Key SEO tools to power a content marketing campaign.

Content marketing is becoming more important than ever before. But getting it to work properly involves some level of work beyond the creation of the content itself.

So, to help streamline the process, here are seven SEO tools to improve content marketing and better position a business for growth.

1. Squirrly

Squirrly is a WordPress SEO plugin, which lets you do keyword research right in your post editor.

If you like to write content that is both SEO and human friendly, then this tool is for you. It not only lets you optimize content, but also lets you measure the success of the content optimized.

Squirrly has a number of tools on its dashboard but one notable tool, which can help boost your content marketing, is the Keyword Research Tool.

This tool helps you find the most relevant keywords for your articles. It also finds keywords used by your competition based on the specific keyword you entered.

With those keywords, you can craft winning content that will get ranked.

Squirrly also shows what phrases are trending – useful for writing sharable content.

2. Google Keyword Planner

Though the Google Keyword Planner tool is mainly associated with pay-per-click (PPC) and SEO, you can also use it to enhance your content marketing strategy.

Specifically, there are three key features that are relevant to content marketers:

1. Search for new keywords and ad group ideas: this feature is useful for generating content ideas. When you enter a word in the search bar, the tool will generate new keywords from the search. From the new keywords, you can find content ideas that are related to the keyword you entered.

2. Get search volume for a list of keywords: this feature allows you to examine the (Read more...) of the keyword. Precisely, you can see stats like average monthly searches and the level of competition a keyword has: high, medium, or low (though the level of competition is for PPC only). You can follow the stats to pick keywords that have high search volume and low competition (which are the best keywords to use for effective content marketing).

3. Multiply keyword lists to get new keyword ideas: this feature enables you to create new keyword combinations. It does this by allowing you to enter the keywords into different columns. By this, you’d be able to discover new keyword combinations that you can use as content ideas. This will help you pick long tail keywords which works best when it comes to content marketing.

google-keywords

3. Google Trends

Google Trends shows the popularity of a given search-term over time; it shows how often people search for a keyword and where they are searching from.

This tool helps you stay ahead in your keyword research. It helps you see which keywords are best for your content strategy and which region to target. Google Trends has many search-related features, which can be useful for content marketers.
These include:

• Trending searches

• Trending on YouTube

• Top Charts

• Google Correlate

• Explore

These features will help you see where you are going.

For instance, after doing your keyword research on Keyword Planner, you can run the keyword through Google Trends to see if it is waning or rising in popularity.

Google Trends shows a list of related search terms after entering a keyword; this makes it a breeze to find new content ideas that people are interested in.

For instance, after entering the term “content marketing,” Google Trends suggests the following keywords, which also have high search volumes:

content-marketing-keywords
Using Google Trends, you can also create a yearly editorial calendar for your content marketing campaign.

That’s because Google Trends shows you those events and topics that gain traction at certain times of the year.

goolge-editorial-calendar
While it is not completely advisable to base your content on trends, Google Trends is a great way to discover what people are talking about in your niche market.

4. Ahrefs Content Explorer

One way of creating great content is to find the most shared content in your niche, follow its structure and try reproducing the same for yourself.

Content Explorer by Ahrefs helps you do just this.

With this tool, you can discover top-performing content in terms of social sharing, get to see the keywords used in the content, and model the same by crafting your own content around that topic.

This will help you come up with content that will outperform the competition or at least produce similar results.

Content Explorer is pretty easy to use: just enter your keywords into the search bar and the tool will list out the most shared content based on the keyword you entered.

For instance, the screenshot below shows the results for “content marketing.”

ahrefs-content-explorer-2
5. Google Analytics

It is not just enough to create content. The content you create should bring you a measurable ROI.

Google Analytics helps you measure the ROI of your content. But beyond that, you can use Google Analytics for nearly every aspect of content marketing – brainstorming/idea generation, targeting, optimization, testing etc.

content-marketing-google-analytics

For one, you can use Google Analytics to see what content your visitors like and then follow through to create more of that kind of content. You can do this by going to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. The result will look something like this:

google-analytics-results

6. Keywordtool.io

Keywordtool.io is a free tool for finding the words that people search for on Google.

This tool uses Google's Autocomplete to provide users with great keyword ideas by generating over 750 long-tail keyword suggestions. It also works with 83 languages and 194 Google-owned domains.

Even more, Keywordtool.io allows users to export the keyword data to a spreadsheet where they can then examine and further categorize the same.

Here’s a screenshot example of Keyword Tool’s results with “content marketing” as the search term:

keyword-tool-io
7. Quick Sprout 

While Quick Sprout mainly shows results for SEO and site speed, you can also use it for content marketing purposes.  

After entering your competitor’s URL, click on the Social Media Analysis feature, you will see which content on the site received the most social shares.

Here’s how it will look:

quicksprout 

The information shown there will let you in on what types of content readers love the most. With that, you can go ahead and create something better. 

With the right tools in your hands, you can improve your content marketing, make your website and blog more effective and drive traffic.

What tools do you use in your content marketing operations? Share with us in the comment section below.

*Image via Shutterstock 

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