✍️ Last modified on April 10, 2023
Result of our test: 4,7/5
The most powerful tool to optimize your articles for SEO especially the On-Site part. Use it if you want to reach the top of the search results!
Surfer SEO is an On Site optimization tool. In fact, it allows a site editor tooptimize all its content so that it performs better on search engines. Surfer SEO is surely the most complete SEO tool regarding the On Page part.
Indeed, with Surfer, you can semantically optimize an article, but not only. It is also a software that allows you toanalyze the pages of competitors, but also to find keywords and much more. It is clearly the tool to use if you want to have better texts than your competitors… And pass them!
However, Surfer Seo is a rather expensive tool and you may wonder if it is really worth it. Don’t panic, we have tested this tool extensively to give you our opinion in this article.
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Contents
Presentation of Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is presented as a tool to optimize On site. Clearly, it will allow you to optimize the referencing of all the internal part of a site. It is primarily used to semantically optimize an article in relation to a target keyword, but not only.
This software is actually more comprehensive and powerful than a traditional SEO analysis tool. It can help with keyword research like other SEO tools for example, but also offers to audit competitors’ pages. To summarize, Surfer is an all-in-one tool, which allows you to analyze the pages on the SERPs(search results) to do better than them, in order to be first.
Who is Surfer SEO for?
Surfer SEO is an indispensable software for SEO. It will therefore naturally address website editors, consultants, SEO agencies, but also editors. In fact, as soon as you have a website and want to optimize your articles so that they rank better on the SERPs, Surfing will be useful.
If you are a website editor, Surfer SEO will help you optimize your content to be the richest in a SERP. For a consultant or an SEO agency, it’s the same thing. This software allows you to optimize a client’s website so that it gains a higher ranking in search results. Finally, if you are a copywriter, Surfer SEO will allow you to deliver SEO optimized texts to your clients.
In summary, Surfer is a tool that will help all websites to create more optimized content for search engines. It’s not just a simple semantic optimization tool that gives a few words of the lexical field of a keyword.
In fact, this tool gives all the necessary indications to be first with an article on Google.
The services offered by Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is a very complete tool, which offers multiple features. We are going to introduce you to its main services in detail, so that you can get an idea of how they work.
SERPS Analyzer
The SERPs analyzer function allows you to establish a ranking of all the pages that come up when you type a query on Google.
Let’s take an example. We will ask Surfer SEO to analyze the SERP for the keyword “affiliation platform“:
Directly, we arrive on a graph that indicates the average number of words of the pages that are positioned in the top 10, top 20 and more. This graph can help but is sometimes not very reliable depending on the SERPs.
The best thing to do is to scroll down to see all the pages that are positioned on “affiliation platform“.
Here, we can see the 40 pages that are positioned on this request. For each of these pages, Surfer SEO gives us several valuable pieces of information. First, we can see the optimization score of the page in question. This allows us to know if our competitors have enriched their article with a semantic optimization tool.
Next, you can see the Domain Score, in the form of a small Shield. This score goes from 1 to 10 and indicates the power of the domain on which the page is written. The higher this score is for a site, the more difficult it will be to get ahead. Because in the eyes of Google, this site will be more powerful and therefore more legitimate to be first. Finally, you can add or remove a website from the graphic with the small logo resembling a table.
Overall, you can see a lot of information on a SERP. This feature is especially useful to define the difficulty of a keyword other than by looking at the “keyword difficulty” on tools like Ahrefs or Semrush . With the SERPs analyzer, we can see in real time the level of competitors, and we can estimate if our page could surpass them.
Content audit
The content audit function, as its name suggests, allows you toanalyze a page in relation to a SERP. Let’s go back to the previous keyword “affiliation platform“, to analyze the makers’ article on this subject.
Directly, Surfer gives us a list of data to improve, to redo or to leave as is, with the color code red, orange and green.
First, we see that our content score is 64, and that it should be at least 68 to be as good as the top 10 of the SERP. On each of the data, you can have more details by clicking on “Show details“. For example, on the Content Score part, this is what Surfer tells us if we ask for more details:
We can see the score of the best pages of the SERP, as well as the recommended content score, and ours.
Just after, you can see the “common backlinks” box. Here the software tells us that our page lacks backlinks, unlike other sites.
Then, Surfer SEO gives us a whole bunch of things to optimize in terms of content. It tells us, for example, that we can add internal links to other pages of our website. It also gives common words, which can be added to the text.
Afterwards, we can see the audit of the page structure:
The program tells us how many titles, images, paragraphs and bold words we have. In each case, it also indicates the optimal number of these elements.
Finally, Surfer SEO analyzes the meta description and the speed of the page:
In summary, the content audit is very complete, even too complete. In fact, it is almost impossible to have everything in green without having a completely unreadable text.
What we recommend is to have a good content score, to add internal links and important words. The rest is quite optional, but can be checked to make sure you haven’t missed anything in the optimization.
Content Editor
This is the flagship feature of Surfer SEO. The content editor allows you tosemantically optimize an article, so that it is richer, and de facto, that it ranks better on Google. Like other semantic optimization tools, Surfer gives us an optimization score and states all the words to be placed in an article for it to be optimized.
To illustrate, we will show you how this feature works. Let’s imagine that we want to write an optimized article on the query “how to unclog a sanibroyeur“.
After writing a small article of 600 words, we pass it in Surfer SEO, mentioning to the software the target keyword.
We see that the article has a score of 32/100, which is not bad, but far from being enough to be among the first. The tool also indicates the number of words needed to be first on this query. For this example, you would have to double the number of words, and add many images.
To achieve a higher score, Surfer SEO indicates the important words to place and the number of times they should be present. We can see for example that the words “wc sanibroyeur” or “dépannage” must be added several times in the article.
With the recommendations given by Surfer SEO, we easily reach a content score of 85. We can see that each time, we respect the number of necessary elements(words, titles, paragraphs and images). In a few tens of minutes, we were able to go from an article not at all optimized to a content-rich article, ready to rank. With the recommendations in terms of content size, paragraph and others, we know we have a legitimate article to get the first place.
Keyword search
Surfer SEO offers, like a classic SEO tool, to find keywords on which to write. To do this, we simply tell the software our main keywords. Then, it will find keywords related to the different SERPs of important queries.
For example, we will ask Surfer SEO to find some keywords related to blogging, affiliate sites and Amazon affiliation .
Directly, the software gives us a long classification of keywords related to the terms stated. You can see the search volume and similarity with the SERPs of the main keywords.
This feature is actually the same as on Semrush, Ahrefs or Ubersuggest for example. However, it’s always nice to be able to find new keywords to write about, without having to pay for another software.
The rates
Surfer SEO offers 3 different pricing plans. In each of these 3 subscription packages, we find the SERPs analyzer, content optimization, keyword research and content planner functionalities. The main difference will be the number of contents that can be optimized and audited per month.
Despite a subscription, the number of optimizable pages is limited. With the basic package, at $49/month, you can only optimize 10 items per month. With the business subscription, you can get up to 70 articles per month for a monthly fee of $199.
Depending on the subscription, you can also invite several people. It is therefore possible to share a subscription with other publishers to reduce costs.
Advantages & Disadvantages
Following our test, here is our feedback on the advantages and disadvantages of Surfer SEO :
The advantages
✅ Many features to optimize, analyze and improve an existing page, or create new ones
✅ Semrush and Google Search Console integration
✅ Real-time SERPs analysis: provides hot data, to be better than current competitors on a keyword
✅ Free keyword search function
✅ Multi-users: allows you to share a subscription to reduce costs(pro and business package only)
The disadvantages
❌ English only interface
❌ Higher price / no credit system to optimize only a few pages
❌ Software quite complex to grasp, because of the many features
In summary: our opinion on Surf SEO
All in all, Surfer SEO is an excellent on-page optimization tool, if not the best. It allows a complete analysis and optimization of the entire internal part of a website. Thus, by using Surfer SEO in your content strategy, you maximize your chances of getting to the top on the keywords you write for.
Thanks to the different features, you can optimize an article to its maximum potential. That’s why we believe that Surfer is the tool that providesthe best results on page positioning. Indeed, if you follow all the recommended data provided by the tool, you will quickly get the best page, or at least the most optimized one. Andwith the best page, we have all the cards in hand to appear first on a query.
However, this software is quite complicated to get used to at first, as it has a lot of features. Tutorials are therefore present on the YouTube channel of Surfer SEO to help users understand their software. Don’t worry, once you understand how this tool works, you will be able to take full advantage of it.
To conclude, it is a software that is quite expensive and therefore not necessarily accessible for a site editor who is starting out. For this reason, we recommend sharing a subscription with other publishers, in order to lower the cost and get this tool for an affordable price.
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The alternative to Surf SEO
Surfer SEO is a very complete ON site analysis tool, so it doesn’t really have competitors offering as many features. On the other hand, in terms ofsemantic optimization, which is the main part of Surfer, many tools exist to enrich its content.
We note for example YourTextGuru which is also an excellent tool for semantically optimizing content. The latter creates a complete guide from a SERP in real time, in order to determine the important words to place in a text. It also works in the form of a score which, unlike Surfer, can exceed 100%.
YourTextGuru is very complete and allows you toeasily optimize your content for SEO, while avoiding a penalty for keyword stuffing. Indeed, it is the only tool to determine an SEO danger score, which evaluates the risk that a text is too optimized in the eyes of Google. The advantage over Surfer is that it is not necessary to pay a subscription to optimize your texts, thanks to a credit system.
The other alternative for semantic optimization is 1.fr. Even cheaper, this software allows you to enrich your content with words from the lexical field of a target keyword. 1.fr is certainly less powerful but still allows tosemantically optimize a text, so that it gains places on the SERPs.
How to use Surfer SEO?
Surfer SEO has several features, which we have detailed above. However, the one that is most used is surely thecontent editor. To make the most of this feature and enrich your content, nothing could be easier.
As with YourTextGuru and 1.fr, the best thing to do is to write an article beforehand and then run it through the tool. Afterwards, you just have to indicate the keyword on which you want the article to be optimized. Depending on the quality of the article, Surfer SEO will give you a score of 100. It also indicates, depending on the keyword and its SERP, the number of words that must be written as well as the number of paragraphs, images and titles required.
Surfer SEO also states all the words that should be placed in the article, as well as the number of times it should be repeated. After that, you just have to place the necessary words, and reach the minimum size required for the article. The best is obviously tohave the highest score. However, it is very difficult to get a content score of 100 while keeping the text pleasant to read for Internet users.
This is why we recommend, as with other semantic optimization tools, to simply aim for a higher score than your competitors.
If you want to learn more about this tool, we leave you with this video that explains in detail how Surfer SEO works:
