5 Frase Alternatives: Tried & Tested [2021]

Frase is a great SEO platform that marketers use to create SEO content and optimize it for search engines based on related topics, popular questions, and more.

But is it the right platform for you?

We tested five popular Frase alternatives for a day. This guide will help you pick the right content strategy platform for your use case and budget.

Here are the top 5 alternatives to Frase:

1. Topic

2. Clearscope

3. Marketmuse

4. Dashword

5. Surfer SEO

Let’s get started.

What is Frase and Why do People Like It?

Frase is primarily a content answer engine platform. Their strength lies in answering questions your readers might have with their chatbot feature called “Frase Answers”. 

On the other hand, “Frase Content” allows you to build content briefs and optimize existing content for organic search.

Frase can output a huge list of subtopics – usually 100+. You’ll have to manually sift through them and pick the most relevant ones. Which defeats the purpose of using a content optimization tool in the first place.

Any SEO tool will spit out 10s or 100s of recommendations. Most of them are going to be irrelevant to your site’s visibility in search. Finding the right items that make sense to work on takes experience.

John Mueller

Key features: 

1. Surface headings, subtopics, and questions to build a content brief.
2. Frase answer engine helps answer questions your readers have.
3. Content scoring to grade a piece of content before hitting publish.

Frase is best suited for anyone on a tight budget and willing to take the time to curate the subtopics list by themselves.

What are the Best Frase Alternatives and Competitors?

Frase isn’t perfect and certainly isn’t for everybody. Frase may be inexpensive, but both its content briefs and optimization features are subpar.

With so many features, Frase ends up lacking on many fronts. No writing assistance, weak content optimization, and poor help and support navigating the tool come to mind.

These are just a few limitations that prevent Frase from being the best SEO tool for determining your content strategy.

Here are five Frase alternatives:

1. Topic

At Topic, we focus on tackling only one problem – streamlining your content production workflow through content briefs and content optimization. 

Like Frase, we automate the manual and time-consuming research process so you can spend time figuring out how to make your content stand out.

Our content optimization tool helps you consolidate content research, create high-quality content briefs, and optimize existing content with our intuitive content editor.

Here are a few of our key features:

Research Section 

Topic analyzes top results for your target keyword and generates a research document that includes headings, questions, and relevant topics. You can curate this research into a comprehensive outline using Topic’s outline builder functionality.

AI-Powered Brief Generation

Thanks to GPT-3, Topic can automagically generate a content outline for you. Plug in a title and description and let the AI do the rest. Use this feature with our research section to build high-quality briefs for your content writers in minutes (not hours): 

Content Grader 

Use Content Grader to see what your draft is missing. Optimize before you hit publish to ensure every article covers what your audience is looking for. Our Google Docs and WordPress plugins offer content grader right where you need it. 

Topic vs. Frase

Pros: 

• Simple interface to help you build high-quality content briefs.
• Accurate content scoring system.
• Google Docs and WordPress integration.
• Every content brief is enriched with SEO data.
• GPT-3 integration to build titles, descriptions, and outlines.
• Keyword research tool at no additional cost.

Cons:

• Expensive compared to Frase.
• No Q&A chatbot features.

Best for: Content teams and agencies.

Pricing: Our starter plan (best for solopreneurs or startups) starts at $99/month and our plus plan (for content teams or agencies) costs only $199/month.

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2. Clearscope

Clearscope was one of the first content optimization tools on the market. Their co-founder Bernard Huang is a well-known SEO in the industry.

Writers use Clearscope to create long-form content that’s loved by both readers and google search. The result? A great reading experience and higher organic traffic.

Clearscope’s strength lies in its AI-powered content optimization feature “Optimize”. With Optimize, you not only save time but also remove any guesswork involved in figuring out what readers want to hear from you.

Pop your draft into Clearscope to get insights on content relevance, comprehensiveness, and LSI keywords to include. You’ll receive a content score to show how well your blog post is  optimized for SEO.

Clearscope vs. Frase

Pros:

• Quality content optimization (like Topic).
• Strong customer support.
• Keyword research tool.

Cons:

• No content brief generation.
• No Q&A chatbot features.
• Expensive compared to Frase.

Best for: Content managers and agencies.

Pricing: Clearscope’s most popular plan will cost you $350/month. The newly introduced $170/month plan, while cheaper, is limited.

Further Reading: 5 Clearscope Alternatives (Tried & Tested)

3. Marketmuse

Marketmuse is an enterprise content strategy and intelligence platform. Their core focus lies in automating your content strategy using artificial intelligence. 

Unlike Frase, Marketmuse tackles a broader problem. You can create an entire content strategy from scratch, auto-generate first drafts of an article with NLP, create content briefs for your writers using AI, and more.

This makes Marketmuse the most feature-rich Frase alternative best suited for large teams with big budgets looking for help with end-to-end content strategy.

Here are some key features:

1. Marketmuse surfaces headings, subtopics, questions to build a detailed content brief.
2. Content Inventory helps you manage your entire content library in one place. 
3. Content scoring system to grade content before you hit publish.

The biggest downside of Marketmuse is it’s unclear pricing. What’s a query vs a credit? What’s an application? You’ll never know unless you dive deeper into their support docs:

Marketmuse vs. Frase

Pros:

• Content Inventory for content audits.
• Content Brief Generation 
• Content Optimization 

Cons: 

• Expensive pricing.
• Complicated workflow results in a steep learning curve.
• Poor UX/UI can reduce adoption rates.

Best for: Enterprise companies looking for help with end-to-end content strategy.

Pricing: Marketmuse offers a cheaper plan but expect to pay $999/month for access to their  entire suite of features. 

Further Reading: 5 Marketmuse Alternatives (Tried & Tested)

4. Dashword

Dashword is a content optimization tool that offers features similar to Frase.

The content editor offers keyword suggestions on the left, a letter-based content grade for  gauging content quality, and recommended word count on the top.

Enter your target keyword and Dashword generates a report of competing articles in SERPs. This includes average word count, content grade, relevant terms, and readability level.

Dashword’s biggest con is its poor term quality. Terms like “good idea”, “great way”, and “example” are recommended when I run a report for “SEO content”:

Dashword vs. Frase

Pros: 

• Access to unlimited reports.
• Simple and easy-to-use user interface. 
• Much cheaper than Frase.

Cons: 

• No Content Brief Generation.
• Poor Content Scoring System.
• No keyword research tool.

Best for: Freelancers

Pricing: For access to unlimited reports you’ll be paying a flat $99/month. Dashword also offers a free trial with one free report. 

5. Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is yet another AI-driven content optimization tool. Their strength, however, lies in on-page SEO optimization.

Instead of the “write what your audience wants to read” philosophy, Surfer chooses to focus on the technical aspect of SEO writing.

Enter a target keyword you want to rank for. Surfer will analyze the SERPs for 100s of data points such as recommended word count, recommended keywords and phrases, image alt tags, and backlinking information.

This makes Surfer a much better fit for expert-level SEOs looking to solve the problem of on-page optimization for both new and existing content. 

Surfer utilizes Google’s natural language processing (NLP) API, but there’s room for improvement. Here are their recommendations, some of which are generic and won’t improve content quality:

Surfer SEO vs. Frase

Pros:

• Powerful On-Page Analysis Features.
• Robust technical SEO toolset.
• Content planner to discover content ideas.

Cons: 

• Low-quality Content Scoring System.
• No Q&A chatbot features.
• Weak content outline generation.

Best for: Freelancers or Technical SEOs.

Pricing: The basic plan starts at $59/month. To access all Surfer features, expect to pay $99/month and above.

Further Reading: 5 Best Surfer SEO Alternatives (Tried & Tested)

Which Frase Alternative Is Right for You?

Like any tool in this list, Frase has its pros and cons and may not be the right solution for your specific use case or budget.

Our recommendation? Pick a tool that offers the features you need at a price that fits your budget. Some tools offer a free (or inexpensive) trial, be sure to take advantage of them! 

If you’re looking for an A++ quality content brief and optimization tool to help you create better content, faster — sign up for Topic today!

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