A practical guide to using AI to write SEO friendly blogs

The idea of using AI for blog posts sounds amazing, right? You imagine scaling up your content, publishing like clockwork, and finally climbing up the Google rankings, all while saving a boatload of time. The goal is simple: churn out great content that pulls in organic traffic.

But for many, the reality has been a bit of a letdown. You wrestle with an AI for hours, only to get a generic, lifeless article that reads like a machine wrote it (which, of course, it did). It's packed with fluff, has zero depth, and, to top it off, it doesn't rank.

I tried this for testing purposes, here are one year results. Around 100 blogs, all over 1000 words to 5000 words. All ai detector passed and all copy and paste AI blogs. It’s lazy and a waste of time.

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It doesn't have to be this frustrating. There’s a smarter way to do this, where AI becomes less of a clumsy assistant and more of a skilled research partner. This guide will show you a workflow that actually works. We’ll cover how to use AI to create content that real people enjoy reading and that search engines reward. We’ll also introduce you to the eesel AI blog writer, the same tool we used to boost our daily impressions from 700 to over 750,000 in just three months.

What is an AI blog writer?

An AI blog writer is a tool powered by a large language model (LLM), which is the technology behind systems like GPT or Claude. You feed it a prompt, like a keyword or a topic, and it generates an article for you.

These tools are a world away from the old "article spinners" from the early days of SEO. Those tools just swapped words around and created unreadable nonsense. Today's AI writers are far more sophisticated. They understand context, sentence structure, and even tone, allowing them to write original content from the ground up.

Their main purpose is to automate the tedious parts of writing. No more staring at a blank page, trying to figure out an outline, or spending ages researching. The AI can do a lot of that for you. The catch, however, is that the output quality varies significantly between different tools. Some will give you a very rough draft, while others can produce something that's almost ready to publish.

Key elements of an SEO-friendly blog post

Before you jump into using an AI tool, you need to know what "SEO-friendly" actually means in 2026. If you don't have a clear picture of the final product, you won't be able to steer the AI in the right direction.

Here are the key things that help a blog post rank well:

• Search Intent: This is probably the most important factor. You have to deliver what people are searching for. If someone types in "best running shoes," are they looking for a product roundup (commercial intent) or the history of sneakers (informational intent)? Your content must match the reason behind the search.
• Keyword Optimization: Your target keyword and related terms should appear naturally in your post. That means in the title, headings, intro, and body text. The key is to weave them in smoothly, not just stuff them in wherever they fit.
• Structure and Readability: No one enjoys reading a massive wall of text. A good blog post is easy to scan. Use clear headings, short paragraphs, and things like bullet points and bold text to break up the content and draw attention to important points.
• E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness): This is Google's acronym for quality. Your content should be accurate, thoroughly researched, and trustworthy. Citing good sources and demonstrating real experience makes a big difference. As Google's guidelines on AI content state, they're more concerned with helpful, high-quality content than how it was created.
• Visuals and Media: A post with images, charts, tables, or a video is much more engaging than plain text. When people stick around and interact with your content, it signals to search engines that your page is valuable, which can boost your rankings.

How to use AI to write SEO friendly blogs: A step-by-step workflow

Creating great content with AI isn't about just pushing a button. It's about following a smart process where you and the AI work together. Here's a repeatable workflow that gets results.

Didn't just copy and paste copy, I used AI (quite heavily) as a tool to help with research (I also did my own to gain nuances AI perhaps wouldn't find) and then help me write detailed posts of anything from 800 to 3600 words. Client traffic went from 800 active users a year to almost 36,000 (8000 landed on the home page alone).

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Step 1: Keyword and Competitor Research Before writing anything, you need to know what you're targeting and who you're competing against. AI can be a massive help here. Tools like Surfer SEO or Frase are built for this. They analyze the top-ranking articles for your keyword (called SERP analysis) and tell you what topics, questions, and related keywords you should cover.

Step 2: Generating a Comprehensive Outline With your research done, the AI can use that data to build a solid outline. Instead of guessing which sections to include, you get a detailed structure that covers all the necessary subtopics to satisfy search intent. This step alone can save you a ton of time.

Step 3: Drafting the Content This is what most people think of when they hear "AI writer." You give the outline to the AI, and it generates the draft. But here's a key detail: most tools stop right here. They hand you a block of text and leave you to handle the rest, like finding images, embedding videos, and formatting.

Step 4: Editing and Humanizing the Draft Let me be clear: a raw AI draft is never ready to publish. It needs a human touch. This is your chance to check facts, adjust the tone to match your brand's voice, and add your own unique insights or stories. As one writer said, AI is a great tool for people who can already write, but it still needs a person to make it feel alive.

Step 5: SEO and Asset Optimization The last step is to polish the draft. This involves double-checking your on-page SEO, adding internal links to your other content, and, importantly, creating or finding all the visual assets. Adding relevant images, charts, and quotes is what turns a good article into a great one.

Comparing popular AI blog writing tools

There are a lot of tools out there claiming they can help you write SEO-friendly content, but they all tackle the problem in different ways. Most are good at one or two steps in the workflow we just covered, but very few manage the whole process.

Here’s a quick look at some of the big players:

Jasper AI: The versatile content automator

Jasper AI is like a Swiss Army knife for marketing. It's made to automate all kinds of copy, from ads and social media posts to emails and blog drafts. Its Brand IQ feature is useful for keeping the tone consistent with your brand.

For SEO-specific tasks, it's important to note that Jasper AI is a general-purpose tool rather than a specialized one. The generated text may require significant editing to be optimized for competitive search rankings. Additionally, it primarily generates text, meaning users are responsible for conducting in-depth SERP analysis and creating their own visuals.

Surfer SEO: The on-page optimization lab

Surfer SEO is a favorite among SEO professionals. It's a powerful tool for optimizing content. Its "Content Score" provides real-time feedback as you write, suggesting which keywords to add and how your post compares to the top-ranking pages.

Its AI writer functions more as a supplementary feature to its core optimization tools. Surfer is designed to help users perfect their content, assuming they will handle most of the initial drafting, research, and asset creation.

Frase: The research and brief specialist

Frase is all about making the research process faster. It excels at analyzing the SERPs and helping you build a detailed content brief in minutes instead of hours. It tells you exactly which topics to cover and what questions to answer. It's also one of the few tools actively optimizing for "Generative Engine Optimization" (GEO), which helps your content get cited by AI search engines like Google AI Overviews.

Similar to some other SEO tools, its main strength lies in research and planning rather than full content generation. It provides a comprehensive blueprint, with the user managing the writing, editing, and asset sourcing.

eesel AI blog writer: An end-to-end approach

While the tools mentioned are effective for specific parts of the content process, some users may be left piecing together the full workflow. The eesel AI blog writer is designed to address this by handling the entire workflow, taking you from a single keyword to a fully-formed, publish-ready blog post.

Instead of just giving you a text file, eesel AI generates a complete article that includes:

• A logical structure with an introduction, proper headings, a conclusion, and an FAQ section.
• Well-researched content that’s optimized for both traditional SEO and the new wave of AI Answer Engines (AEO).
• Automatic assets built right in. This means AI-generated images, infographics, and data tables are included in the post, saving you hours.
• Social proof integration. eesel AI finds relevant YouTube videos and real quotes from Reddit threads to add authenticity and trust to your content.

The AI also performs context-aware research. If you ask for a comparison post, it finds pricing data. If you need a technical guide, it looks up the specs. We’ve spent over a year refining the output, so the tone is genuinely human and readable, not stiff and robotic.

The best part? You can try it completely free. Go ahead and generate your first post in a few minutes. You’ll see the difference between getting a rough draft and getting a finished product.

The human's role in AI content creation

Using AI doesn't make you obsolete; it promotes you. Your job shifts from being a writer to being an editor-in-chief and a content strategist. Even with a powerful tool like the eesel AI blog writer, the final polish has to come from you.

Humans augmented by AI produce better content. I will put out a tutorial soon because I have a system that works perfectly. In short, I use different AI and models, according to tasks. Also, I don’t ever use mega prompts. Series of short precise prompts work out best for me. Full auto AI sucks IMO (Programmatic SEO is the new spamindexing).

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Here's where your human brain is irreplaceable:

• Fact-Checking: AI is smart, but it can still make mistakes. Always take a minute to verify any stats, claims, or technical details it gives you.
• Adding Your Unique Voice: This is your secret weapon. Weave in your brand's personality, share a personal story, or include a unique example that only you could provide. This is what builds a real connection with your audience and shows true experience.
• Strategic Polish: Do a final review of the internal links, make sure the call-to-action is sharp, and confirm that the article fits perfectly into your overall content strategy.

Moving from drafting to publishing with AI

The idea of using AI for SEO content has officially moved from a "maybe someday" concept to a practical strategy you can use today.

But success isn't a given. It all comes down to picking the right workflow and the right tools. This involves choosing between juggling multiple specialized platforms or using an integrated platform that handles the process from start to finish.

For a more detailed walkthrough, the video below explains how to correctly use tools like ChatGPT for research and drafting to create optimized blog posts that save you time and deliver results.

A video from WPBeginner explaining how to use AI to write SEO friendly blogs that will rank on search engines.

By letting AI handle the heavy lifting of research, writing, and asset creation, you free yourself up to focus on what really matters: strategy, promotion, and scaling your content to drive real, meaningful traffic.

Ready to see what that looks like in action? Generate your first article for free with eesel AI and see for yourself.