Transcription
One of the best ways to get more qualified leads, traffic, and sales to your business is by creating high-quality, search-optimized content for your brand. And one of the best ways to do that at scale is by using AI tools. But if you've tried this and you're just unimpressed with the boilerplate, mediocre outputs you've gotten from AI, or your AI content is just not performing in search, then you're in the right place.
In this video, I'm going to walk you through my entire five-step AI-assisted content creation process that combines the best of human creativity and the efficiency of AI.
Over the past 10 years, I have written hundreds, maybe even over a thousand, search-optimized content pieces for over a dozen clients, including my own sites. This content has gone on to generate millions of organic clicks and attract thousands of qualified leads for businesses. In fact, many of my blog posts for one of my old clients, Lyn Works, are still their top-ranking pages, according to Ahrefs, generating thousands of organic clicks per month over the course of the last several years.
So, content is something that's very near and dear to my heart. And because it's such a core part of my business offering to clients, I've experimented with every AI content creation process under the sun. From completely manual content creation, because obviously ChatGPT didn't exist back then, to one-click bulk writing tools with zero human intervention. We're talking the sloppiest of the AI slop. I have tried it all.
Through all of this experimentation, I've developed what I believe to be the optimal five-phase AI-assisted content creation process that combines the creativity and insight that only humans can provide, the speed and efficiency that makes AI so powerful, and a systematic approach that delivers consistent, high-quality results.
So, I want to walk you through each phase of this battle-tested process that has generated millions of clicks and thousands of leads across multiple businesses. You ready?
Each piece of search-optimized content goes through five phases: the research phase, the outline phase, the writing phase, the editing phase, and the polish phase. Wait, no, not not not that Polish phase. I mean, polish phase. Sorry. I've been working with the Surfer folks for so long; got Poland on the brain.
For many years, I had to perform each of these phases manually, and one piece of content took me anywhere between one and a half to three full business days. With this process and some of the tools I'll mention in this video, I was able to increase my output to being able to write anywhere between one to two high-quality pieces of content per day. And you can do the same.
Now, let's start with the first and arguably the most important step, and that's the research phase.
Those of you who've been in this content marketing game for a while know that the most critical and often most challenging part of writing high-quality content isn't even the writing itself. It's understanding the topic well enough to write about it intelligently. In fact, for highly technical content pieces, I've spent 60 to 70% of my content production time just researching the topic. And honestly, it's a lot of fun.
Normally, what I do for research is I type my target keyword into Google and study the SERPs page by page to understand the following:
First and most importantly, what is the search intent of this keyword? What is the user expecting to see? If you don't get this right, I'm telling you, nothing else matters.
Secondly, what are the common content types that Google seems to reward with the top spots? Comparison posts, review pages, or community forums?
Next, what topics do the top-ranking posts cover? Do they focus more on going deep into one subtopic or covering a wide breadth of related subtopics somewhat shallowly?
And four, what are the rich media elements that the top-ranking pages utilize? Things like images, embedded videos, graphics, and more.
While it still may be a helpful exercise to do this sort of manual deep dive every once in a while, I found Perplexity to be an extremely helpful tool to speed things up in this initial research process. I'll start by asking Perplexity what the search intent of a particular keyword is. For example, the keyword "how to grow a YouTube channel."
From here, Perplexity gives me a thorough answer based on the highest-ranking search results, telling me that the query is "overwhelmingly informational and practical." Satisfying the user will likely mean providing a robust guide that covers a wide range of topics related to growing a YouTube channel. And sure enough, these suspicions are confirmed when I check the top-ranking posts on the search results page.
Now that the most important aspect of our research is behind us, it's time to go even deeper.
Now, this is where I love to use ChatGPT's deep research function with my own deep research prompt that I'll link to in the description. This prompt will automatically source information from scholarly journals, if relevant, community sites like Reddit and Quora, and top-ranking sites. Finally, presenting everything in an easy-to-understand research report. I'm telling you guys, this has been my secret weapon when it comes to research.
Now, as those of you who've used deep research know, it can often take around 10 minutes to complete. So, while my research report is loading, I'll do a few things to stay productive.
First off, I'll open up Surfer and I'll start a new content editor document with my target keyword. From here, I'll set my competitors, ensuring I'm only pulling metrics from relevant content. Then, I'll briefly review things like the target word count, which gives me a really good idea as to how long the blog post needs to be, and the topics I need to focus on from the "fact" section. These topics are sourced straight from large language models and top-ranking pages. So, I know covering as many of these as possible in my content is going to increase my chances of ranking high.
Another phenomenal source of information I like to mine is YouTube itself. For many topics, not just growing a YouTube channel, YouTube is a rich source of information and firsthand experiences that often aren't found in written content and therefore missed by a lot of people and large language models. And thanks to the new Gemini features built into YouTube, we don't need to spend hours watching YouTube videos to get valuable information, unless you want to, of course.
For example, this video by Marcus Jones on "how to grow a YouTube channel from zero subs" seems to have a lot of great info, but it's almost half an hour long, and your boy's got deadlines. I'm sorry. So, I click the "ask" button here and ask Gemini to summarize the video right inside of YouTube. From here, I can see some of his main points and even ask follow-up questions to include in my research. And of course, I'll give him a like and subscribe for his contribution. Thanks, Marcus.
By this time, my deep research is probably done. So, I'm going to head over to ChatGPT and see what I've got.
Now, here's the first big mistake I'd recommend avoiding. Don't just take this research and throw the whole thing into another AI assistant and ask it to write a blog post. I know that's tempting. I've tried this before. An AI will almost always go rogue and choose a content angle that either you didn't want or that overall isn't very good. I highly recommend taking the time to read this research in its entirety. Or if you want to make the most of your commuting or walking time, you can copy the text from ChatGPT into Notebook LM, a completely free research tool from Google, and ask it to generate an audio podcast version of your research that you can put on your phone or listen to as you do other things.
"A massive 93% of all those videos, they never even get to a thousand views."
"Wow. 93%. So basically invisible?"
"Pretty much."
Now, if you really want to go above and beyond with your research, you can actually reach out to experts in the field for an interview. Maybe it's these YouTubers or other YouTubers who've grown their channel, and it doesn't need to be this big, like, scheduled video call. It can just be a few text-based questions. Just be respectful of their time and don't be afraid to follow up a couple times. These people are usually very busy. This is really unlocking the next level of high-effort content. The advantage is that you're getting perspectives that nobody, including ChatGPT, has because they're locked away inside the minds of these experts.
Now, because this can often expand your content scope and timeline, you may only want to do this for your core cornerstone pieces of content that really drive the most business for you. I've personally done this with content throughout my career, and the results have been incredible.
And we're now ready to move on to phase two: outline creation.
So, once you understand the user intent, you've gathered your research, and you feel like you have at least a fundamental grasp of the topic at hand, it's time to create an outline. This is like taking the time to draw out a blueprint before setting off to build a house.
One of the advantages of spending a good amount of time in the research phase is that by this point, you should already have an outline forming in your mind. Something I've learned in my career is that spending the required amount of time on each phase makes accomplishing the next phase so much easier. When you immerse yourself in the subject matter for the research phase, the outline practically flows out of you. And once you have a really tight outline, the writing process is literally like paint by numbers.
In the past, an impending deadline has caused me to get impatient and skip some of these preliminary steps, and it's only created more headaches and work for me down the line. So, be patient and trust the process.
If you've done your research, but you need a little help organizing it into a logical outline, Surfer is a huge help. If we go back to the content editor, I can click the "outline" tab and unfurl each of the top competitors' outlines. Now, obviously, I'm not going to copy these wholesale, but I will identify some areas that may have gotten missed in my research and study how the top-ranking pages are organizing their content.
For example, this particular blog post from Free Code Camp touches on some of the more personal aspects of growing a channel, like avoiding burnout and even sharing the results of the author's very first video on the platform. This kind of vulnerability and firsthand experience is highly resonant to audiences. So, I'd likely try to implement something similar in my post. Not to mention the fact that it's a personal story that ChatGPT can't replicate.
If you want to experiment with AI taking the wheel in your outline, you can use the "insert outline" feature within the content editor, and Surfer will automatically add a SERP-based outline with content organized according to the top-ranking pages. Just know that this may differ from your desired angle and research. So, feel free to edit, supplement, or delete whatever you don't need.
Now, another thing I would do to really go above and beyond is to go on Amazon.com and search my keyword. Some topics lend themselves well to books, others not so much. But if you are lucky enough to find some solid books, I would use the "look inside" feature to study the table of contents. Why? Because these authors often have professional editors that help them organize their information into the most optimal structure, which can provide a lot of clarity as you're creating your outline.
For simplicity, I'll usually outline my content right inside the Surfer content editor, making sure to follow semantic SEO best practices in my heading hierarchy. Namely, one H1 on the page, my article title, and each subtopic beneath as an H2. If I get more granular into sub-subtopics, those become H3s, H4s, and so on and so forth. I'll even add in notes of things that I know I'll want to cover under each subheading as I think of them.
Once you have a buttoned-up outline, it's time to move on to the next step of the process: the writing phase.
Now, as much as I would love to wax poetic about the art and science of copywriting, that would make this video at least four hours long. I love copywriting. I wrote copy before I even got into the SEO business. In fact, in high school, I was on the school newspaper, and I had aspirations to be a journalist before I got into marketing. And even to this day, I still feel like I'm a student of the craft.
I will, however, give you a few tips that I've picked up along the way when it comes to writing copy that's not only search-optimized, but fun to read.
First off, in most cases, you do not need to bother with a long, flowery introduction. Like for this post, for example, I don't need to be explaining why YouTube is so great and giving a bunch of stats on YouTube success and blah blah blah. No, nobody cares. Okay? Remember your search intent. People who searched for "how to grow a YouTube channel" likely already have a channel. They know how important YouTube growth is and are looking for actionable tips that they can implement right now. You don't need to convince them.
Web content, especially AI-friendly web content, is designed to be highly skimmable. So, use headings judiciously. Think of each heading as its own isolated idea, its own isolated section that's part of a larger whole. So, for this section on producing quality content, I would start with this H3 defining what quality content is, then move on to the specific attributes of quality content, making sure to keep all the copy topically isolated to whatever subject I'm writing about.
When it comes to using AI for content, I like to think of AI as a writing assistant that can go off and perform research and various tasks for me while I continue my writing momentum. That's the key when it comes to your first draft: don't break momentum. So, I might be writing a section on some of the most important YouTube KPIs, and I might ask Claude or ChatGPT, "Hey, am I missing anything from this list?" And maybe I use some of the suggestions, and maybe I don't.
AI can also be really good for quickly surfacing things like statistics, expert quotes, as you can see, my ChatGPT research has done that here, and giving you quick definitions of particular concepts. For example, for this section on producing quality content, I can ask ChatGPT, "According to YouTube's official documentation and well-established best practices across the internet, give me a succinct definition of quality content on YouTube." ChatGPT has a pretty good definition that I may or may not use word for word, but it's a good starting point for this particular section.
One thing I figured out when it comes to using AI is that the more volume of work you try to outsource to AI at one time, the more your unique voice is erased. For example, I just asked ChatGPT to give me one definition. I can use that partially or completely while still retaining my style. However, if I asked ChatGPT to write an entire section, it's going to be a lot harder to maintain that voice. And the same principle applies even more so to having ChatGPT write entire blog posts, which, of course, we want to avoid.
Now, some people might prefer having AI write an entire first draft to then come through and edit it afterwards. If that's the case, I recommend giving Surfer's "Write with AI" feature a try. The "Write with AI" tool in Surfer is different from ChatGPT because rather than just generating boilerplate info from generic training data, it will actually go out and study the search engines and create an outline based on the highest-ranking pages.
Whatever your writing method of choice, once you've gotten all the most important info on the page, it's time to move on to the next step: the editing phase.
Now, up to this point, I haven't really focused on our content score in Surfer or the recommended keyword insertions. I found that if you've done your research correctly, most of these you'll just hit naturally. But at this point, I'll go through and add any keywords I've missed into my piece if it fits the content and isn't distracting. I'll also make sure I'm staying within my word count range unless I have an especially compelling reason not to. And I'll check the "facts" page once more to make sure I'm covering all of my desired topics.
If I'm writing this for an existing content site, I'll want to make sure I'm appropriately internally linking both from and to this new piece of content. Internal links are a hugely underutilized SEO technique that actually act as pipes that allow backlink equity and authority to flow between pages on your site. Not to mention that it makes it way easier for crawlers and users to navigate your site. Surfer once again makes this incredibly easy with the "insert internal links" function within content editor that takes your domain, analyzes it for topical similarities, and recommends internal link targets.
From a content formatting perspective, I want to avoid the "wall of text" problem by making sure I have plenty of line breaks in my copy and that any lists are formatted as bulleted or numbered lists.
Once the technical and formatting optimization is complete, I'll now begin editing for voice, tone, and flow. A great writer once gave me an absolutely overpowered piece of editing advice, and that's to simply read your content out loud.
Now, I actually stack this with two other techniques, and that's to read your content on your phone, where most people will be reading it anyway, and to read your content while walking. Movement has been shown to stimulate parts of the brain you don't activate while sedentary. And this helps you: one, discover places where you're just repeating yourself or blustering on or you have filler. You want to delete those with prejudice. Number two, find oddly worded phrasing that causes friction in your writing. Number three, spot grammatical errors or poorly structured sentences. It really is the best editing advice I've ever received. So, give it a shot.
Now, if you feel like you've really hit your limit with how much you yourself can edit, but you're not quite at the score that you need in the content editor, you can hit "optimize." It will intelligently locate passages that can benefit from a higher word count, maybe injecting some strategic keywords, and it will prompt you to approve each of these changes as you make them.
Now, once you've researched, outlined, written, and edited your content, it's now time for phase five: the polish phase.
Now, this is something I'm very passionate about, which I call content packaging. Now, you have to ask yourself a question. In a world where anybody can just basically ask ChatGPT to answer any question at any time, why would anybody want to read content on the internet? And the answer is if you provide them with a better, more informative, and more engaging user experience than ChatGPT.
I always go back to this article from Maize as a perfect example. Now, sure, I could learn about different customer user experience testing models by prompting ChatGPT, but this is just a much more enjoyable experience. There are charts and graphs, well-produced visuals, embedded videos, callouts, and firsthand experiences from experts. All things that ChatGPT could never do, for now, at least.
Now, this would be the perfect example in my mind of high-effort, valuable content. To improve your content packaging, consider adding things like expert quotes from your interviews or the books that you researched. Embedded videos. Now, pro tip, you don't even need to embed your own videos. You can embed videos from other people, and it works the same way. Charts, graphs, or technical diagrams or illustrations that drive home core concepts. And you can even do animated GIFs demonstrating different processes.
To be honest, you don't even need to be the best graphic designer to make these. You can source them from sites like Envato or Freepik, or make them yourself in a free tool like Canva or Figma after watching a few tutorials.
Once you've embedded all of your high-quality assets and quotes, throw it up on your staging site, read it over in context, and congratulations, it's time to publish.
Now, if you keep practicing this, you'll get faster and faster, and you'll be able to do in about half a day what used to take me three full business days. You'll be able to knock out tons of high-quality content for your brand in no time at all.
But if you're serious about content creation, I honestly cannot recommend Surfer enough. And I'm not just saying that because I make videos for them. I use Surfer well before I made a single video for the Surfer Academy YouTube channel. It is the perfect complement to brands serious about creating high-quality, search-optimized content in this new AI meta. I highly recommend you check them out. The link will be in the description below.
All right, if you made it to the end of this video, congrats. I know that was a lot. So, you've earned a nice little palate cleanser, something fun, something light. You should definitely check out this video next where we talk about the seven layers of AI SEO. Thank you so much for watching, and happy ranking.