How to audit your content's SEO friendliness in five minutes

Executive overview

Most writers assume including a keyword means a page is optimised. It often isn't. SEMrush's SEO Writing Assistant checks content against the top 10 competitors for your target keywords — covering keyword usage, readability, originality, and tone of voice together.

Content length and keyword gaps are both search intent signals, not just style choices.

Setting up the analysis

• Open SEO Writing Assistant under the Content Marketing section in SEMrush
• Import by pasting text directly or pulling from a live URL
• Review auto-suggested keywords before running — remove irrelevant ones
• Add any missing target keywords manually in the sidebar
• Click "Get recommendations" to trigger the full analysis

Interpreting the SEO score and keyword recommendations

• An 8/10 is solid; chasing 10/10 can hurt user experience
• Missing recommended keywords often signal topical gaps, not just phrasing misses
• Example: "page load time" surfacing for a bounce rate article flags an uncovered topic
• Add terms that fit naturally; skip those that don't
• Edit content directly in the tool, then paste back to your CMS or Google Doc

Using readability scores correctly

• Readability is benchmarked against top 10 competitors for your keyword, not an absolute scale
• A technical B2B audience may warrant lower readability scores than a general audience
• "Text is longer than competitors" is a search intent signal — check SERPs before cutting
• Active voice and hard-to-read sentence flags are worth acting on like an editorial pass
• Fix broken links and add alt tags where missing; link to specific pages over homepages