Tools I Use

As a freelance writer with a focus on SEO, I use different tools for researching information and writing well-written content for clients. This way, not only do they engage with their readers like never below, but their content will reach the best ranking positions possible.

Below is a list of the current tools I use. If you’re a freelance writer, then I suggest that you try out these tools to improve your content as well!

Serpstat

My content writing campaigns start and end with Serpstat. Below are the multiple things I as an SEO freelance writer can do using the tool:

• Conduct keyword research by feeding in my seed keyword to find the best ideas and suggestions to optimize for the topic.
• Research for keywords that the client’s competitors are ranking for but the client isn’t.
• Identify client’s top-ranking pages and brainstorm keyword ideas from it
• Find questions that people ask about the keyword to answer in my content
• Track the ranking of keywords I’ve written and optimized for the client site – THIS IS IMPORTANT because it helps me show how effective my content is and that it ranks on Google search!

Long Tail Pro

Long Tail Pro is one of the first and best keyword research tools that specifically searches long-tail keywords for you. Throughout the years, the tool remains as good as it did when it started because it lets me do the following:

• Find hundreds of keywords with low difficulty and relatively high search volume to target for your client’s site. This process also helps you build topic clusters and build a reverse silo that you can pitch to your clients.
• Analyze pages of SERPs based on different SEO metrics to determine which pages you should target for rewriting to achieve similar results.
• Track the keywords I’ve written for clients and create ranking reports for them.

Social Animal

Social Animal helps complement my content research by finding information on social media about things for my client site and its target keywords. Below are the things I do using the tool:

• Research articles about the keywords with the most shares and analyzes what made them shareable. Then replicate the content on my side and make it even better.
• Find influencers about the topic that I can reach out to after I write the content. The goal is to get on the influencer’s good side so s/he could help me promote the article to his/her audience.
• Understand how the topic is discussed on social media by looking at the best times to publish an article about the topic, who the top authors are, and what platforms share the topic the most times.

Surfer SEO

Surfer helps me gather more information about the target keyword for the content. Below are the ways that I use this killer tool to ensure that my content is optimized to a tee:

• Identify the most crucial ranking factors on SERPs for the keyword and prioritize them when writing my content.
• Include common phrases mentioned in the top 10 pages on search results to increase the correlation of my content with those pages and help Google make the connection, thus increasing my chances of ranking for the keyword on the first page
• WHEN TASKED TO EDIT EXISTING CONTENT – I find and include words from Surfer’s True Density to improve its correlation with the keyword and boost its rankings

ProWritingAid

While I also use Grammarly Premium to edit my article as I write them and review them after writing, I find myself using ProWritingAid more lately. Below are the reasons why:

• Helps break down my content into different variables (more than Grammarly Premium), thus allowing me to understand how I write my articles and make the necessary changes for improvement moving forward
• Generates a comprehensive report about the article that includes document statistics (word and character count), readability by paragraph, and more. I USE THIS WHEN WRITERS HELP ME WITH SOME OF THE PROJECTS I MANAGE so they can learn areas for improvement in their writing
• You’re not sure which between Grammarly and ProWriting to choose from? Check this post out to help you decide.

Other Tools I Use

The ones featured above are tools I can’t do without as a freelance writer. However, I also use other tools to help me complete a project if necessary. Below are those tools:

Keyword Revealer* – I use this tool for its bulk keyword checker. I plug questions I extracted from the People Also Ask (PAA) section of Google SERPs to find which questions people are searching. From there, I created a FAQ section in the article that answers the most searched questions. BONUS: Other keyword research tools I use
SEO Powersuite – It’s an SEO tool that is deceptively expensive (only because it is sold at an annual fee). However, it has excellent keyword research and content writing features that I crank out for demanding clients. In particular, the Content Editor feature of Website Editor is my favorite one yet. It helps me write optimized content in real-time by using keyword suggestions based on the pages appearing on the keyword’s SERPs.
Grammarly Premium* – As mentioned, I use Grammarly and ProWritingAid if I need extra help editing my content. It’s a fast and lightweight tool that is perfect for editing content before submitting it to the client. Read my review of this tool here.
ContentStudio* – To promote my content and clients on social media, I use ContentStudio. Aside from being a social media scheduler and management tool, it can also help you conduct content research like Buzzsumo and create automated triggers to put your social media on autopilot. Click here to read my review of the tool.