Surfer SEO Review: Is This On-Page SEO Tool For You?

phasoka 
April 16, 2022

If you are interested in improving Google search engine rankings for your website, you will want to read this Surfer SEO review.

Chances are, your site is turning slow with less organic traffic and low SEO rankings over time. And the reason is that your site might have various complications ranging from technical to on page content optimization.

Spoiler alert: Surfer SEO can assist you in ranking your content on Google.

Surfer SEO helps online marketers create superior on page SEO optimized content for their websites, increasing traffic from Google searches.

All that said, I will go through all the tool's competencies in this Surfer SEO review.

Also, I will talk about the features you may use, the cost you need to spend, the good, the bad, and the ugly truth about this software, and whether or not I would recommend Surfer SEO for your ultimate need.

surfer seo review

What Is Surfer SEO?

Surfer SEO is a web-based and data-driven program that aids you in creating advanced on-page SEO-optimized content to boost your website ranking on Google.

As you may know, there are two approaches to on-page optimization: create seamless content from the beginning or utilize tools such as Surfer SEO to speed up your optimization effort.

To make this mission fulfilled, Surfer SEO incorporates many intriguing SEO tools to help it, including a content editor, content planner, content audit, SERP analyzer, and keyword research.

The platform uses machine learning to analyze the data of your competitor's content that ranks on top of Google. Keep in mind that SEO is mostly about competing with other websites.

Therefore, to outrank your rivals on Google, you must have better content' resources than your competitors besides a high domain authority, let alone its fast speed.

Surfer SEO Review At A Glance

Surfer SEO allows digital marketers to learn keyword analysis that their competitors are using and how they may utilize those exact keywords to boost the position of their own website. It contains some useful tools for SEO ranking factors, such as:

Surfer SEO: Product Offering

  • SERP Analyzer
  • Content Editor
  • Keyword Research
  • Article & Page Audit
  • Content Planner

Overall Editor's Rating on Surfer SEO

  • Price: 8/10
  • User interface: 9/10
  • Feature: 9/10
  • Speed: 8/10
  • Ease of use: 8/10

Things To Consider Before Subscribing Surfer SEO

Surfer fulfills the gap in SEO content creation. The implication is that SEO is not only dependent on optimizing the contents to match the search engine’s algorithm, but also on competing with other websites.

For example, SERP analyzers provide hints as to what Google expects to see in search results. Technical on-page SEO audits used to take hours or even days, to manually determine the crucial search result indicators. Yet, Surfer can provide you with this information in a couple of seconds.

By examining the data of your rivals, the Surfer SEO software analyzes your written content to assist you to achieve higher Google rankings. This suggests that SEO is competing with other websites, not Google alone. 

At the same time, your site must have fast speed and high-performing domain authority to exceed your competitors on Google's search on mobile or desktop results.

Surfer SEO Features

In my case, I use Surfer SEO for its Content Editor tool a lot. The reason is, I spend less time creating content structures or delegating target SEO writing tasks to my team.

There are many parts of Surfer's service. However, I will detail 5 key features of this Surfer SEO review.

1. SERP Analyzer

Surfer's SERP Analyzer improves the existing content on your website. In a word, this tool evaluates the top search term results in Google for a certain keyword.

surfer seo SERP Analyzer

My take is this, you are wasting so much time if you are still manually checking SERP results to see what the top articles are ranking.

  • Word count
  • Keyword density
  • Heading numbers
  • Character count for title and meta descriptions
  • Alt tags
  • Meta tags
  • Page speed 
  • Backlink analysis and referring domains 
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In reality, the Surfer SEO tool takes into account hundreds of ranking variables, including:

Well, there is a lot of information to go through. If you aren't aware of utilizing these analytics to enhance your SEO, this might be intimidating.

It is noteworthy that NLP is a subfield of artificial intelligence that assists machines in understanding, interpreting, and manipulating natural speech.

In its quest to bridge the gap between human communication and machine comprehension, NLP depends on multiple fields, including computer science and computational linguistics.

But regardless of all that, you receive a straightforward data chart that tells you approximately how many words your blog post needs to rival the topmost SERP places.

surfer seo SERP Analyzer graph

According to the search result, you can go through each title, URL, domain authority, and its content score. 

When you look at it this way, this graph allows you to determine how solid the high-ranking SERP positions are and learn if you have a chance to rank higher than them.

surfer seo SERP Analyzer competitors

There is also an on-page complex-data report. That means you can view how much improvement you need to follow in the description, for example, what common structured data are used, and how many images are embedded in the articles.

In addition, Surfer SEO offers Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keyword options to help you improve your content authoring. In particular, the valuable insights provide:

  • A collection of generic terms that often show in top-ranking SERP results.
  • Frequently asked questions about your target keyword.
  • Suggestions of common terms and expressions.
surfer seo SERP Analyzer surfer audit

Simply put, LSI keywords are conceptually meaningful terms and are connected to a primary keyword. If the main keyword for your website is "cbd oil for anxiety," then LSI keywords would be "pros and cons of cbd oil for anxiety," "cbd anxiety study," "cbd for anxiety research," or "cbd oil for anxiety and ocd."

The multiple keywords and FAQ sections, on the other hand, are unquestionably the most useful and help you develop appropriate subjects to add to your writing.

SERP Analyzer wordcount

But my take is that this level of detail may be a little excessive. However, I would say that having more data in your hand and choosing which SEO metrics to concentrate on the majority of your on-page SEO task is a competitive advantage. 

Furthermore, regarding time-saving you earn from obtaining SERP snapshot results is enormous.

2. Content Editor

Surfer's content editor assists in creating fresh content that will rank in the search engine of Google. This tool is unquestionably superior to other tools provided in plain Word documents or WordPress.

Surfer SEO generates a content score that shows the ideal score that you should aim for your writing. Surfer's Content Score is here to fill the need. In essence, it's a legitimate, fully automated score that saves you a lot of time and effort on manual research and guarantees your SEO efforts are directed in the appropriate direction.

surfer seo content score

For instance, Surfer will suggest a word count length based on your competition, but you may easily modify it as you wish. Nevertheless, if you choose your opponent carefully, there should be little cause to change the number.

surfer seo organic competitor

Surfer estimates phrase and specific keyword density depending on content length. Therefore, pay attention while adjusting it.

surfer seo content structure

Besides, the Surfer searches the first page for related terms and phrases to your page. The application employs its own technologies to choose the most important terms and phrases to embed in your blog post.

If you choose the NLP category at the start of the task, Google NLP API will play a significant role in computing your suggestions.

surfer seo included terms and nlp

There's no need to look at comparable sites because this tool will optimize your content and make it more visible in the Google search console.

You will get a preferable score when you follow its guideline in the platform as follow:

  • The content structure shows the optimal word count and the number of headings, paragraphs, and images you require.
  • Terms of use from the most relevant keywords to the least ones.
  • LSI keywords list and the density with which they should occur.
  • Suggested topic and question from FAQ, competitors, and Surfer.

Otherwise, the Google Chrome extension for Surfer SEO content editor is available for you to use with Google Docs. Therefore, if you have to control the content writing team, you can share the link to access the work.

surfer seo chrome extension Google docs

Once they complete the work, the score will appear, and you can see which parts they can fulfill or which parts they lack. By doing so, you can determine if your writers hit your on-page SEO content requirement. This is truly a time-saving machine.

3. Keyword Research

Surfer SEO also has a keyword research feature. In fact, there is some overlap function between the SERP Analyzer and keyword research tool. However, you may use this tool to:

  • Determine single or several keywords search volume at the same time.
  • Look for exact keywords with a comparable volume to your primary search phrase.
  • Use the filter to see terms in question format.
  • Acquire search volume traffic and suggestions for a specific country.
  • Support for over 20 languages

A SERP analyzer works on LSI keywords that are highly relevant to your primary search term. Although it is not a key feature for Surfer, it does assist in speeding up specific keyword research, which is a useful tool.

surfer seo keyword research

Competition scores, on the other hand, are also deficient, which is a significant shortcoming for this instrument right now.

This is similar to any other keyword research tool you may use. Although Surfer SEO makes keyword research beneficial, I still prefer alternative tools.

The main justification you should utilize this component is if you want to reduce monthly expenses from using a single tool. Surfer, however, lacks several of the interlinking and relevant links features seen in other instruments.

The implication is that I advocate utilizing other keyword volume research tools besides Surfer SEO, such as Semrush, MOZ, KWFinder, or one of my all-time favorite tools, Ahrefs.

4. Article & Page Audit

Surfer SEO's audit tool will pique your attention if you wonder how to optimize existing content for a given keyword.

Start by entering the URL and its keyword into this tool to evaluate how effectively an article or page is optimized for that term.

surfer seo article and page audit

In this function, it does similar work to their SERP Analyzer record, dividing:

  • Missing common backlinks that your rivals have, but you don't.
  • LSI keywords that you neglect.
  • Numbers of word count, headers, bold phrases, and sufficient image count.
  • The time it takes to load a page, and the time it takes to read the first byte.
  • Recommendations for the title, meta tags, and description length.
surfer seo article and page audit keyword

The truth is, it sometimes can be overwhelming, which receives a proposed word limit of 5k to 10k words or a picture count of 50 to 70. This SEO Surfer suggestion could be ineffective at some points. 

surfer article and page audit wordcount

This great tool is useful for inspecting current articles that are presently ranking. As it turns out, you can see whether you are missing common backlinks, keywords, or strategies to increase your content's ranking factors.

5. Content Planner

This feature will carve your content strategy by building subject clusters connected to your target keyword. It is an intriguing idea. In essence, you input a content subject, such as “hair loss treatment”. 

This on page analysis tool generates some idea-collections for your subject, such as "alopecia", “male pattern baldness”, “best hair loss remedy”, and more.

surfer seo content planner

Surfer SEO Training

The Surfer SEO team gives outstanding training, entitled Surfer Academy, on utilizing the application and optimizing your website's search engine optimization. The instruction is offered via video tutorials and is designed to be user-friendly.

They also provide live coaching, for which you may register and prolong your guaranteed money-back to 30 days.

This tool also offers an SEO Writing Masterclass for anyone interested in using the Surfer as a valuable SEO tool and developing their expertise as a writer.

surfer seo writing masterclass

Surfer SEO Pricing

In a general sense, SEO tools are sometimes fairly expensive. Surfer SEO is significantly more affordable, and it offers a choice of programs for independent internet marketers and companies.

Monthly Plans

  • Basic: $49 per month
  • Pro: $99 per month
  • Business: $199 per month
surfer seo pricing

As you can see, each plan includes a different amount of limited inquiries. And I don’t know when and how this Surfer SEO pricing will fluctuate in the future.

In my opinion, I prefer this offering rather than the limitless tools since you know what you will get for your payment and how much usage you deserve.

Additionally, there is certain access between each plan. For instance, the basic plan uses the SERP Analyzer tool to analyze hundreds of ranking criteria and excludes vanity metrics such as domain authority. On the other hand, if you upgrade, you can access more advanced features.

Choosing the optimal plan comes down to your query limitations. It is, indeed, straightforward, and you realize in advance how much you get for the amount you paid for.

Likewise, you can save up to 17% by purchasing the annual plan. Therefore, the price varies depending on your selected plan. Additionally, you can contact their support staff through chat or email and they will handle your refund request if you're not happy after 7 days of using Surfer. 

What is more, Surfer's money-back guarantee can be extended to 30 days if you provide them with sufficient input on how they can improve the app.

Surfer SEO Wrap Up

Writing content is one thing. Promoting is another thing. Optimizing the content to rank on the first page of Google is a whole different thing. Here is what we like and don’t like about Surfer SEO.

What We Like

  • Semantic Evaluation: Adopt machine learning and artificial intelligence to determine the most frequently used words, phrases, and questions in content. Surfer SEO takes advantage of Google's BERT algorithm.
  • Evaluation of Numerous Ranking Metrics: Analyzes over 500 ranking criteria.
  • Backlink and On Page SEO Analysis – While these SEO tools are currently in beta for the SERP Analyzer, it is a positive sign to witness SERP similarity and further backlink data being added.
  • Related Keyword Results: Utilizes LSI keyword analysis to determine which related keywords, themes, and resources to include in your existing article.
  • Free Google Chrome Extension: Enables Surfer to be used with WordPress and Google Docs.
  • Keyword Surfer Chrome Extension: This free extension allows you to research monthly keyword volume and related keyword suggestions.
  • Easy-To-Learn Interface: While reports are sophisticated, using Surfer SEO to enter keywords and drill down into data is intuitive.
  • Time-Saving: Rather than doing a technical audit manually, which would normally take hours, the Surfer application assists you in saving time by providing an audit result within a few minutes.
  • Flexible Pricing: Monthly plans include a predefined amount of related searches, allowing you to pay only for what your business requires.

What We Don't Like

  • Challenging For Beginners: While Surfer SEO is simple to use, a full understanding of how SEO works is required. Therefore, SEO beginners could find it overwhelming.
  • Given Insights Should Not Be Taken Literally: Surfer SEO insights or results are not authoritative and should not be taken literally. The cost of analysis, such as the number of prominent words, keywords Surfer SEO suggests, or the number of images required could be unreal.
  • A Few Imprecise Data: The number of headings that should be included in the existing or new articles and the amount of text that should be bolded can be fairly random.
  • Limited NLP Queries: The cheapest plan does not include NLP queries, while the upper plan is limited to 50 per month.
  • Only In Google: While Google controls 90% of the market, Surfer does not operate with Bing or other engines for searching such as YouTube.
  • Deficient Keyword Research Tool: You can use Surfer's keyword research tool if your budget is too tight to afford a better tool. Despite its accessibility, this is most certainly not Surfer's unique selling point.

FAQs - Your Top Questions About Surfer SEO, Answered!

Is SEO Surfer Free?

Surfer is not a free program. You must pay to access the plan. The payment varies depending on which plan you choose. However, you can use Keyword Surfer for free, a 100% free extension that allows you to see search volumes directly in Google search results.

What Is A Good Score On Surfer SEO?

A score of 0 to 33 indicates irrelevant or low-quality information. 34 - 66 score presents a reasonable level of quality and relevance, a high level of quality but a low level of relevance, or a low level of quality but a high level of relevance. 67 - 100 indicates optimum quality and relevance

How Can I Increase My SEO Content Score In Surfer?

If your Content Score does not meet your expectations, you may enhance it by improving the quality and relevancy of your content. Remember that content score includes the following factors:

  • Headings (H1, H2, H3, …) and title
  • Use of relevant words and phrases
  • The proper content structure, which includes headers and paragraphs
  • The appropriate number of images in the content
  • Existence of OG data
  • Use of the main keyword, partial keywords, related keywords, NLP, and True Density

When it comes to "content gap," it refers to any topics/words/phrases that your rivals go with their material, but you do not.

Surfer's True Density tool, which analyzes the most typical terms in the top-ranking pages for your main keyword, will help you identify content gaps.

Some refer to it as TFIDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency), while Surfer refers to it as true density. It's all (almost) one thing.

If you choose NLP Analysis of SERP Analyzer, you will see NLP-infused webpages from presently ranking material, omitting the sites you deleted.

Remember that you are not required to correct all of the True Density mistakes simultaneously. You may begin by optimizing simply the phrases, then go on to another page while evaluating the success of your tiny modifications.

This means minimizing the content gap and optimizing your keyword usage can substantially influence your ranking. Eventually, you may not even need further modifications.

Before going on to true density analysis, always start with content length optimization.

Since keyword density and use are affected by the length of your material, adding or removing words will have a significant impact.

If you want to enhance your ranks, make sure you provide the greatest content for your target term. Choose the top rivals for your study if there are several pages with high scores in search volume results.

Proper structural elements and subject coverage boost Content Score and help you satisfy user expectations. The content score will assist you in balancing your website's quality, relevancy, and SEO friendliness.

Surfer's Audit and True Density and NLP can help you enhance your content ranking.

How Do I Improve My SEO Surfing Structure?

  • Compare your page to the top pages
  • Use True Density to optimize relevant phrases 
  • Add exact keywords in required locations
  • Look for fresh keyword possibilities  
  • Analyze partials for long-term keywords
  • Create a link building strategy based on your rivals' common backlinks
  • Use Content Editor to create new pages 
  • Learn about the content structure that your rivals are adopting 
  • Verify that Google can crawl to your website appropriately
  • Check to see if your page speed is excellent

Remember that site speed has a significant impact on visitor happiness, and it may be a meaningful indication for Google.

Compare the load speed of your website to that of your rivals. If your web pages are taking too long to load, this might be one of the main reasons you aren't ranking high.

However, evidence may suggest that your opponents are ranking, let alone having slower loading rates. You can ignore it as is in such a scenario.

Does Surfer SEO Have A Search Intent Detector?

Surfer partly has a search intent detector. While most of Surfer's specialists claimed to have investigated user intent, Surfer chose to center its research based on big data and algorithms. The research framework is also used in Content Planner to identify search intent for a single-page subject cluster.

As you know, the most common SEO mistake is attempting to top with a page that is NOT relevant to the query's search intent.

Have you ever attempted to rank a service landing page in a SERP full of how-to articles? Even the most seasoned SEOs who understand the intricacies of SEO techniques would find it incredibly difficult.

Google, the world's most popular search engine, is becoming increasingly intelligent. And because it has no intrigue in ranking pages that users do not desire, knowing the target term is no longer sufficient.

It's no surprise that SERPs are becoming increasingly sophisticated in ways that benefit all consumers' expectations. You must guarantee that your web page or content meets search intent and truly resolves the user's keyword research.

Understanding what terms users look for isn't enough. Users search Google to get what they want and need: Optimize for search intent, or you will be left behind!

What is NLP in SEO?

Search engines like Google and Bing use conversational language to make the results more realistic and relevant. Natural Language Processing (NLP) produces this form of search, which aims to grasp the user's purpose (also called Natural Language Search).

We call it "natural language" because Google and other advanced search engines now can fully grasp the motivations of its users due to ongoing improvements in language artificial intelligence (AI).

Is Grammarly Supported In the Content Editor?

You can use Grammarly and Surfer SEO Content Editor both at the same time. If your Grammarly extension is enabled, it will begin working inside the content editor and even with Surfer when a Google Docs is produced.

Is Surfer Compatible With Shopify?

It's a no-brainer. Using the application, you may access any URL. Take a look at your Shopify pages like you would any other website. It's amazing to see how well marketers can use Surfer to improve e-commerce pages.

Surfer SEO Vs Other Tool: What Are The Best Surfer SEO Alternatives?

  • Cora
  • Page Optimizer Pro
  • Website Auditor
  • Topic
  • Clearscope
  • Marketmuse
  • Dashword
  • Frase

When Should You Choose One Of The Alternatives

Cora SEO  

This is a one-of-a-kind toolkit. There aren't many others like it on the market.

It's an excellent software program if you want to figure out why your opponents are earning rank while you aren't. This is because it employs quantitative models to calculate ranking factors.

You will also find the instructional videos to be beneficial. The inventor demonstrates how to utilize each of the SEO tools in the package.

However, there does not appear to be any free trial period. So, if you want to give Cora SEO a try, you will have to put out at least $250 upfront

Page Optimizer Pro (POP) 

This tool is designed for online content producers who expect their content to rank higher in Google's search engine results.

Most users notice immediate ranking increases after implementing Page Optimizing Pro on their target pages. POP gives you a min and max range in which you can use a phrase in each area.

The objective is to transform every red suggestion into a green suggestion. If you follow these steps, your page will be highly optimized for the term you would like to score for.

People who enjoy Cora but can't afford it will prefer Page Optimizer Pro since it accomplishes the same thing for a fraction of the cost. Their community is also fantastic.

WebSite Auditor 

This application is far more than simply a web crawler with a stylish look. It can do technical SEO audits as well as site optimization.

When it comes to corporate reporting, it is more user-friendly. It is great for beginner SEOs who want low-cost or no-cost tools Because the free edition has many key features.

Surfer SEO Review Conclusion: Is Surfer SEO For You?

There are many things to learn if you have never used on page SEO tools before, such as Surfer SEO's hundred ranking factors and in-depth audit tool.

This platform allows you to access a large amount of data, which is a positive development in my viewpoint. The truth is I agree that some of it are a little too much to follow.

On the other hand, Surfer SEO is hard to match for time-saving technical on page SEO analysis.

Via this Surfer SEO review, I can assume that it is an excellent content optimization SEO tool, and I strongly suggest it to other SEO practitioners, including digital marketing agencies.

After using Surfer SEO for a year, I figured out that this tool can offer a lot of things, but all of them are geared at making your content more visible in Google's search results.

If I had to pick only one of the key features, the Content Editor would be my top choice, as I always do. It is a supremely powerful tool for improving your content's search engine optimization. 

You can also use the SERP Analyzer tool to see how your content stacks up against your rivals.

Long story short, the Surfer is a superb on-page SEO tool for increasing your website's ranking and traffic.

In addition to allowing you to generate better-optimized content, it also lets you see how well other average authority site builders are doing in the search engines.

On top of that, Surfer SEO is suitable for SEOs searching for a data-driven analysis tool with a user-friendly interface that is also reasonably priced.

I like it a lot when it allows us to customize our plan in ways that no other solution in its budget range provides.

The fact that Surfer SEO has had such a significant influence on the worldwide SEO community in such a short time suggests that the best is yet to come for webmasters.

All that said, use Surfer SEO to boost your website's search engine rankings.

Article by: phasoka
Hi, I'm Ka. I'm a content writer, copywriter, digital marketer, and SEO specialist. Besides writing compelling content –from a personal quest to tech-savvy content, I help individuals, business entities, and webmasters worldwide build high-ranking websites through SEOs, backlinks, outreach, and much more.
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