13+ Content Editing Tools for Marketers and Writers

Whether you’re an experienced content marketer or an employee of a small business asked to begin writing posts for the company blog, there’s one step in the process that creators at any level cannot afford to skip: editing.

As it gets harder for content to get any exposure at all, you simply can’t risk your credibility and authority by publishing text that’s filled with grammar mistakes or is difficult to read. While it’s always ideal for your content to be edited by professionals, there are plenty of tools that can help you optimize your writing and ensure that readers (and potential customers) aren’t turned away by unclear content.

Unlike human editors, though, these tools can’t assess important elements of content marketing like:

Is your content valuable and relevant to your audience?
Does your content fit your brand guidelines and style?
Is your content likely to attract new followers?
How does your content fit into and enhance your other marketing strategies?
Is your content optimized for its intended platform (i.e. social, email, blog, etc.)?

Nevertheless, these tools excel at covering your bases: making sure your content is grammatically correct, unique and readable.

Proofreading: Grammar and Spelling

#1 – Grammarly

Grammarly is arguably the most popular content editing tool currently available. They provide a free browser extension that analyzes the grammar, punctuation, spelling, style and sentence structure of everything you write, as you write it. They also offer premium plans that include an MS Office plugin and plagiarism checks.

Similar browser extension tools: Ginger, WhiteSmoke, CorrectEnglish, Scribens

#2 – SpellCheckPlus

SpellCheckPlus is a very simple, free tool that provides proofreading and grammar suggestions. Simply paste in your text and let the tool point out places for possible improvement.

Similar copy-and-paste tools: Proofread Bot, GrammarCheck, Writer

#3 – After the Deadline

After the Deadline is another copy-and-paste text analyzer that uses artificial intelligence to provide style, grammar and spelling suggestions. One of its biggest advantages is that it’s also available as a WordPress Plugin.

Similar WordPress plugins: Editist Style Guide Checker, WP Spell Check

#4 – WordRake

Content often has the most impact when it’s succinct. And while creators should constantly strive to streamline their writing by learning to cut out filler, writers can also use WordRake to tighten and clarify their copy. WordRake is available as an extension for Word and Outlook.

#5 – Slick Write

Slick Write provides an in-browser writing tool that can save your work and analyze it as you write. It offers different settings for what you’d like to track, allowing you to toggle the analysis of certain types of grammar issues. For example, if you’re creating law-related content, you could turn off the tool’s warnings about the use of legalese.

Plagiarism

#6 – Copyscape

With the sheer amount of content being published every day, it’s worthwhile to ensure your text doesn’t match any already-published content too closely, especially if you’re in a saturated industry. Whether you’re concerned about mistakenly publishing some text from another website or you want to check up on a new colleague’s writing practices, it’s best to prevent any SEO or copyright problems by checking your content with Copyscape. Simply paste your text into the tool and Copyscape will show you any web pages that have matching content.

#7 – Quetext

Similar to Copyscape, Quetext provides a copy-and-paste plagiarism check. The interface is (arguably) better than Copyscape, however, and its premium version provides slightly more options.

#8 – Unicheck

Designed primarily for academic writing, Unicheck allows you to perform a plagiarism check anytime, anywhere though its compatibility with cloud-based services like Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive.

Style & Readability

#9 – Hemingway Editor

The Hemingway App is one of the best readability tools available, providing all sorts of suggestions for making content clearer and more direct. It analyzes things like passive voice, sentence length and unnecessary word complexity. It even provides a readability score and grade level analysis.

#10 – CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

The headline of your content can affect readers more than anything else. CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer helps you create the most optimized title by analyzing the structure and effectiveness of your headline. It determines the impact of every single word in your title, sorting them into “common,” “uncommon,” “emotional,” and “power.” It also gives a length analysis, keyword analysis, overall headline score and more.

#11 – Cliche Finder

Other services on this list will help you find cliches, but this tool is the simplest (and it’s free). Just paste your text in and see all the places where you can make your writing stronger by editing overused cliches.

SEO

#12 – Moz On-Page Optimization Checklist

Most writers and editors know they need to include certain keywords in their content to optimize it for SEO. However, it’s not always easy to determine if your keywords are placed optimally or if you have an ideal keyword density. Moz’s On-Page Optimization tool is one of the premier services for analyzing content and providing insight into potential SEO keyword improvements.

#13 – Yoast

Perhaps the most famous SEO plugin for WordPress, Yoast provides a real-time analysis of your WordPress pages as you create them. Editing your content according to Yoast’s guidelines can help ensure good keyword usage and optimal readability.

Again, professional content editors are always ideal, as there are elements of good writing and content marketing that no tool can ever truly analyze. However, if you have to self-edit for any reason, you should definitely run your content through some of these tools. Either way, though, the worst thing you could do is create some content and publish it without anyone giving it a second look. Don’t risk sabotaging your content marketing efforts by failing to do some basic editing.