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Digital marketing relies on content, but even great content sometimes gets lost online. That’s the main reason search engine optimization (SEO) is big business — and why it’s an essential element of any digital marketing strategy.
Even experienced digital marketers can drown in the sea of options available to help with content writing, keyword generation, technical SEO, and everything else that helps your site reach your potential customers.
That’s why we’ve created this handy guide to content optimization tools. It will save you time, as you can quickly identify which platforms offer the solutions you need to support your content strategy.
What Is a Content Optimization Tool?
Digital marketers and web developers typically devote significant time and effort to search engine optimization. While Google says that most websites are found and ranked automatically by its crawlers, marketers know there is value in an SEO investment.
SEO helps Google read and understand your site, resulting in a better user experience (UX). Strong SEO often involves developing content people are interested in. Your SEO research can help you find appropriate topics for short- and long-form content and determine how best to structure and disseminate that content to build your brand.
The investment in SEO definitely has benefits, but it is also just that — an investment. Doing SEO well takes time, human resources, a specialized skill set, and money. That’s where content optimization tools come into play. They can help you to develop and execute a comprehensive SEO strategy with a fraction of the investment.
Here are our picks for 23 top content optimization tools and a brief synopsis of how each can help you step up your content optimization game.
Top 23 SEO Tools To Optimize Your Content
Whether you’re running a single website or a large-scale content operation, adherence to good SEO strategies is essential. But size and scale are also important to consider when reviewing these tools.
Depending on your skill set, your team’s capabilities, and your content goals, you might need a comprehensive solution or one focusing on just a single aspect of SEO. With this guide, you should be able to tell in a few moments which tools to research more deeply and which to set aside.
1. WordPress All-in-One SEO Plugin
The all-in-one SEO plugin (AIOSEO) is a comprehensive SEO tool. It’s intended for people with sites on the WordPress platform and boasts the potential for an increase in rankings and traffic.
That’s a bold claim, but AIOSEO has a long history. It was first developed in 2007 and is highly ranked by users. It offers quick search optimization and ongoing tools to help you maintain that site visibility and optimal user experience.
Its features include schema markup, local SEO, and internal linking automation. You can also use AIOSEO to do an SEO audit and to track SEO keyword rankings. In this age of Google’s preference for E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness), AIOSEO’s Author SEO (EEAT) feature might be especially coveted.
2. SE Rankings’ Content Marketing Tool
SE Rankings’ content marketing tool is another comprehensive solution, but its focus is narrower: content. It gives you and your team the support you need to consistently create great content that’s not only web-ready but SEO-friendly.
This tool supports you through each content creation stage, from content briefs to writing search-optimized content. With this resource, you can have relevant content to which your readers will respond that also attracts the attention of search engines. The briefs based on search engine results pages (SERPs) can ensure you use relevant keywords, and artificial intelligence (AI) helps you to produce more content faster.
3. Frase.io
Frase.io is another tool that emphasizes AI content optimization. It scours the web for facts and background, helping you create high-quality content using artificial intelligence. The platform helps with research on a particular topic and then suggests an outline and critical components of each content piece. Frase.io then assists with SEO content optimization by allowing you to compare your final draft to what’s being released by your competitors.
Frase.io won’t help with off-page SEO or technical SEO, but it might be helpful for high-volume marketers looking for consistency in blog post execution.
4. Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere will probably interest you if you’re doing a deep dive into keyword research tools. This resource offers insight into keyword traffic and trends on your site and across the web. You can use Keywords Everywhere to analyze other websites, including industry competitors. You can see what target keywords they use and the keyword density.
This resource can offer hashtag suggestions but won’t write content. Since keyword research is the first step to building a great content score, this tool might be handy for digital marketers who like to have flexibility in their content creation process.
5. MarketMuse AI-Powered Content Platform
MarketMuse is a comprehensive AI-based platform. It offers more in-depth competitor analysis, including a ranking analysis specific to your site that can help you identify content gaps. The platform can also help you objectively assess where your site ranks regarding specific topic authority.
You can develop a more precise and competitive content marketing strategy using these tools. This platform might be especially beneficial for large-scale digital marketers who want to do an in-depth, specific competitor analysis and a site SEO audit before developing timely and expensive content optimization strategies.
6. PageOptimizer Pro
PageOptimizer Pro is an AI writing on-page SEO optimization tool in one. You can use the tool to create briefs for new content, to develop new content, or to optimize old content. The platform also boasts of its speed, reducing the time you have to spend analyzing your pages.
PageOptimizer Pro's interface is easy to use, asking you a few questions before sending back an easy-to-follow to-do list for the content. Instead of rehashing old adages about what makes for great SEO, PageOptimizer Pro recognizes that not all ranking factors are created equal.
7. Hemingway Editor
Hemingway Editor is an app that’s made for writers, whether they are composing a blog post, e-book, white paper, or research brief. The app won’t help you with keyword research or suggest internal links, but it will highlight instances of passive voice and run-on, wordy sentences.
It can help improve content readability and, in the process, increase content quality. While this might seem like a “nice to have” but not a “necessity” for your web content, recall that even the highest-ranking sites on Google are read by actual people at the end of the day: your potential customers. The quality of your writing can impact whether or not their visit to your site converts into a sale.
8. SEMrush’s Writing Assistant
SEMrush’s SEO writing assistant also wants to make your text more readable, and it offers to help with content optimization. This tool has a few more unique features from a content perspective: You can use the platform to do a plagiarism check, an essential step in the world of high-volume content where you might have many competitors writing on the same topics. It also looks at the tone of voice, helping you maintain consistency across pages.
If you want additional website optimization tools, you can use the writing assistant and other solutions SEMrush offers.
9. Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer
Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer is another tool that can help you develop keyword lists and analyze which phrases or topics might be an effective part of your content strategy. The keyword analysis has unique features, such as the “parent topic” analysis, which helps you determine if you can still rank for your target keyword if you write a page on a more general topic instead. This can help you stay innovative and flexible with your content ideas.
Ahref’s Keyword Explorer also takes data from 10 different search engines, including Amazon, which means it’s not Google-centric. It also knows your web presence extends beyond local borders, so it includes search data from 171 countries.
10. Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is another tool designed to help with overall search engine ranking. It can help you to increase organic traffic with a streamlined content creation process. The tool helps you to develop a content outline, including eye-popping headlines, and to optimize the content so it ranks. This tool also has a built-in plagiarism tracker, so you’ll know if you risk publishing content that is too similar to others.
It also has important integrations like WordPress, Jasper, and Google Docs. If you want to learn more about how best to use this platform or for SEO in general, you can access Surfer Academy Webinars and free courses on writing SEO content.
11. Yoast SEO Plugin
Yoast’s SEO plugin helps to optimize SEO on various platforms, including WordPress and Shopify. This is another all-in-one solution that handles technical SEO and features elements of a comprehensive on-page search optimization tool. Its functionality for content creation is limited, but it does allow you to optimize your pages.
One unique feature of Yoast is the availability of products for niche areas of SEO. You can get separate plugins for local SEO, video SEO for Word{ress, news SEO for WordPress, and WooCommerce. A widely-used plugin, Yoast also comes with 24/7 customer support.
12. Clearscope
Clearscope is another platform explicitly dedicated to content optimization tools. It offers a keyword report with suggested uses in a content page, including which keywords to use in headers and with more frequency across the page. The tool gives you a content score based on its adherence to the recommendations.
Clearscope integrates semantic keywords into its recommendations to more effectively match what people are searching for online. This can help to improve your organic SEO.
13. Grammarly
Grammarly is a writing tool designed with teams in mind. It offers ongoing suggestions for changes to words and phrases to help make writing clearer and more impactful. It allows for the implementation of shared guidelines so all writers on a team can develop content with a consistent, impactful voice. In addition to writing suggestions and rewrite options, Grammarly can offer regular prompts to help get your writing started.
True to its name, the tool also checks your grammar. It highlights possible typos and spelling mistakes and makes clarity suggestions. You might also get a message when a pun or other clever phrase could elevate your writing's impact.
14. Topic
Perhaps Topic’s main advantage is its simplicity. It’s quite easy to understand the purpose and function of this content optimization tool. With Topic, you decide on a focus keyword for a blog post. Topic takes that keyword and scans the top 30 search results that already cover that idea. It then gives you recommendations for headings, keywords, and questions to put into the post. You can use the platform’s integrated outline builder to make an outline.
After you write the content, Topic can assess its quality with its content grader tool. Then, you can make changes or head straight to publishing. While the Topic SEO tool isn’t a comprehensive AI content optimization solution, it might be just what individual writers and smaller-scale marketers need to produce blogs that support their content strategy.
15. AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic is a “search listening tool” that identifies untapped search phrases you can turn into impactful content. The tool, developed by SEO expert Neil Patel, uses the power of the autocomplete phrase. These are the recommendations Google gives when a person enters the start of a phrase.
According to the platform, of the three billion Google searches that happen every day, 20% are new. Harnessing those searches can give you a leg up on the competition when it comes to raw keyword research. After you identify key phrases, you can monitor their trends over time.
AnswerThePublic won’t help you write content or correct your grammar. It might, however, give you fresh content ideas and new insight into what the public is interested in.
16. MarketGoo
MarketGoo’s target audience is a bit different than other SEO solution providers. This platform sells its services to web service providers as white-label SEO tools. The service providers then attach their own brands to those tools and sell them as part of their customer packages.
This has many potential benefits; providers offering website hosting and self-serve development services must support the success of their customers’ sites to stay competitive. Offering built-in SEO tools is one way to create a better package for those clients.
17. Dashword
Dashword is another tool that helps you to create quick and comprehensive outlines for each piece of content. With this platform, you can see the outlines created for comparable pieces by each of your competitors. Then, you can pick and choose which parts of those outlines you’d like to include in your own. You can then immediately share your outline with the person developing the content.
Dashword also offers keyword recommendations and scores your final content draft, allowing you to tweak it as necessary before publishing. After the piece goes online, you can monitor its impact through the platform. You can get alerts about underperforming pages and areas where you can increase your impact.
18. Letterdrop
Letterdrop takes a slightly different approach to content creation. It starts with first-party data from your customers to identify which parts of your content drive revenue. The platform then helps you create more content that brings money into your organization. The first-party data includes engagement with your existing content and queries that happen during sales calls and impact from third-party sites like LinkedIn.
The platform quickly creates AI-assisted content based on what’s making your company thrive. Letterdrop purports to turn team members into “social sellers,” more effectively leveraging revenue-generating content to actually drive conversions.
19. RankIQ
RankIQ has a bit of a niche: blog posts. Its focus is on SEO rather than content writing or generation. The tool allows you to refresh existing content with new SEO recommendations to increase your ranking and overall presence. You can use the tool to create quick briefs for new content based on platform recommendations.
This tool also boasts a unique selling point: an inventory of underused keywords. These are key phrases people search for but that not a lot of people develop content about. Harnessing some of these keywords might give your content a distinct edge.
20. TextOptimizer
TextOptimizer is another straightforward content optimization tool. You enter your site’s URL, and the platform offers a content score. It then provides page-by-page recommendations for adding and removing words to increase the pages' impact and ranking. The optimization focuses on what makes the content more comprehensible to search engines.
In addition to optimizing your existing content, this tool can help you generate new content ideas based on what people are searching for online. This quick and easy tool doesn’t require much technical knowledge or specialized integration into a large-scale content strategy.
21. Keyword Surfer
Keyword Surfer is another product from Surfer SEO. This free Chrome extension lets you get essential data points directly from a Google search. You simply enter a search term and can see the search volume and ideas for other keywords.
This won’t help you draft text or optimize any existing pages. But if your main goal is idea generation, Keyword Surfer can help you understand what words your customers might use to look for the topic you want to write about.
22. KeywordTool.io
KeywordTool.io is another keyword research tool that uses autocomplete data. The data comes from Google and other essential content platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Amazon, Etsy, and TikTok. This tool has a free version that allows you to see search volume for terms generated by autocomplete data. You can customize your query by geographic location and language.
KeywordTool.io has a free and paid version (KeywordTool Pro). Both might be excellent solutions for content creators wanting to know what people are looking for online, wherever on the web they may be.
23. Serpstat
Serpstat is another comprehensive SEO and content solution tool. It offers a site audit, competitor analysis, keyword research, keyword clustering, and AI content generation. It won’t write your content for you, but it will check for grammar and spelling. It will also identify content suspected to be written by AI and run a plagiarism evaluation.
Serpstat has a long list of helpful tools, including its backlink checker that allows you to assess which backlinks are valuable and which might harm your SEO. These features help with technical SEO and on-page SEO.
How To Choose the Optimization Tool That’s Right for You
You can assess a few factors to decide which tools on this list might be right for you. Consider whether you need a:
- Content-only generator or all-in-one SEO solution
- Tool to check human writing for grammar and readability
- Tool to develop quick outlines based on keyword search volume
- Keyword-only tool to help generate content ideas and choose high-value keywords
- Tool to optimize existing content
- Tool to find key topics and words across several platforms besides Google
An easy place to start is by assessing your content generation volume. The more content you create, the more likely you’ll want or need a more comprehensive, all-in-one solution.
Master SEO Content With Compose.ly
With a wide range of SEO content optimization tools available, marketers can often benefit from partnering with real people who can write the content they need to make an impact. Talk to Compose.ly today about our SEO services to help you drive rankings and achieve your lead targets.
