Over the past few years Setup has collected and reviewed marketing tools in a number of categories. From tools that help benefit social media efforts to tools that increase productivity, Setup is on the case to help improve your life as a marketer!

Because there is so much noise, tailored and specific content marketing is becoming increasingly important to businesses. Search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword research help refine digital marketing content. In fact, detailed keywords help companies rank first on search engines and are the reason companies are found through organic search. Marketers are investing an increasing amount of time into keyword research because keywords can define a company and lead to deeper conversions. General keyword research isn’t enough to rank high on sites like Google or Bing, though. Brands can stand out from competition with specific keyword tools that help optimize keyword phrases to create content.

Aside from using the typical keyword search tools like Google Analytics and Adwords to monitor current keyword rankings, here is a list of keyword search tools to help marketers improve their content marketing and organic search.

Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool is a free tool (with paid subscriptions for additional features) that helps content creators write purposeful content. By using Google Autocomplete, Keyword Tool finds more descriptive words that provide value and cater to the consumer. Keyword Tool uses a generator that accesses 192 Google domains and 83 Google language interfaces to provide more than 750 relevant keywords from sites like Google, YouTube, Bing, eBay, etc. This tool enhances content creation by highlighting what is important to the audience and improving a company’s SEO ranking.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs helps users grow their search traffic by monitoring and researching competitors. This tool scans through billions of web pages to provide a competitive analysis, backlink and keyword research, rank tracking, web monitoring, and content exploration to help users understand why certain competitors are ranking high and how to compete with them. Based on the research and analysis, users can alter and improve their content, website, social media, and SEO.

SEMRush

SEMRush also helps users evaluate their competition with in-depth analytics, backlink tracking, search breakdowns, SEO suggestions, and a keyword research tool with recommendations. This tool truly brings the phrase, “keep your enemies closer” to light since users can benefit from observing their competitors actions.

SEMRush is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO)/insight tool that gives a comprehensive competitive analysis to influence the user’s future actions. Tools offered assess the difficulty of keywords on multiple platforms and compare the user's keywords to their competitors with charts for comparison. This tool has both free and priced features - offering limited organic, advertising, and backlinks reports for the free plan.

MOZ

Moz is a competitive analysis tool that increases web traffic and followers with the help of a SEO keyword generator, link analysis feature, and keyword research tool. MOZ crawls the user’s website weekly to ensure it is optimized to its full potential and provides recommendations when the website needs improvements. The Open Site Explorer, Moz’s web crawl, and the Moz Pro help evaluate the competition and maintain an optimized keyword list. Analyzing where the competition went wrong helps the user adjust strategies for more effective results.

MarketMuse

MarketMuse is Setup personal favorite SEO and keyword research tool. Not only does this tool help marketers optimize content to their full potential by using a keyword scanner and content score, but MarketMuse evaluates the entire competitive landscape for any topic. Users can analyze what and how their competitors are marketing to the consumers in addition to learning what audiences are searching. MarketMuse provides content creators with the tools necessary to beef up and research their content with relevant internal link suggestions and “newsroom” insights. This keyword tool will immensely improve the quality and search rankings of content.