Last Updated on December 8, 2022
As digital marketers, content creators, and bloggers, we are constantly publishing content. And I’m not talking just about the article itself. I mean everything from the title to the description, the landing pages, emails, and even the ads themselves.
All of those requirements that are necessary for us to do our jobs take a lot of our precious time, right? So we have two options. Option number one is we can pay for a writer to do it for us.
But to get a decent writer, those costs can add up very quickly.
Or option number two, you can invest in AI writing software. Not only is it cheaper, but it can overcome writer’s block where you just stare at a blank page for an hour, write one sentence and then take a break.
This is where Outranking comes in. It allows you to create awesome pieces of content that actually rank!
In this Outranking review, we will go through who the tool is best suited to, some awesome features, pricing tables, and more!
Ready? Let’s fly!
Disclaimer: This article includes affiliate links that may provide a small commission to me at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan (it will buy me a cup of coffee though 😉). You can read more about the affiliate disclosure in my affiliate policy.
What is Outranking?
It can take months or years of work to produce high-quality content with the right keywords, and yet the Outranking software does all of this in minutes. The Artificial Intelligence system analyzes what your competition is doing and then writes an article specifically targeted at them.
This means you’ll be able to beat them on Google search result pages with higher-ranking articles, and you reduce the need for hours of tedious research and writing. Win-win!
The company was established in 2020 with its new product that was launched in 2021 and has been growing rapidly since. Over time they have released new versions of the platform with even more features than the previous one.
As we go through this review, it will become clear that every part of the platform has been carefully thought out with regard to the user experience.
Who is this Outranking Review For?
Outranking is a fast-growing AI writing and SEO tool that makes it possible for content marketers and SEO managers to outrank their competitors by writing content that’s engaging, well-researched, and optimized.
In my experience with using this tool, it will be perfect for newbies because of the very simple and easy-to-understand interface that doesn’t make you even more confused with all the technical jargon.
Even if you’re experienced with content creation and don’t have time to do it yourself, you will be able to forward Outranking’s easy-to-follow training videos to your writers.
They will then be able to crank out fully optimized articles for you that will keep people coming back for more.
How to Start Using Outranking
Outranking.io is a simple way to take control of decisions affecting the search engine ranking of your website content. Using their platform, there’s no need for advanced technical SEO knowledge or advanced metrics and engineering skills required to get the most out of it.
Here’s how it works.
When you log in to the main dashboard, it looks like there’s a lot missing. But don’t let that fool you, I did mention the UX is very minimalistic. There are four main menu functions:
From a UX perspective, I’d say straight off the bat that the functions are a little backward. I would do a SERP analysis before I use the SEO content function, but it’s not really that big a deal.
Because I’m actually going to show you how to quickly get an article created, I’ll do it in a more chronological order rather than just going from left to right across the top.
1. SERP Analysis.
First up, I found the amount of information here incredible. If you’re a data nerd, then you’re going to love this feature.
I personally use a SERP analysis before creating content to get the keyword that I think I will be able to rank for. However, if you already know your keyword, then you can just go on to the next stage.
SERP Overview
To start, put in your keyword (up to 10 keywords if you like), the country you want to target, and the language, and then you can filter the number of SERP results you want to see (the default is 20). Finally, choose between desktop and mobile.
Next comes the results. You can see that it is broken up into five main tabs. SERP Overview, Meta Data and URL, H Tags, Keyword Data, Questions, and Other Tags.
In the overview, it will give a minimum and maximum range of what you should be targeting in your content in terms of length, the number of images, and even information on the meta title and description.
But don’t just follow these blindly, thinking you’ll outrank (see what I did there?) based on this information alone. There’s no point in writing a 7,000-word post on how to tie your shoes.
Similarly, with the meta title and description. Using SEO best practices should mean you keep your meta title ideally to 60 characters and your meta description to 160 characters as a maximum.
Moving further down the page and the tool will then pull all of the sites directly from Google.
Now, this is what I really love about the data.
The API delivers extremely relevant information on your potential competitors. It shows you exactly why Google has rewarded these sites by placing them in their relative positions.
Key metrics such as DA (Domain Authority – originally founded by Moz but is now used by many others) and the number of backlinks each post has are key numbers to know if you want to compete.
Meta Data and URL
In the next tab, we get all the information relating to metadata.
My favorite part of this tab is the fact that it gives you the exact meta titles, descriptions, and URL of each result all in one place, and whether the keyword you mentioned above is an exact, partial, or not exact match.
Keyword Data
In true Outranking fashion, there are a lot of keywords here. However, they break it down nicely from top to bottom, starting with the meta title, then the description, followed by the H1, H2, etc.
It also shows you how many times each keyword has been placed in each of the sections to give you a rough idea for your content outline.
Moving on, we come to something which I haven’t seen in an SEO optimization tool before, which is a keyword heatmap.
A great piece of technology in a very well-laid-out format to give you a complete overview of the SERPs.
The colors let you know which keyword to go after, and also shows you, under the content tab, how many times a keyword is included in your article or not.
Blue = Most important
Green = Strongly suggested
Gold = Opportunity
2. SEO Content.
Now we have the meat of our article, it’s time to actually put it together. Let’s see how Outranking’s AI writing tools go at coming up with good user intent and relevant keywords.
AI Wizard
Getting the article set up seems pretty easy to do. Just enter the relevant information.
In this case, we’re going with the keyword we chose in the previous section.
From here, you can choose to create an entirely new document or even update existing articles. This is great if you’ve already got a blog, so don’t feel like you have to completely rewrite everything.
You can easily go ahead and update each article to see an increase in rankings.
Moving through the wizard, the next screen will prompt you to automatically generate title ideas and meta descriptions for you.
If you’re on the free plan, be careful here. Just getting the AI to populate a title for you alone means, you could blow out your 5000-character limit and then be out of content.
My recommendation is instead to just click next and move past the description section as well (free plan only) until you get to the sections.
Outline Builder
Once you’ve got the basics, the next step is to outline your content before you can start filling it out.
The first part is the section concept generator. What’s neat about this is that it will use the previous meta title, description, and target keyword you entered.
It will then generate an outline based on the SERP data to give you the best headings and subheadings for your content.
Again if you’re on the free plan, then generating section concepts will use up more of the 5000-character limit (if you haven’t already reached that by now).
If you’re on a tight budget, then you can manually go through the SERP Outlines and Google PAA (People Also Ask) and select your own outline from the results.
Doing it this way doesn’t eat up your 5000-character limit.
Content Platform and Editor
Now it’s time to get writing! At first, the platform can look a little overwhelming, but if you break it down into three different sections, then it becomes much more manageable, and you are quickly able to navigate your way around.
When you first open up the platform, you will be met with this screen. I’ve highlighted the step-by-step instructions that are actually more like a checklist. As you move through your content and start ‘beefing up’ your article, the item will be checked off the list.
For example, let’s say I haven’t yet created a meta description in step 3.
Start off on the far right side of the screen in the main console of the editor platform. You can skip to any part of the article to work on that particular section if you want to.
Click on ‘meta description’. It will take you to the center of the screen and give you instructions on what keywords are the best to be included in this section.
Then on the far left, in between the <META_DESCRIPTION> </META_DESCRIPTION>, tags are where you will write your awesome text. As you hit each keyword, the center section will change color to green.
If you get stuck on what to write yourself, the AI can suggest ideas for you, and you can customize it as you see fit.
Write for Me
To get the most out of the AI, you need to feed it the right information. However, I would not recommend just blindly following everything that the AI writes for you.
But if you’re really stuck and just need something on the page, then when you have the section you want the AI to write for you, click on the cog to the right of the ‘Write for me’ button and give it some context.
This includes the output length that you want and also what tone of voice you would like (witty, knowledgeable, casual, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc).
A better alternative I found is to ‘generate a concept’. This allows any heading you’ve pulled over from the AI wizard into your article, and you can then select which concept best suits the heading.
This includes a default setting, a benefits-driven snippet, features, or even an introduction. In this example, I am going to go with the introduction and see what the AI can come up with.
You be the judge here. I think it has done a pretty decent job as a starting point.
SEO Score
This is where the magic happens.
The SEO score is Outranking’s own metric that pulls all of the information and statistics from the top 20 sites to give an overall score. Anything above 85 is considered good and will give you the highest chance of ranking.
Just remember not to keyword stuff. It still needs to sound natural.
As you keep writing the article, you can keep hitting the refresh button to update the SEO score and track your progress.
3. Questions.
Back on the homepage, the questions tab is fairly straightforward. It shows you the questions being asked on Google along with any other related keyword questions.
You can use this separately for independent research or as part of your article in the content builder.
My preference would be to use the questions tab inside the content builder itself as you can have more control over it, and there’s more information regarding which competitors are answering each question.
You can also make it as a subsection within your article or mark it as an FAQ schema.
4. Keyword Gap.
This is a great way to “spy” on the competition. Using the Keywords Gap tab allows you to compare your domain to that of a competitor.
The AI will then crawl both domains and show you any keywords that a competitor domain is organically ranking for, but you are not. It can also show the difference in traffic if you both rank for the same keyword.
You can compare up to four competitors at one time.
The report data is very simple to understand, and you can easily identify your next target keywords for upcoming content.
Outranking Key Features
While we have seen some awesome features already, this section will break down specific features that I believe are what makes this platform a serious rival and what you should be aware of before subscribing to a paid plan.
1. GPT-3 Powered AI.
Using this clever language processing technology, you can create content and rank for the prime real estate of the internet, the featured snippet.
You can even create competitive answers for the people also ask (PAA) section of the Google search results.
With the outline builder and topic writer covering all major keywords that you need to rank, the algorithm helps you gain some time back and can write a 1,500-word article in less than 30 minutes.
2. Optimize Existing Pages.
It’s not just for new blogs. Outranking is great for optimizing your current pages even further to push you up the SERPs.
It will compare similar competitors that you are able to outdo with your awesome and fresh content.
3. Integration Capabilities.
If you’ve got writers who use Google Docs to write and share articles with, then Outranking can easily be added, from which you can then export straight into WordPress.
Similarly, with their WordPress plugin, you can import from the content editor directly into WordPress, or if you need to do a more sophisticated edit, then exporting back into the editor is easily done.
It is even compatible with the Grammarly browser plugin, so your work stays original and clean.
Whether you’re looking to use this to update existing content, rank higher in the search engine results, or simply use it for social media marketing, the in-depth research that has gone into the backend of the software is clearly visible.
4. Team Collaboration.
Use Outranking to give your team access to manage and share documents that work for your company workflow or agency.
If you’re a freelancer, you can share documents with contractors and clients while at the same time restricting views and editing rights.
5. Customer Support.
Like using any software, having the right support for any issues is essential to keep you moving and getting those articles out there.
You can access their live chat function during business hours, or message service after hours. Their response is fairly quick, usually within a few hours.
You can even join in on a weekly webinar to find out any new and exciting features and how to get the most out of them. Likewise, you can interact with other Outranking users through their Facebook group.
Outranking Pricing Plans
There are five plans to choose from depending on your current business needs:
*For a limited time only, Outranking is having a Grandfather sale. Check out the savings below.
| Plan | Price | AI Characters | Documents | Users |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 per month | 5000 | 2 | 1 |
| Starters | $39 per month | Unlimited | 10 | 1 |
| Growth | $79 per month | Unlimited | 30 | 1 |
| Professional | $159 per month | Unlimited | 100 | 3 |
| Enterprise | Contact | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
While the free version is limiting, the fact that you don’t even need to enter a credit card to sign up is a game changer where most other competitors only offer a 7-day money-back guarantee.
If you want a further discount though then I would recommend paying yearly rather than monthly.
On top of this, if you’re just after extra AI characters, you can add this feature to your current plan.
Prices are $39 per month for 1 million AI characters.
Outranking Pros and Cons
I’m sure you’ve read everything above, however, if you’re after the TL;DR version, here we go.
Pros:
Cons:
Bottom Line
It’s no secret that the use of artificial intelligence is quickly making its way into the digital marketing space. The need for producing optimized content to rank on all of the search engines at a fairly fast pace is incredibly high.
Where Outranking shines is that you really do not need any other software. It truly is an all-in-one platform. This means you don’t need to spend extra money getting another piece of tech to complement the other, saving you money.
Given that the product has been recently launched, there is some serious potential here to be a market leader in AI content writing. Even in the few weeks that I have been reviewing this product, I have seen many changes and upgrades for the better.
Finally, the AI writer is just there to assist you, not to write the entire article for you. Keep that in mind, and you will be well on your way with some of the best content on the web today.
I can’t wait to see what they do next!
It’s time to be the pilot of your life and not just the passenger.
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Chris Bournelis is a blogger, search engine optimization, and content marketing specialist. He has been working in the online business since 2015. Join him here at ChrisBournelis.com for the best SaaS reviews and tips to get the most out of your online business.