Unleashing SERP Domination: Surfer SEO Review 2023

Introduction

Are you eager to conquer Google’s rankings and leave your competitors in the dust?

If you have pages and pages of blog posts that just aren’t ranking on Google, then perhaps you need to take a look at your on-page SEO.

What if you could make sure your articles were SEO-ready as you write them?

For so many, SEO is a mystery subject. Yes, you can pay someone to do it, but there is an easier way to rank your pages and posts.

The answer is Surfer SEO. In this Surfer SEO review, we will take a look at what it is, how it works and how it can help you catapult your pages up the rankings.

Let’s Get Into It!

What is Surfer SEO?

Surfer SEO is a Content Optimization Platform that acts as more than just a keyword research tool.

It’s a complete search engine optimization tool that produces SEO-friendly content outlines as you write them and helps you improve your website’s on-page SEO.

It does this by using NLP (Natural Processing Language) and AI (Artificial Intelligence) in its analysis, using the most recent Google algorithm updates, so you can rest assured that the data you are seeing and using is bang up to date.

As far as your content goes Surfer SEO can be used for but not limited to:

• • Informational Articles
  • Listicles
  • Product Reviews
  • How To Articles
  • Product Alternatives

With its on-board AI-powered system it analyses your top competitors in a Google search and provides you with data-driven recommendations for optimizing your post or article.

So crucially, Surfer SEO targets all the main keywords and headings that are ranking your competitors, thus allowing you to write content that can and will compete with those around you.

Top benefits of Surfer SEO

1. SEO Optimised Content On the Fly: It is so much easier to optimise your content as you write it than having to return to it at a later date because it’s not up to par.
2. Research and Compete: Starting with the keywords you want to rank for and having the ability to research the competition without changing platforms all the time is a great time saver. With Surfer SEO it’s all in one place.
3. The Latest Data: Whilst compiling your article or post it is certainly very reassuring to know that the data you are using is not just the latest, but delivered in an easy-to-use interface that makes writing a breeze.
4. Content Planning: Using the content planner you can build your article outline first which helps enormously in getting the best output from your keywords.
5. Rewrite Old Articles: Google loves it when you update your articles! Optimising your existing content and bringing it up to date becomes a much easier task with Surfer SEO. Just paste your old article into the Surfer SEO content editor and use the same keyword research as you would for new articles and in a flash your tired old post will be fresh and new.

Who Can Use The Surfer SEO Tool?

Well, just about anyone who needs to get their content seen at the top of the Google rankings.

Surfer SEO is used by dozens of the top Fortune 500 companies, who need to ensure that their sites and pages are the best they can be in order to maintain their brand presence on the web.

For smaller and individual companies, using Surfer SEO is the perfect way to ensure that they have the ability to compete and in many cases outrank the big boys.

Some of the users who can benefit from Surfer SEO are:

• • Content Creators
  • Online Marketers
  • Small Business Owners
  • Bloggers
  • How To Writers
  • Affiliate Marketers
  • Product Reviewers
  • Webmasters
  • Digital Agencies
  • Seo Agencies

If you don’t see your profession in this list, don’t worry just be assured that if you are writing anything that you want to publish on the internet, then Surfer SEO is still the product for you to use.

How To Use Surfer SEO

Whilst each individual may approach things differently, and there is no real right or wrong in the way you use a particular tool, (with some exceptions!) there are some ways that seem to make more sense than others.

So, having a structured approach to things might help you get the most from your surfer content. Here is one approach you could consider to get you started with your SEO optimization.

Start With Keyword Research

In most cases writing a new article starts with good keyword research. You need to know what’s working and what isn’t, in order to optimize your content to its best.

Begin by entering your keyword(s) into the keyword research tool. You are now able to look at and understand the keyword density (the number of times it should appear) and the search volume for the given words.

Getting to grips with this at the beginning will aid you in understanding the search intent of potential users, and dive into the essential points you are going to need to mention in your article.

The Content Planner

Having done the base research for your keywords, it is a useful exercise to go over to the content planner. In the content planner, you should enter a ‘broader’ subject keyword to get some keyword clusters.

What does that mean? Well, I do try not to use too much jargon in my articles but sometimes it’s unavoidable! So, here is an example. If your seed keyword was ‘keto coconut cream pie’ for what you enter into the content planner keyword box you need to think a little broader, something that might better match the user search intent.

By entering a broader term like ‘keto pie’, Surfer is going to return a batch of keyword clusters that will be relevant to your article and will almost certainly raise your score. What is a ‘keyword cluster’ then? Simply, it’s a group of keywords that Surfer gleans from top-performing pages that are going to help rank your article.

You are in essence here creating a strategy for your article. If you were a tradesman it resembles the idea of making sure you have all the tools you need to do the job right the first time.

Research Your Competitors

Once you have the basics of what keywords are going to work for your article, we need to move on to understand how that will work against your competitors.

You can of course do some preliminary research on your competitors by doing some simple Google searches. This will definitely help you to recognise some of the sites you need to look out for in this next stage of writing your article.

For this part of the process, you need to jump into the SERP analyser. By entering the keyword and location you are presented with a list of the top performing sites that rank for that keyword.

Remember though that some sites while ranking highly are NOT your competitors. YouTube videos are not what you are trying to beat! So look through the data carefully, you can then select the sites that you are most likely to be competing against, and it is not always the top 5!!

Create Your Article Outline

Now for the meat and potatoes of the job! Moving to the content editor, we will bring all the elements we have selected so far together and compose our content.

There are a few ways to approach this task and as aforementioned each individual will have their own unique twist on how to create content.

One example is as follows:

• • Make a Template (Google Docs) With Headings H1, H2, etc
  • Paste The Template Into The Editor
  • Construct Each Section Under Your Headers

This simple 3 step process ensures that each time you write something you are following a set series of actions to make sure you don’t miss anything out. As you write, try to incorporate in as natural a way as possible, all the keywords in the panel on the right.

Writing Your Content

This is where Surfer SEO really comes alive. As a writer, blogger or content creator you can now of course go outside Surfer and utilise one of the many AI writing tools available to give you a head start and some inspiration.

In any case, as you write your content Surfer is monitoring your progress and your article score is constantly updated. The graphic for your score is at the top of the fight panel and looks a bit like a clock.

Many people just use the content editor as is, however, you can integrate it with Google Docs. If you outsource your articles this is a really great feature as it allows you to use a shared Google doc to construct your article right inside the content editor. Your outsourced writer can do their thing and then you can load it to inspect their work and give instructions where required.

We will cover other Surfer integrations later in this article, but I thought it useful to highlight this one here.

When Your Article is Finished

Having completed your shiny new composition the first urge is to get it onto your website, add some funky pictures and graphics and get it published. That’s fine, get it published and as soon as it is, think to yourself is it as good as it can be?

You did a lot of work to get to this point so it’s always a good idea to run it through a quick sanity check after posting. This is where the Surfer SEO Audit tool comes into play.

Before we get into it, it’s only fair to point out that the Audit tool is free when you subscribe to the Max plan otherwise there is an added monthly cost for you to use it.

That aside, The Audit tool works like this. It’s pretty simple, open the Audit tool, enter the domain/post title you want to examine set your country and click run audit. Once the audit is complete, you need to select competitors from the top of the page and select the sites you want to compare to and then hit Let’s Go at the bottom of the page.

The audit tool will scrape all the sites you picked in the previous step and present you with a list of things like missing common backlinks, internal links and so on. Digesting this information will tell you how well your article is stacking up against the competition and you are then in a position to improve your content and therefore your ranking.

Surfer SEO Pricing

Correct as of the date of this post in October 2023

There are four different pricing levels for Surfer SEO. Sadly there is no longer any free trial, I always feel that a try-before-you-buy mentality works to create long-stay customers. If someone has had time to evaluate a tool they are much more likely to become a long-term customer.

That said, Surfer does offer you a cast iron money-back guarantee, here is what they say in their FAQs:

“If you purchased one of our subscriptions (Essential, Advanced, Max), but Surfer isn’t what you expected it to be or you just changed your mind, let us know within 7 days and we’ll give you a full refund. No ifs, no buts, no hassle – we will only ask you for feedback on how we can make Surfer better for you.”

From this, you can see that they are pretty confident in their product, and the chances are that you will not be asking for your money back when you see what it can do for you, and how much money you might be able to make going forward from your website.

Main Surfer SEO Features

In no particular order then, these are the main features that Surfer SEO offers:

• • Keyword Researcher
  • Content Planner
  • Content Editor
  • Content Brief
  • SERP Analyser
  • Audit Tool

Surfer SEO Keyword Research Tool

Here is an example of what the keyword researcher delivers when you enter your seed keyword(s). You are shown a whole raft of keyword clusters which you can then interrogate to get the best optimisation for your article.

Content Planner

Surfer SEO Content Editor

This is the heart of the Surfer SEO engine. The two images depict the editor on its own and the other shows the Google Docs integration at work.

SERP Analyser

When you enter your desired keyword into the SERP analyser you can then drill down into your competitors, before deciding what your seed keyword will be.

Audit Tool

Get continuously updated pointers to improve content structure

Surfer analyzes top pages and calculates how your content is actually doing. If your content length, keyword density in headings, etc are causing poor user experience. The SEO Audit add-on recognizes and suggests ways to fix these problems and improve your position even after you’ve hit ‘publish’.

Surfer SEO Integrations

Over time Surfer has grown not only in its own skin but also in how it collaborates with other tools to provide you with the best SEO optimisation experience possible.

Surfer Integrates with the following services:

Jasper.Ai

For those of you not familiar, Jasper is an Ai writing tool that has had considerable success in the Ai space in recent times. Used according to its website by more than 100,000 users Jasper has come a long way in a short time.

How does it work with Surfer? Jasper integrates by you connecting your Surfer account to your Jasper account, the Jasper interface then appears in the content editor of Surfer and enables you to use its Ai capabilities to write and edit your content.

Google Docs

The integration with your Google Docs is achieved with the free Surfer SEO Chrome extension which is available here.

As we have been over the integration for this above I won’t repeat myself!

WordPress

After so many requests for it, Surfer has made an easy-to-use WordPress plugin, so that you can easily send your completed articles to your WordPress website.

Just search Surfer on your add plugins page and choose the one titled Surfer – WordPress Plugin, install and activate it in the usual way.

Once activated, go to the left menu bar in your WordPress dashboard, scroll down and select Surfer, the dialogue box that opens asks you to connect your Surfer account, follow the prompts and voila you are ready to post your drafts directly to WordPress.

New To Surfer

In its quest for an ever-evolving platform, Surfer SEO has recently added its Ai feature called Surfy.

Surfy works inside the content editor and lets you use the power of Ai writing to help you create masterful content.

You should be aware that Surfy is not free, you can access it with any plan but you will need to make a purchase of credits from the Ai credit pool to get full access.

Surfer SEO Pros and Cons

As with any other product, there are always what different people will see as the good and the bad. Here is a quick look at what’s good and not so good about Surfer SEO.

Surfer SEO Alternatives

Page Optimiser Pro

Kyle Roof created Page Optimizer Pro and it is a great alternative to Surfer SEO. It is one of the best on-page SEO tools because Kyle incorporated years of his SEO expertise into this tool. With this tool, you can easily create perfectly optimized pages for Google. POP is so flexible that even an SEO beginner can easily understand and use it.

POP Pricing

Basic Plan $27 / month Premium Plan $38 / month Unlimited Plan $490 / year saving 16% 

Frase

Frase is one of the best content outline creation and SEO optimization tools that can quickly help you create a flow in your content creation. You can create a content brief for your existing post or a new blog post with its content brief feature. If you face writer’s block, you can use its AI writer to create the best SEO-optimized content. Similar to Surfer SEO, it also analyzes pages based on geo-location.

Clearscope

Clearscope is also an amazing Surfer SEO alternative, and it was one of the first content optimization tools on the internet. The long-form content created using Clearscope is widely loved by users and Google. You can see the content grade while you’re writing the content. With its optimization feature, you can do keyword research and optimize your content simultaneously.

Clearscope Pricing

Scalenut

Scalenut is a content and SEO optimization platform that offers you tools like SEO writing, content optimizer, topic cluster, etc. Scalenut uses the latest GPT-3.5 technology to give the best results. You can use this tool to find keywords and other vital metrics, such as keyword volume, CPC (Cost Per Click), and keyword difficulty.

Scalenut Pricing

Essential Plan $19/month Billed annually (Save $234/year) Growth Plan $39/month Billed annually (Save $474/year) Pro Plan $74/month Billed annually (Save $894/year) Custom Plan contact Scalenut for pricing.

MarketMuse

Like Frase, MarketMuse is also a content optimization and content planning tool that can help you curate high-quality content that ranks easily on search engines. With this tool, you can optimize your content, create post outlines, analyze the content gap, and create executive summaries. On the dashboard, it offers features like compete, research, questions, connect, and optimize.

MarketMuse Pricing

Free Plan $0 best for users with a low content volume. Starts with a 7-day free Standard Trial. No credit card is required. Standard Plan $147/month best for individuals publishing content regularly. Team Plan $399/month best for agencies and teams looking to add rocket fuel to their content output.

Surfer SEO Review Conclusion:

In the ever-evolving landscape of SEO, having a powerful ally like Surfer SEO can make all the difference. Its comprehensive suite of tools, powered by NLP and AI, equips you with the latest insights and strategies to skyrocket your rankings.

With Surfer SEO, you’re not just optimizing content; you’re sculpting a path to supremacy on Google’s SERPs.

Whether you’re a content creator, blogger, marketer, or business owner, Surfer SEO is your ticket to leaving competitors in the dust.

In this detailed Surfer SEO review we have looked at a structured approach to using the tool which hopefully ensures that you’re harnessing the full potential of this remarkable piece of kit.

From keyword research to content planning and competitor analysis, Surfer’s content output empowers you every step of the way.

When your masterpiece is ready to go live, the Surfer SEO Audit tool acts as your final checkpoint, guaranteeing that your content stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Considering the diverse range of professionals and businesses benefiting from Surfer SEO, it’s clear that this tool levels the playing field.

From individual bloggers to Fortune 500 giants, the quest for SERP dominance unites us all, and Surfer SEO is the trusted companion on this journey.

In conclusion, Surfer SEO isn’t just a tool; it’s a game-changer.

Its precision, and ease of use, set it apart. While some features may be in beta a little too long at times Surfer SEO’s commitment to development is undeniable.

Despite any issues with beta, the addictive effectiveness of Surfer SEO more than compensates.

So, you have seen how Surfer SEO can help you write top-performing content.

If you’re ready to ascend the ranks and claim your spot at the top, don’t hesitate. Explore Surfer SEO today and watch your content soar to new heights.

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