Frase specifications
| What it is | SERP research, content brief builder and optimisation scorer, with drafting attached |
| Primary workflow | Query → SERP analysis → brief/outline → draft → optimise |
| What it analyses | Top-ranking pages: headings, word counts, topics covered, questions answered |
| Question sources | People Also Ask and related community question sources |
| Optimisation score | Topic coverage measured against ranking competitors |
| Integrations | Google Search Console, Google Docs, WordPress |
| Free tier | Trial rather than a permanent free plan; article credits on lower tiers |
| Poor fit for | Writing that is not search-driven; teams wanting finished copy without an editor |
What the SERP analysis actually retrieves
For a target query, Frase fetches the top results and breaks each down: the heading structure, how long the page is, which subtopics appear, and which questions the page answers.
Aggregated across ten competitors, this answers a question writers otherwise guess at — what does a page about this subject have to cover to be taken seriously? If nine of ten ranking pages address pricing and yours does not, that is a gap you can see rather than suspect.
It also surfaces the questions real people ask around the topic, which is the most reliable raw material for headings and FAQ sections because it comes from actual queries rather than from imagination.
Briefs a freelancer can actually follow
The brief is where Frase earns its place in a content operation, and the value is organisational rather than technical.
A brief carrying the required subtopics, the questions to answer, the competing pages, a target length and the heading structure removes most of the ambiguity from a writing assignment. Freelancers deliver closer to what was wanted on the first attempt, and the revision cycle that eats content-team time shrinks.
Teams commissioning ten articles a month get more from this than from any generation feature in the product.
The optimisation score, and how to avoid being ruined by it
Frase scores a draft on topic coverage against the ranking set. Higher score, more of the expected concepts present.
Used properly this is a checklist: have I forgotten something the subject obviously requires? Used improperly it becomes a target, and chasing it produces the recognisable disease of over-optimised content — paragraphs that exist to accommodate a term, lists of near-synonyms, and prose written for a scoring algorithm rather than a reader.
The score measures similarity to what already ranks. That is useful as a floor and actively harmful as a ceiling, because a page identical in coverage to the current top ten has given nobody a reason to prefer it. Hit the floor, then spend your remaining effort on what those pages do not have.
Frase vs Surfer SEO for content briefs
These two are the usual shortlist, and the choice is reasonably clear-cut.
Surfer is more granular on on-page optimisation — term frequencies, density guidance, structural scoring — and its live editor guidance is stronger. It suits teams whose job is optimising pages.
Frase is stronger at the research-and-brief stage, and its question extraction is better. It suits teams whose job is commissioning and producing articles.
Both include drafting, and in both cases the drafting is the weaker half of the product. Neither should be bought for its writing.
If your bottleneck is “what should this article say?”, Frase. If it is “why is this published article not ranking?”, Surfer.
Where the writing quality actually sits
Frase will generate paragraphs and full drafts, and the output is unremarkable — competent, general, and no better than a well-prompted chatbot.
This is not a serious criticism, because generation is not what the tool is for. It becomes a problem only when a team buys it expecting finished articles and publishes what comes out. The realistic pattern is: research and brief in Frase, write properly elsewhere, return to check coverage.
What you still have to bring
- Original information. Everything Frase surfaces is derived from pages that already exist, so by definition it contains nothing new.
- Judgement about intent. The tool reports what ranks; deciding whether that reflects what your reader needs is human work.
- Fact verification. Competitor pages are not authorities, and repeating their claims propagates their errors.
- A reason to exist. Coverage parity is the entry requirement, not the argument for your page.
Search Console, and the underused feature
Connecting Google Search Console lets Frase work against pages you already have — finding articles ranking on page two, showing which queries they nearly win, and identifying what is missing.
Improving an existing page that already has authority is usually a better return than writing a new one, and this is the part of the product most teams never switch on.
Who should buy Frase
Content managers commissioning writers, where the brief is the deliverable that matters. In-house SEO teams producing articles at a steady rate. Agencies standardising how briefs are handed to freelancers. Solo publishers who want to know what a topic requires before spending a day writing about it.
Not for writers who do not work from search intent, and not for anyone hoping to skip the writing.
Other brief and optimisation tools
- Surfer SEO — finer-grained on-page optimisation.
- Clearscope — premium end, strong reporting, enterprise oriented.
- MarketMuse — planning at site level rather than page level.
- AlsoAsked — question research alone, and much cheaper.
Compiled from Frase’s documentation and public sources. We have not hands-on tested this tool. Last reviewed 17 August 2026.
