Content marketing has proved to be an essential part of any kind of website optimization. Today, marketing and sales departments are working closer than ever before. It is hard to argue that today’s market is user-driven and will likely remain such in the next decades. The survey has shown, that 76% of customers expect vendors to know their needs. In order to cater to the readers’ interests, more and more marketing teams put product advertising and discounts aside, while focusing on quality website content, as well as engaging user-business interaction instead.

In order to be on top of your competition, delivering flawless, top of the line content is a must. There are a lot of things to pay attention to when climbing up the ladder in SEO. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details, so take time to polish your content. In order to ensure that your website shines like a diamond, here are some things to check before publishing it.

Take time to pre-write

A certain set of tools can help set the tone for creating high-quality content. These tools are used to identify the most popular topics, phrases, trending hashtags. They can also be used to generate ideas. More people are going to view content that it is structured around organic keywords. One of such tools is Feedly. This service can help to:

• find the keywords sorted by industries and trends
• set keyword alerts tied to a certain brand or company
• discover related topics.

Find relevant keywords

Running out of keywords? Then Moz Keyword Explorer is going to help you out. Get all the info and statistics about the keyword of your interest with this simple tool. Moz Keyword Explorer allows to:

• explore keywords, root domains, subdomains or exact pages
• sort the data by country.

Plan ahead with Keyword Planner

This is a free GoogleAds tool used to analyze how certain keyword combinations will perform. It uses statistics and history of certain keyword usage to show what to expect in the future, similar to the weather forecast. Both, new and experienced content promoters will find Keyword Planner useful. A Keyword Planner will let you:

find exact keywords and longtail keyword matches
see global and local competition i.e. how many times per month people search for a certain combination of words

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Monitor your competitors’ content and keywords

If you are curious how your competitors’ are doing, Ahrefs is one of the best tools to use. Ahrefs is a tool used to monitor any website’s activity. It shows all kinds of statistics and the number of views each piece of content generates. In a few clicks, it is possible to get a list of keywords and backlinks that lead to your competitor’s website. Ahrefs has multiple useful functions:

• keyword explorer
• monitoring competitor backlink profile and organic keywords
• content gap
• link intersect
• batch analysis (multiple competitors compared)

Know your customer

Use Google Search Console! Since the market is consumer driven, it is essential to know your consumer. Google Search Console is one of the best tools to see what people search for. This information is vital to optimize your website for natural queries. Google Search console will show you:

• most popular search queries = what keywords people enter when your page is shown
• how many times your web pages are shown
• how many clicks each page gets
• whether your page is mobile-friendly
• how to crawl = submit your page for indexing

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Edit your content with Hemingway App

This tool helped countless writers and content creators around the globe. Hemingway App is arguably the best tool you can use for content editing. The app points out any style mistakes and assesses how readable the text is. It is also very convenient because there is no need to download anything. The benefits of the app allow users to:

• improve text readability
• shorten long sentences
• rephrase vague sentences

Take some time to proofread

Grammarly is the most popular and well-known plugin to help your text look sharp. Sometimes, minor punctuation and spelling mistakes can escape a human eye, especially in a rush. You will no longer have to worry about such errors when Grammarly has got your back! Here are some of the main functions of Grammarly:

• highlighting grammar mistakes
• in-built synonym dictionary: if a certain phrase is repeatedly found in the text, Grammarly will offer synonyms to use instead of it
• UK spelling
• plagiarism check

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Prepare high-quality content

At times it is better to let professionals generate content for your website. There are plenty of online platforms, whose writers are familiar with SEO-writing practices. A creative content writer can create top-level content for your marketing campaign. Such services usually have a creative writing/web content writing option which allows you to:

• get SEO-optimized texts of proper length
• have plagiarism-free content
• save your time & money in a long-term perspective

Check for plagiarism

Run a plagiarism check, just in case. Copyscape is a great plagiarism checking tool that goes above and beyond. Not only does it check the content on your site for originality, Copyscape also offers some anti-plagiarism protection after you put the page on the web. Other similar tools include:

• ProWritingAd
• Viper
• WhiteSmoke Plagiarism Checker
• Duplichecker
• Grammarly Plagiarism Checker

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Boost your website’s design

Try Canva, a convenient drag ‘n’ drop tool used by people with no design background and professionals alike. Make your site stand out! With Canva you get access to millions of photographs and fonts to tweak the appearance of your page. Canva will let you:

• manage your design team and share the mockups
• create any kind of design content: from small cards & calendars to A4 presentations and infographics
• set custom size dimensions
• download in png/jpg formats

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Edit the snippet

Yoast plugin is SEO multitool that will help you optimize your content in case you are using WordPress powered platform. Use this tool to:

• enter your keyword tags that will be indexed by Google
• edit your snippet: enter meta title and meta description
• improve readability and length of your metadata

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Creating high-quality content to attract both search engines and visitors is time- and energy-consuming. Take your time to pick proper keywords with the best volume-competition ratio. Having written your text, run a plagiarism check and edit your content thoroughly. After that, remember about SEO optimization: include keyword tags, meta title, and meta description.

The above-mentioned tools are not the only viable option for the website owners. These eleven tools represent universally important stages of content creation and can be replaced. Be careful with your content since it is the virtual face of your product or service. The first impression can make or break the deal when it comes to attracting new viewers to your site.

About the author: this is a guest post by Elizabeth Price, a creative freelance writer interested in education, marketing, and business-related topics. A former Psychology student, she is currently expanding her horizon by undertaking a journalism course in New York, meanwhile working for EssayPro as a blog writer and assistant editor.

Title image by Pavel Kozlov for Icons8 illustration project

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