Whether you’re a blogger or digital marketer, you know you need high-quality, relevant content to rank well on Google. Unfortunately, the content creation and optimization process can be complex and time-consuming.
The good news is that an AI content optimization tool, such as Frase.io, can help you research and create content that has the potential to outrank your competitors.
In this Frase.io review , I’ll go over what Frase is, how it works, and how you can start creating optimized content that ranks on Google. I’ll cover the most interesting Frase features, the pros and cons and my thoughts on how it performs.
After reading this review you’ll be able to make an informed decision about Frase.io, as well as others AI SEO software.
What is Frase.io?
Frase.io is a popular AI tool that helps you optimize your content, by automating and simplifying parts of your creation workflow. This means that it can perform complex tasks related to research, writing, and optimization for whatever search term (or keyword / topic) you’re trying to rank for.
For example, Frase.io can automate in-depth competitor analysis and produce actionable insights on how to outrank your competitors. Additionally, it offers other content marketing-related features such as AI Content Generation and Content Analytics (and easy to interpret way of checking your results).
The goal of the platform is to simplify your entire content workflow, help you rank your content faster, and give you the tools to keep those rankings. What’s interesting is that it’s designed to make content optimization easier for people who aren’t necessarily SEO experts.
Benefits of using an AI Content Optimization Tool
Google’s job is to figure out what content will suit the user’s search intent best, so they can show the most relevant web pages in the search results. This is the only thing that matters to Google.
Right now, Google uses AI algorithms, to better understand correlations between topics and to interpret the deeper meaning of searches. Google has become very proficient at analyzing search queries and matching them with the right content.
Because of this, in order to create well optimized content, you’ll need to:
- Satisfy the user’s search intent as best you can. This means answering and giving them exactly what they’re looking for. This is what search engines care about and it’s a major reason why competing pages are ranking above your own.
- Show Expertise, Authority, and Trust (E-A-T). You can achieve this by covering as many relevant and related topics as possible on the subject you’re writing. Of course, keywords are still important (we need words to communicate about topics). However, thinking in terms of topics and topic clusters has become extremely important since the Hummingbird update.
- Build quality backlinks or have an effective internal linking strategy. Backlink tactics and strategies are beyond the scope of this Frase review, and I’ll post some interesting articles about this topic soon. For now, we’ll only cover on-page optimization, because that’s what Frase.io can help you with.
With an ever changing landscape of new content, competitors, and algorithm changes, it can be difficult to keep optimize and keep your rankings. SEO is an ongoing task task, which is why companies buy SEO packages (monthly payments). There is a need for continuous research and monitoring of your rankings.
This is where AI SEO platforms like Frase.io come in.
How does Frase.io Work?
Frase uses AI (artificial intelligence) and NLP (natural language processing) to reverse engineer what’s needed to rank well in search engines for a certain topic. In other words, the tool does research and competitor analysis, so you don’t have to.
To uncover what’s needed to rank, Frase will scan the top-ranked web pages, analyze them, and tell you what you need to do to achieve similar rankings. In fact, Frase is automating ‘SERP analysis‘. SERP analysis is a research activity that’s at the base of any effective SEO strategy.
After entering the keyword target phrase you want to rank for, Frase will perform the SERP analysis and present the findings in your dashboard. Frase.io can also use data, for other things, such as generating blog outlines or article briefings (which you can send to your writing team).
Who uses Frase.io?
Because Frase takes the complexity out of the research phase of the content workflow any content creator can start creating well-optimized articles and blog posts quickly.
Frase.io is used by different types of users, including:
- Digital Marketers (content marketers, copywriters, SEO professionals.)
- Marketing Agencies (marketing teams)
- Individuals (bloggers, entrepreneurs, writers)
What I use Frase.io for
If you’ve read my articles about how to find a profitable niche and my recommended list of niche research tools, you got an idea of how time-consuming online market research can be. Automating a large part of the research process is the main reason I use Frase.
Frase.io saves me hours I would normally spend on manual SERP analysis. SERP analysis is one of the main things needed for optimizing new, as well reoptimizing existing content.
Besides automating SERP analysis, studying the data Frase provides, also helps me:
- Get an overview of the niche (or market). As in the past, a niche (or online market) was reflected in keywords and related keywords, we are now dealing with topics and topic clusters.
- Understand niche dynamics, such as topical changes and movement in the rankings. This helps me anticipate my next move. For example: do I need to re-optimize? Or do I need to add more relevant information to my blog post?
- Identify topic gaps and content gaps that are pushing down my rankings. Filling in the gaps can help you be more relevant and answer the user’s intent more precisely. In turn, this will boost your rankings.
- understand user intent. Frase’s suggestions are based on the top-ranking pages. There’s a reason why these pages rank so well. It’s because Google thinks they are relevant to the search query and satisfy the user intent.
- Monitoring my optimization score. Frase.io applies a SERP score to your page and your competition. This makes it easy to compare the quality of your work. It also shows you how needs to be done still, to rank.
Note: There are several interesting posts on the Frase Blog, that describe how you can get the most out of the data. It’s worth checking out.
That’s enough for an introduction, don’t you think? Let’s go over some of the most interesting Frase features below. I’ll also give you my opinion, on what I use each feature for. This should give you a real good idea of how Frase can benefit you.
Frase.io Features
Frase has some powerful features and It’s more than an AI SEO tool. It will help you with your entire content creation workflow. This includes everything from content planning and AI content generation, to optimization and monitoring.
Below is a more in-depth look at some of Frase’s features. We’ll discuss them so, you’ll understand how exactly how you can benefit from this functionality.
Content optimization
Frase.io automates SERP analysis (competitor research) by collecting and analyzing the top-ranked web pages. Frase’s findings will show you what’s needed to optimize your content and beat the competition in the search engine rankings.
SERP analysis starts after entering a target keyword phrase you want to rank for and creating a new Frase document
Frase will show you:
- SERP Scores / real-time optimization score. Compare your SEO and content score to your direct competitors. Identify keyword stuffing, find topic gaps and learn how much work you still need to do.
- Topical clusters (top topics and sub-topics) that are relevant to your audience. Covering these will help you satisfy the user’s search intent, drastically increasing ranking potential.
- A relevant list of questions your audience is asking (for example on Quora, or Reddit). This allows you to better answer these questions and think of even more content ideas to cover.
- Statistics your competitors are referencing. Referencing trustworthy sources can help you show more authority and expertise on the subject you’re writing about. I’ve covered E.A.T, earlier in this article.
- Headings (H1-H6) of competing articles. Reverse engineering the structure (outline) of competing pages can now be done from within Frase, instead of manually.
Note: Frase provides you with lots of information about the top search engine results. Understanding what makes your competitors rank well, should be your starting point for creating better content. The higher the quality of your content, the bigger your ranking potential.
Content Outline Builder
Outlining helps organize your thoughts and ideas, as well as define the flow of an article. Essentially, building an outline is laying the groundwork for an efficient and effective writing process. It simplifies writing a complex piece of content.
Clicking the ‘outline’ button in the dashboard will open a SERP explorer, which shows the outlines (or structure) of the top-ranked web pages.
The outline builder will help you:
- Organize your thoughts and ideas. Building an article or blog outline helps you create a well-structured piece of content that reads smoothly. You can more easily identify structural problems and topical gaps.
- Define content flow (for example paragraph transitions). Well-written articles that have a meaningful structure and natural flow are easier to read by users and search engines. Google prefers well-written articles, over chaotic text that’s hard to read and understand.
- Find topics your competitors are covering. The SERP Explorer gives you an easy-to-read overview of the headlines used by the top-ranked web pages.
- Improve collaboration. Providing an outline gives team members a set of instructions quick overview of what needs to be worked on.
- Fight writer’s block. It’s not uncommon to have a lack of inspiration (writer’s block) while staring at a blank canvas. An outline can quickly kickstart the writing process
Note: Studying competing article outlines will again, give you a quick overview of how in-depth your writing needs to be. Of course, as mentioned earlier, this provides an ideal starting point.
Automated Content Brief
A content brief is a document that contains specifications about the topic, format, keywords to target, audience, and resources you or team members can reference. The content brief typically also includes guidelines for writing style, tone, voice, target audience, and so on.
Because Frase has already scanned the top 20 results in the SERP, it has enough information to automatically generate a detailed content brief in a few seconds.
Using content briefs can help you:
- Minimize unnecessary revisions. By having clear goals and instructions, you can minimize the number of revisions needed and increase productivity.
- Improves accountability. When working on a project with multiple team members, detailed briefs are essential in helping to define everyone’s responsibilities.
- Better overall results. Instructions that are clear and concise help to minimize ambiguities about what is expected, thus helping to create content that’s on target.
AI Writing
Frase’s AI writing feature allows you to quickly generate unique content, without having to spend time manually writing it. The AI writing tool can output a plethora of content types, including blog paragraphs featured snippets, product descriptions, and much more.
The AI writer feature is accessed via the ‘Tools’ tab in the dashboard.
AI content generation helps you:
- Create unique and highly relevant content. AI-generated content is high-quality and mostly impossible to distinguish from a human-written text.
- Save time and money. AI content generation can dramatically speed up your workflow. In some niches, the publishing rate can be very important.
- Dissolve writer’s block. When you’re suffering from writer’s block, or just don’t know what to write, the AI writer feature gets you started in no time.
Note: While GPT-3 is the standard technology used by most AI writers. Frase does not use GPT-3. Instead, it uses its own proprietary AI model. Both technologies have their advantages and disadvantages.
For more information on AI writers, check out these post about AI writing tools.
Content Analytics
Frase.io will show you useful content analytics based on data that’s pulled from Google Search Console. Inside the dashboard, you’ll find recommendations about which pages need your attention, new content opportunities, and your progress in general.
What’s nice about the automatic recommendations is that it provides anybody with actionable insights. This is unique because this type of data is generally only used by experienced users.
Frase content analytics can help you:
- Evaluate your results. Get an overview of the fruits of your labor, in terms of average positions, clicks (CTR), and impressions.
- Uncover valuable content opportunities. Identify the lowest hanging fruit (quick wins) or uncover opportunities that need minimum effort to start ranking on the first page.
- Prioritize which article to work on next. You can filter data based on impressions, clicks, and queries, just like in GSC. The statuses provided help you decide which pages need your attention.
- Identify content decay. Once you’re finally ranking and bringing in valuable organic traffic, you don’t want to lose your positions. Frase can show you which pages need to be re-optimized, to sustain their rankings.
Frase.io SEO add-on
The SEO add-on provides several additional SEO functionalities to your workflow. You can use the extra data it provides to fine-tune your content strategy. The data will appear next to the results in the content editor.
SEO-related data helps you make more educated decisions about which competitors to attack, how much work is needed, and what’s necessary to outperform them
The Frase SEO addon will unlock you the following extra information:
- Monthly keyword search volume. An estimation of the average number of times a keyword has been searched over the last month. Handy for forecasting organic traffic potential.
- Domain authority (DA). This is an indicator of the overall “strength” of a website. Domain authority can give you an idea of how tough it will be to compete.
- Number of Backlinks. The number of links pointing to a web page. The more backlinks, the harder it will be to outrank the particular web page.
- Unlimited access to the AI writer. Generate as much unique content using the built-in AI writing feature as you want – without any limitations.
Third-Party Integrations
Integrations allow you to use Frase in collaboration with other platforms. Combining the functionality of other platforms can enhance your content writing even more.
Available platforms Frase integrates with are:
- Google docs – Installing this plugin enables you to use to import research data and optimize content right inside of Google Docs.
- Google search console – This makes it possible for Frase to import data straight from GSC and show it in the content analytics section of your account.
- WordPress – Coming in Q2 of 2022. The WordPress integration integrates Frase functionality right into your WordPress dashboard. For those who love writing in Gutenberg.
- Chrome Extension (Frase summarizer) – This allows you to get an overall idea about an article or web page in bullet form (similar to outlines)
Frase.io Pricing
Frase’s pricing plans come in three simple forms. Unless you know you need to create more than 30 documents a month, I would recommend starting with the cheapest plan. You can always upgrade later and it’s an economical way to test out Frase.
Besides, every plan comes with a 5-day money-back guarantee (no questions asked). You’ll also receive a discount if you pay annually.
Basic plan ($44,95/month)
This is the plan I use. It allows creating 30 Frase documents a month. I’m not writing more than 30 articles per month so I don’t need a higher plan. Once my publishing frequency increases, or when I start outsourcing to writers, I will upgrade to the team plan.
I recommend the basic plan for:
- Starting users, who want to give Frase.io a try.
- Individuals, such as entrepreneurs and small businesses who don’t publish daily.
Note: Document credits don’t carry over to the next month. For example: after 3 creating 15 documents every month, at the end of the third month, you’ll have 45 documents in your Frase account.
Team plan ($114,99/month)
You get unlimited documents on the team plan, meaning you can create as pieces of content a month as needed. The team plan provides 3 user seats, meaning there can be 3 different users on the account.
Increasing the user seat will cost an additional $25/month per added user.
I recommend the team plan when:
- You have a content marketing team that publishes a large number of articles a month
- There’s a need for collaboration between team members.
Enterprise plan (custom pricing)
This plan provides larger organizations with custom needs. Think about: an unusually large number of document creations or user seats, or similar situations.
The Enterprise plan includes everything from the ‘Team Plan’ and more. You’ll need to contact sales support for this.
The enterprise plan is recommended for:
- organizations with large marketing teams, who need special support and services.
SEO add-on ($35/month)
The SEO add-on provides additional (SEO-related) data to your account. Getting extra data about monthly search volume, the number of backlinks and domain authority (DA) in one central place is valuable for professionals who know the meaning of these metrics.
While you may ask yourself why this is not included as a standard in every plan, it makes sense. Not every Frase user is an SEO expert. By offering this functionality separately, the cost of other pricing plans can be kept down.
I recommend getting the SEO-addon if:
- SEO Professional or content strategist who wants to fine-tune tactics and strategies from right within Frase.
Conclusion – Is Frase.io worth it?
The more I use Frase.io, the better I think it is. In the beginning, I had to get used to the idea of AI performing important research for me. However, knowing the state of SEO at the moment (I wrote about this earlier in this Frase review) it’s a sensible step to take.
Its tools like Frase AI help individuals such as solo entrepreneurs and small businesses compete with larger players in their niche. It not only helps save time but also money.
After using Frase for months, my take on it is:
Frase will help you create well-optimized content, that has the potential to rank high in the search results, faster and easier than ever before. There’s no need to be a professional content marketer or SEO expert, to create high-quality content, that’s SEO optimized and can rank on Google.
That said, I like Frase AI a lot and I would recommend it to any type of content creator. But of course, nothing is perfect. Let me finish this Frase review with a summary of the pros and cons.
Frase pros
- Time-saver: Frase will save you hours (if not days). It simplifies the creation workflow and speeds up the creation process.
- Data accuracy: I’ve compared Frase’s suggestions for optimization with the results of manual research. I’m satisfied with Frase’s data quality output.
- User experience/ease of use: it’s very easy to use. If you need help with the tool, there’s also great documentation, that’s uncomplicated and fast to get through.
- Support: Good support and the team generally cares about user satisfaction.
- Frequent product updates: Since I’ve become a Frase user, there have been multiple updates to the platform. Frase is constantly being improved and they’ve already added several extra SEO-related tools.
Frase cons
- No built-in plagiarism checker – As of now, you’ll need to check for plagiarism elsewhere. For this, I currently recommend Grammarly’s plagiarism check.
- The AI writer can be even better – Unlike most high-quality AI content generators, Frase’s AI writer does not use GPT-3AI content generators. I still recommend using Jasper for this.
- No TOC generator: While working in the content editor, I found myself scrolling down or using CTR-F to jump to sections of the article. A feature that auto generates a table of content with links would be a time-saver.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
If you have any questions about Frase AI or any related questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. Relevant questions will be answered and listed in this section.
What are the Best Frase.io Alternatives?
Some other popular AI SEO tools are Surfer SEO and Outranking. All of these tools aim to make you a better content writer and help you achieve higher Google rankings. For more about information about, have a look at this list of best AI SEO software.
Why optimize content when you can write naturally?
When you’re very knowledgeable in your field, you could think you can get away with ‘natural writing’ alone. this is because you’ll automatically cover many relevant topics and sub-topics. While this is partly true, it’s unlikely to be sustainable, in terms of keeping your rankings.
Natural writing alone, while forgetting about optimization is not sustainable, because of the dynamics of the SERP. It’s a reflection of the market as a whole. New web pages enter or leave the SERP, topics shift and develop, rankings change, and so on.
Even if you’re extremely knowledgeable, you’ll still need to create content that covers all topics and sub-topics, as well as create the best piece of content by answering the user’s search intent as best as possible.
Can you do keyword research with Frase?
Frase isn’t a keyword research tool. It’s best to use Frase as part of your content creation toolbox. Of course, there’s a possibility to add SEO-related functionality by purchasing the SEO addon, but for keyword research only, more specialized tools are available. If you’d like to know more about keyword research tools, check out this list of SEO tools.
