The saying "Content is King" has always been the guideline for any real SEO Agency trying to get clients listed in search engines. That axiom is a core value we put into practice here at Alpha Toro. In this article we are testing the industry's new tools for SEO content editing. These tools are important because you need to be mindful of common content writing mistakes like keyword stuffing, keyword density, internal link building, etc.
2022 has seen the rise of AI in many categories like Midjourney for graphics or Jasper for content writing. When you combine this amazing new advancement in software with standard reporting tools like keyword research, and SERP ranking you get a powerful all-in-one editing software as a service.
Back in August Google published their "helpful content update", which solidifies the need for good content writing tools. So let's take a look at what these content editors look like.
The user interface for Surfer SEO content editor is quite elegant and extremely intuitive. Its analysis for headings, keywords, and word counts, calculates an SEO score, along with providing a basic rich text editor that rivals anything I've ever used. I'm actually writing this article with Surfer SEO.
One minor drawback is the pricing structure. For $60 a month you can only have 10 articles at a time. I haven't come across many business who have less than 10 articles/pages they need for search engine optimization. Of course they have larger plans but this stored article limit brings me to a point I will touch on at the end of this article. What happens when seo content editors and website content management systems merge?
In addition to being an editor it also has built in AI content suggestions that match your target keywords. In my opinion, AI can be a helpful tool as part of your SEO editing process but it should be used more as a guide or word cloud rather than a copy paste utility. Lets take a look at an example of AI SEO content.
Example of SEO AI Written content
Content with grammatical correctness, spelling error, and easy reading and understanding is usually the higher ranking in Google. Some of your most polished articles can rank very high on Google. But it is pretty much guaranteed that they will be well-polished and most errors will never happen. Grammarly has been widely adopted by SEO writers and has been used in a number of more SEO-intensive tasks than most tools in its category. Grammarly describes itself as 'writing assistant' as being very efficient in this role in writing.
What does a content editor do?
A writer's job is to research proofread and publish traditional and online news articles. The company analyzed reader information and created content strategies that increased user interaction. Editor-in-Chiefs can check articles and verify correct grammar in output.
I think it's pretty obvious that the above paragraphs have some flaws, but you could easily optimize the content to sound more human. Perhaps your workflow becomes writing articles in an editor like this and then double checking grammatical errors and plagiarism in Grammarly? This might seem like a lot of work, but in today's SEO battlefield you take every advantage that helps you win the war.
More Keyword Analysis
I'm an old school SEO guy, who started with tools like Google Keyword Planner and WordTracker, but todays tools make keyword research seem like rocket science. Take a look at this TF*IDF tool from Seobility.
I can research article keyword density against top ranking pages, comparing maximum usage, average usage and where my article falls against competition. I can now use the Surfer SEO keyword suggestions and compare them with actual ranked results.
This further illustrates my next topic, how do all these important SEO tools assemble together like a Voltron action figure.
The Future of Content Management Systems and SEO Content Editors
Writing about, and creating plugins for MODX is my favorite topic without a doubt. But there is still the inescapable fact that people love a "one stop shop", i.e. Walmart, Amazon. Your website content management system can be that shop.
In 2023, the next big advancement in SEO is going to be the merger of these SEO content editor tools into a mainstream CMS. It is typical for a modern SAAS company to build an API for this exact purpose. Surfer SEO has some API documentation, I also reached out to Link Assistant before writing this article but they have no plans for an API as of yet.
This goes beyond having an input field count your characters for meta descriptions and page titles. Especially if you remember the first job of a CMS is to build, organize, and optimize content that includes text, images, videos, sliders, galleries, dynamic lists, etc.
- How do we keep drag and drop content building utilities while adding all the features of an SEO content editor?
- How we do we manage subscription plans to unlock features inside the CMS?
- How do SEO companies prioritize plugin updates over internal updates?
- Will SEO companies change subscriptions to license keys per domain or keep per article pricing?
- Will CMS companies white label SEO API's for a more seamless functionality?
Only time will tell, but I can't wait to get started.