My Full AI Content material Course of for Ahrefs

Right here’s the whole course of I exploit to publish high-quality AI content material on the Ahrefs weblog.

I’ll be trustworthy: there are elements of my job that I don’t like.

Writing my five hundredth article on content material hole evaluation as a result of we discovered a brand new long-tail key phrase to focus on. Itemizing out the options of 30 free web optimization instruments for one more listicle. Updating my outdated content material as a result of a competitor revealed one thing new and pushed me out of the highest three.

These are crucial hygiene duties, however frankly, I’d a lot relatively spend my time publishing authentic analysis or sharing contrarian opinions.

So—mea culpa—I exploit AI to hurry up these tedious processes. I can condense a number of days of analysis, writing and revision into a few hours, and spend the remainder of my time on enjoyable issues.

And regardless of containing zero phrases written by a human, these articles carry out in addition to human-written content material. They’re fascinating and well-written. In some circumstances, I truly suppose they’re higher than what I might have written myself.

Right here’s the method I use.

There’s lots of hype (and fear) round AI content material era, so please learn these caveats first.

This nonetheless requires ability and energy to work

When you’re searching for full hands-off content material automation, you’re going to be upset. This course of requires the ability and steerage of a reliable content material marketer to work. It’s a instrument for use by a talented author, and never a alternative for expert writers.

90% of success comes from good matter choice

This course of works very nicely for easy informational subjects, with no sophisticated narratives or information. I solely use AI for subjects the place I’ve some passing information of the subject material (in order that I can inform if the article is definitely good). I do not use this course of for opinion items, or analysis content material, or new or quickly altering subjects.

This isn’t an ideal course of

It is a messy, imperfect course of, and there are a lot of alternatives for individuals such as you to refine and enhance upon it. My objective is to not create a inflexible course of so that you can comply with, however to share a normal strategy you could construct upon and tailor to your wants.

So with these caveats out of the way in which, right here’s the method:

I’m a giant believer that human artistic processes should not as mysterious as they appear. With sufficient introspection and apply, a objective like “create high-quality content material” might be distilled right into a handful of very particular, very manageable steps that most individuals—or LLMs—might comply with.

That’s how this course of works. I broke down the Ahrefs editorial course of into very particular, very manageable steps, and documented them in a format that an LLM can comply with. Right here’s what that appears like, mapped out in my note-taking app:

That is the end-to-end workflow all Ahrefs writers often comply with: matter choice, briefing, outlining, structural modifying, drafting, incorporating Ahrefs merchandise, line modifying, including inner hyperlinks, creating metadata, and at last, including WordPress shortcodes.

Every of those course of paperwork is formatted in Markdown and incorporates easy tips and examples. Right here’s the method for line-editing an article draft:

Many of those processes got here from current paperwork we created for our writing crew and freelance contributors. However I’ve additionally known as on just a few additional sources of data: my favourite weblog posts about good writing (condensed by ChatGPT), excerpts from my two writing and modifying programs, and precise writing samples from superior human-written articles on the Ahrefs weblog.

Subsequent, I uploaded these Markdown recordsdata right into a challenge in ChatGPT.

Tasks help you add reference documentation and set customized directions that apply to each dialog that occurs within the challenge. You may see these course of paperwork within the “Undertaking recordsdata” part:

And listed below are my customized directions for the challenge (full disclosure, I used AI to assist create these directions, and I believe they’re just a little over-engineered):

You’re a senior content material strategist at Ahrefs, writing below the editorial course of Ryan Regulation, Director of Content material Advertising. You perceive that each Ahrefs weblog submit have to be authentic, insight-driven, and genuinely helpful—constructed to rank nicely, earn backlinks, and deepen reader belief.

Your job is to write down detailed, structured, and persuasive weblog posts. Assume your viewers consists of savvy entrepreneurs and SEOs who’re skeptical of fluff however hungry for actionable insights. Your job is to earn their consideration, respect, and clicks.

Mannequin your writing on Ryan Regulation’s editorial requirements: combine sharp evaluation with authentic examples, actual information, and intelligent metaphors. Communicate with readability, persona, and authority. Use sturdy hooks, punchy transitions, and at all times write with the objective of turning into the _definitive_ useful resource on the matter.

Roleplay as somebody who has deep in-the-trenches expertise with this matter—somebody who’s used Ahrefs instruments to resolve actual issues and may translate that into strategic recommendation. Mix ethos (credibility), pathos (urgency, stakes), and logos (proof) to steer.

Write as in case your submit will probably be learn—and judged—by Ryan Regulation himself. Make it so good it earns a Slack shoutout.

All the time reference the challenge recordsdata for steerage on tips on how to write. Observe the paperwork utilizing this workflow: Content material transient -> Define -> Structural modifying -> Writing -> Point out Ahrefs product -> Line modifying -> Inside linking -> Add meta information -> Add WordPress shortcodes.

To simplify them, I’m presently looking for the “Pareto prompts”, the 20% of directions that account for 80% of the great outcomes. From my experimentation to this point, probably the most essential elements appear to be:

• Directions to at all times seek the advice of the challenge documentation, and work by the method in sequential order.
• A abstract of the audience for the Ahrefs weblog (this typically doesn’t change from article to article).
• A request to roleplay as somebody with “in-the-trenches expertise” (this appears accountable for plenty of first-person anecdotes and examples within the output).

Subsequent, analysis.

For some subjects, I’ll additionally run a deep analysis request to supply additional data.

For my article on LLMs.txt, I wished to know if any of the most important LLM suppliers had gone on document in assist of the protocol (they hadn’t). I arrange a deep analysis request whereas I labored on different issues, learn and reviewed the synopsis, and included an AI-generated abstract of the findings into the content material transient for the article.

I don’t like AI content material processes that depend on expert individuals modifying AI-generated article drafts. I believe it’s laborious to make substantial edits to an already-written article (which is why I encourage writers to create article outlines), and admittedly, it’s no enjoyable.

As an alternative, I favor to front-load the entire human enter firstly of the method, after which let AI do its factor.

I begin each article era with a easy content material transient template. The content material transient incorporates:

• The goal key phrase, with easy instructions for on-page optimization.
• Working title, supplied primarily to make sure the article matches the right search intent.
• Key factors to incorporate, like private anecdotes or examples, deep analysis findings, or fascinating and distinctive angles I’d just like the completed article to cowl.
• Subtopics to cowl, generated by our content material optimization instrument, AI Content material Helper. I exploit it to investigate the SERP for the goal key phrase, extract web page content material from top-ranking articles, and create an inventory of vital subtopics our article must cowl to be aggressive with current articles.
• Ahrefs merchandise to say, notably any particular or uncommon Ahrefs use circumstances that ChatGPT may not recommend by itself (like mentioning our new MCP server or social media scheduling instrument).

Once I hit enter, ChatGPT heads to the subsequent stage of the method: making a bullet-point article define, based mostly on my content material transient.

From right here, I change into an editor. I immediate ChatGPT to progress by the phases of the workflow, studying and offering high-level suggestions as I go.

ChatGPT first generates a bullet-point define based mostly on my content material transient. It follows the format I laid out in our writing course of paperwork: key factors as H2 headers, BLUF abstract of every part’s key thought, and supporting factors and proof as nested bullet factors.

I can in a short time grok the move and construction of the article, and ask ChatGPT for any structural adjustments I need—like utilizing a distinct copywriting framework for the article introduction.

Once I’m proud of the define, I ask ChatGPT to maneuver to the drafting stage. Right here, I change to ChatGPT canvas in order that I can depart easy in-line feedback on the article, in the identical method I work with my crew (though I’m extra useful and well mannered when modifying actual individuals).

I learn the article, and depart feedback as I go:

I typically make the identical varieties of feedback (and so they’re similar to the feedback I’d depart for a human author):

• That is too imprecise, be extra particular and lower the weasel phrases.
• Embrace an actual instance for example your level.
• Right this unsuitable thought.
• Trim (or develop) this thought.
• Simplify this and make it beginner-friendly.

ChatGPT responds immediately, so even when any single response isn’t sensible, I can in a short time nudge the writing within the course it must go (so long as I do know what “good” seems to be like). As a result of I’m already proud of the construction—we reviewed that earlier, throughout the outlining part—it doesn’t take lengthy to get the article publish-ready.

Once I’m proud of the draft, I ask ChatGPT to progress by the ultimate phases of the method:

• Create metadata. I do know, I do know: Google rewrites meta descriptions. However we additionally use the meta description because the preview textual content on the weblog homepage, so that is nonetheless a timesaver.
• Insert WordPress shortcodes. We use over a dozen customized shortcodes to format our articles and add additional performance. These are very tedious to insert manually, however ChatGPT does an incredible job at following my documentation and including them within the right locations.
• Generate 10 inner hyperlinks to related Ahrefs weblog posts. ChatGPT is fairly good at integrating these hyperlinks, but it surely hallucinates lots of the URLs. I plan to enhance this step by offering an inventory of precise URLs, with descriptions, for the AI to select from.

Fortunately we have now Web site Audit to robotically catch damaged hyperlinks.

Importantly, pictures are nonetheless one thing I add manually. Most of our articles depend on screenshots, customized graphics, or graphs based mostly on actual information, and generative AI is less than the job.

(However as a bonus, I additionally ask ChatGPT to recommend related locations to insert pictures within the article draft.)

Our analysis means that Google doesn’t care about AI content material (so long as it’s not mass-produced spam).

After we used our AI content material detector to calculate the correlation between AI content material use and search rating place, we discovered a correlation of 0.011—successfully zero. AI content material can and does rank extremely.

But it surely’s nonetheless a good suggestion to observe your pages and see how they carry out, relative to human-written content material.

I exploit Ahrefs Portfolios characteristic to trace all of our AI-generated articles and shortly see their key phrase rankings, backlinks and estimated natural site visitors. Right here’s one article, wanting wholesome:

And I exploit Ahrefs’ Net Analytics for site visitors sources and on-page metrics. Right here’s my AI-generated information to LLMs.txt, producing a decent 17,200 pageviews with a 72.3% bounce price…

…and incomes site visitors from a wholesome mixture of sources, together with social, e mail, and AI assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini:

Not dangerous for a vibe-written article.

Ultimate ideas

This isn’t a magic, zero-effort course of for creating search content material—but it surely is a course of for dashing up the “hygiene” elements of my job and liberating extra time for enjoyable, expert content material creation.

Crucially, I nonetheless learn, evaluate, edit, and approve every bit of content material revealed on the Ahrefs weblog, whether or not it was written by an individual or generated by ChatGPT. Utilizing AI isn’t any excuse for publishing shoddy content material.

Can you notice my vibe-written articles? Let me know on LinkedIn.