How to Use Frase in 2026: Step-by-Step Beginner Guide

What Frase Actually Does

Frase automates the research and brief-building stage of content creation — pulling competitor headings, PAA questions, and topic coverage into a usable outline in under 2 minutes, rather than doing that research manually before every article.

Getting Started: Account Setup

Go to frase.io and start the $1, 5-day trial — full access to test brief-building on real content before committing to a monthly plan.

Generating a Content Brief

How to Build a Brief

1. Click New Document and enter your target keyword
2. Frase pulls the top-ranking pages for that keyword and analyzes their structure
3. Review the auto-generated brief: common headings, target word count, and a question list pulled from People Also Ask
4. Edit the brief to add anything the automated analysis missed — occasionally a less common but relevant subtopic needs manual addition

The Document Editor

How to Write Against Your Brief

1. From your brief, click Start Writing to open the document editor
2. Your brief's headings and target terms stay visible in a sidebar as you write
3. Check off headings as you cover them, and reference the Topic Score to see how much of the competitor-derived coverage you've addressed

SERP Analysis

How to Analyze Ranking Competitors

1. From within a document, click SERP Analysis
2. Review the top-ranking pages' headings, word counts, and topic coverage side by side
3. Identify structural patterns — headings appearing across most top results are near-mandatory sections for your own piece

The Answer Engine

The Answer Engine surfaces exact questions people ask around your topic, sourced from real search data — useful for FAQ sections or identifying angles your brief's PAA list might have missed.

1. Open Answer Engine for your target keyword
2. Review the question list, sorted by relevance
3. Select questions worth addressing directly in your content, particularly for an FAQ section

Full Workflow: Brief to Draft

Here's the workflow that gets the most from Frase's research automation:

Frase Pricing 2026

Plan	Price	Includes
Trial	$1 / 5 days	Full access
Solo	$45/mo	4 articles/month
Basic	$115/mo	30 articles/month

Start the $1 trial on a real article you're about to write, not a throwaway test topic.

Common Beginner Mistakes

• Treating the automated brief as final. It's a strong starting point, not a substitute for your own domain knowledge on less common subtopics.
• Chasing a perfect Topic Score. Diminishing returns and risk of unnatural writing set in well before 100.
• Ignoring the Answer Engine. It's a fast source of genuinely searched questions for FAQ sections, often overlooked since it's a separate tab from the main brief.
• Running one brief per keyword in isolation. When planning several related articles, generate all their briefs in the same session — overlapping headings and questions across briefs are a useful signal for how to split topics between separate pieces versus combining them into one comprehensive article.

Using Frase for a Team of Writers

If you're briefing freelance or in-house writers rather than writing everything yourself, Frase's brief becomes a handoff document rather than just a personal outline.

1. Generate and refine the brief yourself first, adding any subtopics the automated analysis missed
2. Share the document link with your writer directly from Frase — they see the same headings, target terms, and question list you reviewed
3. Have the writer work inside the Frase editor so the Topic Score updates live as they draft, rather than writing externally and pasting in at the end
4. Review the finished draft against the original brief before publishing, checking that the writer addressed the core headings even if they reorganized the structure

This workflow removes a common failure point in outsourced content production — a writer working from a vague topic instead of a structured, competitor-informed brief consistently produces weaker first drafts that need more editing rounds.

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