With all the buzz about Google’s new AI implementation called “RankBrain,” there are some new tools popping up. Times are a-changing, and we SEOers need to stay on top of potential new strategies for our clients. I was approached by an industry leader to test out a new tool that is specifically built for semantic search optimization. What can I say, I couldn’t resist.
So what exactly is Market Muse? Great question.
Market Muse is a software solution designed to be a semantic search content optimization tool.
There are three parts to it, and they are as follows:
- Site Audit
- Content Audit
- Content Analyzer
Site Audit
The main purpose of the Site Audit is to help with developing a content plan. This tool generates keywords for topic modeling and gives keyword variations complete with search volume and more. These keyword variations are available for an Excel download for further analysis. You are also able to compare your site against competitors for a particular keyword. A couple of drawbacks are that you can only analyze one search term at a time, and the tool is a little slow when processing.
Content Audit
The content audit tool scans your site for low-quality pages for on-page optimization and internal linking opportunities. This tool gives the client’s on-page content a report card for internal pages based off a scrub of an entire site for a particular search query.
Content Analyzer
The Content Analyzer helps you improve your content on a page level. This tool shows you related topic keywords, related topic keyword variations, and the top pages appearing in the search results for the particular search query you are analyzing.
The Content Score is calculated by:
1 point for any topic mentioned once in the content
2 points for any topics mentioned 2 or more times
Site Audit
The Site Audit tool is designed to build a content plan. The site audit crawls your entire site and compares the content to the specific keyword you plug in to compare it against.
You can then sort by number of mentions and drill down into the variants of those mentions. These variants show you the volume by search query. This tool gives you close variants to potentially do topic modeling around.
This is a great way to build out a content strategy for your site.
You can export your keyword variants into an Excel doc to slice and dice the data.
There is an option to compare competitors. You can sort this data and export as well. The site audit only allows you to analyze one search term at a time, so you will want to be very selective when using this tool.
Content Audit
The main purpose of the Content Audit Tool is to find low quality content. The tool is similar to the site audit tool, but the main difference is that it shows you pages where there is room for improvement for on-page optimization and internal linking. When you click on the content score improve link, Market Muse takes you to the content analyzer tool.
Content Analyzer
You can conduct a content audit and eventually end up in the Content Analyzer or you can go directly to the the Content Analyzer. This tool analyzes content on a page level and gives you relevant keyword variations to include on your page. It also shows you competitors at the bottom of the page and their content score. This is a great way for you to see what your competitor’s content looks like and how you can alter your topic modeling to include more keywords.
In the Content Analyzer section you get a related topics section. This part of the tool is great for adding more keywords for building out a robust topic modeling strategy.
When you click on the plus button (+) Market Muse drills down into that particular related topic and gives you variants for potential on-page optimizations.
Below the related topics section is the “most Powerful Pages” section for a particular search term you are researching. This gives you instant access to what sites other than yours are ranking. The content score helps you narrow down the stronger pages so you can analyze those first.
Overall I believe this is a great tool to use in conjunction with a strong on-page optimization strategy. My recommendation would be to use this tool for top level navigation optimization, internal linking, topic modeling, and developing a long form content plan. I would definitely track every keyword and annotate the pages you optimize in Google Analytics for understanding the overall impact of using this tool. You could go a step further and create custom content groups and really measure your success with this tool from there.
