Companies that blog attract 55% more website visitors. Publishing content faster can lead to greater search visibility, more blog traffic and conversions.
In this article, I’ll show you how to write blog posts faster, plus actionable steps and writing tips to boost your writing speed, produce high-quality blog posts and scale content writing.
What you will learn
- The fastest way to write a blog post is by using AI tools but fact checking, proofreading and editing are required
- Google no longer discriminate against AI content
- Actionable steps plus free blogging and writing tips to write blog posts quickly such as maintaining a keyword bank of article ideas, researching your topic, identifying search intent, among others
How to write blog posts faster
Today, the fastest way to write a blog post is by using AI. You can use AI to quickly brainstorm, get your creative juices flowing and generate ideas. They can also be used to do research, create content briefs and outlines to generate a draft of the perfect blog post.
However, these tools are not perfect yet and the quality of their first draft is still low.
That’s why a blog post produced by AI may use the wrong context, lack creativity or state incorrect facts.
Therefore, it’s important to fact check, proofread and edit any AI generated content before trying to hit the publish button.
This way, you can add a human touch, introduce more depth and creativity, ensure accuracy of information and facts, correct spelling mistakes, improve writing flow and make it engaging and reader friendly to improve the overall quality
Also, Google doesn’t discriminate against AI content as long as it demonstrates experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, commonly referred to as E-E-A-T
To increase your writing speed, save time and write blogs faster, kickstart your writing process with AI, generate a first draft within minutes and edit to improve the quality.
Using the right tools, it’s a repeatable process that makes it easier to produce new blog posts quickly and scale content writing.
9 steps to write blog posts quickly
Apart from using AI to quickly create a first draft, it can also help produce high quality blog posts, speeden the content creation process, and scale content marketing.
1. Maintain a keyword bank of content ideas
With a ready list of topics to write about, you can pick one and start writing without wasting time.
This can help you save time, generate a first draft quickly and write a blog post faster. Without a keyword bank, you will spend hours thinking and staring at a blank page, instead of writing.
You can generate an entire topical map of keywords for your website with Surfer's Keyword Research tool.
- Sign into Surfer Keyword Research Tool
- Enter a broad keyword and select your target country
- Click Create Keyword Research
Let's say I have a website about photography and want to generate a list of keywords for my website. Surfer's keyword tool has 93 different keyword suggestions that I can write blog posts for.
I can use the keyword data to prioritise content creation for my blog.
And can use this as a bank of keyword ideas for new topics instead of spending hours engaging in manual keyword research.
2. Research your topic
Before you start writing, research your blog post topic to improve your knowledge, get your creative juices flowing, generate ideas and take note of details your audience cares about, in something like Google Docs.
This way, you won’t struggle to write and waste time or create a terrible first draft that must be deleted.
With research findings at your fingertips, you can start writing with confidence, stay focused, write quickly and produce amazing blog articles fast.
Here are a few ways to research your blog topics in detail:
Google your topic and read other blogs that show up in the search engine results page (SERPs)
Carry out more research on social media and other platforms like Quora, Reddit, Slack channels, Discord groups and so on
Gather more information and clues through Google Autosuggest, People Also Ask and Related searches results. For example, here are the different results for the term “affiliate marketing.”
3. Identify search intent
Because people searching online belong to different stages of the buyer’s journey, their needs, interests and search intent also differ.
Informational intent: Those searching for information and answers to their questions. For example, queries may include … what is digital marketing? How to remove food stains on carpets, search engine optimization, etc.
Navigational intent: Those searching for a specific brand, company or website they know. Queries may include Pinterest, Surfer SEO, Amazon, etc.
Transactional intent: Those who’re ready to buy and are looking for the best place to buy from. Queries may include "buy jeans online", shoe sales, etc.
Commercial intent: Those thinking of buying but want to research the product or service first. Queries may include "best wireless keyboards", "HP versus Lenovo laptops", HubSpot review, etc.
For each type of search intent, different types of content provide value for searchers.
Therefore, take this into consideration when creating content so you don’t focus only on buyers and miss out on all others
Knowing the search intent behind your blog post topic or keyword can provide direction on the type of content to create and the right tone to use.
You won’t waste time wondering whether to write a listicle or an ultimate guide or a comparison post. This way, you can hit the ground running and write your blog post fast.
To identify search intent plus the best type of content for your keyword so you can write faster, Google it.
Then check all the results on the first page for the most common type of content that showed up.
For example, if you Google a topic like “what is SEO writing”
Most of the first page results are informational posts and guides. Therefore, create an informational blog post or guide that answers the question in detail.
Clicking on a keyword tile inside Surfer's Keyword Research summary for your domain can also help you identify search intent.
This topic for example, is categorized as information intent, judging from the SERPs.
4. Learn from your SERP competition
Because you write for a similar audience, staying abreast of top-ranking content from search competitors, is a faster way to identify blog topics to write about.
This will help you save time on keyword research, improve your writing skills and speed up your blog writing process so as to spend less time writing blog posts.
Start by identifying search competitors and their top-ranking blog posts.
You can then use Surfer Audit to analyze several elements.
- Target keywords they already rank for
- Long tail versions of these keywords you can rank for
- Missing angles in their posts you can cover to make yours better
- Relevant words used to optimize their titles, meta descriptions and body text
- This analysis can also reveal industry content gaps that you can fill and new keywords to target
Remember, search competitors are websites that ranks for target keywords you want to rank for.
They don’t have to be your business competitor or play in the same industry as you.
For example, if your website focuses on health and wellness topics, websites that publish content on health and wellness are your search competitors.
5. Outline your article
Writing without a blog post outline means there’s no prior knowledge of how to structure your blog posts and what to include.
Of course, you can end up writing slowly and wasting time because you keep stopping, thinking and staring at a blank page.
Having a solid outline, on the other hand, gives you an idea of the structure and content of your blog post before you start writing.
This can improve your focus and concentration and also increase your writing speed so you can write blog posts fast.
To create a blog post outline, identify all the headings and subheadings you want to cover, arrange them in the right order and insert them into relevant header tags like H2s and H3s. Also note talking points as bullet points under each header.
For example, here’s the outline for this post you’re currently reading:
Introduction
1. What you will learn (H2)
2. How to write blog posts faster (H2)
3. X steps to write blog posts quickly (H2)
· Maintain a keyword bank of content ideas (H3)
· Research your topic
· Identify search intent
· Learn from your search competition
· Outline your article
· Keep relevant keywords handy
· Optimize for SEO and readability
· Follow a content calendar
· Use frameworks, not templates
4. Key takeaways (H2)
5. Conclusion (H2)
To automatically generate an outline, click on Insert outline (headings) inside Content Editor.
Surfer will analyze the top ranking pages for your search query to present an outline that you can edit. For example,
6. Keep relevant keywords handy
Because people search online with different words and phrases, sprinkling semantically relevant keywords in your blog post can help Google find it faster and rank it higher.
By keeping such keywords handy, you can quickly add them to your blog post while writing, all without searching for them, losing focus and wasting time.
This will improve your writing skills, speed up your blog writing process, allow you to write blogs faster and scale content writing.
For example, if your target keyword is digital marketing, some related keywords may include:
- Internet marketing
- Online marketing
- Social media marketing
- Search engine optimization
- Content marketing
To manually compile a list of relevant keywords for your target keyword, type it in Google and take note of keywords provided by Google Autosuggest, People Also ask and Related Searches sections.
You can start writing blog posts faster using keyword optimization tools like Surfer Content editor that will suggest relevant keywords inside the writing window.
7. Optimize for SEO and readability
To attract and engage the right audience and also rank, a blog post must be optimized for SEO and readability.
Optimizing your blog articles for SEO requires adding your keywords to four areas.
Page Title: This is the blog post title and should contain your target keyword.
Ensure the title is attractive, compelling, around 60 characters and accurately communicate the blog post content
·Header tags: These are the H1, H2, H3 tags used to structure a blog post.
Add the keyword to header tags so search engines can have information about the blog post structure
URL structure: With your keyword in the URL, search engines can quickly figure out whether your blog post is relevant to a search query or not.
Meta descriptions: This is a short summary of a blog post that’s shown under the title in search results.
Keep it within 100 and 120 characters for best results, include your keyword and make it persuasive enough to drive more clicks.
Optimizing blog posts for readability is also essential to make your content easy to scan and skim.
For over 13 years, studies showed that most people reading online only skim and scan, instead of reading line by line.
Therefore, break up your blog article with relevant images and visuals, videos, quotes, graphs, charts and so on, to introduce white space and make your blog post skimmable.
8. Follow a content calendar
Because it's prepared weeks or months in advance, a content calendar, also called an editorial calendar, can help prioritize blog post ideas and also speed up your blogging process by fixing time deadlines to each stage.
As a result, following a content calendar can help you stay focused and organized, track your content creation process, save time, increase your writing speed, meet deadlines and produce more blog posts.
Depending on your needs, you can create an editorial calendar with Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Calendar or Microsoft Excel.
You can also use project management software like Trello, Notion, Asana and so on.
9. Use frameworks not templates
Whether you want to write a how to post or other blog posts, there are plenty of free blog post templates available online.
While they can seem like a good strategy to quicken your blogging process and write faster, unfortunately that’s not the case.
There’s nothing wrong in using content templates to write one blog post from time to time.
But when it comes to scaling, using blog post templates is not realistic, can affect the quality of your blogs and make it tough to achieve topical authority and credibility with your audience.
Instead of content templates, use writing frameworks like PAS or the Inverted Pyramid to structure and create quality blog posts consistently, write faster and scale content writing
PAS refers to Problem, Agitation, Solution and it’s a simple writing framework where the problem is identified first. Next, the problem is agitated further by going into more details and finally a solution is provided.
The Inverted Pyramid is a writing framework where the most important and relevant facts, information, sentences and keywords are shared at the beginning to quickly hook readers and capture their attention.
Key takeaways
- Use AI writing tools to save time writing blogs, write quickly and scale content writing
- Google supports AI content as long as it satisfies E-E-A-T
- Write a blog post faster when you maintain a keyword bank of content ideas, research your topic, identify search intent, learn from your SERP competition, outline your article, keep relevant keywords handy, optimize for SEO & readability, follow a content calendar and use frameworks not templates.
- Writing quickly requires a lot of focus and concentration therefore a conducive writing environment, free from distractions, is a necessity.
Conclusion
Creating blog posts faster used to be challenging but that’s no longer the case. Now it’s possible to write a blog post in minutes with AI. Also, there are useful writing tips and actionable steps to speed up the writing process, produce great blog posts and scale content writing. This way, smart businesses, content teams and other bloggers can achieve their marketing goals sooner.
