Clearscope is more expensive than its alternatives (I get it). But there other tools like Surfer SEO and more that make up for all its features. If you’ve come to read this, you’re probably looking for Clearscope alternatives that offer better value for money while offering the same or better features.
It is smart to look into Clearscope alternatives, whether you want SEO for personal blogs or your business’s sites. However, picking the best SEO tool can take time because of so many options.
But you’re in luck, as I have already tried Clearscope and three of its alternatives: Surfer SEO, Content Harmony, and Frase.io, for my businesses. These tools, when used correctly, can help you optimize your websites for search engines better than ClearScope and at a lower cost.
Over the past 5 years, I have helped three startups achieve their first $1Mn+ in revenue with just SEO. I have had my fair share of experiences in writing for growth and marketing using such SEO content creation and optimization tools. In this comparison, I’ll share my experience with the discussed SEO tools and how they have helped me boom my businesses using only SEO. You can read my tips below:
In this article, I’ll cover an in-depth review of the best Clearscope alternatives. They have been some of my favorite and most used resources while growing my businesses with SEO and more organic engagements. I’ll highlight their features, pros, cons, and whom they are best for. Keep reading to learn more about the alternatives and how they can help you grow your business.
But first, full transparency: I may receive commissions if you click on some of the links in this article, but it won’t cost you a thing! Also, the companies do not pay me to write these reviews. I test the products and services myself, and I support them regardless.
Table of Content
- Best Clearscope Alternatives #1: Surfer SEO
- Best Clearscope Alternatives #2: Content Harmony
- Best Clearscope Alternatives #3: Frase.io
Clearscope
Clearscope is one of the most popular keyword research and SEO content optimization tools. It uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) to give you the best keyword results and a list of what you should use in your content. It increases your chances of performing organically and helps you rank higher.
Clearscope can be an excellent choice for content optimization, but it falls behind due to a few notable drawbacks. Its price tag is extremely high for small and medium-sized businesses, and it also offers fewer content reports and limited information than its alternatives.
That’s why some marketers like me have searched for and used Clearscope alternatives that offer similar or better services at a more affordable price point.
Best Clearscope Alternatives #1: Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is a one-stop solution for your on-page SEO content creation and optimization. It is a cloud-based tool whose data-driven approaches can help you make fewer mistakes and increase online visibility, organic traffic, and engagement.
Surfer SEO has features for everything you need for keyword research, topic suggestions, internal linking, content creation, or anything else. It gives you step-by-step task workflows to guide you toward more efficient SEO practices on your websites.
It has an interactive and easy-to-use UI that lets you get the most out of SEO optimization, even if you are just starting. Moreover, its integrations with popular platforms like Google Docs, WordPress, etc. make it one of the best choices for SEO practitioners to increase returns for their businesses.
Features
Let’s dive into some of the top features of Surfer SEO. They also are my favorite features that have helped me a lot.
Internal Linking
With Surfer SEO, you can use internal links to make your website more attractive to Google bots. It helps you pass and get the “link juice” (which describes and measures the strength of a backlink) and improves your website’s quality, visibility, and conversion.
Its SEO Audit tool provides a ready list of your best internal linking options. Optimizing the top 10 links from the list can significantly help your page. Surfer SEO makes linking to your own pages easier, which helps you get more organic traffic and engagement.
Content Completeness
Surfer SEO tools like Content Planner, SEO Audit, etc., let you complete your targeted content without doing much. It can write and optimize in any language to help you make content that can rank worldwide.
Surfer SEO’s search intent ensures you get the relevant topics according to your website. It has a built-in outline border that works with AI, keyword research, on-page SEO, and many other features that will help you finish your content.
Content Optimization
Surfer SEO ensures that your content is optimized best for search engines to rank it. At first, it tries to help you with questions better than your competitors. It has many tools, like keyword research, a content editor, an SEO audit, etc., to help you optimize your articles, from outlining to publishing.
It also lets you use the content audit to get a clearer idea of your content. You can add every missing piece to make search engines like your content. As it keeps optimizing your article after publication, you won’t have to worry much about your content’s SEO optimization.
Subscription Plans
Surfer SEO has a Free Plan with access to a few tools. Its Basic Plan costs $49 monthly, while the Pro Plan costs $99.
Both plans offer better offers than most competitors at a much lower price. Additionally, large organizations can try the Business Plan, starting at $199 monthly. You can even get a 17% discount if you pay annually.
Pros
- Intuitive and easy to use, and usable in any language
- Gives internal link suggestions to help your content rank
- Its content planner helps in content completeness and optimization
- Keeps optimizing even after publication
- Provides SERP analysis
- Has multiple necessary integrations like Google Docs and WordPress
- Its paid plans have Surfer Academy to help become better with SEO
- Has a 30-day money-back guarantee
- Highly responsive customer support
Cons
- Most features are not even available for trial in the free plan
- Might not be fully customizable for some businesses
- Can be too costly for some medium-sized projects
Best Suited For
Because of game-changing features like internal linking and post-publication optimization, Surfer SEO is a must-have SEO tool for any online business or e-commerce store. Its paid plans start at $49 per month, making it the most affordable choice for small and medium-sized businesses to try. Besides, enterprise-level clients can also opt for its more premium plans.
Best Clearscope Alternatives #2: Content Harmony
Content Harmony is an industry-leading SEO tool that lets content teams save time researching and use it to drive more organic traffic and engagement. It adheres to data-driven and AI-driven approaches to help you discover what the audience wants to read.
Content Harmony uses real-time search data to give you helpful suggestions to implement on your web pages. It provides necessary SEO features like keyword reports, Content Briefs, Search Intent, content optimization, content workflow, etc.
Content Harmony aims to support marketing agencies’ entire SEO content creation process and the content team. It helps train staff faster, improves communication, and makes communication faster, letting agencies provide more value to their clients.
Features
Let’s look at some of Content Harmony’s key features.
Content Briefs
Content Briefs provides robust keyword data and a simple process for top-notch briefs. Its customizable block editor lets you design content briefs with text fields, checkboxes, emojis, and more. You can also add notes, comments, and instructions to forward the most in-depth information to your writers.
Its Content Workflow lets you add sections like Content Overview, Audience & Brand Overview, Visual Requirements, etc., to create organized briefs in less time. It has Standard Content Brief templates and allows you to create unlimited templates based on your needs. You can also share these briefs using public sharing links.
Search Intent
Search Intent gives you access to an industry-leading and ready-for-scale search classification system. Its reports help you understand multiple important questions about a SERP in a few seconds. You can run standalone Search Intent reports and also find them inside the Content Brief Workflows.
It gives you a better way to classify search intent than the traditional classification systems. It can also indicate overlapping intent, which can help you understand what types of results search engines want to show to users. Its eight custom intent types give you a clearer picture of what Google wants to show users.
Content Grader
The AI-driven Content Grader lets you determine if a page is “fully optimized.” It brings innovative and cool ways to the process. It can give you a list of the most common topics and phrases you missed in your content and also lets you understand how well the topic model has been used, not just a single keyword.
You can use Content Harmony to see how comprehensive your content is compared to your competitors. You can also find out which topics you have not yet covered before publishing the content. As a result, you can publish the perfect piece of content the first time without repeatedly returning to it.
Subscription Plans
Content Harmony’s monthly plans start at $99 for the Standard plan and $299 for the Pro plan. You can get a 10% discount if you opt for an annual payment.
Big agencies and enterprises can discuss their plans with Content Harmony and customize them, starting at $1,000 per month. Besides, you can schedule a demo and see how it can help you.
Pros
- Simple and easy to setup and use
- Can help you get a better result by training your team members
- Provides you with an advanced search intent classification system to get a better idea of search engines’ wants
- Gives you a whole new level of experience for the brief building to make better and more efficient content briefs
- Allows you to identify visual content requirements
- Designed to save you time by tying together the whole SEO process
Cons
- Doesn’t provide any free trial
- Doesn’t have great integration options yet, as some of its competitors have
- Has a steep learning curve for beginners in the first few days
Best Suited For
Content Harmony is for anyone who wants to streamline SEO content creation and optimization. With its pricing, Content Harmony is affordable for businesses of any size. It is a great SEO tool for businesses of all sizes, freelancers, and anyone wanting more organic online engagement.
Best Clearscope Alternatives #3: Frase.io
Frase.io is an SEO content optimization tool that helps you identify and utilize content opportunities based on search results. It saves you time and effort to find what people are looking for, make a content brief, and even write parts of your article.
Frase.io has a built-in AI writing tool to help you generate content briefs and even write some sections of your articles. The AI tool also helps you find out what questions your target audience is asking online and create and optimize content that can answer those questions.
It helps you gain insight into the trending keywords and rankings. It also provides a vast collection of data that can give you an advantage over your competition and easily rank your web pages on search engines.
Features
Let’s go through some of Frase.io’s key features.
AI-Generated Content Brief
Frase.io lets you make content briefs in just a few minutes with the help of AI. You can use the results for any target search query to curate these briefs. Frase.io brings you hours of SERP research by analyzing, dissecting, and centralizing the internet’s best content into one place.
In the content brief, Frase.io looks at several things, such as an overview, the top 20 topics, headings, questions, external links, etc. You can add these sections per your preference or let AI do everything. You can also create and store custom templates for your briefs to simplify the workflow.
Research Tool
One of Frase.io’s best tools is its automated research tool. It looks at the first 20 SERP results and shows the content’s most important keywords and topics. It also has an Export to Excel option to download all the topic’s data in an Excel file.
This feature’s FAQ Schema is also a blessing if you want an FAQ section in your article. If you type in your keyword, Frase.io will automatically generate a list of relevant questions from sources like Quora, Reddit, Google’s “People Also Ask” column, etc. It also displays the keyword-related questions with their sources and the monthly search volume.
Content Optimization
Frase.io gives you a blueprint to create content that ranks in search engine results. It uses a topic model to compare your article with the top 20-ranked results on Google. Based on that comparison, it will suggest edits for improvements like missed topics, missed keywords, etc.
Its topic model helps you identify every keyword you should include in your content. And the interesting thing is that you can optimize your published content for any specific keyword. As a result, you can optimize like an expert and publish content that search engines like Google will love.
Subscription Plans
Frase.io offers the Solo Plan for $15 per month and the Basic Plan for $45 per month. Large agencies and teams can try the Team Plan for $115 per month. You can save up to 16–18% if you pay annually.
You can also get unlimited AI-generated characters, enriched SERP data, the Frase AI Writer, and more with the add-on for $35 per month.
Pros
- Provides a 5-day trial for only $1
- Extremely simple to set up and use
- Provides top search results for better SEO-optimized content
- Identifies the content gaps and helps fix them
- Is a great tool for structuring and researching content
- Allows access to domain authority and backlink
- Lets you create templates as guidelines and AI writer customization
- Has great customer care support
Cons
- The AI writer isn’t a perfect fit for writing introductions and conclusions
- Its keyword suggestions lack accuracy sometimes compared to other popular SEO tools
- Difficult to use on a mobile device
Best Suited For
Businesses of any size can trust Frase.io to optimize their websites with SEO, just like digital marketers worldwide do. Even though it is the best choice for digital marketers, it is a perfect fit for anyone because of its affordable plans. It can assist you in having your content rank highly in online searches.
Final Thoughts
Clearscope isn’t the ideal solution if you’re a small business or a freelancer who doesn’t want to spend his whole budget on an SEO tool. In the current competitive market, we can expect an SEO tool to offer more features than ever at a much lower price, as Surfer SEO, Content Harmony, and others do.
While the SEO tools we discussed do most of the work for you at a lower cost than Clearscope, which one you choose depends on your budget and the features, you prioritize.
If you want all the features of an SEO tool with AI-supposed data-driven approaches, internal linking, and content completeness at as low as $49/month, Surfer SEO can be the best alternative to Clearscope for you.
Again, if you’re targeting data-driven ways to find better search intent results and content briefs, Content Harmony deserves a try. Finally, Frase.io is worth a shot if you want to rank higher in search engine results with extensive automated research within minutes.
Full Disclosure: If you click on some of the links in this article and purchase a paid plan, I may receive affiliate commissions (at no cost to you!). Regardless, the products and services I review are some of the best I’ve tried, and I support them personally. Head over to my privacy policy & affiliate disclosure to know more.
P.S. Check out my podcast (with 78 episodes and more on the way!) if you’re interested in actionable growth marketing and hearing from actual marketers about how they’re taking their businesses forward.