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If you’ve been in the SEO world for a while, you’ve probably heard about Frase and MarketMuse, two of the most popular SEO tools available.
Our take: both of these SEO tools are good at different things. But like any content writing SEO tool, they don’t provide enough of what writers or business owners really need —from detailed keyword research to in-depth content optimization.
If your SEO tool doesn’t get it right, you’ll be invisible to everybody you’re trying to reach.
So what makes Frase vs MarketMuse special then? In this article, we’ll compare these SEO tools to help you decide which one is right for your business. And we’d also love to introduce you to Outranking, quite possibly the greatest Frase/MarketMuse alternative, and precisely what you’re looking for.
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 Frase and MarketMuse, both of which are competitors with Outranking. This content is for informational purposes only.
Frase is an AI-based content optimization software developed for SEO. Designed for content marketers and agencies, this platform helps you “think” of the most relevant keywords and questions to optimize your content around them.
It first conducts competitor research and generates an outline from its findings. You can then use its AI, to turn that outline into a draft with more detailed facts and research before finally moving on to content optimization.
People tend to flock to Frase for its 3 main features:
It’s the chatbot and data-driven approach to SEO that most appeal to the masses. But while these features are important, you may find the learning curve a tad steep. On top of this, Frase has hidden its vital AI services behind an add-on fee of $35 per month. 🫣
If you’re looking for a tool to assist with every phase of content creation and optimization, MarketMuse is a better fit. It researches topics, generates optimized content, identifies pertinent keywords, and suggests suitable links.
MarketMuse can also pinpoint gaps, suggest relevant SEO terms, list associated questions for FAQs, and steer internal and external linking — all of which can boost your SEO rankings.
MarketMuse stands out in the SEO industry for 3 reasons:
MarketMuse stands out because it provides data from numerous sources instead of the top 20 results of a SERP, giving writers a more comprehensive view of a topic. Of course, this means you’re relying less on competitive data. And MarketMuse also doesn’t disclose its sources – uh, problem.
From a glance, it’s easy to see that Frase and MarketMuse tackle your SEO strategy differently. So the best choice depends on your priorities and needs when seeking SEO tools.
If you want the best of both worlds, consider Outranking.
Outranking is an alternative to Frase and MarketMuse that outdoes content creation and AI-driven writing. The platform automates every part of the content workflow process.
Like Frase, Outranking takes the top 20 results from Google’s SERP for any keyword. This approach is in line with Frase’s competitive focus, providing more useful data than what you would get from MarketMuse.
But Outranking differentiates itself from the two tools by giving you more data. For example, Outranking holds more information on the format of the piece, which can heavily affect the ranking. It also has a more comprehensive AI writing tool than Frase.
The cherry on top? 🍒 Our latest V13 comes with automatic SEO writing and optimization to scale SEO content and amplify its impact on your business (and yes, a tidier UI!).
You now know what each platform does — Good lol! Here are the 7 elements of any good SEO tool that we used to analyze Frase and MarketMuse. 🕵️
Term mapping helps you identify the most commonly used terms and topics among competitors. Frase and MarketMuse both offer this feature, but they each have a different approach to it.
Below is Frase’s Terms Map, which gives its users a score of 100%. The yellow line indicates an average between the top results of a SERP.
MarketMuse takes a similar approach to its topic map. But instead of giving you a score out of 100, it gives your general content a score. Then it asks you to meet this score or improve it.
Frase does have a slight edge here with its topical heatmap. If you’re a visual person, it might be the choice for you. But MarketMuse has a simpler approach if that’s your preference.
Content marketers use NLP extraction to gather SEO data and other competitive information. It enables you to write about topics that give you a competitive edge on SERPs.
Frase puts most of this data as part of its content editor. This can make the content editor feel a bit more cluttered and busy. You can also import URLs not included in the top search results, which might be less useful if your focus is outshining your competition.
On the other hand, MarketMuse gathers data using a wider net, suggesting 50 related topics beyond Google’s top search results. This way, you can focus on including all aspects of a topic. But there’s a catch with this approach: it isn’t competitively focused.
While the image below shows the top results, MarketMuse’s content optimization tool gathers data from thousands of additional pages. These pages are helpful for research, but might not help you stay competitive on the SERP.
SEO tools are increasingly using AI tools for content creation and structuring. Both Frase and MarketMuse have different approaches to leveraging the power of artificial intelligence.
Frase has fully embraced AI by writing its own custom system, which helps with both short-form content and long-form blogs.
When you first create a document, Frase invites you to create an outline. You can base the outline data on headings from the top results of a keyword’s SERP. Frase handles this automatically, but you can also choose to do it by hand.
Once you finish your heading structure, you can automatically (or manually) generate prompts. These prompts provide instructions for the AI writer to follow.
Next, you can let the AI writer work its magic, but you’ll find it doesn’t always listen to instructions. For example, the system sometimes completely ignores character or word limits, leaving you to waste time editing unnecessary content.
If you want short-form content, Frase supports this on its AI tools page. This provides you with a list of templates you can start with. You can also customize these later with your own prompts. Simply use a forward slash to access these tools from the editing page.
MarketMuse, on the other hand, decided to limit its AI features to its NLP data-gathering systems. It knows how to read data, so you can learn the number of times phrases and keywords are mentioned throughout the content. Beyond that, MarketMuse doesn’t have any AI-writing features, which is disappointing to some. The company also doesn’t support outline building.
Quick read 🧐: Learn how Outranking helps Slaterock Automation boost its SEO presence.
A content brief is the beating heart of your content. It provides you and your team with clear instructions and expectations. Frase provides a brief building tool you can find by clicking Auto Brief under the research tab. When clicking it, it collects the data you can find throughout Frase’s tools and pastes it into the main editor screen.
You’ll need to manually enter the information for many brief parts like the goal and target audience. With Frase, the brief creation software is optional and outside your content workflow.
MarketMuse, by contrast, follows along with many other writing tools (we’re looking at you, Clearscope, and SurferSEO 😬) and fails to implement a brief creation feature.
Both Frase and MarketMuse rely on similar suggestions regarding word count and the tracking of keywords and phrases. But Frase goes beyond these basic suggestions:
When you’re writing, Frase relies on two tools: Research and Optimize. The Optimize screen tracks your keyword usage, while the Overview screen tracks these stats:
Meanwhile, MarketMuse just includes a content score and a word count with nothing else. This doesn’t give you any real insight into the best way to optimize your content.
Psst! 🤫 Here’s a quick look at how Outranking can optimize your content and improve your score 👇
Both Frase and MarketMuse integrate with third-party tools. Frase is smart and offers integration with Google Docs, WordPress, and Google Search Console (GSC).
While these services are great, Frase’s Google Docs integration doesn’t include any of the most useful information for research. The WordPress integration also logs you out regularly and only shows limited optimization data. Finally, the GSC integration only works with Frase’s data-gathering chatbot, making the data unusable for content.
MarketMuse has one integration: ChatGPT. This integration exists to supplement MarketMuse’s lack of AI tools. But, ChatGPT is known for inaccurate answers.
Here’s a quick pricing breakdown for each platform:
| Frase | MarketMuse | |
| Free Plan? | No | Yes |
| Free Trial? | No | No |
| Entry-Level Plan | Solo Plan — $14.99 /mo. | Standard Plan — $149 /mo. |
| Moderate Plan | Basic Plan — $44.99 /mo. | Team Plan — $399 /mo. |
| Premium Plan | Team Plan — $114.99 / mo. | Custom Plan — hidden |
| Add-Ons? | Pro Add-on for $35 | No |
Frase easily offers the better price of the two. But the entry-level plan only comes with three and ten content pages, which you’ll likely burn through quickly. Only the most expensive plan has unlimited access to content editor pages.
The SEO add-on is a virtual necessity for Frase if you want to use AI writing. Without it, you suffer from extreme limits when using the AI writer. This means you can completely miss one of Frase’s core features.
Although MarketMuse is much more expensive, it clearly lacks some crucial features as we unearthed in our analysis above. Its sole focus is on research tools, and the company unfortunately uses this as an excuse to justify its high prices.
Though Frase and MarketMuse are popular choices, they take different approaches to SEO. What if you can get the best of both worlds? That’s Outranking for you! 💅 Plus, the latest V13 version is ground-breaking and can truly make a difference for your content.
Wanna see what’s new? Check out our launch event for V13!
Frase only provides some limited information on content optimization, while MarketMuse offers very little on its content editor. Because of this, on-page optimization often becomes a guessing game. But Outranking’s latest version automatically optimizes your content with a click of a button 🪄:
Frase only includes workflow support as an afterthought, and MarketMuse completely misses the mark here. Meanwhile, here’s how your workflow can look like with Outranking:
In a nutshell, Outranking can seamlessly handle the entire content creation process for you!
Whether doing it for yourself or working with others, Outranking’s brief creation process is built right into the workflow. Our AI tools analyze the content of your competitors and other relevant SERPs to create a highly optimized content brief.
With Outranking, you get:
Here’s a quick review of how the three compare regarding integrations:
Like Frase and MarketMuse, Outranking provides SEO tools like content optimization, platform integrations, and keyword research. However, we differentiate ourselves with our extensive SEO audits with unlimited crawls to create a robust site foundation. In contrast, you’re gonna have to guess with Frase. And MarketMuse? MarketMuse misses the mark by being most helpful with research and not outsmarting the competition.
Outranking finds SERP ideas almost instantaneously, and you can easily select which ones you want to create your first draft, cutting down your research time
Helen M. at Capterra
Outranking’s extended audit capabilities would also benefit large-scale businesses seeking extensive SEO overhauls.
It’s easy to see why Outranking provides a better SEO experience than Frase or MarketMuse — Both tools seem to have forgotten that people use SEO tools for competitive data.
While Frase has some of this, it lacks the level of detail needed to get SEO success. If you want to emulate the average format, it helps to know the common keywords in headers and titles. It also helps to see the structure (like tables and list items).
Unfortunately, MarketMuse is falling behind with its lack of focus on innovation, and it fails to give the people what they want — a good AI writing tool that can handle SEO research and competitor analysis.
Thankfully, if you couldn’t find what you were looking for with Frase and MarketMuse, Outranking has got you covered.
Join our community of 12,000+ smarty pants and see what the fuss is all about!
