To make quality content, simply being good at writing won’t be enough. You also need proper research, analysis, and optimization to make sure that your content is the best of the best.
Today, various AI powered tools and platforms with the goal of fast-tracking this process have entered the market. One of these programs is Outranking.
Let’s talk more about what it offers.
WHAT IS OUTRANKING?
Outranking is more than your average AI writing assistant. The platform is a one-stop shop for all your research, SEO data, SERP analysis, and content writing needs. With the help of its powerful features, you’re guaranteed to produce highly engaging content at 10x speed!
WHO IS OUTRANKING FOR?
Outranking is great new platform designed for content writers, marketers, business owners, and everyone who needs a bit help with regards to efficient and effective content creation. From researching about your topic to making sure your article remains the best by letting you know about what you should work on, Outranking will serve as your trusty companion.
FUNCTIONALITIES
Outranking is an amazing new web tool that can help you accomplish a lot of things ten times faster, and for a fraction of what it would cost you to hire specialists. The following are the main functions of this platform:
Outlines in under 15 minutes using the AI Wizard
One of the most crucial and most time-consuming steps when it comes to creating content is writing the perfect outline. Your outline is the first thing that will be able to determine whether your content will rank and be useful to your audience.
With Outranking’s AI Wizard, you’ll only need less than 15 minutes to create the most powerful outline as it auto generates titles that meets your audience’s intents, meta descriptions that have SEO value, and outline ideas using user intent, keyword and SERP data.
Factual Research in under 1 minute using AI
It’s very important to provide your audience with relevant and accurate information but all that reading, understanding, and extracting key information are more time-consuming tasks. With just a few clicks of a button, you can have Outranking conduct the research for you!
Simply click ‘Summarize concept’ to influence AI to write factual and most recent content. Outranking also allows you to create factual web content from video transcripts, unstructured content, documentation, ecommerce products or on any kind of web or custom research within minutes using Concepts!
AI Write with clicks using Methods and GPT-3
With Outranking, users can create custom AI methods for specific workflows using predefined content and SEO parameters to create content with clicks. Creating you own custom method is made easy for you and it will only take a few minutes!
Outranking gives you a lot of options for your tone of voice, writing frameworks, custom text summarizations, and use cases. You also have the option to choose from the library of Methods contributed by other Outranking users.
SEO Optimization
Not everyone can quickly grasp the concept of SEO. Having to identify user intent and optimize content to have the right keywords, phrases, questions, sections, and tags can be very confusing, but these are very important steps to make sure your content ranks.
Outranking guides you through this challenging process and gives you step by step instructions. With Outranking, you will be able to analyze SERP data, identify keywords, phrases, and questions related to your topic, and predict the success of your content with its instant SEO scoring.
FEATURES
Outranking is an advanced editor to help you write web content in fraction of the time. As the platform puts it, it’s like “producing web content on steroids”. A subscription to Outranking gives you access to its following highlighted features:
AI Wizard
The AI Wizard guides you through a three-step process to create titles, meta descriptions, and article sections for long-form content using a few clicks and a few minutes using the most advanced outline builder.
- One-click create meta title ideas
- One-click generate a meta description
- Build outlines using structured content blocks, SERP’s and Google PAA (people also ask)
Concepts
The Concepts feature allows users to collect summarized facts from existing information found online. These Concepts are presented in a structured format which helps depict discussion points on any given subject. You can extract relevant information from Ecommerce products, Youtube videos, research materials, and even FAQ’s.
- Click generate to extract facts from search engine ranking pages
- Customize fact collection with templates
- Use the custom content utility to collects facts from your research
- Select multiple concepts and write content paragraphs with a click.
Methods
The Methods feature simplifies the process of writing workflows and automation with procedures to create specific sections of your content using automation capabilities. With Methods, you can create introductions and conclusions for your articles with just a click of a button. Along with this, you are also given the freedom to choose a specific tone for your target audience.
- Create private methods for custom use cases
- Use from the many public Methods available
- Engage more customers with compelling content
SERP Analysis
Outranking makes use of the most advanced on-page elements scoring methods to help you gather 360-degree intel on your competition and automatically create a plan to Outrank them. This analysis allows you to gather related keywords, topics using Google NLP, off-page statistics, heat maps, on-page statistics, and relevant questions from various competing web pages.
- Enter a focus keyword or search term
- Gather intel from the top 20 pages of SERP
- Auto-create a plan to optimize content for SEO
Instructions and SEO Scoring
Outranking gives you step-by-step instructions to help you create and optimize content that will never miss the mark using the best SEO practices and search engine ranking data.
- Optimize for Related Keyword
- Optimize for Word Count
- Optimize for Content Depth
- Optimize for Topics
- Optimize for Questions
- Optimize most crucial on-page SEO factors
Integrations
The platform offers a WordPress Outranking, Google Outranking Plugin, and Native Grammarly Compatibility for you to stay close to the tools you’re already familiar with.
Platform Capabilities
The following are more of the Outranking’s capabilities:
- SEO Content Editor jam-packed with productivity tools, versioning, collaboration, in-build content research, SEO scoring, and other content creating utilities
- Built-in Keyword research tool
- Teams to collaborate with team members on documents
- Full API access to the platform as well as access via WordPress and Google Doc Plugin
- Keyword Gap Analysis
- Support for 13 languages: English, Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish
EASE OF USE
With all the services and tools that Outranking has to offer, you may expect a complex user interface and jam-packed application. However, once you sign up to the platform and test it out for yourself, you’ll find using Outranking is quite easy and not confusing at all.
If you do not know about SEO or SERP analyses yet, you can make use of Outranking to help you understand what it is and how it can improve your content creation. Creating content with the platform is a step-by-step process and Outranking conveniently gives you plenty of reminders, suggestions, and notes as you go along to make sure that you make the most of it.
PRICING
Outranking offers three types of plans: Starter for $39, Growth for $79, and Professional for $159. The following images show the inclusions for each regular plan type.
The price jump from one plan type to another is quite significant so you’ll have to make sure that you choose the one that’s enough for what you’re going to use Outranking for. As you can see from the table, you will be able to get access to all the platform’s tools and services no matter which plan you choose. The only difference between the three is the number of web documents you can create and SERP analyses you can collect for each month. For a Starter and Growth plan, you get 10 and 30 documents respectively. For a Professional plan, you will be entitled to create a hundred documents for every month.
Unless you are a big team or company in need of producing a massive amount of content every month, you will probably get by with a subscription to the Starter or Growth plans. For the occasional content creators, the Starter plan is recommended. If you will need to create more than 10 documents with Outranking, then the Growth plan would be the better option as it will enable you to create 1 document per day.
Here’s a summary of their offered plans:
REVIEW IN DETAIL
Now, let’s test out how we can use Outranking.
Signing Up
Outranking goes all out with its landing page, feeding you with loads of information about its various capabilities and powerful tools and features, but not to the point that you are bombarded with a lot of words. I actually found myself more intrigued with the web app as I was scrolling through its professional and beautiful landing page.
After reading about Outranking’s functionalities, you will then be met with testimonies from some of its users, most of them talking about how promising the platform truly is.
There is also a separate page for a more in-depth read about all the features Outranking is proud of, giving you even more ideas about just how much their AI system can do for you.
With regards to availing of a subscription, it’s nice that you won’t be bombarded with a lot of messages pushing you to do so. As soon as you sign up, you’re automatically entitled to a free trial. Also, the platform won’t ask you for any credit card details. Considering the many features that Outranking has to offer, which can be overwhelming, being able to test out the platform for yourself without any strings attached is a good thing.
Signing up with Outranking will take only a few seconds of your time. You can choose to sign up using your Google account, or you can opt to sign up with another email address.
Dashboard
Let’s talk about your dashboard. After signing up to Outranking, you’ll find that despite that using the platform will be quite simple and that it is easy to explore. You’ll find 4 tabs on top of the space, which are the 4 main things that you can do with Outranking: SEO Content, SEO Analysis, Questions, and Keyword Gap.
Clicking on your name on the top right side of the window will lead you to the Settings window where you can manage your profile, plans, subscriptions, and team. Here is also where you can track the number of documents, keywords, and AI characters you have left.
As shown below, for your free trial, you will be entitled to 2 documents, 2 keywords, and 5,000 AI characters.
Start Creating Content
Now, let’s go ahead and test out Outranking’s tools.
Let’s start with creating SEO Content. To start, Outranking will require you to fill out the short form for it to start getting the idea of what you want for your content. For this trial, let’s suppose that we are to write about the best online marketing strategies for small businesses.
Once you’re finished with the form, you will then meet Outranking’s AI Wizard which is a very helpful step-by-step procedure of slowly building your content.
First is to select a title for the content you’re working on. Click on Generate Title Ideas at the top of the window and wait as the program lists down several options for you to choose from. Outranking will generate about 5 variations for each time that you click on the Generate button.
If you don’t find anything to your liking yet, you can always click on the button again. Just keep in mind that generating titles use up your available AI characters.
Outranking was able to generate good titles for our chosen topic, though you may have to make a few changes to make them better and stronger. It’s a good thing that you can edit your title right away by simply clicking on it. Once you have made your selection, click on the next button.
The next step is to create a meta description for your article. The procedure for this is the same with generating titles.
For this trial, I think that Outranking was able to do a better job with the meta descriptions compared to titles. The given options for the meta descriptions were all short but comprehensive enough to give readers a gist of what you’re going to talk about in your article.
The last step for the AI wizard is to build your outline. Outranking truly cuts down the time needed to produce content with all its outline suggestions. You will be given a lot of section concepts and ideas that are relevant to your content, and building your outline is a breeze from there. On the right side of your screen is where you’ll see the outline you’ve selected.
After the AI Wizard, you will now be taken to an elaborate workspace where you can continue working on the content itself of your article. On the left side of your workspace is where you’ll see the entirety of your article. You’ll notice a complete set of editing tools on the bottom which makes it convenient to quickly make changes to how your content should look like.
You can have Outranking automatically write a few sentences for you by clicking on the Write For Me button found beside the editing tools bar, but you will have to write a few sentences of your own to get the AI going. The AI does a pretty good job at writing content for you. I did find some things to be a bit redundant, but perhaps a much specific and precise background of the topic would do the trick.
At this point, you’ve already had a lot of help from Outranking— title, keywords, meta description, and outlines, which you can go back to by clicking on the Wizard button on top should you need to make any changes. From those things alone, you’ve already cut down a significant amount of time brainstorming for content ideas. But Outranking doesn’t stop there.
On the right side of the workspace, you’ll find even more tools to help you come up with the best content, and I think this is the part where you truly get your money’s worth. Let’s briefly go over what we can get from this area of the workspace.
First, you’ll be able to see an overview of your SEO Score as you work on your content. Outranking gives you a range for how many words your article should be to rank higher than your competitors, as well as the readability of your piece. As you scroll down, you’ll see more targets for more specific things such as Sections, Exact Searches, Links, and Images, and Content Format. What’s really great about this is Outranking gives you a lot of comments on how you can make your content much better, rather than simply showing you your scores.
To make writing even easier, Outranking offers a set of Quick Functions which are pretty handy.
Outranking makes it a point to really serve as your writing assistant. Clicking on the Instructions tab gives you a list of step-by-step instructions, so you won’t ever forget about the most important parts to include in your content. It automatically checks what you have already finished doing, which makes it really convenient to look for what you need to do next.
The next parts are more in-depth scoring, comments, and suggestions on the specific parts of your content: Title, Meta Description, Heading, Sections, Questions, Topic Coverage, Related Keywords, Research, and even your URL. Clicking on any of these tabs will give you more suggestions which you can use to improve your score.
Once you’ve improved your scores and are happy with your content, saving and exporting your file is only a few clicks away. All your creations are automatically saved and can easily be returned to when needed.
Another powerful feature from Outranking is SERP Analysis. Simply go back to home and select the tab on top of your window. Simply type any keyword, topic, or question relevant to what you will be writing about, and in one click of a button, Outranking will automatically return with a lot of valuable information and data to help you be the best.
I’ve gone ahead and typed in “online marketing strategies” and here are some of the results you can expect to see in just one click of a button.
After a short wait, Outranking was able to provide us with an intensive analysis of data from existing pieces related to your keyword, topic, or question. As you scroll down, you’ll also be met with a list of related articles, and data for each one of them.
Selecting the Meta Data & URL, H Tags, Keyword Data, Questions, and Other Tags tabs will provide you with more information regarding the frequency and matches of your chosen words or topics. Through this, you’ll determine just how many articles are written under the same topic and give you an idea as to which angles of the subject you can take on. By taking on a unique angle to a common topic, you’ll have a much higher chance of outranking your competition.
Going back to our Home, we now explore Outranking’s Question function. Using this feature will allow you to browse through the most searched questions related to your keyword or topic, giving you ideas as to what people want to know about which you can now address through your content. Basically, this feature is a great way to look for new topics and content ideas that will automatically get your content on top of the search engines.
The last function is called Keyword Gap. To make use of this function, you will have to enter the domain name of your website, as well as your competitors’. Outranking will then provide you with analysis info comparing you and your competition, such as the difference between your average monthly search volume and traffic difference.
Outranking is such a great guide and AI assistant for writers and content creators, especially for those who are not quite into the business of conducting SERP analyses yet. With all its SEO scoring, instructions, trackers, suggestions, and data analyses, it’s pretty much like having a writing partner right by your side. Even if you haven’t grasped SEO yet, a quick trial of the writing process with Outranking will give you an idea of what it is and what you need to know about it.
I liked in particular how easy it is to use the platform. With its step-by-step instructions and guides, you won’t have to worry about getting lost or not knowing what to do next. With the real-time scoring of your content, it’s much easier to figure out just how much more work you need to put into your article. The fact that it also scores each part of your content, from the title down to the URL, makes it convenient to know exactly what part needs improvements. In addition to this, it provides you automatically with a lot of suggestions as to how you can improve your article.
When it comes to writing the content itself, I do think that you’ll need to make a few edits here and there as ideas can be a bit redundant compared to AI assistants focused on helping you with writing content. But as I’ve said, what really gives you your money’s worth is the intensive analysis and guidance that comes with writing content with Outranking. Plus, the ability to directly compare your work with existing pieces on the internet can definitely help you create better content; you’ll be able to see what made them rank high and improve the things they’ve missed.
Overall, Outranking’s features will be able to fast-track your brainstorming process, create high-quality and engaging content that people want, and of course, make sure that your content ranks.
PROS
- Offers a free trial without asking for credit card details.
- Has a straight-forward and easy to follow user interface
- AI can help you generate content and allows immediate editing of output
- Gives you a lot of instructions and guides as you work
- Offers affordable plans
CONS
- More edits needed for a much higher quality of output
OUTRANKING ALTERNATIVES
Outranking vs. Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is one of the more popular platforms for content planning, creating, and optimizing, with over 8,000 clients saying only good things about its tools, features, and services. With Surfer SEO, your content creation process is faster, more efficient, and easier to manage. Its main features are the Content Editor, Content Planner, SERP Analyzer, SEO Audit, Keyword Research, Keyword Surfer, and Content Editor Extension.
Both platforms offer the same kind of features. Surfer SEO does a really great job with all its powerful features, but the way that the platform is designed is more for those who are already experienced with SEO. Outranking has a more beginner-friendly approach with all the guides and suggestions it gives as you work on your content.
A subscription to Outranking is also more affordable compared to Surfer SEO’s. Outranking’s Starter Plan will only cost you $39 while Surfer SEO’s will cost you $49.
Outranking vs. Frase
Frase is another powerful AI with the goal of helping you cut-down hours of research, writing, and optimizing high-quality SEO content. The platform boasts three main features: Question Research, AI-Generated Content Briefs, and the interesting Answer Engine which is a custom call-to-actions to deliver an answer and follow up with a relevant blog post. This helps you drive targeted traffic to your website.
Frase’s Answer Engine features make it different from Outranking and other software, so you’ll have to determine whether this feature is what you’re looking for. Both programs are quite easy to use, but I do think that Outranking is the more beginner-friendly with its step-by-step process and guidance as you go.
The prices of a monthly subscription to Outranking and Frase are $39 and $44.99 respectively, making Outranking the more affordable option. It is also worth noting that with Outranking, you already get access to all that it offers for its Starter Plan. For Frase, unlimited access to the Frase AI Writer and other premium features will cost you an additional $35 for every month.
Outranking vs. Topic
Topic is an easy-to-use content optimization tool that helps you consolidate content research, create robust content outlines, and optimize content. It provides powerful insights for you to get engagements and is guided by the principle: “Write what your audience wants to read.”
For beginners, Topic is another great option as it is minimal and has an easy-to-follow writing process. Outranking provides a bit more detailed set of information, comparison to competitors, and other data, but Topic does give you the essentials.
With regards to pricing, Topic’s is based on the number of content briefs you create. A Starter Plan with Topic is priced at $99 monthly, which makes Outranking the more affordable option at only $39.