Nowadays, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is being used by a lot of companies that want to build their exposure, visibility and awareness online. What’s interesting is that SEO is no longer considered to be an optional marketing strategy.
Instead, it’s pretty much mandatory these days. The main reason is that the online market has become overly competitive and highly saturated to the point where you need SEO to stand out in such a crowd. This is especially true if you’re trying to push your own content online.
If your content isn’t optimized for search engines, chances are that no one will be able to find it. What can you do with content no one can see?
Fortunately, you don’t have to be an SEO expert to ensure your content is well-optimized. There are plenty of tools out there that will help you out in this endeavor. All you have to do is know how to use them. With that in mind, here are a few of the top content optimization tools for SEO.
Why is content so important?
Content has been referred to as king in the marketing world for years now. Online marketers have discovered just how important content really is and how much you can accomplish with it.
Aside from the fact that content can provide consumers with value through education, information and entertainment, there are plenty of other things it can effectively do.
For example, content is used by marketers to improve online visibility, boost brand awareness, generate more exposure, increase credibility and authority for websites and so on. Let’s not forget the fact that content is one of the most important ranking factors for search engines, such as Google.
Even though there’s no magic bullet that can help you succeed in the online world, content is, in fact, quite close to it. Therefore, content binds everything together, but if it’s not optimized, you won’t have much use for it. Now, let’s explore those tools, shall we?
Ahrefs and their Content Explorer
Ahrefs is considered to be the mother of all SEO tools by numerous marketers. They provide companies with a ton of useful tools that can help create more than effective SEO strategies. However, their Content Explorer feature is what you’re looking for if you want well-optimized content.
Although this feature doesn’t help you optimize your content directly, it does help you find the most shared content across various social media platforms related to any niche you desire. So, what can you do with this information? Here are a few examples.
- Study the content to determine what makes it so popular.
- Identify key aspects that people find valuable and attractive enough to share that content.
- Use the same structure for your own content to ensure success.
Highly sharable content on social media can go viral sooner than you think. This can vastly increase organic traffic for your website that originates on social media and even help boost conversion rates if your strategy is on point.
SEMrush
SEMrush is another highly popular SEO tool that offers a plethora of features to its users. SEMrush has a wide variety of content optimization tools for you to choose from, but the most interesting one is their Writing Assistant.
This tool can be used as a web app, or you can install it as a plugin if you have a WordPress-powered website. The beauty of this tool lies in its simplicity and ease of use. You don’t have to tinker and ponder to get what you want.
The way it works is that it scans every top-ranking page for related keywords and comes up with various suggestions on how to optimize your content so that it becomes more SEO-friendly.
For example, this tool can recommend which words to include and how many. Moreover, it will also suggest where to get your backlinks to boost the authority of your content.
That way, you can opt for the right Internet marketing service to help you with link-building efforts. Last but certainly not least, this tool shows you the average readability score for your content. This can help you adjust your content for your audience and ensure that they’ll enjoy reading it.
Frase
This is yet another effective tool that will help you optimize your content for SEO. Although not as popular as some of the other tools, that doesn’t undermine its value. As a matter of fact, Frase leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to come up with a content brief in just a matter of seconds.
This will provide you with the right topic you need to cover so that you’ll boost authority for your content. Furthermore, this tool also helps you scan the best-ranking articles and comes up with recommendations you should follow to improve your own content writing.
You can leverage those recommendations to improve both the new and existing content you have. Various SEO companies leverage the same strategy this tool utilizes. Research the content first, then find the right topic to cover. You can then create content and optimize it for the desired results.
Yoast SEO
If you have a WordPress website, this plugin is the right tool for you. That said, Yoast SEO has a lot of neat features that will help you with on-page SEO. But what exactly is on-page SEO?
On-page or on-site SEO is the process of optimizing your content and your entire website for search engines. In other words, you’re helping search engines match the context and content of your web pages with user intent. Here are a few examples of what you can do with on-page SEO
On-page SEO essentials
- Implementing the right keywords.
- Optimizing keyword frequency.
- Creating SEO-friendly URLs.
- Using outbound links.
- Optimizing title tags and Meta descriptions.
- Optimizing UX signals.
- Creating internal links.
The Yoast SEO plugin can help you with all of those tasks and more. In fact, this tool can also help you optimize your content for social media and make it more adaptable for various platforms.
The purpose of this feature is to make your content more sharable, which can boost engagement and exposure. This will ultimately lead to more traffic and, hopefully, more conversions.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an invaluable tool for content optimization. After all, the majority of your SEO efforts are focused on Google’s search engine, so any tool they provide is quite useful. Google Analytics doesn’t help you optimize your content per se.
Instead, it provides you with relevant information regarding your target audience. You can use that information to create awesome content, optimize it well and plan out an editorial calendar that will help you publish great content regularly.
Now, one of the things this tool is very good at is showing you which search queries provide you with the most traffic. You can use that information to find the right keywords you will use to optimize your content. If a keyword is too competitive for your liking, you can always find long-tail alternatives to improve your overall content marketing efforts.
There are many different tools you can use to step up your content marketing game end ensure your content is well-optimized for SEO. The key is in finding the tool that will meet your needs. Sometimes that means using more than one tool.
Some tools are more expensive than others, but if they help you produce desired results, then they were certainly a good investment.
Author bio:- Tomas is a digital marketing specialist and a freelance blogger. His work is focusing on new web tech trends and digital voice distribution across different channels.