13 Super Useful Tools for SEO Writing & Content Optimization (Free tools)

SEO writing can be quite overwhelming, especially if you choose to do it from scratch. Think of the keyword research process, the content writing process, and, more importantly, the Optimization required to rank your content on search engines. In all honesty, it isn’t an easy nut to crack. 

While SEO writing and content optimization aren’t so straightforward, this resource will provide you with free useful SEO tools for content writing and optimization. This will make your content writing process fast, easy, and painless. 

What are SEO tools for Content Writing?

SEO tools are software solutions that help improve search engine optimization for your website. See them as essentials that provide information about the health of your website and its performance on search engines. They also help you identify key areas to improve on your website and content. 

With SEO tools, you can perform keyword research, data analysis, SERP analysis, audience research, and backlink analysis. In fact, SEO tools make your content writing and content optimization easy as pie.

Beyond making your SEO content writing easy, the tools listed in this resource will also help you achieve;

1. Traffic to your content

Getting traffic is usually one of the major purposes of SEO writing. Working with the tools listed here will double your traffic. And not only that, these tools will get you quality relevant traffic!

2. Identify SEO and content problems.

The SEO tools listed in this resource will also reveal key problems in your content. In addition, they will show you why you are not ranking and what you can do to improve your rankings.

Having said that, here are useful tools for SEO writing and content optimization.

13 SEO Tools for Content writing and Optimization

List of 13 SEO tools for SEO writing and content optimization;

1. SuferSEO 
2. Rankmath
3. Google search console
4. Semscoop
5. Google Keyword planner
6. Hemingway app
7. Wordhippo thesaurus
8. Webfx readability tool
9. Keyword io
10. Keywords everywhere
11. Grammarly
12. Copyleaks
13. CoSchedule

1. SEO Tools for Content Writing: SurferSEO

This content optimization tool is useful for creating content that ranks. With SurferSEO, you can perform keyword research, analyze SERP, create content outlines, and analyze your content. 

What’s more? SurferSEO comes with a content score indicator. The content score indicator is located inside the content editor. This indicator shows you what word count, the number of subheadings, images, and paragraphs your content should aim for to outrank your competitor.

Furthermore, the editor highlights the target keywords your content should include and the required frequency for each. For instance, if a keyword reads 3 in the editor, it means you should have it appear three times within your content body. When done right, your content becomes fully optimized to rank.

SurferSEO is an excellent tool to optimize your content for search engines. And it’s highly recommended for content writers, copywriters, and content strategists for SEO writing and content strategy.

2. SEO Analysis and Content Optimization Tool: Rankmath

Rankmath is an advanced SEO optimization WordPress plugin. This SEO checker tool is perfect for on-page SEO and content optimization. 

First, Rankmath helps you analyze your content before publishing it on WordPress. Just like Yoast, it analyzes your;

• Article title: Rankmath makes sure your focus keyword is found in your title. It also shows the length of your title and whether or not it should be reduced or increased. 
• Meta description: With rank math, you can discover how strong and compelling your meta description is and better ways to improve it for SERP rankings.
• Internal links: If your content does not have any internal links to other pages on your website, Rankmath will help you discover that
• External links: Rankmaths suggests external links for your content. 
• URL: With Rankmath, you can tell if your URL is SEO optimized or not

In addition, Rankmath offers content AI to its users for content optimization. With Rankmath Content AI, you will find gaps in your content and see how to improve them.

For example, the Content AI shows what score your content should hit to outrank your competitor; word count, number of links, media, and headings required.

Finally, Rantmath offers other complementary SEO tools for your website. For example, Rankmath Provides you with an SEO analyzer tool to check site performance, a Keyword ranker to discover your keyword rankings, and an Advanced Analytics tool to connect your Google console and Google analytics. 

These and more optimization features make Rankmath unique compared to other SEO tools for content writing.

3. SEO Analysis Tool: Google search console

This SEO checker tool is super useful for analyzing your content and website performance. With the Google search console, you can submit your website, blog posts, and new pages for indexing. 

Indexation is a crucial thing required to help your website and published content appear on SERPs. If your pages and posts are not crawled and indexed by the Google bot, they may never appear on search results. And when this happens, your website doesn’t get any traffic.

Hence, when you launch a new website, it’s recommended you add your website’s sitemap to the Google search console for constant crawling and indexing. This way, your site gets its targeted traffic. 

Another good thing about the Google search console? It reveals your site performance, such as the responsiveness of your website on smaller screens, errors associated with your website, and how to fix them. This important information will help you carry out effective SEO optimization for your website.

Finally, the Google search console informs you of the keywords driving traffic to your page. This feature makes it extremely handy for finding content ideas and gaps to outrank your competitor.

4. Keyword Research Tool: Semscoop

Semscoop is a keyword research tool for finding and analyzing keywords; search volume, CPC, and keyword difficulty. This keyword research tool has many features suited to help you with content analysis, SERP analysis, and backlink analysis. In addition, they facilitate your content ranking and performance. 

For example, Semscoop provides in-depth suggestions on keyword ideas. When you run an analysis on a given keyword, Semscoop goes beyond providing the search volume and difficulty to informing you about content size, the number of backlinks, and competitor pages to spy on for gaps. With this information, your SEO writing becomes easy, and your content is properly optimized for SERPs.

Apart from the listed features, the tool is also FREE, allowing up to five keyword analyses per day. However, you must upgrade your account to their paid plans to get a complete analysis.

5. Keyword Research Tool: Google keyword planner

Google keyword planner is another FREE keyword research tool for content writers and copywriters. This tool aids your SEO writing by providing keyword ideas you can write on. However, unlike other keyword research tools that provide keyword ideas based on seed keywords, Google keyword planner is different.

Google keyword planner offers two options for generating keywords. The first option is typically the same as what you have on other keyword research tools — you input a seed keyword and generate long-tail keywords. But, the second option is different.

For the second option, you’ll only need to input the URL of your competitor’s target page to see the keywords driving traffic to their site. The best part is that this SEO tool reveals the search volume and keyword difficulty of those keywords. This is extremely vital, as you can pick any of these keywords and build your content on them.

Google keyword planner is a must-have for content writers, copywriters, and SEO strategists. 

6. Content OptimizationTool: Hemingway app

An essential SEO writing tip is to keep your content clean and easy to read. Unfortunately, Google hardly favors complex and hard-to-read content on their SERP. Instead, good content must be clear and legible, and the Hemingway app is the right tool to help you achieve this.

Hemingway app is a content optimization tool that analyzes your content for complex words, passive phrases, adverbs, and common errors. 

It suggests simpler words against complex words and shorter sentences over long sentences. For example, instead of using the word “due to,” the Hemingway app suggests you use “because,” noting that the latter makes your content easy to read.

This app also has a grading system that scores your content for readability while suggesting better ways to improve it. Usually, a 6th grade is the standard score for highly readable content. But it’s advised that you aim for a 5 – 7 grading score and 8 for more technical content types. 

7. Content Optimization Tool: Wordhippo thesaurus

A thesaurus is surely an important part of your SEO writing. Remember, the goal of content optimization is to make your content user-friendly. Thus, a thesaurus offers you synonyms to simplify your words. 

Wordhippo is a thesaurus tool that provides definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and rhymes to create user-friendly content. The website is FREE and has hundreds of synonyms and phrases. It’s also easy to use and doesn’t require any special navigation skills. You’ll only need to visit the website, type a word, and allow Wordhippo to spin out thousands of synonyms for you.

8. Content Optimization Tool: Webfx readability tool

Unlike the Hemingway app that uses the Flesch-Kincaid method to determine how difficult your content is, Webfx uses other methods, including; Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, Coleman Liau Index, SMOG Index, and Automated Readability Index (ARI).

Combining these methods makes Webfx super useful for analyzing your content structure, syllable length, and sentence length. The good thing is this SEO tool is free and will only require you to paste your content text or URL into the calculator for content analysis. 

9. Keyword Research Tool: Keyword io

This SEO tool is popular for generating long-tail keyword ideas for your content writing. You’ll only need to type in your seed keyword, target country, and language to generate tons of long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are keywords with high search volume and low difficulty. They are useful for gaining traffic on SERPs, especially for new websites with low domain authority. 

On Keyword io, you can filter your keyword ideas into groups such as how-to questions, what-is, and best-related questions.

For instance, in the above example, searching for the seed keyword “affiliate marketing” on Keyword io returns over 600 hundred long-tail queries people are searching for. Then, using the filter search bar, select “best,” and you’ll get queries such as; best affiliate marketing courses, best affiliate platforms, and other best-related queries.

These queries can help you create good content likely to rank on SERPs. Thus, top SEO agencies, content writers, and copywriters interested in working on highly relevant content topics can leverage Keyword io for timeless keyword ideas.

10. Keyword Research Tool: Keywords everywhere

Keywords everywhere is yet another keyword research tool for finding long-tail keywords. This SEO tool comes with an extension( available for Chrome and Firefox ) that lets you find queries and related questions people search for on Google. With Keywords Everywhere, you can discover the SEO difficulty, its monthly search volume, on-page difficulty, and off-page difficulty.

Luckily, this SEO tool is FREE, with unlimited access to generating keyword ideas. However, a paid upgrade will be required for advanced keyword analysis, such as competitor analysis, organic keyword ranking, trends data, and top-ranking pages analysis.

11. Content optimization tool: Grammarly

Grammarly is a content optimization tool for improving the readability of your blog posts. This analyzer tool checks for spelling errors, punctuation, and other writing errors in content drafts. It’s also useful in checking your content’s clarity, engagement, and correctness.

In addition to analyzing your content, Grammarly is excellent for rewriting and paraphrasing a poorly written article. Poorly written articles are usually boring, unclear, and cannot engage readers. But, with Grammarly, they can be rewritten and turned into a masterpiece.

Meanwhile, using the platform is a no-brainer and will only require you to sign in and copy and paste your work, while the tool provides you with correction suggestions to make. In the end, Your work gets scored based on how optimized and readable it has become. 

Finally, Grammarly is FREE, and teams can share the tool with no restrictions. However, for more advanced features, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

12. SEO Tools for Content writing: Copyleaks

Copyleaks is an anti-plagiarism tool that uses artificial intelligence to scan and detect plagiarized content in your work. It’s quite typical for writers to borrow words, ideas, and phrases from other resources. And when they do, it leads to the production of plagiarized work. Unfortunately, Google disapproves of unoriginal content.

Nevertheless, Copyleaks is a tool that can help you detect and rework plagiarized phrases. Importantly, the tool is easy to use. First, paste your draft, run a scan, and click on each highlighted sentence or phrase to rework.

Finally, Copyleaks is FREE but paid for advanced features.

13. SEO headline analyzer tool: Coschedule

This is another excellent tool for SEO writing and content optimization. Coschedule is a full-suite digital marketing tool that helps you manage your social media and blog posts. While it is popularly known as a content marketing tool, it consists of a headline analyzer tool that helps analyze blog posts’ titles for SEO.

When using Coschedule, the tool scores your headline for clarity, readability, word balance, and sentiment. These qualities help your article stand out amongst thousands of others published daily. 

Another useful feature of this tool is comparing your article title with the top-ranking competitor articles. With that information, you gauge your headline performance and improve for better performance.

Conclusion

Getting better in SEO writing doesn’t have to be hard. With the tools listed here, you won’t have to struggle with your content writing process and its Optimization. Instead, go through them and absorb them into your content strategy for higher rankings.

Also, if you enjoyed this article “13 SEO tools for content writing and optimization” and would like to learn more about SEO content writing, read our resource on Powerful Seo Writing Tips That Work for content writers and copywriters ( this is an actionable piece to help you skyrocket your writing skill).

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