MarketMuse review – Premium Content Research Tool

If you take your content marketing seriously, then you know how important research is. The more facts and the deeper the research, the better your content will perform. Today I want to introduce you to MarketMuse, a high – end content research tool with multiple content modules. Let’s check it out.

So this is the MarketMuse platform. It is divided into projects and applications. And then right now they’re also running a beta on the Topic Navigator. Within the project section, you can start a new planning. A planning is basically an article.

1. Features of MarketMuse
2. MarketMuse Pricing
3. Alternatives to MarketMuse
4. Future of MarketMuse
5. Pros & Cons using MarketMuse
6. Last thoughts on MarketMuse

Features of MarketMuse

So, this article, I want to write a MarketMuse review. I have ordered a brief down here, a first draft, but that one is processed by time, so we have to wait for that. But then in the brief section here, I can then build my own headings. So over here we can see that we have some ranking subheadings that we can use in this case. So, for instance, MarketMuse alternatives and MarketMuse competitors.

I like that one. So let’s pull that over. And then there are questions I want to answer. Again, we can look at the questions’ section over here. And all of this is the research pulled based on my search phrase, which in this case is MarketMuse review, which you can see here.

For the questions let’s say, does MarketMuse help with backlinks, and what does the content score in MarketMuse mean? And what is credit, and what are they used for? So this section I like. Now let’s go to the next section here. Again, we will add a sub heading.

What sector does MarketMuse operate in? Let’s go to the questions again. Let’s take what are the main features of MarketMuse? This one I will actually move up here because it’s about alternatives and competitors. And then let’s keep it at this.

I know that it’s important that your subheadings has something to do with the questions, but let’s see how this goes because it is to some extent relevant to the question. So let’s confirm and process this brief. So it will take a couple of minutes to process this specific brief. So let’s see later on the video whether it’s done or not. And let’s see the result.

So right now it’s just running in the background. In the meantime, let’s go and check out some other modules. The first module here is creating research. So let’s take a topic here and write WordPress Image optimisation plugins. And then let’s press run.

You can also enter a URL if you want to optimise based on that URL. But let’s see how this will go and what we will get back as a result. It is now done running the research, and it took quite some time, so do have patience because there’s a lot of data that needs to go through. But here you can see that we get a lot of related topics and this is relevant in order to create authority within a search phrase. So if I want to cover WordPress Image Optimisation plugins as a search phrase, you can see some phrases down here which are used.

I should maybe take a look at it and also use it in my article. So the first one is, of course, my own search phrase that is often used one or two times in an article. Then there is Image Optimisation, used more than ten times, and it goes on and on down here. What’s interesting is that it also comes with specific keywords that I can use, which is specific plugins. So here we have Ewww Image Optimiser, which is a plugin I have also previously reviewed.

If we go further down, then we also have ShortPixel, another plugin. Then we have phrases like Optimise Image, WordPress Image Optimiser Plugin, WordPress Image Compression plugin, and so on. What you need to use this module for is to see what is relevant for my search phrase. So when I enter my search phrase, what do I also need to focus on? Of course, you don’t have to take all of these modules and then enter them into your article.

You need to take those that are relevant and those that are maybe used a little more than the other ones because the less they’re used, maybe the less relevant they are. But it’s not always the case and that’s why it’s so difficult. So you need to use your common sense in picking out the words that you want to include in your article. But for now I’ve just chosen some, and I can then add to my inventory. Now let’s move on to compete.

This is a fascinating tool. So I have used the same phrase here, WordPress Image Optimisation Plugins and what we can use this for is to find content gaps. So you can see that if we see red then it means it’s used several times. So this website used it one to two times. But other than that, this search phrase might be a content gap in this case.

Going further down you can see a search phrase like Image is heavily populated, and you can see it’s used more than ten times on almost all the websites because these websites here are the top ranking on this specific search phrase. Moving further down, you can see a search phrase like optimised Image. It’s also not used that much. It could also be a content gap and going further down it’s used fairly enough.

But the further you get down, the bigger content gaps you see. So like for instance, Original Image is used to some extent, but an Optimised image is only used on two websites, and they’re used one to two times on those websites. Large images are not used so often either. I don’t think anyone is searching for large image, but it’s just interesting and this is how you find those content gaps to see what you need to focus on. It’s a fascinating tool, and it is the same keywords as we saw from the research.

Now the optimise section, is where you can write your content for this specific search phrase and then see how you can score higher Because of this optimised module, you have a score. And this score is based on how many times you’re using these specific words. So you can see that we have the different modules compete which I just showed you, and then the research where we can see our topics here. So if I write a WordPress image optimisation plugin, then you can see it’s getting green.

And that’s because I have used some words here. The same if I write a PNG image, then you can see again, this one here is then coming up and the same we see with WP compress. Of course, right now I’m just writing nonsense. This is just to show you how you write a great article within MarketMuse because, of course, you need to write something that makes sense now in order to change from only writing a paragraph to also changing headings to enable the static control bar. Here I can change. So it’s H1 for instance, or an H4. And then I can write something like compress. Is this the best plugin? So that’s like one H4 for instance.

And here you can see your content score is now nine. We need to be at least 46, but 60 would be the best part, because then we have a higher chance of ranking on this specific search phrase. It’s counting your words, what the average words should be and the target that you should try and aim for. And all of these words out here you can use both for inspiration to what to write about. But it’s also important to include some of these words.

And when we look at the compete, then you can see how you measure between these, because right now our content score is nine. And all of these, except for this one right here is going higher than nine, and they have a higher count of words. So we need to write a lot more in order to just be in the mix here to rank for this specific keyword. In the feed here you can see suggestions on what we should focus on. So this is what MarketMuse finds important for this search phrase. So they’re telling me that I need to use the word plugin more, I need to write more about WP Compress.

I need to use the word image more and so on down here. So this is like recommendations from MarketMuse on how you create the best possible article for this specific search phrase. We can also save our writing, and it’s important to do this because otherwise you lose all of your writing. Here you can save it to your inventory, and then we can copy for publishing, and it is just copied to a clipboard. There is no integration between MarketMuse and WordPress.

That would be a nice add-on. But this is how you create content within MarketMuse based on the research that we just did before with research and competition Now the next point which I would also like to be part of the optimised, but it’s not possible in this sense is questions because within questions we have a lot of questions that we can focus on answering with articles. So, of course, you can ask a question, like what do WordPress Image Optimiser plugins do? Then press run in, and then we can run it and optimise it to create an article based on this specific question.

And that is often done, and it’s very successful to do it this way. But you can also include these questions in a long article. So you take five, six, seven questions, and then you answer them within one article. This makes sense when the questions are close to each other. Of course if it’s questioned in north, east, south, west, then don’t do it.

But if they’re close to each other, it’s a great idea, and then we can choose to run it in research which I’ve also shown you, compete, optimise or in connect and Connect is the last application in here. So again we’ll write WordPress Image Optimisation plugins in the Connect module, and then we’ll see what results we get. Now the Connect is done. And what’s interesting about Connect is that you find links that you can link to or link from. So I have entered my website within MarketMuse when I was setting it up and here it’s showing me that internally I can link from all of these specific articles to the new article that I’m building about WordPress Image Optimisation plugins.

And going further down, it’s also showing me related keywords like WordPress plugin, then these articles might be great, WordPress Image, then these articles might be great. So this is a great way, because internal link building is so important. It’s so significant that when a visitor reads your article that they always have the next step to go to and that is often found within the article. So this is a great module to find those links, and they also have external links. So let’s say I’m writing about ShortPixel as a plugin then I can link to this external article here talking about ShortPixel or I can link to ten Best WordPress Image Optimisation plugins or six Best WordPress Image Compression plugins and so on.

So this is just a great way to find those specific links that you can use, and you can also use this as inspiration to go in and see what they have talked about and then maybe you can use some of it in your own article. We also have networking competition, but it didn’t find anything. Now they are also running a beta module called Topic Navigator. This is still new, and I have been trying to run it with some different search phrases, and it is limited to what results I get. So, just for the sake of this video, I will just take a search phrase like WordPress optimisation and run this.

So we show we got some data. With the Topic Navigator you can see that these specific topics they’re searched on 10 to 30 times. So this is basically like a keyword research tool. Do however be aware that just because MarketMuse says that this one WordPress optimisation is searched 30 times a month, that doesn’t mean that it’s exactly correct because I could imagine that it searched a lot more than that. But it’s just an indication to see whether you should focus on it or not because over here in the history you can also see that it goes very much up and down. So, in October 2020 there were 70 searches on it, and then it went down from there all the way.

And here in November 2021, there were zero searches. So this is just a great way to see if you should focus on it or not. I will say as long as there are just more than zero searches then it’s worth focusing on the article. But these are the keywords that you also have related topics. In this case it didn’t find anything and this is going back to what I said in the beginning.

It is still a new module, so it is limited to what they have of data. But now we’ve been through all the applications. Let’s try and go back to our project to see if our brief is done, and it is done here. So you can see that they are suggesting a lot of stuff and this is based on research. So let’s just start from the top, so you can see they are suggesting that I would use MarketMuse Review as my H1 basically as the article heading.

Then they have some subtopics like Content, Content Optimisation, Content Marketing, Content Score. They are basically, different modules, so this is great to use. They don’t have any additional topics, and then we have the subheadings that we did and in the subheadings we have this you have already seen MarketMuse Alternatives and MarketMuse Competitors. I have added some questions and here they are mentioning some topics I should focus on within this subheading.

So SEO Software, Content Creation, Content Brief, official website, page Optimiser Pro, are not so relevant. Google Search Console could be, better content I could also focus on. So this is okay. Then we have an anchor that they suggested, Google Search Console. When I use that, then I make a link to this internal article I have. And for the website auditor they recommended a link to an external article and there’s no additional topics, and it is the same we see here. Again, the subheading we added with questions, what topics they recommend that we add, some links both internal and external.

I can see it is only showing one here, but they have 39 ways that they want to show what I can rank to. So this is great. This is an easy way to build up this specific article, and we can always add new sections for this brief to be elaborated even more. We can then save and finish, and now the report is ready. So now I cannot add anything else.

I can still edit it. But here we have our outline brief, then we have our executive summary where we can see that this one needs to target a content score of 49 We need to hit around 3000 words a little less, and then we can see the creation objective, the different questions, what they’re asking, some title that we can use to rank this specific article for and just a lot more. So you can see that we have our executive summary, and then we have our outline brief. So I really like this view.

I think it’s easy to understand. It’s set up very nice, and we can then share it with our content writer, so they can go in and check out the brief.

MarketMuse Pricing

Now the pricing structure of MarketMuse is where we see it’s really a high-end content research tool. Because they have a premium plan where you get an unlimited amount of everything that costs $999, but you do also get all the modules and an unlimited amount of everything. What I will recommend you starting with is the free plan to test out MarketMuse because it’s not certain that MarketMuse is the tool for you. It really depends on the way that you work and when you’ve tried out the free plan, if MarketMuse is still something that’s interesting for you, then maybe upgrade to the standard plan. So you take it step by step and then when you grow, and you need more space, you need more credits, and you just need more modules, then you can go for the unlimited plan.

Alternatives to MarketMuse

Now the alternatives to Marketmuse are two companies as I see it.

The first one is SurferSEO. SurferSEO is also well known for their content research tool and it’s a very powerful tool to build content within. I do not know that much about SurferSEO except for what I have seen already, but it seems like a great competitor. The other tool I will mention which is closer to MarketMuse is Frase.io.

We have previously reviewed Frase.Io and it is a great tool. You can build very strong and powerful content within Frase.io because the research tool within Frase.io is just that powerful.

It has so much data behind and you just get so much research. But as you’ve just seen, it’s a lot the same within Marketmuse. And Marketmuse even have more modules than Frase.io at the moment with the keyword research tool, the content gap modules and so much more. So Marketmuse is still the high end of these three products but it is interesting to see how the other products will cope with MarketMuse and whether the unlimited plan of MarketMuse will decrease in price in the future. Let’s see.

Future of MarketMuse

Now the future of MarketMuse. I couldn’t find anything official of their roadmap. I tried to get into it, but it was private. So at the moment I know they’re working on a topic Navigator where you can see topics and keywords around a search phrase, so you can cover all the different topics on a specific search phrase that gives you authority within the industry on that specific search phrase. Furthermore, of course I hope that they will improve their AI because some of the drafts we’re getting at the moment they’re not that high quality and MarketMuse is a high-end content tool, so we really need to expect that the AI will deliver great results for us. So those two, I at least know and hope that they will work on.

Pros & Cons using MarketMuse

Using MarketMuse and as you just saw it is definitely a premium tool.

They have a huge help library, and then I really like that all the content you’re building, you’re building it based on research which is based on a lot of content on data. Though I hope that they will improve their AI to deliver better drafts and that they will maybe decrease the pricing of the unlimited plan because it is a bit too expensive at the moment.

Last thoughts on MarketMuse

If you are looking for a premium content research tool that fits all your needs, then MarketMuse is perfect for you. I’m a huge fan of all the research I can do within MarketMuse and that’s why I want to give MarketMuse four and a half stars. They still need to improve their AI.