Clearscope vs. Frase: Which SEO Tool is Better?

Let’s shine the spotlight on Clearscope and Frase — two established players in the SEO space. As we dissect these tools, our aim is to help you understand their differences to help you make an informed decision. And we’ll talk about what makes Outranking a great alternative to both of these tools.

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Just a heads up!

This blog was created by the team at Outranking, a trusted content analysis tool for digital marketers. In this review, our team analyzed both Clearscope and Frase, both of which are competitors with Outranking. This content is for informational purposes only.

What Is Clearscope?

Clearscope is a well-known content optimization platform. It uses IBM’s natural language processing (NLP) technology, Watson, to suggest keywords and topics based on data from Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), much like its competitor SurferSEO.

It offers a buffet of useful features and a commendable set of advantages in one user-friendly platform. However, it also has some drawbacks. Let’s take a look at Clearscope’s pros and cons.

5 Pros of Clearscope ✅

1. Time saver: Dramatically reduces time spent on keyword research. 
2. Creativity enhancer: Presents a springboard for content ideation, by giving you topics and keywords
3. Simplified SEO writing: Provides intuitive tools for optimization, making the process easy even for less experienced SEO writers
4. User-friendly interface: Enables immediate content optimization without a steep learning curve
5. Content grader: Provides tips on readability and optimization as you write

5 Cons of Clearscope ⛔️

1. High price: Not the best fit if you’re on a tight budget or new to SEO
2. No AI writing: No built-in tools for AI writing, meaning you’ll have to do everything manually
3. Weak for short-form content: Useful for longer pieces like blogs, but not built for optimizing service pages
4. Lack of data: Provides little data to help you gain a competitive edge
5. No brief creation: No support for brief design, so you’ll have to rely on external tools

Although Clearscope is a popular and respected SEO tool used by marketers worldwide, it isn’t free from drawbacks, especially for smaller businesses and those with specific needs. 

What Is Frase?

Frase tempts content writers with AI features that Clearscope doesn’t offer. The company is much newer and smaller, with a staff of only six people, so it still has a long way to go to compete with Clearscope.

If you’re considering switching up your SEO software, Frase could still be a great alternative. With its advanced AI features for content optimization, it’s a solid competitor. Let’s take a look at Frase’s pros and cons!

Psst! 🤫 Take a look at how AI can optimize your content! 👇

5 Pros of Frase ✅

1. Keyword targeting: Easily targets up to five keywords for your content
2. Content optimizer: Helps you easily optimize your content for your target keywords
3. AI templates: Provides multiple AI templates for long- and short-form content
4. Data-driven interface: Consolidates Important data in one place
5. Chatbot support: Includes a chatbot you can integrate on your website

Compared to Clearscope, Frase offers much more data and integrated AI tools. But, like Clearscope, it also has some cons.

5 Cons of Frase ⛔️

• No keyword metrics: No insight into monthly keyword data (search counts)
• Complex pricing model: Multiple add-ons without any clear benefits, making pricing confusing
• Unhelpful Chrome extension: Offers summaries of web articles, which is rarely useful, as a major part of the product’s core functionality
• No free trial: Unlike many of its competitors, including Outranking, Frase does not provide a way to test the product before investing in it
• Non-streamlined features: Some users find the interface too crowded

Bear these points in mind as you weigh your options. Remember, when you’re optimizing your content in today’s rapidly changing digital landscape, it’s always best to make an informed decision.

What Is Outranking?

Outranking is an AI writing tool that changes the optimization game by helping you create impactful articles that give you an advantage over your competitors. 

You get a depth of data that will help you to quickly research content as well as build content designed to rank.

A verified reviewer on Capterra

Outranking’s features make it the best SEO tool on the market! Here’s what you’ll get 💪:

• SEO optimization: Keep your content fresh and competitive!
• Integrations: Seamlessly upload articles to WordPress or Google Docs, and double-check your work with the convenient Grammarly integration
• Built-in team feature: Simplifies teamwork, so you can say goodbye to messy collaboration logistics
• AI content writer: Uses AI to conduct background research and craft titles, outlines, briefs, and even entire drafts that can rank well on search engines
• Pricing: Starts at $59 monthly for ten articles, and scales up depending on your team’s needs

Ready to up your game? 🥇

With the best AI writing tools around, there’s no time to wait! Get started with a free 7-day trial! 💃

Clearscope vs. Frase: 9 Features Compared

Below is a quick comparison of Clearscope and Frase.

1. Pricing 💰

Clearscope starts at a steep $170/month, gives only ten content optimization reports and 20 content inventory pages which provide SERP data, and lacks AI writing tools. Additional pricing details remain undisclosed, requiring potential customers to contact Clearscope’s customer service. 😱

Starting at $14.99/month, Frase is the more affordable option. The solo plan offers a mere four articles with incredibly limited AI writing access. The basic plan ($44.99/month) still includes just ten pieces; only the pricier team plan ($114.99/month) provides unlimited articles. To remove the limits from their AI writer, you must pay an extra $35 monthly.

Want more bang for your buck? 💸 Check out Outranking’s detailed pricing – which includes AI writing! ✨

2. Content Grading 📝

With Clearscope, content grading is both straightforward and flexible, focusing on keywords. It provides a comprehensible content score, although the information you get is extremely limited.

And Frase emphasizes topic clusters. Its grading mechanism uses a progressive percentage bar, with a yellow baseline reflecting the average of the top 20 pages on the SERP.

Here’s a quick overview:

Feature	Clearscope	Frase	Outranking
Specific keyword-oriented grading	✅	✅	✅
AI-driven content grading	✅	✅	✅
Media data	❌	✅	✅
Competitive analysis	✅	✅	✅
Metadata (e.g. titles and descriptions)	❌	❌	✅

3. Keyword Research 💻

Keyword research is important in SEO software, as it allows you to uncover user search behaviors. Plus, it guides content creation by enabling you to write well-researched copy that’s relevant to your audience’s needs.

Clearscope offers monthly search data, competition metrics, cost-per-click (CPC) insights, and a question filter.

Unfortunately, Frase lacks keyword data, but its editor allows you to gather information about five keywords.

Become a keyword research master 🥋Our training video has all the information you need to succeed! 👇

4. AI Content Writing 🤖

Clearscope’s AI features are limited to its NLP content editor, so you have to do everything manually. It’s a huge drawback for those seeking more automation in their content production pipeline.

Frase offers a comprehensive AI writing tool that provides numerous templates, covering everything from on-page optimization to copywriting for sales pages. However, its long-form content tool often has issues. For example, unlike Outranking, it doesn’t include tables.

5. Natural Language Processing (NLP) Term Extraction 🔤

Understanding and using your customers’ language to create SEO-driven content is crucial in the digital era. Natural language processing term extraction features identify key terms from your competitors’ writing, allowing you to match the language used in your industry.

Clearscope is simpler in its approach, only gathering data on word count and common terms, which many will find unhelpful.

Frase uses NLP technology to automate the process of content creation, starting with a seed keyword, and then generating a document including tech stats like word count, links, and images. It also provides an overview derived from top-ranking results and shares a “stats” section with data to back any claims.

Outranking combines the best features from both platforms. It uses Google NLP to collect data from the highest-ranking content, and extracts the keywords and phrases most relevant to the search terms.

Looking for a tool that can make tables, lists, AND statistics? 🤓Outranking as all these tools built in! Read all about raising our content score using on-page SEO 📚

Here’s a quick look:

Features	Frase	Clearscope	Outranking
NLP terms	✅	✅	✅
Statistical data	✅	❌	✅
Media data	✅	❌	✅
Tables and lists of data	❌	❌	✅

6. Content Brief Creation ✍️

Creating captivating content involves more than just peppering keywords throughout your text; it’s all about delivering a comprehensive, engaging narrative to your readers. A well-crafted content brief – the roadmap for writers and editors – is crucial. 

Unfortunately, Clearscope lacks brief creation features, requiring you to do everything manually. However, the data insights gained help you create and finish content briefs.

Unlike Clearscope, Frase uses a mostly automated process, but many sections still require manual intervention. Here is a quick guide to Frase’s content brief creation:

1. Start with a seed keyword to generate a new document
2. Review the technical statistics to gain key insights into average word counts, links, and image usage for greater content adaptability
3. Select the Overview section to examine section headers and principal topics for each current top-ranking result for a clear idea of what works
4. Clicking the auto brief button creates your brief for you — You must go on to fill in many of the sections manually

7. Outline Builder 🏗️

Creating compelling content requires strategizing, so a robust outline builder, which allows writers to create structured, engaging, and SEO-effective pieces, is essential.

As with content brief creation, Clearscope provides no support for building an outline. 

Frase does offer outline building, which takes one of two approaches:

1. Copy headers directly from your competitors. Later, you’ll need to edit these headers to ensure that Google won’t penalize you for plagiarism.
2. Build your outline based on Frase’s AI-driven outline builder. Again, you’ll need to edit this to avoid the appearance of plagiarism. 

8. Batch Analysis Capabilities 📊

Batch analysis, in any SEO software, is a powerhouse tool that can make a huge difference in your ranking game. It allows for comprehensive, simultaneous evaluation of multiple pages or keywords, significantly streamlining your workflow and providing invaluable insights.

Clearscope runs bulk reports by letting you copy and paste keyword and URL data. It’s handy, but time-consuming. Plus, if you don’t match your URLs and queries, you’ll have many wasted reports.

Frase is a bit better with this, allowing you to upload an Excel file of keywords. From there, you can choose potential subtopics for each keyword, assuming you’ve paid extra for the SEO add-on. However, these are not connected to URLs, requiring extra work to import that data. Frase also lets you import data from URLs, but this is mainly for its optional chatbot, which is less relevant for most content writers.

9. Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Audit Tool 🔧

Understanding how well your content aligns with search engine algorithms can give your website a significant boost. That’s why the SERP Audit Tool is a key feature of SEO software like Clearscope and Frase.

Clearscope’s SERP Audit Tool:

• Provides information on common terms and average word count
• Enables you to see specific phrase or word usage in top SERP results
• Starts with keyword research

Frase’s SERP Audit Tool:

• Lets you insert up to five keywords simultaneously to audit separate pages
• Provides data on statistics, links, images, and other important features
• Pulls the featured snippet

4 Reasons Why Outranking Is the SEO Software for You!

Are you still wondering why Outranking stands out from Frase and Clearscope? Here are four compelling reasons to consider:

1. Superior Content Grading

Looking for a complete solution to gauge your content’s SEO potential and standard? Outranking is your game-changer! It’s not just about grading — we provide a comprehensive solution that transforms the entire content creation process. 💫

Outranking grades content based on other writers’ formats, including not just the content, but also the number of tables, keyword instances, and other important data often overlooked by other SEO tools. And unlike others, we don’t encourage keyword stuffing.

Our content score ensures that your content is the best on any given topic. Also, you can explore its granular details to identify the most relevant keywords and phrases for your page. 🔍

Simply put: Outranking provides more information while still remaining user-friendly, letting you decide which data sets to focus on and opt into building your writing around data-driven terms. 

2. AI-Assisted SEO Content Writing

Outranking’s system is built on AI, starting with brief creation and leading to a finished product. This effectively transforms your writing process into an editing process, saving you time and money.

With Outranking, just guide the AI writer using detailed prompts, and watch as it crafts engaging content. Unlike competitors, Outranking always produces relevant, usable content, and includes special formatting elements like lists and tables.

And the best part – you’ll create content that ranks fast, making every blog post count. 

3. Outline Generation and Builder

Outranking has emerged as a powerful alternative to Clearscope and Frase, offering smart, AI-powered solutions to streamline your content development process. Our standout features include an efficient outline generation and builder tool, making it an unbeatable choice.

Unlike Clearscope, which lacks an integrated outline builder, we offer AI-generated suggestions for headers and questions to speed up your content strategy and optimize its reach and relevance.

Plus, Outranking also uses related target keywords and topics that can be used to boost your organic search results. When compared to Frase’s outline builder tool, our AI-powered capabilities are far more streamlined and efficient as well.

Due to these unique features, Outranking holds a clear advantage over other platforms by offering a range of unique features, from AI writing to the crucial outline builder tool.

4. AI-Generated SEO Content Briefs

Outranking offers AI-generated SEO content briefs that are a game-changer, making it a better alternative to Clearscope and Frase. Here’s how:

• Automated brief creation based on top results from Google’s SERP
• AI-driven content workflow process, making it easy for you to transition from brief, to outline, to final draftDetailed set of collaboration-friendly guidelines using data-driven points
• Collaboration features for easy sharing through Google Docs, PDFs, and even simple links.

With Outranking’s extensive AI support, both the brief and outline creation processes are hands-off and low-effort.