The 9 Best Content Optimization Software in 2023

Last Updated on September 4, 2023 by Alex Birkett

You’ve likely heard about content optimization software. In fact, you may already be using it to improve your content and make it more search engine friendly.

If you haven’t tried this software yet, there are a lot of great reasons why you should.

Here are three of them:

  • Content optimization software can help you write better content.
  • It can also help you create more engaging blog posts and articles that readers love reading and sharing.
  • And finally, it will help you increase traffic to your website by making it more SEO friendly.

To put it simply, there are many different types of content optimization software, and each has its own purpose. Some are designed to help you create content, while others are designed to help you improve the performance of your existing content.

What is Content Optimization Software?

Content optimization software is a type of web-based application that allows you to optimize your content for search engines. It can also be used to create and edit content for your website.

Content optimization software typically includes a keyword research tool and other features for optimizing your site’s content.

The main benefit of using content optimization software is that it saves you time. You don’t have to manually search for keywords or manually enter them into your website. The software will do this for you, so all you have to do is follow the instructions provided by the software vendor.

Some content optimization tools also include backlink building tools, which allow you to create links on other websites that point back to yours. This improves your page rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).

For instance, Cierra Loflin, Content Marketer at Superpath, uses different content optimization tools for different purposes (as listed below):

  • Ahrefs for site maintenance & hygiene, plus KW research if you need it
  • Figma for graphs & content visuals
  • Grammarly Premium for editing/proofreading
  • Airtable for content management
  • Google Analytics, Search Console (obvious but should check a few times a week, see which pages are performing best, etc.)

We’re going to look into some of them in detail in this article.

What Makes a Good Content Optimization Platform

If you’re looking for a content optimization platform that will help you get the most out of your content, we’ve got a few things you should look for:

  • Easy to Use – You want your content optimization platform to be easy to use so that you can focus on creating great content instead of having to learn how to operate it. Look for an intuitive user interface with clear instructions on how to use it effectively.
  • Integrates With Your Current Tools – If your current tools aren’t working well, it doesn’t make sense for you to invest in new ones when you can integrate with the ones that already work for you! Make sure your new tool will integrate seamlessly with other tools like Google Analytics, AdWords, or HubSpot so that you don’t have to spend extra time learning how to use both tools at once.
  • Keyword Research – A good content optimization platform should do keyword research for you so that you can focus on creating high-quality content instead of having to do all the hard work yourself. Additionally, it should be able to track how well each keyword is performing so that you can see which ones are working and which ones aren’t.
  • Create or curate content – Most platforms let you create your own original content or curate it from elsewhere on the web. Some have built-in templates that make it easy to create new blog posts, infographics, or landing pages quickly, while others let you search through sources like Google News or Yahoo Finance.
  • Content Transformation – Content transformation is one of the must-have features of a good content optimization platform. It allows you to change the language, structure, formatting, and metadata of your website’s content in order to make it more suitable for different channels and devices.
  • Content Analytics – It should provide insights into how people interact with your content, such as what kind of content is being viewed, what kind of topics people find interesting, and which social networks they prefer to share on. This information will help you better understand who your audience is and what they want to read about so that you can optimize future posts accordingly.

The 9 Best Content Optimization Software

  1. Surfer SEO
  2. Frase
  3. Clearscope
  4. Ahrefs
  5. SEMrush 
  6. Grammarly
  7. Google Search Console
  8. MarketMuse 
  9. Hemingway Editor

1. Surfer SEO

Surferseo-cover-image

Best For: Startups and small businesses looking to optimize their blog posts.

G2 Score: 4.8

Surfer SEO is one of the most comprehensive and effective SEO software on the market. It’s a tool that can help you optimize your website and increase your rankings on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others.

The tool is suitable for both beginners and experts alike. You can use it to find the best keywords for your website or blog posts, analyze their popularity and track their performance over time.

With the power of AI (Artificial Intelligence), Surfer helps you identify gaps in your content and suggests fixes that are easy to implement. With the help of Surfer, you can boost your organic traffic in a short amount of time.

The content optimization editor provides:

  • Guidelines based on top-performing pages.
  • Ideal word count and image count for your content.
  • Insights into the keywords to use
  • Guideline on how to structure your article structure, and more.

For instance, these are the guidelines for this article:

Content-optimization-software-seosurfer

Surfer SEO Key Features:

1. Content Planner:

With Surfer, you can generate relevant content ideas with ease. The tool gives you a wider range of ideas for longer keywords and lets you track your progress in content creation within the tool itself.

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Keywords; Source: Surfer

The Content Planner also uses machine learning to track your prospects’ search behavior. This allows you to see whether they’re ready to buy, considering alternatives, or just looking for information. You can use this information to figure out what kind of content you need and how to rank your keywords.

2. BRIEF – AI Optimized Content Builder:

Surfer’s content builder provides you with a unique, AI-optimized blog post idea based on your keywords. It gives you multiple unique paragraphs categorized into proper headers that you can modify and use to achieve a particular tone.

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Content Builder; Source: Surfer

3. Content Editor:

Surfer’s content editor comes in the form of a Google Chrome Extension. You can sync it in Google Docs and WordPress to get real-time feedback on your content as you edit.

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Content Editor; Source: Surfer

4. SEO Audit Tool:

Surfer’s SEO Audit Tool enables you to automate many SEO practices. It gives you insights based on data from your organic competitors and suggests how much content you should add or remove to achieve a higher ranking in Google search results.

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SEO Audit Tool; Source: Surfer

You’ll get insights and suggestions on:

  • Content length
  • Page speed
  • Missing backlinks
  • A number of headings
  • Keyword density
  • Referring to domains
  • NLP entities coverage
  • NLP Sentiment
  • Meta tags structure

5. Chrome Extension for Content and Keyword Research:

Surfer’s free Chrome extension gives you real-time information about your keywords in terms of monthly search volume. It also tells you what other similar keywords are and provides you with new ideas for keywords that you can use.

You can also check the domain’s monthly traffic and content word count, plus how many exact keywords your top 10 competitors are using.

6058643a6dedd5d42f514a4c kyeword surfer hero img

Chrome Extension for Content and Keyword Research; Source: Surfer

Pros:

  • Easy to use
  • 7-day money-back guarantee
  • Prevents keyword stuffing

Cons:

  • No free plan
  • A limited number of pages you can audit under each plan

Pricing:

  • BASIC ($49/month) – You can write and optimize 10 Articles/month, audit 20 Pages/month, guidelines enhanced with NLP free for 1st month, Invite 1 Team Member, Grow Flow
  • PRO ($99/month) – Write and optimize 30 Articles/month, Audit 60 Pages/month, Guidelines enhanced with NLP, Invite 3 Team Members, Grow Flow
  • BUSINESS ($199/month) – Write and optimize 70 Articles/month, Audit 140 Pages/month, Guidelines enhanced with NLP, Invite 10 Team Members, Grow Flow, White Labeling, API

Further reading: Surfer SEO alternatives.

2. Frase

Frase-content-optimization-tool

Best For: Small businesses and startups looking to optimize and generate AI-based content.

G2 Score: 4.8

If you want to optimize your content, analyze its quality, and find out if it needs improving, Frase is the tool for you.

It’s an automated content analysis tool that analyzes your articles and determines how well they perform. It analyzes all aspects of the article, from keyword density to readability and more. It also helps you improve your content by showing research competitors, developing content briefs, and producing and optimizing content.

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Frase Key Features:

1. AI-generated content:

To create content automatically, you can choose from dozens of Frase’s AI Tools or design your own unique templates tailored to your needs.

Once you enter a search query into the search bar, the platform will generate a detailed content brief that includes headings, keyword counts, and relevant subsections based on that query.

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AI-generated content; Source: Frase

2. SERP Explorer:

You can create an outline for your content using SERP Explorer and then filter through the headers and content.

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SERP Explorer; Source: Frase

3. Question Ideas:

Frase’s Question Research tool helps you find questions that your potential customers are asking, so you can save time doing research.

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Question ideas; Source: App Sumo

As you type in a keyword, Frase will show you the questions and where they were asked. You can transfer the relevant questions to your document using the link at the end of each question.

4. Content Optimization:

Frase generates subject suggestions by examining the top Google results for your keywords and applying natural language processing (NLP) to them.

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Topic Score; Source: Frase

A new mention in the score will appear each time one of these topics gets added to your editor.

For instance, if “social media platforms” has a score of 0/1 but is mentioned once, the score will change to 1/1, and your Topic Score will rise – a bit like SEO Surfer’s content editor.

Apart from this, Frase also gives you insights into SERP Scores, Topic Clusters, Topic Heatmap, Blacklist Topics, Low-Quality Topics, Related Topics, and more.

5. AI Writer:

Frase uses artificial intelligence to generate content for your website – taking into account contexts like your Document Query, Background Context, On-page Context, Context from SERP, and more.

6. Content Analytics:

Frase lets you integrate Google Search Console, allowing you access to multiple sites and GSC accounts from your Frase account.

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Content Analytics; Source: Frase

Frase’s Content Analytics tool uses Google Search Console data to analyze and measure organic growth, prevent content degradation, and find new keyword prospects.

Pros:

  • Question research enables you to achieve high rankings for highlighted snippets and voice searches.
  • Enables integration with Google Search Console
  • Generates content briefs for you automatically
  • Sharing and exporting have no limit

Cons:

  • Relatively new in the market – users report that its autosave sometimes doesn’t work.
  • Unlimited document credits only get unlocked in costlier plans.

Pricing:

  • Basic ($44.99/mo) – For individuals and teams executing an SEO content plan, 1 User Seat, 30 Document Credits
  • Team ($114.99/mo) – For teams and agencies that need maximum flexibility, 3 User Seats ($25/mo per extra), Unlimited Document Credits
  • Enterprise (Custom charges) – For large teams needing flexibility and custom services, Unlimited Users, Unlimited Document Credits

You get a 5-day money-back guarantee with all paid plans.

3. Clearscope

Clearscope-cover-image

Best For: Small businesses looking for an all-in-one content optimization tool.

G2 Score: 4.9

Clearscope is one of the best content optimization tools that help you find the best keywords for your website. The software analyzes your existing content and gives you suggestions for how to optimize it for search engines.

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Clearscope Software; Source: Clearscope

It’s compatible with the tools you already have and is available as a Google Docs add-on and a WordPress plugin. I’ve been using the tool for over two years now and can vouch for its ease of use and intuitive user interface.

According to Marcella Chamorro, marketing head at Cogsy,

“Working with Clearscope made optimizing an article for a keyword (and its related keywords) smooth and straightforward. It’s become an elemental part of our content creation workflow, helping us rank higher in search engines faster. We’re now seeing articles pop up on top SERPs within a week or two, which is huge, as content is the pillar of our overall marketing strategy.”

Clearscope Key Features:

1. Keyword Research:

Clearscope’s keyword research tool shows you the search volume statistics for popular variations of your starting keyword idea.

You will get insights into:

  • Keywords: The editor will highlight your keyword and popular search variations gathered directly from Google.
  • Monthly Searches: This is the estimated monthly number of times the keyword is searched on Google.
  • Competition and CPC: These metrics show the approximate competition and cost-per-click for sponsored advertising campaigns on Google.
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Keyword Discovery; Source: Clearscope

2. Content Outlining:

Clearscope’s Keyword Discovery questions and keywords can help you conduct research and create content that will be focused, thorough, and highly relevant.

You’ll be able to:

  • Explore Common Questions Using Keyword Discovery (To get a full list of questions arranged by monthly search traffic, go to the ‘Keyword Discovery’ tab in your Clearscope report and filter by Questions).
  • Use Relevant Terms to Guide Paragraph Structure (Navigate to the ‘Optimize’ tab of your Clearscope report to discover the text editor screen with your question ideas in mind. You can outline your material in real-time and track your progress on this page).
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Optimize; Source: Clearscope

  • Plan For Relevant Supporting Content (Examine your outline for parts that could benefit from additional material, such as an image, infographic, or even a video – anything that will help the visitor find what they’re looking for).
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Relevant Supporting Content; Source: Clearscope

Pros:

  • It comes with a Google Docs add-on and WordPress plugin
  • It provides a readability indicator
  • There is no cost for training, onboarding, or client service.
  • Easy to use
  • You can look at the content scores and reading levels of your competitors.

Cons:

  • Even the lowest tier plan is costlier than most of its counterparts.

Pricing:

  • Essentials ($170/mo) – 3 user seats, 20 Content Report credits, 100 Keyword Discovery credits, Google Docs + WordPress integrations, Support for five languages
  • Business ($1200/mo) – Unlimited user seats, 100+ Content Report credits, Content Inventory monitoring, Custom onboarding
  • Enterprise (Custom pricing) – Custom Report, Keyword Discovery and Monitoring credits, Custom Google TLDs

Further reading: Clearscope alternatives.

4. Ahrefs

Ahrefs-cover-image

Best For: Competitor research and keyword analysis.

G2 Score: 4.6

Content optimization is the process of measuring, analyzing, and improving your content’s performance. This can be done on a single page or across your entire website.

One of the best tools for content analysis and optimization is Ahrefs. It allows you to measure how well each page does in terms of SEO, social shares, backlinks, and more. It also helps you with keyword research and competitor research to help you outrank your competitors.

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Dashboard; Source: Ahrefs

The best part? The intuitive dashboard gives you an overview of all your projects and lets you track their SEO performance and progress. You can track changes in your site’s health score, domain rating, referring domains and backlinks, organic traffic, and keywords.

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Dashboard tracking; Source: Ahrefs

You can even connect your Google Search Console to toggle between Ahrefs and GSC data in your dashboard. GSC only displays data for up to 16 months by default. However, Ahrefs will save and display data for as long as your GSC account is linked.

It also lets you organize your projects under different folders, which you can share with your team members.

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Folders; Source: Ahrefs

Ahrefs Key Features:

1. Site Explorer:

With Ahrefs’ site explorer, you can get a detailed look at any website or URL’s organic search traffic and backlink profile.

It integrates three important SEO tools into a single interface, including:

  • Organic traffic research (You’ll be privy to the keywords your competitors are ranking for and the sites receiving the most traffic).
  • Backlink checker (Discover backlinks to your competitors’ websites and evaluate their backlink profiles).
  • Paid traffic research (Determine whether your competitors are using sponsored search ads and where their paid traffic is flowing).
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Site Explorer; Source: Ahrefs

2. Keywords Explorer:

Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer tool provides thousands of keyword ideas, examines their ranking difficulty, and calculates their traffic potential with Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.

It gathers its keyword data from 171 countries and ten different search engines, including Google, YouTube, Amazon, Bing, Baidu, and more. Based on the current top-ranking pages, their KD score predicts how difficult it will be to rank for your keyword.

Ahrefs also shows you the estimated amount of clicks for your keywords, along with the top-ranked pages’ SEO data and ranking histories. You can examine the SERPs to see why certain pages are ranked the way they are.

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keyword ideas; Source: Ahrefs

3. Rank Tracker:

Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker allows you to track your Google rankings across 170 countries on desktop and mobile. You just need to enter or import a list of keywords, add multiple countries per keyword and add your competitors’ URLs.

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Visualize your SEO progress; Source: Ahrefs

With Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker, you’ll also get insights into:

  • Featured snippet
  • Sitelinks
  • Top stories
  • Image pack
  • Thumbnails
  • Top ads
  • Bottom ads
  • Shopping Results
  • Knowledge card
  • Knowledge panel
  • Videos
  • Tweet box
  • People also ask
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SERP Features Overview; Source: Ahrefs

4. Content Explorer:

Ahrefs’ content explorer supports advanced search operators. It also helps uncover link-building chances, low-competition themes, collaboration opportunities, and more.

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Content Explorer; Source: Ahrefs

It offers 12 filters that you can combine to find content that matches your criteria:

  • Published once / Republished
  • Referring domains
  • Published / First published date
  • Organic traffic
  • Live / Broken
  • Number of words
  • Language
  • Traffic value
  • Social shares
  • Site
  • Domain Rating
  • Author

It also has in-line charts showing whether a page gains or loses backlinks and organic traffic over time.

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Tracking of backlinks; Source: Ahrefs

Broken link building is also feasible in Content Explorer. To detect dead pages on a specific topic with backlinks, combine the live/broken and referring domains filters.

5. Site Audit:

Site Audit analyzes your web pages to calculate an overall SEO health score, display crucial data in charts, highlight all potential SEO concerns, and make recommendations to improve those issues.

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Site Audit; Source: Ahrefs

It also checks for issues related to:

  • Performance
  • HTML tags
  • Social tags
  • Content quality
  • Localization
  • Incoming links
  • Outgoing links
  • Resources
  • External pages

Pros:

  • Easy to use
  • You may use Ahrefs to undertake keyword analysis for a range of search engines, including, most notably, YouTube – important competitors typically only share Google search data.
  • It provides you with the essential tools for an SEO job, including keyword research, backlink analysis, and site audits.

Cons:

  • No free plan
  • All plans have only one seat, including the most expensive ‘Enterprise’ option. To receive more seats, you must pay an additional fee in addition to the plan price.
  • Costlier than many other Content Optimization Software.

Pricing:

  • Lite ($99/month) – Essential data for small businesses and hobby projects.
  • Standard ($199/month) – Perfect for SEO professionals and in-house marketers.
  • Advanced ($399/month) – Indispensable tools and more data allowance as your business scales.
  • Enterprise ($999/month) – Ideal for big agencies and enterprises.

5. SEMrush

Semrush-cover-image

Best For: Keyword research and brainstorming blog post ideas.

G2 Score: 4.6

SEMRush is in line with Ahrefs regarding SEO, backlink analysis, and content marketing. We recently did a SEMRush vs. Ahrefs breakdown to help decide which is the best tool for SEO, but now we will solely talk about SEMrush’s content marketing tools.

Coming to content marketing, SEMRush offers numerous content marketing and copywriting tools to help you optimize your content and make it rank higher in search engines.

You get tools for:

  • Topic research
  • Content plan creation
  • Brief preparation
  • Writing and optimization
  • Content analyzing and measuring
  • Optimizing content.
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SEMRush’s Content Marketing Platform; Source: SEMRush

SEMrush Key Features:

1. Semrush Keyword Research:

Semrush’s SEO keyword research tools help you increase your traffic and dominate the SERPs.

Let’s talk about all the keyword research tools in brief:

  • Keyword Overview – Keyword Overview displays metrics for any keyword in your database, helping you target the most lucrative terms.
  • Organic Research – Examine any website’s positions in Google’s top 100 results, investigate your organic competition, see which phrases bring them the most traffic, and discover new ways to move your website to the top of the SERPs.
  • Keyword Magic Tool – You get insights into Keyword Difficulty, Intent, Search Volume, Trend, and Cost Per Click.
  • Keyword Gap – Perform a detailed competitor keyword analysis of desktop and mobile keywords for any domain, subdomain, subfolder, or URL. You can also compare your keyword profile to competitors’ to identify SEO gaps and new ranking chances.
  • Keyword Manager – You can use real-time stats to create strong master lists that meet your SEO strategy and goals for up to 1,000 keywords simultaneously.
  • Organic Traffic Insights – Get insights into metrics like total users, new users, average session duration, bounce rate, and more.
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Keyword Overview; Source: SEMRush

2. SERP Tracking Tools:

SEMRush helps you keep track of your campaign’s progress and optimize your targeting efforts using the most up-to-date data available.

You can also track daily changes in ranks for Google and Baidu SERPs across our regional databases and discover domains with the most paid keywords, paid traffic and expected paid traffic budget.

The backlink analysis tool gives you access to the freshest database of over 43.0 trillion backlinks. You can now analyze your backlink profile, track growth, and find backlinks more quickly than ever before.

It also provides:

  • Backlink Audit Tool – With this tool, you can audit your backlinks, remove potentially harmful backlinks, and disavow backlinks.
  • Link Building Tool – It helps you collect a list of prospects, finds the best fits for your outreach, tracks your work in progress, and monitors your results.

4. On-Page SEO Tools:

You can use its On-Page SEO tools to check your site’s health, examine crawlability and difficulties, and discover new ways to improve rankings.

The site audit tools and its website-scanning technology detect over 130 technical and SEO flaws. According to their severity, all issues get categorized into three categories: errors, warnings, and notices.

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Reports; Source: SEMRush

Other tools include:

  • On-Page SEO Checker: It compares your page to the top 10 real-time organic competitors for each target phrase, using data from Semrush and Google to suggest actionable methods to enhance your Google results.
  • Log File Analyzer: Log File Analyzer assists you in obtaining error information and detecting technical, structural, or navigational flaws that obstruct Google’s bots. The tool decrypts your logs and generates a detailed table and graph that you can use to analyze the entire crawl process.

Pros:

  • It comes with add-ons for Google Docs and WordPress
  • All-in-one keyword research and content optimization solution
  • Identifies keyword stuffing

Cons:

  • Costlier than other similar options

Pricing:

  • Pro ($119.95/mo) – For marketing newbies and small in-house teams.
  • Guru ($229.95/mo) – For SMEs, growing agencies, and marketing consultants.
  • Business ($449.95/mo) – For large agencies and enterprises.

6. Grammarly

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Best For: Clear, mistake-free writing

G2 Score: 4.6

Grammarly is a content optimization platform that uses artificial intelligence to check your writing and offer proofreading suggestions for your writing, including grammar and spelling errors, as well as contextual spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary mistakes. It’s a browser extension, online grammar checker, and plagiarism detector all rolled into one.

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Grammarly Dashboard; Source: Grammarly

The best part? It integrates with your web pages and even Google Docs – ​​providing real-time feedback as you type so you can catch mistakes immediately.

How do you think I kept this article devoid of embarrassing grammatical errors?

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Grammarly Key Features:

  • Grammar Check – Grammarly’s grammar checker detects errors in your writing and identifies problems with sentence structure, punctuation, and even the words themselves.
  • Plagiarism Checker – Grammarly’s plagiarism checker detects plagiarism on billions of web pages as well as in ProQuest’s academic databases. It can help you make sure that any content you have that isn’t 100 percent original has been correctly cited.
  • Essay Checker – The free essay-checking tool from Grammarly will assist you in checking your papers for grammatical errors, confusing sentences, and misused words.
  • Tone Detector – Grammarly’s tone checker can detect the tone of your message by examining your word choice, phrasing, grammar, and even capitalization.
  • Style Guide – With Grammarly’s Style Guide, you can keep your team on the same page with a shared library of company-specific words, terms, and phrases. You can make guidelines to prevent your team from using jargon or acronyms with clients.

Pros:

  • Grammarly works with a variety of writing programmes, including Google Docs, Clearscope, Topic, and more.
  • The Premium version provides advanced features like clarity-focused rewrites, plagiarism detection, and formality level detection.

Cons:

  • Suggests passive voice use as incorrect.
  • Sometimes, the suggestions are contextually wrong or not relevant.

Pricing:

  • Free – Basic writing suggestions and tone detection
  • Premium ($12.00/mo)  – Clarity, vocabulary, and tone improvements
  • Business ($15/member/month) – Features for teams, organizations, and enterprises

Read more: Grammarly alternatives.

7. Google Search Console

Google-search-console

Best For: Monitoring your site’s search traffic, performance, and fixing issues.

G2 Score: 4.6

Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google for webmasters who want to optimize their content and web pages for search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

The service provides comprehensive reports on how well your site is performing in organic search results, as well as valuable tools such as an index checker, URL inspection tool, and more.

All in all, it assists you in analyzing your site’s Search traffic and performance, resolving difficulties, and improving your site’s Google Search ranking.

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Google Search Console; Source: Google

Google Search Console Key Features:

  • Search Analytics – You can get a lot of useful information about the way your site is doing by checking on impressions, clicks, and position on Google Search, as well as observing which queries send users to your site.
  • Crawling – You can submit sitemaps and specific URLs to Google for crawling. Then, you can check your site’s index coverage to ensure Google has the most up-to-date version of your site.
  • Fix Issues –  When Google detects problems on your site, you’ll get an email. You can see which pages are affected by these issues and report that they’ve been fixed once they’ve been resolved.
  • URL Inspection tool – It pulls extensive crawl, index, and serving information from the Google index for your pages.

Pros:

  • Gives you behind the scenes for your site content
  • Helps you better understand user behavior in terms of their clicks, flow, and impressions
  • You get email alerts for any issue at any time on your site
  • It is completely free

Cons:

  • It can be difficult to learn

8. MarketMuse

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Best For: Analyzing where your content stands using content scoring.

G2 Score: 4.6

MarketMuse is a tool that helps you write faster and publish smarter by using artificial intelligence to research topics, create content-driven customer journeys, and get discovered by potential customers.

I especially loved MarketMuse’s Content Briefs feature that allows you to create detailed briefs, helping you publish detailed material. It gives your authors the framework, relevant themes, questions to answer, and linking recommendations they need to generate amazing content.

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Content briefs; Source: MarketMuse

The content editor provides real-time feedback on how well your work covers a certain topic so that you can see the quality of your work and how well it aligns with user intent.

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MarketMuse Content Scores; Source: MarketMuse

MarketMuse Key Features:

1. Inventory & Applications:

MarketMuse Inventory automates your inventory and content audit processes, including gathering, analyzing, and organizing your pages and making them available. You’ll have less manual work and more time to research, plan, and execute content.

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AI-Stackable filters; Source: MarketMuse

The AI-Stackable filters let you drill down into any aspect of your website or topic to identify potential for goal-crushing content plans. Then there are metrics intended to assist you in identifying and prioritizing your finest content possibilities.

2. Competitor Analysis

To get an idea of what the top-ranked pages in your niche are doing, compare your page to any of the top 20 pages in the rankings and look for gaps in their coverage that you can use to create the most complete and unique information on any subject.

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Compare your content; Source: MarketMuse

Pros:

  • Offers free plan.
  • Easy to use
  • Provides suggestions for internal and external linking

Cons:

  •  MarketMuse is quite pricey overall because the credits aren’t included in the lower Optimize plan.

Pricing:

  • Free – No time limit, 1 user, 15 queries per month, 10 projects. Applications: Optimize, Research, Compete, Questions, Connect.
  • (Standard – $7200/yr) – Data export, 100 queries per month, Unlimited projects, etc.
  • (Premium – $12000/yr) On-demand content audit for one or more domains, Domain analysis, Track managed topics, 25 team members, Unlimited  Content Briefs, Unlimited queries, Unlimited projects, etc.

Read more: MarketMuse alternatives.

9. Hemingway Editor

Best For: Detecting lengthy, complex sentences and common errors

G2 Score: 4.4

Hemingway Editor is a free online tool that helps you write better by highlighting wordy or pompous sentences, removing filler words and simplifying your language.

The editor highlights sentences that are hard to read by using a color scheme. The harder the sentence is to read, the darker the color will be. It also indicates when you should drop certain words or replace them with anything else. This makes it easy to identify parts of your writing that need work.

It also displays a readability score for your text, which can help you improve it.

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Hemingway Editor; Source: Hemingway

Aside from detecting and correcting adverbs, passive voice, and difficult-to-read sentences, it also fixes common style, tone, and grammatical errors.

Pros:

  • The online tool comes for free
  • Desktop app is also cheaper than most of the similar tools

Cons:

  • Doesn’t offer suggestions for how to fix the problem

Pricing:

The web version is entirely free, while the desktop app costs $19.99.

Over to You!

Ultimately, whatever software you decide to use for content optimization, it’s going to fall into one of two camps: doing the work for you or providing the information you need to do it yourself.

Either way, content optimization is an essential practice that won’t go away in favor of a quick fix. In order for businesses to effectively compete for their target audience and clients, content optimization is something that must be done consistently and correctly.