This article was created and optimized using Frase’s copy briefing tool.
The technological arms race to develop the best content creation and optimization software is already well underway. Unfortunately, that’s made SEO tools a dime a dozen, and it’s often hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Frase.io is a relative newcomer that’s growing in popularity, but does it deserve the hype? This Frase review will explore how the software works, compare it to its competitors, and help you decide whether it’s worth paying for in 2023.
Note: Frase is still evolving consistently. If your user interface doesn’t quite look like the one in the screenshots below or those in other reviews, it’s due to one of Frase’s updates.
What is Frase?
Frase is a content creation and optimization software that leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI). Its powerful features help you plan, write, and optimize content faster, reducing the time it takes to create articles that rank first on Google.
Also Read: Clearscope Alternatives
Frase is also the name of the company behind the AI-powered research tool. Founded in 2016, the startup is headquartered in Boston and backed by UnderscoreVC.
How Does Frase Work?
Most of Frase’s value resides in its Document Editor. That’s where you’ll spend most of your time on the platform. It includes four primary features, each of which helps with a fundamental stage of the content creation process:
- Researching
- Outlining
- Writing
- Optimizing
To start, you must first go to Frase’s “Documents” page. From there, you’ll have access to any content you’ve created so far and the ability to create a new Document.
Also Read: Clearscope Review
Clicking “New Document” lets you choose between creating an article from scratch or optimizing an existing piece. If you choose the latter, you can conveniently import the content to the Document Editor by inputting its URL.
Either way, the next step is to provide the search term you wish to rank for in Google. You can also instruct Frase to pull information for the research process from all Google results or from a specific domain.
Also Read: MarketMuse Review
Whichever you choose, clicking “Create Document” launches the Document Editor, where you can work on creating a content brief and the content itself.
Research Assistance
Once you launch the Document Editor, Frase will take you to its content research tool. By default, it crawls the top 20 Google results for your target search term and organizes their data for easy analysis.
For example, Frase provides the average amount of words, links, and images in the crawled pieces of content. If you scroll down, you can also find the individual numbers and an outline of the headers for each one.
Frase’s Research Assistance tool also lets you create detailed content briefs with the information it gathers. Clicking “Automate Content Brief” opens a menu you can use to aggregate data from the top results and paste it into the Content Brief Document Editor.
For example, you can tell Frase to compile meta descriptions and headers for your keyword’s top search results, then the popular questions from Google’s “People Also Ask” and the average word count.
Once you’ve figured out which information you like to include, you can save a content briefing template and streamline the process in the future.
All in all, Frase’s research function is competitive with other similar tools. It can give you an idea of how long your content should be and what features you need to include.
Frase’s AI-generated content briefs are also convenient. You’d still need a content strategist to give the eventual content creator more detailed instruction, but the tool can instantly gather a lot of the data necessary to create an effective brief.
Outline Builder
Frase’s Outline Builder is where it really shines for me. When you click over to this feature, Frase presents a row of outlines for the top 20 search results, listing their headers for you to review.
You can use it to construct your own content outline with the headers from the top-ranking search results as building blocks. Click one, and Frase will automatically add it to your budding content.
I love the convenience of this feature. It facilitates the same SEO strategy I use to build outlines for my articles. However, I have to click back and forth between tabs, while Frase can complete the process much faster and in a single window.
Fortunately, Frase lets you manually edit the headers, so you can change the wording when appropriate and insert unique H2s and H3s. Once you’ve finished, you can tell the tool to save, copy, and paste the text into your Content Editor.
AI Writer
At this point in Frase’s content creation process, you should have a content brief and an initial outline of your article. In other words, you have everything you need to start writing, so Frase’s next feature is its AI-powered content tool.
I didn’t have high hopes for this software, and I’d say that my expectations were appropriate. Frase’s AI-powered tool can produce grammatically correct content, but it doesn’t create much that’s useful.
In this section, Frase provides tools that automatically generate various types of content, ranging from small article sections to entire articles.
For instance, I used Frase’s Blog Introduction content tool to write a draft intro for this Frase review. All it needed to start the process was the intended title of the article and the desired level of creativity to determine the writing style.
However, if you read the resulting blog content, you’ll see that it’s not entirely relevant. One could argue that you might be able to use the tool to generate (very) rough first drafts for long-form content, but I don’t see much point in that.
However, I don’t think Frase suffers from more significant accuracy issues than any other advanced AI writing software. It’s worth noting that Frase doesn’t use GPT-3 like most of its competitors.
Content Optimizer
Frase’s last primary feature is its Content Optimization tool. If you’ve ever used one of Frase’s competitors like MarketMuse or Clearscope to get keyword recommendations, it should feel pretty familiar.
First, the Frase Content Optimization tool enters your target keyword into Google and extracts the most relevant terms using Natural Language Processing. Next, it gives you an ideal keyword density for each, helping you identify and plug content gaps.
Based on these keyword recommendations, Frase then analyzes the text you add to the Document Editor and gives it a content score between 1% and 100%, representing your topic coverage compared to the highest-ranking articles.
So far, that’s pretty standard, but Frase has a few more cool tricks up its metaphorical sleeve. For example, it also tells you:
- Which top search results use each recommended topic
- Where each top search result uses each keyword in its content
- The average topic score of the top search results for your keyword
Ultimately, Frase’s Content Optimization abilities are better than the others I’ve used. Drilling down into the keyword sources to see how they fit into top-ranking search results is incredibly useful, as is getting each competitor’s topic scores.
Frase also seems to do a reasonably good job of excluding the irrelevant phrases that happen to be in multiple ranking articles, though a few still sneak through occasionally.
Additional SEO Features
Frase’s Document Editor is its primary offering, but it also provides several other search engine optimization tools. Most of them help you generate effective content ideas, but Frase switches them out semi-regularly.
At the time of writing, the extra SEO tools you receive by default include:
- Google Search Console integration function that helps spot topic gaps
- Outline Builder that compiles relevant questions from Google and Quora for a search term
- Wikipedia Concept Map that creates a web of key topic ideas related to a search query
- Topic Planner that pulls long-tail keywords from the best-ranking results for a target search query, plus each one’s monthly search volume
The Outline Builder tool and Wikipedia Concept Map feature are both currently a little underwhelming and produced largely irrelevant content when I input the keyword phrase “Frase review.”
However, the Topic Planner could be pretty helpful. It probably can’t replace a full-scale keyword research tool, but it’s a great bonus for someone who isn’t already using something like Ahrefs.
Frase Pricing Plans
Frase currently offers three subscription tiers. Each one comes with a 5-day money-back guarantee plus monthly and annual pricing options, with discounts for the latter. They include:
- Basic: $44.99 paid monthly or $479.88 paid annually ($39.99 per month) for one user seat and 30 Document credits per month
- Team: $114.99 paid monthly or $1,199.88 paid annually ($99.99 per month) for 3 user seats (additional user seats available for $25 per month) and unlimited Document credits
- Enterprise: Custom pricing that allows for potentially unlimited users and Document credits
Frase doesn’t exactly offer a free trial, but its website home page includes a “sandbox” feature that lets you play around with the Document Editor. In it, you can try the research, outline, AI writing, and optimization functions for yourself.
In addition, Frase offers an SEO add-on subscription for $35 per month that can expand the tool’s capabilities to include additional monthly search volume, domain authority, and backlink data.
For whatever reason, this also unlocks unlimited AI writing, which otherwise stops at 10,000 characters per month.
Frase Customer Reviews
Frase is a relatively new content marketing tool, but it’s already popular enough to have accrued a significant number of customer reviews. Here are its ratings on a few popular crowdsourced review sites:
- Capterra: 4.8/5 (315 reviews)
- G2: 4.8/5 (211 reviews)
- Trustpilot: 3.1/5 (35 reviews)
You have to take these ratings and reviews with a grain of salt since companies can often manipulate them, and customers tend to rate more for negative reasons than positive ones. However, Frase’s scores are still encouraging.
The reviews indicate that Frase’s customer support is responsive. Unfortunately, the only way to reach them is by submitting a support ticket online, but you can get answers to common questions through its answer bot, crash course, and help center.
Frase Pros
Even next to its most competitive software alternatives, Frase has a lot to offer. Here are the primary reasons to consider using the software.
Affordable Pricing
Frase’s pricing options are more favorable than most of its top competitors. For example, its cheapest option can cost as little as $40 per month if you pay annually, and it lets you optimize up to 30 Documents per month.
Surfer SEO offers the same value for $99 per month. Meanwhile, it costs $170 per month to get just 20 Content Report credits from Clearscope (its equivalent to Document credits).
In addition, Frase’s second subscription tier provides unlimited Document credits and costs, at most, $115. None of Frase’s direct competitors even offer an unlimited option, let alone for such a reasonable rate.
Optimization Software
Frase’s Content Optimization feature stands out from the rest. While its ability to suggest keywords to include is comparable, the way it provides keyword optimization data on the best-ranking content is exceptional.
Compared to Clearscope, Surfer SEO, and MarketMuse, Frase provides uniquely deep insight into the other top-ranking articles. It also does so in several easily digestible ways, making its tool more practical.
User Experience
I spent quite a few hours in Frase’s software writing this Frase review, and I have no complaints about its user interface. In fact, it only took me a few minutes to get the hang of using and moving between features.
Frase Cons
Frase is a tool that’s well worth considering for content writers, but it’s not perfect and won’t necessarily be ideal for everyone. Here are the most significant downsides to using it.
Work in Progress
Frase is a relatively young platform. Though the startup was founded in 2016, the software didn’t gain much traction until it launched on AppSumo in 2020.
Sometimes, Frase’s youth shows. For example, the user interface and website layout change much more often than average. That should only be a minor hindrance, but it would be annoying to deal with constantly.
More broadly, Frase’s limited history makes it generally unpredictable. The startup tool’s value may change as it rolls out new features, eliminates others, or increases its pricing.
AI Writing
Frase likes to talk up its AI writing software, claiming it’ll significantly reduce the time it takes you to create quality content. Unfortunately, Frase’s AI-generated content is of little value.
However, I don’t condemn it for that too much since every AI writing tool I’ve used before has produced equally low-quality content.
Is Frase Worth It?
No software is ideal for everyone, but every content creator should consider adding Frase to their current SEO stacks. In fact, I’ve decided to start using it myself after exploring its features so thoroughly.
Frase lets you access premium content optimization and brief generation software at a discounted price. It also has an excellent user interface and a reputation for solid customer support.
If you still question whether or not Frase is for you, play around with the free version on its website!
