Suman Samal, Asst. Marketing Manager
Suman Samal
Jun 27, 2023

The Best SEO Content Optimization Tools in 2024 | Scalenut

Looking for the best SEO content optimization tools to improve your rankings? Elevate your content game using these top 5 SEO content optimization tools.
The Best SEO Content Optimization Tools in 2024 | Scalenut

Table of contents

Do you remember the time when writers and marketers had to manually check how many times a keyword was used in a piece of content, ensure that the key term was present in the meta tags, and analyze competitor content to see what was helping them rank higher?

Thanks to the SEO content optimization tools! You don't have to spend hours and hours doing all those tasks manually.

SEO content optimization tools ensure you're aligned with standard SEO best practices like using profitable keywords, readability, key term usage, etc.

Some tools even provide all the necessary competitor information, like word count, outline details, and targeted keywords, to enable users to adapt the tactics proven to work well.

If you're looking to use one such content optimization tool, you might feel overwhelmed by all the options available. So, we hand-picked the top six content optimization tools to help you choose the one that serves your brand's content marketing goals.

Note: Scalenut is our own product that helps you plan, research, write, and optimize content all under one tab. It's a comprehensive content marketing platform that supports both SEO and content production. If you're planning to produce new content or refresh old content, Scalenut is your best bet. You can book a personalized demo call here to see if Scalenut meets your content requirements.

Best SEO Content Optimization Tools

Here are the top 6 tools that can precisely serve the above functions.

1. Scalenut

Scalenut Content Optimizer

Scalenut is an AI-powered SEO and content marketing platform with a 5-minute blog writer and an SEO content editor that helps you optimize your content for better ranking. This platform is ideal for content writers and bloggers who want to ideate, write, and optimize SEO content to drive organic traffic to their website or client's page.

In Scalenut, you can find all the tools you need to create traffic-generating content. Here is a complete breakdown of each function.

How You Can Use Scalenut to Optimize Content? 

Article Forge can create 1500 words with just a click. However, the absence of essential functions such as SEO content editor, competitor content analysis, and social listening tools are significant drawbacks. 

In Scalenut, you can find all the tools you need to create traffic-generating content. Here is a complete breakdown of each function. 

Keyword Planner

The Scalenut Keyword Planner helps you achieve topical authority in your industry and specific niche. You can insert your niche topic in Scalenut’s Keyword Planner to generate a report that groups relevant keywords together. 

Scalenut's Keyword planner to achieve topical authority in your content.

This report lets you view metrics like relevance, CPC, and search volume under one tab. You do not need to juggle between multiple columns or tabs as you do in SEO tools like Ahrefs or Ubersuggest to find relevant metrics that matter to you.

Scalenut key terms suggestions

If you are a content writer, sometimes you might just have one seed keyword to target. In that case, you will need a list of relevant keywords to target. That’s why the Scalenut content editor suggests relevant key terms your competitors are currently ranking. This allows you to easily outcompete your competitors without doing hours of manual research. 

Content Outline Generator

Every value-rich long-form piece of content originates from a detailed outline and brief. However, Article Forge does not have an outline generator to guide the AI to follow your brand structure or SEO outline. 

In Scalenut, you can create an AI-generated outline automatically or build a custom version by comparing top-ranking web pages under a single tab. With this information in one place, you can easily find content gaps, add frequently asked questions, and restructure your outline with the drag-and-drop option within minutes.  

Scalenut Content Outline generator

Moreover, Scalenut provides additional features like writing points and social listening tools to generate questions from forums like Quora, Reddit, and search results. This ultimately reduces the time taken to search and create an outline manually.  

Cruise mode

Scalenut has an in-built AI writer to help you create quality long-form content at scale. The cruise mode function allows users to generate the first draft of their outline in less than 5 minutes. Once you have the first draft, compare it with your competitor's content. This helps you see what points and subheadings you have missed. Instead of juggling multiple tabs, you can find all your competitor's content under the research tab. 

Scalenut Content Outline generator

Moreover, you can fine-tune the AI-generated copy in Cruise mode using the rephrase, shorten, or expand options. You can generate additional information for each section using the write and instruct tools in the editor tab. Altogether, this gives you complete control over AI and allows you to generate brand-relevant content within minutes. 

Content Optimizer

One of the biggest obstacles for content writers and bloggers is producing rank-ready content. You might be spending hours and hours ensuring every piece of content you publish is optimized to rank on Google or other search engines. 

However, manually checking the keyword density and finding relevant key terms to target can be a hassle. In situations like this, a reliable content report can boost your confidence that a piece of content is optimized for search. That's why Scalenut's Content Optimizer grades your content to generate a score and necessary suggestions to help you find a place at the top of the SERP. 

Moreover, you can use the fix-it button to auto-optimize your content based on the suggestion list. This eliminates manual editing time and acts as a supporting tool to fine-tune your content. 

SEO Content Editor 

Scalenut has advanced NLP and machine learning technologies to help you create content that ranks on the first page of the SERP for target keywords. You can see real-time NLP scores and custom SEO suggestions to improve your content. 

Scalenut Content Editor

Scalenut's SEO editor evaluates your content from different angles, like keyword density, links, content depth, key terms, and more. 

Whereas Article Forge does not provide a dedicated SEO editor to optimize your content for Google. Even though the tool helps with bulk content creation, non-optimized content does not stand a chance to drive traffic to your website.

Pros Cons
Provides automatic AI suggestions to write titles, outlines, and content briefs in seconds. The existing features can be quite overwhelming for first-time users.
The custom tone of voice allows you to adapt quickly to different niches and brand voices.
The content optimizer provides suggestions after keenly analyzing the competitor's content so you can equip your content to outrank the top-ranking pages.
Easily view all the top-ranking blogs for your target keywords under one tab. This allows you to find the content gaps and manually add them to the outline with a click.
AI-generated writing points for each blog subhead allow you to preview and customize the prompts based on your content goals.
Additional features like NLP terms, competitor content analysis, and statistics finder can help you drastically improve the first draft without manually conducting basic-level research.
You can create supporting social media copy and short-form content using the AIDA, PAS, BAB, and other 45+ ready-to-use templates.

Who can benefit from Scalenut?

  • SEO strategists managing a team of writers. 
  • Content heads who are responsible for creating content briefs 
  • Writers who run a small team 
  • Writers who create SEO-based long-form blogs and articles 
  • Marketers who manage social media channels and content editing activities 

Pricing 

Monthly 

  • Essential Plan - $39 per month 
  • Growth Plan - $79 per month 
  • Pro Plan - $149 per month

Yearly 

  • Essential Plan - $20 (per month if paid annually)
  • Growth Plan - $40 (per month if paid annually)
  • Pro Plan - $75 (per month if paid annually)

What do users think about Scalenut? 

  • G2 review - 4.7/5 stars
  • Product hunt review - 5/5 stars 
  • Capterra review - 4.8/5 stars

2. Clearscope

Clearscope Content Optimizer

Clearscope is an SEO-optimization platform that helps businesses create an SEO-driven content marketing plan. Its core functionalities include a content editor, SEO reports, a real-time content tracker, and more. Clearscope is an ideal tool for businesses trying to produce SEO-friendly content.

Read Scalenut Vs Clearscope for a detailed comparison between the two.

How is Clearscope better than Scalenut? 

Here are the core features of Clearscope. 

Key Features

Content Reports 

Like Scalenut Content Editor, Clearscope lets you get a detailed report on your written content. Additionally, you can import your published content to the report tab with just a click, ultimately saving you from manual copy-pasting. 

Content Inventory

The content inventory system allows businesses to track their overall content performance in terms of traffic, impressions, content health, and clicks. Adding to this feature, the Clearscope keyword planner, which displays monthly searches, competition, and CPC, will help you decide the profitable keyword you should target in your next content. 

Content Editor

Clearscopes' Content Editor has advanced NLP and competitor analysis features to help you optimize your content for search engines. Clearscope editor grades and suggestions are comparatively less accurate than Scalenut's, as it does not provide a specific content score or recommendations. The report includes keyword lists, competitor analysis reports, and readability grades.

Pros Cons
The Clearscope report allows you to label each piece of content based on different categories, which acts as a content management system. Instead of a specific SEO score, Clearscope provides a letter grade, which some users may find vague.
The filtering option in the content editor tools enables users to filter keywords based on importance, unused, and heading categories. Clearscope outline generators cannot automate the content brief creation process. It only acts as a brainstorming tool to create outlines manually.
You can access additional research materials from YouTube, Quora, Reddit, and SERP, as well as questions to include in your content. The lack of AI writer, templates, and keyword clustering options limits the tool's ability to help content marketers perform end-to-end SEO.
Integration with Google Docs and the WordPress Plugin helps users easily include the tool in their workflow. The credit-based pricing system generates reports that often hinder users while searching for previous reports and creating new ones.
The keyword importance grade in the content editor helps you see the necessity of using a particular keyword in the content. Sometimes, the keywords and other suggestions become irrelevant to what the users try to achieve through the content.
Additional features like NLP terms, competitor content analysis, and statistics finder can help you drastically improve the first draft without manually conducting basic-level research.
You can create supporting social media copy and short-form content using the AIDA, PAS, BAB, and other 45+ ready-to-use templates.

Pricing 

  • Essential - $170 
  • Business and enterprise custom 

Who can use Clearscope?

  • SEO strategist who works with different clients 
  • Content writers 
  • Content managers

What do users think about Clearscope?

  • G2 ratings - 4.9/5 stars 
  • Capterra ratings - 4.9/5 stars  
  • Product Hunt ratings - No reviews

3. Surfer SEO

Surfer Content Optimizer

Surfer SEO is a content planning and optimization software that enables users to create a basic SEO plan and optimize content to rank higher in Google. The tool has gained credibility and has attracted a large following since its launch. 

The core features of Surfer SEO include the content editor, keyword research tool, Surfer AI, Grow Flow, and content audit. A few of these tools only come as add-ons to your Surfer premium plan. 

Read Scalenut Vs Surfer SEO for a detailed comparison between the two.

Key Features

Content Editor 

The Surfer content editor is one of the most popular yet expensive SEO optimizers. Its content editing features include NLP suggestions, outline generator, brief creator, and content guidelines. 

The suggestions are backed by NLP and machine learning technologies. This feature is similar to Scalenut's Content Optimizer. Both tools provide data-backed content suggestions to help your content rank higher. 

Keyword Planner 

Similar to Scalenut, the Surfer Keyword Planner groups relevant key terms based on their similarities, like Scalenut. This feature allows users to create more content for topics in high demand in their niche and industry. However, Surfer lacks tools like social listening, research, statistics, and others to help users sharpen their content. 

Surfer SEO ranks a level low compared to the Scalenut keyword planner. It is because Scalenut provides users with a long list of keywords that allows users to choose brand-relevant keywords manually. As much as clusters are helpful, it is necessary to manually analyze raw data to find subjective content ideas relevant to your brand. However, Surfer does not offer keyword lists yet. 

Grow Flow 

The Grow Flow is a unique feature of Surfer AI. This feature aims to hold users accountable and help them improve different aspects of their website for better ranking. 

Users will get a list of tasks they need to complete to optimize their website and content for search while learning a thing or two about SEO and content marketing within a short period. 

Pros Cons
Multiple language support makes it easier for users worldwide to create and optimize content using Surfer. The absence of a free trial restricts first-time users' ability to know how the platform can help them.
The Surfer Plagiarism Report allows users to detect duplication in AI or human-written content to save the site's reputation from Google. It is an expensive tool that does not fall under individuals' or growing brands' budgets.
Sharable content editor workspaces promote team collaboration. The Surfer SEO article is not yet worth $29 because of its quality and efficiency.
The audit tools allow you to improve your existing content's performance and refresh it to stay relevant to the time period. The add-ons like Grow Flow, Content Audit, and Surfer AI are too expensive for beginner and intermediate-level users. Moreover, there are tools like Scalenut to replace Surfer at a much more affordable price.
Surfer AI collaborates with Semrush to help users build a robust backlink system.
The Grow Flow feature holds users accountable and gamifies the process of learning and implementing.

Pricing 

Monthly

  • Essential - $89 
  • Advanced - $179 
  • Max - $299
  • Enterprise - Custom 

Yearly 

  • Essential - $69 
  • Advanced - $149 
  • Max - $249
  • Enterprise - Custom

Who can use Surfer SEO?

  • SEO strategists with teams
  • Agencies 
  • Enterprise

What do users think about Surfer SEO?

  • G2 ratings - 4.8 / 5 stars 
  • Product Hunt ratings - 4.8 / 5 stars
  • Capterra ratings - 4.9 / 5 stars

4.Frase

Frase is an AI content generation and optimization tool that helps businesses, agencies, and teams of writers create content faster. Even though Frase is popular, its core functions only include research, outline, writing, and optimization.

Frase can be a go-to solution for anyone who doesn't like to start working on a blog post from scratch. It eliminates the manual process of skimming and summarizing Google's first-page content.

Read Scalenut vs. Frase for a detailed comparison between the two.Key FeaturesAI researcher

Frase uses the GPT-3 Open AI model to generate AI-written content.

Using this tool, you can find all your competitor's details, including their word count, backlinks, ranking position, headers, and image count. This helps you know how to polish your content to outrank your competitors. AI Outline Tool

Frase has three ways to create an outline. You can generate an automated outline with the help of AI that pulls together frequently asked questions, SERP analysis, the top 20 competitor sections, and questions used. This eliminates the manual time spent researching competitors' content.

If you have pre-set templates, you can easily import them into Frase. This allows you to compare your standard templates with the top-ranking pages and add a brief for each section. AI Writer Tool

Frase AI writing assistance focuses primarily on building the first draft after creating a detailed summary for each blog section. This feature is quite similar to Scalenut's writing points.

As soon as you generate an outline, Frase AI comes up with a short brief to give you an idea of what will be covered in each blog’s section. This feature can help content heads provide more detailed content briefs and precisely guide their teams.

The AI writer needs significant support from users to create relevant, long-form content. The AI Write option may only produce effective results if you provide descriptive prompts or clear starting lines.AI Optimization Tool

The content optimization tool allows users to identify SEO gaps within their content and bridge them using the AI's suggestions.

However, Frase's content optimization tool is quite a step down compared to Scalenut's SEO optimizer. Its suggestions are based on competitors' content performance, whereas Scalenut considers different content aspects to provide accurate suggestions.

Pros Cons
The curated list of competitors' headers allows you to easily compile your outline manually. Unlike Scalenut's first draft, this tool doesn’t generate an optimized first draft using AI.
You can access add-ons like questions from Quora, Reddit, SERP, stats, and other elements that can improve the quality of your content. The tone of voice feature is not available as a standalone option; you need to include that as an instruction to customize the content to your brand.
You can add instructions to train the AI to follow a specific tone or content angle. There could be more NLP suggestions and an appealing scoreboard to guide the users.
The heatmap feature in the content optimizer allows users to quickly view the keyword density of each term used in competitors' content. The absence of templates, one-click content production options, AI-powered document management system, and social media content generation capabilities are obvious limitations of the tool.
Frase can be handy if you're tired of manually conducting competitor content research.
The Grow Flow feature holds users accountable and gamifies the process of learning and implementing.

Pricing 

  • Solo Plan - $14.99 per month 
  • Basic Plan - $44.99 per month 
  • Team Plan - $114.99 per month

You can access features like keyword search volume, SERP data enrichment, and Frase AI Writer for $35 per month as a Pro add-on.   

Who can use Frase?

  • Content writers  
  • Head of a content team
  • Content manager:

What do users think about Frase? 

  • G2 ratings - 4.7/5 stars
  • Product hunt ratings  - 5/5 stars 
  • Capterra ratings - 4.8/5 stars

5. MarketMuse

MarketMuse Content Optimizer

MarketMuse is an AI-powered content planning and optimization platform solely dedicated to helping businesses create tailor-made content strategies. The core goal of the tool is to help users get optimal ROI from their content marketing efforts. 

The key features of MarketMuse include a competitor content analyzer, content planning, content clustering, keyword research tool, and content optimizer. All these tools work cohesively to streamline the manual work that SEO strategists and content heads perform on a day-to-day basis.

Read Scalenut Vs MarketMuse for a detailed comparison between the two.

Key Features

SERP X-ray 

MarketMuse's competitor analysis tool helps you see a detailed report of what works for your competitors in the SEO and content categories. 

You'll get to know more in-depth details about your competitor's content, like internal links, external links, pages with videos, H2 per page, content score, page intent, and many more. 

Content Clusters

The MarketMuse content clusters tool helps you analyze your content and spot the obvious content gaps in your website. With the heatmap tool, you can easily find your competitor's content clusters to locate their weak points and capitalize on the opportunity. 

Content Planning

With MarketMuse's content planning system, you can easily review your existing content hub and find new topic ideas that have the potential to rank higher on the SERP. 

The tool can also help you examine your existing content's performance and analyze metrics like topical authority, competitive advantage, personalized difficulty score, SERP features, and more. 

Moreover, you can generate an automated content inventory that updates frequently to give you real-time insights about your published content. 

Keyword Research

MarketMuse's content keyword planner has a simple and easy-to-understand user interface. One of the common issues that users find with SEO tools like Ahrefs, Ubsersuggest, or Semrush is the overwhelming amount of SEO data.

That's why tools like Scalenut, Surfer, and even MarketMuse aim to simplify the data into a consumable format. With the MarketMuse keyword planner, you can access primary data like volume, CPC, trends, and personalized difficulty scores. Their cluster-centric approach allows users to cover highly relevant and rank-ready content.

Content Optimization

ChatGPT and MarketMuse integration bridge the absence of an in-built AI writer in the tool. ChatGPT does decent work reviewing content from an objective point of view. 

Many content creators, like Tommy Walker, founder of Content Studio, mentioned using ChatGPT to edit their content. Basically, MarketMuse and ChatGPT work together to provide personalized content and SEO suggestions. 

Pros Cons
The personalized difficulty score is a unique feature that allows users to see the keyword difficulty that's highly relevant to your site. The lack of a full-fledged AI writer is a major drawback. If you're looking for a content marketing platform with the combined powers of SEO and content creation, you should probably consider other tools.
The MarketMuse’s content briefs allow users to provide more context to their writers regarding the structure of internal and external links to be added, word counts, targeted content score, related topics to cover, and more. Even though the content briefs cover basic needs, the absence of writing points and an AI-backed outline is a significant weakness.
The data-backed content marketing efforts help individuals and businesses predict their ROI better. MarketMuse falls into the high-price category.
This tool is highly relevant for beginner- to intermediate-level SEO strategists.
The ChatGPT editor can be handy for SEO strategists reviewing the final content.
The Grow Flow feature holds users accountable and gamifies the process of learning and implementing.

Pricing 

  • Free - $0 
  • Standard - $149 per month 
  • Team - $399 per month 
  • Premium - Custom plan 

Who can use MarketMuse?

  • Beginner to intermediate-level SEO strategies
  • SEO Content writers

What do users think about MarketMuse? 

  • G2 rating - 4.6/5 stars
  • Product Hunt rating - 4.8/5 stars
  • Capterra rating - 4.6/5 stars 

List of Other Common SEO Tools

  • Scalenut
  • Letterdrop
  • RankIQ
  • SE Ranking 
  • Semrush
  • Page Optimizer Pro
  • Moz
  • ShortPixel
  • Copyscape
  • WriterZen
  • Outranking
  • NeuronWriter
  • Content Harmony 
  • Topic 
  • Jasper

What is Content Optimization?

Content optimization refers to the process of improving and fine-tuning your website's content to make it more search engine-friendly and user-centric. It involves strategically incorporating relevant keywords, optimizing meta tags, improving readability, and enhancing the overall structure of your content. Doing so increases the chances of your content appearing higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attracting more organic traffic. 

How Content Optimizing can increase your marketing ROI?

Content optimization can significantly increase your marketing ROI by improving the visibility and performance of your online content. 

By incorporating relevant keywords, optimizing meta tags, enhancing readability, improving structure, and addressing technical factors such as page load speed, you can attract more organic traffic to your website. This means more potential customers are discovering your content and engaging with it, leading to increased brand exposure and potential sales. 

Additionally, higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) can establish your business as a credible and authoritative source in your industry. 

Over to you

If you’re a growing brand, you would ideally need an all-in-one content marketing platform that helps with keyword research, AI-powered content creation, and robust optimization features. 

If you're doubtful whether your content is optimized for SEO, then it's best to choose an AI-powered content tool like Scalenut.

This content creation platform strikes the right balance between SEO and content. Inbuilt tools like content optimizer, keyword planner, and article writer help you rank higher on the SERP, gain SERP visibility, and rank higher in the SERP.

With Scalenut’s 7-day free trial, you can experience firsthand how Scalenut can simplify your content creation process. 

FAQs

How to optimize content for SEO?

To optimize your content for SEO, you need to follow a few key steps. First, conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant and high-volume keywords that align with your content and target audience. Incorporate these keywords naturally throughout your content, including in the title, headings, and body text.

Next, optimize your meta tags, including the meta title and meta description. These elements provide valuable information to search engines and can greatly impact your click-through rates.

Ensure that your content is easy to read and understand by using clear headings, bullet points, and concise sentences. Break up long paragraphs and use formatting techniques such as bold or italics to emphasize important points.

Additionally, make sure your content is mobile-friendly and loads quickly, as these factors can impact your website's visibility and user experience.

Don't forget to include relevant internal and external links within your content to provide additional context and credibility.

Finally, regularly analyze and track the performance of your optimized content using SEO tools like Google Analytics or Scalenut. These tools can provide valuable insights into how your content is performing, which keywords are driving traffic, and where there may be room for further optimization.

What are the best content optimization tools?

Some of the best content optimization tools are Scalenut, Surfer SEO, Frase, MarketMuse, and Growthbar.

Suman Samal
Asst. Marketing Manager
ABout the AUTHOR
Suman Samal
Asst. Marketing Manager

Suman Samal is a Asst. Marketing Manager at Scalenut. She is a technology enthusiast with a keen interest in content marketing and SEO. She truly believes that with the right set of tools every organization can improve the ROI of their content marketing campaigns. She spends her time managing content operations at Scalenut and ensuring that everything we publish is of the highest quality.

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