If you are looking for a detailed guide on how to use Surfer SEO, this article is for you. Nowadays, SEO has changed. Not everything is manual, SEO experts are leveraging AI tools for their SEO strategies, and Surfer is one of them.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has been around us for a long time. Every website needs to implement SEO strategies, or else it can be one of the 90.63% of websites that receive no traffic from Google, which is a massive number.
Writing long-form content isn’t everything; you must focus on on-page SEO optimization. You can either do it manually or leverage Surfer SEO features. In this article, I will guide you through how to use Surfer SEO and get the most out of it.
Let’s burn your curiosity bubbles in the next section.
What is SurferSEO?
Surfer SEO is an on-page SEO optimization tool, which are used by many small and larger agencies to take their content strategy to the next level and make it more profitable. Moreover, it comes with different advanced tools and features, which we will discuss later. Content Marketers solely rely on Surfer to automate their SEO workflow.
Surfer gives you keywords and article length and analyzes the top 10 competitors and 500 factors, and compares them with yours. It will give you an idea of what you should be doing. By following Surfer suggested words, keywords, and headings, you’ll have higher chances of getting ranked on any SERP.
Furthermore, following Surfer’s suggestions isn’t the only thing. You must also focus on quality content rather than just relying on the tool. The Surfer ranking factors depend on word count, images, headings, page speed, keyword density, and partial keyword density.
How Does SurferSEO Work?
Understanding Surfer isn’t a hard nut to crack. Once you find your targeted keyword, you can create your content outline with the Surfer content editor. Moreover, Surfer will give you an estimated number of words, keywords, headings, and score count. Once you start writing, you can see the score will start increasing during content creation.
As mentioned, Surfer will also analyze other competitors and give you suggestions about the number of word counts and keywords based on seo audit. With this, you can rank much better. You won’t have to search for LSI keywords, as Surfer correlates between 500+ factors and positions in SERPs before giving you a full strategy for your content and provided keyword.
Surfer is undoubtedly a great SEO tool to improve your website ranking in SERPs. It helps your blog website to be more visible on Google and other search engines by providing an excellent on-page SEO strategy in just a few clicks.
Surfer SEO Pricing
Surfer offers four packages for their users. All these packages have different features and benefits.
Basic Plan – $59/Monthly
- Create outlines with the content editor tool for 10 articles.
- Audit up to 20 pages for your website.
- Track and optimize up to 2 websites.
- The invitation option is available for 1 team member only.
- Available to do advanced keyword research.
Pro Plan – $119/Monthly
- Create outlines with the content editor for 30 articles.
- Audit up to 60 pages for your website.
- Track and optimize up to 5 websites.
- Invitation option available for 3 team members only.
- Available to do advanced keyword research.
Business Plan – $239/Monthly
- Create outlines with the content editor tool for 70 articles.
- Audit up to 140 pages for your website.
- Track and optimize up to 10 websites.
- Invitation option available for 3 team members only.
- Available to do advanced keyword research.
The last Plan is Custom Pricing, where you can discuss your needs with the management about the no. of articles and audit for pages. You can consult their sales department about the plans and discuss which suits your business.
I suggest you go with the basic Plan if you are starting a business or solely using it for your own blog optimization. Although, you can also go with the Pro plan if you have a team of three to five people.
Surfer SEO Tools
Keyword Research Tool
If you are writing content that needs to be optimized enough to answer search queries, your writing efforts might go down the drain. Backlinko’s study on 11.8 million Google searches found that keyword density is prominent in ranking websites.
Google search engine results do not depend on a few main keywords scattered in your content to identify it as the most relatable to the target keyword. It is required to make the whole content relatable to the query by optimizing it with a broad spectrum of related keywords.
Surfer seo makes this hefty work easy with its Keyword tool. This tool opens the routes to make the best content strategy for you in a snap by finding the most recent content topics according to your seed keyword. Once you add your main keyword on the search bar, you will get tables of related topics holding tidy, separated lists of related topics according to your targeted geographical place.
By unwrapping each table, you can wander through monthly search volume, keyword difficulty score, and the amount of traffic you can expect once the table is optimized in your content. Select the most effective table according to your topic and search intent. The chosen keyword set will be added to the surfer’s content editor to develop a defined structure for your write-up.
Surfer content editor
Surfer content editor will articulate your article’s map based on the recent competitive website SEO analysis. You get to analyze the search results that are top-ranking and the articles you want to dominate, and each article will be displayed with its relevance content score. Here you can also manually select the competitor websites, 2,5, or 10, and examine their work according to your content goal.
After selecting articles, you will be given all guidelines to make a furnished outline holding ranking factors, I.e. word count, headings, paragraphs, and optimal keyword density. The content editor also provides questions that can be added to rule the search results.
This feature can help you understand your target audience and their queries and formulate featured snippets and meta titles accordingly. But it is still better to formulate questions and headings independently, as human-based content is better than all AI-generated content.
The more you optimize your content in the draft, the more your score increases, signaling your content is also turning Google SERP friendly. To aid in this purpose, you will also get suggestions on added terms and NLP(Natural language processing), if enabled, to skyrocket the on-page optimization of your content.
Moreover, Surfer supports teamwork by letting the account holder share the link with external content creators. The shared link won’t need a login; people can work on that with Content Management Systems and Google Docs.
SEO Audit
You might have content fading down in a swarm of new algorithms and Google updates. If you get a hand on surfer SEO tools, you can regain your lost rankings. Surfer SEO wants your old and new content to catch up by reviving on-page SEO optimization.
The audit tool helps you optimize existing content, giving suggestions on improving the on-page optimization of your content according to the latest updates.
Add your content link, and you will first know your content score compared to competitive websites. Then you can get a sneak of all the loopholes in your content, making it lag. It can be missing backlinks repelling your organic traffic towards your competitors or additional internal links to retain the traffic on your website.
Moreover, this feature lets you audit your competitors to compare your own and competitors’ audits. You will learn about removable factors from your content, such as extra word count, keyword density, and extra characters.
Domain Planner
The renovating process is not limited to webpages in surfer seo; it determines to update your whole domain to rank higher. This tool will determine the top-ranking pages of your site according to different SEO metrics.
The domain planner will compare each content with ranking sites and provide a report underlining crucial components. It will include content score, low-hanging fruits, ranking keywords, and all other data that will aid you in improving the SEO of each web page. You can then add the chosen web page to the surfer’s content editor and laser out all the lagging elements.
SERP Analyzer Tool
If you know How SERP works, you know it’s essential to defeat the paid ads to make a presence on ranking pages with organic traffic. Surfer’s SERP analyzer tool will give a graph report for each on-page SEO ranking factor based on your main keyword.
The report will map out the search engine results for that one factor. Suppose you want the report for an average word count on ranking sites. This SERP analyzer will relate this factor with existing content(ranking sites) to give you a SERP analysis. Similarly, you can peek deeper into the metrics like domain score, keyword difficulty, questions, etc., to determine whether the target keyword(main keyword) is worth your time and sweat.
Overall, serp analyzer will make you a data scientist for how it nails down the tiniest important ranking factors like the number of characters in meta titles, HTML size, and load time of ranking pages. Moreover, you can also add the URL of your competitor’s site beside the default 48 SERP entries to get their SERP report.
Grow Flow
What is better than someone keeping tabs on your content performance every day? Surfer SEO tool provides you with an AI virtual assistant( Growth Management tool) that will examine your content weekly with the help of Google search console data. After that, it will check out for any improvement that can stack up your ranking and notify you with little nuggets of tasks that can be done in just a few minutes. These tasks can be like these:
- Addition of missing related keywords to your blog posts or web pages.
- Making new content around topics recommended by the surfer.
- Addition of more internal links to improve the on-page SEO performance of the site.
Moreover, you will be given all suggested keywords after seo analysis. Copy, paste, and your content is suitable to prevail over ranking sites.
How to Create New Content With Surfer SEO
We have discussed the tools and features, now it’s time to create content, and I’ll show you how you can do it. Surfer provides a smooth way to create your content structure, optimize it for search engines, and increase your chances of ranking on SERP.
It’s a straightforward process; let’s begin step-by-step:
1- Surfer’s Keyword Research Tool: Find New Keywords to Target
You can create content with your keywords or leverage the keyword research tool of Surfer SEO. To get better results for your targeted keyword, enter two or three keywords in the search box.
It gives you the full details of the keywords, including the search volume, related keywords, and competition. You can also change the location; the screenshot shows the United States. Although, if you target a specific location for your keyword, you can also check the details with Surfer.
Moreover, the best keywords are those with higher volumes and less competition, so search for those keywords.
2- Create an Outline with the Content Editor Tool
After searching your targeted keyword, create a plan with the Surfer content editor tool. It will give you an idea about the no. of words, headings, and secondary keywords. For maximum optimization, evaluate those keywords in your draft to create more chances of getting ranked.
As mentioned, Surfer analyzes top-ranking pages on Google and other search engines before giving you an impactful plan for your content. The tool also guides you on keyword density, placement, and variations.
The score on the content editor tool depends on the quality of the draft, readability, keyword usage, and length. Furthermore, the content editor tool allows users to edit the content in real time, giving them more flexibility for adjustments in the draft. Ensure to increase the score by adding internal links, alt tags to images, and meta tags.
3- Customize Your Competitor’s
After finishing the draft, you may have to edit it further. You can easily customize your competitors. Click the Surfer Customize icon on the top right-hand side to do it.
You can choose your competitors in these settings. The content guidelines will be according to the competitors you choose. You can include or exclude your competitors and tap “Let’s go.”
Furthermore, down below your competitors, you can customize your content structure, such as length, headings, and images. Surfer generates the default ones based on your selected competitors. Although, the writer has access to edit the words, headings, images, and paragraphs. Once you increase or decrease the words, Surfer will adjust the no. of headings and paragraphs.
4- Define your Terms
Surfer has an excellent algorithm, allowing the writers to add terms to the content. As a writer, you can exclude or include other terms (If you have allowed the NLP option when creating content outline).
You can add the relevant terms and remove the irrelevant ones from the terms. With this strategy, you might rank higher on search engines. Surfer suggests the terms based on your competitors, although if it doesn’t meet your needs, you can also unmark them.
Moreover, if you have your own list of terms in bulk, you can add them by clicking the three dots on the right side.
5- Add Topics and Related Questions
In this section, you can add related queries and questions about your draft, so the writer can figure out what to deliver in the draft.
These questions are extracted based on your defined competitors. You can tick mark them to add it. You can also leave additional notes for your writer at the end.
6- Start Writing and Check the Content Score
After everything, you can start writing your draft. Once you start writing, the score will start to increase. Make sure you use the keywords generated by Surfer, which will be shown to you on the right side of your screen.
Surfer also guides you on how often you should use the given keyword in your draft. Furthermore, images can also help you increase your score. Images play a vital role in your SEO strategy, as 55% of the searches have images.
It is indispensable for you to focus on the quality of the content. Instead of focusing on the score, check your content with Grammarly for correctness and clarity.
SurferSEO Integrations
As mentioned, Surfer is an excellent on-page optimization tool, allowing you to integrate with several applications. Let’s check them out.
Google Docs
You can easily integrate Surfer with Google Docs by installing an extension on your browser. The main advantage is that you won’t worry about your draft formatting. It is easy and simple to install.
Furthermore, you can also create new docs from the content editor tool on Surfer. With this integration, you, as a writer, can manage things easily.
WordPress
When you copy-paste the draft from Surfer to WordPress, a lot of formatting gets disturbed, and it takes a lot of time to edit. But not anymore; you can install the Surfer FREE plugin on WordPress and start editing your draft without worrying about formatting. You can also add images, which will be saved in your WordPress media folder, and have full control over your content.
SEMRush
SEMRush and Surfer integration is the epitome of cool. Surfer integration with SEMRush gives you useful weekly insights about your competitor’s backlinks. It helps you boost your off-page SEO strategy.
Furthermore, SEMRush is integrated into Grow Flow, which we have described above. Grow Flow works like a teacher who gives you SEO tasks every week. These tasks help you to boost your domain performance. In addition, you don’t need to purchase a SEMRush premium subscription to integrate it with Surfer.
Jasper
Jasper and Surfer are both robust content marketing tools. You can connect both tools and save time. You don’t have to write or apply any SEO strategy, connect Surfer with Jasper and generate a handful of content within minutes.
With this strategy, you won’t have to worry about hectic editing and proofreading. All you have to do is to install the extension and sign up for Jasper to create your content outline.
What is a Good Score on SurferSEO
There is no accurate statement of how good your score should be on Surfer, but it is recommended to reach at least 70 to 80. The higher the score, the higher the chances of ranking on SERPs. Furthermore, the score depends on several factors, such as headers (H1 to H6), originality, images, paragraphs, and NLPs.
If your content score lies between 0 to 33, you must work on the quality of the draft. In contrast, a score between 67 to 100 indicates that the content is high quality and has more chance of getting ranked.
A good score also gives you confidence and enables you to write perfectly optimized content for your blog. The keyword suggestions on the right-hand side contain partial and long-tail keywords, which play a key role in increasing the score of your blog post.
Conclusion
Surfer SEO is a great content creation and on-page optimization tool which many agencies and content marketers use. It comes with a basic, pro, business, and custom plan for its customers. Every package contains different features and benefits.
It is important for you to adopt advanced SEO tools for your website to increase SERP visibility and rankings. Surfer enables you to boost your ranking by providing suggestions after analyzing your competitors. You can also integrate Surfer with Google Docs, Jasper, and WordPress. There are several surfer seo alternatives but this surfer seo review blog post will help you understand the difference.
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