Sistrix Content Assistant in the test

Word magic or just hocus-pocus? What can the Content Assistant from Sistrix do in practice? Many SEO agencies praise the tool, which is part of the fee-based "Content Optimizer" module and, together with this, costs an additional 100 euros per month. While the "Content Optimizer" is considered indispensable in the technical SEO area due to its numerous features with on-page optimization options, the Sistrix Content Assistant also delights the hearts of editors and writers of all kinds, if they have access to it - which naturally cannot be the case in every online editorial or communications department.

How the Sistrix Content Assistant works

Unfortunately, the Sistrix Content Assistant cannot be started "out of the box", as Google does not evaluate individual searches, but entire keyword clusters. Consequently, SEO-optimized content should also be based on such keyword clusters. The first step is therefore to research the right keywords with Sistrix Keyword Discovery. Suitable keywords from an often huge selection are then imported into keyword lists. If the system spits out over 14,000 terms for the term "Valentine's Day", for example, only a few dozen of them will come into question. In the case of a store, these might include terms relating to gifts for men and women. As a rule of thumb, a number of 200 to 1000 keywords is considered useful in practice. If there are fewer, the data basis may be too thin.

Keyword clusters with Sistrix Discovery

Only in the third step does the Sistrix Content Assistant help with the creation and optimization of content for the keyword cluster. The tool can be found in the Optimizer module of the Toolbox. Simply click on the "Start wizard" button on the Optimizer start page. Then select the prepared keyword list on the basis of which the wizard should work.

Optimize keyword density as with WDF*IDF

Now the Content Assistant not only provides meaningful keyword information that may be missing or underrepresented in the text, and thus comes very close to the WDF*IDF method. Unfortunately, there are also suggestions that do not necessarily make sense. For example, the note "2 paragraphs are very long and should be separated", if you have written a rather informative and longer text for Valentine's Day for good reasons and deliberately want to "foist" the gift ideas on the reader only at the end.

More or less useful W questions for Valentine's Day

A practical feature is a function that suggests suitable questions for Valentine's Day to familiarize yourself with, while the top version of this FAQ list casts doubt on the intellectual level of the average Google user. "What is Valentine's Day?" (sic!), says Sistrix at this point in all seriousness. "Is Valentine's Day only for lovers?", "Why does Valentine's Day exist?" and "When did Valentine's Day come about?" make more sense. However, FAQ suggestions are also available in the (also paid) basic version of Sistrix.

Practical display of keywords in the Sistrix Content Assistant

The Content Assistant is easy to use simply because the keywords are displayed directly next to the text with or without a tick and with green and red bars (depending on the density). So all you have to do is let your eye wander and add something here and there. In the test, the recommendations largely coincided with common WDF*IDF tools, but are displayed more clearly and are easier to interpret. The result can be exported in HTML format or as plain text.

Poor interaction with Google text documents

Importing from an existing website or as a Google sheet from the cloud does not run quite as smoothly. Here, the Sistrix Content Assistant fails due to the lack of document approval and also fails to make up for this intuitively and easily in just a few seconds. For the sake of simplicity, it is therefore recommended that you perhaps create the text in Sistrix right from the start and save it regularly so that it cannot be lost in the event of a connection failure.

Familiar recommendations in the guise of the Content Assistant

Sistrix also provides well-known wisdom free of charge: "Image integrations can often be found in the SERPs. Can you also present your content visually?" says the content tool, which also recommends the integration of a video. Incidentally, it is also clear that, at least for Valentine's Day, a small store cannot easily compete with large news sites, which have been heating up the topic since January. "Google News is often displayed in your keyword set. Is your site already included in Google News?" is a question that is quite rightly asked. However, for reasons of news volume alone, only editorial content with significantly more than 5 new articles per day can be considered. Among other things, these can score points with so-called "listicals", such as here in a successful example for Valentine's Day.

Conclusion on the Sistrix Content Assistant

The Sistrix Content Assistant is definitely a high-end tool that is relatively easy to use, at least if you are used to creating keyword lists. Sistrix gets a minus point for the announcement that you should "have a coffee" while you are creating lists. At least it's honest and clear. Depending on the number of keywords, at least 5 to 10 minutes or even more should be allowed for this step. The Sistrix Content Assistant is therefore particularly useful in conjunction with keyword optimization on behalf of customers or for strategically important content.