Write content that ranks on Google AND converts visitors into customers — with AI doing 80% of the heavy lifting.
Content is the product Google sells. Every time someone searches, Google is selecting the best possible answer from millions of options. Your job is to create content so good that Google has no choice but to recommend it.
For years, SEO meant keyword stuffing and thin content. But Google has evolved. Today, your content must be:
🎯 By the end of Day 5: You'll have a complete content brief for your target keyword, you'll understand the AIDA structure, and you'll have written (or outlined) your first SEO-optimized piece of content with AI assistance.
Instead of writing random blog posts, build "topic clusters" — one comprehensive "pillar" page on a broad topic, surrounded by "cluster" posts on subtopics. All link to each other. This tells Google you're an authority on the topic.
Pillar Page: "Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing"
Cluster Posts:
Each cluster post links back to the pillar page, and the pillar links to all clusters. This creates a web of topically related content that Google recognizes as deep expertise.
You learned search intent on Day 2. Here's how it applies to content creation:
Informational Intent → How-to guide, listicle, explainer video
Example: "How to write effective marketing emails"
Commercial Intent → Comparison, review, "best of" list
Example: "Best email marketing tools for e-commerce"
Transactional Intent → Product/service page, landing page, pricing page
Example: "Sign up for [Email Service]" or "EmailMarketingTool.com pricing"
Navigational Intent → Branded landing page
Example: "MailChimp login" or "Constant Contact reviews"
The Rule: If your content format doesn't match search intent, you won't rank — no matter how good the content is. If someone searches "best email tools" (commercial intent), they want a comparison list, not a 3,000-word how-to guide.
AIDA is a classic copywriting framework that works exceptionally well for SEO content because it keeps readers engaged while teaching them something valuable.
Open with a question, bold claim, surprising statistic, or relatable problem.
Bad: "Email marketing is important for business growth."
Good: "Companies that use email marketing see 42% higher ROI than those that don't — but most people are leaving money on the table with weak subject lines."
Explain why this matters. Show the reader that you understand their pain. Use subheadings, examples, and data to keep them reading.
Walk through the actual steps, frameworks, or solutions. Show what success looks like. This is the bulk of your content (sections 2-4 of your article).
Tell the reader what to do next. "Sign up," "download this template," "read the next guide," or "try this tool."
Professional content teams always start with a brief before writing. This prevents wasted time and ensures your content hits all the SEO marks.
A content brief includes:
You don't need an hour to write a brief — 15 minutes with AI using Prompt #1 below will save you hours on the actual writing.
Google's quality raters evaluate content on E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Here's what that looks like in practice:
Experience: Use first-person examples. "I tested 47 email templates..." or "In my 10 years as a marketer..." Personal stories build trust.
Expertise: Show deep knowledge. Use specific numbers, frameworks, and references to data. Avoid generic filler phrases.
Authoritativeness: Cite sources. Link to studies, statistics, and expert quotes. Include an author bio with credentials.
Trustworthiness: Be accurate. Disclose conflicts of interest. If you're recommending a tool you use, say so. Correct mistakes visibly.
Warning: AI-only content (ChatGPT output without human expertise) scores low on E-E-A-T. Your job as a content strategist is to use AI to speed up the process, but you must add the expertise, examples, and real insight that make content Google-worthy.
This is how you use AI without writing generic, AI-sounding content:
Step 1: Brief with AI Use Prompt #1 to generate a complete content outline and strategy
Step 2: Draft outline Take the brief and expand the H2 outline into detailed points you want to cover
Step 3: Add your insights For each section, write or paste your own examples, data, and real-world stories
Step 4: Use Prompt #2 to expand For any thin section, use Prompt #2 to get AI to help flesh it out, then edit to add your voice
Step 5: Edit for readability Break up walls of text. Use short paragraphs (2-3 sentences max). Add bold for key points.
Step 6: SEO check with Prompt #3 Paste your final draft and let AI audit it for SEO quality
Result: Faster writing, better SEO optimization, and content that actually sounds like a human expert wrote it.
Google's Core Web Vitals include user engagement metrics. If people bounce off your content fast, Google notices. Make your content readable:
Test your readability: Paste your content into hemingwayapp.com. It color-codes hard-to-read sentences in real time.
There's no magic word count for SEO. What matters is depth relative to what's already ranking.
How to find your target length:
General guidelines:
The Rule: Long content ranks better only because high-intent, competitive keywords attract more comprehensive top results. Write the depth the search deserves, not a word count.
Replace [TARGET KEYWORD] with your actual target keyword
Fill in [SECTION NAME], [TOPIC], [KEYWORD], and [WORD COUNT] for each section
Paste your finished draft after [PASTE YOUR CONTENT] to get a full SEO audit
Pick your most important target keyword from Day 2. Follow this workflow:
Target: Complete a 500-word draft today, then finish it this week.
Great writing skills don't automatically produce content that ranks. These are the content mistakes that quietly kill rankings for months before beginners figure out what's wrong.
There's a difference between writing "about SEO" and writing for "how to do keyword research for a new blog." The second is a real search query with real intent. Articles written around vague topics rarely rank because they don't fully satisfy any single search. Start with the keyword, then write the article.
A 400-word article cannot compete with 2,500-word comprehensive guides that are currently ranking for your keyword. Google picks the most complete answer. If every top result covers 8 subtopics and you cover 3, you're not the most complete answer. Match the depth of what's already winning.
Google's quality raters are trained to recognize AI-padded content. Worse, readers bounce in the first 5 seconds if the intro is filler. Your opening paragraph should immediately tell the reader what they'll get and why it matters. Hook fast or lose the click forever - Google counts that bounce.
Publishing an article and leaving it as an island kills its chances. New content gets found by Google faster and ranks better when multiple existing pages link to it. After publishing, go back to 2-3 related articles on your site and add a link to the new piece. It takes 5 minutes and meaningfully helps indexation.
Google rewards freshness, especially in fast-moving topics. An article about "best SEO tools 2023" published in 2023 and never touched will lose rankings to a competitor who updated theirs in 2025. Set a reminder every 6-12 months to refresh your top-performing articles - update statistics, add new sections, and republish with a new date.
The gap between content that ranks and content that doesn't often comes down to execution at the sentence level. Here's what it looks like in practice.
💡 The test: After writing any paragraph, ask "did the reader learn a specific fact, framework, or step?" If the answer is no, it's padding. Delete it or rewrite it with concrete detail.
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