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Outranking the competition with our cutting-edge SEO strategies.
If everything in the SEO world revolved solely around keywords, most SEO experts would have already found every possible shortcut to manipulate search engines and strike it rich. But most hacks aren’t always what you expect them to be.
Times have changed—searching isn’t the same as it used to be five years ago, let alone last year. With so many people using AI to generate content, Google has prioritized filtering out low-quality material from its search results:
Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies.
Google Developers
Google requires that its search results provide value to its users. This means you need a content optimization tool with the latest AI features that ensure your content is reliable and helpful. Fortunately, this list has you covered. 💯
We evaluated over 21 tools for SEO content optimization, narrowing it down to the top 8 best SEO tools. This post provides an in-depth look into each one—the good and the bad—along with some key tips. Let’s get started!
Dive into the top 8 easiest SEO tools for SaaS that combine link analysis, backlink health tracking, and more!
Disclaimer: This blog was created by the team at Outranking, a trusted content analysis tool for digital marketers. In this review, our team analyzed eight tools, some of which are competitors with Outranking.
SEO-optimized content is comprehensive, original, engaging, and answers all users’ questions about a topic, including optimized page titles, headlines, HTML tags, meta descriptions, internal links, external links, alt text, and anchor text.
An SEO content optimization tool is software that can read the existing content and suggest how to improve it to align with the search engine’s best practices. This includes optimization of content structure, originality, length, search keywords, entities, and readability. While these tools greatly help make data-driven decisions on improving the content, human oversight and intelligence are still needed.
Marketers seeking organic leads or traffic can benefit from an SEO content optimization tool to create a better SEO content strategy for predictable content success.
Learn more about how to create a better SEO content strategy with the 4 Ps of marketing strategy .
Many tools for SEO content optimization can do multiple optimization tasks. For example, an SEO content optimization tool might be able to read your content, suggest terms, grade readability, provide semantic suggestions, suggest secondary keywords, and tell you whether you’re topically relevant.
There are a few cases where you’ll find a tool that handles all optimization tasks. Below, you’ll learn about some of the most comprehensive content optimization tools. 👇
To make your content the best it can be, you’ll need two main types of content:
| On-page Content Optimization | 1. When creating new content, you want to ensure your content is optimized before publishing 2. Optimizing existing content that isn’t ranking well or at all |
| Grammar and Tone Optimization | 1. All content must go through a grammar and plagiarism check before publishing or republishing |
Outranking is a powerful AI SEO quality content writing and optimization tool that can perfect your content and improve your website’s organic reach. It’s one of the most advanced SEO content optimization tools available, with many features designed to help you achieve predictable content success! 📈
Never stress over how much do seo services cost or creating a saas seo roadmap. With Outranking, your worry about seo website cost is past.
Outranking provides the most comprehensive approach to optimizing content compared to any other tool on the market. It combines many of the major features of other tools while including some unique, innovative features.
As you work, you’ll be provided with data for word count, sentences, statistics, readability, and common/unique terms found throughout headers, titles, and meta descriptions. You can also track internal links using a sitemap.
While Outranking currently has no built-in keyword research or technical SEO features, you can get these for free with Google Search Console and Analytics. Instead, it provides the most comprehensive approach to improving your content.
You can even automate this process with brief, outline, and first draft creation. This saves you the time needed to write a new piece of content, ultimately saving you money you’d normally spend hiring a team of writers.
It’s also an ideal solution for digital marketers and self-employed writers:
[Outranking] is incredibly feature-rich, and it’s guaranteed for you to publish content that ranks!
Gaia B. on Capterra
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Clearscope is an SEO content optimization tool that focuses only on NLP terms optimization and coverage. Clearscope analyzes the top 10 results and extracts entities using the IBM Watson engine. It’s easy to use but lacks the advanced on-page SEO content optimization features provided by tools like Outranking.
Clearscope is more suited for simple workflows. It provides a content grade, information on the word count, keyword research tools, and some simple NLP data on the terms you need to use.
The catch? Clearscope relies on its association with IBM to be known as a premium tool. Despite this, it provides very few features and only 10 documents for pricing, starting at over $100 monthly.
But, like so many other tools, it also encourages poor keyword-stuffing practices:
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Frase is an SEO content writing tool first and an optimization tool second. Frase uses Google NLP entity extraction to suggest SEO content optimization. It offers some additional features for optimization, such as semantic terms for an extra charge.
Recently, it added features to provide content uniqueness as well. Their core optimization algorithm still heavily depends on NLP terms usage and keyword density, much like Clearscope and SurferSEO. It also offers other features related to writing and website insights.
Frase also has its own built-in AI content feature. But, some concern has cropped up that its AI systems directly copy what you see on Google:
Frase also offers a chatbot feature that allows people to search your site. However, if you want it for writing features, this is mostly worthless. At the end of the day, Frase seems confused about what it wants to do.
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Followup Read: Frase Vs. Marketmuse Complete Comparison
Rank Math is a WordPress site content optimization plugin that helps optimize web pages and blog posts for search engine results pages (SERPs). It provides users with an easy way to learn about SEO.
The plugin offers an easy-to-follow setup wizard and uses a modular framework with high-performance speed, making optimizing website posts and pages a convenient environment.
But Rank Math’s biggest bonus for most users comes back to its savings. Because it’s solely a WordPress plugin, it’s far less expensive than other tools.
But Rank Math being inexpensive means that it might cut corners, leading to customer support and potential site compatibility issues:
Rank Math doesn’t offer the same comprehensive guidance for optimizing page content. So, if you’re looking for a tool that works better for content, consider Outranking.
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SurferSEO is one of the most widely known content optimization tools. It’s most recognizable for having an interface that many content optimization tools like to emulate.
Surfer’s scoring for SEO content optimization is based on NLP terms coverage found throughout the body and headings. It also gives you extra points based on the number of images and sentences.
SurferSEO has a reputation in the writing community due to its focus on keyword stuffing. These sentiments on poor content writing habits are shared in the G2 review below:
Ultimately, Surfer has won some success. However, it’s important to remember that we can’t rely on all optimization tools simply for their dependence on repeating the same key phrases over and over again.
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MarketMuse is a topic research, content brief, and web page optimization tool. It scans hundreds of pages before creating topic models for coverage and density. Though its curated data goes into great depth, it often falls short as a tool for competitive data.
Similar to tools like Clearscope and Surfer, MarketMuse focuses heavily on NLP terms to optimize content. It also supports outline creation and word count tracking, meaning you can get this feature with any of the tools on this list.
MarketMuse focuses more on researching keywords than auditing content. Its outside features include a keyword heatmap, SERP analyzer (SERP X-Ray), and keyword detail. It can also suggest internal links by connecting to your site.
One major problem: you’ll find that its credit system often takes two queries to find keyword data and questions, meaning your plans are half as useful as you’d expect:
Also, while MarketMuse notes it’s an AI-driven tool, it doesn’t support direct AI writing. Instead, it outsources AI writing to ChatGPT, whose capabilities have worsened over time.
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Grammarly is an online grammar-checking and proofreading tool that improves conciseness, tone, word choice, and much more as you write. It can be accessed from any web browser and used anywhere. Once installed, you can use its free basic package for as long as you need.
As a content optimization tool, Grammarly focuses on one thing: grammar (pretty obvious, right?). Being concise, direct, and grammatically correct is essential to rank well on Google. Understanding what is direct traffic and how to increase direct traffic to website will greatly influence your ranking. Google is built to create the best user experience, so how you write is important!
Being a grammar-focused tool, you won’t find anything on SEO. Surprisingly, it does have a decent tool for AI writing called GrammarlyGO.
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Hemingway Editor is well-known for being free and easy to use, with a simple interface to paste your content in and check for readability issues. It’s a fine option for people without Grammarly who can afford to spend additional time copying and pasting content back and forth between different editors.
Hemingway focuses on making your writing easier to read. It highlights complex sentences, adverbs, the use of passive voice, and many more factors. This makes it a vital tool for content writers who are just starting and want to write at a specific grade level.
Hemingway is inconvenient because it isn’t built for SEO. However, it provides a free (and often clearer) version of the readability scores presented in more expensive tools. So, Hemingway is (and will continue to be) an important tool in the arsenal of new digital marketers.
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SEO scoring is your secret weapon to outrank competitors. It meticulously examines on-page SEO content elements crucial for ranking. NLP keyword insights are just the beginning. A powerful SEO content optimization tool includes data on more than just the words you find (like images, tables, and links).
A good SEO content optimization tool will score the content for:
A killer title is your golden ticket to SEO success! 🚀 Choose an SEO content optimization tool that helps craft titles with high CTR potential, the right keywords, and the perfect length. And don’t forget your meta descriptions — while they might not be heavily scored, they still contribute to the ranking factors.
Great SEO content checkers not only suggest ideal word count but also reveal the secret sauce of competing pages: tables, lists, and stats. Boosting your UX to outshine the rest is a must-have feature for 2023! The key to standing out when everyone uses AI content writing for a quick win lies in understanding and improving UX for SEO content.
Don’t be a copycat! Google craves fresh, unique content. The right writing checker ensures your content’s originality, setting you apart from the AI-generated masses or constant rewriting of SERP pages. While it’s true that Google seeks comprehensive content, content that doesn’t add any new or unique value won’t rank. Finding the perfect balance of similarity and uniqueness will guarantee predictable SEO content success for your content.
A good SEO content optimization tool will have the best of the best NLP data. It should offer term maps and in-depth topic analysis to keep you ahead of the curve along with mapping keywords with your existing content. Also, look for suggested usage of those NLP terms.
Keyword stuffing is a no-no! Most tools suggest going after density, an old way of optimizing SEO content. Stay away from these tools that indicate how often a keyword should be used on your page. Instead, focus on fully covering your topic, using keywords that support your content, and defining important terms. A brilliant tool should help you spot any troubling areas when necessary for better ranking.
Don’t skimp on images, videos, or alt tags! The right SEO content optimization tool reveals others’ benchmarks, helping you optimize your media to match or exceed the competition. Of course, you don’t want to go overboard with too many images, but that’s where a good SEO content optimization tool comes in handy. It can help you find that equilibrium between visuals and text for search engines and your audience.
Citations and internal links are crucial to SEO content. 🔗 A high-quality optimization tool will suggest anchor text, identify relevant content to link, and offer insights on internal and external link numbers. These details help ensure your content is valuable and easy to navigate.
No one likes gibberish! Understand your audience and craft content with “perfect readability.” Most SEO writing checkers rely on external tools, but your expertise and know-how make all the difference.
A good SEO optimization tool will have integrations with popular tools like Grammarly, CopyScape, Google Docs, and WordPress. A great tool will show you a readability score as part of your optimization process. 😌
If you’re curious about how to add affiliate links to your blog or website handled by WordPress , don’t miss out on this handy hack to simplify and streamline your online monetizing endeavors.
When it comes to SEO content optimization, you’ve got plenty of tools and platforms to choose from. If you want a tool that does it all, we recommend Outranking. Its comprehensive suite of tools helps you with research, writing, and optimization—everything you need to get ahead of the competition.
Outranking’s SEO content optimization platform provides quantitative data on SERP elements, allowing you to optimize your content to match what works for top-ranking websites. With valuable information on the competition, common threads across top search results, and target keyword usage frequency, you’ll be able to boost your on-page SEO elements and drive more organic traffic to your site.
Outranking’s keyword coverage analytics help you to identify what’s ranking on the SERP for your chosen keyword and how pages dominate the top ten. It also provides the top search results’ minimum, average, and maximum word count to ensure that your content is as long as necessary to rank well.
With Outranking, you can also explore real-time SERP analytics to see how your content performs and get internal link suggestions without accessing the CMS, streamlining optimization for faster results.
Outranking produces concise, relevant, and factual content that helps you maximize your ROI on content efforts. The platform’s granular scoring system for on-page SEO elements allows you to optimize your content for the best results without any guesswork.
Hop in the SEO driver’s seat and unlock these features by joining Outranking today!
