Any self-respecting content marketing affiliate knows the saying “content is king” and therefore understands the importance of creating high-quality, engaging content to help your site rank higher in search engines.
The objective is to create content that attracts customers, provides value, and drives traffic to your selected affiliate offer, resulting in a sale.
However, the rise of AI-generated content is making search engines even more competitive. AI tools are helping affiliates create large amounts of content quickly and at low cost, making it harder for search engines to rank quality content. Google's recent EEAT update explains this:
However, there is a secret weapon that many top affiliates use to maintain their edge. Sem RushThis powerful SEO and digital marketing toolkit will help you get ahead of AI content in several important ways.
1. Conduct smarter keyword research
One of the most important steps in any content strategy is choosing the right keywords to target.
Semrush Keyword Overview This tool allows you to analyze the search volume, competition level, Keyword Difficulty score, and more for any keyword.
This data-driven approach allows you to focus on keywords that are more likely to generate quality traffic.
Additionally, the Keyword Magic tool suggests hundreds of relevant long-tail keyword variations based on actual user searches. By targeting these highly specific, low-competition phrases, you can create content that directly answers searcher queries – something AI isn't very good at.
According to a study by Backlinko, long-tail keywords have a 3-5% higher click-through rate (CTR) than general terms, highlighting their importance in your strategy: Imagine what would happen to your affiliate commission at the end of the month if you saw a 3% increase in clicks on your content.
2. Analyze your competitors (including other AI writers)
To outperform your competitors, you need to understand their strategies. Semrush domain overview tool It provides valuable insights into any website’s organic and paid search performance, backlink profile, highest performing pages, and more.
The tool can also be used to analyze websites that serve up AI-generated content and identify potential weaknesses that can be exploited — for example, you might find that your content lacks depth, nuance, and the human touch that resonates with readers.
3. Find untapped content opportunities
One advantage human writers have over AI is that they can identify fresh and unique content perspectives that a machine might miss. Semrush Topic Research This tool helps you discover these opportunities by analyzing broad topic areas and suggesting specific, untapped keyword variations to target.
A HubSpot study found that businesses who publish 16+ blog posts per month get 3.5x more traffic than those who publish 4 or fewer posts, highlighting the value of finding new content opportunities. Also, Content Gap Analysis It gives you the opportunity to see what topics and keywords your competitors are ignoring and create best-answer content that fills in the gaps.s.
4. Optimize your content for better rankings
No matter how good your content is, it won't perform well if it's not properly optimized for search engines. On-Page SEO Checker We crawl your pages and provide customized recommendations for improving the technical, content, and user experience elements that impact rankings.
For example, they might suggest tweaking your title tags and meta descriptions, adding semantically relevant keywords, improving readability, compressing images, etc. By following these tips, you can: Following these tips will greatly increase the chances that your human-created content will outperform AI-generated output, and a recent Moz article highlights the importance of this by reporting that on-page SEO optimization can increase organic traffic by up to 20%.
5. Monitor performance
The main advantage humans have over AI is its ability to continuously learn, adapt, and make strategic decisions based on real-world data. Semrush’s Powerful Reporting and Analytics Features You can track the performance of your content across key metrics such as organic traffic, backlinks, rankings, and conversions.
These insights can be used to zero in on your most successful content topics and tactics and eliminate underperforming strategies — an agile, data-driven approach that's currently missing in AI content creation tools.
Semrush offers a number of useful features for affiliate marketers, including social media tracking, PPC and Amazon ad management, market/traffic analytics, etc. However, the tools mentioned above are especially useful for staying ahead of AI-generated content.
Final thoughts
After all, while AI writing tools can help you quickly generate drafts and basic copy ideas, they still struggle to match the depth, nuance, and emotional resonance of human-written content.
Use Semrush to conduct smarter research, find untapped opportunities, optimize your pages, and make data-driven decisions to create content that AI can't replicate.
Great affiliate marketers are constantly adapting to stay ahead of the curve, and as AI content becomes more prevalent, tools like Semrush will be critical to staying competitive and driving sustainable, long-term success.
To try Semrush for yourself, Sign up today The free pricing tier allows you to quickly get up to speed with the platform and become familiar with its controls.
If you are an affiliate and love the product – Join the Affiliate Program Promote Semrush to others and earn while you learn!
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