Creating authentic, high-quality content is the only way to build your reputation online successfully. If your content offers something of value to your audience, everyone is going to want to read it.
If it answers critical questions people are searching for, it will rank.
It sounds simple, but in reality, a lot of different elements go into effective content creation. You have to generate the best ideas, do active keyword research, and then implement strong technical SEO.
With the digital universe growing by 40% every year, it’s getting more and more challenging to stand out. Content creation is a balancing act. Once you master the tools of the trade, you’ll be miles ahead of your competitors.
It can be hard to find useful content creation tools. And, who has enough time to try them out? Luckily, we grouped our collective experience to narrow down the ten best content tools to improve your content creation process.
Content Creation Process: Keyword Research
Keyword research is usually the first step you take before creating SEO content. It helps you to target your audience and create relevant content that will rank in SERPs. Gone are the days of trawling through Google search results. These three nifty keyword research tools speed up the process and provide you with valuable SEO insights.
1. KWFinder
My first stop for keyword research is always KWFinder. This tool will help you to select short and long-tail keywords. It provides you with search volume, trend, CPC, and ranking difficulty.
It also provides links to pages currently ranking for specific keywords and indicates their domain authority. Additionally, KWFinder shows you how other pages targeting your keyword are ranking, their rank, the number of backlinks, Facebook shares, and estimated visits. This will let you determine how plausible it is for your content to rank for a particular keyword.
KWFinder is also great for carrying out localized keyword research. There’s an option to search worldwide or limit your research to only a specific country, state, or even city. The same goes for languages.
Another benefit of this keyword research tool is that in case your selected keyword is not suitable, it provides endless alternatives that might be. A keyword that hasn’t even crossed your mind could be the perfect one for you.
2. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is one of the most popular keyword research tools available, and for a good reason!
First of all, it’s completely free. Secondly, you can use it to find the average monthly volume, suggested bid, and ranking difficulties of any keyword. It’s also a great place to discover related search terms.
3. UberSuggest
The third keyword research tool you should be using is UberSuggest. This platform will give you an extensive list of suggested keywords related to your initial search. It’s also very efficient as it organizes its findings alphabetically.
Ubersuggest works well when used in tandem with Google Keyword Planner, as this will ensure your keyword research covers all bases.
For some more useful keyword research tools, check out this article:
Read More: 6 Keyword Research Tools to Help You Strike Gold
Content Creation Process: Idea Generation
Even the best content creators can find themselves stuck for ideas at times. If you find yourself fresh out of luck but need to produce something new quickly, these tools will help you to generate great content ideas.
4. Buzzsumo
The first tool you should try out is Buzzsumo. Buzzsumo makes generating content ideas as easy as pie.
As well as generating content ideas, Buzzsumo lets you analyze what content is performing best for your competitors. The platform also provides useful information such as:
- The number of shares each content piece has received.
- The influencers who shared the content.
- Trending topics.
- The number of backlinks content received.
Another major bonus of using Buzzumo is that it will alert you when specific keywords are trending, so you can get ahead in the game.
Buzzsumo guides you through the content creation process to ensure that your high-quality content does as well as it deserves.
A simple search for “content creation” on Buzzsumo presented us with these results:
5. Google Trends
You may be surprised that Google Trend has made it into this list of idea generation tools. Although this wasn’t its original purpose, Google Trends is a great tool to use for this.
The platform allows you to see the current trends for each search term you enter.
It also shows you related topics and queries. Then, you can filter the results to see which keywords are rising to the top.
Google Trends is especially useful as it provides insight into which subjects are gaining or losing the interest of readers.
When you combine all the data provided by Google Trends, good topic ideas will appear, generate traffic, and drive engagement.
6. Answer the Public
Another useful idea generation tool is Answer The Public. This tool is entirely free and presents ideas and keywords visually.
To use the tool, you simply enter in your selected keywords and preferred country. A few seconds later, you’ll have loads of content ideas at your fingertips.
We used “Social Media Marketing” as our keyword, and we were returned with this.
If you’re not into the visual presentation, you can switch it and view results in a different format. Just click ‘data.’
Another great feature of Answer the Public is that it provides results in question format, just as users would be likely to type them into search engines.
Read More: 7 Tools to Help you Generate Content Ideas
Content Creation Process: Content Creation
No matter how much SEO and keyword research you do, it will all be useless if you don’t have high-quality content to begin with. Here are some tools to help you create amazing content your audience will love.
7. INK
INK is a recently launched AI writing assistant designed to help both experienced and aspiring web writers optimize their content for search. Meaning, even if you are new to SEO, you can use this tool to create not just unique but high quality, relevant content as well.
Unlike other content writing assistants, INK’s sophisticated AI technology will help you improve your writing and content optimization efforts by analyzing your competition, reading their content, and making suggestions in real-time. All the recommendations provided by INK are guaranteed to be unique.
INK also has a WordPress plugin that will allow you to import your INK files to WordPress without any problem. By import, that includes all images, links, and text formatting you used or applied on your INK file.
Best of all, INK is free for anyone to use. INK is a real must-have if you want to improve your content creation process.
Read More Top AI Writing Assistants For SEO Content Creation
8. Canva
Canva is one of the best graphic design tools you can find online. What’s more, is it’s free! You can get creative with this tool to enhance your content with attention-grabbing visuals.
All you need to do is sign up. The platform is very user-friendly and bound to bring out your inner artist.
Canva offers high-quality images, fonts, and colors for you to work with. It also provides stunning layouts that are bound to inspire you. It’s amazing what adding visuals can do to transform your content. Whether you are creating a thumbnail for a Youtube video, designing a presentation or blog graphics, you should check out this content creation tool.
Content Creation Process: Editing & SEO
Editing and SEO are perhaps the most technical parts of the content creation process. Here are two of our favorite tools that will make the process hassle-free.
9. Grammarly
Grammarly is an AI-powered editing tool that will make your content creation process more accurate and mistake-free.
One of the best of its kind, Grammarly can detect grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, and style mistakes automatically in your writing.
Once you create your account, you have the choice to either use the online text editor or install the browser extension. Both are entirely free for you to use.
Grammarly uses algorithms to flag potential issues in your text. Then, it suggests context-specific corrections for grammar, spelling, wordiness, style, punctuation, and even plagiarism. The tool also explains the reasoning behind each revision, so you can make an informed decision about whether, and how, to correct an issue.
All of the writers at Edgy Labs use Grammarly on an everyday basis. Here’s what Lewis McCahill, lead editor at Edgylabs, had to say about Grammarly;
“Grammarly is a tool that I use every day on every single article that I work on. As an editor, Grammarly is the ideal addition to my browser that helps me notice both major and minor mistakes in writing while also giving effective solutions or alternatives. It’s unobtrusive, effective, and rarely wrong — I’d recommend it to anyone.”
10. Yoast
Yoast is an SEO plug-in that will help you to drive traffic to your content. This editing tool evaluates your content to make it as readable as possible. It also will help your content creation team avoid producing duplicate content that will confuse search engines. Yoast takes care of many technical aspects of SEO.
Again, our editor Lewis had something to say about this tool:
“Yoast is the perfect keyword optimization tool. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, it’s great for showing you exactly how to optimize your copy and where you can improve.”
Creating authentic content that your target audience will love can be difficult if you don’t know what they want. These ten tools will make content creation into an efficient process instead of a chore.
Just remember that you need to know your audience like the back of your hand. Optimize your content creation process with keywords and make sure anything you create is high-quality content.