15+ Best Content Marketing Tools: Ranked & Reviewed

You can use content marketing tools to target better, retain, and engage an audience as a marketer or a writer.

Additionally, they serve other purposes to help optimize content overall.

Ahrefs is the best tool at your disposal because it hyper-focuses on SEO optimization and uses metrics to track site performance compared to your content.

An Overview of Content Marketing Tools

Content marketing involves developing and using good content to draw potential and current customers; this comes in the form of newsletters, videos, white papers, blogs, social media posts, and other popular types of content.

When companies do content marketing correctly, it exudes professionalism and ensures a high level of quality and organizational values for customers.

Here’s where the benefits of content optimization show themselves.

What is a Content Marketing Tool?

Content marketing tools belong to a software system that aids marketing teams in planning, collaborating, and creating content that boosts the notoriety of your brand.

Content marketing tools help to consolidate and streamline the entire generation process, including the campaign’s inception and the return on investment (ROI).

Why Are Content Marketing Tools Important?

Utilizing content marketing tools can help you save money and time by refining the kind of contact you produce and streamlining your content marketing strategy.

These tools can give you fresh ideas to write about, help you get visitors to your content, enable you to target your audience and help them to select a buying option.

Do I Need a Content Marketing Tool?

For digital marketers, making quality content has always produced great results—which is why content marketing tools are integral to your company’s success.

Using content marketing tools will make it easier for businesses to produce fantastic content creation for their customers and audience at a much lower price than it would cost them to hire a team of content professionals.

The Best Content Marketing Tools at a Glance

Below you’ll find free and paid content marketing tools available today:

What is the Best Content Marketing Tool?

Ahrefs is the best content marketing tool.

Ahrefs is the best tool for backlink checking, finding link-building opportunities, and keyword research.

What is the Best Free Content Marketing Tool?

Google Docs is the best free content marketing tool.

When it comes to collaboration Google Docs is the best by a mile.

Additionally, it is easy to use, and many users report that they have had pleasant experiences with the platform.

Features to Look for In Content Marketing Tools

You have countless options to choose from in the content marketing tools industry; you must know what to look for in a content marketing tool and what you need to best fulfill your needs.

1. Measures Improvement

Regarding publishing your content via videos, newsletters, social media, blogs, and other channels, accessibility will be the number one attribute to evaluate.

With CMS, you can centralize your content activity into one convenient place.

A quality CMS should have an analytics and tracking feature.

Having the ability to track the efficacy of your content marketing strategy, you can hone in on your most promising material; this allows you to know what works for you and what’s not.

2. Easy to Integrate

The database or tool/software should allow easy integration when using existing infrastructure.

Refrain from moving to a new WordPress blog if your content marketing tool cannot support it.

Your job is to find one that is compatible and easy to integrate.

3. Type of Content

It’s essential to choose content marketing tools that suit the type of content you’re creating and your needs.

For example, if you need to collaborate and share notes, you may choose Google Docs.

For keyword metrics and suggestions for SEO best practices, go with Ahrefs.

It depends on the type of content you create and how you need to optimize it for a more effective marketing strategy.

4. Budget

Some content marketing tools are costly, but they offer many features that can help take your business to the next level.

If you’re starting and trying to build an audience, you may need multiple tools to help you make an excellent first impression, build buyer personas, and create the best content for business growth.

5. Content Support

You want a content marketing tool that bolsters your content strategy by giving you a versatile platform and allowing leeway for a litany of content.

Best Content Marketing Tools: Our Top 3 Options [Ranked & Reviewed]

It’s crucial to find the best content marketing tools that can help refine your content, target your chosen audience, promote your content across various channels, and more.

There are numerous benefits to content marketing tools, and here are our top picks for the best choices out there.

Ahrefs: Our Pick

Ahrefs offers tools to make data-informed and intelligent content marketing decisions.

This is a simple platform.

You don’t have to be tech-savvy to use this platform.

The UI features many helpful tooltips to help explain the metrics and features.

Additionally, there’s a bevy of educational content on the Ahrefs YouTube channel and blog to help you optimize your results.

Key Features of Ahrefs

• No experience necessary: You don’t have to have prior SEO knowledge; Ahrefs is easy to learn and use and does all of the work for you.
• Keyword research: Use Ahrefs to conduct keyword research for various search engines such as Amazon and YouTube—typically, the most successful competitors provide search data for Google.

• Holistic SEO approach: You have access to all necessary tools for an SEO project: backlink analysis, site auditing, and keyword research.

• Broken link analysis: Performs broken link analysis; this is very easy in Ahrefs for both external and internal.

• Web auditing and tracking: Allows users to seamlessly audit Core Web Vitals performance. Additionally, it gives you access to lab and field data in one convenient place.

Why is Ahrefs a Great Solution?

Ahrefs serves as an all-in-one SEO toolset that provides free learning materials; this holistic approach encompasses analysis of your competitors, research on trending keywords on the web, optimization of your website, tracking of ranking progress, and input from the leaders of the industry.

Pros of Ahrefs

• Domain verification system: It has a liberal ‘domain verification system’ that allows you to utilize Ahrefs with various sites at an affordable price.
• Power seats: It’s relatively inexpensive to add more ‘seats’ for Ahrefs and increases the possibility for collaboration with others.

• Traffic metrics: Their ‘traffic potential’ metric offers a terrific way to identify undiscovered keywords—you can’t find this feature anywhere else.

Cons of Ahrefs

• Lack of customer service options: Phone support is unavailable with Ahrefs.

• No backlink building: You don’t have access to built-in contact surfacing or project management tools to assist you in backlink building.

• Sluggish interface: The interface can be slow at times.

Ahrefs vs. Other Top Recommendations: How They Compare

When you compare Ahrefs to other top competitors such as Frase.io and Word agents, Ahrefs comes out on top regarding SEO tools.

Ahrefs is a platform trusted by marketing professionals and SEOs worldwide for having one of the best tool sets for SEO, thanks to their top-notch data.

Conversely, Frase.io is optimal when trying to develop ideas for content outlines, and it also features other helpful tools at an affordable price.

Ahrefs Pricing

Ahrefs offers four paid subscriptions to suit a broad range of organization sizes:

• Lite plan: $99/month
• Standard plan: $199/month
• Advanced plan: $399/month
• Enterprise plan: $999/month

Each of the plans above features comprehensive SEO toolkits that will let you enhance your digital footprint and SERP ranking on your site.

With each price increase, you gain more updates, data allowances, and dashboard features that will help you increase your online presence.

Can You Try Ahrefs for Free?

There is no Ahrefs free trial; however, there’s a deal that customers can use concerning free services.

Ahrefs gives new users free access to their Webmaster Tools and various free SEO tools that you’ll have access to without signing up.

Conclusion: Should You Choose Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is the ideal tool for anything ranging from tracking the rankings of your keywords to evaluating your competitors’ traffic and keywords and much more.

It grants you the ability to research ten search engines, including Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, and Google.

Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer is a one-of-a-kind keyword research tool that exceeds search volumes and displays the estimated number of clicks for search results.

Frase.io: Budget Pick

Frase.io is a powerful SEO content creator and AI writer.

It’s an excellent solution for bloggers, as it creates articles much quicker than a copywriter can.

Frase.io also conducts a competitor analysis, automates first drafts, performs SERP gathering, automated first drafts, and more.

You can analyze your website to see where you need to improve.

Key Features of Frase.io

• Frase.io templates: Frase.io has numerous templates that can streamline content generation. You can also build your templates.
• Grammar check: The grammar check tool checks for spelling errors, run-on sentences, and more.
• Citation finder: Locates and correctly formats citations within your content.
• Technical SEO: Use the web crawler to identify and monitor technical issues on your website.
• Data visualization: This feature displays graphs, charts, and other critical metrics related to content performance.

Why is Frase.io a Great Solution?

Frase.io is an excellent solution because it does work on the front and back end to ensure well-rounded keyword optimization.

The copywriting tool powered by AI extracts topics and keywords from Google to help you understand the best way to structure your content so that you can rank as high as possible.

In turn, you’ll generate more organic traffic and attract more visitors- garnering you more clicks, ad revenue, and sales if you have products on your website.

Pros of Frase.io

• Content analyzer: This helps you understand opportunities you’d otherwise miss. You can connect your Google search console to this app, generate click-through rate data, create impressions, and learn ways to improve your content.
• Content writing: The Content Writer feature helps you create outlines and high-quality content that you can insert directly into the app.
• Content optimizer: This tool allows you to optimize your content. It compares how your content performs when stacked against the competition.

Cons of Frase.io

• No internal link insight: The tool doesn’t offer suggestions for internal links.
• Spam: Frase.io doesn’t eliminate issues with spam.
• No mobile app: There are no desktop or mobile apps. It’s only available as the website version.

Frase.io vs. Other Top Recommendations: How They Compare

Compared to the other recommendations, Frase.io stacks up well against the competition.

It’s a powerful AI tool that does a great job of optimizing your content, though you can experience more glitches than you would with Ahrefs because the UI sometimes gets cluttered.

Frase.io does, however, use natural language generation to make writing faster.

You can use these tools together for content that checks all the boxes.

Frase.io Pricing

• Solo plan: $19.99/month (For those who don’t produce more than seven pieces of content each month)
• Basic plan: $44.99/month (For those just starting with content optimization and SEO practices)
• Team plan: $114.99/month (For advanced SEO functionality)
• Enterprise: Please call for a custom quote (Custom plans for any team.)

Can You Try Frase.io for Free?

Frase.io allows a free trial lasting five days for $1.

Therefore, if you’re unsatisfied with their services, you may request a refund with the free trial period.

Depending on your content, five days may not be enough time to fully explore what Frase.io has to offer.

Conclusion: Should You Choose Frase.io?

Content creators and SEO specialists trust Frase.io for researching, writing, and optimizing top-notch SEO content quicker than you could imagine.

Businesses can develop briefs for the whole team in minutes, product content comparisons amongst competitors, and even review conduct analyses all in one place. It’s an excellent choice for small to medium-sized businesses that are just starting out on their content creation endeavors.

Best Free Content Marketing Tools Options

Here are the best free content marketing tools available to create top-notch content at no additional cost to you:

Google Docs

Google Docs are amongst the most popular word processors in the world.

It’s web-based and free to use, and you can use it for your personal work or as a tracking, presentation, and storage service within your company.

You can also upload your blogs that you type in Google Docs directly into your content management system.

Google Docs contains features such as collaborating and sharing documents with others, which is perfect when brainstorming and sharing ideas.

Why is Google Docs a Great Option?

Google Docs is easy to use for all experience levels.

It checks for spelling errors, and you can insert screenshots, tables, images, shapes, and more.

You can also play around with numerous plug-ins to get the best user experience.

Google Docs also allows you to give certain people editing access based on viewing only or going in to make changes as they please.

Drawbacks to Google Docs

There are a few drawbacks to using the Docs program, but some content creators complain about the word checker not being as accurate as other marketing tools.

The finished product may still have grammatical errors, and you’d have to use another program, such as Grammarly, to correct your content more comprehensively.

Google Docs also doesn’t offer as much of a variety of themes and templates.

WordPress 

WordPress.org is a world leader in content management.

Marketers across all industries can benefit from the tools provided to create a website or blog.

There’s post scheduling, deleted page restoration, website portability, and more.

Why is WordPress a Great Option?

WordPress is an excellent option because it’s easy to create a website in minutes.

The platform has many templates you can further customize, such as built-in plug-ins, making scalability easy.

According to the Search Engine Journal, WordPress is the most commonly used CMS in the world.

It powers around 39.5 percent of all the websites on the internet.

It’s a reputable site with an extensive library of responsive themes and free maintenance and support.

Drawbacks to WordPress

Some primary concerns when using WordPress are slowing your website’s speed and making it sluggish, resulting from plug-in bloat.

You can only integrate so many before it becomes problematic.

Sometimes the post-release function doesn’t send out the posts on time.

Lastly, you have to update the platform constantly.

Notable Mentions: Other Content Marketing Tools To Check Out

Other content marketing tools may not have made it to the top of the list, but they’re outstanding contenders nonetheless.

They can serve various business needs and may suit you better than other options.

Jasper.ai

Jasper.ai is an AI-powered writing tool that curates content five times faster than the average human writer.

Jasper produces one hundred percent original and accurate content.

You don’t have to worry about plagiarism; some categories have pre-written templates.

Why is Jasper.ai a Great Option?

Think of Jasper.ai as a 24/7 virtual writing assistant.

This tool is reliable and flexible, creating excellent content across various topics.

Whether it’s informative content, a keyword or keyword phrase, ad campaigns, or unique niches, Jasper.ai has you covered.

Enter the information into the system, and you’ll get instant content in the perfect format for a smoother workflow.

Jasper.ai has a simple interface that’s easy to navigate and supports more than 25 languages.

Drawbacks to Jasper.ai

Sometimes you have to fact-check the information that Jasper.ai produces.

You might find that the numbers and phrases in some content are incorrect.

There might also be a few words repeated when writing long blogs, articles, and more.

Also, there’s a significant learning curve for those who aren’t tech-savvy.

Jasper.ai Pricing

• Starter plan: $29/month (20,000 words, 50+ copywriting tools, unlimited projects).
• Premium plan: $59/month (access to everything from the starter plan plus additional tools like the revision history, certifications, and more).
• Customizable plan: Call customer service to get a custom quote for a specific word length.

Can You Try Jasper.ai for Free?

You can dry the Jasper.ai free trial for five days.

You’ll also receive 10K words at no additional cost.

The trial period comes with all the templates and features of the paid subscription plans.

Semrush

Semrush offers users valuable insight into how their competitor’s sites perform in display advertising, link building, and organic search ranking.

You can easily see the keywords that earn organic traffic and compare them to your company’s keyword performance.

Why is Semrush a Great Option?

Semrush is an excellent SEO solution.

This tool has over 50 other on-rent marketing tools that focus on social media marketing, PPC, competitor research, and other KPIs to help expand your audience.

Semrush has backlink checkers, technical SEO auditing, a straightforward user interface, constant updates, and solid customer support if you have questions or run into problems with the program.

Drawbacks to Semrush

A few drawbacks to using Semrush include the traffic analytics data needing to be more accurate.

It’s a rough estimate that’s more accurate than some other content marketing tools you may use, but it still falls short.

The data is also only relevant to Google and no other search engines, which limits your ability to develop a marketing strategy if you’re relying on performance metrics.

Semrush Pricing

These features come with basic SEO tools and reporting functions, but the more you pay, the more advanced metric tools you can access.

• Free plan: $0/month
• Pro plan: $199.95/month
• Guru plan: $229.95/month
• Business plan: $449.95/month

Can You Try Semrush for Free?

You can always sign up for the free account that Semrush offers, which has limited tool access and usage limits.

A 7-day Semrush free trial is available to you if you want to test the paid plans before committing.

Rank Math 

Rank Math is an SEO tool installed on a WordPress platform.

It has a dashboard that’s easy to navigate and other features that help you optimize your content.

These include meta description generators, ALT texts, link building, and more.

This tool can produce analytics for both Bing and Google search engines.

Why is Rank Math a Great Option?

Rank Math is an excellent tool in your CMS arsenal because it doesn’t negatively impact your site’s performance, and the intuitive display is easy to use.

There’s a wide range of SEO metrics and data, making integrating your content across all social media channels easier.

The developers continuously add helpful features to Rank Math, and the customer support team is highly responsive.

With continued improvements, Rank Math is quickly becoming bloggers’ preferred content marketing tool.

Drawbacks to Rank Math

As fantastic a tool as RM is, there are a few drawbacks.

For starters, this tool is more expensive than some of the other options on the list that offer comparable results.

Some beginners report feeling overwhelmed by the features crammed into the display.

Also, there is the issue of compatibility problems with third-party plug-ins.

Rank Math Pricing

Rank Math offers plenty of features that can help optimize your site and increase lead generation while driving organic traffic.

There is a free version that will impact your SEO score, but the Pro plan is the most chosen alternative that makes a significant difference.

• Pro plan: $59/month (perfect for entrepreneurs and bloggers)
• Business plan: $199/month (up to 200 client websites in addition to everything you get for the pro plan)

Can You Try Rank Math for Free?

There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee with Rank Math Pro.

If dissatisfied with their premium features, you can email the customer support team at [email protected], and they’ll issue a refund immediately, no questions asked.

Canva

Canva is a top-tier design tool with drag-and-drop capability for those who don’t have professional experience but want to create beautiful illustrations.

Canva can help you design crisp images for podcasts, videos, social media graphics, thumbnails, blogs, and more.

It’s an easy way to learn how to market your content visually.

Why is Canva a Great Option?

Canva has an intuitive user interface that allows beginners and advanced designers alike to develop images suitable for infographics, social media print materials, and blogging sites.

Are you an influencer who needs to add a little pizzazz to your Twitter cover photo, or perhaps you’re creating a memorable background picture for your website?

Canva is the best solution for content marketing focused on design and photos.

Drawbacks to Canva

Canva has a limited number of templates on their platform, and sometimes you can’t design unique elements on them.

Their export settings are also more restrictive, and you can’t move your created image from one template to another.

Lastly, there are concerns among users that the alignment is a little off-centered sometimes.

Canva Pricing

Each package comes with a certain number of images the user can create and credits for more features.

• Free plan: 0$/month (with limited features)
• Pro plan: $12.99/month (for up to five people)
• Enterprise plan: $30/month (per person for a minimum of 25 people)

Can You Try Canva for Free?

You may be able to use a discount on Canva, but it depends on what type of account you have with Canva.

Also, they offer consistent discounts and promotions for extended (annual) plans and team packages.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most widely used content marketing tools focusing on displaying web analytics data.

It can scan your page and check your site for the average bounce rate, lead generation rate, and the best ways to incorporate Google ads.

Many of the features are free with Google Analytics, which integrates seamlessly with WordPress blogs.

Why is Google Analytics a Great Option?

The basic configurations of Google Analytics make it a suitable candidate for beginners, as it’s easy enough to learn.

It’s such a powerful tool that it allows you to track goals, set up behavioral events, analyze product purchases, review submission forms, and more.

This information is easy to collect because it can track the data automatically when you copy the code to your chosen website.

All of the information is in one central location and a convenient dashboard.

Drawbacks to Google Analytics

As is the case for many analytics websites, Google can’t track everything that occurs on your site at once.

Therefore, there are some issues with accuracy, which means you can’t rely on the figures as facts as opposed to approximations.

Sometimes information is missing, or it tracks useless data, or you need someone to set the tracking functions up for you if it’s confusing.

Google Analytics Pricing

There are two options for Google available: Google Analytics and Google Analytics 360.

Google Analytics is the standard and free version, which many people say is sufficient for their business needs.

Google Analytics 360 is a pricing system split into tiers.

The cost starts from $12,500/month and $150,000/year.

Can You Try Google Analytics for Free?

Google Analytics is already a free program with a decent amount of basic and premium features.

However, you’ll incur a recurring fee if you need something more professional, robust, and packed full of cool plug-ins.

Mailchimp 

Many content marketing strategies involve sending emails, and you need a solid solution that automates things and makes them more efficient.

There’s no better email CMS tool than MailChimp, which features a dashboard accessible through your desktop or mobile phone.

Up to a specific number of subscribers and emails, it’s also a totally free service.

Why is Mailchimp a Great Option?

Mailchimp is a flexible, user-friendly, inexpensive way to send emails automatically.

This software also features an advanced version to integrate with Instagram and Facebook advertising as well as monitor segmentation opt-ins.

They have a lot of templates with various designs, from formal to whimsical, classic, and more.

The program has tutorials explaining how to configure funneling email options and set up tools for re-engaging.

Drawbacks to Mailchimp

Many users wish MailChimp had a few more template designs available with the free plan.

Also, Mailchimp can feel clunky to operate sometimes.

You also can’t schedule emails to go out on the free plan.

Mailchimp Pricing

• Free plan: $0/month (limited support after days and limited contacts)
• Premium plan: $299/month (10,000 contacts)
• Standard plan: $17/month (500 contacts)
• Essentials plan: $11/month (500 contacts)

*Contacts allowance ranges from 500- 250,000+

Can You Try Mailchimp for Free?

Users can take advantage of the 30-day

Mailchimp free trial to create better marketing content.

If you like what they offer, you can choose one of the subscription plans.

Even More Options To Check Out

Here are even more options for suitable content marketing tools that’ll take your blog, website, or business to the next level:

Asana

Asana is a mobile and web-based project management application.

It makes it easier to share information, assign tasks, and stay up-to-date about what’s going on when you’re working with more than one person.

Asana streamlines the processes you need most: task assignment and follow-up.

There’s no significant focus on SEO or content creation as with the other choices we have.

Also, the UI can be confusing if you don’t understand many of the controls, as is often reported.

Loom

Loom is a high-quality video recording tool similar to that of Zoom.

You can communicate effectively with others, annotate and highlight things said during the videos, and collaborate as well.

The controls are easy to use, and it’s a great tool for creating educational videos.

Loom makes it easier to explain things online, make short videos for entertainment purposes, and so on.

The drawbacks of Loom are that many people feel that the app receives updates constantly, but some of the features still need to be improved, such as the scheduling option to send out a video or the editing tools.

HubSpot

HubSpot is one of the most well-known CRM tools that you can use to automate your marketing efforts.

Most of the features you’d need are free through HubSpot, such as a live chat function, a WordPress plug-in, a form builder, and other popup tools.

The downsides to using HubSpot are that it can get expensive, the templates provided are challenging to modify, the reporting functions are limited, and the A/B testing on lower packages is non-existent.

CoSchedule

CoSchedule is one of the top headline analyzers on the market.

It scores how effective your headline is while offering feedback on how to improve it.

It can be the difference between getting someone to click your link or passing you by.

This tool helps you to plan, publish, and optimize your headlines.

Aside from getting more traffic, there are some things to look out for with CoSchedule.

The layout can be confusing because it looks cluttered or specific controls look too similar to others.

Also, you can only upload up to one file at a time, even if you’re only working on a short section, such as the headline.

BuzzStream

BuzzStream is an outreach and link-building tool.

When you need to send emails, BuzzStream researches prospects, tracks reply rates, sends follow-up emails, and more.

The outreach campaigns are very organized, and you can see how you’re performing regarding your goals and the results.

BuzzStream is another application that has a steep learning curve.

The UI issues that the tool presents can make the site slow and clunky, as it doesn’t integrate well with other plug-ins.

ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is a powerful, intuitive, effective content marketing tool that helps promote online courses, communicate with others, host a webinar, try to sell a product, and so on.

When you’re trying to scale your business, it’s one of the best options available.

ClickFunnels doesn’t allow email marketing for some of the lower plans.

Using certain functions, such as formatting the user interface, is challenging.

You don’t have the choice to add multiple opt-in forms on your website as some other tools offer.

Other Products Relevant to Content Marketing Tools

In addition to content marketing tools, business owners will need to invest in a few other tools that can help optimize their content, and save time and money.

• Content Management Software: A content management system is perfect for enterprises that need to manage how they create and modify digital content. If you run a larger business or website, having CMS software is essential for success. Check out our list of the top CMS systems to make business operations more efficient.
• Content Creation Services: Many content creation tools are available to make your job more effective. These services come in various forms auditory, visual, and written. Review the top services available at the moment.
• Content Optimization Tools: Optimizing your content is the best way to rank higher in search results. It includes improving readability, adding keywords, linking to internal and external links, and so on.

Wrapping Up

Content marketing tools are necessary when focusing on quality and engaging and maintaining your target audience.

You need optimized content to drive organic traffic to your website, blog, social media account, etc.

Ahrefs is the best choice because it’s a powerful SEO tool that tracks data, makes suggestions, and is easy to use for all experience levels.