A guide to Semrush SEO writing: Features, pricing, and a powerful alternative

Creating content that actually gets seen is a balancing act. You can pour your heart into writing the most insightful article, but if Google can't find it, it might as well not exist. You’re constantly trying to please both your readers and the search engine algorithms.

This is where SEO writing tools come into play. They’re built to help you connect your research to your final draft. A big name in this space is Semrush, which offers the SEO Writing Assistant to help you polish content you've already written. It’s a solid tool for improving your drafts.

But the landscape is shifting. Newer, AI-first platforms are taking a different route. Instead of just helping you edit, tools like the eesel AI blog writer can generate a complete, SEO-optimized, and publish-ready blog post from just a keyword. It’s a move from simple assistance to full-on content automation.

What is Semrush SEO writing?

When you hear "Semrush SEO writing," people are usually talking about a collection of features within the Semrush Content Toolkit. These tools are designed to help you create and adjust your content to give it the best shot at ranking well.

The main feature here is the SEO Writing Assistant (SWA). Imagine a real-time coach looking over your shoulder as you write. Its primary job is to offer data-driven tips to improve your text across four areas: SEO, readability, originality, and tone of voice.

The cool part is that its advice isn't generic. It looks at the top 10 articles already ranking for your target keywords and uses that information to give you specific, practical recommendations. This way, you're not just guessing what Google is looking for; you're getting insights based on what's already proven to work.

A deep dive into Semrush's SEO writing features

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is loaded with features to help you refine content you've already drafted. Let's break down what it actually does.

Real-time content scoring

The SWA grades your content on a scale of 0 to 10, based on four main pillars. This gives you a simple, clear target to aim for as you write and edit. Here's a visual breakdown of how that scoring works:

• Readability: It uses the Flesch reading ease formula to score how easy your text is to read. It will point out long or complicated sentences, suggest breaking up large paragraphs, and flag uses of the passive voice.
• SEO: This is the core function. It checks if you've used your target keywords well, warns you about keyword stuffing, and looks for technical problems like broken links or images that are missing alt text.
• Tone of Voice: You can set a specific tone, from casual to formal, and the tool checks your writing for consistency. If a sentence sounds too corporate for a friendly blog post, it will highlight it.
• Originality: No one wants to accidentally publish something that’s already out there. The SWA has a built-in plagiarism checker that scans your text to make sure it's original before you publish.

AI-powered writing tools

Semrush has also added some AI features to help you when you're stuck or need to polish a few sentences. These tools operate on a credit system called "Smart Writer Words," which is linked to your subscription plan.

• Rephraser: If a sentence doesn't quite sound right, you can highlight it and the AI will offer different ways to say the same thing. You can also use it to simplify complex topics, expand on an idea, or summarize a long paragraph.
• Compose with AI: This feature helps generate smaller pieces of content. If you need a short paragraph on a specific subject or want to flesh out a bullet point, this tool can get you started.
• Ask AI: This is essentially a built-in AI chat. You can ask it questions about your topic without leaving your document, which is great for quick fact-checks or brainstorming new ideas.

It’s important to know that the "Compose" and "Ask AI" features are currently only available within the Semrush interface or the Google Docs add-on. They aren't yet supported in the WordPress or Microsoft Word plugins.

Seamless workflow integration

One of the SWA’s biggest strengths is that it works where you do. You don’t have to keep copying and pasting your text into a separate application for feedback. It's available as a plugin or add-on for the most common writing platforms:

• Google Docs
• WordPress
• Microsoft Word

This makes the editing process much smoother. A particularly useful feature is how it functions for teams. If you share a Google Doc with a coworker, they can see all the SWA's suggestions as long as they have the free add-on installed, even if they don't have a paid Semrush account. This is a nice touch for collaborative editing.

How much do Semrush SEO writing tools cost?

Access to the SEO Writing Assistant is part of Semrush's subscription plans. It's included in Semrush's more expensive subscriptions, specifically the SEO Toolkit Guru and Business plans. The access and limits you get are tied to your plan.

Here’s a summary based on Semrush's own documentation:

As you can tell, the Pro plan’s access is extremely limited, making it more of a trial than a practical tool for regular content creation. To make real use of the SWA, you need to be on the Guru plan at a minimum.

If you're on the Guru or Business plan and need more credits, you can purchase add-ons:

• Additional Plagiarism Checks: $5/month for 10 extra checks.
• Additional Smart Writer Words: $20/month for 10,000 extra words.

For a hands-on look at how the SWA works in practice, this video tutorial provides a helpful walkthrough of its key features.

This video tutorial provides a helpful walkthrough of the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant's key features.

The role of the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant

The Semrush SWA is designed as a content assistant. Its primary function is to help refine, polish, and optimize existing text. This means it works with content you've already created, rather than generating it from scratch.

This "assistant" approach means:

• It requires an initial draft: The SWA is designed to work on content that has already been written. It helps improve the text after the initial research, outlining, and drafting are complete.
• It focuses on text optimization: Users are responsible for other elements of a blog post, such as finding images, creating tables, embedding videos, and designing the overall structure. The tool's main focus is on refining the written content.
• Optimization is a guide: While aiming for a high score can be helpful, it's important to balance recommendations with natural language. Over-optimizing can sometimes lead to content that sounds robotic or performs unexpectedly.
  

  To test it I took all its suggestions and implemented them, so the article had an SEO score of something like 9.8 (out of 10) based on the semrush algo. It then tanked out of the SERPs lol

  Reddit
• It's designed for assistance, not generation: As Semrush notes, the tool is "designed to assist the content creators rather than substitute them." It serves as an optimization layer on top of the content creation process.

An alternative approach: Content generation with the eesel AI blog writer

For teams looking for a different approach to content creation, end-to-end generation tools offer an alternative. The eesel AI blog writer is a content generator designed for teams that need to scale high-quality content production.

It automates the content creation process from start to finish.

• From keyword to publish-ready post: You just provide a topic or keyword. From that single input, eesel AI generates a complete, structured article in minutes. You get an introduction, logical headings, a conclusion, and even an FAQ section, all good to go.
• Automatic asset and media integration: The tool doesn't just produce text; it fills your article with AI-generated images, infographics, and tables. It also finds and embeds relevant YouTube videos and adds social proof by pulling real quotes from Reddit discussions related to your topic.
• Deep, context-aware research: Instead of just checking for keywords, eesel AI actually understands search intent. If you're writing a comparison post, it will find pricing data. For a product review, it will look for technical specs. It's also optimized for AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), which helps your content appear in places like Google's AI Overviews.
• A tool for content growth: The tool was developed and used internally at eesel AI, where it helped grow the company's blog from 700 to 750,000 daily impressions in just three months by publishing over 1,000 optimized posts.

Best of all, you can try it for free. If you find it useful, the pricing is simple: $99 gets you 50 full blog generations.

Choosing the right SEO writing tool

Both Semrush and eesel AI are designed to help you create better content that ranks. They just have fundamentally different approaches. The best choice depends on your team's workflow and what you're trying to achieve.

• The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is well-suited for content teams that have an established manual writing process. It provides an optimization layer, offering writers real-time feedback to refine their drafts according to SEO best practices.
• The eesel AI blog writer is designed for teams looking to scale content production. It automates the workflow from research and drafting to asset creation, delivering a publish-ready post.

Generate publish-ready SEO blogs in minutes

Ready to move from assisting to generating? Try the eesel AI blog writer for free and create your first complete, SEO-optimized blog post in just a few minutes.