When it comes to building a successful marketing strategy in this day and age, content creation is crucial. Engaging content is often how prospects learn about you, a gateway to your brand.

That said, there’s more to content marketing than writing content, however great your writers are. It’s not like you can simply publish a few hundred words on your blog now and again and sit back while the profits pour in.

This is where content optimization comes in. Believe it or not, only 9.37% of content ever gets any organic traffic, and you need content optimization unless you want to be in the remaining 90.63%.

One of the leading authorities on content creation and SEO-related matters, Semrush, says that almost half of all content writers struggle to find a balance between search engine optimization and creativity.

One of the best ways to refine content is to study your competitors.  Using a tool for B2B Market Research will help you identify companies that compete. Then using the page analysis tools you can study how they are performing.

These numbers clearly show that, without high-quality optimization, no matter how much blood, sweat, and tears you pour into your content, you won’t get very far.

Before we get into the best tools out there today, let’s quickly delve into what content optimization really means.

Content Optimization — 101

With content optimization, you are more likely to hit your business goals by driving more search traffic and reaching a wider audience through your content. We could break effective content optimization into several steps:

1. Keyword research
2. Creating content that matches searcher intent
3. Optimizing headlines and subheadings
4. Optimizing title tags and meta descriptions
5. Including relevant images and visual information

You may be unfamiliar with a few of the steps listed here. If so, we’re sure this all seems quite overwhelming, but trust us, content optimization is hardly rocket science, especially if you’re using the right tools for the job.

Many content optimization tools provide a sort-of checklist process that you can utilize for every post. This enables you to optimize your content effectively and quickly, driving better results in less time.

X Best Content Optimization Tools Available

Now that you know the steps involved in content optimization, let’s examine a few of the tools used by some of the best website development agencies.

MarketMuse

MarketMuse is a content optimization tool designed to help enterprise-level businesses plan, audit, and optimize content.

This end-to-end solution uses machine learning and automation to identify topics that would work well on your website, as well as grade your content against the competition.

MarketMuse lets users create content briefs through the platform rather than offering them the tools they need to structure personalized outlines. This could be a bit of a problem if you’re pushing for highly unique content, but it is an excellent solution if you’re in a rush.

The content briefs you can create include KPIs for writers, average word counts, and topics to cover, based on what is already being discussed within your niche.

MarketMuse improves your content optimization process in three crucial ways:

1. Your content will be ranked based on its difficulty compared to competitor content on the topic you covered.
2. Analyzing already published content on a topic, machine learning software identifies subtopics and the best wording.
3. The language generation engine can create near-natural, original content by analyzing large amounts of content on a similar topic.

This is an excellent solution for enterprise-level businesses that need end-to-end support in their content marketing strategies.

If you already have a plan and are simply looking for easy-to-use software to ensure you’re covering the right topics and grade your drafts, the following tool on our list offers the best bang for your buck.

Topic

Topic was explicitly designed to make content creation easier by speeding up the research process.

This is often the part that marketers dread the most, not knowing what audiences want to read, what topics should be covered and what aspects should be included in the content. Topic makes all this easy, making writer’s block and blank page woes a thing of the past.

When you’re done planning with Topic, you’ll be ready to sit down and write the content that will create all the buzz around your business. Research is the most crucial part of creating quality content, which is why this tool prioritizes it.

Creating high-quality content involves uncovering your audience’s search intent, researching the competitors in your industry, and learning what common questions your audience is asking.

All of this is combined into a powerful tool that will help you produce better content and save time in the process. With it, you’ll be able to spend more time on the creative task of writing, as the research part will be highly automated.

Providing your audience with something they want to read is crucial, and this is why creating content with Topic can increase your impact on the industry, as well as improve your rankings.

Aside from this, the software provides guidance, helping you keep your content fresh and outrank your competition.

Here are the key ways in which topic boosts your content optimization and creation:

1. By scanning competitor outlines, the Outline Builder Tool allows you to quickly create a custom outline by incorporating major topics and filling in any gaps.
2. You can see exactly what your audience wants to know because Topic aggregates common consumer questions from sources such as People Also Ask, Quora, and Answer the Public.
3. Using Topic, you can group your subtopics according to their semantic similarity and then simplify the structure of your pieces.
4. With the Content Grader tool, your content is graded in real-time, so you know your post will rank higher than those of your competitors.

In just a few minutes, Topic allows you to create content briefs that are engaging, accurate, and cost-effective.

Frase

Frase’s primary focus is user intent, as it helps you create high-quality content based on what your audience wants to see. It determines this by looking at your target demographic’s common questions through various channels.

The tool automates content research using AI-powered technology, helping you understand your audience’s needs better so that you can offer them the best possible solutions.

It brings together a wide swath of information on your chosen keywords, as well as summarizing articles and recommending topics, enabling you to create highly comprehensive and easily digestible content.

Frase helps you optimize your content in three crucial ways:

1. It identifies common questions asked by your audience on Quora, Reddit, and other forums through its in-depth AI research capabilities.
2. It uses competitor content to generate briefs and outlines automatically.
3. It identifies significant gaps in your content and scores it against similar articles on the topic.

When it comes to uncovering the most common questions your target demographic asks on a specific topic, few tools can compete with Frase. You can create content that taps into your audience’s specific needs by taking full advantage of the software.

Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant

If you usually write your content in Google Docs and aren’t keen on switching to a different text editor, Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant is the way to go. It offers a Google Chrome add-on with some excellent features. The tool is also available for Word Press.

The Writing Assistant works by instantly recommending tweaks and optimizations as you go along. It uses the top 10 pages for your chosen keyword to optimize the content, checking the text for SEO-friendliness in real-time.

The plugin also has a checklist feature, offering your content writers a quick and easy way to incorporate keywords in all the right places and giving everyone involved a helpful, bird’s-eye view on the content’s quality.

Here are the key ways in which the Writing Assistant can be used to improve your content:

1. The content score evaluates your content against other similar articles on the internet based on target keywords, readability, and length.
2. Keyword recommendations enable you to pinpoint the topics your audience wants to read about.
3. The assistant keeps your tone throughout each piece consistent and on-brand.

This tool is an excellent place to start if you’re getting into content optimization. It offers all the information you need on things like readability, topic themes, and keywords so that you can improve the overall quality of your content.

Wrapping Up

When it comes to getting your content in front of the right audience, content optimization is critical. The software outlined in this article helps you include essential information, the proper subsections, and the correct keywords.

More than anything, these tools provide you with all the insights you need to consistently produce top-level content.

When you include content optimization tools into your online marketing workflow, you’ll see your pages climb up the search results pages, driving more traffic and helping you achieve your business goals.