NeuronWriter Review: AppSumo's Tool of the Year for SEO

NeuronWriter Wins AppSumo's 2023 Community Tool of the Year

Every year, AppSumo announces its Tools of the Year awards, and for 2023, the community vote went to NeuronWriter. That's not a decision made by the AppSumo staff — it was chosen by the actual users who purchased and used the tool throughout the year.

NeuronWriter is an SEO content optimization platform that helps you write articles designed to compete with whatever's already ranking on Google. If you grabbed a code during the AppSumo launch but haven't fully explored it yet, or you're still deciding whether an SEO tool like this fits your workflow, this walkthrough covers everything you need to get started.

The deal starts at $89 for a single code, with AppSumo Plus members saving an additional 10% on top of that. There are multiple tiers available depending on how much content you plan to produce, and we'll break down which plan makes the most sense later on.

Setting Up Your First NeuronWriter Project

When you first log into NeuronWriter, you'll start with a blank slate. The first step is creating a project, which is essentially a folder where all your articles for a specific website will live. Most users should choose the domain-related project option, which lets NeuronWriter pull in data specific to your site. If you're a freelance writer working across multiple clients, you can also create non-domain projects.

Once the project is created, head straight to the gear icon for settings — this is a step that probably should be part of the onboarding flow but isn't. Here you'll enter your target keywords (what you're trying to rank for), brand keywords (your business name), and negative keywords (topics you want to avoid). For example, if you run an ultrasound business, you'd want to exclude terms like "animal ultrasound" that aren't relevant to your services.

You can also add competitor URLs and competitor brand names, which gives NeuronWriter more context when generating recommendations. The more information you provide upfront, the better the tool's suggestions will be throughout the content creation process.

Integrating WordPress and Google Search Console

NeuronWriter supports direct integration with WordPress, which means you can push finished articles straight to your site without copy-pasting. Setting this up requires generating an application password inside your WordPress admin panel under your user profile. Once connected, you'll be able to import and export content between the two platforms.

The other integration worth setting up immediately is Google Search Console. Even if you tend to avoid Google products for privacy reasons, Search Console is worth making an exception for. It's one of the rare cases where Google gives you information — how people are finding your site, what keywords they're using, your average ranking position — without requiring you to share anything in return. They already have this data whether you use the tool or not.

Inside NeuronWriter, the Search Console data appears alongside your articles, giving you a clear picture of how each piece of content is performing in real search results. You'll see impressions, clicks, and average position for every page you're tracking.

Creating and Optimizing Your First Article

To start writing, click the "new query" button. In SEO terms, a query is simply what people are typing into Google. You enter your target search phrase, optionally add related keywords, and NeuronWriter goes off to analyze the top-ranking articles for that query. It comes back with a difficulty score, search volume, and cost-per-click data so you know exactly what you're competing against.

Before writing a single word, NeuronWriter asks you to select which competing articles should serve as references. This is an important step — if you're writing a blog post, select other blog posts as references, not homepages or product pages. The tool's recommendations are only as good as the competitors you choose to benchmark against.

The title and meta description editor includes a visual preview of how your article will appear in Google search results, complete with a pixel-width indicator. If your title gets cut off in the preview, it'll get cut off in actual search results. NeuronWriter suggests AI-generated titles, but the real value comes from tweaking them with your own knowledge of what your audience actually cares about.

Using the Content Score and Term Suggestions

The right sidebar in the editor displays a content score — a number that represents how well your article stacks up against the competition. You'll also see a trophy icon showing the target score you need to reach. A well-optimized title and meta description alone can get you a surprising amount of the way there before you've written any body content.

NeuronWriter provides two categories of term suggestions: basic terms (short, broad keywords like "ultrasound" or "3D") and extended terms (longer phrases like "what to expect during an ultrasound"). The extended terms are typically more valuable because they reflect the actual questions and concerns your readers have. You can exclude irrelevant suggestions, which cleans up the interface and adjusts the scoring so you're not penalized for skipping terms that don't fit your article.

One particularly useful feature is auto-insert, which scans your existing content and suggests natural places to work in recommended terms. It presents each suggestion one at a time so you can accept or reject them individually. Don't blindly accept everything — read each suggestion to make sure it fits naturally. The goal is content that reads well for humans, not just content that checks boxes for a scoring algorithm.

Building Your Article Outline with AI

NeuronWriter offers four different approaches to building an article outline. You can pull heading structures directly from competitor articles, use smart headings generated from recommended terms, browse "People Also Ask" questions from Google, or generate a full AI outline using GPT-4.

The competitor outline view is useful for making sure you're covering the same ground as top-ranking articles, but you shouldn't copy their structure wholesale. The People Also Ask section occasionally surfaces questions you hadn't considered, giving you angles that could differentiate your article. The AI outline generator tends to produce comprehensive structures — sometimes more headings than you actually need — but it's a solid starting point.

For most articles, a combination approach works best: generate an AI outline, cross-reference it with competitor structures to make sure nothing important is missing, then trim and reorganize until the flow makes sense. Even just having headings in place can push your content score significantly higher before you've written any paragraphs.

Internal Links, Content Ideas, and Publishing

Once your article is taking shape, NeuronWriter can suggest internal links — pages on your own website that are relevant to the current article. Adding these links keeps visitors on your site longer, which sends positive signals to Google about your content's usefulness. The tool even recommends anchor text for each link.

The next content ideas feature is one of the more underrated parts of NeuronWriter. It analyzes your finished article and suggests related topics for future posts. These ideas feed directly into your content plan, which means you'll never run out of topics to write about. It turns a single article into a content strategy.

When the article is ready, you can export it directly to WordPress through the integration you set up earlier, copy it manually, or run a plagiarism check using the credits included with your plan. The plagiarism checker is especially useful if you've leaned heavily on AI-generated content and want to make sure nothing flags as duplicate.

NeuronWriter Pricing: Which AppSumo Plan Is Right for You?

The AppSumo deal maps directly to NeuronWriter's existing pricing tiers. One code gets you the Bronze plan, two codes gets Silver, three gets Gold, four gets Platinum, and five to seven codes gets Diamond. This matters because any future features NeuronWriter adds will be tied to these plan levels.

The real breakpoint in value comes at the Gold plan (three codes, $267). That's where you unlock plagiarism checks, Google Search Console integration, WordPress and Shopify integrations, and unlimited team sharing. The Bronze and Silver plans are functional for basic content creation, but you'll miss out on the integrations that make NeuronWriter significantly more powerful.

Everything above Gold primarily increases your limits — more projects, more AI credits, more analyses per month. The Diamond plan at five codes ($445) locks you into the highest tier for any future feature additions. For context, annual subscriptions to comparable SEO tools like Surfer SEO or Clearscope can easily exceed that amount in a single year. If you're producing content at any real volume, the Gold or Diamond plans represent strong long-term value.

Final Verdict: Is NeuronWriter Worth It?

NeuronWriter earned its Community Tool of the Year title for good reason. It takes the guesswork out of SEO content creation by showing you exactly what's working for your competitors and giving you a clear roadmap to match or exceed their efforts. The competitor analysis, term suggestions, and content scoring create a feedback loop that makes it genuinely difficult to publish a poorly optimized article.

The tool is approachable enough for beginners — you don't need deep SEO knowledge to follow its recommendations — while offering enough depth for experienced content strategists who want granular control over their optimization. The WordPress integration and Google Search Console connection turn it from a writing aid into a complete content management workflow.

If you're running a blog, managing SEO for clients, or building out content for any website that depends on organic traffic, NeuronWriter is one of the strongest tools available at this price point. The lifetime deal structure means you're making a one-time investment rather than paying monthly, which makes the value proposition hard to beat.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.