The Semrush blog aims to give you the information you need to develop and improve your marketing and SEO strategies. And to be the best place in the world to learn SEO and digital marketing.
Here’s a look at the core principles and editorial steps that make our content trustworthy, informative, and actionable.
Editorial Principles
We create our content according to principles that reflect how much we value quality.
These principles are:
- Accuracy: Using exhaustive research and thoughtful wording to ensure articles are free from errors, misrepresentations, and misleading statements
- Expertise: Relying on subject matter experts and fact-checkers with deep industry knowledge to verify that our content is trustworthy
- Readability: Writing with language that’s simple, clear, and concise to make our content informative and accessible for all readers
- Value: Providing comprehensive information along with actionable and useful recommendations that can’t be found anywhere else
- Originality: Publishing truly unique content informed by experience to maintain trust with readers
Editorial Process
Our comprehensive editorial process is designed to ensure the information we publish aligns with our principles.
Here's an overview of the steps we take to maintain our standards:
1. Strategic Brief Development
Our content strategists are SEO and marketing experts who perform thorough research to create detailed creative briefs for every article.
They provide key insights writers can use to create the best possible content.
2. Expert-Driven Content Creation
Our rigorous vetting process tests all writers’ expertise and allows us to verify their skills.
This ensures we work with seasoned marketing professionals who have in-depth knowledge and the ability to clearly communicate complex information.
These professionals choose the pieces they want to write based on their familiarity with the topics. And draft content that’s informative, engaging, accessible, and aligned with the provided brief.
3. Rigorous Fact-Checking and Editing
Once our subject matter experts have crafted the initial content, it moves to our team of highly trained editors.
This team also includes marketing professionals with deep industry experience and knowledge. And they’re responsible for an in-depth review process that includes:
- Fact-checking: Verifying every claim against trusted sources to ensure the information is accurate and current
- Language and style: Refining the language to check for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors—and to make sure it’s aligned with our style guide
- Relevance: Making suggestions for additional context or insights to enhance understanding and engagement with our audience
4. Compelling Image Creation
When editors have finished polishing the content, it moves to the image-creation phase.
Our graphic coordinators capture relevant, helpful images and work with designers to create custom illustrations. And confirm every image adheres to our visual identity and makes the content easier to digest.
They then add these images to the article.
5. Final Review and Approval
After the imagery phase, our managing editor conducts the final review. This step serves as the last line of defense to ensure the content meets all our editorial standards.
The managing editor reviews the content for quality and alignment with our core principles.
Once the managing editor is fully satisfied with the content, they approve it for publication.
Style Guidelines
Our internal style guide is designed so that our content consistently meets our audience’s specific needs. And works well for our website.
Our style guide encompasses:
- Voice and tone: Establishing guidelines that ensure we communicate ideas in ways that are simple, clear, engaging, approachable, and appropriate for our readers
- Formatting and structure: Providing clear instructions on how to organize sentences, paragraphs, and sections to enhance readability and user engagement
- Terminology and usage: Outlining usage guidelines for industry-specific terms and other jargon to ensure clarity and consistency
We also treat it as a living document. Meaning we review and update it regularly to align with evolving best practices, reader feedback, and our constantly changing industry.
For matters our internal style guide doesn’t cover, we defer to the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook—a benchmark for journalistic standards.
It provides a comprehensive set of guidelines covering spelling, punctuation, abbreviations, capitalization, and attribution.
To ensure our content is in harmony with both style guides, we provide training to our content creators and editors, include compliance checks during editing, and conduct regular reviews and updates as needed.
Content Updates
To keep our content accurate, relevant, and engaging, we have a systematic review and update process for our existing content.
It’s based on:
- Performance review: Analyzing content performance related to readership and engagement to identify pieces that may need updates or enhancements
- External changes: Keeping up with industry updates, technology advancements, market trends, and regulatory changes to determine when content needs adjusting
- Reader feedback: Collecting input from readers via social media to understand what improvements would better meet their needs and interests
Sometimes, we completely rewrite the existing content from scratch. When more minor updates are needed, we implement them while working to maintain the integrity and quality of the original content.
Content updates are reflected with new publish dates. And undergo our rigorous editorial process to ensure they meet our high standards.
This regular review process aims to help our content remain a trustworthy, up-to-date resource for our readers.
Commitment to Transparency
We see transparency as a key value, especially when recommending tools and products to our audience.
So, we only suggest tools and products that we believe are useful for the task at hand. This includes our own offerings.
Contact
If you have questions or feedback about these editorial standards or our content, please contact [email protected].