Without the best SEO writing tools on hand, your content creation workflow gets disrupted. 

To do your best work that stands a chance of challenging for the top spots on Google, you need the right writing tools software. But with new software popping up every day, where do you start? I’ve reached out to the experts for their advice so you don’t waste time wading through the internet searching for the right software. 

This isn’t a regular tools list.

It’s a curated one as voted for by SEO experts and marketers. People who live and breathe search engine optimization. My aim isn’t to provide an exhaustive list or detailed reviews, but to show you which tools the pros recommend for SEO content writing.

Here’s a list of the latest SEO content tools to help you produce best-in-class content. 

Top Writing Tools By Category

Here are the best tools by category.

Keyword Research & Backlink Analysis

1. Ahrefs.
2. SEMrush.

On-page Optimization

1. Clearscope.
2. Surfer.

Research

1. Frase.
2. Writesonic.

All-in-one Tools

1. Ahrefs.
2. SEMrush

Content Briefs & Outlines

1. Content Harmony.
2. Frase

Grammar & Proofreading

1. Grammarly.
2. ProWritingAid.
3. Hemingway Editor.

Technical SEO

1. Yoast SEO.
2. All In One SEO

Free SEO Tools

1. Answer The Public.
2. Uber Suggest.
3. Keywords Everywhere.

Headlines

1. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer.
2. Sharethrough Headline Analyzer.
3. Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer.

14 Top Content Writing Tools For SEO Endorsed By Experts

Let’s go through an overview of free and paid SEO writing tools recommended by the experts. We will look at what each tool does, its outstanding features, and how much it costs. 

1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is easily one of the top picks for all-in-one SEO writing tools recommended by experts.

With its extensive web crawling prowess and countless five-star ratings on respected review sites such as G2 Crowd, Capterra, and Trust Radius, Ahrefs is an undoubted leader in the SEO software space.

It’s part of the content writing workflow of most content teams. 

“Ahrefs is the best competitor research and SEO tool you can get right now. It has the biggest backlink index than any other tool. With this tool, you can spy on your competitors’ SEO strategies, their backlinks, keywords, and also other aspects…Ahrefs beats every other SEO tool in the market out of the water. If you are not using Ahrefs in your SEO campaigns, you’ll be losing big. As a blogger, I can’t imagine blogging without this tool. This tool has been a great help to me in my SEO campaigns. If I was introduced to the importance of this tool in my early days of blogging, I would’ve been 2 years ahead in time.”

—Akshay Hallur, Blogger & Founder of BloggingX

Top Features

• Site Audits for conducting a leave-no-stone-unturned website on-page SEO analysis so you see what’s holding your site back from ranking.
• Site Explorer to analyze the backlink profile of competitor websites and see the organic keywords they rank for.
• Keywords Explorer is complete with keyword difficulty scores, support for 10 search engines, accurate search volumes, and thousands of keyword suggestions.
• Rank Tracker to monitor your rankings and average position both on desktop and mobile.
• Content Explorer to find the most popular content together with its SEO metrics and social shares. 

Biggest Con

• A poor rank tracker that updates every 5 days or 7 days which isn’t good enough.

Ahrefs Pricing

• Lite $99 per month.
• Standard $179 per month.

2. SEMrush

SEMrush, which recently bought Backlinko, needs no introduction.

They are a popular all-in-one tool with a suite of tools that covers every aspect of online marketing:

• SEO Writing Assistant.
• Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.
• Social Media Marketing 
• Competitor Research.
• Backlink Analysis.
• Keyword Research.

Thousands of entrepreneurs and famous brands use SEMrush to start and grow their online businesses.

SEO expert Matthew Woodward gives the software the thumbs up.

“SEMrush is a great tool. I consider SEMrush as a “must-have” tool for anyone serious about SEO. I use it to complete my SEO tasks such as keyword research, content creation, competitors’ backlink analysis, and much more! The insights are fantastic and it has been a game-changer for my clients’ websites as well as mine. In other words: it’s an outstanding tool.”

Top Features

• SEO Writing Assistant for producing SEO-friendly content that’s readable, plagiarism-free, and maintains a consistent tone of voice.
• On-page SEO Checker to make sure your website ticks all the boxes for your content to rank.
• Competitor Analysis gives you valuable insights into your rivals’ entire online marketing strategies.
• Keyword Research to find endless keyword ideas plus their organic and advertising value.
• Topic Research to discover well-liked topics, headlines, questions that resonate with your audience.

Biggest Con

• Their UX isn’t user-friendly or intuitive.

SEMrush Pricing

• Pro $119.95 per month.
• Guru $229.95 per month.
• Business $449.95 per month.

3. Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO, which burst onto the scene in 2018, has quickly become a fan favorite among SEOs, content marketers, and agencies. 

It’s a widely popular on-page optimization software that compares your content with the top-ranking posts in the SERPs. It’s superb for content teams that need an affordable easy-to-use tool for content optimization.

Many content marketers attribute their top rankings to the superpowers of Surfer.

“Surfer SEO is #1 any day, anytime. We’ve used this tool to rank several articles for our clients and ourselves. And I’m not saying Surfer is 100% responsible for all the rankings, but they play a bit part in it.”

—Victor Ijidola, CEO & Content Lead, Premium Content Shop

Top Features

• Content Optimization tool tells you which LSI keywords to use and how many times to use them as you write.
• Outline Builder to build article outlines in minutes, complete with headers, voice, and tone.
• Keyword Research allows you to generate a list of related keywords you can target by typing in a seed keyword.
• SEO Audit to analyze and optimize existing content assets to identify areas of improvement or opportunities for quick wins.
• Planner to craft your content strategy and have dozens of topics and keywords in the pipeline months ahead.

Biggest Con

• They cap the number of queries you can do on all their plans.

Surfer SEO Pricing

• Basic $49 per month.
• Pro $99 per month.
• Business $199 per month.

4. Clearscope

Many renowned SEO copywriters praise Clearscope for its content optimization ability.

They claim the AI-powered software has helped them rank their content, which strengthens the brand’s claim that they are ‘the best-in-class content optimization platform.”

Clearscope scrutinizes top posts and makes practical recommendations about word count, readability, and relevance based on the findings. Their UI is more focused on helping content managers and writers. It’s best for large teams—folks creating at least 10+ pieces of content per month.

“Clearscope makes it easy to create SEO-optimized drafts that meet search intent without keyword stuffing.

Unlike Frase, SurferSEO, and MarketMuse, Clearscope recognizes that “SEO writing tool” can stand in for “SEO writing tools” and vice versa. With those other content optimization tools, you’ll need to include keywords verbatim to increase your content score. That’s often misleading.”

—Lily Ugbaja, Freelance Writer & Content Strategist for SaaS and Martech

While Clearscope is expensive, it packs a lot of value.

“It’s one of the more expensive tools I use, but I can’t recommend Clearscope enough. Instead of focusing just on one keyword, this platform helps me add semantic concepts while I’m writing. That makes for a much more potent piece of content from an SEO perspective. It also shows you which websites are ranking for your target keyword and grades how SEO-friendly your content is.”

—Kenzi Wood, Owner of Kenzi Writes

Top Features

• Semantic Keyword Suggestions to increase the chances of your content ranking in the SERPs.
• Competitor Research shows you the leading posts for your target keyword so you know exactly what you are up against.
• Content Outlines reveal the structure and subheads of competitor posts so you know what’s working.
• Research Feature unveils top questions around your topic and the common citations competitors use in their content.
• Grades Content based on relevance, keyword use, and comprehensiveness.

Biggest Con

• Clearscope has barebones keyword discovery data.

Clearscope Pricing

• $170 per month.

5. Yoast SEO

With over 11 million active installs and counting, Yoast SEO is by far the most popular SEO plugin. 

The software helps content creators optimize content in real-time to make sure it meets all the latest best practices and improves search rankings.

No WordPress site set-up is complete without a Yoast installation. Virtually every expert endorses it.

Lisa Sicard, the founder of Inspire To Thrive, is one of them:

“My favorite SEO content writing tool is Yoast Premium. It helps to guide me in my blog writing with keywords, internal links, and sentence length factors. It also uses SEMrush for related keywords in its research. I find it easy, quick, and useful.”

Priyanka Hansawat, a WordPress content writer also favors Yoast.

“Yoast SEO is one of my favorite SEO tools. It’s a WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your content in real-time. I like the plugin because it analyzes the blog posts/pages completely and gives suggestions to make content more SEO and user-friendly. Yoast SEO helps you optimize your content by making sure you have added enough related keywords, added image alt texts, added internal and external links, etc.

The feature that makes the plugin special is that it’s a no-code plugin. You don’t require any prior coding knowledge to use it.”

Top Features

• Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease allows you to rate your content on a scale of 0-100 to make sure it’s easy to read. 
• Meta Descriptions feature enables you to write, preview, and fine-tune your meta description copy to boost click-throughs to your pages.
• Paragraph Structure analyzes your paragraphs and makes SEO-friendly suggestions to make them better.
• Keyword Density helps you ensure you use keywords in all the right places at the right frequency.
• Linking Suggestions tell you if you’ve used the ideal number of internal and external links in your content.

Biggest Con

• Yoast SEO can’t pick the searcher intent, a vital aspect of modern SEO.

Yoast SEO Pricing

• $99 per year. 

6. Content Harmony

When you produce content at scale, content briefs are a must. 

They help guide writers to hit all the right SEO notes and meet brand requirements when crafting content. Plus, content briefs maintain high editorial standards and ensure content quality.

Content Harmony is excellent for building comprehensive data-driven content briefs quickly for non-subject matter experts.

The software is a great fit for large teams and agencies that work with many writers.

“Good looking new product to produce “A+” Content Briefs with built-in SEO. Includes SERP Intent, Keyword Reports, Questions, Images, and—of course—an easy-to-format brief for writers. Nice work Kane Jamison and the Content Harmony team.”

—Cyrus Shepard, Co-Founder & CEO Zyppy

Top Features

• Create Thorough Content Briefs at least 3x faster than you can do manually. 
• Share Content Briefs easily with writers, clients, or teammates
• Search Intent Insights to analyze browsers’ search intent and tell you exactly what they are looking for on a page. 
• SERP Analysis with hundreds of data points and detailed keyword report.
• Grade Your Content to ensure it includes all entities, related keywords, and brand requirements spelled out in your brief.

Biggest Con

• They don’t support other languages besides English.

Content Harmony Pricing

• Standard $99 per month.
• Pro $299 per month. 

7. Frase

Research is a time-consuming but integral part of content writing.

Frase makes light work of research. It’s a big timesaver for companies hiring SEO writers.

The AI writing tool helps you make your content as in-depth as possible based on topics or questions people ask about the topic. Frase also writes or rewrites optimized content automatically based on controlled outputs.

In a firsthand experience review post, Priscilla Tan, a SaaS Content Specialist, couldn’t recommend Frase enough.

“Frase is a wonderful tool for creating content briefs. I can see it reducing creation time by at least 50%. It’s also a great tool when it comes to updating existing content. When I imported one of my blog posts, it uncovered keywords I’d never thought of adding in the first place. If you’re an editor or content strategist who manages a team of freelance writers and wants to automate research, this tool will definitely make your life easier.”

Top Features

• Content Brief to help you create comprehensive briefs in seconds: covers headings, subheads, keyword count, and suggested word count.
• Content Optimization to weigh up your content with top-ranking pages and get suggestions on how to improve it.
• AI Writing for generating copy content at the click of a button, whether it’s intros, product descriptions, FAQ, and more.
• Content Analytics to help you identify pages that need a refresh so they climb higher on the SERPs and pick low-lying keyword opportunities. 
• Keyword Clustering to level up your SEO content strategy.

Biggest Con

• The software is weak on the content optimization front.

Frase Pricing

• Solo $19,99 monthly.
• Basic $44,99 per month.
• Team $114,00 per month.

8. All In One SEO

SEO content writing tools have exploded lately.

From keyword research to technical SEO, on-page optimization, and more, the list of specialist tools keeps rising.

That’s where a comprehensive tool like All In One SEO (AIOSEO) comes in handy. By rolling all key functions into one, you get all the help you need from a single tool instead of spending money on several tools.

“All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is my favorite. It makes it super easy to optimize your posts and pages. It also helps with technical SEO aspects like redirects, schema, sitemaps, and more. All this without touching a single line of code.”

Katopeka Nkhoma, Technical Writer

Top Features

• Rich Snippets schema to help you capture premium space at the top of the SERPs.
• SEO Audit to help you quickly identify and fix SEO issues that drag your site down.
• Local SEO to help you dominate local searches and drive more customers to your brick-and-mortar business.
• Assign SEO user roles so the right people access your content whenever they need to.
• Readability Analysis to make your content reader-friendly.

Biggest Con

• The content analysis feature isn’t as good as that of competitors.

All In One SEO Pricing

• Basic $49.50/year.
• Plus $99.50/year.
• Pro $199.50/year.
• Elite $299.50/year.

9. Buzzsumo

Content that ranks scratches the itch of readers.

But to write content that engages your audience, you must know what they enjoy. That’s where Buzzsumo comes in. Buzzsumo helps you discover the most engaging content that’s being shared by influencers, thought leaders, and micro-influencers across social media platforms.

True to their name, they unveil buzzing content that’s hot now.

Experts favor Buzzsumo to identify and reverse engineer trending, results-getting content. It’s the tool of choice for top brands like HubSpot, Ogilvy, and BuzzFeed. 

“Buzzsumo is what we like to use for research. It helps us see what’s being talked about on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and so on all so that we can know what is most relevant and find the best approach for us especially when it comes to keywords and titles to use.”

Linnea Labs, PR Executive Pearl Lemon Group 

Top Features

• Content Research scans gazillion articles and social media posts to help you identify top-performing content.
• Keyword Tool to discover expressions your audience is using to search for answers, complete with search volume, search trends, and cost per click (CPC).
• Find Influencers and powerful content creators on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media channels to ignite your content promotion campaigns.
• Backlink Tracker to get notifications whenever someone links to your content and monitor organic growth.
• Chrome Extension to analyze social share numbers of pages as you browse.

Biggest Con

• Poor backlink analysis feature.

Buzzsumo Pricing

• $99 per month.

10. Ubersuggest

Most experts applaud the free Ubersuggest as a good starting place for people who are new to SEO or are on a tight budget.

The software gives you all the basic data for you to gain competitive insights: keyword research, competitor data, search volume, and CPC.

In particular, the free Chrome extension is very handy.

Chloe Sisson, Outreach and SEO Coordinator at Zen Media loves Ubersuggest.

“I love using Ubersuggest for most of my SEO needs. With this tool, not only can you conduct keyword and competitor research, but you can also look at content ideas. You can see different blog topics for various keywords and you can see what your competitors are posting. Ubersuggest will show you how well certain URLs are performing, meaning you can gain insight into what content consumers enjoy.”

Top Features

• SEO Analyzer to run website audits to point out errors that are dogging your website and get explicit instructions on how to fix them.
• Backlink Checker for competitive analysis to discover who is linking to your rivals with details about domain score, page score, and anchor text.
• Chrome Extension reveals handy keyword data like search volume, CPC, competitor numbers on Google, Amazon, and YouTube.
• Website Traffic Checker to estimate the traffic of any website and get insights on how to grow your traffic.

Biggest Con

• It caps the number of results it displays.

Ubersuggest Pricing

• Individual $29/month.
• Business $49/month.
• Enterprise $99/month.

11. Answer The Public

As far as free content writing tools for SEO go, AnswerThePublic is one of the best.

The software helps you get into the minds of potential customers. You get helpful insights on what to include in your content based on real questions people are searching for on Google—right now.

Just pop your topic into the search bar, hit search, and let the software do the rest. Within a few seconds, you’ll get a goldmine of question-based content ideas to tap from. And with 14% or ~490 million of Google searches phrased as questions, you can rank for lots of valuable question keywords if you play your cards right.

AnswerThePublic is powerful when you brainstorm ideas or choose your angle of attack as Sue-Ann Bubacz of Write Mix For Business discovered.

“I like to experiment. So, some of the KW Research I do includes, playing with the alphabet around my search term for popular and most searched, related topics, checking with AnswerThePublic for insights to cover all angles on a topic, and even taking notice of trends is helpful.”

Top Features

• Over 500k free searches a month on the free plan.
• Unlimited searches and users on the paid plans.
• 20 search listening alerts to monitor live searches and get prompt suggestions.
• Compare search behavior over time to pick up trends you can exploit.
• Colorful high-resolution images to present search results memorably.

Answer The Public Pricing

• Pro $99 per month.
• Expert $199 per month.

12. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

Content lives or dies based on the quality of the headline.

If your headline is poor, readers won’t click let alone read the content. But a powerful headline gets your content clicked and read.

Many respected content writers commend the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer as the best software for optimizing headlines.

The free headline analyzer extension helps copywriters craft headlines that drive clicks, traffic, and shares.

Top Features

• Headline Type shows you how to take advantage of tried-and-tested headlines that convert.
• SEO Optimization helps you nail the ideal character count for the best SEO results.
• Word Count to nail the perfect number of words to improve engagement and readability.
• Sentiment for assessing the exact emotion the headline evokes in readers.
• Clarity & Readability to determine the simplicity and readability of the headline based on Reading Grade Level.

Biggest Con

• It can be misleading because some low-score headlines perform well.

CoSchedule Headline Studio Pricing

• Basic Plan $9 per month (5 headlines)
• Pro 20 Plan $29 per month (20 headlines)
• Pro 60 Plan $49 per month. (60 headlines)

13. Grammarly

Most pros endorse Grammarly as their favorite tool for polishing up their copy.

It catches glaring grammar issues, spelling mistakes, and basic sentence structuring. This impresses readers and shows your brand in a positive light.

USA Today best-selling author Bryan Collins has high praise for Grammarly.

“For me, Grammarly Premium is worth it. I write and publish several dozen articles across several content websites each week. I also edit articles by other freelance writers for these sites with the help of a freelance editor. It’d be impossible to edit and publish all of these articles without the help of a reliable premium grammar checker that can spot issues I usually miss. What’s more, I’ve learnt a lot about the finer points of English grammar thanks to this tool. I also use the plagiarism checker regularly when commissioning work by new freelance writers. Finally, I like that I can set a house style guide that my editor can use.”

Top Features

• Find and fix common grammar mistakes in your copy and produce flawless content that impresses readers.
• Tone adjustments to help you nail the right tone for your audience.
• Choose the formality level of your copy.
• Plagiarism Detection to make sure your content is 100% original and you don’t get into trouble for stealing content.
• Word Choice feature to help you pick the most appropriate term in your writing.

Biggest Con

• Not great for editing conversational copy, as it flags some expressions as errors.

Grammarly Pricing

• $30 a month.

14. ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid, another grammar checker is outstanding for strengthening your writing.

It’s a formidable rival of Grammarly. The software removes common errors, poor style, misspellings, and inconsistencies. Not only is ProWritingAid hyper-accurate, but it also boasts of a massive 25 writing analysis reports, and has a user-friendly interface. No wonder it’s well-liked by heavyweight content marketers.

“I have been using ProWritingAid for a while now and can confidently say that it is an advanced online language editor. It is exhaustive in terms of the language improvements that it suggests and is fairly easy to use. I might even go as far as to say that it is on par with a human editor.

Overall, I give this tool a big thumbs up!”

—Shane Barker, Digital Marketing Consultant

Top Features

• 20+ In-depth Reports that cover passive voice, sentence variation, repetitiveness, cliches, stickiness, diction, and more.
• Style Suggestions to improve the quality and clarity of your writing all around.
• Learn Grammar subtleties as you move along through in-app videos, explanations, and suggestions.
• Word Explorer for help in finding the perfect word or expression to convey the exact meaning you have in mind.
• Integrations with Google Docs, MS Word/Outlook, Scrivener, OpenOffice, and Final Draft.

Biggest Con

• It’s a tad slower than its competitors.

ProWritingAid Pricing

• $20 per month or $79 per year.
• $399 for lifetime access.

4 Simple Tips On Using Writing Tools

Useful as they are, SEO writing tools aren’t perfect. So use them wisely. 

1. Realize a machine cannot turn rubbish content into rubies.
   
   Optimized rubbish is still rubbish, so produce helpful content.

2. Recognize that a tool is only as good as the person using it.
   
   Learn how to extract maximum value from the tools for the best results

3. Rely on common sense and specific industry context.
   
   When in doubt, do what suits your industry or context.

4. Remember, machines make suggestions, not commands.
   
   Don’t be obsessed with writing software and become a slave to it.

Bottom line: tools are helpful but don’t trust them blindly. 

Humans make machines. No robot, no matter how brilliant, can compete with a human who is at the top of their game. The software complements writers, but cannot replace them.

There’s no greater thrill than overriding a wayward writing software suggestion. 😉💪😉

Improve Content Performance With SEO Content Writing Software

You now know the best SEO writing tools available today.

No more excuses for shoddy copy or a messy content workflow. Choose writing software that’s a perfect fit for your company and mission.

I’ve given you the tools.

Go finish the job.

About The Author

Qhubekani Nyathi

Hi, I’m QT aka, the Click Guy.

I’m a pillar content specialist.

I get a kick out of creating authoritative data-heavy long-form pillar content that drives traffic, leads, sign-ups, and sales for B2B brands that get content marketing.

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