Question 1

What is a Clearscope alternative?

Accepted Answer

Anything that tells you what to write and then whether what you wrote covers it. That includes rival content optimisation platforms such as Frase, Surfer and MarketMuse, the broader SEO suites that bundle a content grader, a freelance strategist on a monthly retainer, and managed services such as this one where the research, the writing and the publishing all happen outside your company. Clearscope is the research and grading specialist in that list. We are in the last group, which is a different purchase rather than a cheaper version of the same one.

Question 2

How is Cascadia different from Clearscope?

Accepted Answer

Clearscope tells you what to write and grades what you wrote. We write it and publish it. Their platform produces briefs, scores and prompt tracking, and it does all three well. Ours produces posts that are live on your site, with the topic selection, the editing and the refresh cycle attached. Their pricing counts prompts, pages, explorations and drafts, while ours counts how much gets written and published each month. Which one is right depends on whether what you are short of is direction or hours.

Question 3

How does your price compare to theirs?

Accepted Answer

A hundred and twenty nine a month on Essentials, three hundred and ninety nine on Business, against seven hundred a month here. There is no version of that arithmetic where we are the cheaper line and we are not going to construct one. The comparison is not subscription against subscription though. It is a subscription plus whoever writes the twenty pieces, cuts them and puts them live, and once those hours are costed at any realistic rate the two figures move a great deal closer.

Question 4

Is Clearscope cheaper than this?

Accepted Answer

Yes, at roughly a fifth of what a month costs here on the entry plan. No arithmetic makes a research subscription cost more than a staffed service, and dressing that up would insult you. What the subscription does not contain is anybody to write the twenty pieces it recommends or to put them on your site. That is the only reason to keep reading past the price.

Question 5

Why pay this when the tool is a hundred and twenty nine?

Accepted Answer

Because knowing what to write was never the expensive part of content. The expensive part is a competent person spending a recurring share of every month actually writing the pieces, cutting them, publishing them and going back to older ones, and that costs a great deal more than seven hundred whether you employ them or hire them. If that person is already on your payroll, buy Clearscope and keep the difference. We would rather say so than take the order.

Question 6

Why not buy the subscription and write the posts ourselves?

Accepted Answer

You should, if somebody there has both the site access and the hours. It is the cheapest path available and we say so on this page more than once. The reason it usually does not happen is that a research tool will cheerfully return fifty subjects that all score well, and separating the handful worth publishing from the rest is judgement rather than effort. Then each one needs most of a day to write and an hour to publish, and neither ever quite arrives.

Question 7

Should we buy this at all?

Accepted Answer

Often not, and month one is a much better time to establish that than month six. If somebody in house enjoys this work and has the hours, buy the subscription and keep the difference, which here is most of seven hundred a month. This starts to make sense when the blog matters to revenue, the research has been sitting unused for a while, and nobody wants to own it.

Question 8

Do we have to stop using Clearscope?

Accepted Answer

No, and there is often good reason not to. Keep it if somebody there uses it and we will work alongside it rather than against it. The prompt tracking in particular measures something we do not sell separately, so cancelling it in order to hire us would cost you a signal and gain you nothing. There are no contracts on their side either, so the decision stays reversible whichever way you go.

Question 9

Does anything break while you take over?

Accepted Answer

No. The site stays up and nothing is rebuilt. Posts go in one at a time under your own author account, and anything carrying real risk gets staged and talked through first. What usually changes visibly in month one is that two or three older pieces get rewritten and quietly start outperforming anything new.

Question 10

What if we were penalised or hit by an update?

Accepted Answer

Then recovery comes before publishing and the timeline stretches. We work out whether it was a manual action, an algorithmic update, or a change that merely resembles one, then which posts carried the problem, then whether each of those gets rewritten or retired. Some of it clears within weeks and some waits for the next core update. Anybody offering you a date for that is guessing.

Question 11

Do you host the site or own the content?

Accepted Answer

No to both. The site stays on your own hosting under your own domain, and every post belongs to you from the moment it publishes. That is deliberate rather than generous. Leaving costs you nothing except the work stopping, which is the whole difference between building an asset and renting visibility by the month.

Question 12

What is included at each tier?

Accepted Answer

The first tier is seven hundred a month and covers the whole loop: what to write, the writing, the editing, publication, and going back to older pieces before they slide. Growth at fourteen hundred raises the monthly volume and stretches to a second product line or a second location. Two sizes rather than a metered allowance, and nothing that runs out in the third week of the month. Most businesses starting from a quiet blog belong on the first, and we will say so rather than selling up.

Question 13

Do you guarantee rankings?

Accepted Answer

No, and treat anybody who does with suspicion. Nobody outside Google decides what ranks, so a ranking guarantee is either hedged until it means nothing or pinned to subjects so obscure that winning them proves nothing. What we commit to is work done, published and reported, with the months a number went the wrong way shown beside the months it did not. A content score at least never claims otherwise, which is a point in its favour.

Question 14

What does the monthly report actually contain?

Accepted Answer

What went out, which posts moved and in which direction, which older pieces were refreshed, and what we intend to do about whatever did not work. Positions and clicks appear together, because climbing ten places on a subject nobody searches is not progress. It is written to be read in a few minutes by somebody with no interest in what term coverage means. There is no dashboard to log into and no filter to apply, which suits some people and not others.

Question 15

How long before we see a difference?

Accepted Answer

Refreshed posts can move within weeks, because a piece that already had some standing gets better rather than starting from nothing. New pieces on competitive subjects are the slow half: three to six months before the direction is clear, and longer where the results above you are entrenched. A content grade rises the moment somebody edits the draft, which is satisfying and is not the same measurement at all.

Question 16

What if I want to leave?

Accepted Answer

Thirty days notice ends it and nothing is stranded. The site, the posts and the positions were always yours, so there is no account to migrate and nothing to hand back. Positions do decay once the work stops, because competitors carry on publishing whether or not you do. That is the nature of the channel rather than a lock in, and we would rather you knew it before signing than after leaving.

A Clearscope Alternative That Writes The Posts And Puts Them Live

Twenty drafts is the ceiling on Essentials and it is still the ceiling on Business

It tells you the piece is not there yet and then waits for somebody to fix it

Clearscope sells seven products and this page argues with roughly two of them

Cascadia

Without Cascadia

Finished posts published onto your live site with the internal links in place

Subjects chosen against your margin, which no search volume figure contains

The writing itself, rather than a brief and a score to write the piece against

Decaying posts not merely flagged but rewritten and put back up for you

Somebody willing to say a well scored subject is still not worth the month

Images sourced and placed, and every piece formatted for your own theme

Analytics and Search Console read by a person and answered for in prose

Editing done by a person who did not produce the draft in the first place

A short written summary each month rather than another dashboard to open

No monthly draft allowance to watch and no pack to buy when it runs out

Where Clearscope fits

Where hiring people makes sense

Where Clearscope is strong

What seven hundred buys that a subscription does not

What the first ninety days look like from where you sit

Nothing new gets written until we have read what is already there

The posts already earning something get rewritten before a new one goes out

The topic list gets built around margin rather than around a content score

Publishing starts, and the reporting arrives whether the month went well or not

Don't Take Our Word For It

Fifty approved subjects, and nine of them ever got written

Every post scored well, and not one of them sold anything

Dollars a month, with nothing metered and no allowance to top up

Setup fee, and no pack of drafts to buy in week three

Months before a new post settles into the position it will hold

Clearscope alternative and managed content FAQs

Ask Us Anything