Surfer SEO Review 2023: Is It The Best All-In-One On-Page SEO Solution?

Want to see what it will take to outshine your competition? Well, in this Surfer SEO review, we will see what this tool can do compared to its alternatives to help you achieve your goals. We shall also be looking at its pros and cons, pricing, features and more.

Surfer SEO is a powerful content optimization and keyword research tool that can help you optimize your website content and rank higher on Google.

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Here’s a quick summary in case you don’t have time to read the entire blog post:

As the name suggests, Surfer SEO is an on-page optimization tool that allows you to create SEO content and optimize your existing content for better ranking and visibility.

When you create or optimize your content with Surfer, it analyzes over 500 on-page signals in one pass. Signals include TF-IDF, meta titles, alt tags, LSI, NLP, and more.

Rather than relying on intuition and guesswork, Surfer’s data-driven SEO analysis gives you what you need to rank well in the SERPs.

Additionally, Surfer also has a robust keyword search engine, which is not as reliable as other tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush.

Later in this review, we will go into detail about all the tools and modules this tool has to offer.

In a nutshell, Surfer SEO is a great on-page tool that helps take the guesswork out of the process. Not only is it easy for SEO newbies to use, but using the tool actually helps you improve your SEO. Plus, you’ll rank faster and more often!

What is Surfer SEO?

Surfer SEO was founded in 2008 by Slawek Czajkowski. Slawek founded a company focused on bringing data into every step of the SEO process. As they grew, his team built an in-house tool for content optimization. This tool later became more and more powerful and ultimately the driving force to create Surfer SEO.

Surfer SEO helps you create on-page optimized and Google-friendly content as much as possible. It analyzes over 500 ranking factors, compares your content with your competitors, and provides a data-driven SEO plan to help you rank higher in the SERPs.

While most software relies on basic keyword research, user information, and tutorial lists for you to get the job done, Surfer uses a data-driven model to help you rank your pages and posts.

You can focus less on how and more on what it takes to outperform the competition.

Think of Surfer SEO as your personal Data Scientist. Quickly analyze competitors, performance metrics, and find technical factors that positively impact search rankings. Using this data, you can reverse-engineer your way to the top of search results.

Related: How To Get Traffic On Your Blog: 5 Simple Steps To Get Results.

Some Ranking Factors Analyzed By Surfer SEO Include:

• Text Length
• Number of headings
• Number of Images
• Page Speed
• Keyword Density
• Partial Keyword Density
• Referring URLs
• Referring Domains
• Meta Tags Structure

This is just a sample, Surfer SEO analyzes over 500 different factors in keyword results at any given time.

How To Use Surfer SEO (Key Features)

Surfer SEO users now have access to 6 modules (up from 4) and a few additional tools for use with Surfer SEO.

• Content Editor
• SERP Analyzer
• Audit 
• Keyword Research 
• Content Planner 
• Grow Flow

Here we will discuss all these modules that Surfer SEO has to offer. 

Surfer SEO SERP Analyzer

Surfer SEO’s SERP Analyzer is unique in such a way that it gives you clarity on keyword ranking factors. With just a few clicks, you can see the impact of your selected ranking factors with charts that are easy to understand.

This SEO tool gives you a detailed SERP breakdown for any given keyword. This module helps you find correlations between SERP result position and on-page factors.

To get started, you need to enter the target keyword for which you want to analyze the SERP.

For example, we will take the keyword “Spotify Premium Free Trial” as an example.

After Surfer’s SERP analyzer fetches the data, it displays detailed information:

• Average word count (length of keyword content).
• Keyword density and term frequency.
• Use long tail keywords and partial matches.
• Keyword related questions.
• Page speed. Time to first byte.
• Structured data.
• Hidden content.
• Number of links pointing to top competitors.
• Meta title, meta description, image alt tags. 
• Search visibility — for URLs and domains.
• Backlinks — for domains and URLs.

There are other aspects, but we will not list them all here. Sometimes it seems that Surfer provides more data than other SEO tools available on the site. All of this data belongs to correlative SEO.

Yes, Surfer SEO goes into much more detail and it also provides important data metrics like – what is the average word count or content length of the ranking pages.

Other important aspects like the number of H2 tags used in the ranking pages. The catch is that it also provides backlink data, such as the number of links included in the first page results. You can use this tool to optimize your existing content.

Most of the data Surfer provides is useful. For example, let’s say you want to write about the topic – “Spotify Stats”. You’ll know the average word count, the number of keywords to rank for, the content structure – title length, body, paragraphs, headings, titles used, and more. 

Overall, you’ll get detailed data and information about all the on-page factors for a given keyword and page rank.

Content Editor

Keyword density is no longer enough. That’s why Surfer SEO uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to check how prominent each word is on your competitors’ pages.

The data collected will provide you with the most accurate and competitive guidelines to help your content achieve the metrics Google requires.

You will get instant feedback through content score.

What is a content score? Content Score is where Surfer SEO analyzes your text and gives you instant feedback on how better your writing is than your competition.

It’s not really about the quality of your content, it’s about the quality of your content to rank in Google.

In other words, the content score doesn’t just look at whether you have good grammar, it’s a really basic function. But instead, it looks at relevant keywords, titles, images, content length, and hundreds of other factors to determine how well your content compares to the top ranking sites. Ratings range from 0 (worst) to 100 (best). 

To get started with the Content Editor, you need to enter the search term for which you want to create content.

For example, “Grammarly vs ProwritingAid”. For this keyword, Surfer’s Content Editor will share more detailed information like:

• Content Score out of 100 – how well optimized the content is.
• Content structure — words, headings, paragraphs, images.
• LSI keywords – that you need to optimize.

You can also use Include Pages to ensure your content is compliant and best of your top competitors. This feature helps you select your content and compare it to your chosen ranking competitors.

Yes, this is useful, but these days all SEO tools use this module to simply scrape your top competitors’ data. But no big deal!

When it comes to other aspects such as Surfer’s content editor, you’ll find the interface to be very basic. For example, create your content in Google Docs, MS Word, or any other word processing interface.

You can also copy and paste the content you create into your dashboard or write content in the Surfer content editor. See how many times you’ve used a particular LSI term or phrase, right-hand content scores, word counts, headlines, and more. Based on your suggestions, you can optimize your content.

Additionally, there is one interesting thing about the content editor. That means it can cover questions and headlines. Yes, they pull question data from Google People Also Ask. This is useful.

Follow Surfer Content Editor’s recommendations and you’ll be more likely to rank ahead of your competitors with updated, Google-friendly and optimized content.

Surfer SEO Audit

With Surfer’s SEO Audit feature, you can go back and tweak your existing content to improve your rankings.

To get started, you need to enter the URL you want to optimize, then enter your target keywords. After entering these details, you need to select the country you want your page to be optimized then click the Run Audit button.

Magic happens here. A detailed analysis of the entered URL is displayed. It directly performs keyword analysis similar to SERP Analyzer and provides useful data shown below:

• Content length
• Number of headings
• NLP entities coverage
• Page speed
• Keyword density
• NLP Sentiment
• Missing backlinks
• Referring domains
• Meta tags structure

Identify missing keywords and how to fix them, such as how often you include popular phrases and NLP entities. Incorporating omitted terms into your content is the easiest way to improve your rankings.

Surfer analyzes the best pages and calculates the real state of your content. You may fall behind due to the length of your content, partial keyword density in the title, keyword stuffing, and other issues that lead to a poor user experience. The SEO Audit tool recognizes and recommends ways to fix these problems and improve your position even after clicking “publish”.

Choose the top performing pages with great content that serve the same search intent as you. This way you get the most accurate data you can rely on. Increase your organic search traffic and improve your website’s SEO performance.

Surfer’s SEO Audit finds and crawls relevant pages on your website and gives you automatic internal link suggestions. You can see the number of pages linking to the audited URL. Surfer will report relevant pages to link to.

Surfer SEO Content Planner

With Surfer’s SEO Content Planner, you’ll get a bunch of groups of keywords to target to gain authority. The special feature of this tool is content classification.

Let’s say you want to rank for some super competitive keywords like “Keto Diet”. To get to the first page, your site needs to have topical relevance and enough supporting content (cluster pages) to support the main content (pillar pages).

This is where Surfer’s Content Planner comes into play. The main topic you enter has various cluster topics. The best thing is that it offers various filters such as search intent, keywords, search volume, and content score for filtering listings.

Additionally, you can connect your domain to Content Planner to find more relevant content keywords for your existing pillar pages. Connecting your domain pulls data from Google Search Console to provide you with more relevant keyword suggestions.

Immediately plan a successful content strategy.

Check your target audience’s search intent and gauge monthly search volume and keyword difficulty at a glance!

Create great, relevant, and rankable content.

Use the full power of Surfer to write high-quality, well-researched articles that your audience and Google will love!

Grow Flow

Surfer SEO’s Grow Flow feature is an AI growth management platform that provides weekly tasks to improve your SEO.

It’s designed to help you get more traffic and grow your blog or website organically.

To use this AI marketing tool, you need to connect your Google Search Console account and follow the in-app instructions.

Another cool feature of this new tool is that it is a free addition to the Surfer SEO platform. Not only is it free for non-Surfer users (with limited features), but all Surfer users have access to its fully loaded functionalities!

Surfer SEO Chrome Extension

While not necessarily part of the Surfer SEO suite of products, Surfer has developed the Google Chrome extension, a free keyword research tool.

After installing the Google Chrome extension, go to Google as usual and enter your keyword in the search.

SurferSEO makes it easy to view keyword traffic without even opening a new tab as you can see below:

Although free, the keyword research tool does more than just search volume. In fact, they are very generous with the information they provide.

The right side shows detailed information about other similar keywords. Easily switch between countries or copy to clipboard. Everything is built into your browser. Several charts let you quickly visualize search result traffic, word counts, and keywords.

Built For Collaboration

If you use authors or assistants to help create content, Surfer SEO can be your all-in-one SEO tool. Not only can authors get results in real-time, but they can easily share results as soon as they finish writing an article.

Surfer seo sharing option can save you hours during the editing stage of content publishing. Authors submit finished articles with optimized headlines, images, and paragraph numbers. This tool is designed to work with the click-to-share option.

Google Docs Integration

A classic example of understanding collaboration tools is the integration with Google Docs. Put keywords in the content editor feature and you can share links with Google Docs.

Some authors prefer writing in Google Docs, so this is a great feature. This integration allows the author to see all of Surfer suggestions directly in Google Docs.

Location Based SERP Analyzer

What works in one country may not work in another. In this new era of search, most companies with little international presence are shifting to global marketing strategies. If your audience can find your business in any language using globally relevant keywords, you’ll get noticed.

The Surfer SEO database works in a variety of languages ​​and countries, so it doesn’t matter where you want to rank your site, whether it’s in Spanish, German, or Swedish.

Structural Data SEO

With Surfer, you can go beyond “typical” ranking factors like keywords and anchor text to see which pages on your website have the best structure. Schema markup describes specific aspects of the content that search engines expect to see on your site.

As Schema.org improves over time, it should also improve search engine optimization and become a more realistic indicator of who ranks higher on major search engines such as Google and Bing.

Optimizing For True Density

Which key terms are missing in your content? Is your presence in search predictable and consistent? On-page SEO optimization can feel like a guessing game, but it doesn’t always have to be.

To see if you’re off target, True Density provides a simple yet powerful way to detect and fix these issues.

Backlinks Optimization

If your competitors are outperforming you in SERPs, it could be due to your backlink profile. Surfer SEO will find the common backlinks you’re missing.

Backlink optimization is unique to every business. Surfer finds out what’s important to your business and what link building tactics your competitors are using to drive more search traffic.

We understand that Surfer SEO strategy is about good links, not just links. Good content, not just links with keywords.

Surfer SEO Pricing

• The Basic Plan: The monthly price of the basic plan is $59/month, or you’ll get it for $49/month – when billed annually. Basic plan includes 10 content editors, 20 audits, free NLP for the first month.

• The Pro Plan: Costs $119/month for monthly pricing, or you’ll get it for $99/month when billed annually. Surfer’s professional plan includes 30 content editors as well as 60 content audits per month. Additionally, you will also have access to NLP and you can invite three team members to use Surfer access.

• The Business Plan: Costs $239/month, or you’ll get it for $199/month when billed annually. Yes, the business plan includes 70 content editors, 140 testers, and some NLP credits. You can also invite ten team members, send white label resorts, and support APIs.

Surfer SEO also comes with a seven days money-back guarantee.

Surfer SEO Alternatives

There are other SEO tools on the market that offer similar features. The SEO keyword space is very competitive, but if you want to know how Surfer SEO compares to other SEO tools, it is safe to say that it is Surfer SEO’s content editor that sets it apart.

Some of the Surfer SEO alternatives that offer similar data-driven content options are:

Page Optimizer Pro

Surfer is definitely the winner in many ways, including ease of use and integration. Comparing the pricing plans of Page Optimizer Pro and Surfer SEO, we can say that POP is very affordable compared to Surfer.

Frase.io

Frase is another tool available similar to Surfer. Both tools have a lot of functionalities in common. For example, both tools allow you to create AI-powered content outlines and help you optimize your content for better SEO scores.

When it comes to content optimization, Surfer SEO is clearly the winner. On the other hand, when it comes to creating quick AI-powered content outlines, Frase.io is clearly the winner.

ClearScope

Let’s be honest, Clearscope is way clear of Surfer. Clearscope is expensive, but well worth the investment. Yes, you can get started with Clearscope with a monthly budget of $350.

However, we recommend sticking with Surfer SEO. This also gets the job done. Yes, Surfer SEO is much cheaper than Clearscope, starting at $59/month.

Surfer SEO Pros & Cons

Pros:

• The user interface is clean and easy to use.
• Ability to create your own charts and data comparisons for keyword research.
• It helps optimize many on-page SEO factors.
• It is one of the best tools for optimizing your current content and improving your search engine rankings.
• Surfer offers both keyword and content optimization. No other keyword tool offers a content editor within their platform. You will need to purchase another tool such as Clearscope or MarketMuse.
• The free Chrome extension is worth it.

Cons:

• Only 30 Content Editor Credits per month can be used up quickly on the Basic plan.
• The Surfer SEO tool is great with its content editor, but the keyword research tool felt a bit daunting, and it seems there are some extra features in the beta.
• Other tools are better at pinpointing your competitors’ backlinks.

Surfer SEO’s Public Roadmap

Surfer SEO shared the roadmap publicly with its users on Trello, where you can see what’s currently in development and what Surfer SEO’s future plans are. They also show what they have recently released and how it will help you. They recently released Content Editor 2.0, a beta version of Content Planner, a WordPress plugin for the Content Editor, and tags for all generated queries.

Surfer SEO Academy

Surfer SEO Academy is a series of FREE video training courses and live workshops that teach you how to become a professional SEO surfer.

It comes with over 30 lessons and topics, ranging from keyword research to technical SEO to on-page optimization.

SEO Writing Masterclass

The SEO Writing Masterclass is a step-by-step training course on how to write SEO-friendly content.

Designed for those who want to start creating SEO content for the web and understand NLP.

The course is divided into four modules, each with multiple lessons and free SEO templates.

This SEO Writing Masterclass is an invaluable resource for both content managers and writers.

This unique and dynamic SEO writing course offers over 19 lessons covering a variety of SEO-related topics such as search intent, NLP (Natural Language Processing), keyword research and scoring, competitive analysis, and more.

It also details Surfer’s platform and SEO content creation by those who know it best.
After completing this masterclass, not only will you be Surfer certified, but you will have the confidence to apply what you have learned to update your content marketing strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Surfer SEO is the best choice for SEOs looking to improve their on-page SEO with data-driven analytics tools starting at only $49/month. We encourage you to try Surfer Toolkit on your website and see for yourself. We guarantee that you will not regret after using it.

If you are a beginner, feel free to check out this FREE SEO Writing Masterclass from Surfer which will provide you with over 19 lessons covering a range of SEO-related topics such as search intent, NLP (natural language processing), keyword research & evaluation, competitors analysis and many more.

Also Read: Best AI Copywriting Software to try this year.

Last updated on July 21st, 2023 at 04:49 am