Content optimization is the process of enhancing the quality and relevance of a webpage’s content to improve the page’s rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). It involves analyzing currently ranking content and then implementing data-driven changes.
There are plenty of content optimization tools on the market in 2024. Some have been popular for a while, like Clearscope and Surfer, while others are newer but still worth consideration, like Positional and Dashword.
All these tools have the same goal: improving the search engine performance of your pages and posts. But there are differences between them — some subtle and some distinct.
So, what’s the best toolset for content optimization?
The answer to that question depends on your organization’s needs. In this post, we’ll highlight eight leading content optimization tools to help you decide which is right for you.
Comparing 8 of the Top Content Optimization Tools
There are many factors to consider when deciding between different content optimization tools — for example:
- Key features
- Integrations
- Pricing
- Ease of use
- Support options
Here, we’ll cover the most important aspects of each tool, so you can choose the one that best meets your needs.
1. Positional’s Optimize
Quick Take: Positional's Optimize toolset offers data-driven recommendations, which can be the difference between a top-ranking article and one that search engines seem to ignore. The recommendations are based on a comparison of your page with the top-ranking webpages for a given keyword.
Every writer knows the struggle of spending hours crafting the perfect article — only to see it languish without getting the traction it deserves on SERPs. Positional’s Optimize toolset was designed to help writers create content that has a good chance of ranking out of the gate.
By comparing your page with pages that are ranking well, you can improve keyword frequency, optimize for long-tail keywords, and get suggestions for sentiment, readability, word count, and so on.
Other key features of Optimize include:
- Reverse-Engineering Top-Performing Articles: Ever wondered what makes top articles tick? With Optimize, you can dissect top-performing articles, to better understand their success formula.
- Comprehensive Suggestions: Whether it's word counts, headers, images, or readability, Optimize has got you covered. It's like having a content mentor guiding you at every step.
- NLP and Related Terms: Using both an analysis of content competitors and natural language processing (NLP), Optimize provides you with a list of suggested terms to include in your content.
- 0 to 100 Grading: After analyzing a number of variables (such as word count, headers, and sentiment), Optimize will provide a Positional Score between 0 and 100, making it easy to quickly evaluate how optimized your content is.
- Unlimited Reports: Users can optimize an unlimited number of articles without any restrictions.
- Part of a Much Larger Toolset: Although Optimize is used only for, well, optimization, getting access to Positional means getting access to other useful SEO features such as Internals and Keyword Research. In particular, Positional’s toolset for internal linking is very helpful for finding missed opportunities in existing content and in new content as you create it.
There are some limitations. For example, while Positional provides keyword recommendations and SERP header suggestions, it doesn’t tell you specifically which keywords to try to incorporate in which specific header elements.
While Positional does offer a Google Docs integration, there are no integrations with specific CMS platforms, such as WordPress and Webflow, or with AI-writing tools.
2. Clearscope
Quick Take: Clearscope is a wonderful tool, although it’s slightly more expensive than other offerings. Its inventory features can be helpful if you have a lot of content, but you might quickly run out of report credits.
Clearscope is a good content optimization tool that offers an AI-driven approach to analyzing the top 30 articles for a given keyword. It provides suggestions on LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords, content length, readability, and so on to ensure that your content is not only engaging but also well-optimized.
Clearscope was founded by Bernard Huang, a former SEO consultant and a popular voice in the SEO industry. The fact that Clearscope's customers include major brands like Adobe, Shopify, and YouTube further solidifies its credibility.
If you're looking for a tool that provides comprehensive suggestions and competitor insights, Clearscope is definitely worth considering. Key features include:
- Content Grade and Keyword Ranking: Clearscope guides users on keyword placement, especially in header tags, enhancing organic ranking potential.
- Future-Proof Keywords: Stand out with Clearscope's ability to identify keywords that hold relevance both now and in the foreseeable future.
- Content Inventory: An advanced inventory system tracking content catalogs and performance changes.
- Customer Support: Have a query? Clearscope's responsive customer support, primarily available via email during business hours, is there to assist.
- Scoring: Content is scored using a letter-based grading system.
Clearscope does come with limitations, though, like the lack of a SERP-based internal linking feature, which is crucial for SEO, and few integration options (WordPress and Google Docs). It's a great tool to consider if content analysis and competitor insights are your priorities. However, if you're looking for a tool with more advanced collaboration tools and internal linking features, you may need to explore other options.
If you publish large volumes of content, Clearscope’s cap of only 20 monthly content reports might be fairly limited, and things might get more expensive quickly.
3. Surfer
Quick Take: Surfer is arguably the most popular content optimization tool, and rightfully so, with a comprehensive set of features and integrations, and if you are looking to create content with AI, you can do that directly inside the platform.
With its Content Editor, Surfer allows you to optimize your new and existing content to align more closely with what's currently working in search results. The tool will scrutinize your pages, conduct an audit, and offer suggestions for improvement. Surfer uses more than 500 ranking factors to provide its recommendations, including metrics like keyword density, content relevance, and topical authority.
One of the standout features of Surfer is its True Density metric, which lets you know if you're using specific words too often or too seldom and helps you identify content gaps. Relying on True Density simplifies the optimization of existing content. Other key features include:
- Content Editor: Surfer's Content Editor helps you optimize blog posts during the writing process by offering clear guidelines and suggestions.
- Surfer AI: An AI-writing tool that will generate optimized pieces of content automatically.
- Topic Explorer: A native toolset for keyword research and topic discovery. Quickly identify content gaps and missed opportunities based on competitor performance.
- Auto-Optimize: A push button-like experience that will automatically optimize your piece of content for improved scoring and performance.
- Scoring: Content is scored using a numerical score from 0 to 100.
Surfer supports eight languages, including English, Spanish, and French. It also has a number of unique integrations, including with Jasper, a popular AI writing tool, and Contentful, a popular headless CMS, in addition to integrations you would expect like Google Docs and WordPress.
Surfer is a comprehensive tool that offers many features to help content creators and SEO professionals optimize their content. Whether you're looking to improve existing content or craft new, well-optimized articles, Surfer has got you covered.
4. Yoast
Quick Take: Yoast is one of the most popular WordPress SEO plugins. It offers very tactical technical SEO suggestions and checks for things like title tags and meta descriptions. If you’re using WordPress, you should have Yoast, but if you’re looking for more granular content suggestions, you’ll likely want to pair it with another tool like Positional, Clearscope, or Surfer.
Yoast is a powerful WordPress plugin that offers real-time SEO analysis so you can ensure that pages and posts are well optimized. It also provides readability analysis so you can make sure that content is digestible and engaging for readers.
In addition to SEO and readability analysis, Yoast also offers features such as a breadcrumbs tool, automatic generation of XML sitemaps, and customized meta descriptions and titles. Other key features include:
- Meta Descriptions and Titles: Customize these crucial SEO elements for enhanced search visibility.
- Content Insights: Understand your content better with insights into the most used words.
- Link Building: Get suggestions for internal linking to bolster your site's SEO.
While Yoast is a powerful tool, beginners might need time to learn how to use it. In addition, while the free version offers a suite of tools, some advanced features are reserved for the Premium version.
Whether you're a blogger, a business owner, or someone looking to optimize your WordPress site, Yoast can be transformative.
5. MarketMuse
Quick Take: MarketMuse is a more expensive offering, but it has some unique features, such as tools for identifying content gaps and measuring content quality.
MarketMuse is another toolset that uses machine learning and AI to analyze content and then make suggestions. Like Clearscope, it also includes an inventory tool that helps you keep track of all your content assets, along with a variety of other tools.
The Optimize feature helps users understand how their content stacks up against the competition and provides suggestions for optimization. Some other key features are:
- Questions Application: Enhance your content by addressing questions related to your primary keyword, ensuring that you cover all the bases.
- Connect Application: Boost your SEO efforts with linking recommendations based on your target keywords.
- Content Score: Gauge the quality of your content and its potential to rank well on search engines.
- Competitive Content Analysis: A unique approach to quickly identifying gaps in information within your content when compared against competitors.
- AI Writing Assistant: Prompts that suggest how to weave topics into a greater narrative, improve readability, and change tone. There is also a native integration with ChatGPT, so you won’t need to switch between tools.
It's important to note that the platform's extensive options might be overwhelming for newcomers, and the pricing might be steep for individual bloggers or small businesses. And if you use Google Docs, know that the formatting won’t carry over perfectly between the tools, so you might need to spend time adjusting formatting.
For medium to large businesses with their own dedicated SEO writers, MarketMuse can be a solid option.
6. Frase
Quick Take: Frase is a lower-cost option that’s easy to get started with. Folks rave about its tools for outlining and researching alongside its core optimization functionality.
Frase provides insights into content relevance and offers SEO suggestions to ensure that your content is both engaging and well optimized. Its standout features include:
- Content Analysis: Understand how your content compares with competitors’ content and gain insights into its quality and relevance.
- SEO Platform: Beyond just content creation, Frase provides SEO suggestions to ensure that your content is ready for search engines.
- Content Editor: Enhance your content's quality with Frase's suggestions and insights.
- API Access: Users can leverage Frase’s scraping and optimization technology, which is available as an add-on, via API.
- Article Generation: Another add-on allows users to generate optimized article content automatically using AI.
- Scoring: Content is scored using a percentage-based system, and your content is scored alongside other top-performing search results so you can quickly see how your content stacks up
7. Dashword
Quick Take: Dashword provides a unique workflow for creating optimized content briefs before content creation.
Dashword offers a suite of features that analyze content quality and provide actionable insights to boost SEO. Its key features include:
- Content Analysis: Dashword provides an in-depth analysis of your content, so you can ensure that it's relevant and of high quality.
- Keyword Research: Gain insights into trending keywords without relying solely on platforms like Google Ads.
- Meta Description Generator: Auto-generate meta descriptions to enhance your content's SEO.
- API Access: Access platform features directly with an API.
- Single Sign-On (SSO): Important for enterprises or companies with SSO requirements.
- Scoring: Like Clearscope, Dashword provides a letter-based score instead of a numerical score.
However, Dashword isn't without limitations. Some users have mentioned concerns about character limits for descriptions and keywords.
8. Semrush’s Writing Assistant
Quick Take: Semrush is a platform with hundreds of capabilities. You might already be using Semrush for keyword research and auditing, and its Writing Assistant product is certainly worth testing if you’ve already got a subscription.
Semrush is a renowned SEO and content optimization platform offering a fantastic set of tools to enhance online presence. While Semrush does many things, its SEO Writing Assistant offers suggestions for content optimization. Some of its notable features include:
- In-Depth Suggestions: Get actionable recommendations for readability, tone of voice, originality, and SEO, including keyword suggestions and linking.
- Google Docs Integration: This is available as a Google Docs add-on, and it allows you to quickly move content from the Writing Assistant to Google Docs.
- Shareable Links: Create shareable links to share reports with clients or freelance writers.
- Scoring: Content is scored from 0 to 10, with a score of 10 being the highest possible score.
However, Semrush can be overwhelming for beginners due to its vast array of advanced features. It's a powerful tool for digital marketers and businesses, but newcomers might have to take some time to learn how to use it.
Where Content Optimization Tools Fall Short
While content optimization tools are great for building the frame of a piece of content, don’t forget that the words within a tool or on the webpage actually matter, too.
My biggest complaint with content optimization tools broadly is that it’s possible to get a very high score in many of these tools without actually writing a helpful piece of content.
As a quick reminder, when creating your content, you should think critically about the unique helpfulness you’re providing and the value you’re bringing to search results.
What is your content adding to the internet?
That’s a good question to ask before hitting that publish button.
Some of these tools do help to coach you to create more original pieces of content. For example, Semrush has its originality scoring, and Positional attempts to surface questions that you should address and answer but that you might have missed.
Final Thoughts
There are so many content optimization tools to choose from these days. Many of the solutions mentioned in this article are part of much larger toolsets and provide additional workflows and capabilities.
Depending on your content creation process and CMS, certain tools might fit more natively into your workflow. For example, if you’re using WordPress, Yoast might be a great place to start. Similarly, if you need integrations with AI-writing products, tools like Surfer and MarketMuse might be a great fit.
Tools like Semrush, Positional, and Clearscope offer a lot more than just content optimization at this point. And if you’ve already got an existing subscription to one of these tools but you just haven’t tried their content optimization workflow, that might be a good place to start.
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