Search engines have evolved over time to delivery you the right results for your query. Gone are the days when putting a search terms many times on a page would get your website ranked, now the likes of Google have got smart and have developed systems to read your content and decide if it’s worth of being a search result, but can a website tool help you write good content?
Is Frase any good? As a research tool Frase is an excellent service to invest in, helping you uncover topics your competition are using to rank high in the Google search results, create quality content for your website and create briefs for any 3rd party writing teams you use.
Frase.io is a new kid on the block aiming to “empower companies to deliver answers everywhere.” As search journeys now start with questions rather than keywords Frase is a tool to help writers identify and answer questions by doing the research for you.
Can it really help you write better content? As a website owner myself I was keen to find out.
What is Frase.io?
Frase is a web-based tool that assists in your content creation. The tool includes content recommendations and suggested word counts based on the content type, and it offers a variety of writing prompts. The prompts include questions, fill-in-the-blank statements, and more. These tools can help keep your content fresh and engaging for your readers, and possibly increase your search engine traffic. The prompts can also help you get to know your audience and discover what they find most engaging.
How do you create content?
It’s easy to get started, you just click new document and enter the search query topic you’re writing about.
Alternatively you can optimize an existing blog post by entering the search query and the URL of your existing content, this will import the webpage into Frase ready for editing (you can always copy/past content if you prefer).
After a few minutes you’ll be presented with the workspace. The main window allows you to create a content brief and create your article. To the right is the research panel.
When starting a fresh document these areas will be blank, if optimizing an existing piece of content the “My Content” tab will show your existing article.
This main workspace is where you/your writer will spend time crafting the perfect blog post by referring to the research panel on the right. It’s a good interface, having the research on the same screen as your workspace is highly convenient and means you don’t need to keep clicking between different tabs.
What’s the difference between Content Brief and My Content?
In terms of functionality these workspaces operate exactly the same way. The Content Brief section was introduced to allow users to create a content brief separate from the main document. This can be shared with others, a brilliant and useful feature if you are outsourcing the writing.
Creating a brief is just a matter of clicking a few buttons and the research is pasted into the document for you to use/share.
My Content is the content editor, where you will write and edit your article. Both have the research bar on the right of the screen.
Although I tend to use the right hand side panel when writing, I often create a content brief as the first action, to read over the research compiled by Frase.
Research Results
The brief pastes the research results into a format you can share, but if you’re writing the content yourself you can head directly to the “My Content” tab and start creating your post.
Results shown are based on the query and location you entered at the start. Both the search term and location can be updated without starting a new document, handy if you’ve made a mistake or selected UK when you wanted results for the USA.
Frase does an excellent job of keeping track of how your document compares to others, showing your stats vs average stats for word count and number of headers/links/images. You then see a short summery of the top search results, very useful to see how other websites covered the same topic.
The aim isn’t to copy other people, it’s to ensure your post is better than all existing posts. Seeing how others tackled a particular topic is hugely helpful, it allows you to spot gaps in your own content. I’ve also found it incredibly useful at highlighting key statistics I might want to include as well as key questions that are being asked.
Topic Score
A recent update introduced topic scores, an area to see how often topics are mentioned in most articles and a comparison to how often you’ve mentioned them. You can view the top topics or arrange them via topic cluster.
For example if you were writing about computer mice you could see a topic cluster that includes “vertical mouse” and “ergonomic mouse review”
As you add these topics to your document the research panel is updated to show how many times you’ve used a topic compared to the average number of uses.
This is a really useful real time tool that updates as you write and allows you to check you’ve:
- not missed any key topics
- not overused topics
The simple colour coding makes this very easy to understand and in use I’ve found this is brilliant at checking I’ve covered a topic as completely as I can and it often uncovers areas I’d not considered including.
Questions
With the stated mission of empowering the delivery of answers it’s no surprise the results section includes a list of questions for you to answer. This is a real time saver, rather than having to manually check Google search results, People Also Ask, Quora and Redit, Frase does the hard work for you.
In general, I’ve found this to be a very power section, so much so it’s actually a separate tool within Frase, allowing you to do question research before starting a document. Using the example of “best PC mouse” returns results across a range of sites.
- Question: What question was asked
- Source: Where the question was asked
- Monthly Search Volume: Exactly what you’d expect, this is information costs extra which is why you see a padlock in my screenshot
It sources questions from Google autocomplete, People Also Ask, Quora, Reddit, a massive time saver that means you don’t need to trawl the internet for them. Not all searches return this many questions, it depends on how popular the topic and how many quesitons that topic generates.
These results can be exported to an Excel sheet or you can start a new document based on the question. As Google loves to help people, if you answer questions it can help get your website ranked for search results.
Frase/Nichesss SUPER HACK
If you grabbed a copy of the recently reviewed Nichesss you’re going to love this superhack. Here’s the workflow:
- Research questions for your topic in Frase
- Copy a question and in Nichesss create a Blog Post Intro
- Take the Nichesss result and paste it back into your Frase document!
This method can be used to quickly generate answers to frequently asked questions. Although the answers are written by AI and it’s original content you should still read over them, check any stats and reword in your tone of voice.
Can you write a full blog post in Frase?
Yes Frase is the ideal place to write your content. It has a full editor built in, I’m using it to type out this very article!
It’s an easy-to-use editor that allows you to type directly and apply formatting such as:
- Styles (e.g. Heading 1, 2 3 etc)
- Bold/Underline
- Add links
- Bulletpoints/numbers/checklists
- Tables
- Videos
- Images
There is also a remove formatting option, perfect for when you’ve pasted content in written elsewhere and you want to set the formatting yourself, I’ve had to do this when pasting content from a Google Docs file.
You might also notice in the toolbar the Export button.
You can share the document with someone externally, either read only or editable and this is very handy if you’re working with clients or external writers. The select all and copy function is perfect for picking up the content and dropping it into your CMS.
You also have options to export as a PDF, HTML or publish directly to your WordPress website (once you’ve configure the integration).
Frase Pricing
At the time of review Frase offered 4 price points, 2 for the research and content creator and 2 for the Answer engine, which I’m not covering in this post:
Frase Content:
- Individual Plan
- $45 per month
- 1 user
- 30 document per month
- Team Plan
- $120 per month
- 3 users
- Unlimited documents
Both plans come with pre-built templates, topic scoring, content briefs, search console integration, version control, support for 6 languages and unlimited exporting/sharing.
This pricing is very reasonable when compared to Market Muse, a similar platform that provides a content writer and research tools, they have a plan for 3 users which costs $499 per month!
If you’re also in the market for search engine results data you can pay an additional $35 a month to get metrics for backlinks and domain authority, this isn’t something I’ve tried so can’t comment on how useful it is.
Frase Answers is a separate product, another element I haven’t tried. It allows you to add an answer bot to your website and uses AI to provide the information your visitors are looking for. This starts at $200 a month.
Frase Community
The developers set up a very active Facebook group to discuss Frase and SEO topics. This is also where they post about new features and survey the community. They’re very open about the platforms development and have a publically available roadmap: Frase Roadmap.
How Does Frase Compare to Other Blog Creation Tools?
When it comes to tools for blog creation, Frase stands out for its AI-powered content optimization features. Unlike other platforms, Frase offers advanced SEO insights and content briefs to streamline the blog writing process. Its ability to generate high-quality content ideas sets it apart from other blog creation tools on the market.
Would I recommend Frase?
If you are someone who is writing a lot of content I 100% recommend giving Frase a go. I write articles for a range of websites and find it very easy to use, the research element is excellent, I can easily share drafts via the share link function and it’s helped to make me a better writer.
If you’re interested in learning more you can support me and my website by clicking on any of the affiliate links in this article and visiting frase.io.
