Choosing the right content optimization tools for your marketing stack is one the most important things you can do to make SEO faster and more effective. Content is the backbone of search engine optimization, and it’s what will drive traffic to your site for years.
If you’re looking for a way to improve your content, then there’s no better way to get started than with this list of the best content optimization tools available today.
What is content optimization?
Content optimization is the process of creating and promoting content that will rank highly in search engine result pages. Optimizing your site with content can lead to more traffic, higher conversion rates, and a better user experience for online visitors who are looking for information.
Why is content optimization important?
To rank well in search engines, content must be optimized. Google prioritizes content that has higher quality and relevance, so optimizing your site with content can lead to more traffic, a better user experience for online visitors who are looking for information, and increased conversions from website visitors into customers.
What are content optimization tools?
These software programs are designed to help you optimize your content for search engines. Some of the tools mentioned here will help you find keywords that are relevant to the topic of your content and track how many people click on pages after they visit a result in their search engine results page.
They can be used by content creators to optimize their content for improved SEO, or they can be integrated with web development platforms and CMS systems.
Common tools include Yoast SEO plugin, Moz keyword research tool and Wooranker Rank. However, none of these are on the list today as they are mentioned in practically every article about content optimization.
Many of the tools I’ll be looking at day use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to help guide you through the optimization process.
What is natural language processing (NLP)?
Natural language processing, or NLP, is the process of analyzing natural human speech.
It can be used for a wide variety of purposes and it’s especially helpful in optimization because it allows them to understand what people are actually looking for rather than just picking up on keywords.
The content optimization strategy
- Keyword research
- Competitor research
- Content research
- Content optimization
- Measure performance
It’s great having a list of tools to use, but unless you have the right strategy, they are useless.
So first you need to know what people are looking for. This is the keyword research phase. You also need to understand keyword intent.
Once you know what type of content ranks well in search engines, need to know what type content performs well across social medial.
Then comes the content research phase, where you build an outline and know which sub-topics you’ll cover, before moving onto writing your article with on-page optimization in mind, and then editing it.
Finally you need to track your results.
So in all, a content optimization strategy may also involve using:
– web analytics to understand where your website visitors come from
– social media monitoring tools to keep an eye on what’s being said about your brand so you can respond to customer complaints
– content and link building tools that help you publish articles on blogs in order to get links back to your website.
– keyword research tools, such as SEMrush or other similar programs which will show you the best keywords for search engine optimization.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is the process of discovering which words or phrases people are typing into search engines when they’re looking for a product or service like yours.
Then you need to find out what content will work with those keywords. This is known as optimization, and there are tools that can help you do this phase too!
The right SEO keyword research tool will tell you which keywords people are typing into search engines, how often they’re typed in, and the competition for those words.
What is keyword intent?
Keyword intent is the search terms that someone types into a search engine. For example, if they type in “buy shoes,” then their keyword intent may be to purchase footwear or find information about which shoe brands are best for them.
There are 4 types of keyword intent; informational, commercial and navigational.
Information intent keywords are words that people search for when they want to know something, such as “how can I grow my own vegetables.”
Commercial intent keywords are words that people type in when they’re planning on making a purchase. For example, if someone types in “red shoes” then their keyword intent may be to buy footwear or find information about which shoe brands are best for them.
Navigational intent keywords are what people type in when they want to find a company’s website.
Competitor research
It’s impossible to achieve success without seeing what success looks like. You can do this by researching your competitors.
We need to understand how they are ranking in search engines, for which keyword clusters, and how their content is performing on social media.
Thankfully this is easy to do using some of the tools I’m sharing today.
Content optimization
Once you know what your content is going to be about, you need to make sure it contains the right keyword clusters.
This will ensure that it’s found when people search for things you’re writing about.
When it comes to content optimization, there’s no shortage of tools available. I’ll go over a few that are worth checking out and mention why they’re good for your business.
Measure performance
Measuring your websites performance is key to longterm success.
You’ll want to understand the number of visitors that come and go on your site as well as how they found you in the first place.
In addition, what content is bringing them back or taking up their time? These tools can help you answer those questions.
Ahrefs
While not strictly an optimization tool, Ahrefs helps marketers to complete two important steps in any successful marketing campaign; research and measuring performance.
Ahrefs is a leading website marketing analytics tool that provides you with all the information on your site and backlinks.
You can use this SEO tool to find out how relevant your content is, which keywords are ranking well for your website and where you need to make changes in order to rank higher.
It’s also a powerful keyword research tool and can assist with link building through helping you find broken links on relevant websites.
Plans start from $99 a month.
SEMRush
SEMRush is a powerful tool for both link tracking and keyword research. The free version includes everything you need to run your SEO campaign, including domain analysis, backlinks management, rank tracking and content suggestions.
While some of the features might feel overkill for individuals or small businesses, it’s a great tool and virtually essential for agencies and content marketing teams.
SEMRush provides limited access for free.
Wordtracker
Wordtracker is a keyword research tool that has been around for decades and offers access to an incredible database of keywords thanks to its partnerships with Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
What’s great about Wordtracker is the versatility it offers: you can get hundreds or even thousands of search volume estimates in seconds depending on your needs.
There is a free option available and plans start from $27 a month.
Moz Pro
Moz Pro is a well-established SEO tool, and it’s no wonder why.
The service offers keyword research tools to analyze content marketing visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). You can also use the “on page” analysis features for onsite optimization advice.
Plans start from $99 a month.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
What Screaming Frog SEO Spider lacks in bells and whistles, it makes up for with its advanced functionality.
The tool crawls your website to find any page errors that could be hindering search engine indexation (e.g., 404 pages). It also provides a list of all the internal links on your site, as well as external links.
This can be a great asset in creating an SEO strategy for your content marketing efforts.
The service is free, but it does have some limitations. As such, you’ll need to upgrade if you want access to the full range of features and reports.
Plans start from £149 per year.
BuzzSumo
While not strictly a website optimization tool, I believe it has an important role in SEO.
BuzzSumo is a content discovery and social media analysis tool that lets you find the most popular content on any subject, brand or influencer.
It can show which articles are performing best in terms of traffic, shares and links – so it could be useful for determining what kind of content to create.
You can also seach for content on a specific subject, so it’s an easy way to get inspiration.
BuzzSumo is free to use for a limited number of searches.
Clearscope
Clearscope helps you understand which keywords you should be using in your content.
It creates a content outline so you can have a paint-by numbers approach to SEO.
Plans start from $170 a month.
Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO helps you to make sense of the vast amount of data out there.
It’s primarily a keyword research tool, and it gives detailed information about your site as well as how other sites in your industry are performing.
Plans start from $59 per month for individuals.
MarketMuse
MarketMuse is a content optimization tool that focuses on helping you get found in search engines.
It works in a similar way to Clearscope, as it uses AI to figure out the true surfer intent behind your chosen keywords.
Plans start from $79 a month.
Frase
Frase is a content optimization tool that helps you to determine what words or phrases a surfer is interested in.
It does this through the use of AI and natural language processing, which means it actually understands human speech rather than just picking up on keywords – an uncommon trait among SEO tools.
Plans start from $45 a month.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a very popular tool that includes grammar checking, spell-checking, and writing style analysis.
Its AI can help you to identify when your sentences are too long or convoluted – something which often leads to poorly read content.
Grammarly has a free plan available.
Copywritely
Copywritely is a content creation tool that helps you to create better content.
It does this by providing you with the right words and phrases, including synonyms, antonyms, related terms – all of which are designed to make your writing more readable as well as more interesting for the reader.
It will also check the keyword density of your content.
Plans start from $18 a month.
MajesticSEO
MajesticSEO is a link analysis tool which helps you to identify the backlink profile of any domain.
If you’re looking for content optimization tools, it can be an invaluable resource when trying to identify if your competitors are getting traffic from links that they may have missed or not been aware of.
Plans start from $39 per month.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights will analyze the speed of your website..
It provides feedback and insights into the things which are slowing down your website’s speed, such as problems with images or CSS files – and then offers advice on what to do about them.
Page Speed Insight scores from 0-100%.
The higher the score, the faster your website is.
Google PageSpeed Insights will also help you to find out if your content has been optimized for mobile devices – and provide suggestions on how to fix any issues that are found.
This is free to use.
Google Search Console
The Google Search Console was created by Google and offers content creators the ability to monitor their website’s performance in real time.
It can be used for SEO purposes as it tracks search engine rankings, crawl errors, traffic data and more.
It should be one of your first ports of call when analyzing how well your website is performing in the Google search engine.
Google Analytics
Pretty much everyone who has a website or blog will be using Google analytics. It offers you the ability to monitor your site’s traffic, content and ranking performance in real time.
It also provides all sorts of other data about how visitors are finding your site from search engines, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and via the content you share across your social media networks.
Preventing Content Decay
Content decay happens when old content on your site starts to rank lower than newer content. The more time elapsed between the date of publishing and when Google crawls it, the greater its chances are for this happening.
It is a natural process that all sites experience over time – but one you should always try to avoid or limit as much as possible. Thankfully you don’t need to be an SEO expert to figure out what’s causing it.
It can happen for many reasons: content decay is caused by a number of factors, including Google updates that target new and old content alike, the publishing frequency of your site and more.
Competitors might be publishing more than you are – which will steadily push your content to lower rankings.
The best way to combat content decay is to publish often and update existing content as soon as possible to keep it fresher for Google.
Conclusion
While you don’t need to use all of these content optimization tools, having a good selection will help your blog post rank higher in search engines and slowly increase organic over time.
The important thing to remember when content optimizing is to make sure you’re not spamming the search engine and that your content is relevant, accurate, useful and updated.
By putting your reader first, and search engines second, thinking about what they want to read and not just how you can rank highly, content marketing will be more fruitful in the long run.