How good is your eye? In other words, how well are you able to judge a piece of content’s quality, optimization, and overall potential to meet your goals?
If you’ve been in marketing for any length of time, you probably have a great eye. But even the most experienced marketers can benefit from using content analysis tools. After all, these tools can catch errors and spot opportunities for improvement that you may not have noticed otherwise.
But with so many tools available for analyzing content, where do you start? Here are our picks for the top ten tools.
5 SEO content analysis tools
First, let’s dig into tools that focus on search engine optimization.
1. Jasper’s choice: Surfer
Surfer is a robust but affordable AI SEO tool. No more piecing together several tools to inform your content strategy. Or paying for expensive all-in-ones like Semrush that you may not be able to justify spending on at this stage of your content marketing journey.
Surfer covers the bases you need to choose relevant content topics that will drive, nurture, and convert quality traffic. Its five core offerings are:
- Keyword research to find promising, relevant keywords to form the pillars of your SEO content strategy
- SERP Analyzer to learn from the kinds of content Google is ranking on the first page of the SERP
- Content Planner for planning topic clusters (and tracking your progress in creating content for those clusters)
- Content Editor for optimizing your website content to outperform the pages currently ranking on the SERP
- Content Audit for evaluating and improving the performance of live web pages
Source: SurferSEO; A partial report from Surfer’s content audit tool
The bonus? To make SEO writing easy as can be, the Content Editor functionality is available within Jasper documents.
With the Jasper + Surfer integration, you can see recommended keywords, your overall content score, and other SEO recommendations in the left-hand pane of Jasper as you write. So, no more writing in one tool and copy-pasting the content into an SEO content checker. You can generate content with the help of artificial intelligence and optimize it to rank in search results all in one place.
Pricing: Surfer subscriptions start at $29 per month, which is affordable compared to many similar tools like MarketMuse and Clearscope. Get started with Surfer here and begin creating SEO-optimized content with AI.
2. Clearscope
Although it’s not a swiss army knife like Surfer is, and not as affordable, Clearscope is a gem for content optimization. It gives content a letter grade based on how well the piece is optimized to rank and also gives a target letter grade (with A- as the minimum). Plus, like Hemingway App, which we’ll talk about later, Clearscope gives the current reading grade level of your content and a readability target.
Overall, this AI-powered platform is great for:
- Keyword discovery
- Competitive analysis for target keywords
- Spotting opportunities to differentiate your content via the terms map
- Optimizing content using suggested terms, SERP competitor outlines, and themes, questions, and citations common in the SERP
Pricing: The Clearscope Essentials plan will set you back $170 a month, and the Business plan $1,200 a month. (There’s also custom enterprise pricing if you need it.)
3. Google Search Console
Google Search Console—GSC for short—is another powerful tool for content analysis. It can tell you whether your published content has been crawled and indexed, and if it’s appearing on Google or not. It can also alert you to errors that prevent indexing and opportunities to improve things like mobile usability.
Additionally, Google Search Console reveals:
- Your site’s average position in the SERPs
- Total impressions, clicks, and click-through rate
- Impressions and clicks for specific queries, pages, countries, devices, and dates
This data can be useful for pinpointing web pages that could use further optimization to rank higher and bring in more organic traffic.
Pricing: Search Console is free but offers priceless data to help you evaluate and optimize content performance.
4. Google Analytics
Google Analytics needs no introduction; if you’re a marketer, you’ve used it at some point. Its reports are helpful for analyzing the performance of content you’ve already sent out into the world. And that same data can also give you clues about what content you should be investing in moving forward.
Google Analytics is an all-around great tool that reports on content performance metrics like:
- Click-through rate
- Bounce rate
- Pageviews
- Time on page
- Pages per session
- Conversion rate
It’s important to be able to accurately interpret Google Analytics data. If you can, you’ll have a better idea of the true quality of your content, which is what we’ll talk about next.
Pricing: Google Analytics has a pretty extensive free plan that works fine for most businesses. For larger, data-driven companies, there’s the Analytics 360 plan (but be prepared to pay big bucks).
5. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo's Content Analyzer stands at the forefront of innovation, serving as a comprehensive inspiration index for billions of content pieces published worldwide. This tool is designed not only to empower content creation but also to revolutionize your approach to social media and website performance audits.
By harnessing the power of BuzzSumo, users gain unparalleled access to a launchpad that propels content strategy forward, offering a distinctive edge in content discovery and analysis. Trust in the reliability and expertise of BuzzSumo to navigate the vast landscape of global content with confidence and precision.
You can use BuzzSumo’s Content Analyzer to:
- Get content ideas from the highest engagement content around the net
- Write better headlines that garner attention and improve engagement
- Discover trends and patterns among the top performing content on any platform
- Find the top influencers in any industry
Using the Content Analyzer to find specific keywords or phrases gives you a curated list of engaging headlines. Simple as that.
Pricing: BuzzSumo doesn’t come cheap, but it’s incredibly powerful. There’s a generous 30-day free trial and paid plans start out with the Content Creation plan at $199 per month. The platform is more suited for savvy freelancers and agencies who can justify the price tag.
5 quality-focused content analysis tools
What are the top tools for judging content quality with search engine optimization out of the picture?
1. Jasper’s choice: Grammarly
Grammarly is hands-down one of the most popular content tools in the world. It’s the second pair of eyes for countless thousands of content pros—and for good reason. It scores content based on correctness, clarity, engagement, and delivery, recommending ways to improve texts.
You edit work according to your own style guide in Grammarly. And you can set audience, formality, domain, and intent goals for more accurate scoring and, ultimately, higher-quality content.
Grammarly can help you:
- Find and fix grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors
- Make your content more understandable so that, no matter your audience, your message is clear
- Nail your delivery and make your content more engaging
The cool thing about Grammarly is that it integrates with our AI content generator, Jasper. That means you can check your content as Jasper creates it (instead of writing and editing separately).
To get set up, all you have to do is install the Grammarly extension. There’s no additional setup needed to use Grammarly within Jasper.
Pricing: Grammarly has a great free plan that has more than enough features for many users. But, if you want to upgrade, pricing starts at $12 per month.
2. Hemingway App
Often used along with Grammarly by content marketers, Hemingway App is the tool for simplifying your content. It color codes potential issues that need your attention. And it gives an overall grade for readability, even recommending the reading grade level you should aim for if your current level is too high.
In a nutshell, Hemingway is great for:
- Simplifying hard-to-read and very-hard-to-read sentences
- Spotting passive voice, words with simpler alternatives, and overuse of adverbs
- Checking your reading grade level to make sure your content is simple enough for your target audience to understand
Pricing: You can use Hemingway for free on the web. Or you can grab the Windows or Mac desktop app for a modest, one-time fee of $19.99.
3. CoSchedule Headline Studio
Unlike the other content analysis tools here that analyze entire texts, CoSchedule Headline Studio analyzes headlines specifically. Based on extensive research of what characteristics drive the most clicks, this tool scores headlines out of 100.
Trusted by more than 1 million marketers, Headline Studio provides the simplest way to compare and choose from the many headline variations you create for your pieces. And you can use it on-the-go thanks to the free browser extension. (A WordPress plugin is available too.)
CoSchedule Headline Studio judges headlines on several criteria, including:
- Word choice
- Length
- Reading grade level
- Headline type
- Sentiment
- Clarity
- Skimmability
There’s even a separate score for SEO. It compares your keyword search volume and usage to other pages ranking on the first page of the search engine results page (SERP).
Pricing: There’s a free plan that doesn’t include features like the SEO score and headline history. Paid plans are $9, $29, and $49 per month billed annually.
4. Jasper’s choice: Copyscape
Both unintentional and shameless plagiarism are huge problems in the content community. That’s where Copyscape comes in to make sure you haven’t plagiarized anyone (or yourself) and vice versa. As far as content tools go, this one is as straightforward and affordable as they come, and a must-have in your toolbox.
Copyscape offers:
- Manual plagiarism detection
- Automatic plagiarism alerts through Copysentry
- Banners to deter would-be plagiarizers from copycatting your content
Like Grammarly, Copyscape integrates with Jasper so that you can check the uniqueness of AI-generated content as its created.
To use it, select the Plagiarism Checker button in the top right toolbar and add credits to your Copyscape account if necessary. Then, click Scan Document to check your entire text or highlight a specific section and click Scan Selected Text. Copyscape will tell you if any of the text is found elsewhere on the web, which is rare for Jasper. You can then give credit where credit is due or edit your content to avoid plagiarism. Simple!
Pricing: Copyscape does have a free option but, given the price of Copyscape Premium, upgrading is a no-brainer. For literally just a few cents per check, you can do batch plagiarism checks, track plagiarism cases, do automatic checks with the API, and more. And pricing is pay-as-you-go. You can buy as little $5 of credits, use them at your convenience, and buy more whenever you need to.
5. Rockee
Rockee stands out on this list because it works a bit differently. It's a content feedback platform that empowers you to understand what readers really think about your content.
Rockee allows you to create an embeddable widget that prompts readers to rate the content they're reading. This allows you to better connect to your audience and fine-tune your content for future readers. Collecting user feedback on your content is essential for improving the quality and relevance of your writing.
With Rockee, you can gain valuable insights into how your readers perceive and engage with your content. By understanding their thoughts and opinions, you can make necessary adjustments to better connect with your audience and create meaningful content that resonates with them. This not only helps to build a stronger relationship with your readers but also increases the chances of creating high-quality, engaging content that meets their needs and expectations.
Receiving feedback from users also allows you to continuously improve and refine your writing skills, leading to overall growth as a writer. So don't underestimate the importance of collecting user feedback – it's an invaluable tool in enhancing the impact of your content!
Pricing: Rockee has a free plan which allows you to collect up to 15 responses from readers per month. Paid plans increase the amount of responses you can collect, which varies quite a bit. Check out their pricing page for more details.
Write your best content with the help of content analysis tools
Adding these tools to your content creation workflows can benefit everyone involved in executing your content marketing strategy—strategists and writers included. And it can be a plus for your target audience too. After all, all of the tools above and their alternatives improve user experience in one way or another.
Along the same lines, Jasper improves your user experience by allowing you to produce high-converting content up to 5x faster. It also integrates with several of the tools on this list to keep quality high.
If you haven’t already, get signed up for Jasper today and get a free 7 day trial!
