SEO writing tells a story in a witty yet professional manner. A lot lies in the eye of an individual studying them though. There are many agencies that provide quality content writing but fail to deliver when it comes to SEO content. This is where copywriters have a key role to play. They understand how SEO writing is performed and write articles in line with your business requirements.
So, let me share with you some basic needs of an seo content writer.
Google Search Console
The Google Search Console is Google’s own tool that helps you improve your rankings in the search engine results pages. The console includes tools that measure the performance of your website, including page load times that impact SEO. You can monitor your website’s position on Google search results, including which of your pages are ranking for specific keywords. You can also see how many impressions and how many clicks your pages have gotten in the search engine results pages.
Google Search Console is a critical tool for all webmasters. It provides much-needed transparency into how your pages are performing and can help determine which content you should optimize or what keywords you should target next.
Pricing: Free for all website owners.
Google Keyword Planner
Most digital marketers use either the Google Keyword Planner or a paid version with better features for keyword research. Still, this is one of the best free tools for doing basic keyword targeting research. The keyword planner offers two main features:
- Discover new or related keywords – You can type in any keyword to see a list of related keywords along with their search volume and other related metrics. This makes it easy to find new keywords to target for SEO.
- Get search volume and forecasts – You can monitor trends to identify search terms or keywords that are becoming more popular.
Pricing: Free for anyone with a Google Ads account. If you need a quick guide, you can check out this resource: How to Create a Google Ads Account.
WordStream
WordStream offers a stripped-down version of Google’s keyword planner that’s free and easy to use. Just type in a keyword of your choice, pick an industry and type in your location. Then click the big orange button and you’ll get a list of keywords along with their search volumes on Google and Bing, and the average CPC for each keyword on each ad network.
Pricing: WordStream’s keyword research tool is free to use.
SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the most popular and useful tools for digital marketers of all stripes. Their monthly subscription package includes 40 different tools that help with SEO, PPC and social media management. Marketers can use SEMrush to analyze backlinks, conduct keyword research, analyze the performance and traffic of their own website or those of their competitors and discover new markets, niches and opportunities. There’s also a site auditing utility that can help with some of the more technical aspects of website SEO.
Pricing: Some features available for free, paid subscriptions start at $99.95 monthly.
BuzzSumo
If you’re curious about new content trends and developments in your industry, look no further than BuzzSumo.
BuzzSumo is a search engine that streamlines the entire content research process. It does so by using keywords and other data points to identify which types of content are performing well online. You can even experiment with different filters to further refine your search.
Want to find out what’s being shared across social media channels? Maybe you’re trying to keep up with the influencers and industry leaders in your area? Perhaps you want to see what your competitors are up to?
All of these actions can be taken on BuzzSumo.
BuzzSumo.com Influencer Tool
Evernote
While many people still prefer post-its, notepads, and other old-school methods of keeping track of their daily tasks, having a solid note-taking app like Evernote might spare you constant hassle.
The best thing about Evernote is that it works on pretty much every device, including iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows and automatically syncs as long as you have a reliable internet connection.
From to-do lists and research notes, there are plenty of note-creation tools that have been proven to be useful at each stage of the writing and editing process. You can embed pictures and audio, review edits of others, and set reminders to receive in-app notifications.
Evernote Note-Taking Tool
Content Studio
ContentStudio is an all-in-one cloud-based platform that helps brands, agencies, and startups discover, publish, and track their content marketing efforts.
Features span engagement tracking, multi-account management, post scheduling, drag and drop embed, and social media monitoring. The planner features an easy-to-use calendar, a publisher that helps plan content deliveries, and analytics that make reporting on marketing performance easier than ever.
Plus, you can even gain insight into how a piece of content has fared historically for a specific keyword or topic.
When it comes to publishing killer content, Content Studio checks all the boxes.
Content Studio Social Media Scheduling Tool
SimilarWeb
Analyzing more than 3 million mobile apps and 80 million websites, SimilarWeb’s mission is to empower users with the insights needed to “win your market” as they put it.
Essentially, SimilarWeb is a website analysis tool where you can get insights into information like your competitor’s top-performing pages, keywords they’re ranking for in Google, and how much traffic they’re receiving every month.
Equipped with this data, the goal is to start optimizing your content and benchmarking your SEO performance to outperform others in your industry.
The company’s top customers include tech powerhouses like Google, Microsoft, Omnicom, and Alibaba.com.
SimilarWeb Competitor Analysis Tool
Portent Content Idea Generator
Portent’s Content Idea Generator is one of the best content creation tools on the market, particularly when it comes to headlines.
According to Copyblogger, 80% of site visitors read headlines and only 20% actually make it to the end of the article.
That’s what makes Content Idea Generator so useful. It basically brainstorms different blog post titles for you in seconds.
For example, if you wanted to write a piece on content marketing, just enter “content marketing” into the search bar and see what the app comes up with.
If you don’t like the suggestion, just click “See Another Title” and the page will refresh and present a new title recommendation.
Rinse and repeat until you eventually find one you like!
Portent’s Content Idea Generator Tool
Scoop.it
Founded in 2011, Scoop.it has helped over 8 million users publish millions of pieces of content.
Scoop.it is part content curation platform and part social network. With it, you can monitor sources globally and curate content from a variety of third-party sources like niche magazines and mainstream media outlets.
Distribute it automatically on your blog or social media platform of choice or review it internally with your team.
Scoop.it has gained so much traction over the years that it has been featured in publications like Forbes, Mashable, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch.
Scoop.it Sharing Permissions
BrightEdge
With more than 1,700 customers worldwide, BrightEdge defines itself as “The industry’s first and only SEO solution to give marketers real-time research, recommendations, and rankings–everything an SEO needs all in a unified platform.”
This is considered one of the best content marketing tools out there because it shows you the intent behind search queries, in addition to guiding content creation and optimization.
It converts online content into real business results like engagement, traffic, and sales via its one-of-a-kind SEO platform. This platform enables brands to predictably plan and measure campaigns using data collected from BrightEdge’s Content Performance Marketing feature.
BrightEdge Customer Journey Tracing
Answer the Public
Type any keyword into this free online tool and you’ll get an extensive visualization of questions people have asked on Google using your keyword. This tool connects with one of the biggest recent additions to the Google search pages: Snippets.
On some search results pages, Google now displays Snippets. A snippet is a tab near the top of the page that highlights a common question related to the target keyword. When a user clicks on the snippet, Google connects them to a web page that answers that question explicitly. Being featured in a Snippet is a great way to generate organic traffic because Snippets are always near the top of the page.
With Answer the Public, marketers can write highly targeted articles that directly address questions that they know are being typed into search. This makes it more likely that their articles will be featured in Google Snippets.
Pricing: Three searches per day for free, unlimited searches starting at $99 monthly.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a WordPress plug-in that gives you real-time feedback as you optimize your blog posts using WordPress. The plug-in acts like a built-in checklist tool that prompts you to complete on-page SEO tasks for each blog post that you create. Yoast SEO provides feedback on your page optimizations in real-time, makes suggestions for improvement and helps you manage all the details when doing on-page SEO with WordPress.
Image Source: https://kinsta.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/yoast-seo-configuration-wizard.png
Pricing: The basic version of Yoast SEO is free. Yoast SEO premium starts at $89 monthly for a single-website license, but you can save money by purchasing multiple licenses for multiple sites at the same time.
Keyword Density Checker
Keyword density is an important factor that search engines like Google use to rank web pages. Digital marketers know that the Google Search algorithm looks at the density of keywords to understand the relevance of each piece of content. For each blog post, it is important to ensure that the target keyword is mentioned a sufficient number of times within the text. At the same time, excessive mentions of the keyword (a practice known as keyword stuffing) are discouraged.
This simple keyword density checker makes it easy to figure out how many times each keyword is mentioned in your article. You can paste in the text of your article and you’ll receive a list of the most frequently occurring one-word, two-word and three-word keywords in your article. For most content pieces, digital marketers aim for a keyword density of 2-5% for the target keyword.
Pricing: The keyword density checker is just one of over 75 free SEO tools offered by the team at PrePostSEO. Visitors to the website can perform a total of 500 queries per month across all tools. To unlock more searches, users can purchase a premium plan starting at $50/year for 50,000 annual searches.
Read-Able
Read-able is a useful tool for ensuring that your content is accessible for your target audience. When you paste your article into Read-able, it uses a proprietary algorithm to assign your content a grade level that corresponds to how easy it is to read and understand.
The average North American reads at an around an eighth-grade level, so if that’s your target audience, Read-Able will help you write clear and concise sentences that are easier for a wide range of readers to understand. If your target audience is college-educated, it’s okay to use longer words and complex sentences to convey meaning. Read-Able is all about matching the level of your writing with the reading level of your target audience to provide the best experience for readers.
Pricing: Read-able offers a free version of its tool that checks reading level, grammar and spelling. The PRO version is available starting at $4/month and includes features like edit suggestions, error highlighting, additional reports and the ability to score emails and additional file formats.
Grammarly Premium
Google checks your website for spelling and grammar. A website whose content contains many spelling errors is less likely to rank highly on search engines. Grammarly makes it easy to create content that is grammatically correct and free of spelling errors. You can add the tool to your browser and use it when composing emails, social media updates or a blog post.
Pricing: Grammarly Premium starts at just $11.66 per month when you purchase a one-year subscription. The premium version offers more corrections and an anti-plagiarism feature to help ensure your content is truly unique.
Conclusion
As a content writer, you understand what’s important when it comes to SEO and keyword research. Now, we’re going to take two steps back and look at it in a whole new way, in this article: “SEO and Content: The Yin and Yang of Organic Search,” and we’ll talk about how search engine optimization (SEO) really affects content strategy when it comes to keyword research.