Clearscope review: My experience using this content tool

At the time, I was the only content marketer at the company and it was my job to grow the Webflow website through SEO.

Even though I had some SEO experience from a past startup internship, I was quite terrified of the responsibility I was given. But I was determined to be the best marketer I could be and dove head first into the world of copywriting and writing SEO content.

I found that blog articles are what Google loves to rank in the SERPs (search engine results pages). And ironically, with the rise of LLMs and AI Search engines, it’s what those platforms also love.

During that time (2019), I heard the guys at Grow and Convert mention how they were using a tool called Clearscope to run their content marketing agency. I checked out the tool, and requested a demo.

Not too long after, I was on a call with Bernard, the Co-founder and CEO of Clearscope. And what he told me blew my mind.

“We scan the top 30 results for a given keyword, run that through IBM Watson and Google’s NLP (natural language processing) algorithm, and give you a report on all the related keywords you should be including in your piece of content.”

It was AI before AI.

In desperation to get the Webflow website growing, I said “sign me up!” and I started using it immediately. Less than a year later, I had grown the Webflow website by 130% and the team at Clearscope wrote up a case study about it. They also invited me to do a webinar with them (back when I had hair):

In 2022, I decided to leave my dream job at Webflow to build my dream media company, Marketer Milk. And because Clearscope used to run at a really hefty price tag, I experimented with a bunch of different content optimization platforms.

Some good, some terrible.

I kept trying to look for a a tool that could do the same things I loved about Clearscope (at a fraction of the cost). But I still found myself recommending Clearscope to all of my clients (mostly so I could use it again without having to pay lol).

But now, here we are. 2025, and I’ve grown this website through SEO from 0 to… well you can see for yourself:

And I think it’s time I write up my honest Clearscope review. I’m not being paid to write this, although Bernard did give me a 20% discount code if you decide to use the platform (you can access it here).

But because this is not a sponsored review (which I never do), I get to give my honest opinion of the platform. The good, the bad, and the wishlist of things I want it to be.

Here we go.

Who is Clearscope for?

Clearscope is for anyone who is responsible for publishing content on a website, with the goal of getting that content ranked in search engines and LLMs.

When it comes to the job roles that could use Clearscope, that would be people like SEO Managers, Managing Editors, Content Marketing Managers, Growth Marketing Managers, or anyone in an IC role that publishes or creates content that will go into a CMS.

When it comes to the types of companies that could use Clearscope, this can include SaaS companies, media and blog companies, ecommerce companies, service businesses, and really any website that relies on content creation to grow SEO traffic.

From my personal experience, I’ve used Clearscope for growing SaaS websites with SEO (both at companies I’ve worked at and through my own SEO agency) and also growing this blog. So I can speak to those use cases. But I know I would also use the tool if I were going to grow an ecommerce business through writing product-led SEO content.

In terms of who actually uses Clearscope, it’s mostly enterprise B2B businesses. They have customers like Shopify, Toast, Adobe, Algolia, G2, Webflow, Podia, Hotjar, and a ton more SEO-focused brands.

But I do think now with Clearscope’s cheaper pricing (and with the discount I have for my readers), it’s a super underrated tool for solo bloggers or founders (I mean, I’m one of them!).

What is Clearscope best for?

Clearscope is best for creating content that is optimized for search engines. It’s an amazing platform if you’re a great writer but you need a little help nailing down the SEO side of copywriting.

At its core, Clearscope is a writing tool. They may not claim they are, but I start every piece of content I write with a Clearscope report (even this one). I’ll show you in the features section below how I use it.

But Clearscope has also grown through the years to be more than just an SEO writing tool. They have a keyword research tool and an analytics tool that can integrate with your Google Search Console data (this gives you some really cool insights and metrics).

Here’s how I use Clearscope:

• For creating new pages and wanting to make sure the on-page SEO is as perfect as possible.
• For optimizing existing pages on websites to help them move higher up in ranking.
• For analytics to understand my traffic value and getting insights on which pages I need to update and optimize.

Most importantly, what I think Clearscope does the best compared to some other tools like it on the market (that copied Clearscope) is that it has a Google Docs plugin that is amazing. I used to use a tool called Frase that was super cheap. But the issue with it was that the Google Docs integration almost never worked.

Clearscope’s Google Docs integration is damn near perfect. And I’m using it to write now (as I love to write in Gdocs). I’ll show you more in the next section.

Clearscope’s popular features

Clearscope is a fairly stable platform. They have focused heavily on creating the best content optimization tool and I do think they’ve accomplished that.

Some of their competitors have gone out and built a suite of other SEO tools into their platform. But Clearscope has stayed close to what it was originally intended to do. And I respect them for that.

When I think of Clearscope’s features, I currently see it in three main pillars: reports, analytics, and research.

Let’s go over each of those.

Content Reports

The core feature of Clearscope is its content reports. This functionality is probably the main reason why you're initially going to start using Clearscope. What this feature does is it allows you to generate a content report based on a specific keyword.

Based on the Clearscope plan you have (which I'll get into the pricing later in this article), you're going to have a different set number of reports. For example, I'm on the business plan and this gives me 20 of these content reports per month.

When you first click on 'create report,' it sends you to a screen where you can enter your search query, which is essentially your keyword. You can also set settings like if you want to search locally based off of a country or if you want to search worldwide. I generally set this to the United States because that's where I'm based.

You can even go as far as setting it locally for your state or even city that you are in if you're creating local SEO content for a service business.

Once you type in your keyword, you can click ‘create report’ and from there it will start working on the content brief.

Once the report is finished loading, you can click on it and you’ll be sent to this initial starting screen:

Here, you have a few options. You can either:

• Draft your content using AI,
• Input a URL of an existing piece of content to optimize (it will import the text into the report automatically),
• Or, start from a blank draft (this is what I do).

I did say that this was going to be an honest review, and to be honest, I don’t use the AI draft features (it is Clearscope’s newest feature though). I’m still skeptical about using AI to create content drafts and would never advise publishing AI content on any website. Even this article is 100% me typing it on my macbook sitting outside on a patio while swatting flies away.

But, I do want to show you the AI draft because I think Clearscope does a pretty decent job at leveraging AI for content ideation.

AI drafts

When you click on ‘Draft with AI’, you’re prompted to this screen:

As you can see, I have generated a report around the keyword “chatgpt google sheets integration.” The first thing Clearscope’s AI does is help you pick the search intent.

I’ve mentioned this in my YouTube videos and on this blog a lot already, but search intent is the #1 most important ranking factor. And sometimes AI/LLMs don’t get it right. It takes a human with real expertise to know how to approach a given keyword.

So what Clearscope’s AI does is give you a few different intents so you can manually choose from it. I like this approach because there’s still a human in the loop. It’s not 100% automated, which is actually a great thing.

In this case, the first option is the right intent. Once selected, it takes you to the next step, which is where you pick the type of content format you want to create.

For this keyword, I want to create an article teaching people how to integrate ChatGPT with Google Sheets, so I selected the “how to” option and clicked ‘Continue’.

From there, it asks what type of tone you want the content to follow.

You can have it understand the tone of an existing web page, based on text you copy and paste, or use a default tone. In this case, I copied some text from a blog post I wrote and pasted it.

Then, the next step is to set an article title. Clearscope will give you some suggested titles, but they’re as good as any other LLM like ChatGPT or Claude would give you.

In this case, I selected the first one that was suggested. But in reality, I would not use this word for word. Mainly because the title it gave me is 65 characters long and I would not have titles be over 58 characters long when it comes to SEO (or the title will be truncated in the search results).

Anywho, I clicked continue, and now we get to the fun part. This is where we put together our article outline. And what I love about this is that you select between H2 and H3 headings and you can drag them around in whatever order you want. It’s also easy to edit them.

One recommendation that I wish the Clearscope team would add (and I already mentioned this to the CEO) was to be able to create a description under each heading of what you want the AI to go over.

Even though I don’t use AI generated content, I think it would be good to be able to give the AI context under each heading and subheading on exactly what you want it to go over and mention.

From here, we can click create draft and it will get started.

Now, we have what would have been a regular Clearscope report, but it has the AI content inputted in.

And as you can see, it doesn’t give the content a full A grade. So the article is not fully optimized and needs some human editing.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the content is actually not that bad. It’s just over 2,500 words. And in fact, it’s better than most AI writing tools I’ve seen.

It writes better than an average human writer. But I don’t like to be average.

Out of curiosity, I ran this AI draft through Originality AI to see how it would pass on an AI detection score.

And as you can see, it did detect it as 55% confidence of being AI. Which, is actually quite impressive. Usually if you just copy and paste ChatGPT text into here it will detect it as AI content with a 100% confidence level.

But that fact that it only got 55%, and the fact that I’ve received similar results with my own human written content, is not bad at all. So ya, take these AI detectors with a grain of salt. It upsets me when it thinks I wrote with AI when I didn’t. But the fact that Clearscope’s AI could match some human level stuff is quite impressive.

Okay, now lets get more into the report and how to optimize your content with Clearscope.

Using the content reports

Whether you start with a blank draft or with the AI draft, you will be sent to a writing editor.

Here you can see the main aspect of Clearscope is the content grade, which is similar to what schools in the US use for their grading system. As in, an F is the worst grade you can get and an A+ is the best grade you can get.

In Clearscope, it's generally advised to try to aim for an A minus, but the tool will give you suggestions on what grade to get based off of what other pages for that keyword are also getting.

You can see on the left-hand side that it gives you not only the content grade but also tells you the typical word count along with your own word count in the draft. It'll give you a readability score, again telling you the suggested and what yours actually is.

On the right side, you'll see all the LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords that you should be including in this piece of content. It will also tell you how many times that related keyword is used on average within other pages that rank for the keyword you're going after.

You'll also notice the terms tab, which is the default one that tells you all the keywords, and then there are two others which are research and outline.

Research is cool because it gives you questions that people are asking. This is taken from the "People Also Ask" section in the SERPs. And I actually recommend using a lot of these as H2 ideas in your blog post. That's what I do. I also use another SEO tool called AlsoAsked that does this too.

And then there's an outline tab which essentially shows you the outline of other existing blog posts that are ranking for this keyword.

This is cool because it gives you a general idea of how others are approaching a blog post. But I would not copy them word for word because you want yours to be unique and stand out.

At the top of the report, you also have options to move outside of the Editor and go into the "Term map."

Here you can see the distribution of how each keyword appears within all the top 10 ranking pages for your main target keyword. It's pretty neat if you want to look at the data.

Then there's probably my second favorite tab (first being the Editor, of course), that's the "Competitors" tab.

This gives you a full bird's-eye view of the top 30 pages for your target keyword that you generated the report for, and it tells you how each page is doing in terms of the content grade and the word count. If you don't see a lot of pages with a score of an A, it shows that there's a good opportunity for you to come in and write a more optimized piece of content.

And lastly, there's an Integrations tab that shows you that you can integrate with Google Docs, WordPress, or Microsoft Word. But I don't really use this tab. I'm going to show you how to actually integrate it with Google Docs.

The way I use Clearscope is I pretty much always use the Google Docs integration. The Clearscope editor is nice to write in, but I personally just like to write things in a Google Doc. This is also a great approach if you work with external writers because it's a lot easier to share Google Docs. However, you can easily share Clearscope reports (that can be used without even needing a Clearscope account).

In any Clearscope editor, you can click the link icon in the top right corner and then you can toggle on the 'Enable shared link.'

From there, you'll get a URL that you can share with anybody to give them the report to write in, or you can use that link for the Google Docs integration.

All you need to do is go to the Clearscope app within the Google Workspace Marketplace. From there, you simply install it and this will give you extension functionality within your Google Docs.

Now in any Google Doc, you can go to the Extensions tab and once you click on that, there'll be a dropdown and you'll see the Clearscope option.

Once you click on it (and hit ‘Start’), you'll see the Clearscope app pop up on the right-hand side of the Google Doc and it'll ask you to paste in that shared link report.

Once you paste it, you can hit enter and you will have the Clearscope Terms feature as well as the content grade, word count, and readability all within your Google Docs in real time.

It’s so legit, and honestly my favorite feature from Clearscope. As you can see, I used a report for this exact blog post. I practice what I preach!

Note: If you get stuck, you can view Clearscope’s documentation on how to integrate Google Docs.

Outside of the content reports, we have a couple more core features. They aren’t as complex as the editor, but let’s briefly go over those.

Content Inventory

When you integrate Clearscope with your Google Search Console data, you get access to the "Content Inventory" tab. Within this tab, you have two options: Analytics and Pages.

Analytics will show you recommendations for content that you should update (Clearscope likes to call this "Striking Distance queries"), it will tell you things like technical issues, and give you interlinking opportunities.

You'll also be able to see your clicks and impressions within here. It's the same as Google Search Console, just with a different UI. It's like a GSC wrapper.

But what's cool about looking at your real first-party GSC data here is that it takes the keywords you rank for and Clearscope figures out the cost per click (CPC) amount attached to each keyword and the amount of traffic it gets.

This then helps you understand the value of your traffic.

And this "SEO Value" Clearscope generates essentially means that it would cost this much in Google Ads spend to get the same amount of organic traffic you're getting. The default it shows is last 30 days, but you can look at this over 12 months.

However, this information is mostly accurate for the duration that you've been using Clearscope. So if you just integrate your Google Search Console data today, it won't have a lot of data. But if it's been over 12 months since you've integrated the Google Search Console data, then whatever value you look at for the 12-month timeline is going to be the most accurate.

Hope that made sense.

The other tab is Pages. And this shows you pages on your site that could use optimizations. You'll see their current grade, the best target keyword, and you can easily generate reports to optimize existing content straight from this tab.

So as I mentioned earlier, you can use Clearscope both for generating content reports for brand new pages you want to target, but it's also great if you want to go and update existing content. In fact, updating existing content has always yielded me a 2X increase in traffic to a web page. Whether for my own website or my clients'.

So if you're an SEO agency or a content marketing freelancer, you can help businesses quickly see an ROI from your work by generating Clearscope reports and making their existing web pages reach at least a score of an A-.

Topic Research

And the last core feature we have is Topic Research. Within this feature, there is a tab called 'Explorations' and this helps you uncover topics to go after.

For example, you can type in any topic that you're interested in and when you hit 'Create,' it will start to generate a report on all the keywords within that topic. This is great if you're trying to build topical authority, as it's a really strong ranking factor when it comes to SEO.

I generated a search for the topic “chocolate chip cookies” and I can see a list of related topics and keywords:

Here, I can see the search volume, trends, intent and other stuff. If I had selected a topic related to things I already have content on (through my GSC data), I would also be able to see my share of voice.

This share of voice is like an AI monitoring tool that can tell you how you perform in search engines and LLMs compared to other websites. So if you care about how much you’re covering a topic compared to your competitors, this can be a cool feature.

You can even click on ‘See intent’ to do a quick overview of the keyword and generate a report.

Overall, these are Clearscope’s core features. Now, let’s go over pricing and my overall pros and cons.

How much does Clearscope cost?

Let's talk pricing, something everybody cares about when signing up for a new shiny SaaS tool.

Clearscope used to be really expensive. If I remember correctly, a few years back their plans used to cost over $300 per month.

But since the rise of AI marketing tools, Clearscope's pricing has become more competitive. There are a few companies out there that have copied Clearscope to a T and have charged less than they have, so now they're matching those brands.

And if you use the Clearscope promo code MARKETERMILK at checkout or through this link, you'll be able to get 20% off, essentially bringing down the monthly cost even more.

Clearscope’s pricing plans

Clearscope currently has three plans. Here they are:

• Essentials: $189/month (or $159/month with discount), comes with 20 monthly content reports, 50 keyword discoveries, and 100 content inventory pages
• Business: $399/month (or $299/month with discount), same credits as Essentials but with 300 content inventory pages and a dedicated account manager
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, everything in Business plus custom credits, SSO, and crawler whitelisting

The Essentials plan is solid for solo content creators, freelancers, and small content teams. I'm on the Business plan myself because I need the extra content inventory pages to track all my content across different projects.

The only grip I have is that 20 reports per month is kinda low. And you need to pay a $100 add on (if you’re on the essentials plan) to get 10 more reports. So it’s not cheap. But if you’re writing a lot of content, I do believe it’s worth it.

might sound limiting, but you can buy additional reports in bundles. You can grab 10 more reports for $100 or 20 for $200. Not cheap, but sometimes you need that extra push for a big content sprint.

If you want to see the full feature breakdown and compare what's included in each plan, check out their pricing page.

But if you want the 20% off coupon, go to this page.

Clearscope’s customer support

Every software product I review, I always look at the customer support. With vibe coding being a trend these days and people just whipping up SaaS applications using Lovable, it's hard to tell if a product is coming from a real trusted company with a full team or some 20-year-old kid in their mom's basement.

If you're a big company or somebody serious about scaling your content production, then you probably want to use a product that comes from a trusted team.

It's safe to say that Clearscope's customer support is amazing. And it's a big reason why I've been such a fan of the tool for so long. Bernard, the CEO, is so active not only on social media but also through email.

There's also an FAQ knowledge base where you can go through and find answers to commonly asked questions.

And if you can't find any answers, then you can also submit a ticket through their contact support page or email them at support@clearscope.io.

The only thing I wish their customer service had was a live chatbot that you can interact with. But besides that, the tool is very simple to use and there's a lot of tutorials on YouTube on how to use the platform. Clearscope also creates a lot of resources themselves, so I doubt you'll have too many problems with it.

You can also check out their YouTube channel, where they have a playlist on how to use the platform.

Clearscope pros and cons

After using Clearscope since 2019 and watching it evolve, here's my honest take on what works and what doesn't.

Clearscope pros

Here are some of the advantages of using Clearscope:

• The Google Docs integration actually works. This sounds basic, but after trying competitors where the integration breaks constantly, this is huge. I write everything in Google Docs and having real-time optimization feedback right there speeds up my productivity.
• It's focused on doing one thing really well. While competitors try to be all-in-one SEO suites, Clearscope stuck to high-quality content optimization. They're the best at what they do because they don't try to do everything.
• The recommendations actually improve rankings. I've consistently seen 2X traffic increases when optimizing existing content to hit that A- grade. The correlation between Clearscope scores and ranking improvements is real.
• Bernard and the team actually care. The CEO responds to emails, they ship updates based on user feedback, and the support doesn't feel like talking to a chatbot.
• Share reports without forcing signups. External writers can use shared reports without needing a Clearscope account. It adds an ease of use level when working with freelance writers.
• The AI features enhance, not replace. Their AI-powered draft tool maintains human control at every step. You pick the intent, approve the outline, and it still requires editing. They get that AI should augment writers.
• GSC integration shows real ROI. Seeing your "SEO Value" in actual dollar amounts makes it easy to justify the cost to clients or your boss. It would cost X in Google Ads to get the traffic you're getting organically.

Clearscope cons

Here are some potential downsides with using Clearscope:

• 20 reports per month on the higher plan feels stingy. Even on the Business plan, you only get 20 reports. Adding 10 more costs $100 (or $60 on Business). This adds up if you're publishing daily.
• No live chat support. For a tool this expensive, I expect instant help when I'm stuck. Email support is good, but sometimes you need answers now.
• The learning curve for beginners. If you don't understand SEO basics, Clearscope won't teach you. It's a tool for optimization, not education. You need to already know what search intent means and why LSI keywords matter. But that goes for literally any SEO tool.
• Limited keyword research capabilities. The Topic Research feature is decent, but it's no Ahrefs or Semrush. You'll still need a dedicated keyword research tool.
• Can encourage over-optimization. Chasing that A+ grade can lead to keyword stuffing if you're not careful. Sometimes a B+ piece of content that reads naturally performs better than an A+ that feels forced.
• Pricing still hurts for solopreneurs. Even with the discount, $159/month minimum is tough if you're just starting out. There's no hobby plan for people testing the waters.

The pros definitely outweigh the cons if you're serious about SEO content. But it's not for everyone. You need both the budget and the knowledge to make it worthwhile.

TLDR: My final thoughts

The thing about Clearscope is that it's not an SEO strategy tool or a content creation platform. It's a content optimization tool.

Clearscope works best when you already know what you're doing. If you understand search intent, can write well, and know basic SEO principles, then Clearscope becomes your secret weapon.

It takes your good content and makes it great. It takes your page sitting at position 7 and helps push it to position 2.

But if you're hoping Clearscope will teach you SEO or magically make bad content rank, you're going to be disappointed.

The tool is only as good as the person using it. And that goes for ANY tool.

After 6 years of using this tool, watching it grow from a $300+/month enterprise product to something more accessible, I can confidently say it's been worth every penny for my business. 

Is Clearscope worth it?

✅ Yes, if you're already creating content regularly and understand basic SEO. Whether you're a content manager at a SaaS company, running a content agency, or building your own blog, Clearscope will help you create better-optimized content faster. The Google Docs integration is sick, and the ability to optimize existing content for quick wins makes the ROI clear. Even at $159/month with the discount, it pays for itself if you're serious about SEO.

❌ No, if you're just starting with content or have a tight budget. Clearscope won't teach you how to write or what keywords to target. It won't fix a bad content strategy. And at minimum $159/month, it's expensive if you're only publishing a few pieces a month. Start with free tools like Google's Keyword Planner, learn the basics, then come back to Clearscope when you're ready to scale.

What makes the platform unique?

The biggest difference between Clearscope and its competitors is restraint. While tools like Surfer SEO, Frase, or MarketMuse keep adding features (AI writers, keyword research, SERP analysis, content planning), Clearscope stays focused on content optimization (with some new stuff sprinkled in).

This focus shows in the details. The Google Docs integration that actually works reliably. The share links that don't require signups. The content grades that correlate with real ranking improvements. These are the features you actually need when you're writing content day after day.

Clearscope was doing AI-powered content optimization before ChatGPT made AI cool. They've been using NLP and machine learning since they were founded in 2016. Even their new AI features keep humans in control, which is exactly how it should be.

After trying most of the alternatives, I keep coming back to Clearscope because it does one thing exceptionally well. And in a world of bloated software trying to do everything, that's refreshing.