’s about performing research by leveraging insights from NLP tools like Google NLP API or InLinks to identify and understand how Google scans your content.

So while writing SEO content, include matching terms, entities, subtopics, and visual elements that help strengthen your blog or article’s semantic depth.

Through your content, the target should be to offer unique value to your readers. This might include offering new information or even existing information, but using a different angle.

Here’s a sneak peek of Google’s guidelines on Helpful Content:

To make your content unique and different-sounding, address FAQs, conduct interviews, run a podcast series, run polls or surveys, etc.

Interviewing SMEs is also a natural yet impactful technique to serve Google and visitors with a fresh take on topics.

Add original quotes, visuals, opinions, and frameworks to increase your content and site’s credibility.

5. Ensure Clear Content Formatting

When writing SEO content, naturally incorporate keywords, variants, and other relevant terms into titles, meta descriptions, introductions, and headings.

Avoid forcefully inserting them into your content, as it sounds too pushy and may worsen the visitor’s user experience.

Here’s an example of clear formatting from Ahrefs:

Now, with AI overviews picking up answers from websites for base-level queries, the importance of formatting content has increased.

This is because AI search engines, AI SEO Agents, or LLMs interpret content in an interesting manner as opposed to the traditional indexing and parsing method.

They don’t look out for schemas in your blogs, but do expect you to use proper headings, subheadings, bullet points, etc.

It’s simple – Your content structure should logically flow in an easy-to-understand language and provide clean, direct answers.

6. Ensure Readability, Mobile-Friendliness, and Excellent UX

If your website lacks readability, your site visitors won’t think for even a second before bouncing off.

Avoid this by emphasizing on visual layouts and ensure it’s clear and navigation-friendly. Pick short and easily readable paragraphs & crisp summaries instead of long walls of text. Use standard fonts and offer actionable CTAs.

To save time and enhance readability, use a paraphraser tool to ensure consistent language throughout your article.

Also considering Google’s mobile-first indexing approach, creating a mobile-friendly site is a must to provide a smooth page scrolling and overall visiting experience.

Acting on these factors will enhance your website’s technical and SEO quality, thus signalling a strong relationship between UX and SEO.

You can play around with the collapsible FAQs section and table of contents to offer visitors a quick overview of what they can expect to learn.

Check out what Google states on providing a great page experience:

All of this contributes to passing the Core Web Vitals Test both on desktop & mobile, and passage-based indexing by AI engines and LLMS.

7. Maintain Originality & Avoid Content Duplication

Creating original content isn’t just about being creative; it’s about ensuring your writing doesn’t unintentionally copy what’s already online.

With so much content being generated today, especially by AI, it’s easy to repeat what others have already said.

To protect your credibility and avoid duplication, always check your content before publishing. A free online plagiarism checker is a quick and cost-effective way to scan for copied material, making it perfect for bloggers, students, and marketers.

These tools help you spot and rephrase similar parts. Adding your own analysis, expert quotes, or unique data makes your content stand out.

In today’s SEO world, what ranks well is not just useful, it’s clearly original and genuinely yours.

8. Keep Updating & Optimizing Your Content

The last step of the how to write SEO content framework is monitoring your content’s performance with Google Search Console [GSC] and other tools.

Keep an eye on the queries picked up by search engines and run a thorough check to see whether those queries are being associated with the right target pages or not.

Not doing so might result in a serious issue known as keyword cannibalization, which may end up clashing with 2 pages for a single keyword.

Watch our SEO analyst explain its consequences in detail –

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Apart from manually checking your content’s quality, you can leverage tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or AI Content tools like Surfer SEO, Writesonic, etc., to optimize and fix section-wise errors

Refresh statistics, add new keynotes from experts, and expand your existing topics to cover new happenings so that your website stays at the top.

Conclusion

There are multiple ways to write and optimize SEO content for better organic SEO results.

However, SEO writing comes down to following the fundamentals and adapting to the ongoing content optimization requirements, such as AI overviews, LLM optimization, etc.

So as long as you continue to write quality SEO content that is skimmable, readable, and easily shareable, search engines and LLMs will reward you with rankings and mentions.

SEO is a dynamic game that requires constant optimization and an agile approach to gain a first-mover advantage over your competitors.

If you’re looking for SEO services that are AI-first and optimized for measurable results, contact our SEO analyst today for a quick discovery call.