Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
Benefits of using research tools for content development
Using research tools for content development offers many benefits:
- Helps you look at your own data: You will be unable to tell how people are consuming your content unless you have data tracking how they are navigating your content. You can also use cloud data (crowdsources data) from studies and trend websites such as Google Trends with your own data to see how yours compares.
- Provides reports to track goals: Regularly tracking your goals and progress can determine whether or not your efforts are working.
- Offers ideation and topic suggestions: Tools are great because they can give you insights and ideas you might not have thought of otherwise. By using crowdsourced data (as well as your own data), you can see what your target audience is interested in and searching for.
Free tools
A number of free tools are available:
- Google Analytics: Helps you track and interpret your website goals and data
- Moz Open Site Explorer: Helps you compare your website’s link portfolio – that is, how many links it has coming to its content pages compared to your competitors
- Answer The Public: This pulls Google Autocomplete data to show what real users are actually asking, based on a basic keyword phrase you enter
- Keyword Tool: Similar to UberSuggest, this pulls up related keywords. You can see results and search by search engine and different languages and country versions.
Paid tools
Paid tools like SimilarWeb, SEMRush, and Searchmetrics all work in basically the same way – they offer data and reports on your website and competitors. This varies by tool, but usually includes:
- Links
- Mentions
- Errors
- Competitor comparison
- Keyword suggestions, and more
Paid tools often provide more data – for example, you might get more searches or more data results – and more options, like white labeling your reports or being able to save them as PDFs. They also offer more extensive tracking.
Paid accounts usually offer you the option to add team members to work collaboratively and access the same features of the paid tools.
Topic and title idea tools
These free tools can help you generate and store ideas for future pieces of content, as well as track team feedback:
- RYP Marketing, Portent idea generator, HubSpot title generator: These help you come up with topic-title ideas based on keywords.
- UberSuggest: This suggests related keywords based on a basic keyword phrase you enter. This is based on Google Keyword Planner data.
- Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote: These are used for storing brainstorm title ideas to share with the team, and to collaboratively add comments.
Kelsey Jones
Digital Marketing Consultant and Writer
- 9 years’ experience in SEO and writing for the web
- 17 years’ experience in HTML
- Experience writing content for small and large brands
- US Search Awards Judge 2014, 2015, 2016
- The Drum US Search Awards Judge 2017
- Former Executive Editor, Search Engine Journal, 2014-2017
