Living in an era where content is the new black or orange has placed content writers in high demand. While we are still trying to maintain quality, the increased workload has made it almost impossible for us to avoid using content writing tools for SEO purposes.
This blog post is dedicated to all hardworking content writers who need content writing tools for SEO to improve the quality of their content and meet deadlines. The reward for us is when we see those blog posts that we write ranking on the first page of Google’s SERPs.
What is content writing?
Content writing is the entire process of planning, writing, and publishing content in written formats. These pieces of content take various forms, but whatever form they take, the endpoint is usually to convey a message to a particular audience.
Depending on the quality of your content, it has the ability to convert your audience into paying and returning clients.
Types of content
There are several types of content, including:
- Blog posts
- Podcasts
- eBooks
- Landing pages
- Product Description
- Social media contents
- Video
- Infographics
- Newsletters
- Article
- Audiobook
- PDFs
The importance of SEO in content writing
The importance of SEO in content writing includes:
Visibility
No matter the platform you are writing for, the end game for every writer is to be able to showcase their work in front of an audience.
For example, when you write content for blogs, you want to see it show up on the first page of a SERP for its focus keyword. When you write content for social media, you want to see it get the needed engagement and traction.
Whatever content you write, what makes your efforts worthwhile is when it is visible to your target audience. What better way to do this than through SEO?
SEO allows your content to be visible to people who are searching for it.
Engagement
Due to the fact that SEO is based on research, it allows you to discover what people want to read about in the exact format that they want.
This lets you create personalized content, which promotes engagement.
Brand building
When your visibility increases, it helps you develop a strong online presence, which is advantageous to your brand.
As more people engage with your content, they become familiar with your brand, its values, and its offerings, fostering a positive brand reputation.
Builds credibility
When you consistently produce high-quality content that is optimized for search engines and users, earn quality backlinks from reputable websites, and optimize your website to enhance user experience, it will help to build your credibility as an authority in your niche.
Niche relevance
SEO-driven content ensures that your brand is associated with specific keywords and topics that are relevant to your target audience. By incorporating relevant keywords into your content, you align your website with the search queries that your audience is using. This targeted approach effectively positions your brand as a relevant resource for users seeking information or solutions within your niche.
Free marketing
Organic traffic is the icing on the cake when it comes to SEO. Unlike other paid marketing options, SEO is more long-term and rewards consistent, quality content with adequate research and cost-effective strategies.
How to choose the best content writing tools.
Selecting your most suitable content writing tools for SEO requires careful consideration of various factors to optimize your content creation process and achieve your SEO goals effectively.
Here are some factors to consider when choosing the best content writing tools for SEO:
Your Content Needs and Requirements
Assess your content writing needs and identify the specific tasks you want to automate or enhance with the use of these tools. Consider whether you need tools for keyword research, content optimization, plagiarism checking, grammar assistance, or a tool that combines these functionalities.
Ease of Use and Good User Interface
Prioritize content writing tools for SEO that offer a user-friendly interface and easy navigation, especially if you are a beginner. This little factor can significantly affect your workflow and productivity.
Accuracy and Reliability
Ensure that the content writing tools for SEO that you choose provide you with accurate and reliable data. This is crucial for making informed decisions about your content strategy and optimizing your content for search engines.
Pricing and Budget
Evaluate the pricing plans of these tools and compare the functionalities offered by different plans. Select tools that align with your budget and provide the features and functionalities you need without breaking the bank.
Free Trials or Demos
Take advantage of the free trials or demos offered by many content writing tools for SEO. This allows you to experiment with the tool’s functionalities before making a purchase.
Integrations with Existing Tools
Consider how well the tools you choose integrate with your existing content management system (CMS), analytics platform, and other relevant tools. It needs to have seamless and hitch-free integration with your existing tools for overall efficiency.
Customer Support and Resources
You need to consider the level of customer support provided by the developer. Access to comprehensive tutorials and responsive customer support can be your saving grace when troubleshooting issues arise.
Content Writing Tools for SEO Writing
Grammarly
If you are a content writer, I am absolutely sure you’ve heard of Grammarly at least once. This is because it is one of the best content-writing tools available.Â
The essential features of Grammarly cover spelling, punctuation, and grammar, but it doesn’t stop there. When you upgrade to the paid plan, you get plagiarism checks, vocabulary, and even sentence tone checkers.
One thing that distinguishes Grammarly is that it uses AI systems to detect subtle writing errors, making its reviews and feedback very accurate and spot on.
Although AI systems have certain disadvantages, including the inability to identify word structures outside of their programming, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. You can manually correct your writing where you deem appropriate.
The free version of Grammarly, though limited, is far better than most spellcheckers and editing tools as it offers a variety of features, including:
- Integration with several browsers
- Integration with Google Docs
- AI system for spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors
- Availability on mobile devices
- Readability metrics
As expected, the premium version offers far more value than the free version and gives writers literally all the features needed to have a WOW effect on readers. It goes beyond the basic suggestions and checks word tone, style, ineffective word usage, and plagiarism. Another feature of the premium version is outsourcing your writing to an actual human proofreader, although this comes at an additional cost.
Grammarly Premium makes sure your writing has clarity and emotional appeal and is free from plagiarism.
Pricing starts at $12 per month for the Grammarly premium and $15 per month for the Grammarly Business.
SEMRush Writing Assistant (SWA)
Developed by SEMRush, this writing assistant has all the features necessary for content optimization, and the good news is that these features are automated. Unlike other content writing tools for SEO, the features are not exactly embedded in the tool but come from various integrations, including all the SEMRush tools.
I like this tool because it shows you recommendations and gives you feedback as you write. This means that you don’t have to wait till you’re done writing to make necessary corrections. You also get to finish your work faster and learn on the go.
The SEMRush Writing Assistant offers:
- SEO suggestions
- Real-time feedbacks
- Google Docs integration
- Integration with other SEMRush tools
- It can be used as a WordPress plugin
The limitation of the SWA is that you cannot access it unless you have an active SEMRush subscription which starts at $120 per month.
There are several ways you can use the SEMRush Writing Assistant:
- Inside SEMRush: This allows you to check the viability of your content right from the SEMRush platform, although this prevents you from styling options or image insertion.
- As a Google Docs Plugin: More preferable than the first option, although you need to have a Google Workspace account. Then you have to install the plugin to your Google docs from the GSuite Workspace market, after which you enable the add-on via your Google Docs.
- As a WordPress plugin: This is the most preferred option as it is easy to use with more available options. All you need to do is go to your WordPress plugin page, search for the SWA, and install and activate. Click on the ‘Flat mode’ in your post editor, log in to your account, and your SWA is ready for work.
Answerthepublic
For any content creator or writer, answerthepublic gives you insight into your customer’s minds. It compiles a list of search queries based on specific keywords. It then categorizes these queries into several forms, including:
- Questions like why, where, how, who, what, can will, etc
- Prepositions like without, near, with, to, without, etc.
- Comparisons like versus, and, or, like, etc
- Alphabetical: displays results in alphabetical order
- Related
and presents it in an appealing visual format.
This tool is best for researching market trends and observing queries around specific keywords in any niche. These keywords are predictions of what your audience will search for, and it is an accurate analysis as these data are updated frequently.
The free version offers you search insights and allows you to download the displayed data, although you have a limited number of searches per day.
The paid version allows you access to unlimited daily searches, unlimited users, data comparison, and CSV export.
There is no free trial for answerthepublic, and the pro plan starts at $99 monthly with a 20% discount if you want to pay for an entire year.
Google Docs
Initially, when I started writing, I always loved using Microsoft Word for all of my writing until I discovered Google Docs.Â
Besides the fact that Google Docs automatically saves your writings to your drive or device to prevent the risk of losing your writing, it also allows you to add plugins that can help your content writing process.Â
Working with a team allows you to collaborate on a document and automatically syncs all inputs.
When writing blog posts, I always use Google Docs, and it’s incredible how I can highlight a particular phrase or word, search the internet for related posts, and automatically insert the links. This saves you the stress of having to insert URLs or add related links to your writings manually.
If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, what you see on your Google Docs is what you will see at the backend of your website, so you hardly have to edit your texts.
If you aren’t using Google Docs as a blogger or writer, you should try it!
Ubersuggest
Possibly the best keyword tool for SEO writers, Ubersuggest brings all your SEO needs to fulfillment. Developed by Neil Patel, it offers insight into keywords, content analysis, website analysis, competitor analysis, link tracking, and many other features.
It has a reliable and vast database of keywords and uses the API (Application Programming Interface) for Adwords, specifically Google Keyword Planner and Google Suggest, to get its data. This gives its users insights that help their SEO strategies and ranks them better in search engines.
If you are looking for an SEO tool that covers all the aspects of SEO, then this has got you covered. The free version offers you limited access to keyword analysis and content analysis. There is also a 7-day free trial that gives you a preview of what you can have access to in the premium version.
There are three categories of the paid version:
- Individual: $12 monthly or a $ 120-lifetime access
- Business: $20 monthly or a $ 200-lifetime access
- Enterprise: $40 monthly or a $ 400-lifetime access
Hemingway Editor
One of the best tools is the Hemingway editor when it comes to streamlining writing styles and writing clarity. Perfect for writing concision and word phrasing, it shows the readability of the article and aspects of the writing that need corrections by using different color codes.
- Yellow: Phrases highlighted in yellow indicate long, complex sentences.
- Blue: Highlighted blue phrases show weak verbs and phrases. You might want to edit these phrases with context words and more impactful verbs.
- Green: Green highlights are indicative of passive voice.
- Red: Red highlights show that the highlighted phrase is difficult to read, and the readers will likely not get its meaning.
- Purple: Phrases highlighted with purple usually indicate that you can shorten the selected phrase or that the highlighted word has a simpler alternative.
There are two ways to use the Hemingway editor. You can use it as a free tool online or download it as an app. The online Hemingway editor is entirely free, but the App version comes with a one-time fee of $19.99.
Although the features for both the online and app versions are the same, a significant difference is that you cannot download or upload your corrected work using the online version, but you can do that via the app. The app also gives you download options, including HTML, Markdown, or Word document.
The app version also allows you to use it without an internet connection, while an internet connection is necessary for the online version.
Jasper AI
This makes it to my list because it is one of the few AI tools that can actually help you with SEO. The Jasper AI has integration with Surfer SEO to help writers and bloggers with on-page SEO.
What is Jasper AI?
Jasper AI is a GPT-3 (Third-generation generative Pre-trained Transformer) content writing tool that helps you create and edit content. The fact that it is a GPT-3 tool means that it can use a small amount of input text to generate large amounts of relevant texts using the internet data, making it a perfect choice for long-form and short-form content.
Another reason you will love this tool is that it offers a lot of templates:
- Long-form assistant: to write long articles from start to finish.
- AIDA Framework: Utilizes the AIDA model for copywriters (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action)
- Content Improver: To copy and paste pieces of your writing to make it better.
- Facebook Ad Primary Text: Create highly converting copy for the ‘primary text’ section of your Facebook ads.
- Google Ads Headline: To create highly converting copy for your Google Ads’ headline section.
- Marketing angles: To add vibrancy to your marketing by researching different angles.
- Video description: To create unique descriptions in your YouTube videos.
- Email Subject Line: For compelling subject lines to get readers to open your mail.
- Real Estate Listing – Residential: Creating enticing real estate listings that sell homes fast.
- PAS Framework: For creating new marketing ideas using the PAS framework (Problem-Agitate-Solution)
Pricing for Jasper AI. starts at $29 per month for the starter plan and $59 per month for the Boss mode. There is an option to pay yearly with 2-month payments off.
Canva
Do content writers need Canva?
Well, if you have an app that allows you to make amazing graphics for your content in record time and offer millions of templates, then maybe you don’t need Canva.
Visual content is just as important as written content. In fact, your written content is not complete without pictures, infographics, or short videos. Canva makes it easier for content creators to develop graphics they can use to hook their readers.Â
With millions of templates ranging from infographics, websites, concept maps, planners, posters, invoices, ebook covers, YouTube intro, blog graphics, Instagram posts, videos, and the list goes on! It is a must-have for all content writers and bloggers.
Pricing: The free version is available and has a lot of templates from which you can select.
The paid version is valued at $13 per month.
Hubspot’s blog topic generator
As the name implies, this tool majorly helps generate topic ideas for your writing. This is the tool for you if you are continually hitting a creative block or running out of topics.
When you open the site, you get to add a noun that best describes what you want to talk about. Hubspot allows you to add up to five nouns, and it gives you days, weeks, or months’ worth of blog topic ideas that you can use.
You can access more ideas when you sign in to the platform using your website’s URL.
The Hubspot blog topic generator is completely free.
Why you need SEO content writing tools.
- Improve your writing: In less than a month of using appropriate tools, the quality of your writing is sure to increase. As the tool makes corrections, you also learn aspects of your writing that need improvement.
- Improve reader experience: One of the benefits of most content writing tools for SEO is that they optimize your content to be reader-friendly. These include paragraphing and flowing sentences.
- Optimize for search engines: Yes, your content gets to go through SEO scrutiny and editing—keyword stuffing, paragraph length, keyword research, word count, etc.
- Organize your content: Content writing tools help organize your content layout and make it visually appealing to your readers.
- Professional content: After editing and revising your content, the final product is usually professional.
- Instant feedback: Most tools instantly revise your content as you write and make suggestions where necessary.
My content SEO Tools: top picks
These content writing tools for SEO have a lot of advantages, and they are sure to improve your writing quality and optimize for search engines.
My top picks from these tools would be
- AnswerThePublic,
- UberSuggest,
- Google Docs,
- Grammarly, and
- Canva
What tools have you tried out? Do you think they help improve your writing skills? Did I fail to include your go-to content-writing tool?
Read also: 14 Powerful tips on how to write a blog post that highly engages – SARMLife.
