May 8, 2023

Frase vs MarketMuse: The Better Fit for Content Optimization

Priya Jamba, Content Marketer
Priya Jamba
Frase vs MarketMuse: The Better Fit for Content Optimization
Priya Jamba, Content Marketer
Priya Jamba
May 8, 2023

Frase vs MarketMuse: The Better Fit for Content Optimization

Are you torn between Frase vs MarketMuse for your content needs? Our expert comparison will help you make the right choice for your business.
Frase vs MarketMuse: The Better Fit for Content Optimization

Table of contents

As businesses and marketers increasingly recognize the importance of high-quality content in their online presence, the need for efficient content optimization and strategy tools has grown significantly. Frase and Marketmuse are two such tools that can help the content team of businesses create better content and improve their SEO rankings.

So, let's dive in and explore the superior tool between Frase and Marketmuse! In this blog, we will compare the features and capabilities of Frase and Marketmuse. Plus, we will discuss their pros and cons to help you decide which tool best fits your content optimization needs.

Let's get started! 

Frase Overview


Frase is an AI-powered content optimization tool that helps you create SEO-friendly articles. It uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to analyze competitors' content, identify relevant topics and keywords, and provide suggestions for improving your chances of ranking higher.

Frase Features

  • Content Research
  • Content Outline 
  • AI Writer
  • Content Optimizer 
  • Keyword Search

Frase Content Research tool simplifies your entire content research by providing all your competitor's content and top-ranking page insights under one tab. 

All the Google SERP insights are categorized into Outline, Headings, Questions, Stats, News, and Wiki. Moreover, you can access competitors' domain authority and backlink count details under the overview tab (only available for Pro-add-on users). This helps you to consider all the factors contributing to ranking higher in the SERP. 

As for outline creation, Frase reviews the top 20 SERP pages to create an outline and gather research points for a search query. You can also manually select headings and subheads from the top-ranking page and curate an outline based on competitors' blogs. 

One of Frase’s unique features is its automated content briefs. However, the relevancy of the brief ultimately depends on the outline. Users must manually add or eliminate sections to create a relevant outline that meets their target audience's knowledge level. 

Next off, Frase AI Writer is one of the popular writing tools as it helps users quickly generate the first draft for their content brief. It follows the instructions provided under each section and curates relevant content. You can even give specific instructions to the AI like writing tone to be followed and specific information to include and exclude in the content. 

Similar to Surfer, Frase has a content optimizer that suggests a list of key terms to include in content to make it rank-ready. It also shows how competitors have used those terms in their content. 

Moreover, this tool scores a piece of content based on key term usage and keyword density. In addition to that, you can find competitors' content scores. This helps you decide on a score for your content that has the potential to compete with top-ranking pages. 

It also presents a heatmap to show how often a keyword has been used in the top 20 ranking pages. When you know the shared similarities in search results, it becomes easier to find the sweet spot and mimic best practices to create content that ranks higher.

Finally, the topic planner helps users quickly find all the topics of long tail keywords that competitors are ranking for. Users can also view the keyword volumes, sub-topics supporting a seed keyword, and monthly search volume details. 

Moreover, the Outline Builder generates auto-suggested keywords and a list of questions from Quora, Google, and other social tools to build a relevant outline. You can find different variations for one seed keyword and get topic ideas to create a content plan and generate organic traffic. 

Pros

  • Team collaboration tools like document sharing, project status update settings, and team project folders help users manage their content teams easily. 
  • Integration with Google Docs and WordPress allows users to introduce the tool to their workflow quickly. 
  • Templates like blog introductions, how-to blog posts, Sentence Rewriters, Feature-benefit converters, etc., help users create and edit content for better engagement. 
  • Community support provided within the tool is another huge advantage. 
  • It also offers SEO add-ons like GSC content analytics, outline builder, Wikipedia Content Map, and topic planner. 
  • Frase has a Chat-based AI language model to fetch quick answers for impromptu questions.
  • The Frase team conducts webinars and workshops frequently to keep the readers updated about industry trends and product updates. 
  • Google Search Console integrations allow users to monitor their content performance and get internal link suggestions to optimize content. 
  • Frase has an Article Rewriter that helps users rewrite an entire article in just a click. 

Cons

  • The absence of a keyword research tool restricts users from finding easy content opportunities that provide them a better chance to rank higher. 
  • The lack of a Keyword Cluster tool restricts users from achieving topical authority in their industry. 
  • High reliance on competitors' content for optimization and keyword suggestions will not be beneficial in the long run. 
  • The tool focuses not on entire on-page SEO but emphasizes keyword density and usage.
  • Lack of advanced SEO tools like keyword explorer, content cluster creator, advanced on-page SEO suggestions, etc., are major drawbacks.
  • The absence of short-form templates restricts users from leveraging the tool to create social media and other short-form content. 

These are the top factors you should weigh side by side before opting for Frase paid plans.

Pricing 

Plan Price (monthly) Price (Yearly)
Solo $14.99 $12.66 /per month if paid annually
Basic $44.99 $38.25 /per month if paid annually
Team $114.99 $97.75 /per month if paid annually

They also offer add-ons like keyword search volume, SERP data enrichment, and unlimited Frase AI writing for $35. You can only access the AI writer as a pro-add, meaning you need to purchase a base plan and a Pro-Add-On. 

MarketMuse: Complete Overview 

Marketmuse tool logo 

MarketMuse is a software that aids businesses in their strategy and optimization requirements. Its primary advantage is its capability to automate content creation and optimization tasks through AI.

It allows its users to devise a content strategy that is consistent with their targets and objectives. By leveraging natural language processing (NLP), it generates preliminary drafts of blog posts and content briefs that writers can use.

The platform's AI-powered insights equip companies with data-driven knowledge, which they can utilize to make informed decisions about their content and improve its performance.

MarketMuse Features

The core functionalities of the tool are content planning, keyword research, content management, and competitor analysis. Here is an in-depth review of each feature in the upcoming section. 

Keyword Research 

The MarketMuse keyword research tool provides keyword insights, SERP analysis for a target keyword, a heatmap to view competitors' performance, and link suggestions. 

Generally, all SEO tools provide access to relevant keyword insights like volume and CPC. Whereas MarketMuse goes one step further and provides details about a topic’s performance over time (trends), keyword variants, and suggested keyword usage to help users make the best use of each keyword. 

The SERP X-ray feature is one of the most useful tools in MarketMuse. It helps users get in-depth insights into competitors' content. 

The heatmap tool lets you see how your competitors perform at the SERP and website levels. Moreover, you can get must-have content suggestions and content gap insights from your competitors. 

MarketMuse's keyword planner also maps out your existing content performance to provide personalized insights like your custom keyword difficulty score topical authority score for the keywords you aim to rank for. This helps you find out how you can improve your content's performance. 

Content Planning 

With MarketMuse's content planning system, you can quickly review your existing content hub and find new topic ideas that have the potential to rank higher on the SERP

The tool helps you examine your content's performance and analyze metrics like topical authority, competitive advantage, personalized difficulty score, SERP features, and more. 

When you have an extensive content database, finding topics you have not covered might become challenging. That’s why MarketMuse facilitates managing all your content in one place. Moreover, the real-time content inventory helps you analyze content performance based on automatically updated data. 

Content Briefs 

Even though MarketMuse does not help create full-fledged AI content, it facilitates SEO-driven brief creation. 

The brief creation process is categorized into 3 steps, i.e., creating sections, processing, and reviewing. You cannot generate an automated brief with one click. However, you can find all the necessary details, like questions, subheadings, topic suggestions, and internal and external links to include in your content. 

Moreover, you will get access to questions generated by artificial intelligence to create comprehensive content. The final brief will include topics, subtopics, word count expectations, and link recommendations to add to your content. Overall, the content brief provides all the details your writer needs to create content. You can share the brief with your team with just a click of a button.  

Pros 

  • The heat map and SERP-X-ray features provide in-depth competitor analysis to help users understand your competitor’s performance. 
  • Content topic and planning tools allow users to maintain and track content in one place
  • ChatGPT integration provides AI-assitance help users create highly engaging content and optimize it for better performance. 
  • Saves manual time spent on research by providing details about competitors' content insights under one tab in a visually appealing manner.  
  • Personalized keyword difficulty and topical authority scores are highly beneficial for finding profitable content topics and predicting content performance. 
  • With raw competitor data, it is easier for users to find the weak spot and outcompete their competitors
  • MarketMuse planning tool helps users build a content hub to easily analyze, manage, and optimize content for better performance. 
  • The free plans with 10 monthly queries help users take advantage of the basic functions of the tool without spending. 
  • Users can easily export content to Word, Excel, and Google Docs with just a click. However, this facility is not available for free users. 

Cons 

  • Even though the tool provides advanced features, the pricing plans are out of budget for some growing brands and individual service providers. 
  • Their standard and team plans do not provide access to domain-level analysis, unlimited brief credits, or team training. This limits the user's ability to access the tool to its full potential. 
  • The tool can be quite advanced for new users with limited SEO knowledge. 
  • The absence of AI-powered content writers is a major disadvantage that limits the user's ability to increase content production efficiency. 
  • The lack of plugins and Chrome extensions is another significant drawback. 
  • The competitor data and other SEO information can be quite overwhelming to new users. 

These are the top factors you should weigh side by side before opting for MarketMuse's paid plans.

Pricing

Plans Monthly pricing Yearly Pricing
Free $0 $0
Standard $149 $1500
Team $399 $3900
Custom Custom Custom

Frase vs Marketmuse: An In-depth Analysis 

Now that you have a fair idea about the strengths and weaknesses of these tools, let's move on to compare them head-on. 

Frase vs Marketmuse: Content Lifecycle 

Both Frase and MarketMuse offer comprehensive solutions for the entire content lifecycle, from research to publishing. Frase offers a content brief tool, while MarketMuse offers an AI-powered content strategy platform. MarketMuse clearly has a more robust offering for the entire content lifecycle.

Winner: MarketMuse

Frase vs Marketmuse: AI-Writing 

Both platforms use AI to some extent in their solutions. Frase has an AI-powered content editor that provides real-time suggestions for improvements. MarketMuse offers a more advanced solution with their AI-powered content strategy platform that can generate content ideas, outlines, and even first drafts.

Winner: MarketMuse

Frase vs Marketmuse: User Interface 

Frase boasts a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate from the get-go. Conversely, Marketmuse’s interface can be hard to navigate for beginners. Although the learning curve for MarketMuse's user interface may seem steep, the platform offers several educational resources to help you get up to speed quickly. So, Frase offers a superior user experience. 

Winner: Frase 

Frase vs Marketmuse: Content Optimization 

Both platforms offer content optimization tools that suggest improvements based on SEO, readability, and engagement metrics. Frase offers a content editor that provides suggestions for improvements, while MarketMuse has a more comprehensive optimization tool that can analyze entire content clusters for optimization opportunities.

Winner: MarketMuse

Frase vs Marketmuse: Content Research 

Both platforms have powerful research capabilities. Frase offers a research tool that provides content ideas, questions, and popular topics. MarketMuse offers a more advanced research tool to analyze entire content clusters and provide insights for topic modelling and content strategy.

Winner: MarketMuse

Frase vs Marketmuse: Keyword Planning

Both platforms have keyword planning capabilities. Frase's keyword research tool provides search volume, CPC, and difficulty metrics. MarketMuse has a more comprehensive keyword planning tool that can analyze entire content clusters and provide insights for content strategy.

Winner: MarketMuse

Marketmuse vs Frase: Which is better? 

MarketMuse is a more comprehensive offering that provides advanced AI-powered capabilities. Its content optimization tools use natural language processing and machine learning to analyze and understand the meaning and context of the content and identify gaps and opportunities for improvement. 

However, MarketMuse's advanced capabilities come at a much higher price point, which may be cost-prohibitive for smaller businesses and content creators. 

On the other hand, Frase is a more affordable option that provides a good range of features for smaller businesses and content creators. It's user-friendly and easy to navigate, making it an excellent choice for those new to content optimization. 

Its affordability and ease of use make it a practical choice for smaller businesses and startups. However, MarketMuse is a superior tool due to the sheer number of features that it offers than its counterpart. The better tool among these depends on your unique content and SEO requirements. 

If Marketmuse plans do not fit into your budget, consider exploring Scalenut, a better alternative that comes with a comprehensive set of SEO functions. Try out your 7-day free trial here. Keep reading to know about the tools functions. 

Scalenut: A Better Alternative

Scalenut is an AI-powered content optimization platform designed to streamline your content creation process and improve your search engine rankings. 

With real-time content analysis, optimization recommendations and keyword research features, Scalenut offers advanced functions to enhance your content's performance. 

Here’s how Scalenut helped a leading Pharmaceutical brand add 100K traffic to their website. 

Scalenut offers 

  • Keyword Planner and Cluster Creator 
  • Outline Generator 
  • Cruise Mode (Article Writer) 
  • Content Optimizer 
  • SEO Content Editor

Keyword Planner

The Scalenut Keyword Planner helps you achieve topical authority in your industry and specific niche. You can insert your niche topic in Scalenut’s Keyword Planner to generate a report that groups relevant keywords together. 

Scalenut Keyword Planner  

This report lets you view metrics like relevance, CPC, and search volume under one tab. You do not need to juggle between multiple columns or tabs as you do in SEO tools like Ahrefs or Ubersuggest to find relevant metrics that matter to you.

Scalenut Keyword Optimizer 

If you are a content writer, sometimes you might just have one seed keyword to target. In that case, you will need a list of relevant keywords to target. That’s why the Scalenut content editor suggests relevant key terms that your competitors’ content is currently ranking. This allows you to easily outcompete your competitors without doing hours of manual research. 

Content Outline Generator

In Scalenut, you can create an AI-generated outline automatically or build a custom version by comparing top-ranking web pages under a single tab. With this information in one place, you can easily find content gaps, add frequently asked questions, and restructure your outline with the drag-and-drop option within minutes.  

Scalenut Outline Analyser 

Moreover, Scalenut provides additional features like writing points and social listening tools to generate questions from forums like Quora, Reddit, and search results. This ultimately reduces the time taken to search and create an outline manually.  

Cruise mode

Scalenut has an in-built AI writer to help you create quality long-form content at scale. The cruise mode function allows users to generate the first draft of their outline in less than 5 minutes. Once you have the first draft, compare it with your competitor's content. This helps you see what points and subheadings you have missed. Instead of juggling multiple tabs, you can find all your competitor's content under the research tab. 

Scalenut Competitor Content Research tool   

Moreover, you can fine-tune the AI-generated copy in Cruise mode using the rephrase, shorten, or expand options. You can generate additional information for each section using the write and instruct tools in the editor tab. Altogether, this gives you complete control over AI and allows you to generate brand-relevant content within minutes. 

Content Optimizer

One of the biggest obstacles for content writers and bloggers is producing rank-ready content. You might be spending hours and hours ensuring every piece of content you publish is optimized to rank on Google or other search engines. 

 Scalenut Content Optimizer

However, manually checking the keyword density and finding relevant keywords to target can be a hassle. In situations like this, a reliable content report can boost your confidence that a piece of content is optimized for search. That's why Scalenut's Content Optimizer grades your content to generate a score and necessary suggestions to help you find a place at the top of the SERP. 

Moreover, you can use the fix-it button to auto-optimize your content based on the suggestion list. This eliminates manual editing time and acts as a supporting tool to fine-tune your content. 

SEO Content Editor 

Scalenut has advanced NLP and machine learning technologies to help you create content that ranks on the first page of the SERP for target keywords. You can see real-time NLP scores and custom SEO suggestions to improve your content. 

Scalenut Content Optimizer

Scalenut's SEO editor evaluates your content from different angles, like keyword density, links, content depth, key terms, and more. 

Pros Cons
Provides automatic AI suggestions to write titles, outlines, and content briefs in seconds. The existing features can be quite overwhelming for first-time users.
The custom tone of voice allows you to adapt quickly to different niches and brand voices.
Easily view all the top-ranking blogs for your target keywords under one tab. This allows you to find the content gaps and manually add them to the outline with a click.
AI-generated writing points for each blog subhead allow you to preview and customize the prompts based on your content goals.
Additional features like NLP terms, competitor content analysis, questions, and statistics can help you drastically improve the first draft without manually conducting basic-level research.
You can create supporting social media copy and short-form content using the AIDA, PAS, BAB, and other 45+ ready-to-use templates.


Pricing 

Plan Monthly Yearly
Essential Plan $39 $20
Growth Plan $79 $40
Pro Plan $149 $75

Who can benefit from Scalenut?

  • SEO strategists are managing a team of writers. 
  • Content heads who are responsible for creating content briefs 
  • Writers who run a small team 
  • Writers who create SEO-based long-form blogs and articles 
  • Marketers who manage social media channels and content editing activities 

What do users think about Scalenut? 

  • G2 review - 4.7/5 stars
  • Product hunt review - 5/5 stars 
  • Capterra review - 4.8/5 stars

Conclusion: Which One is Right for You?

When choosing between Frase and MarketMuse, consider your specific needs and goals. If you're looking for an easy-to-use tool to help you quickly create optimized content, Frase may be the better option. Frase's Content Briefs and Writing Assistant can help you create high-quality content optimized for search engines.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a more advanced SEO tool that provides a deeper analysis of your content and helps you create a content strategy optimized for search engines, MarketMuse may be the better option for you. 

However, if you’re looking for a simpler, comprehensive and budget-friendly option, considering Scalenut is worth your time and penny. Opt in for your 7-day trial now.

Priya Jamba
Content Marketer
ABout the AUTHOR
Priya Jamba
Content Marketer

Priya Jamba is a Content Marketer at Scalenut. She loves marketing technologies and believes that with the right combination of tools and creativity, every organization can build sustainable brands. She is on a mission to help marketing teams across the globe produce tangible results from their marketing campaigns. Currently, she is working along with the Product team to enhance the AI content quality through prompt engineering.

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