Writing high-quality content is essential for getting website traffic.

But creating great content can be challenging, especially if you’re not a professional writer.

That’s where the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant comes in.

In this Semrush SEO Writing Assistant review, I’ll tell you how the tool works and if it’s effective for improving your content.

So read on to find out more!

What is the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant?

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is a content marketing tool from Semrush that helps you to optimize your content for search engines and users.

It provides real-time feedback on how well your article is optimized for certain keywords and gives you suggestions for improving your content and on-page SEO.

It helps you to identify and fix issues that could impact your search engine ranking, and also helps to check your content originality.

How to use the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant?

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is available with at least the Guru plan of Semrush.

So the first step to do is to get access to a Semrush free trial or paid subscription to Semrush Guru.

If you don’t have either of those yet, get a 30-day free trial of Semrush Guru. Create a new account, enter your credit card details, and you’re good to go!

Read my full post on activating the Semrush Guru 30-Day trial.

Now login to your Semrush dashboard, and go to Content Marketing Toolkit -> SEO Writing Assistant.

Then click on ‘Analyze my text’.

You can use the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant (SWA) in 4 ways:

• Semrush interface
• Google Docs Add-On
• WordPress Plugin
• MS Word Add-On

In the next step of this Semrush SEO Writing Assistant review, we will see how the tool works in the four different platforms.

1. Semrush interface

You will see an editor interface.

Enter the text, keywords, and location, and click on Get Recommendations.

2. Google Docs Add-On

Go to Google Marketplace, find the Semrush SWA as an add-on, and install it.

Then log in to Google Docs, click on Extensions -> Semrush SEO Writing Assistant, and click on Show.

The Semrush SWA add-on in Google Docs shows on the right of the text editor.

For a step-by-step process on how to use the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant in Google Docs, check out my post on how to check for plagiarism in Google Docs.

3. WordPress plugin

If you are writing your content on WordPress, find the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant plugin, and install and activate it.

The SWA in WordPress can show either at the bottom or the right of your WordPress post editor. It works with both the Classic and Gutenberg editors.

4. MS Word Add-On

You can also get the Semrush SWA as an add-on for MS Word, but you will need to have a paid Microsoft Office to integrate your Word editor with the SWA.

How can you optimize your content with the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant features?

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant has 6 key features that provide feedback and recommendations for content optimization.

1. Overall Score

The first metric you see is an overall score of your content based on all the different aspects of content optimization.

2. Readability

The readability section gives you recommendations on 4 aspects:

2.1. Readability

The readability score is based on the Flesch-Kincaid score which evaluates how tough or easy it is to read your content, based on the years of schooling a reader may have had.

It follows a specific calculation, and Semrush recommends keeping the writing level at 8th-9th grade, or plain English.

You will get a score for your content, and you can edit your content if needed.

2.2. Text length (Words)

The other metric you get here is the text length, both by the number of words, and the amount of time that is needed to read the text.

You can adjust your content accordingly, to beat your competitors.

2.3. Title Issues

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant also lets you know how your title is optimized as per Google requirements, like if it includes a keyword and has a certain length.

2.4. Content Issues

The last readability aspect you get analysis and recommendations on is the content text.

Content Issues allows you to see any issues with your article’s actual content, long paragraphs, difficult-to-read sentences, and complicated words.

SWA recommends the sentences or words that should be rewritten or changed in order to improve your score.

3. SEO recommendations

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant evaluates the keywords you enter in your target keywords and based on those and your content, suggests other semantic and related keywords to use to optimize your content.

You can also choose to download extended recommendations from the SEO Content Template, which suggests how to optimize your content to beat the top 10 pages in the Google SERP.

The recommended keywords include the keywords you have already used in the content (in green) and the ones the SWA suggests you use (in grey).

Once you add a keyword, the grey keyword turns green!

Along with the keyword suggestions, the SEO section also provides recommendations on alt attributes and internal links.

4. Tone of voice

The Semrush SWA categorizes your content’s tone of voice as very formal, somewhat formal, neutral, somewhat casual, and very casual.

If you want to change your tone of voice, you can click on the pencil icon on the right to edit it, and change your content to match it.

5. Plagiarism check

Ensure that your content is original.

This is particularly helpful if you have received content from a content writer and not written it yourself.

Simply click on ‘Check it for free’, and you will get a report if duplicate content exists on the web, and which elements are common.

When I checked it for a blog post of mine that is already published, I got a poor score.

But then I checked it for a fresh piece of content, and it was fine.

In a nutshell, the Plagiarism Checker really works!

6. Rephraser

Rework pieces of text to improve quality, target different channels, or overcome writer’s block

You can choose to accept or ignore the suggestions, and you can also see a side-by-side comparison of your original text and the suggested changes.

Want to see the Semrush SWA in action?

Try it free for 30 days with the Semrush Guru.

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant Pricing

Semrush has 3 pricing plans with different limits for the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant:

• Semrush Pro: It starts at $119.95 monthly and includes only one template of SWA and no plagiarism checks.
• Semrush Guru: It starts at $229.25 monthly and includes unlimited templates of SWA and 5 plagiarism checks.
• Semrush Business: It starts at $229.25 monthly and includes unlimited templates of SWA and 10 plagiarism checks.

Read my full post on the differences between Semrush Pro vs Guru.

If you sign up for Semrush with my Semrush coupons, the Semrush lifetime deal or a Semrush Black Friday deal, you can get very high discounts on Semrush Guru.

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant Review – My experience

Based on my experience, I would like to summarize this Semrush SEO Writing Assistant review based on 4 factors:

1. Installation
2. Interface and user experience
3. Content optimization recommendations
4. Integrations

1. Installation

Installing the SWA is pretty straightforward once you have a Semrush Guru account and know the editor platform you want to use.

I personally prefer using SWA in WordPress or Google Docs over the Semrush inbuilt editor, but it is really up to you which one works for you.

I have not used it in MS Word, but it follows the same process as the others.

Either way, you should have no problem setting it up!

2. Interface and user experience

The interface of the SWA is quite simple and smooth.

As we saw before, you get an overall score and 4 clear sections on which you get recommendations for your content marketing optimization.

You simply go through the recommendations of each section and implement the changes you think are relevant.

As you edit your text, your score updates in real time, indicating whether you are heading in the right direction.

Here are some of the features I like most about the interface and user experience of the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant.

• Real-time score update: This is one of my favorite features as you don’t have to edit the whole text to get a score, you know it immediately.
• Ease of use: It is very beginner-friendly. So even if you have never done any content optimization before, you won’t have any issues getting started. Just follow the recommendations step by step.
• Tooltips: For many sections and recommendations, there are explanations of what it is and which sections you need to edit.

3. Content optimization

In this section of the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant review, I will share my experience with the optimization recommendations that SWA gives.

• Readability: This is a score based on an internally acclaimed calculation, so this is pretty okay. You can always decide the readability level and text length based on your content and brand.

• SEO: I like the keyword suggestions for SEO optimization, especially the ability to connect and download the Semrush EO Content Template.

But the keywords it recommends may not always be easy to rank for or the keywords you would have chosen yourself.

Besides, when it comes to the title, alt issues, and other on-page issues, you would be better off using WordPress plugins like Yoast or Rank Math that let you optimize all elements in detail with a specific focus keyword.

They also give you very in-depth recommendations which SWA does not live up to.

For internal linking, I would recommend you use a separate, focused tool like Link Whisper. It makes internal linking extremely fast and effective, and I swear by it! Read my full Link Whisper review to know more about this tool.

• Tone of voice: My review of the tone of voice would be neutral.

It does give you an indication of how formal/ casual your text is, and suggests some sentences to rewrite, and it could help entry-level writers.

Pro writers would be able to adjust this on their own, especially if the brand story and digital content strategy are already crafted.

• Plagiarism: The Semrush Plagiarism Checker is very accurate.

It may not compare to a full-blown plagiarism tool like Grammarly or Scribbr, but it is enough for you to check if your content could have a duplicate on the web.

Just remember that you can run only 5 checks a month.

• Rephraser: If you are not using an AI tool like Jasper to write your content, the Semrush rephraser tool can be quite effective in suggesting rephrased content without risking plagiarism.

The only downside again is that is it available for only 1000 words in a month.

4. Integrations

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant integrates very easily with other WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, etc.

It usually provides recommendations on content optimization which are different than the ones provided by the SEO plugins, even on the SEO part.

Besides, the tone of voice feature and the plagiarism checker in a WordPress SEO plugin is unique to the SWA.

So you can install the other SEO plugin, and integrate it with Semrush to get the keywords for your content optimization.

Read my full post on Yoast vs Semrush to see how it works.

Who should use the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant?

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is an online tool that makes it easy to write SEO-friendly content.

It is designed for anyone who wants to improve and optimize their content, including content writers, bloggers, students, and business owners.

If you are a content marketeer managing the content from content writers, the Semrush SWA could also be fantastic for you, because you will directly see if the content is optimized for the keywords you have chosen.

Check out my Semrush review to know more about the Semrush features and their pros and cons.

Try out SWA for 30 days for free, to see if it works for you!

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant Review 2023 Conclusion – Is it effective?

Overall, the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is a helpful and effective tool that can save you some time and improve your writing and content optimization.

It’s not perfect, though, not a replacement for human editing and shouldn’t be relied on as such. You as a content writer, editor, and manager, will have to take decisions on which recommendations to apply.

You also have to find your own content topics and do your own keyword research to get the most out of the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant.

So I would not recommend you get a paid subscription to Semrush Guru with the Semrush SWA being a big consideration.

Semrush Guru has other benefits, like the SEO Content Template, the Content Audit tool, and the Semrush historical data feature, which make it superior to Semrush Pro.

However, if you have Semrush Guru, the SWA is definitely a valuable addition to your SEO arsenal. And if you use WordPress, the integration makes it even easier to use.

Have you tried the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!