Organic search traffic fluctuates. It’s never static owing to Google’s algorithm updates, changes in search result layouts, and competition.
The fluctuations have been dramatic in 2024, the biggest in years. I’ve corresponded with many legit, non-spammy businesses whose sites have lost a lot of traffic. Most don’t know why.
Here is how to identify pages with traffic losses and the cause.
Search Console
Google Search Console is the quickest way to identify pages that lost organic traffic. Use the “Compare” option inside the “Performance” report and set the dates before and after the losses.
Then click on the “Pages” tab and sort by the number of clicks. Here’s an example of a site with extreme organic traffic losses and the impacted pages.
In Search Console, set the dates before and after traffic losses and compare clicks for each page. Click image to enlarge.
From there, click any URL in the first column, and the report will filter to that page. Click the “Queries” tab and sort by “Clicks” again to see the search terms with the biggest traffic drop.
Those are the priorities. Search on Google for each query. Note new features in the results. Study the top-ranking pages for quality, user experience, and search intent.
Click the “Queries” tab and sort by “Clicks” to see the search terms with the biggest traffic drop. Click image to enlarge.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics 4 can also identify pages with traffic losses, although it has no easy sorting options.
Typically, popular pages account for most declines. In GA4, go to “Engagement” > “Landing Page.” These pages have the most traffic — from all sources, not just organic search.
In GA4, apply filters to isolate organic search traffic. Click image to enlage.
Next, after filtering for organic search, select “Compare” to analyze two periods.
Unlike Search Console, GA4 provides engagement time and thus potential recovery tactics. Improve or update pages with an average engagement of a few seconds that also lost traffic. (Use the “Search” field to find a specific page.)
Follow the same filtering steps for any traffic source beyond organic search.
GA4 provides “Average engagement time per session,” a helpful recovery metric. Click image to enlarge.
Google launched the “People also ask” section in search results in 2015. Since then, search engine optimizers have strategized how to appear there. But the benefits of researching keyword-focused questions extend beyond “People also ask” to include:
Conversational search, where people speak queries into mobile devices.
Generative AI searches, such as ChatGPT, wherein users tend to type complete questions.
An understanding of consumer demand and pain points.
Here are five tools to research questions around your targeted keywords.
Moz
Moz Keyword Explorer
Moz’s “Keyword Explorer” includes a new question research feature. Type your keywords and click the “Questions” tab. The most useful component is the ability to group related keywords — which Moz labels “lexical similarity” — by “low,” “medium,” or “high.”
“Low” similarity produces larger groups with questions loosely relevant to one another. I chose the “medium” option for the “cat food” keyword. The resulting questions are easily addressed in a single web page, making the option very helpful.
Pricing for Moz Pro starts at $99 a month with a free 30-day trial.
Semrush
Semrush Keyword Magic Tool
Semrush offers a “Questions” option inside its “Keyword Magic” tool. Type your base term, and switch to the “Questions” tab. The questions are sorted by search volume by default. The left panel lists the keyword modifiers commonly found in those questions.
Semrush starts at $125 per month, with a free 7-day trial.
AlsoAsked
AlsoAsked
AlsoAsked pulls questions from “People also ask” sections. It also shows more questions, which Google generates from searches on the original “People also ask” content.
AlsoAsked’s initial search is free. Upgrade to the $12 per month plan to see the follow-up questions.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo’s “Content Discovery” tab includes “Questions” from Reddit, Quora, and other discussion boards. Users can enable or disable any data source by top-level or full domain name. The questions are grouped by word and adjustable by time frame — day, week, month.
Users can also view “Related themes” to discover more base terms for potential questions.
Pricing for BuzzSumo starts at $199 per month with a free 30-day trial.
Answer The Public
Answer The Public
Answer The Public pulls questions from autocomplete results on Google, Bing, YouTube, and Amazon and groups the output by word. The tool also provides cost per click and search volume for each question.
Answer The Public offers a free, limited trial. Paid plans start at $9 per month.
Google’s search results are difficult to copy or export. The listings redirect through Google.com, requiring a click on each one to reach the destination. Moreover, search result pages now contain sections beyond traditional listings that prevent copying, such as “People also ask,” videos, and images.
Yet exporting ranking URLs is important for analyzing backlink data, titles, on-page optimization, and more.
Thruuu’s free trial includes the analysis of 10 SERP pages. Paid plans start at $13 per month.
SERP Sonar
SERP Sonar is a free Google Chrome extension that scans search results in real-time, providing keyword usage in snippet titles, descriptions, and URLs.
The extension’s “Export” feature allows downloading an SERP as a CSV file, which includes for each listing:
URL, title, and snippet description,
Actual page description (versus Google’s rewrite),
Creating quality videos takes time and effort. Ensuring they are discoverable in organic search is often a missing step. Here are three tools to help.
Ahrefs
A free tool in Ahrefs identifies keywords to insert in YouTube video titles, increasing the chances of ranking in YouTube’s and Google’s organic search results.
Ahrefs pulls keywords from YouTube’s autocomplete results. It also shows the organic search volume on YouTube for each keyword, providing the potential clicks if your video ranks for that term.
Ahrefs identifies keywords to insert in YouTube video titles. This example is for the keyword “content marketing.” Click image to enlarge.
Click the “Questions” tab to find queries on YouTube associated with the keyword.
Clicking “Questions” shows YouTube search queries containing the keyword. Click image to enlarge.
Gemini
Video descriptions can make or break rankings and engagement. Google’s Gemini (formerly Bard) streamlines video description composition. To test, I used this video for content marketing on Reddit.
I then entered the following prompt into Gemini:
Generate key takeaways from this video [URL].
Unlike Gemini, ChatGPT won’t work for this task because it cannot access YouTube videos. Here is Gemini’s response:
Here are the key takeaways from the video:
Reddit is a great platform to find content ideas and promote your content because it has a lot of stories, data, and studies shared there. However, it’s important to follow the rules of each subreddit and become part of the community before trying to promote anything.
You should not just drop your link and leave it. Instead, find a cool comment to go with the link, a question, or something to provoke a discussion. It’s also important to mix in sharing other people’s links and content that you found interesting.
Reddit has a voting system, so it’s important to make sure your content is high quality and helpful for people. This will help you get more upvotes and visibility.
By being active on Reddit, you can learn what approaches work best for your target audience and what kind of content gets shared the most.
A free tool from Michael Cottam, a search engine optimization consultant, fixes both problems. Instead of using the embed code, the tool creates a still image containing a “Play” button. When “Play” is clicked, the tool swaps the image for an iframe that embeds the YouTube video and plays it.
To use, upload the video to YouTube and enter into the tool its:
URL,
Title and description,
Duration,
Upload date.
Consultant Michael Cottam’s tool optimizes page speed and rich-snippet visibility for embedded YouTube videos. Click image to enlarge.
The embed code doesn’t load until the image is clicked, preventing slow page speeds. The tool also includes structured data markup for the Google rich snippet.
Google autocomplete provides search suggestions while typing in the query box or Chrome address bar. The suggestions are based on the search volume of each query, making autocomplete a helpful research tool to identify popular terms on a topic.
Autocomplete can predict search journeys because target customers will likely select one of the suggestions instead of their own words or phrases.
Multiple tools can export keyword autocomplete suggestions from Google, Bing, YouTube, and other search engines, expediting the discovery of new terms, including those related to a brand.
Here are six to consider.
Keyword Tool Dominator
Keyword Tool Dominator provides keyword popularity for nine search engines, including Google, YouTube, Bing, and Amazon. For Google, the tool pulls all autocomplete suggestions for a base keyword by country and language. The tool extends words as every letter and number is typed, mimicking autocomplete.
It doesn’t show precise search volume for each keyword, instead providing a score of 1 to 100 based on the popularity relative to autocomplete terms, with “100” terms marked as “Hot.”
Those metrics provide some value, although I prefer the actual volume for each word. The tool’s filters can group queries by a common word, find longer phrases, and even exclude words.
The free version of Keyword Tool Dominator allows for two searches per day. Paid plans start at $9 per month.
Keyword Tool Dominator provides keyword popularity for nine search engines, including Google, as shown here. Click image to enlarge.
AdWords Robot
AdWords Robot is a simple Google autocomplete scraper. It extends a core term with the search engine’s suggestions. There are no extra features, but it’s a quick way to see how Google extends keywords. The tool groups suggestions by adding letters and numbers to a core word or phrase.
Yoast has a similar tool, but it extends a query only with letters, not numbers (such as size or age).
AdWords Robot is a simple autocomplete scraper. It extends a core term with Google’s suggestions. Click image to enlarge.
Keyword Tool
Keyword Tool is an advanced search term provider with few free features. The platform shows autocomplete suggestions for core terms on 13 search engines, including Google, YouTube, Bing, Amazon, eBay, and TikTok.
Paid plans for Keyword Tool start at $89 per month to access keyword search volume, competition, and trends.
Keyword Tool shows autocomplete suggestions for core terms on 13 search engines, including Google. Click image to enlarge.
Keyword Discovery SEO
Keyword Discovery SEO is a free Chrome extension that extracts Google autocomplete data for a word or phrase.
The tool groups suggestions by inserting “are,” “can,” “how,” “what,” when,” and “where” to a core term. From a query of “red shoes,” for example, the suggestions include:
are red shoes in style
can red shoes go with anything
how to style red shoes
what red shoes mean
when to wear red shoes
where red wing shoes made
Clicking the link icon next to each suggestion produces a Google search for that term. The tool extends queries with every letter and preposition (e.g., for, of, with).
Keyword Discover SEO groups suggestions by inserting “are,” “can,” “how,” “what,” when,” and “where” to a core term. Click image to enlarge.
SERP Help
SERP Help is another free Chrome extension to generate and copy Google autocomplete suggestions for any query. It’s a timesaver.
SERP Help is useful for generating and then copying autocomplete suggestions. Click image to enlarge.
Answer The Public
Answer The Public pulls autocomplete suggestions from Google, YouTube, and Bing and organizes them into five categories:
Questions
Prepositions
Comparisons
Alphabetical
Related
The tool allows one search per day without registering and three per day with free registration. Paid plans start at $9 per month for 100 daily queries, which include helpful data such as search volume and pay-per-click demand.
Answer The Public pulls autocomplete suggestions from Google, YouTube, and Bing.
Whether you have a company website, a blog, or an (online) store, chances are you’ve got a lot to do. You’re probably busy leading your company, blogging, or making your customers happy with the necessary goods. SEO might not be top of mind at all times. Yet, you also know that higher rankings would most likely benefit your business. So, how do you do SEO efficiently? Here, we will give you some tips on how to save time in SEO!
Disclaimer: it’s a known fact that SEO also stands for Seriously Effortful Optimization, so you will only get to the top by putting in the work. You should focus on stuff that matters (creating excellent content, making your site fast, and providing the best user experience, i.e., doing holistic SEO). The biggest time saver is choosing the right SEO tools to help you perform these tasks.
Table of contents
1. Unlock time-saving optimization with AI
Embrace the cutting-edge AI capabilities of Yoast SEO Premium to streamline your content optimization process. This powerful feature effortlessly generates titles and meta descriptions for your content. It even extends its benefits to your product meta descriptions when using WooCommerce SEO.
By leveraging AI, you can say goodbye to hours spent brainstorming catchy titles and compelling meta descriptions. Let the AI-powered tool handle the heavy lifting, ensuring your content is search-engine friendly while freeing up valuable time. You can focus on delivering high-quality content to your audience while our generative AI feature handles the optimization.
Yoast SEO Premium uses generative AI to help you work faster
2. Improve existing content
Are you considering writing yet another post on topic X? Think twice. Before you write something new, please check which posts you already have on this topic. Do you find something similar that you’ve written two or three years ago? You can refresh the existing post instead of writing a brand new post. Add new insights, add a hook to current news, improve the quality, and merge it with another post on the same topic on your site. Update it, and you can even share it again in your newsletter or on social media.
This is beneficial in more than one way:
It will prevent keyword cannibalization: if you have multiple similar posts on the same topic, your rankings for that query can deteriorate.
And, of course, you’ll save time by reusing content. In most cases, rewriting and updating content takes less time than writing something from scratch.
If you want to refresh your content smartly to benefit your SEO, check out our blog post on updating your content in 10 steps. A tool that saves time in the updating process is Yoast Duplicate Post. This free plugin allows you to duplicate and rewrite an existing post as a draft. When it’s ready, you can just hit ‘republish’ (or schedule) it. No more copying and pasting or inconveniently working in docs!
Creating a new draft or clone with Yoast Duplicate Post
One of the first things many SEOs do when auditing a site for the first time is to check the internal linking profile of a website. You could write a thousand articles, but if they don’t get links (external and internal), not many people will find them, making all the writing you’ve done a waste of time. A good site structure can boost your rankings, especially if you structure your site according to the cornerstone content principle.
In a nutshell, the cornerstone content principle means linking related posts. And most importantly, link these posts to the best, most complete article you’ve written on that topic. This is the article that touches on all aspects of the topic. It’s the article that you surely want to rank with! Because this post (or page) gets the most internal links, it sends signals to Google that this is the most important post on that topic.
Internal linking with Yoast SEO Premium
Without any help, implementing this is a lot of work: finding out which posts are related, making sure they’re linked, and manually checking whether they all link to a cornerstone article. Fortunately, Yoast SEO Premium has an excellent feature to help you save time: the internal linking suggestions tool. It will find and show suggestions for related articles to link to next to the post editor in the Yoast SEO sidebar. Pick the ones that you think fit best in the context of your post.
Easily add contextual links with Yoast SEO Premium
Moreover, you can mark your posts as cornerstone content in the backend with Yoast SEO. If you’ve done this and you’re writing a related post, this cornerstone article will show up on top in the suggestions. So you won’t forget to link to those!
Of course, you need more than just internal links for SEO. Nothing beats getting an external link from a high-authority website to build your authoritativeness (part of E-E-A-T). So, building backlinks remains key to achieving good results in SEO. Unfortunately, there’s not a shortcut here. You’ll need outstanding and genuinely original content to earn backlinks nowadays. Plus, you must put effort into the necessary outreach to get the word out about the fantastic things you do, create, or write.
SEO can be overwhelming. You’re never done with SEO, and the tasks you want or need to do can pile up. As a result, you can lose track of everything on your plate, which can even lead to overwhelmed paralysis. It is stressful and not helpful if you want to save time. It’s good to get an overview of the SEO improvements you want to work on to prevent feeling overwhelmed or regain control. Productivity tools like Trello or Todoist can help you attain and keep this overview.
When you’ve organized your board, you’ll need to prioritize. But you might wonder: which tasks on your board come first? Well, as always in SEO, the answer is: it depends. Are significant technical flaws preventing Google from correctly crawling and indexing your site? The obvious answer is to start with that. Do you use huge images on your site, causing pages to load for ages? That might be a good starting point, too.
As for content improvements, it’s impossible to give one-fits-all advice. One principal recommendation, and maybe stating the obvious: make sure your priorities are aligned with your business goals. Are you focusing on getting more sales right now? Optimizing your product pages probably makes sense. Do you want to establish sustainable growth? Focus on the long-term with sustainable SEO.
Are you still feeling overwhelmed? Then, starting with more minor, easy-to-accomplish tasks might be a good idea. Getting into a flow of achieving things and moving cards to done can give that positive energy needed to take up the more significant tasks.
5. Optimize your post for synonyms and related keyphrases
What if you want to rank for multiple queries with one post? That would be a huge time-saver, right? The good news is that you can and might even already do. Of course, there’s one significant constraint: the queries must be very similar. For instance, if you write about sustainable hen houses, it might be worth optimizing for a synonym such as eco-friendly poultry houses too. Using synonyms is a best practice not only for SEO but also for readability. Generally, people don’t like repeatedly reading the same word in a text.
Using synonyms will also help Google to understand the topic better. You’re giving them more context on the topic, making it easier to identify which entity you’re writing about. The same goes for related keyphrases; it will provide Google with the context to show your post or page for the correct query. If you want to optimize your post for related keywords, our Semrush integration can save time finding these. It will show related queries to your focus keyphrase with search volume.
Related keyphrase suggestions by Semrush in Yoast SEO
In Yoast SEO Premium, you can set keyphrase synonyms and related keyphrases. The SEO analysis will consider these phrases when analyzing your text and give you feedback so you can also optimize for these phrases. As explained, this will result in more natural writing and a better understanding of the post’s topic by Google. And it can save you time because you won’t write essentially identical posts. As a bonus, you’re not creating duplicate content or causing keyword cannibalization.
6. Preview your social post in the admin
We think sharing your content on social should be part of your SEO efforts. When you’ve written a blog post and plan to share it on social media, you want to ensure it looks good on your timeline. But if you need to do that on the social media platform itself, it does take some time. You must go back and forth between platforms, adapt and upload improved images, etc.
A small but easy time-saving feature in Yoast SEO Premium is our social media preview functionality. It will show you what your post looks like when shared on Facebook or X. Does the image fit, and does the title look good? If you use it, you’re no longer in the dark about the appearance of your post on your timeline. And it saves you time switching between platforms and copy-pasting URLs.
Moreover, you can even set default templates for specific post types. For instance, at Yoast, we set those for help articles. We don’t share these frequently on social media, so we won’t create individual images for all these articles. But setting a good fall-back image prevents these posts from looking misfitted when shared by someone else. Read more about our default social templates.
Save time in SEO
So that’s it. These are our tips on saving time in SEO. It mostly comes down to focusing on what matters and using the right tools. Over to you! Do you have any tremendous time-saving tips? Please share them in the comments!
Optimizing for searchers’ intent has always been key for top organic rankings. That’s especially the case with Google’s helpful content algorithm, which is intent-focused.
I’ve listed tools to analyze and filter keywords by search intent, but generative AI has uncovered new ways of performing that task.
Here are four AI-powered tools for innovative search-intent analysis.
For example, if most of the top 20 results were articles, Keyword Insights would assign a context as “informational.” If the results were product detail pages, the context would be “transactional.”
Keyword Context informs the tool’s additional features, such as content briefs and keyword discovery.
Keyword Insights assigns an intent metric to query — “informational,” “transactional,” or “other.” Click image to enlarge.
Optimo
Optimo offers a free, unlimited search intent tool. Insert up to 100 keywords per analysis, and the tool will describe what a searcher may be looking for in each case.
To test, I inserted seven hosting-related keywords. Here are those keywords with Optimo’s description of searchers’ likely intent.
reCAPTCHA. “Understand the reCAPTCHA feature.”
VPS Managed Hosting. “Purchase managed hosting solutions for a virtual private server.”
SSH with Port Number. “Connect to a server using SSH with a port number.”
Domain Purchase Sites. “Find a list of sites to purchase a domain name.”
VPS. “Purchase a virtual private server.”
PHP Max Upload Size. “Understand the maximum upload size of a PHP script.”
MySQL Show Table Size. “View the size of a MySQL table.”
Optimo is handy for revealing searchers’ keyword intentions that may differ from your own.
SEO.ai
SEO.ai offers a free tool that analyzes a keyword and produces more descriptive alternatives. The tool provided these versions for “web hosting”:
“Best website hosting providers,”
“How to choose a website hosting service,”
“Website hosting cost comparison,”
“Website hosting reviews.”
When planning an article reviewing web hosting companies, I could input “website hosting reviews” for SEO.ai’s variations of that phrase:
“Website hosting comparison,”
“Best website hosting providers,”
“Affordable website hosting options.”
The tool works best for identifying less competitive, long-tail keywords. It’s also helpful for discovering topics to support primary landing pages.
Google’s SGE
Google’s Search Generative Experience can help understand the intent of a keyword. For example, SGE’s snapshot for “web hosting” includes the definition, average prices, and hosting companies.
The snapshot signals mixed intent: an explanation, the cost, and potential providers. The results reveal various search journeys to create and optimize content accordingly.
SGE’s snapshot for “web hosting” includes the definition, average prices, and hosting companies. Click image to enlarge.
The last year has seen loads of exciting developments when it comes to AI. With all these developments, we’ve seen new tools powered by AI pop up left and right. Tools that can help with loads of different things. From writing to keyword research to fact-checking, AI seems to be at home in all markets. The rise of this phenomenon can no longer be denied. Let’s take a look at 8 great AI tools that can help you when it comes to working on your SEO!
We’ve listed 8 tools that can help you with your SEO in different ways. But I do want to note that it’s important to maintain a healthy balance between utilizing AI and your input. AI can help us a lot, especially with getting started and saving time on easy tasks. But keep in mind that authenticity and trustworthiness are important for your audience and SEO. Don’t let AI do everything and take your unique point of view out of the equation. Don’t underestimate your importance in this process and make sure to always stay critical of the output. Check the tone of voice, check the facts and rewrite whatever needs to be rewritten. In the end, this human element will be what gets you to the top of the search results.
1. ChatGPT (Plus)
Let’s start with a tool you’ve probably already heard of: ChatGPT. This is a text-based AI model that interacts with you in a conversational way to answer any question you have. Or fulfill any content request you have. This means that the range of what ChatGPT can help you with is quite wide. Although it is limited to text-based answers, you can ask ChatGPT a lot of different things and it will always try to help you with your request.
Another great feature is the possibility to tweak your request along the way. So if you ask ChatGPT to write an introduction for a blog post on a specific topic and the answer it comes up with is too long, you can then ask it to shorten it and it will do so. If you’re not happy with the tone of voice, you can ask it to change that. Or if you don’t like it at all, you can ask ChatGPT to rewrite it altogether. You can also give it prompts to instruct the tool more specifically and get a better result from the start. This allows you to keep tweaking the text until you’re satisfied with it.
Screenshot of content request in ChatGPT (free)
There is a free version of ChatGPT, which in itself is already a powerful tool. There is also a paid option that unlocks a few additional features and faster response times, ChatGPT Plus. This can be interesting if you use ChatGPT quite a lot and have more complex requests that you need help with. But if you’re just getting started, we would recommend trying out the free tool first.
2. Jasper
Another AI tool that you can use to produce content is Jasper. But it is more focused on producing marketing content like blog posts, social posts, email and website copy. Where ChatGPT targets a wider audience, Jasper focuses on people working in marketing and entrepreneurs who do their marketing themselves. Utilizing the AI tool works pretty similarly, where you put in a request and Jasper provides you with content specifically created for a newsletter or post (or something else).
It also allows you to upload a style guide or examples of your content so that it can learn your preferred tone of voice. In addition, you can also give it information about your company like the products or services you provide, your audience and even a campaign brief. Jasper uses all of this to understand the goal of the content you’re requesting and to create content that is on-brand and detailed. What’s also cool about this tool is that it also comes in the form of a browser extension. Allowing you to use it while you’re working on your content in WordPress, Gmail and other places.
Screenshot of Jasper browser extension being used in Gmail
It’s good to know that Jasper works with a monthly (or yearly) subscription plan, so this is a paid tool. They have a few options you can check out and a free trial if you want to give it a try before subscribing.
3. Keyword Insights
A vital but time consuming part of SEO is keyword research. That’s why one of the AI tools we’ve picked is focused on that specifically. You can use Keyword Insights to find new keyword ideas and cluster them. By filling in a keyword it gives you loads of related keywords and their search volumes. Keyword Insights also helps you categorize keywords by clustering them properly and it allows you to upload other files to get those keywords in there as well. It gives you a nice overview of all your keywords per cluster and all the relevant data to figure out which ones you want to work on. The tool actually uses an algorithm to quickly show you which keyword is the best choice at the moment.
An overview of related keywords in Keyword Insights
After you’re done with that, you can actually use the writing assistant to get started with writing. What’s cool about this writing feature is that it gives you an overview of the top headings of other websites that rank high on that keyword. Or it can even generate an outline for you. Which can be great inspiration to get started with the structure of your text. It also helps you write the text by suggesting relevant content for the article you’re working on.
Keyword Insights is a paid tool, that has several pricing options depending on your needs. A few of those options also enable team sharing, which comes in handy when you have multiple people working on your SEO. It has loads of interesting features to do keyword research in an organized way. But a very important sidenote is that it can be tempting to let the tool also do all the writing for you. Which might result in a text that is far from original and authentic and will not get you that top result in Google. As it will be mainly based on what’s already out there. So make sure to check out the keyword features, but be mindful of how you use the writing assistant.
4. Semrush SEO Writing Assistant
Another writing tool powered by AI is the SEO Writing Assistant you can find in Semrush. This tool analyzes your text in regards of SEO, readability, originality and tone of voice. It gives you suggestions based on this analysis and also comes with a few features to optimize your text, such as the Rephraser, Compose and Ask AI. What’s great about the Originality section is that this helps you create content that’s not like everyone else’s, something you risk when using AI in your content creation. This can help you figure out whether you need to change your angle and it also checks your content for plagiarism.
The SEO Writing Assistant in Semrush
Another reason we’re mentioning this tool is because Semrush in general is a great tool for SEO. So having this option in there is a great addition to their set of tools. The SEO Writing Assistant is part of Semrush’s Content Marketing Platform, which you get access to with two (out of three) of their subscriptions. You can also sign up for a free trial to give it a whirl.
5. MarketMuse
When looking at AI tools that can help you elevate your SEO, MarketMuse is another one we want to mention. In short, MarketMuse is content planning and optimization software that comes with loads of SEO and automization features. The idea is that it puts everything you need in one place and automates content audits for you. Helping you suggest what you need to work on next instead of guessing or speculating what does or doesn’t work.
The Topic Navigator section in MarketMuse
It can help you do keyword research, plan your content and write. All based on personalized data, as they analyze your website and also look at competitors in your field. Which can save you loads of time and help you make informed decisions. Without having to switch between different tools and documents or sheets. It’s all in our place. As most AI tools discussed so far, MarketMuse works with a monthly subscription plan and gives you a few options to choose from.
6. Originality.ai
The name might already be an indicator of what this AI tool can do for you. Originality.ai helps you fact check your text and also checks it for plagiarism. Being trustworthy is an important factor in SEO right now, and will probably remain important, so you need to get your facts straight. And make sure you’re not accidentally committing plagiarism, which is becoming a bigger risk in these AI-heavy times. Funnily enough, it also comes with an AI Content Detector which is pretty good in detecting content written by AI. Even if it has been paraphrased.
The fact checker in Originality.ai
Originality.ai comes with a monthly subscription option and a pay-as-you-go option which gives you a bunch of credits to get started. Unfortunately, there is no free trial, but if you go to their website you can find loads of information (and some examples) of how the features work. There’s also a demo of their fact checker if you want to give that a try!
7. Grammarly
Grammarly is a tool that’s quite popular with the writers here at Yoast. It shows you when you’ve made an error when it comes to spelling and grammar, and works on different platforms and in different places. Which is very helpful when you write a lot of online text. Now that Grammarly also comes with the power of AI, it can do even more for anyone who writes online content.
Grammarly now comes with a generative text feature, which allows you to give it a prompt and get a draft right away. It also comes with a rewrite feature to change the tone of voice of your piece of content. You can also teach it what your personal tone of voice is, so that it can give you specific suggestions that fit your communication style. Lastly, it can help you with brainstorming and outlines by giving suggestions based on your task at hand. It’s a neat little AI tool that you can use on the go.
Screenshot of Grammarly functionality, showing some of its AI features
Grammarly has a free plan, which gives you access to their basic AI assistance and 100 AI prompts per month. If you need more and want access to more prompts and advanced features, they have a few paid monthly subscription plans.
8. Yoast SEO & WooCommerce SEO
Naturally, I can’t bring this list to a close without mentioning our own AI features. Not too long ago, we added an AI feature to Yoast SEO Premium that generates SEO titles, meta descriptions and social snippets for you. It looks at the content that’s already there and with the click of a button it gives you a few options. Saving you the hassle of doing it manually and providing you with relevant titles, meta descriptions and social snippets that are all aimed at increasing your click-through rates.
Screenshot of the AI meta description generator in Yoast SEO Premium
The AI title & meta description generator is part of our paid plugin, Yoast SEO Premium. Which comes with a yearly subscription plan, but an affordable one. As we want to make our features available to as many people as possible.
Unlock AI features in Yoast SEO Premium
Get this feature and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!
We’ve also added this feature to Yoast WooCommerce SEO a short while back. This helps you make your products stand out on the search result page and get those clicks to your website. So if you have an online shop and are looking to optimize your products pages, it’s worth taking a look at that product as well.
An XML sitemap helps Google crawl a site, understand its structure, and discover more pages.
For years Google has asserted XML sitemaps in Search Console don’t directly help rankings, but in my experience a sitemap often provides a boost in organic traffic, especially for new sites and those with thousands of pages or more.
The screenshot below from Search Console is for traffic to a new hobby site that submitted a sitemap in late May 2023. Organic search traffic improved in early June and then declined a couple of months later, but not to the previous level.
Organic search traffic to a new hobby site quickly improved after submitting a sitemap and then declined, but not to the previous level. Click image to enlarge.
Presumably Google values sitemaps, or it wouldn’t include them in Seach Console. But they’re helpful only when properly formatted and error-free. I’ve seen many sitemaps containing broken URLs or pages with noindex tags or blocked from crawling.
A sitemap should be a clear path for Google to navigate the site and include only URLs intended to drive traffic.
To verify, submit the sitemap to Search Console and allow a few weeks for Google to crawl your site. Then return to Search Console and navigate to Indexing > Sitemaps. Click “See page indexing” beneath the three dots beside the sitemap URL.
To verify a sitemap, navigate in Search Console to Indexing > Sitemaps. Click “See page indexing” beneath the three dots beside the sitemap URL. Click image to enlarge.
In the report, look for reasons for not indexing, such as:
Duplicate pages, wherein indexed the version is not in the sitemap.
Remove all those URLs from the sitemap or fix the errors.
Google ignores priority and changefreq sitemap attributes. There’s no way to instruct Google which pages are important, although including only indexable pages in a sitemap is a good first step.
Using sitemaps, Search Console can identify pages with videos, although in my testing the primary sitemap page showed, incorrectly, only zeros in the “Discovered videos” column, presumably due to a bug.
Search Console’s primary sitemap page lists zeros under the “Discovered videos,” likely due to a bug. Click image to enlarge.
Ignore the zeroes and check the “See video page indexation” report listing the URLs from that sitemap with indexed videos or errors.
The “See video page indexation” report lists the URLs with indexed videos or errors. Click image to enlarge.
Better Crawls
Cleaning up sitemaps ensures smooth crawls from Googlebot and thus elevated indexing. Error-free sitemaps are especially important for sites with thousands (or millions) of URLs or many under the “Discovered but not crawled” and “Crawled but not yet indexed” categories.
Google increasingly relies on artificial intelligence for organic search results. Soon those results will include AI summaries, called “snapshots,” of key info from a query. Hence search optimizers are now deploying AI to analyze rankings.
Here are three search-engine-result-page analyzers that utilize AI.
RivalFlow from Spyfu uses AI to uncover organic search opportunities. The tool checks a domain’s higher-performing keywords, identifies competitors, and suggests content improvements for a page to improve its ranking.
In my testing, RivalFlow was easy to use — just input a domain — with realistic competitor assessments based on linking profiles and existing organic traffic.
Having entered a domain, the tool returned a list of SERPs with ranking opportunities.
Enter a domain, and RivalFlow will produce a list of SERPs with ranking opportunities. Click image to enlarge.
With RivalFlow I could see the possibilities and implement AI-generated content improvements.
The tool analyzes one domain for free, with access to the SERP report, although a credit card number is required. Paid subscriptions start at $99 per month — $79 if paid annually.
Thruuu is an AI-powered SERP analyzer and content-strategy creator. Thruuu evaluates any search result page and also compares two sets of results. For a single SERP analysis, the tool pulls organic listings, local packs, “People also ask” content, and videos.
For each SERP listing, Thruuu provides the page rank (from the Open PageRank initiative), word count, image count, and page type.
For each listing, Thruuu provides the page rank, word count, image count, and page type. Click image to enlarge.
The comparison feature shows two SERPs side by side, contrasting the headings, related searches, questions from “People also ask” boxes, and frequent terms from ranking pages. The tool then assesses whether a single page can target both queries.
Thruu creates content outlines and briefs by applying generative AI to the SERP data.
Thruuu’s free plan includes 10 Google SERPs, two content briefs, and up to 500 keywords. Paid plans start at $13 per month for 75 SERPs.
SERP Sonar is a free Chrome extension that analyzes real-time Google search results and lists data of each ranking page:
Number of words in titles and URLs,
Exact-match keywords in titles and URLs,
Titles and URLs with no exact-match keywords,
Exact-match keywords in snippets,
Average word count per page based on ranking URLs.
SERP Sonar provides details of words in titles, URL descriptions, and more. Click image to enlarge.
Analyze 10, 20, or 50 ranking URLs. Export the data — URLs, titles, descriptions — in an Excel file for further analysis.
A separate report provides averages for each ranking page:
Average word count,
Average image count,
Ad networks on page,
Affiliate networks on page,
% of pages using Schema.org structured data
% pages with user-generated content.
Enable a free AI analysis via a (paid) ChatGPT API token. That review uses SERP data to determine Google’s assessment of query intent for a keyword.
For example, I entered “NY waterfalls.” The tool assigned two potential intents.
Informational Intent: Based on the keyword “ny waterfalls” and the titles and descriptions provided, my first highest confidence determination of the search intent is informational intent. The titles and descriptions mention phrases like “New York Waterfalls – Full List by County,” “31 Breathtaking Waterfalls in New York State,” “35 Gorgeous Waterfalls in New York State,” and “17 Best Waterfalls in New York.” These titles and descriptions suggest that the searcher is looking for information about the various waterfalls in New York State. The inclusion of phrases like “full list,” “bucket list-worthy,” and “best” also indicate the searcher’s desire to gather information and explore different waterfall options. This aligns with the informational intent category.
Local Search Intent: My second highest confidence determination of the search intent is local search intent. Although the titles and descriptions mostly focus on providing information about waterfalls in New York State, the mention of phrases like “Upstate NY + Near NYC” and “Finger Lakes Waterfalls” hint at a more localized search intent. The searcher may be specifically interested in finding waterfalls near their location, either in Upstate New York or near New York City. Additionally, the inclusion of phrases like “A NY local’s list” and “before you die – newyorkupstate.com” further emphasizes the local aspect of the search. Therefore, it is possible that the searcher is looking for specific waterfalls to visit in their local area, indicating a local search intent.
The AI analysis also provides title and meta-description suggestions, stating, “By feeding the keyword plus ranking page title tags, the AI is able to provide more nuanced title ideas that are tuned to the competitors that are actually ranking in the SERP.”
Here are the suggestions for “NY waterfalls”:
“Discover the Hidden Beauty of New York’s Waterfalls,”
“Unveiling New York’s Best Kept Secret: The Spectacular Waterfalls,”
“The Ultimate Guide to Exploring New York’s Mesmerizing Waterfalls,”
“Embark on an Adventure: The Most Captivating Waterfalls in New York.”
