Comprehensive SEO Content Analysis for Top Rankings

Content is the most important asset of your SEO strategy. But for content to push your business forward, it has to rank high for relevant phrases and draw organic traffic to your website.

Unfortunately, 90.63% of web pages don’t get any organic search traffic from Google. 

There are many reasons for poor content performance on SERPs. These include targeting the wrong keyword, ignoring search intent, lack of in-depth information, and poor writing quality.

The question is, what’s preventing your page from reaching top rankings?

The best way to find out is to conduct a comprehensive SEO content analysis.

By carefully examining existing content and identifying problem areas, you can create targeted strategies that align with your business goals.

In this blog post, you will learn how to evaluate content so you can refine your content strategy and start generating top-ranking content.

Table Of Contents:

• What is SEO Content Analysis?
• Why Is Your Content Not Ranking?
• Pros and Cons of Conducting a Comprehensive SEO Content Analysis
• Best Practices for a Comprehensive SEO Content Analysis
• Best Tools for SEO Content Analysis
• Conclusion

What is SEO Content Analysis?

Struggling with low SERP rankings?

It may be time to conduct a content analysis.

SEO content analysis is the process of evaluating your website’s content to identify areas for improvement and optimize it for search engines. This helps you create high-ranking web pages that cater to user intent, ultimately leading to better visibility and increased organic traffic.

A thorough content audit ensures that your existing content remains relevant, engaging, and optimized for search engines. By regularly conducting a comprehensive analysis, you can identify gaps in your current strategy and make informed decisions on how to improve or create new pieces tailored toward target keywords.

Key Components of Content Analysis

• Technical SEO: This ensures proper site structure, page speed optimization, mobile-friendliness, and other technical aspects for improving search engine rankings.
• User Intent and Search Query: Analyzing search intent behind specific queries allows you to craft more targeted blog posts or product pages that answer users’ needs effectively.
• Meta Descriptions: Evaluating meta descriptions helps ensure they accurately summarize each page’s contents while enticing users to click on the link with compelling copywriting techniques.
• Keyword Targeting and Content Gaps: Detecting poor keyword targeting within existing articles enables you to revise them while identifying any potential gaps where additional topics could be covered by new pieces of content

Screenshot from Ahrefs

Why Is Your Content Not Ranking?

While there are a variety of factors that contribute to the success or failure of your content, some common problems arise time and again for most people.

Poor Keyword Targeting

One of the most significant issues in content is poor keyword targeting. This happens when you choose keywords without doing proper research or analysis.

For example, if you’re selling shoes online, you might assume that “shoes” would be an ideal target keyword for all your pages. However, this approach fails to take into account how competitive this term is and how difficult it will be to rank for it.

To avoid poor keyword targeting:

• Conduct thorough research using tools like Google Keyword Planner or Semrush.
• Avoid overly broad terms and focus instead on long-tail keywords specific to your business.
• Analyze what keywords your competitors are ranking for.
• Create unique landing pages optimized around each target keyword.

Screenshot from Wordstream

No Relevance to SERP/Intent

In addition to choosing appropriate keywords, another critical factor in successful SEO content creation is ensuring relevance both to search engines and users.

If someone searches for “best running shoes,” they likely want information about different types of running shoes rather than simply being shown purchasing options.

Insufficient Information and Poor-Quality Writing

Your website’s visitors expect high-quality writing and sufficient information in answer to their search queries. If your website fails to provide them with the information they’re looking for, you’ll likely lose their interest and trust.

Similarly, poor writing quality can also be a turn-off for visitors. Your content should be engaging, informative, well-structured, and grammatically correct — not boring, cliche, sloppy, or riddled with errors.

To avoid these issues:

• Create a style guide for your content team.
• Conduct thorough research before creating any piece of content.
• Hire professional writers or editors if you need help, or consider using an AI writing tool.
• Use tools for checking grammar, spelling, punctuation, and usage.

Pros and Cons of Conducting a Comprehensive SEO Content Analysis

Creating content for a website is not an easy task. It requires time, effort, and resources to produce high-quality content that can attract visitors and convert them into customers. If your current strategy isn’t working, then you need to find out what you’re doing wrong through proper content analysis.

Conducting a website content analysis is the first step toward creating an effective content strategy. The process helps identify areas of improvement so you can create a roadmap for your team to follow when creating new product pages or blog posts.

While SEO content analysis can be a valuable tool for optimizing web content, it does have some potential disadvantages:

• Subjectivity: SEO content analysis tools rely on algorithms and predefined rules to evaluate content. However, these algorithms may not fully capture the subjective aspects of content quality, such as creativity, uniqueness, or the overall user experience. As a result, the analysis may not always reflect the true value or relevance of the content.
• Limited scope: SEO content analysis tools typically focus on specific aspects of content optimization, such as keyword usage, meta tags, or readability. While these factors are important, they don’t encompass the entirety of content quality. As a result, relying solely on SEO analysis may neglect other important aspects like engaging storytelling, in-depth research, or appealing visuals.
• Lack of context: SEO analysis often treats each piece of content in isolation, without considering the broader context of the website, its target audience, or the overall content strategy. While individual content pieces may be optimized according to SEO guidelines, the overall user experience and coherence of the website’s content may be overlooked. A narrow focus on SEO analysis alone may lead to content that appears fragmented or disconnected from the site’s purpose.
• Evolving algorithms: Search engine algorithms are constantly changing and becoming more sophisticated. SEO content analysis tools may not always keep up with these changes, leading to outdated recommendations or strategies that are no longer effective. Staying up to date with the latest SEO trends and adjusting the content accordingly can be challenging, and relying solely on analysis tools may not provide the most current insights.
• Over-optimization: While optimization is essential, excessive optimization solely for search engines can result in content that feels unnatural or overly stuffed with keywords. If the primary focus is on pleasing search algorithms rather than providing valuable content for users, it can negatively impact the overall user experience and engagement.
• Lack of creativity and spontaneity: SEO content analysis tends to prioritize certain rules and guidelines. While these guidelines are important for search visibility, they may limit the creative expression or spontaneous nature of content creation. Strict adherence to SEO analysis recommendations may lead to content that feels robotic or lacks the unique voice of the brand or author.

It’s important to note that SEO content analysis tools help identify areas of improvement and provide insights, but they should be used in conjunction with human judgment, creativity, and an understanding of the target audience’s needs and preferences.

Best Practices for a Comprehensive SEO Content Analysis

Ready to conduct a detailed, comprehensive SEO content analysis on your website? Here are some of the best practices to follow:

Conduct a Content Audit

A thorough review of current blog posts and product pages will help you identify areas where optimization opportunities exist such as poor meta descriptions or titles lacking proper targeting around target keywords.

Using tools like Google Search Console can also give insights into which pages receive traffic but have low click-through rates due to poorly written title tags or meta descriptions.

The process involves analyzing all aspects of content including tone of voice, structure, layout, design elements (such as headings/subheadings), and images within text blocks.

Identify Keyword Opportunities

Keyword research is a critical component of any SEO content analysis. By identifying target keywords for your content pieces, you can optimize your content to rank higher in search results.

Once you’ve identified your target keywords, it’s important to place them strategically all over your content. By doing so, you can improve your search engine results and drive more traffic to your website.

Screenshot from Wordstream

Choose the Right Target Keyword

Keyword research is not just about selecting a high-volume keyword that seems relevant to your topic. You need to consider search intent and competition as well.

To choose the right target keyword, start with a broad list of potential keywords using tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Semrush. Then narrow down your options based on relevance, volume, and competition.

Consider what people are searching for when they enter specific queries into search engines. This will help you understand the intent behind each query so that you can create content that meets their needs effectively.

Additionally, look at how competitive each potential keyword is. If there are already many websites targeting this same phrase or term with high authority rankings, it may be difficult for your new website to compete against them without strong technical SEO practices in place.

Pro tip: If you’re already using BrandWell to write your content, you don’t need a separate keyword tool to find competitive keywords. You can do keyword research right inside the app and analyze these important metrics:

Define Target Personas and Buying Stages

To create relevant content pieces, it’s essential to understand your target audience and their needs at different stages of the buying process. By identifying these personas, you can tailor your content accordingly, ensuring it resonates with users’ search intent.

Identify and Fill Content Gaps

Content gap analysis is the process of finding content pieces that may be missing on your site. You can use the Ahrefs Content Gap tool to discover potential opportunities by comparing keyword rankings between sites.

Once you have identified these gaps, you can start creating new content.

Consider your target audience and their search intent when crafting new blog posts or product pages. Research what topics they are interested in by reviewing social media conversations or discussion forums where people discuss their problems and challenges.

Content gap analysis template from CoSchedule

Optimize Pages

Once you have identified areas for improvement, it’s time to focus on optimizing each page. This involves incorporating primary keywords in at least one internal link, ensuring proper formatting throughout the article, and potentially merging multiple related articles into a single optimized piece.

To improve your content’s search engine ranking, make sure to include target keywords in strategic locations such as headings, meta descriptions, and within the body text. Keep keyword density natural by avoiding overstuffing or forced usage of terms that don’t fit organically within the context of your writing.

Long-tail keywords are more specific search queries that can help your content rank higher. For example, instead of using a generic phrase like “SEO Tips,” you could use “Effective Strategies for Local SEO.”

Additionally, using Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords can help provide further relevance and context to your content.

If you find several existing pieces covering similar topics with overlapping information or poor keyword targeting, consider combining them into one comprehensive post. By consolidating these assets into an all-encompassing resource that covers the topic more in-depth, this approach helps fill any content gaps while providing readers with valuable insights from different angles.

Remember to update internal links after merging articles so users can easily navigate between relevant sections without encountering broken links or outdated references.

Ensure proper formatting throughout the article by maintaining consistency in font size, style, and color schemes, making it visually appealing and easy to read for users.

Assess Readability and User Experience

Creating content not only means delivering informative pieces. Your blog articles and landing pages should also be easy to read and understand.

To assess the readability of your content, you can use the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level tool which helps assess the complexity of your text and suggests improvements for better comprehension.

To further enhance your reader’s journey, make sure your website offers a smooth and enjoyable browsing experience. You can do this by optimizing website navigation, ensuring fast page load times, and making content accessible for various users with different devices or abilities.

SEO auditing platforms like Ahrefs Site Audit or Semrush Site Audit can help identify areas where user experience is poor so that you can make the necessary adjustments.

• Optimize website navigation: Ensure that menus are well-organized and easy to find by grouping related pages under appropriate headings.
• Focus on page load times: Compress images, minify CSS/JS files, and leverage browser caching techniques to improve loading speed across all devices.
• Make content fully accessible: Use descriptive alt tags for images, include transcripts for audio/video content, and employ proper heading structure (H1-H6) throughout your site.

Hemingway is one of the best readability checkers for improving SEO content

Taking these steps will result in a more engaging reading experience while simultaneously improving search engine rankings as Google prioritizes websites that offer a positive user experience.

Review Your Content Strategy Regularly

Do not simply rely on your content analysis. You should also review your content strategy regularly, keep an eye on how your competitors’ websites are doing, and stay on top of changes in Google ranking guidelines. All these steps should be part of your overall SEO strategy to push your business forward.

By following these best practices, you can improve your online visibility, organic traffic rates, and ultimately conversions and sales revenue.

Best Tools for SEO Content Analysis

There are several tools available to help you conduct a comprehensive SEO content analysis.

Here are some of the best tools that can help guide you when optimizing your website’s content for better search engine rankings.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that helps you optimize content for SEO directly within the WordPress editor. It evaluates content based on focus keywords, readability, meta tags, internal linking, and more. Yoast provides real-time feedback and suggestions for improving content to make it more SEO-friendly.

Moz Pro

Moz Pro offers a suite of SEO tools, including content analysis capabilities. It assesses on-page SEO factors such as keyword usage, readability, metadata, and page structure. Moz Pro also provides insights into how content is performing over time and suggests improvements to boost rankings.

Clearscope

Clearscope uses AI to analyze content and provide data-driven insights for improving SEO. It helps in identifying relevant terms and phrases to include in your content based on what top-ranking pages are using. Clearscope aims to optimize content to align with user intent and improve organic search performance.

BrandWell

Although primarily a long-form content writer, BrandWell integrates a full suite of content intelligence tools that include topic reports, content briefs, and optimization audits. These app features analyze everything from word count to readability of your top 50 competitors in organic results.

Here’s an example of a topic report from BrandWell:

Another cool feature is the real-time optimization audit you can run while you’re editing your article. Simply click the Get Optimization Feedback button and see how you can refine your content based on expert recommendations.

Here’s an example of an optimization audit report within the BrandWell text editor:

Each of these tools operates slightly differently but generally focuses on evaluating content against SEO best practices, analyzing keyword usage, assessing readability and user engagement metrics, and providing actionable recommendations to enhance content performance.

Choosing the right tool depends on your specific needs, budget, and the depth of analysis you require for your SEO content strategy.

Conclusion

A comprehensive SEO content analysis is essential for creating content that resonates with your target audience and drives traffic to your website. By using tools like Google Search Console and conducting keyword research, you can identify content gaps and opportunities for optimization.

With a solid content strategy in place, you can create content that aligns with search intent and improves your website’s ranking potential.