How content optimization tools could speed up your Skyscraper content creation process
New content optimization tools automate the process of reading top results for a search query, while providing insights around key topics you should consider. We refer to these tools as “AI-powered” because they leverage various NLP techniques to automatically extract topics and measure their importance in a given context. This AI approach provides a new type of value proposition compared to traditional “SEO Lite” tools, which mostly focus on ensuring your meta-tags are in good shape.
AI-powered content optimization tools should at least assist during the following workflows:
1. Crawl and process top results
The capability to extract information from top search results. Key data points such as word count, links and topics will rely on an accurate clean text extraction system (i.e. this includes ignoring ads, menus, widgets, comments, etc.).
2. Extract topics
This refers to the capability of automatically extracting and classifying topic mentioned in your clean text. At a minimum, this system should be capable of extracting concepts, organizations, people, locations and products.
3. Score content and recommend topics
Most tools will provide a content scoring function according to topic coverage (i.e. how are your topics compared to top performers?). In addition to topic scoring, related topics should be suggested to help the user dig deeper and find ways to incorporate new content into your document.
These tools can be typically used in two workflows:
- Before publishing an article: As part of your editorial review process, you can ensure that your content is topically relevant for a target search query. This can be particularly important when working with external freelancers and setting up SEO strategy.
- During a content refresh effort: Given the direct relationship between content refreshes and search ranking, you should periodically look back at your archive and optimize decaying content.