Clearscope Review: Features, Pricing, and Alternatives

Ranking on search engines requires content that also appears in AI answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Content optimization tools like Clearscope aim to address this challenge. As a well-known tool in the SEO space, Clearscope offers a data-driven guide for optimizing content based on top-performing articles. In this guide, we'll explore Clearscope, covering its features, pricing, and key considerations to help you decide if it's a good fit for your team.

What is Clearscope?

Clearscope is a focused content optimization tool, not an all-in-one SEO suite like Ahrefs or Semrush. Its stated purpose is to help you "Get Discovered on Google, ChatGPT".

It works by analyzing the top 30 search results for a given keyword. It identifies key terms, topics, and questions that high-performing articles cover. A review from Marketer Milk mentions it uses tech from IBM Watson and Google's NLP. The result is a data-driven blueprint to help you write content that is more comprehensive than what is currently ranking.

Clearscope is designed for content managers, SEOs, and agencies who have an established content strategy. It is used to refine on-page SEO for articles, rather than for building a strategy from the ground up.

A closer look at Clearscope's core features

Clearscope’s functionality is centered on a focused feature set designed to help you write, monitor, and research content. These can be broken down into three key areas.

Content reports and AI-assisted writing

The core of Clearscope is its Content Reports. When you run a report, you get a content editor with a simple F to A+ grading system. This grade reflects how well your article covers the topic compared to the top search results. A higher grade indicates more thorough coverage.

The report provides several targets:

• Terms: A list of recommended keywords, phrases, and entities that Clearscope suggests for inclusion in your article. You can check these off as you write.

• Word Count: It suggests a target word count based on the average length of the pages that are already ranking.

• Readability: You also get a readability grade to ensure your content is accessible to your target audience.

Clearscope recently added a Draft with AI feature. It guides you through a few steps to generate a first draft:

1. Choose Searcher Intent: You start by defining what the searcher is trying to accomplish (e.g., find instructions, learn general information).

2. Select Content Type: Next, you pick a format, like a "how-to" guide or a "product page."

3. Customize Tone: You can provide a writing sample to match your brand's voice or use one of the default tones.

4. Craft a Title: The AI suggests several SEO-informed headlines for you to choose from.

5. Edit the Outline: Before generating the full text, you receive an AI-generated outline that you can review and modify.

This feature produces a text-only draft. It provides a starting point, but human editing, fact-checking, and formatting are still required to make it publish-ready.

Clearscope also offers integrations. The Google Docs add-on and WordPress plugin allow you to see your grade and term suggestions directly within your working documents.

Content monitoring and inventory

Clearscope also helps manage existing content. By linking with Google Search Console (GSC), its Content Inventory feature creates a dashboard where you can monitor your content you've published.

This provides access to several practical tools:

• Striking Distance: This feature shows you which of your pages are ranking on the bottom half of page one or the top of page two of Google. These are ideal candidates for a refresh and re-optimization to improve their rankings.

• Content Decay: This feature flags content that is losing clicks and organic traffic over time, indicating which articles need attention.

• SEO Value: This metric estimates what your organic traffic would cost if you were paying for it through Google Ads. It’s a useful way to demonstrate the value of your content efforts.

It also sends alerts for technical SEO issues like broken links or crawling errors that might be affecting your rankings.

Topic research and internal linking

Clearscope assists with content planning. Its Topic Exploration feature is useful for finding related keywords and subtopics for a main theme. This helps in building content clusters to establish topical authority. The tool sources its data directly from Google, showing search volume, trends, and common user questions.

It also includes an AI-powered Internal Linking feature. While you write, Clearscope scans your existing content and suggests other relevant articles on your site to link to, including recommended anchor text. This helps build a solid site structure and distribute link equity for SEO purposes.

Clearscope pricing plans

Clearscope is a premium tool, and its pricing reflects this. The plans are primarily differentiated by feature limits and the level of support provided.

Here’s a breakdown of their two main plans, based on the official pricing page:

One thing to note is that the add-on credits can increase costs, especially for teams with high content velocity. Needing just 10 extra reports on the Essentials plan adds another $50 to the monthly bill, which can accumulate for active teams.

Key considerations and limitations

While Clearscope is effective for content optimization, it's important to understand its specific focus. Here are a few key considerations.

It’s not a complete SEO suite

Clearscope is designed to complement, not replace, comprehensive SEO tools. You will still need tools like Ahrefs or Semrush for other important SEO tasks. Clearscope does not handle backlink analysis, technical site audits, or in-depth keyword research. As a review by Brafton notes, it does not include features for tracking backlinks, a critical part of a comprehensive SEO strategy. It is a specialist tool, not a generalist one.

No, it absolutely doesn't save time. It takes about 50% longer per piece (that's just a rough estimate). I won't use it for flat rate pieces because of the extra time commitment (same with Surfer). But, the one client I have who uses Clearscope religiously has hundreds of pages in the top few slots for important search terms.

Reddit

Credit limits

For agencies or large content teams producing a high volume of articles each month, the 20 monthly draft credits on both plans may be a limiting factor. The cost of purchasing additional credits can impact the budget for teams scaling content production.

AI generates drafts, not finished posts

While the Draft with AI feature is useful, it provides a text-only starting point, not a finished blog post. The user is still responsible for tasks such as fact-checking, editing for tone, formatting, and creating or finding visuals like images, tables, and videos.

Content optimization vs. AI blog generation

Clearscope is an example of an AI-assisted tool for optimizing content. Another category of tools focuses on AI blog generation, which aims to automate the creation of a complete first draft. Tools like the eesel AI blog writer are part of this category, designed for teams looking to scale their content process from a keyword to a finished post.

These tools differ from optimizers by providing features such as:

• Full-post generation: These tools generate a structured blog post with an intro, conclusion, headings, and an FAQ section.

• Automated asset creation: They can include AI-generated images, infographics, and tables directly in the article.

• Media and social proof integration: To enhance content, they can embed relevant YouTube videos and include quotes from public forums like Reddit.

The primary goal of such tools is to enable teams to significantly scale content production and increase online visibility.

For a more in-depth look at how Clearscope works in practice, this video review from Content and Conversation provides a detailed walkthrough of its features and benefits for content teams.

This video review from Content and Conversation provides a detailed walkthrough of the tool's features and benefits for content teams.

Final thoughts on Clearscope

Clearscope is a specialized tool for optimizing content. For teams with writers looking for a data-backed way to improve on-page SEO and create more comprehensive drafts, it is a strong option. However, it is not an all-in-one SEO platform, the credit system can be a consideration for teams with high content output, and its AI is designed to assist writers rather than generate complete articles.

For teams that need to scale the entire content workflow, from a keyword to a finished article, AI blog generation tools like the eesel AI blog writer offer a different approach to content creation.