How to create programmatic SEO content using AI

Drafthorse is a programmatic SEO article generator. The ultimate goal is to integrate it with Google Search Console and your CMS, facilitating the growth of your blog.

Currently, you generate a list of keywords create SEO optimized articles around those keywords using AI (as.

How to Generate SEO Articles Using AI

Step 1: Collect Keywords

Start by using SEMRush's magic keyword tool to find keywords related to your topic with a low Keyword Difficulty (KD). Once you have your list, export them into a CSV file.

Step 2: Identify the 10 Best Keywords

From your list, highlight the 10 keywords that you want to use. Choose those that are relevant to your brand and would provide value to someone who lands on your site after searching for them. Longtail keywords with a low KD are ideal, as this suggests the existing answers are poor. Generally, a KD under 20 is acceptable.

"How to" type content tends to perform well. For instance, Swell found success with a long-term keyword phrase with a variable ("how to start x podcast"). This is an example of "programmatic SEO".

Step 3: Generate Articles Using Drafthorse

Upload your chosen 10 keywords or the CSV file into Drafthorse. The tool will take each keyword and produce an article outline based on it, then write each of those sections one by one. This process occurs in parallel, so if you have 100 keywords with good search intent, you can write 100 articles in minutes. Remember, each keyword should only be targeted once!

Why Does Using AI to Create Articles for SEO Work?

In SEO, whether you're using AI or not, about 10% of published content will produce 90% of the organic traffic. It's a volume game, and AI can significantly boost your output volume. If you're curious about how Google treats AI content, you can review the Google Search Guide to AI Generated Content.

There are two types of AI content:

Commodity Content – This is what Drafthorse does, producing general knowledge content at scale.

Content Repurposing – This involves transforming internal content into other pieces of content, a strategy employed by Swell, another company run by Cody.

The magic happens when you can combine these two strategies. Previously, it would take a team of 50 people to achieve this kind of arbitrage.

Tips for Writing SEO Content Using AI

1. Avoid choosing something too broad, like "B2B marketing". Start by ranking for the longtail versions of a keyword, then internally link back to the general B2B Marketing keyword. For example, B2B food marketing, B2B SaaS marketing, etc.

2. If your content doesn't turn out well, consider looking for keywords that represent a task your target audience needs to accomplish, such as "how to start a podcast". Always include a Call To Action (CTA) in your content.

3. If you're a young company that needs to survive, you should be doing some instant transactional marketing in the short term while waiting for the SEO to kick in. Consider the search intent – if someone is asking the question, they likely need the product, increasing the likelihood of a signup.

4. To find more keywords, examine your competitors and your own search console. Look for keywords that get a lot of impressions but no clicks, where you're showing up on the second page of search results. You can also ask ChatGPT for Head Keywords (opposite of Long tail), then drop them into SEMRush.

Cody also runs Swell, an AI writer for podcasts, producers, and agencies. You can follow Cody and his work on Twitter!