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I’ve written articles many times that weren’t a hit. I’ve spent hours researching, writing, and perfecting every sentence, only to clearly see the organic traffic never roll in.
These experiences taught me that no matter how well-written your content is, it will likely not make an impact if you don’t use SEO content optimization tools to identify gaps that may prevent it from ranking.
Content optimization tools help run SERP analysis, identify relavant keywords, suggest internal links, improve readability, and do a lot more so you can create high-ranking content with high visibility on search engines.
With the right SEO tools, you can transform your content from being invisible in search results to shining at the top, driving organic traffic your way.
In this article, I have outlined 10 of the best SEO content optimization tools I know to help polish your content and make them rank on search engines.
An Overview of The Best SEO Content Optimization Tools
| Content optimization tool | Starting Price | Free trial available? | Recommended for |
| Surfer SEO | $69 per month (for yearly billing)
$89 per month |
Yes. 7 days | Content optimization, content management, and AI articles. |
| Scalenut | $19 per month (for yearly billing)
$39 per month |
Yes. 7 days | Content optimization, content management, and AI articles. |
| NeuronWriter | $14 per month (for yearly billing)
$23 per month |
Yes | Content optimization, content management, and AI articles. |
| Frase | $12 per month (for yearly billing)
$15 per month |
Yes | Content optimization, content management, and AI articles. |
| Outranking | $19 per month (for yearly billing)
$25 per month |
Yes | Content briefs, AI assisted optimization, and automated internal linking. |
| SE Ranking | £44.00/mo per month (for yearly billing) £55.00/mo per month (monthly billing) |
Yes. 14 days | AI writing and SEO suite |
| MarketMuse | $125 per month (for yearly billing)
$149 per month |
Yes. 7 days | Content optimization and thorough SERP analysis. |
| Semrush | $117.33 per month (for yearly billing)
$139.95 per month |
Yes | Content Optimization, SERP analysis, and comprehensive SEO suite. |
| Clearscope | $189 per month | No | Content Optimization, AI content outlines, and content management. |
| WriterZen | $135 – one time | Yes. 15 days | Content Optimization and content management. |
1. Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is a SEO content optimization tool for planning, writing, and optimizing your content. This tool helps you generate content ideas and suggests the right keywords that can help your content rank. One of Surfer’s core features is its content editor. The content editor allows writers to import or write content and optimize it on the web app.
“This year, my agency wrote 1,975,002 words with Surfer. The writers know exactly which words they should use, and how they should use them. They get the content length and topic suggestions which speeds up the process. Most importantly, they genuinely enjoy working with Content Editor. We would be lost without it.” Craig Dewart, Director at My Content Pal.
With Surfer AI, you can generate SEO content within minutes. Here’s how: enter your keyword >>select the tone of the content >> input your outline >> click “Write with AI” button, and that’s it —you will have your well-optimized article in minutes.
Surfer also has a content score feature for rating your content quality and its relevance to your keyword. A content score of 0-33 indicates low-quality content, 34-66 indicates quality, and 67-100 indicates high-quality content. Surfer has other amazing features like:
- SEO audit add-on
- Keyword research extension
- AI outline generator
Surfer SEO Pricing
Surfer SEO has four pricing tiers:
- Essential: $89 monthly (180 articles per year)
- Scale: $129 monthly (1200 articles per year)
- Scale AI: $219 monthly (1200 articles per year)
- Custom: Custom or individual contract
Pro tip: You can cut down your yearly cost by $480 if you opt for a yearly subscription on any tier. The best part? Surfer offers a 7 days free trial for you to assess if it’s the best content optimization tool for you.
2. Scalenut
Content writers, marketers, managers, and agencies use Scalenut to manage all aspects of their SEO from ideation to publishing. Scalenut provides you with related keyword clusters and their metrics.
“The keyword grouping is a great feature. I also like the AI content writing interface. The cruise mode is very user-friendly. I highly recommend it.” Kavitha R., International Marketing and Communications Representative.
Scalenut also has a powerful AI writer who can help you create the first draft of both long-form and short-form content. With Scalenut AICopywriter, you can access 40+ templates for creating persuasive emails, product descriptions, and so on.
Other amazing features of Scalenut are:
- Keyword Planner
- Cruise Mode
- Traffic Analyzer
- Topic Cluster
- Chrome Extension
Scalenut Pricing
- Essential: $20 per month (10 articles)
- Growth: $40 per month (60 articles)
- Pro: $75 per month (150 articles)
- Enterprise: Custom
3. NeuronWriter
NeuronWriter is a content optimization tool that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to create engaging content. This tool is also useful for generating content outlines, doing competitor analysis, and it integrates with platforms like Google Search Console and WordPress. Read our NeuronWriter review to learn how these tool works, why we use it, and how it can improve your SEO effort.
4. Frase
Frase is an awesome SEO content optimization tool popular among content writers, marketers, managers,and agencies. This tool has a brief generator and an AI writing assistant that helps to speed up your content writing process.
With Frase, you can optimize your content in three ways. You can optimize:
- As you write.
- A draft you have written.
- A published article by entering its URL for Frase to scrape its content and optimize.
Frase’ topic scorer helps you compare your topic and keywords with your competitors’ thereby ensuring you create and publish topically relevant content. With this feature, you can identify the huge gaps — in terms of topics and keywords — in your content.
“Frase feels like a next-gen content tool that’s not just exciting for SEOs, but for writers as well. In my mind, that’s more important to create successful content.” Kevin Indig, Ex Director of SEO at Shopify.
Frase’ topic scorer also grades your title and keywords shows you the particular percentage you have to meet the average title of your competitors. Other features of Frase include:
- Content template
- Team project folder
- Content scorer
- Outline builder
- Document sharing
- Content analytics
- Content editor
Frase Pricing
Frase has four pricing tiers:
- Solo: $14.99 monthly (write and optimize 4 articles per month)
- Basic: $44.99 monthly (write and optimize 30 articles per month)
- Team: $114.99 monthly (write and optimize unlimited articles)
5. Outranking
Outranking is an AI-powered SEO research tool for managing your content optimization process effectively. With Outranking, you can generate outlines, keywords, and written content in a few minutes.
“I’ve been testing several AI-assisted SEO tools for developing content over the past 6 months and Outranking has quickly become one of my top 3. My blogger and I use it for creating content that ranks for client sites and Google My Business websites and posts. We used to use as many as 5 tools to do what Outranking does for us now, so this tool saves us money and more importantly, TIME. I’ve recommended Outranking to all of my colleagues and have found it to be an invaluable addition to my SEO agency.” Bradley B, Digital Marketing, SEO, and Local Lead Generation Coach.
Outranking’ Question Module helps you find possible questions people are asking on SERP related to your niche. You can also use Outranking to perform SERP analysis on your website.
Other amazing features of Outranking are:
- Keyword clustering
- Keyword planning
- SEO briefs
Outranking Pricing
- SEO Writer: $19 (10 SEO documents)
- SEO strategist: $99 (15 SEO documents)
- Custom.
6. SE Ranking
SE Ranking is a popular tool that helps bloggers, content writers, marketers, and agencies manage their content optimization process. This tool is amazing, especially when you are on a budget.
“SE Ranking is not only unique among SEO platforms but is positioned to be a tool that can replace several in your SEO toolbox. It has in mine.” Erin Sparks, Founder of Site Strategics.
SE Ranking is a complete toolkit that does the whole SEO by tracking your keywords, website audit, analyzing your competitors, and so on. This tool has other amazing features like:
- Content editor
- AI writer
- Keyword grouper
- SERP checker
- On-page SEO checker
- Backlink checker
- Competitive analysis
SE Ranking Pricing
- Essential: £55 monthly
- Pro: £95 monthly
- Business: £209 monthly
7. MarketMuse
MarketMuse is a content optimization tool that has features you need to research and plan website content with ease. It also has an amazing keyword analysis feature that provides you with valuable suggestions for keywords.
“I’ve been lucky to leverage MarketMuse at three companies…Their account team is second to none and always have our best interest in mind when developing strategy for us to exploit via tactics.” Jeanne Hopkins, CRO at Onescreen.ai
MarketMuse’ automated content audit works by going through your content and flags down all issues it finds. With MarketMuse, you have access to other features like:
- Content clusters
- Content brief generator
- Keyword research
- Competitive content analysis
MarketMuse Pricing
- Free: Seven-day trial (10 queries per month)
- Standard: $149 per month (100 queries)
- Team: $399 per month (Unlimited queries and briefs)
- Custom: Annual agreement (Personalized metrics)
8. Semrush
Semrush is a popular all-in-one SEO tool for general SEO, local SEO, social media, keyword research, and content optimization. Its content optimization feature is an SEO writing assistant, which rates your content based on SEO, originality, readability, and tone.
To optimize your content on Semrush, navigate to Content Marketing >> SEO Writing Assistant >> Analyze new text.
Paste the text content you wish to optimize and its target keywords.
Click the “get recommendation” button to see optimization recommendations for your content and that’s it!
“In the first 5 years of RockContent’s existence, Semrush has helped us to become Brazil’s biggest digital marketing blog.” Vitor Peçanha, Co-Founder at Rock Content.
Semrush Pricing
Semrush has four pricing plans:
- Pro: $129.95 monthly
- Guru: $249.95 monthly
- Business: $499.95 monthly
9. Clearscope
Clearscope is another amazing SEO tool that makes use of machine language and advanced natural processing to analyze what is ranking. With Clearscope, you can build content briefs, do competitors’ research, get citations about a keyword, and lots more.
In the Clearscope content optimization workflow, there’s a keyword discovery tool that grades how well your topics and keywords are doing in your content. Clearscope also has integration with Google Docs and WordPress, which makes it easier when writing and publishing content. While optimizing your content, Clearscope helps to indicate the word count typical for a certain topic, and this serves as a guide for you while writing.
“Clearscope gives us the inside scoop. It tells us exactly what we need to do to rank.” Vince Caruana, Senior Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Manager and Organic Content Manager at Algolia.
Clearscope’ new feature, content inventory, helps you track your content’s performance over time by plugging it into the Google search console. Other interesting features of Clearscope are:
- Content outline generator.
- Content grading.
- Term map.
- Competitors’ map.
Clearscope Pricing
- Essentials: $189 per month
- Business: $399 per month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
10. WriterZen
WriterZen is an AI copywriting and keyword research tool for creating articles that rank well on Google. With WriterZen topic discovery tool, you can generate topic clusters, keywords, and article ideas from a single keyword. Then, you can analyze your results with metrics like keyword difficulty, golden score, and so on.
“WriterZen helps you to narrow down the best keywords to target for your articles. I haven’t used any other tool that utilizes The Golden Keyword Ratio for identifying keyword clusters that have higher ranking potential. Their YouTube channel is very well laid out to help you learn how to use the software.” Larry S., Marketing Consultant.
Like other tools with content editors, WriterZen AI can help you create content briefs and complete first drafts of your articles. It also has an inbuilt plagiarism checker that flags copied content in your articles.
WriterZen is an amazing tool for beginners. It has a textbook that explains certain SEO terms. It also has a library that includes tutorials or materials that help you stay on track.
Other features of WriterZen include:
- Keyword planner
- Keyword explorer
- Team function
WriterZen Pricing
- Keyword Research: $135 – one time
- All-In-One Basic: $270 – one time
- All-In-One Advanced: $405 – one time
Choosing The Best SEO Content Optimization Tool
Before choosing any optimization tool, here are a few questions to ask yourself.
- Can I afford this tool?
- How many articles can I optimize using this tool?
- Does this tool integrate with tools I use like Google Search Console and WordPress?
- Do I need a comprehensive SEO suite like Semrush or just an optimization tool?
If your answer fits the description of the tools mentioned above, then that tool is likely right for you.
Dorcas Emmanuel
Dorcas Emmanuel is an SEO content writer for SaaS and B2B agencies. She has worked as a ghostwriter for many small businesses and has helped in creating articles that rank well on search engines. When she is not writing or reading a novel, Dorcas spends time making cute dresses for little girls.
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