Welcome to my review of Frase, a popular tool among SEO professionals and content marketers.

I know what you are thinking.

Here we go again with another review of an SEO tool filled with fluff about how wonderful and glorious it is. Or about how it’s a must-need in your tech stack to save you and your team hours on end…blah blah blah.

Thankfully, this Frase review is anything but that. As a content writer turned SEO agency co-founder (and a recent Marketing and Advertising Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree), I’ve used just about every SEO tool under the sun.

I’m here to spill the beans on Frase — from where it shines to where it falls short (and everything in between).

In other words, I’ll delve into the pros and cons of using Frase and explore some of the unique benefits (and pitfalls) that other Frase reviews fail to mention.

By the end, you should clearly understand whether Frase is the right SEO tool for your needs or if you should avoid it with a ten-foot pole (and go with a popular Frase alternative).

Are you interested yet?

Well, then, let’s dive in.

What is ​​Frase? Who is it suited for?

Let’s get the basics out of the way so we can take more time to look at Frase’s benefits and features.

Over 30,000 teams use Frase (or Frase io) to produce high-quality content quickly and easily. They use it to improve their research, writing, and optimization of SEO content.

In simple terms: Frase is an AI-powered tool that helps you write the most SEO-friendly content faster than ever.

GPT-3 has made a Twitter and LinkedIn frenzy over the past few months. However, Frase uses an AI model (not GPT-3) for content generation. Its unique AI model that’s trained on billions of web pages from all over the internet.

So if you are looking for a “better” alternative to the currently free GPT-3 tools from OpenAI, Frase could be for you.

You can think of Frase AI as a closed-loop autocomplete system — you give it a small text input, and it can anticipate what comes next. Or, in the case of SEO, help scrape SERPs to tell you precisely what you need in your content to rank higher.

SEOs

SEO experts have many goals for optimizing websites for search engines. Some of the main goals of SEO experts include:

1. Improving the ranking and visibility of a website in SERPs.
2. Increasing the number of organic traffic to a website.
3. Improving the user experience of a website, including the design, content, and performance.
4. Increasing the number of high-quality, authoritative backlinks pointing to a website.
5. Making sure that a website is mobile-friendly and has a fast loading speed.
6. Optimizing a website’s content and structure to make it easier for search engines to understand and crawl the site.
7. Identifying and targeting the most relevant and valuable keywords and phrases for a website’s content.
8. Tracking and measuring the performance of a website’s SEO efforts and making ongoing optimizations to improve results.

TL;DR: The goal of SEO experts is to help improve a website’s ranking in search engine results and drive more organic traffic. And Frase helps accomplish more than half of these goals.

Frase uses artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the content creation and optimization process, to create high-quality content that outranks the competition while also providing value to readers.

Content Marketers

Writing content is not for the faint-hearted. It’s tedious, time-consuming, and repetitive. Plus, writer’s block is more common than I care to admit.

Writing (good) content that ranks is challenging. Not to mention competitive.

Content creators publish more than 6 million blog posts daily. It’s like trying to buy a new Rolex from an authorized dealer in 2022. Or securing the latest shoe drop from Nike.

And sometimes, it feels like the odds are stacked against you. But Frase is a go-to tool that can help marketers create content that consistently attracts and converts organic traffic and boosts ROI. 

AI writing tools are a content marketer’s best friend, not their enemy. Content marketing is easier than ever with keyword research, question ideas, and content idea generation. 

Marketing Agencies

SEO tools aren’t just for individuals or freelancers — marketing agencies are more likely the bread and butter target market.

Why? Because they can afford these tools and must deliver top-notch results for their clients. They are the experts. Clients pay them to do all of the heavy lifting.

Marketing agencies can use Frase to spend less time researching and creating high-grade SEO content and more time on other growth initiatives.

I always look for tools to improve my team’s workflow. I’d rather my team spend less time on tedious tasks (like creating content briefs) and more time building relationships with clients or providing added value.

Frase features breakdown

Frase has numerous features (and more than a dozen free tools), but I’ll break it down into four different categories:

Content briefs

Frase simplifies SEO research by quickly providing the top results for any target search query, so you can create SEO-optimized briefs in minutes (6 seconds to be exact).

There’s no need to spend hours scrolling through SERPs to find the hidden gems. Instead, Frase makes it easy to access and analyze the web’s top content in one place.

You unlock information about main keywords, titles, and other topical concepts your competitors use. And the best part, it’s all neatly displayed in one research panel.

You have instant access to the following information about the top 20 SERP results:

• SERP overview
• Headings
• Questions (People Also Ask, Quora, Reddit)
• External links
• Statistics
• News & related sources
• Wikipedia topics

Frase helps you create custom blog post outlines based on the best content on the internet. You can quickly scroll through the top 20 SERP results to pick the headers you want in your outline.

Click the headers you want for your brief, which automatically updates on the right side of the tool. You can also filter by H1, H2, H3, H4, questions, and long-tail keywords.

Content writing

Like the other AI-writing tools, Frase’s claim to fame is the ability to cure writer’s block. And as cliche as it sounds, it’s true.

With automated outlines, blog introductions, product descriptions, FAQs, and more, you can generate high-converting, SEO-optimized copy with a button.

All you need to do is provide a few inputs, and voila. Then, the Frase “Write for Me” feature takes over and spits out a complete sentence or paragraph.

Or, if you find a header you like from your competitors, you can click the “Write about this” button to generate new, better content surrounding that header or topic.

The AI-writing capabilities for Frase can also help you fine-tune your writing with paraphrasing and rewriting features. Think of all the unique angles you can achieve with the power of AI. Or you can also expand on certain topics. 

Content optimization

As a content marketer, you do everything possible to write optimized content that ranks on Google.

You come in with a unique angle and compelling title, and your on-page SEO dialed in. It’s a shoo-in, right? So you hit publish and spend the next two weeks refreshing Google, hoping your content appears on the first page.

But that day never comes. What went wrong? What differentiates your content from the competition? Where did you fall short?

You can understand the answer to most of these questions with Frase’s content optimization feature. The proprietary text editor uses a topic model to compare your content to that of your competitors, so you can write like an expert (and avoid missing the mark).

You’ll get a complete list of related topics and the recommended number of mentions for each keyword, so Google is more likely to favor your content. And so you can hang with the rest of them.

There are three ways to optimize content in Frase:

• Optimize as you write
• Optimize a draft you’ve already written (in Frase or somewhere else)
• Optimize a live URL (Frase will scrape and import that content directly to the tool)

The tool shows you a gold bar of where your topic score needs to reach before it can compete with the big dogs. To increase your topic score, add missing keywords to your content (highlighted in gray).

You get bonus points if your topic score surpasses the gold bar 😉

You can also use Frase Answer as a chatbot-type AI writing tool to scan the current content on your site for optimization purposes. It’s an answer engine. Think of it like a magic genie.

Content analytics

Frase offers a dashboard that uses your Google Search Console data to identify and categorize your most promising content opportunities quickly so you know what to focus on next.

The dashboard includes data like:

• Clicks
• Impressions
• Avg. CTR
• Avg. Position
• Clicks Growth
• Ranked Pages
• Rank Rate

And it also offers insights on content slipping through the cracks (needing a refresh) and provides keyword opportunities served on a silver platter.

Free tools

On top of all the premium features Frase offers with a paid plan, it offers over a dozen free content-creator tools:

• AI Content Generator – create a very simple (read: short) blog based on a title
• Introduction Generator – produce an introduction to your blog in seconds
• Outline Generator – draft a content brief from a title or keyword
• Paraphrasing Tool – simplify your content into a clear, concise paragraph
• Paragraph Rewriter – repurpose paragraphs with new angles in one click
• Blog Title Generator – find the perfect title for your next blog post
• Description Generator – write SEO-friendly meta descriptions in seconds
• People Also Ask – find the top-asked questions on Google for a given keyword
• Product Description – create compelling e-commerce product descriptions
• Slogan Generator – drum up a catchy slogan for your new business
• Summary Generator – turn a complicated article into a concise summary
• Value Proposition – develop a value proposition for your brand
• Sentence Rewriter – find a better way to write a sentence

These free tools remind me of all the Copy AI tools I covered extensively in this review.

However, I think Copy AI takes the championship belt in a head-to-head showdown of the free tools from Copy AI versus Frase.

Why? The content that Copy AI produces is of higher quality than Frase.

For example, with the Description Generator from Frase, I have to refresh the results multiple times to find a description worth using. But with Copy AI, the results are fresh off the press and ready for a human touch.

Also, with the Frase AI tool, you’re limited on how many times you can use the free tools in a day. I have yet to run into that issue with Copy AI.

Plus, the CTA from Frase is misleading. The basic plans don’t offer unlimited AI content generation. Instead, you’re capped at 4,000 words per month unless you add the “Pro Add-On.”

My favorite free tools from Frase are the Outline Generator, and the People Also Ask.

As the CEO of an SEO agency with 40+ team members, we write a lot of content. And I don’t mean that lightly. It truly is a lot of content.

Every content starts with a content brief, from internal blog posts to guest posts on top sites. We simply don’t have enough time to manually write all the content briefs while keeping up with our day jobs.

That’s where AI outline generators come into play. With a simple title and keyword, you have a highly-relevant outline in a matter of seconds.

Then my team can quickly add or subtract items and ship off the brief to the next stage of the workflow. It’s that simple and effective.

I love the People Also Ask tool because it’s a surefire way to boost the likelihood that your content will rank higher on Google. If you can answer some of these questions as you write (and sprinkle them in, naturally), it’s truly worth its weight in gold.

Here’s a simple query about the keyword for this post, “Frase review”:

Are all of the outlined questions answered in this post? You’ll have to keep reading to find out.

Frase pricing breakdown

Is Frase free to use? Yes, Frase offers over a dozen free tools, from outline generators to sentence rewriters and so much more.

But if you want a free trial for all the premium features, you’re SOL. Unless you pay $1 for a 5-day trial. 🙂 Frase clarifies on its help page that this $1 trial fee is non-refundable.

Although most people can afford to pay $1 for a trial run, it is an unnecessary barrier to entry for me. So why not offer the free trial with no strings attached?

To unlock the premium features, here’s the Frase price breakdown:

• Solo: $14.99/month
• Basic: $44.99/month
• Team: $114.99/month

Then, of course, you can get the “Pro Add-On” for an additional $35/month. The “Pro Add-On” unlocks more features like the following:

• Keyword search volume – Monthly search volume and keyword matches for use in the Outline Builder.
• SERP data enrichment – In-depth details on domain authority and other backlink data from the top results on SERPs.
• Frase AI writer – Unlimited access to the AI Writer (no word restrictions like the other pricing tiers).

I wish pricing bundles included these features. I’d pay more for it, but I don’t like that it’s an add-on. It makes it feel more expensive.

What I liked about Frase

Frase has impressive features that make it stand out from other SEO content tools. Here are some of my favorite things about it:

Build high-quality content briefs in minutes

It’s easy to build a content brief about any topic or keyword using Frase content tools.

It helps pull in the top 20 SERP results, and you can quickly scroll through the headers to inspire you for your outline.

If you love a particular H3, you can add it to your outline with a simple click. Within six seconds, you have a fully optimized brief. And, of course, you can edit it to add your flair.

We all know that a good blog post needs some supporting statistics. The lack of easy access to stats was one of my main complaints about Copy AI. Frase allows you to access top statistics (with the source included) easily.

You can spend less time scouring the internet for random statistics and more time delivering results for your clients.

Create SEO-friendly content (that actually ranks)

I never write a blog post without running it through an optimization tool. Usually, my go-to is MarketMuse, but it’s relatively expensive. So that’s where Frase fills in the gaps.

SEO content optimization tools are game-changing. If you aren’t using them in your content workflow, stop what you’re doing and invest in Frase. You won’t regret it.

The results speak for themselves. After running your content through these tools, you can easily rank above The New York Times and many other prominent publications on Google.

And it’s extremely satisfying to get the target score above your competitors. It’s a fun little game I like to play. 😀

Plus, they just released a WordPress Plugin that makes the process much more efficient.

External and internal link suggestions

If there is one thing you know about me, I hate manually adding internal links to blog posts. It’s time-consuming and challenging when you have a robust library of content.

That’s why I love the Link Whisper WordPress plugin.

But the fewer tools, the better. So when I found out that Frase also offers a feature for adding external and internal links, I popped open that champagne bottle.

Internal links are such an underused SEO strategy. Internal links distribute link juice to other pages on your site while simultaneously improving the user experience.

Plus, it helps Google understand how your pages are related.

Easy-to-follow crash course

My biggest complaint about AI-powered tools is that it’s hard to know if you are using them to their full potential.

For instance, are you using all of the features? Is there a better way to do something? Do you need a piece of the puzzle to produce better results?

Frase provides a complete crash course with pre-recorded YouTube videos, walking through every feature in great detail.

This training material is perfect for my SEO agency. Why? I’m able to easily onboard new team members by pointing them to this course. It saves me time on how to use the tool.

The tutorials are of excellent quality and share the tool’s hidden gems. Frase also highly recommends that every new user complete the course.

Frase Certified Expert

I thought this was a neat touch.

What does it mean to be a Frase Certified Expert? Well, you’ll be among the most technologically advanced Frase users worldwide. And you get some unique perks.

This feature reminds me of the HubSpot Inbound Marketing Certification. It’s a clever idea.

What I disliked about Frase

As with any SEO tool, there are a few drawbacks worth noting.

Here are a few areas where I felt Frase fell short:

Content is not publish-ready

At this point, AI isn’t replacing content marketers. AI-produced content still needs a human touch and some editing.

Does AI speed up my content workflow? Yes, absolutely.

Will I publish the content written by Frase’s AI model “as is”? Not a chance.

Will it get there in a few years? Yes, I do think, at some point, it’ll no longer need much (or any) human editing.

For now, it’s wise to use Frase to help you when you have a bad case of writer’s block, but not to replace your freelance writers.

Left wanting more from the AI assistant

With AI, the output is only as good as the input. Garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes.

I wouldn’t recommend Frase as a content writing tool. Instead, I recommend Frase as a content optimization tool and for researching the competition when drafting content briefs.

But even if you have perfected the query, the AI model still left me wanting more.

For the content writing feature, I think some of the other AI-powered writing tools on the market have a more intuitive interface and produce better quality content.

It has the potential to be an all-in-one content tool, but it’s not quite there yet for me.

“Free” features are limited

The free tools from Frase are fantastic, but they’re way too limited in usage credits.

I used the meta description tool a few times for this review and have already exceeded the daily limit. I have never run into this issue with the free Copy AI tools.

Frase probably isn’t the best choice for freelance content writers on a strict budget. Plus, if you write five articles (or more) per week, you’ll quickly approach that 4,000-word cap on base plans.

Popular Frase alternatives

When it comes to optimizing your website for search engine performance, Frase is an excellent choice. However, it isn’t the only solution out there.

There are several other AI-powered options, each with its own benefits and drawbacks.

Here are some Frase alternatives:

1. MarketMuse – Trusted by thousands of B2C teams with AI-powered content research, intelligence, and strategy, you never have to worry about your content ranking in SERPs again with MarketMuse.
2. Clearscope – Clearscope is a premier SEO content optimization platform for driving search traffic. Its intuitive tools make SEO writing a breeze so that you can produce the highest-quality content.
3. Surfer SEO – Surfer SEO is a cloud-based SEO tool that uses AI to analyze existing content on the web and provide recommendations to help content rank higher in search engine results.

Do I recommend Frase?

So, is Frase any good?

Yes, Frase is a stellar SEO content optimization tool that delivers on its promises (putting the entire SEO content workflow on steroids). It’s also very reasonably priced compared to its competitors.

My team uses Frase to create high-quality content briefs to land guest posts on some of the best sites on the internet. It saves us hours per day and gives us confidence that we are hitting the nail on the head when pitching content ideas.

The last thing we want is to waste time creating content that flops. It’s already a bottleneck for any SEO agency, so you want to avoid adding fuel to the fire.

If you are ready to up your content game, I recommend using Frase to take your content to the next level. It’s the icing on the cake that you need to boost your content to the top of SERPs.