I write a lot of columns here at Search Engine Journal about how to optimize your content.
But I rarely touch on how to do this at scale.
Enterprise marketing teams, in particular, often face significant challenges when it comes to content optimization.
For example, optimizing a large catalog of web pages, and the sheer governance factor of managing content across several properties.
Fortunately, plenty of SEO tools offer either enterprise-level features or enterprise-level subscriptions to help optimize content at volume even easier.
Here are a few of my favorite enterprise SEO tools for content and how to use them.
1. Surfer
Surfer is a content optimization platform that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to do what many SEO professionals have had to do manually.
What It Is
It assesses the search results and determines how best to optimize content.
This algorithmically-driven tool essentially audits the top URLs for a given keyword and gathers valuable insights regarding what these pieces of content are doing well, plus how to apply these insights to your own content.
Why It’s Great
Surfer is great for enterprises because its Business subscription plan allows up to 140 audits per month, the inclusion of 10 team members, and 70 content editors.
This means that your business can audit up to 150 pages or posts every month and apply updates to up to 70 pieces of content within the Content Editor.
Surfer is super easy to use by internal teams, agency partners, and freelance writers.
So, if you plan on outsourcing your SEO content projects, you can provide a shared link to the Content Editor for whoever is working on your project.
How To Use It
Surfer has many different content optimization tools, so how you use it really depends on your SEO goals.
You can use the Content Planner to plan your content and create an editorial calendar.
You can use the Brief tool to let AI create an optimized SEO page brief.
And you can use the Content Editor to optimize new and existing content.
I recommend using the Audit tool first to assess your content and identify opportunities to optimize existing content.
All you have to do is enter your domain, page, or post URL, and Surfer will produce go-forward recommendations for your SEO content strategy.
2. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an industry-leading SEO tool best known for its keyword research, competitor analysis, and backlink analysis capabilities.
What It Is
However, it also offers a range of features to serve businesses’ content optimization needs.
For example, Rank Tracker allows businesses to monitor keyword performance and identify opportunities to improve existing content.
And Content Explorer reveals untapped content ideas and opportunities to build valuable backlinks.
Why It’s Great
Ahrefs is a fantastic enterprise-level tool because it offers keyword research, rank tracking, backlink analysis, and content exploration on a global scale.
It boasts having an inventory of over “1.6 billion search queries” and the “most extensive index of backlinks.”
In that, the tool’s goal is to be the “single source of truth” for enterprises looking to make strategic SEO decisions.
How To Use It
As stated above, Ahrefs offers several tools that can aid your content optimization projects.
However, my favorite is Content Explorer, which allows you to research billions of web pages and uncover both SEO and social insights.
Simply enter a topic into the Content Explorer to uncover new opportunities.
Ahrefs even offers a range of filters to refine your search by certain criteria, including the number of referring domains, live versus broken links, language, traffic value, and the number of social shares.
Finally, you can dive deeper into any piece of content to see whether a page is gaining or losing links, or whether traffic has increased or decreased over time.
3. Semrush
Semrush is a popular SEO and content marketing SaaS platform that helps businesses and marketers achieve more with their content.
What It Is
From keyword research to competitor research to social media management, this tool does it all.
It’s really a “one-stop-shop” for your SEO strategy.
Why It’s Great
The Business subscription plan is best suited for large businesses and enterprises because you can research, track, measure, and optimize for a near-limitless number of keywords.
And if you have several websites with hundreds to thousands of pages, ranking for thousand or tens of thousands of keywords you will want a tool that can keep up.
In fact, you can even go bigger with a Custom plan suited to your enterprise’s specific needs.
In summary, Semrush offers over 50 different tools and reports to help you overcome your content marketing challenges.
These tools will help you develop a powerful content strategy and optimize your content to drive more organic traffic.
How To Use It
With so many tools and features in its toolkit, diving deep into all the features is impossible.
Instead, I recommend my two favorite Semrush tools for content optimization: The Content Audit tool and the SEO Writing Assistant (SWA).
Content Audit will assess your website’s content to determine how it performs (in terms of traffic and keyword position) and how users are interacting with your content.
It will then identify which pages are not doing well and then make a recommendation for optimization.
The SWA, on the other hand, is where you put recommendations into action.
It essentially works as a “smart” writing editor that helps you optimize your content in real-time.
This includes updates for SEO and engagement purposes.
4. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps website owners improve their SEO by extracting data and auditing for common SEO issues.
What It Is
Although mostly known for its technical SEO auditing capabilities, Screaming Frog still has some applications for content optimization.
For example, it will identify duplicate page titles and descriptions that may need optimizing or flag pages with “low content.”
Why It’s Great
Screaming Frog allows users to audit up to 500 URLs for free, but then there’s the option to buy a license to access more advanced features, including “no limit” on URL audits.
For enterprises, this is great because it means you can audit and assess even the largest of websites.
Further, Screaming Frog can audit large sites efficiently while providing results in real-time.
This means you can begin taking action on the SEO recommendations even while the tool crawls the rest of your pages.
How To Use It
If you know your website has more than 500 URLs, I recommend getting started with a paid license right away.
This will allow you to audit your entire site without a URL limit.
Once you’ve downloaded Screaming Frog and validated your license, you can crawl your website.
Watch as the tool propagates with data, such as the number of page URLs, image file sizes, technical blockers, and more.
For content optimization purposes, pay attention to these results:
- Low content pages.
- Missing meta descriptions.
- Duplicate meta descriptions.
- Missing title tags.
- Duplicate title tags.
- Missing H1 headings.
- Duplicate H1 headings.
- Broken internal links.
- Broken external links.
- Missing H2 headings.
- Duplicate content.
- Missing image alt text.
- Missing structured data.
- Pagespeed (entire report).
- Orphan pages.
The existence of any of these issues means your content requires some optimization.
Keep in mind there may be site-wide issues that are forcing these errors, so assess your website holistically so you can apply bulk updates as needed.
5. SparkToro
Founded by Rand Fishkin, SparkToro is an audience research tool that helps businesses create better, user-focused content.
And you can’t get great content without writing with your target audience in mind.
What It Is
Simply put, SparkToro looks at the websites your customers visit, the social accounts they follow, the hashtags they use, and more, to help you create content that appeals to their interests and behavior.
The goal is to “forget audience surveys” and let AI produce accurate and helpful audience insights in just a few clicks.
Why It’s Great
While the Agency subscription package is veered toward marketing agencies, the same tools can also benefit enterprises.
This pricing option offers unlimited searches, up to 250 social media results, demographic data, and up to 50 users for your team.
Spark Toro is great for all larger businesses because it can scan millions of social and web results to find your audience’s interests.
This data can then inform the type of content you create, the search terms you target, the platforms you market your content on, and how to optimize your content to encourage users to take action.
How To Use It
SparkToro offers a convenient How it works video to walk you through its features.
You can use SparkToro to:
- Generate a list of publications your audience loves.
- Compare the sources of influence for multiple audiences.
- Prioritize your PR, social, content, and outreach campaigns.
- Analyze your brand’s online presence.
- Analyze your competitors’ audiences.
- Discover opportunities for backlinks or media coverage.
All in all, use SparkToro to discover where your target customers hang out and the content they engage with most.
Then, use this intel to improve your own content, find new content ideas, and improve conversions on your website.
6. Clearscope
Clearscope is a content optimization platform that helps brands create highly relevant content.
What It Is
Clearscope uses AI technology to uncover what people are searching for, what content is performing best for these searches, and how brands might improve their content to rise to the top of the search results.
Determine your “Content Grade” to assess the SEO of your existing content or improve the score on your new content while it’s in production.
Clearscope offers a helpful tool for enterprises looking to optimize their content at a larger scale.
Why It’s Great
Clearscope is similar to Surfer in that it mainly works as a writing assistant but brings the added benefit of integration.
Clearscope integrates with many of the tools businesses already use, such as Google Docs and WordPress. This makes for seamless adoption without cumbersome back-and-forth between tools.
Further, Clearscope is trusted by big brands. Some of its existing customers include YouTube, Deloitte, Adobe, and Shopify.
These are all massive companies with large appetites for content.
How To Use It
Use the Keyword search to analyze the results for your target keyword and then generate a content editor document where you can either paste in existing content or start from scratch. Clearscope will then offer recommendations based on organic search data, including recommended word count, secondary keywords, headings, and keyword usage.
Also helpful, Clearscope offers a Readability score to determine the reading level for your content. This will help you adjust your content to suit a beginner- to expert-level audience.
7. Frase
Frase.io (otherwise known as “Frase”) is AI research and writing software that helps you “research, write, and optimize high-quality SEO content.”
What It Is
Frase’s claim to fame is assisting brands to streamline the content production process – by reducing the time from hours to mere minutes.
Some of its most notable features include:
- Content Briefs – Allowing users to create SEO content briefs quickly
- Content Writing – Recommendations for generating quality, high-converting content
- Content Optimization – A comparison of your content with top search competitors
- Content Analytics – Exploration into new content opportunities and recommendations for refreshing old content
Why It’s Great
Frase’s Team plan offers a subscription option for enterprises looking to “scale content production.” This includes unlimited document credits, unlimited document sharing, and three user seats, though more are available at an additional cost.
With this model, enterprises can create dozens to hundreds of content briefs. These can then be handed off to writers to write and optimize the content. This reduces the need for an SEO strategist to optimize each piece of content, or to create an entire brief from scratch.
Want to create a ton of valuable content for your enterprise? Then you’ll want a tool that can facilitate this at high volume.
How To Use It
Enter the search term you wish to target and Frase will create a content doc. You can then share this doc with your team, agency, or writer. The writer can produce the content in accordance with Frase’s SEO recommendations.
Further, you can use Frase to find new content ideas. Stumped on which new pages or posts to produce for your brand? Frase can help you fill out your editorial calendar with creative, search-driven content topics.
8. Hemingway Editor
Your content can be chocked full of keywords, but if it isn’t written with your audience in mind, it probably won’t convert. The Hemingway Editor helps you avoid the common blunder.
What It Is
Once your content is optimized for search engines, the Hemingway Editor can be the final pass to ensure your content is bold and clear. This includes editing for voice, complexity, grammar, and overall readability.
Why It’s Great
Hemingway Editor is so simple to use that anyone (a marketer, team member, or writer) can use it to optimize content.
So, even at an enterprise level, it only takes Hemingway Editor a couple of seconds to work its magic.
If you are working with a writing team, have them run their content through Hemingway Editor to identify spelling errors, passive voice, and more. This will save you time (and money) compared to relying on an editor for these updates.
How To Use It
The Hemingway Editor uses color-coding to identify issues in your content. For example:
- “The app highlights lengthy, complex sentences and common errors; if you see a yellow sentence, shorten or split it.”
- To improve readability, “you can utilize a shorter word in place of a purple one.”
- “Adverbs and weakening phrases appear in blue. Get rid of them and pick words with force”.
- “Phrases in green have been marked to show passive voice.”
You can paste in existing content and edit away, or click the “Write” button to start something new.
This app is super simple, helpful, and great for optimizing enterprise-level content.
We Love Our Enterprise SEO Tools
Enterprises have big goals for SEO and even bigger appetites for content. The need for content optimization can seem unending.
That’s why enterprise-level SEO tools are a godsend for updating content on a massive scale.
Working on an existing project? Paste your content into a content writing tool to make improvements in real-time.
Looking for optimization tips? Use Semrush to audit and optimize your content fast.
We love enterprise SEO tools because they make even the largest tasks achievable.
So, even if you have a large site to optimize, these tools can do all the heavy lifting you need to achieve your goals.
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