Surfer SEO Review 2023: Features, Pricing, and More

In this guide, I will write a complete review of the all-in-one SEO tool: Surfer SEO. The article will cover what Surfer SEO is, its key features, pricing plans, pros and cons, and comparisons between Surfer SEO and its alternatives. 

What is Surfer SEO? 

Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is an all-in-one on-page optimization software that helps websites rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) and get more organic traffic from Google. 

The software provides detailed data-driven analysis and recommendations for optimizing and improving your website’s content. It helps users identify pages that need optimization, perform keyword research, and analyze top-performing content on SERPs for specific keywords. 

Surfer SEO also provides you with a content editor, which offers real-time optimization suggestions by analyzing competitors’ content and provides data-driven recommendations to improve your content’s readability, relevance, and keyword density. 

Surfer SEO offers additional features, including SERP analysis, keyword research tools, and backlink data analysis, to help users optimize their websites for better search engine rankings.

Key features: How to use Surfer SEO? 

1. Content Editor

Surfer's content editor
Content Editor

Surfer’s content editor is a unique tool that helps users optimize content for better search engine rankings. It provides real-time analysis and on-page SEO optimization suggestions by analyzing top-performing content on SERPs for specific keywords related to your content. 

With the content editor, you can start writing high-quality articles immediately without looking at blank Google docs and don’t know what to do. 

The content editor provides data-driven recommendations for improving content readability, relevance, and keyword density, helping users create high-quality content that ranks higher on Google. 

The tool also offers a comprehensive scoring system that rates the content quality and provides keyword suggestions for improvement, ensuring your website’s content is optimized for maximum search engine visibility. 

To start, type in a target keyword for your article and hit “Create Content Editor”. Surfer SEO will create a content editor dashboard where you can write content. The right side of the tool contains a list of semantic keywords you need to add to your article for SEO optimization. In the following example, I used the keyword “best SEO software”.

Surfer's content editor homepage
Content editor’s homepage

2. Audit

Surfer SEO audit tool
Audit tool

Surfer SEO provides you with a robust audit tool for improving the on-page SEO of your website. 

The tool analyzes multiple on-page factors, including internal links, semantic keywords, meta descriptions, word count, and load time to determine areas of improvement to improve rankings on SERPs. 

One of the critical benefits of the audit tool is its ability to identify technical issues that could be hurting your website’s search engine visibility. These issues might include broken links, missing meta tags or duplicates, incorrect use of header tags, or site speed issues.

In addition to highlighting technical issues, Surfer’s audit tool provides insights into the website’s page speed, which is a vital ranking factor. Page speed is crucial for the user experience, and slow loading times can negatively impact your website’s SEO.

Surfer SEO not only identifies issues but also provides optimization recommendations to help you fix these problems. 

Based on an analysis of the website’s content, it offers recommendations for URL structures, meta tags, content structure, and internal linking strategies to improve your website’s search engine visibility. 

The tool also analyzes your competitors’ websites, allowing you to see what works for them and apply these strategies to your website. 

3. Domain Planner

Surfer SEO domain planner
Domain Planner

The Surfer SEO Domain Planner is an essential tool for anyone looking to research and optimize a domain. The tool helps you assess the strengths and weaknesses of your website and develop a strategy for SEO optimization.  

First, connect to your Google Search Console account. This step is not mandatory, but it helps Surfer to give you more accurate data. 

Surfer SEO will scan and present your domain’s top 100 performing pages. You can analyze multiple aspects of your website, including featured snippets, impressions, user intent, Google ranking position, search volume, traffic, and content score.

Surfer SEO domain planner dashboard
Domain Planner Dashboard

The Domain Planner can provide all the keywords your page currently ranks for. Expanding results will give you the list of keywords that you are looking for. You can choose “Advanced View” to expand all the lists instead of doing it manually one by one.

Once you identify the pages you want to optimize, you can create a Content Editor and start the optimization process. 

One of the most powerful features of the Domain Planner is the “Low Hanging Fruit” feature. This feature will show all the pages on the second page of Google. You can start focusing on optimizing these pages and help them rank on the 1st page. 

4. Keyword Research

Surfer SEO keyword research
Surfer’s Keyword research tool

Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of any successful SEO strategy, as it provides insights into what people are searching for on Google. Surfer’s keyword research tool is a comprehensive solution to help you with this task. 

The tool allows you to find profitable keywords that match your niche and target audience. By finding relevant and promising keywords, you can optimize your content for Google, resulting in higher website traffic and increased revenue.

One of the significant advantages of Surfer SEO’s keyword research tool is its ability to evaluate keyword competitiveness. The software provides data-driven metrics like search volume, competition complexity, CPC, and long-tail options, making choosing the right keywords more straightforward. 

Topic Clusters
Keyword research dashboard

Moreover, the keyword research tool also helps you build topical authority for your website. By analyzing the top-ranking content on Google, the tool provides you with a list of relevant topics to include in your content. These topics are organized into “Clusters.” You can filter these topic clusters based on search intent, search volume, and the number of keywords in each group. 

This analysis ensures that your content is structured for search engines and covers all questions people ask on Google.

5.SERP Analyzer

SERP Analyzer
SERP Analyzer

The SERP Analyzer tool is a powerful and comprehensive feature that provides you with a deep understanding of SERP competitiveness, relevancy, and user intent. 

It analyzes the top-ranking pages and gives you ranking factors for particular keywords, which you can then use to adjust your content and rank higher for relevant searches. 

SERP Analyzer dashboard
SERP Analyzer Dashboard

The SERP Analyzer is designed to provide an in-depth analysis of the top-ranking pages for each keyword search. It evaluates factors such as content structure, quality, and media to offer detailed and data-driven insights on why certain pages rank higher on search engine results pages. 

With this analysis, you can identify gaps in the user’s content. You can create more comprehensive, engaging content that caters to users’ search intent by identifying these gaps.

The SERP Analyzer provides insights into the user intent behind specific search queries and predicts what they are most likely to search for next. With this information, you can develop highly-targeted content that will likely rank higher on SERPs.

Furthermore, the tool evaluates the backlinks of top-ranking pages to provide insights into the types of high-quality links that can improve SERP rankings.

6.Grow Flow

Grow Flow
Grow Flow Dashboard

Grow Flow is a unique feature of Surfer SEO that allows you to identify pages that require improvement to increase ranking, traffic, and backlink acquisition. It helps you track the content performance of your websites by providing data-driven insights into the pages that need optimization.

These tasks are low-effort and easy to complete. Surfer SEO provides a tool with the best ROI for your SEO efforts. 

Grow Flow offers a keyword mapping feature, which helps you identify opportunities to integrate or revise keywords based on the content, structure, and user intent information it provides. You can add missing keywords to your content using this feature. 

Grow Flow also gives you some tasks, including adding internal links and rewriting published content. This ensures your content is competitive and fully SEO optimized. 

Price

Surfer SEO pricing plans

Surfer SEO offers 4 pricing options

Basic plan

First of all, we have the Basic plan, which starts at $49/month if paid monthly and $59/month if paid annually. This plan suits small business owners and bloggers needing minimum SEO for their websites. The plan includes 10 articles and 20 page audits per month. It also allows you to manage 2 websites. 

Pro plan

The Pro plan starts at $99/month if paid monthly and $119/month if paid annually. This plan is standard for medium-sized businesses that manage multiple websites or freelancers with numerous clients. The plan allows you to edit 30 articles, perform 60 audits per month as well as manage 5 websites at the same time. 

Business plan

Next, we have the Business plan. This plan suits prominent business owners who must manage large blogs or people with significant content needs. This plan starts at $239/month if paid monthly and $199/month if paid annually. You can edit up to 70 articles and perform 140 audits per month. 

Custom plan

Surfer SEO offers a custom plan for large enterprises with significant content needs. For this plan, you need to contact the Surfer team to get a customized price plan for your organization. 

Pros

Excellent content editor: I love the content editor tool of Surfer SEO. It’s easy to use and extremely useful. It eliminates all the guesswork when writing a blog post, which helps me have higher confidence that my content may rank on Google.

Powerful domain planner: Surfer SEO provides a powerful domain planner that helps my website in many ways. With this feature, I can know how my content is performing and what I should do to get the best ROI from my SEO efforts. 

Comprehensive audit tool: Surfer also offers an excellent auditing tool that helps me find any “holes” in my content and optimize them to rank higher on search engines. 

Cons

Limited keyword research: The keyword research tool doesn’t provide much in-depth information for specific keywords, such as what pages rank for this keyword and detailed search volume. 

Confusing SERP analyzer: There’s no filter for the information present on the page. There’s no point in optimizing all the features. The users should be able to identify and prioritize optimizations for their websites. 

Is SurferSEO worth it? 

From my experience, Surfer SEO is an excellent investment for businesses aiming to improve their SEO performance and generate more organic traffic and leads.

First of all, Surfer SEO is a powerful, all-in-one tool that provides comprehensive and data-driven insights into website optimization. The software boasts various features, including the audit tool, keyword research, SERP Analyzer, content optimization, and content calendar, that can help you optimize your website performance and drive more organic traffic.

Moreover, Surfer SEO takes the guesswork out of SEO optimization and provides detailed and precise information on what needs improvement and how to achieve better SEO rankings. 

With Surfer SEO, you can gain a competitive advantage by creating effective and targeted content, identifying relevant and profitable keywords, and implementing a comprehensive SEO strategy. 

Finally, while the tool’s cost may deter users who work on smaller budgets, they cannot overlook the benefits of investing in Surfer SEO for their businesses. 

Surfer SEO alternatives: Ahrefs and Semrush

While Surfer SEO is undoubtedly one of the best SEO tools, there are other options available on the market that businesses may want to consider. Two popular alternatives to Surfer SEO are Ahrefs and Semrush.

Ahrefs

  • Provides a more powerful keyword research tool than any other small business SEO tools

  • Focuses on backlink analysis and includes features such as site explorer, content explorer, and rank tracker.

  • Offers a site audit tool that checks for technical SEO issues and provides suggestions for optimizing website performance.

Semrush

  • Offers a range of features beyond SEO, including social media management, paid advertising analytics, and competitor analysis.

  • Includes an all-in-one marketing suite with SEO features like keyword research, site audit, and position tracking.

While SurferSEO, Ahrefs, and Semrush all offer valuable features, Ahrefs and Semrush may be better suited for those focused on backlink analysis and keyword research. At the same time, SurferSEO is a better option for content optimization. Ultimately, businesses should consider each tool’s specific features and pricing structures to make an informed purchase. 

Surfer SEO review: Conclusion

In conclusion, Surfer SEO is a valuable and highly effective SEO software that offers businesses insights into their website’s SEO performance. With a focus on content optimization, Surfer SEO provides users with detailed and precise data-driven insights on keyword density, content structure, and related keywords. 

When using Surfer SEO with other off-page SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush, you can create high-quality content websites that rank high on Google. If you want to take your SEO game to the next level, Surfer is worth consideration. 

Featured image source: Image by gstudioimagen on Freepik

Mac Li

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