Do you have your content production ducks in a row? Even with talented writers and a detailed content strategy, there’s no guarantee you’ll produce effective content.
Content being good isn’t enough. Even well-researched and high-quality posts often get buried under dozens of competitor blog posts on the first page of Google.
The key is content optimization. If you don’t optimize your articles for SEO (search engine optimization) to appease Google’s ever-changing algorithm, say goodbye to dreams of becoming a thought leader. Fortunately, if you have solid content already, it isn’t that difficult to polish it up to Google’s standards with the right tools.
This guide will explore content optimization tools, why you should use them, and review some of the best available options on the market.
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A content optimization tool is software that helps writers, editors, and marketers optimize content, so it better resonates with their audience and, at the same time, satisfies Google’s algorithm.
You must understand and consistently deliver what Google considers high-quality content for different keywords. That’s the key to driving results with your content strategy.
While a writer can try to include best SEO practices in their writing, there’s much more to optimization than avoiding keyword stuffing or adding the focus keyword to H2 headers.
With content optimization software, you can refresh old content that no longer performs well and refine unpublished content before it goes live. However, SEO tools range in scope and price, with some acting solely as keyword researchers and others offering a comprehensive suite of features, including content optimization tools.
Before we move on to what makes some tools better than others, it’s important to understand why SEO is so important for online content.
First off, organic search drives 53.3% of all traffic to business sites, and as such, a failure to optimize is not just a failure to rank in Google but a failure to reach most of your audience.
SEO might seem like a buzzword since it’s guaranteed to come up in just about any discussion about online content. But really, it’s the foundation of a content distribution strategy. If there were a recipe for the perfect blog post, it’d look a little something like this:
That last part is what will give your content a chance at driving traffic over the long term.
In technical terms, optimizing for SEO will drastically increase the likelihood that your content ranks highly in Google’s SERPs (search engine results page).
Google always tries to show the most relevant results to users’ search terms, so optimizing for SEO is all about making your content in line with what the platform deems to be ‘relevant.’
But how do you make this happen in practice? Let’s take a look.
In terms of on-page SEO, there are a number of factors that Google considers when evaluating the quality and relevance of your page; we’ve highlighted five of the most important below.
Google tends to prefer skimmable, scannable content that is generally easy for users to read and digest. While long-form content often performs well, it needs to be structured in the right way to do so.
For instance, a dense wall of text is the last thing digital audiences want to read, and Google’s algorithm recognizes this. That’s why most content these days is broken up into shorter sentences and paragraphs, separated with clear headers and visuals to boost comprehension and engagement.
Content optimization tools can provide readability scores and give suggestions for how to improve your content.
No longer the end-all-be-all of SEO, but keyword density and placement are still part of the content optimization process.
Keywords are what users rely on to find your content on Google and other search engines — the words and phrases they search for.
So keyword research is the crucial first step toward a better search engine ranking. First, find a relevant keyword with a good search volume and attainable competition. Then, you can use a content optimization tool to figure out what the content should look like — including suggested keyword density and “semantic keywords,” AKA related topics that Google wants to see included in your content to consider it a “complete answer to a question.”
For example, when searching for “soccer,” related semantic keywords would include: goalkeeper, ball, pitch, defense, striker, etc.
Finding and ranking for the right keywords is a great way to tap into your target audience and attract targeted traffic to your landing pages. There is a science to keyword research, though, as you’ll have to try and choose keywords you think you can outrank your competition for. Fortunately, there are tools like Ahrefs that can help you with this process by providing you with insights into keyword search volume, competition, and related keywords.
Though doing the research itself is easy enough, the challenge comes from finding keywords that you can actually outrank your competition for. This can be tricky work to do yourself considering the high competition and frequent change of Google features; fortunately, many digital marketing companies like Tactica specialize in SEO and keyword research, meaning they can make this happen with greater ease. By outsourcing the keyword research stage of a digital marketing campaign to a specialized agency, you could end up seeing real results in your search engine rankings.
Optimizing your internal linking structure is key to any content optimization process, as internal links let Google know which pages are particularly important and which content is directly related.
And, of course, backlinks (links from other sites) signal to Google that people are not only consuming your content but also getting so much from it that they want to share it with their own audience.
Bear in mind, though, that the power is no longer in blind numbers. Google can identify a high-quality backlink from a relevant authoritative source and prioritizes these over a high volume of poor-quality external links.
Getting more backlinks can be tricky, but it all boils down to producing highly engaging and shareable content. You can also feature other bloggers in interviews, actively pursue guest blogging opportunities, and follow other link-building strategies.
With 4G (or 5G) on our phones and lightning-fast broadband, images are no longer a nice-to-have. You’d be hard-pressed to find a high-ranking article without at least one or two images.
Visuals break up content nicely and allow readers to take a brief break as they scroll down and digest the information. Adding images to your content is particularly important if you sell products, as customers usually want to see what you’re talking about with their own eyes.
Meta tags, which include meta descriptions and title tags, are HTML tags, invisible code, that search engine crawlers read to help them understand what your content is about, and how to show your page in the results.
Without meta tags, you’re making your content less clear, and Google won’t know what text to put in your blurb.
You can also add similar descriptions to images in the image alt tag attribute, a hidden field that browsers use to explain to visually impaired users what the image depicts. Google also uses this data to contextualize the image and content.
So now that you know what you need content optimization software for and how it helps you nail your SEO, all that remains is to find the right option for your business.
Content optimization tools can seem intimidating at first, especially if the concepts of SEO and optimization are unchartered waters for you. You need to understand what the different tools offer and what factors to consider before making a decision.
The thing is, content optimization tools come in many different forms and offer various services like:
As such, there isn’t one particular content optimization tool that will transform your results overnight. You’ll first need to identify what’s currently lacking from your content, and that can help you pick the right tool to climb the SERPs.
Instead of covering endless options, we’ve decided to highlight a few of the best content optimization software tools available today. Each of these content optimizers brings something different to the table. So instead of directly comparing one against another, focus on what you’re currently missing and could benefit most from.
Wordable is a content optimization and publishing tool wrapped up into one easy-to-use solution.
If you write content in Google Docs and publish it to a CMS like WordPress, Hubspot, or medium, Wordable can help save you both time and money.
Your current process likely involves dedicating time to fixing up and optimizing every copied-and-pasted doc from Google Docs to WordPress and all the painstaking formatting that requires. Not only does this eat up valuable time, but it also prevents you or highly-skilled employees from working on more important things.
With Wordable, the process of going from finishing a post to publishing it is seamless. You can even batch export multiple posts to WordPress with just a single click. What’s more, you can also optimize each post either individually or as a batch.
Optimization features include:
Wordable and other add-ons and plugins help turn WordPress from just a CMS into a seamless content marketing platform.
Frase is an app that helps you research topics and optimize existing content created in Google Docs or elsewhere for SEO factors like keyword density and semantic keywords.
With Frase, you can start writing relevant content with content briefs that inform you how many target keywords to insert, what headlines to use, and other factors that can help you keep SEO in mind as you write.
Once you’re finished with the draft, you can pass it through Frase to see how it fares against the competition. The tool will provide you with a content score and show you how this compares to your competitors’ content. It will then suggest improvements you could make to match — or beat — other content out there, like adding in more relevant keywords.
There are dozens of excellent keyword research tools out there that help you write SEO-friendly content, and Ahrefs is one of the very best.
Ahrefs not only provides comprehensive keyword research data, but it also lets you analyze backlinks to your site and pages. You can even do competitor research on what your competitors are doing that makes their content rank well.
Any content creators or businesses with a content marketing strategy could benefit from a tool like Ahrefs — it makes keyword research a breeze. The following tools will help you track and improve the rankings of all your content:
Dashboard — The Ahrefs dashboard gives you a strategic overview of exactly how each piece of content is performing according to key SEO metrics. It’ll show you a real-time domain rating, ranking keywords, backlinks, and your volume of organic traffic, so you can decide when it’s time to mix things up or refresh old content for search engines today.
Site Explorer — The Site Explorer feature lets you see exactly how your competitors’ content is performing and what keywords they’re consistently ranking for. This can help you establish the keywords that you want to target in your own high-quality content.
Keywords Explorer — The keyword research tool analyzes current keywords to give you key data such as organic search volume, related keywords to target, and the level of difficulty/competition for each keyword.
There are several other features, too, such as site auditing and backlink profiling, which allow you to get a comprehensive overview of everything SEO.
Implementing SEO tactics is one thing; knowing if any of them made the slightest difference is another altogether. With SEOTesting, you can run reports on your content and essentially audit everything you’ve ever published to see if there’s room for improvement.
The tool offers features such as the following:
Timed SEO tests — Set up tests that evaluate your content’s performance over a set period, for example, a few weeks.
SEO split tests — Test different URLs before you publish so you can see what’s likely to perform best.
Detailed reports — Access a range of detailed reports on everything from long-tail keywords to Google algorithm updates and CTR (click-through rate) improvement opportunities.
Grammarly doesn’t deal with SEO at all, but it can help you create the kind of powerful, well-written content that readers and, by extension, search engines love. If the content you put out is poorly-structured or fails to resonate with your target audience, it’s unlikely to rank regardless of how much time, money, and energy you sink into optimization. (Google uses UX factors like Dwell Time to determine which content to rank, not just keywords and backlinks.)
Grammarly helps you write clearly and succinctly for your audience. It’s more than just a proofreading and editing tool — it’s an AI content marketing assistant that’ll let you know if your writing is likely to appeal to your audience.
Remember how readability and engaging content is important for SEO?
This is a tool that will help you turn any article into a highly readable, engaging, and grammatically sound piece of content.
There are also Grammarly alternatives available online. Consider tools that improve readability and engagement, crucial for SEO optimization.
If optimization is a dreaded process in your company due to the number of people and bottlenecks involved, Wordable can help you streamline the process and speed things up in your content pipeline.
Sign up for the free trial today and upgrade your optimization process instantly.
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