Online users are constantly searching for quality content and all types of information online. And in other to be successful online, most content creators know that you need SEO to help your content appear when your targeted keywords are searched for on search engines.
While SEO can be simple in theory, it can be challenging to do it right. Even the slightest change to your website content can affect your rankings and traffic, making it hard to know what’s working and what’s not.
Search engine optimization is an ever-changing field, and it can be pretty daunting if you’re new to digital marketing. That’s why you need a tool that can help you simplify the process of writing well-optimised content that will rank higher on search engines.
Considering the number of AI content optimization tools in the SEO industry, choosing the best AI content optimization tool can be tricky. Although, despite the crowded space, there are excellent SEO content optimization tools like Surfer SEO.
Surfer SEO is an AI SEO content optimization tool that helps you rank your written content higher on the search engine results page with the help of an AI. The tool can help optimise your written content for better visibility.
What is Surfer SEO?
Surfer SEO is a tool used to curate and optimise written content, such as articles. The tools analyse your content by cross-checking against over 500+ factors and other sources to see how your content ranks based on the current search result pages.
In addition, other factors such as headings, keyword density, word count, images, and other factors are provided to aid the content creation process.
With enough features to analyse your content and help provide the best possible options to make it relevant, this tool is a great pick. Surfer SEO also utilises Google’s NLP Analysis and a dedicated keyword research tool to know which keywords best fit your content or the best keywords with low competition.
The result found from the content analysis is then formulated to help you improve your written content and rank high on SERP. In addition, its content editor allows you to work directly and make on-the-go choices regarding drafting your content.
Who Is The Founder of Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is the brainchild of Michal Suski, who used to own an SEO agency. According to Michal Suski, the decision to develop Surfer came out of the need to hire more staff for a project, and when it wasn’t possible, they decided to build a tool that would undertake the task.
That was how SurferSEO was born and has since then been constantly developed to help other content writers undertake their projects with much ease and assistance.
Key Benefits of Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is a user-friendly tool that has become widely accepted in the SEO and content creation space. However, this is due to the benefits the optimization tool offers and what you get from using the tool.
Using this SEO content tool will give you an enlightening experience as a content writer.
Below are some of the benefits you stand to enjoy when you use Surfer SEO.
- The tool helps you in identifying low competition keywords that will help your article rank higher on search engines,
- The app provides you with LSI keywords by using its Keyword Analyser,
- The content structure assistant makes writing easier,
- The Surfer Audit feature cross-checks your content against that of your competitors and provides you with a more competitive advantage,
- Detailed and in-depth content analysis,
- Chrome Extension also makes your work easier.
What Are The Most Popular Features of Surfer SEO?
One of the strongholds of Surfer SEO is the unique features they provide. Here are some of the tool’s key features that you need to know.
Content Editor
When you want to start optimising your content, you are greeted by a content editor on the Surfer SEO platform that allows you to create your content and optimise it accordingly. This feature also gives you the leverage to work on pre-existing content to improve its relevance and performance.
The content editor feature on the Surfer SEO is so seamless that it optimises and fixes your content as you type while showing you the proper steps to take and the corrections you need to make in your written content for better ranking opportunities.
Surfer Audit
If you are familiar with creating optimised written content manually, you would understand that it requires lots of effort to produce hitch-free written article content. This is because a simple error on your side can take a long time before it’s noticed.
This is why the Surfer SEO Audit feature is excellent, as it undertakes the role of an assistant and helps you point out steps you should take to make your content surpass the competition and with a better content score.
With this, you can quickly substitute redundant or invaluable content text and replace them, which would boost your ranking. Surfer audit is more like running an SEO audit; in this case, it’s centred around your content text.
SERP Analyser
Search result pages are a constant struggle for content creators, writers and business owners are trying to take the top pages on search engines for better visibility.
Surfer SEO SERP analyser runs a check on all top-ranking pages and tries to compare your keyword with other top-ranking contents to determine which words you need to add to your content to be better ranked by Google. It provides you with a content score that you can work on to improve your content.
This feature is more like a senior editor providing you with advice on making your work better, but in this case, it helps your content rank higher.
In my opinion, this is one of the features that make Surfer SEO stand out among other AI SEO content optimization tools and possibly one of the most used features from their customers.
While analysing your content against that of your competitor, the SERP Analyser compares factors such as NLP salience, Keyword Density, word count, number of headers, and so on. All these are then used in analysing the result.
Keyword Research
Keywords are a peculiar determinant in ranking in SERP, as inadequate use or overuse of your targeted keyword on the topic you’re trying to rank for could cause you a poor ranking on search engines.
The tool checks the inputted keyword and compares it against the top pages currently ranking for your target keyword. Then, it suggests at what ratio you need to add your target keyword and other related words or phrases to your written content.
Keyword Surfer
Gone are the days of you having to shuffle between Google Chrome and your Surfer SEO, as the tool has now been integrated. With this feature, you can research Google and still get relevant data on the search query.
This feature is a plus because it takes away the constant shuffling between these tools when you can get the result from the same place.
How To Use Surfer SEO
To use the Surfer SEO Optimization tool, you have to understand this tool gives you the option of utilising it in two ways. You can either use the tool to create and optimise new content or work on pre-existing content which you want to rank well on SERP.
Now, how you use these two methods differs, but they are all geared to providing the same result.
For new content, all you need to do is log on and then input your phrase or keyword into the SERP analyser, and it will give you the best steps and ways to follow.
If it is pre-existing written content, you need to add the content into the “Compare with Competitor” option.
This would analyse your content against competitors that are currently ranking high for the keyword you want to rank for and advise you on how to edit your content correctly to outrank your competitors.
What is Surfer SEO Content Brief
For most people, creating the proper structure for their content can be challenging, and that’s what this features aims to solve. This feature helps you create an outline and a structure to follow in writing well-optimised content.
One of the big pluses of this SEO content brief is that you can easily use it as an instructional guide for your content writers, even if you’re outsourcing your writing tasks.
With Surfer SEO, you will be given an outline of words such as sections, header, subheadings, topic, and questions to answer to help you better optimise your content.
Surfer NLP Feature
Before I go into Surfer’s NLP feature, let’s understand what NLP is all about and how it relates to the Surfer SEO analysis.
What is NLP?
NLP stands for Natural Language Processing; it’s a computer method used in analysing the text in your content by providing insightful text analysis with machine learning. It extracts and analyse your written content to better understand what your content is all about.
If you want some hands-on experience, you can try out Google’s Natural Language API demo for more insights. The tool analyses the syntax, entities, and sentiment of your content in other to categorise it properly.
The ultimate goal of NLP is to make the search engine have a more accurate understanding of the content and its context.
What Is Surfer SEO NLP Analysis
The Surfer SEO NLP Analysis allows users to leverage NLP to analyse text in their content.
This technology offers the most efficient and accurate analysis in understanding the text in your content, such as the entities in your text, the sentiment level of the sentences, the syntax used, and how Google categorised your content.
Basically, Surfer NLP shows you insight into how Google understands your content so you can make any adjustments if need be.
What are The Pros and Cons Of Surfer SEO
We must understand that no matter how efficient a tool is, it will always have advantages and disadvantages. In this section, I will be discussing the pros and cons of the Surfer SEO tool.
Surfer SEO Pros
- The interface is easy to navigate and use,
- The content brief makes your work easier,
- There is no limit to the amount of user access when using the shareable link to share your content editor,
- You get to enjoy the Google Doc integration,
- Advanced Google NLP feature.
Surfer SEO Cons
- Surfer SEO is expensive for newbie content writers that are starting on a low budget,
- The keyword suggestion can be tricky if not efficiently added,
- There is a limit on their NLP usage if you signup for their basic plan. With the basic plan, you can only use the NLP for one month,
- Depending on the account plan you choose, there are limitations on the number of content editors and audits you can carry out every month.
- The AI article outline generator is not the best when compared to other tools like Outranking AI. If you use Surfer AI-generated outline, you still need to go through the content for better readability.
Is Surfer SEO Worth It?
With the overall functionality of the Surfer SEO optimization tool compared to its flaws, there is no doubt that the SEO tool is worth the hype. Although Surfer SEO is not a perfect SEO content optimization tool, they are still one of your best choices compared to the other tools out there.
The features you enjoy with this tool at its price range are pretty fair, and you would still end up with well-optimised content.
Is Surfer SEO free?
Surfer SEO is a premium SEO tool, and they do not provide any free account. However, they offer a 7day money-back guarantee for those willing to have some hands-on and want to see what Surfer SEO has to deliver.
Surfer SEO Pricing
When comparing Surfer SEO Pricing to other brands that offer similar features and functionality, Surfer’s pricing is quite affordable, although not the cheapest in the industry.
Generally, I would recommend the Pro plan simply because it provides most of what you need to optimise your written content and get the best out of Surfer SEO’s platform.
However, I still think their Pro plan is on the high side.
Here are the price plans offered by Surfer SEO;
Basic Plan – $59 per month,
Pro Plan – $119 per month,
Business Plan – $239 per month.
Alternatively, you can make use of their annual subscription and get 17% off on any of the plans you choose.
Alternatives To Surfer SEO
There are a lot of SEO content optimization tools on the internet. Some have AI writer ability included, and some just optimise your writing content. In relation to this Surfer SEO review, I will be mentioning three other good alternatives to Surfer SEO.
Please take note that two of the SEO content tools mentioned below do have an AI content writing ability included in the tool.
Here are the best alternatives to Surfer SEO:
- Outranking AI (includes AI writer),
- MarketMuse,
- Frase AI (includes AI writer),
- Clearscope,
- Page Optimizer Pro.
Outranking AI vs Surfer SEO
Outranking AI is an AI content optimization tool with an AI writer included. This content tool is one of the best SEO content tools that I will easily pick over Surfer SEO.
Outranking AI is feature-rich, with more features being added on every new version they release.
Although Outranking is relatively newer in the industry than Surfer SEO and is such, it’s still less reliable than Surfer SEO in terms of platform consistency (few issues of bug).
However, I still highly recommend Outranking AI over other SEO content tools in its group. More so, at the starting price of $39/month, it’s cheaper than Surfer SEO.
You can read my detailed Outranking AI review to learn more and better insight into the tool.
MarketMuse vs Surfer SEO
This is another premium SEO content optimization tool that takes content and analyses it against thousand of options on the internet. MarketMuse is undoubtedly a great tool, but Surfer SEO has more features than MarketMuse.
Also, Surfer will provide you with more insights into your content than MarketMuse. And to crown it on Surfer, their prices are lower than MarketMuse. Although, MarketMuse does have the edge over Surfer SEO because they offer a free account plan.
Frase AI vs Surfer SEO
Frase is another SEO content optimization tool that is catching up with Surfer’s tool. Frase AI is an all-in-one SEO tool explicitly designed to help content writers produce quality content with the help of an AI assistant.
With Frase AI, you can easily avoid writer’s block and produce good articles with their AI writing assistant. Although you will still need to fact-check the AI-written content, apart from that, Frase AI will improve your content writing process and efficiency.
Also, Frase AI has similar features to Surfer SEO, and they are both in the same price range.
Surfer SEO vs Clearscope
To compare both SEO optimization tools, we have to look at their functionalities, pros, and cons to give a better verdict. Clearscope is a very advanced content writing optimisation tool.
Still, when comparing both features, there is no doubt that Surfer SEO is the clear favourite while Clearscope is behind it with a user-friendly and straightforward interface.
While I find Clearscope quite good, the purpose of using an SEO tool for your content optimisation is to help get better results with your aim at ranking on the first page of search engines.
That is why I’d say that Surfer SEO is the better option for ranking your content.
Surfer SEO vs Page Optimizer Pro
Page Optimizer Pro, popularly called POP. It’s an on-page optimization tool that has pretty decent features. Although it used to be a better option in optimising articles, unfortunately, tools like Surfer SEO has put them behind the scene.
To get more actionable insights for better ranking, your content on search engines like Google and Bing, Surfer SEO has features and functionalities far better than Page Optimizer Pro.
Conclusion
Surfer SEO has, over the years, gained popularity in the industry and has become a common choice for content writers, content editors, or SEO professionals who want to seamlessly optimise their written content for a better chance at ranking on search engines on the first page.
I believe that Surfer SEO is overhyped on its ability. AI SEO tools like Outranking AI will do the same job without you having to pay too much.
Better still, you can sign up for MarketMuse free account. With MarketMuse’s free account, you can optimise your content without having to pay anything.
However, please remember that a tool is just a tool. It all depends on how you use it. Besides, there is no assurance that Google will rank your website despite using the most expensive SEO tool.
My advice is that you can always sign up for any SEO content optimization tools with a free account, like MarketMuse free plan and get some hands-on on how their platform works.
By doing that, you can always upgrade to a paid plan when you think you need it.
I hope you found this Surfer SEO review helpful, and I wish you all the best in blogging.
