Is Surfer SEO worth all the hype? As a seasoned content writer who loves everything SEO, my Surfer SEO review answers all these questions and more.
I recently used it to check out the Surfer AI section, but a bit more later.
But when you look at the price, can Surfer SEO outperform other SEO tools when optimizing content to rank first on the SERPs?
Let’s find out to see if Surfer SEO is worth the while.
Key Takeaways
- It has a SERP Analyzer helping you explore a specific niche compared to competitor’s pages.
- The analysis before creating content using the AI is impressive, but using the Surfer AI is expensive. It costs $10 per article you generate.
- Another highlight is the Surfer AI, a content generator that helps create content with one click.
Pros And Cons Using Surfer SEO
After using Surfer SEO, I loved the ease of use and intuitive interface. Here, I have a short list of all the things I like and don’t like.
Pros Using Surfer SEO
- Surfer SEO provides more than 500 ranking metrics to help analyze content.
- You can get relevant keyword suggestions to use in your content
- You can use the SERP analyzer tool to see what your competitors are doing
- You can write SEO-optimized content using the Google Docs integration
- You can audit content in minutes
- Excellent Surfer SEO customer support with step by step process on everything available
Cons Using Surfer SEO
- With WordPress, it has a buggy extension but is not a permanent problem, only once in a while.
- The keyword research tool could be better.
- Surfer SEO is great for optimizing content, but it would be great if it focussed on more.
Surfer SEO
My Quick Take
Surfer SEO is a top 3 AI copywriting tool powered by tons of data in its research.
It’s one of the most used SEO tools in the industry, and for good reason.
What Is Surfer SEO
With Surfer SEO, you get a cloud-based on-page optimization tool to analyze and compare your pages against top-ranking pages on search engines.
So, Surfer SERO removes all the guesswork to give you data-driven analysis tools to show what is missing in your content, page, site, and more.
Thus, Surfer SEO studies the top search volume of ranking pages on the SERPS to identify the on-page SEO metrics like the main/sub-keywords, LSI/NLP/TF-IDF keywords, meta tags, and more.
With the metrics available, you have a valuable tool to research keywords, optimize your site, and analyze the SERPs.
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Surfer SEO Review Features
The crown jewel of Surfer SEO is the content editor that works wonders on on-page optimization and provides an advanced analysis.
If your page struggles on the 17th spot, it can take your content to the top 3 by editing it instead of building backlinks.
But this is only some of the cloud-based software has to offer. There are more key features.
Keyword Research: Find Low-Competition Keywords
Here is where Surfer SEO can drop the ball fast—an example of how the ball drops is the keyword research tool.
It is okay but does not compare well with other keyword research apps. The main concern is the low-volume keywords, which are the bread and butter of many sites when starting.
The truth is that Surfer SEO does not shine in this category as it needs more data.
Where the software shines is on the high-traffic keywords, but the keyword research tool still needs a lot of work to be first-class.
When writing content, you get tons of keyword ideas throughout the article.
What is helpful is that you can install the Surfer SEO Chrome extension to display metrics for anything found on Google.
I liked using it to research on the go as you need not open complex tools but can find available alternatives, providing better data.
Content Editor Tool: Write SEO-Optimized Content With AI
The latest edition to Surfer SEO is Surfer AI, which allows you to research a keyword, write, and optimize your article with top-ranking articles by clicking a button.
I signed up for the light plan at $29 per month, getting keyword research and 3 content edits per month. It’s super limited, and SurferSEO works from the principle that everything costs extra.
Unless you’re on the max plan at $299 monthly, you only pay for grow flow and Surfer AI.
If I want an SEO audit, it’s $49 extra per month. SERP Analyzer, $29 extra per month and Grow Flow, $9 per site per month.
So yes, as they say, SurferSEO isn’t for everyone, but I wanted to test their AI, which has been so hyped.
I started with the long tail keyword: How to export from Figma to Webflow
Getting from keyword to outline took 4 minutes. While this is not fast, I believe they can improve this, as the alternative tools do the same steps but much faster.
What SurferSEO does in these 4 minutes is scrape Google for the ranking websites and then give each website a content score based on its own NLP parameters.
Based on the content score Surfer SEO then chooses the websites it wants to compare itself against and get inspired by. This is a neat way.
My outline would be:
Short intro
Key takeaways
Export Your Figma Project To Webflow Using A Plugin
- Guide to use the plugin
Export Your Figma Project To Webflow Manually
- Define your global styles
- Export Figma Assets
- Div-framing your Webflow website
- Styling your content
- Define interactions
- Test desktop and mobile
Wrap up
SurferSEO’s outline:
Understanding Figma and Webflow
- Figma Overview
- Webflow Overview
Preparing Your Figma Design for Webflow
- Layout Structure
- Components and Symbols
- Color Management
Setting Up Your Webflow Project
- New Project Creation
- Style Guide Implementation
- Customizing Colors
Exporting Assets from Figma
- Designating Assets for Export
- Export Commands
- Uploading to Webflow
Building Your Webflow Site
- Replacing Frames with Divs
- Styling Content
- Creating Interactions
Testing and Refining Your Webflow Site
- Publishing Your Site
- Cross-Platform Testing
- Tweaking and Finalizing
I’m not changing anything, I’m going with the flow of Surfer SEO AI creates articles in one click. I could maybe have changed the outline and got a better result, but I wanted to let Surfer SEO do the work as it think it should be done.
Surfer SEO AI uses the newest version GPT 4 in 32k, which means it supports 32,000 token context-length.
GPT-4 is much more expensive than GPT 3.5, up to 5x the price, so that’s some of the reason to why the price tag is at $29 per article, but is the output worth it?
It took 8 minutes to get the article generated, so overall it’s not a fast article generator, but GPT-4 is a lot slower than GPT-3, so that’s part of the answer. However, I generated the same article using KoalaWriter in less than 2 minutes.
I’ll share a link to the article from Surfer SEO AI in the description. So you can check it out.
For the intro, I’m in-between, it has some great elements, but I would change it to contain more of the content in the article, right now it’s a little too generic.
Pros of Surfer SEO AI
- Short summary
- Content score, it’s optimising the content to use the right NLP keywords.
- The overall quality of the content
- Suggesting images, but it’s just after each H2, so there is no logic behind it seems. And for an article like this, images are crucial, maybe even a video.
- It hits word count perfectly.
- It generates an FAQ section, which is decent. It’s not perfect. And the 2 questions in this case are already answered in the article, so I wouldn’t keep the FAQ section.
Cons of Surfer SEO AI
- And 12 minutes to generate a 3000 word article, Expect 4 minutes per 1000 words.
- It took around 8 minutes to generate a 2000 word article.
- No outgoing links.
- No internal links.
- No tables.
- Missing experience (I did XYZ).
Now the thing about AI Copywriting tools is that they often work for different use cases. Surfer SEO is great for info articles but terrible at comparison articles and best x for y—for example, the best noise-cancelling headsets for freelance copywriters.
But with the article done, you can easily export it to WordPress if that’s part of your plan. It’s not for my sake.
But now, is SurferSEO AI worth $29 per article? No, it’s not.
Surfer SEO is comparing their AI to human writers to justify their price point, but I’m comparing it to their alternatives, Frase and KoalaWriter.
Now Frase doesn’t run on GPT 4, so it’s not a 100% fair comparison, but they do a decent job at generating the content, and I can generate articles down to below $1.
However, I would readily use KoalaWriter for most of my articles if I used AI. With KoalaWriter, I also get outbound links to sources and formatted tables.
They run on GPT 4, and I generated an article of 2000 words for a little less than $5. But the thing about KoalaWriter is that you don’t get the NLP editor you get with Surfer and Frase.
By the way, I’m working on a comparison video between these 3 tools where I’ll go in dept, so remember to subscribe so that you won’t miss that video.
So, in the end, Surfer SEO is for people and companies with a large budget who create many info articles and want to speed up their content creation flow.
I haven’t been able to generate an article I could easily copy, paste and publish. All the articles are missing internal links, my own experience and sometimes, they’re a bit off.
But, if you want to step up your SEO game, you’ll need to run competitor research. Watch my video on how to do so, and it’s super easy and very lucrative for your SEO strategy.
Surfer SEO Content Audit Tool: Find SEO Opportunities
Now, not all tools in Surfer SEO are bad; don’t get me wrong, where it is helpful is the content audit tool to help you optimize your existing pages.
The tool is simple: enter your URL to optimize and add your competitive keyword. You must also choose your country and click the “Create Audit” button.
Now, all you do is sit back and let the magic happen. You will see a detailed analysis of your page entered and provide you with valuable data as follows:
- Missing LSI keywords and phrases
- SEO Scores
- The overall content word count, headings, and suggested changes
- Suggestions if you have enough images to headings
- The page load time
- Tips for meta titles and descriptions
- Internal link suggestions to backlink profiles
Still, I do not suggest following everything and instead serving people first, then concentrating on search engine ranking.
The audit tool is unique because I could use it to cover gaps from missing backlinks, page load time, meta titles/descriptions, LSI keywords, and missing data points.
SERP Analyzer: Analyze the SERP For Opportunities
The core tool is the Surfer SEO SERP analyzer, which thoroughly breaks down a keyword.
The module provides you with actionable guidance to make a correlation between your on-page aspects and the SERP results.
As with most other tools inside Surfer, you need to give an exact keyword to analyze.
For example, Frase.io review. Once the analyzer fetches the data, you will see the average word count of your competitors.
You see the keyword density and frequency you need to use the term compared to top-ranking competitors.
There is a partial match to the long tail keyword, the number of images on a page, and if the target keyword is used in the image as an alt text.
Other factors are the speed of the page, hidden content, structured data, no links that point to the competitors, and more.
But when you harness the information correctly, it can help you rank higher on the SERPs.
Who Is Surfer SEO Made For?
Surfer SEO is costly, and they do present you with plan options. The Essential plan’s monthly pricing starts at $89 or $69 monthly with a yearly subscription.
If you want to include the AI in your Surfer SEO subscription, it’ll add an extra cost of $50 per month, allowing you to generate 5 articles.
The highest-paying option of $249 includes premium features, while the other plans have limited features.
The application suits Freelance SEO, bloggers, website owners, and SEO agencies.
Still, it remains pricey compared to other applications that provide similar information.
Another benefit is that you get a 7-day Money-Back Guarantee.
Surfer SEO Alternatives
When it comes to Surfer SEO, there are other alternatives available to choose from.
Frase
As Sufer SEO, Frase offers AI writing and is a content optimization tool. I use Frase for all my content and love it.
You get on-page keyword suggestions from the first 20 results on the SERPs, and it also stands out as an AI writing tool, but it uses GPT-3, so it’s not my favorite for generating the content if it comes to that.
MarketMuse
MarketMuse is another alternative to Surfer SEO, and while MarketMuse doesn’t have a full AI generator to generate an entire article, it offers in-depth analysis.
I love comparing multiple tools when I write content to ensure I’m covering my target keyword from all angles and my content score is high across the board.
MarketMuse is perfect for this, as it offers all these features and much more.
Wrap-Up: Is Surfer SEO Worth It?
Surfer SEO is not perfect, as you can find some amazing Surfer SEO competitors.
I wouldn’t say I like the keyword research, nor am I a fan of the new app releases.
The Surfer SEO pricing point is the main barrier if you are starting, but if you want organic traffic that ranks, it is a big help.
The data and content editors are good, but the Surfer AI could be better. But if you have the money to spend and want to enhance your on-page SEO, try it.
Surfer SEO
My Last Thoughts
If you’re looking for a premium SEO tool that generates great content for your website, then Surfer SEO is a great tool.
You also get a site audit keyword research and much more on top of the pile.
Surfer SEO
Is Surfer SEO still the best SEO on-page optimization tool in 2024? I wanted to test it in my Surfer SEO review. Get the answers here.
Price: 89
Price Currency: $
Operating System: Web
Application Category: SEO
4.5
Pros
- Surfer SEO provides more than 500 ranking metrics to help analyze content.
- You can get relevant keyword suggestions to use in your content
- You can use the SERP analyzer tool to see what your competitors are doing
- You can write SEO-optimized content using the Google Docs integration
- You can audit content in minutes
- Excellent Surfer SEO customer support with step by step process on everything available
Cons
- With WordPress, it has a buggy extension but is not a permanent problem, only once in a while.
- The keyword research tool could be better.
- Surfer SEO is great for optimizing content, but it would be great if it focussed on more.
