I have a confession: Initially, I was really overwhelmed by the idea of SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a scary world with a lot of information. SEO tools for publishers can be expensive, and if you don’t know how to use them, you’re not getting much bang for your buck.
However, ignoring SEO is not optional in the digital world. You have to know how to be found. Fortunately, there are a ton of SEO tools for publishers.
A good, old-fashioned content audit: It sounds basic, but analyze your content. An audit could be useful if you have no idea what to look at or where to start.
Tools you should check out
Yoast is an SEO scoring tool to help you ensure the optimization of keywords within WordPress. It’s an easy-to-use tool that provides some important metadata fields and allows you to fill them out as you create content. Yoast makes it easy for you to control titles and meta descriptions, set your targeted keywords, track how often you’re using them, manage sitemaps, and so much more.
This tool helps you analyze the intent of your content regarding search engine tables. In the average person’s speak, that means that when someone Googles “chicken,” they could be looking for recipes, restaurants, farms, etc. TextOptimizer helps by analyzing your content and user intent to better match your content to relevant searches.
Moz offers a 30-day free trial, so the risk is pretty low. They’ll suggest new keywords, track assigned keywords, highlight keyword gaps, identify content opportunities, and more. They’ll also provide information on keyword analysis, backlink research, and other areas to help create your content strategy.
Ahrefs has a free tool for keyword analysis and suggests keywords related to the primary keyword phrase. This can be very helpful in the early stages of content creation. They also offer comparison data that looks at gaps between your site and your competitors, which can provide important insight as you tackle your content strategy.
This platform is more technical than most, but it is fast and efficient and can audit large websites. A differentiator here is that it is integrated with PageSpeed Insights, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console, making a deep dive into your content much less daunting.
SEO is essential for news publishers who want to stay relevant and reach a wider audience online. Focus on creating high-quality content with keywords that your target audience is searching, so that your content can start ranking on the search engine results page. You’ll also want to monitor and track these keywords to see how they are ranking and if you need to revise your strategy.
