Looking for the best content writing tools for SEO? You’re in the right place.
I’ve been writing content for almost a decade now. And in that time, I’ve tried dozens of different tools to help get my articles to rank—so I know what works and what doesn’t.
In this post, I’ll be revealing what I think are the 10 best tools to help you optimize your written content so it stands the best chance of ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
The best content writing tools for SEO compared
#1 – SE Ranking
SE Ranking is my overall favorite content writing tool for SEO. The reason it’s my top pick is because it’s feature-rich, robust, and affordable. It’s an all-in-one platform that brings all the tools you need to plan your SEO strategy, write content, optimize it, and track its performance together under one roof.
If you could only have one tool in your stack – it should be this.
The tools you get with SE Ranking include a content editor (with real-time scoring and SEO tips), an on-page SEO checker, a content audit tool, a content ideas finder, a competitor analysis tool, a white-label SEO report builder, a rank tracker, a backlink monitor, and more.
So instead of having to piece together a bunch of different apps, you can manage your entire content writing workflow from one platform.
For example, your workflow might look something like this:
First, enter a keyword into the ideas finder tool to have SE Ranking come up with some related keyword clusters and topics that you might want to target in your content strategy.
From there, select the keywords/topics you want to write about and open them up in the content editor.
Next, SE Ranking’s writing assistant will analyze the top-ranking articles in the SERPs for those keywords/topics to determine the optimal content parameters, and suggest some words/phrases you might want to include in the content to give it the best chance of ranking.
Then, it’ll load all those suggestions inside a brief in the content editor. And as you write your content in the content editor, it’ll update in real-time to tell you your current ‘content score’, which indicates how well-optimized the content is, and what you need to do to improve.
Plus, it’ll also analyze your text for grammar, punctuation, stop-word ratio, and readability. You’ll be able to see your current score in all of these areas and the errors you need to fix inside the editor.
Once you’ve optimized your content and published it to your site, you can use the built-in rank tracker to see how it’s performing in the SERPs, and the report builder to showcase your ranking data.
Key features
- Content editor. Write your content in the built-in editor with real-time SEO scoring and optimization tips
- AI writer. Generate content from scratch in one click
- Keyword research: Discover keywords for your content and group them together
- On-page SEO checker. Check your existing content against on-page ranking factors for optimization tips
- Other SEO tools. Website auditing, competitor research, backlink analysis, rank tracking, and more.
Pros and cons
Pricing
Plans start at $55/month, get 20% off when you pay yearly. Get started with a 14-day free trial.
Read our SE Ranking review.
#2 – Surfer
Surfer is a powerful content writing tool that helps you to research, plan, write, and optimize SEO content. It’s something I use day in, day out here at BloggingWizard and part of the reason so many of this site’s articles rank well on Google.
Surfer’s core feature is its Content Editor, and I honestly think it’s one of the best-kept secrets in the SEO industry.
It tells you exactly how to optimize your content for the target keyword that you’re trying to rank for, based on AI analysis of the articles that are already ranking on Google.
For example, it gives you a long list of related keywords/NLP terms to include in the content to boost its topical authority, tells you what questions to answer; how many headings, paragraphs, and images to include, and what the total word count should be.
As you write, it scores your content in real-time so you can see at a glance how well-optimized it currently is on a scale of 0-100.
I also like that it tells you what the average Surfer score of the top 10 competitor articles that are already ranking on Google is, so you know where the goalposts are. You’re aiming to make sure your score is higher than your competitors. That way, you’ll stand a much better chance of ranking.
Of course, that’s not all Surfer can do. It can also automatically generate writing briefs and outlines, help with keyword research and clustering, audit your existing website content, generate content from scratch with AI, check for plagiarism, and more.
Key features
- Content editor. Write better content with real-time guidelines and optimization scoring in the Surfer editor
- Keyword research. Discover and analyze keywords for your content strategy
- Audit. Optimize existing articles on your website.
- Surfer AI. Generate written content and automatically optimize content with the power of AI.
Pros and cons
Pricing
Plans start from $89/month and save up to $480 with yearly billing. Get started with a 7-day free trial.
Read our Surfer review.
#3 – Scalenut
Scalenut is a good choice if you’re on a budget. It’s another comprehensive content writing and SEO tool with everything you need at a very affordable price point.
You can use Scalenut’s content planning tools to discover keywords, combine them into topic clusters, and generate content plans/briefs.
Then, you can write and optimize your content in the built-in Docs-style editor, complete with real-time SEO scoring, optimization tips, and suggested NLP key terms.
My favorite feature is the ‘Fix It’ tool—it significantly speeds up the process of optimizing your writing. Instead of having to manually edit your content to optimize it, you can just click ‘Fix It’ next to any suggestion in the editor, and Scalenut’s AI will do it for you.
For example, let’s say you need to add more NLP key terms to the text to improve your SEO score. Sure, you could go through manually and figure out a natural way to insert each term one by one, but that can take a long time.
But if you just click ‘Fix It’, Scalenut’s AI writer will suggest a natural way to insert each term and edit/rewrite/add the necessary sentences for you. All you have to do is accept the suggested changes, and it’s done—it only takes a couple of clicks.
Key features
- Content planning. Conduct keyword research, brainstorm topic ideas, and generate briefs and outlines for your writers
- Content editor. Write and optimize content in Scalenut’s document editor, with scoring, tips, and NLP suggestions.
- Automatic optimization. Use the Fix It tool to automatically add keywords to your content and improve your SEO score
- Cruise Mode. Speed up the writing process and produce SEO-friendly blogs in under 5 minutes with Cruise Mode.
Pros and cons
Pricing
Free SEO writing tools available. Paid plans start from $39/month, get 50% off when you pay yearly, and try premium features free for 7 days.
Read our Scalenut review.
#4 – Frase
Frase is another great content writing tool for SEO teams and marketing agencies. Like SE Ranking, it includes lots of tools to help you research, outline, write, and optimize content.
Frase’s workflow is similar to SE Rankings: You start by entering the search term you’re trying to rank for so Frase can analyze the SERPs to extract insights and SEO recommendations.
Then, you write and optimize your content inside the built-in editor, with real-time scoring and optimization suggestions based on the SERP analysis.
But there are a few things that make Frase special. First off, its SERP analysis capabilities are second to none. It gives you a much deeper level of insight into your competitors, pulling all their content into the sidebar of the editor so you can research as you write.
Secondly, its built-in AI writer is excellent. It can pull in sections from your competitor’s articles and rewrite them for you from scratch with completely original output. Plus, improve/paraphrase your own writing, and even generate entire article drafts in seconds.
I particularly like how you can prompt the AI to write each section of your content individually. So instead of entering just one prompt for the whole post, you enter a separate prompt under each header in your article, and the AI will follow the instructions header-by-header to the letter.
Also, Frase offers a Team plan that’s fantastic value for money.
It lets you add up to 3 users and write & optimize unlimited articles, so you don’t have to worry about exceeding your plan usage caps. It also comes with useful collaboration features like team project folders, easy document sharing, project status tracking, etc.
Key features
- AI writer. Generate, edit, and paraphrase content using the power of artificial intelligence.
- Content editor. Write and optimize your content inside Frase’s document editor
- SERP analysis. Automatically analyze the search results for your target keyword and extract insights from your competitors
- Document management. Share documents with your team and keep them organized in shared project folders.
Pros and cons
Pricing
Plans start from $14.99/month, and discounts are available when you pay annually. Get started with a 5-day trial for $1.
Read our Frase review.
#5 – Quillbot
Quillbot is another useful tool for content writers. It does a great job of paraphrasing text, which can help you to make sure your written content is 100% unique—and that’s vital for good SEO.
The main reason to use Quillbot is to avoid unintended plagiarism and make sure the content you’re writing passes Google’s checks for duplicate and AI-written content so that you don’t get any SEO penalties.
For example, let’s say you’ve decided to use AI to generate some of the content in your blog post, or you’ve copy-pasted something from a competitor’s post (not something I recommend).
In that case, you could run it through Quillbot to have it rewritten in a completely original way, and the content it outputs shouldn’t be flagged up as plagiarized or AI-written.
Another way Quillbot can help with SEO is by improving the quality of your writing. You can switch between different paraphrasing modes to rewrite your text in different tones and improve fluency, grammar, conciseness, etc.
Key features
- Paraphraser. Rewrite any text with 100% original output
- Modes. Choose from 8+ paraphrasing modes to customize the tone and style of the output.
- Grammar checker. Tidy up your content and make sure it’s free of grammar errors
- Plagiarism checker. Avoid unexpected penalties by checking your content for plagiarism.
Pros and cons
Pricing
Free plan available. Premium plan costs $19.95/month, save 58% with annual billing. Try it risk-free with the 3-day money-back guarantee.
#6 – Semrush
Semrush is an all-in-one tool suite that can help with every area of SEO, including content writing.
It’s incredibly powerful and feature-rich, but it’s also super expensive. So, I’d only recommend it for agencies/teams/brands that have a large budget to work with.
It has over 40+ features in total, but my favorite feature for content writing is the SEO Writing Assistant. It uses real-time data and insights from the top-ranking competitors for your target keyword(s) to tell you exactly how to optimize your content for SEO.
Aside from SEO, it also offers suggestions to help you optimize your content in three other areas: Readability, Originality, and Tone of Voice. And it scores your content in all of these areas too.
A lot of the other tools we’ve mentioned in this post also offer SEO scoring/optimization suggestions, but only when you’re writing content inside their built-in editors.
In contrast, Semrush’s writing assistant lets you optimize your content outside of the platform too with add-ons available for WordPress, Google Docs, and MS Word.
Key features
- SEO Writing Assistant. Use the smart writing editor to optimize your content for SEO, engagement, and readability
- Keyword research: Discover, analyze, and track keywords
- Link building. Conduct a backlink audit, find out who’s linking to your competitors, and build new links
- On-page SEO. Conduct an SEO audit, check your pages against on-page SEO factors, and more
- Other tools. Explore 40+ tools to help with all areas of online marketing
Pros and cons
Pricing
Free plan available. Paid plans start from $129.95/month, and save up to 17% when you pay yearly.
Read our Semrush review.
#7 – PageOptimizer Pro
PageOptimizer Pro is another useful SEO content writing tool that can help you to rank. I like its user interface, and it has some interesting features that I haven’t seen elsewhere.
The core concept behind POP is the same as most other content writing tools: It compares your written content against the top search competitors for your target keywords, as well as on-page ranking factors, then scores it and tells you what you need to do to improve.
You can write/edit content in the built-in editor—or elsewhere thanks to the Chrome extension—and you’ll be able to see your current content score and optimization to-do list as you write.
But POP can also do a few other things that similar tools can’t. For example, it’s one of the only content writing tools I’ve tried that can automatically generate and optimize a schema markup for your content based on competitor analysis.
This is super useful, as schema is becoming an increasingly important part of SEO. It can help you to get featured in Google’s rich results, which command more SERP real estate and can earn a page more clicks.
Key features
- Content editor. Write content in the POP editor with SEO scoring and optimization tips
- POP Schema. Generate an optimized Schema markup to help your content rank in the rich snippets
- Watchdog. Monitor your traffic and ranking positions with automated alerts
- EEAT analysis. Use POP’s EEAT reporting tool to check how well-optimized your site is for EEAT signals (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) compared to your competitors, and find out how to improve.
Pros and cons
Pricing
Plans start from $34/month. Try it risk-free with the 7-day refund guarantee.
#8 – Rytr
Rytr is an AI writing tool that can save content writers a lot of time. It can automatically generate high-quality SEO content for you at the click of a button.
I’m a bit of an AI skeptic myself—I’m not convinced generative AI is good enough to replace good content writers just yet.
But what it definitely can do is help content writers to produce better content, faster. And that’s where Rytr excels.
The first step is to choose a ‘use case’, which basically means choosing what type of content you want Rytr to create. There are 30+ use cases to pick from including blog outlines, blog sections, testimonials and reviews, emails, ad copy, story plots, and so on.
Next, choose what tone of voice and language you want Rytr to write in, and enter some prompts to tell it the keywords you want to include and any other instructions.
Rytr will then generate the content for you, and you can edit and format it as needed inside the built-in document editor.
Another thing I like is Rytr’s AI operators. You can use these to do things like automatically shorten or expand on your writing, reword paragraphs, clean up the grammar, check for plagiarism, etc. All these tools speed up your workflow and can save you hours of work.
Key features
- AI writing. Choose from 40+ pre-built AI writing templates and generate content in a few clicks
- Tones of voice. Customize the output to match your brand voice
- Rich-text editor. Polish up your AI-generated content in Rytr’s rich text editor
- AI-powered editing tools. Expand, shorten, reword, and improve your content using AI editing operators.
Pros and cons
Pricing
Free plan available. Paid plans start from $9/month, get 2 months free when you pay yearly.
Read our Rytr review.
#9 – Copy.ai
Copy.ai is a comprehensive AI-powered toolkit for marketing and sales teams. You can use it to automatically generate, optimize, and audit your SEO content, as well as lots of other stuff.
Copy.ai is built around automation workflows. There are a bunch of pre-built workflows to automate different areas of marketing and sales operations, which you can install in seconds.
Lots of these workflows are super useful for writing SEO content. For example, there’s a workflow that creates a content brief for any target keyword by scraping the top three SERP URLs and using the insights it gathers to put together an outline.
There are also workflows that can create a content brief from a video transcript, generate blog posts from briefs, automatically refresh old and outdated content, automatically repurpose content from one form to another, and a whole lot more.
It has a bit of a higher learning curve than some of the other content writing tools we’ve looked at. But once you get the hang of it, it’s incredibly powerful.
Key features
- Content workflows. Choose from dozens of AI-powered content workflow templates to automate processes like brief generation, text generation, and updating content.
- SEO workflows. Automate SEO processes like internal linking, external linking, ALT text generation, and more.
- AI chat. Generate custom content based on the prompts you enter into Copy.ai’s AI chat tool
- Other AI sales and marketing tools. All the other automations you need to speed up sales and marketing processes.
Pros and cons
Pricing
Free plan available. Paid plans start at $49/month, save 25% with yearly billing.
#10 – Grammarly
Grammarly is another tool I couldn’t live without. I always use Grammarly when writing posts for Blogging Wizard to make sure I’ve optimized it for readability and haven’t made any spelling/grammar errors that’ll hurt my rankings.
The reason that Grammarly is useful from an SEO perspective is that Google prefers to rank posts that are error-free, highly readable, and well-written. And that’s exactly what Grammarly is designed to help with.
I’d recommend installing it on your browser. That way, it’ll be there to check over your content wherever you write online, whether that’s directly in WordPress, Google Docs, or pretty much anywhere else.
As you write, it’ll flag up issues like spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, poor grammar, etc., which you can fix in one click.
It’ll also offer in-depth recommendations to help you improve things like the clarity, conciseness, and tone of your writing. You can even set personal goals/style guidelines for your brand and Grammarly will use that to personalize its recommendations.
Oh, and it gets even better. With the introduction of GrammarlyGO, it now has AI built in. So Grammarly can generate content for you from scratch, on the fly.
Plus, automatically improve/rephrase your sentences, answer questions, brainstorm ideas, and more. It’s like ChatGPT, but better—and right there inside your browser.
Key features
- Error detection. Grammarly reads your text as you write and highlights errors in correctness, clarity, engagement, and delivery
- Suggestions. Get suggestions on how to improve your text, and implement them in one click
- GrammarlyGO. Write content faster with the help of Grammarly’s AI writing tool
- Document management. Write documents and keep them organized in your My Grammarly dashboard
Pros and cons
Pricing
Free plan available. Paid plans start from $12/month, and you can try the Business plan out with a 7-day free trial.
Read our Grammarly review.
Final thoughts
Each of the SEO content writing tools in this post can help speed up and improve the content creation process in different ways.
And often, it’s a good idea to have multiple content writing tools in your stack. For example, an AI writing tool, on-page SEO tool, SEO auditing tool, grammar checker, plagiarism checker, etc.
Some of the all-in-one platforms we’ve looked at come with all of these different tools out of the box, so if you want to keep things simple, I’d recommend going with one of those.
While you’re here, you might want to check out our comparison of the best content optimization tools. To learn more about the basics of search engine optimization, check out our SEO beginner’s guide and roundup of SEO statistics.
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