Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an integral part of digital marketing. It involves using various techniques to improve the visibility of a website. It directly impacts the search engine result pages (SERPs).
Surfer SEO is one of the most popular SEO tools used today. It has powerful features to enable authors to develop a strategy for content development. A guided AI content generation process within Surfer SEO ensures high organic rankings in Google Search.
But it may not be the best fit for everyone’s needs. While the tool has a lot to offer, some users might find the Surfer SEO Pricing too expensive. Others might need different features unavailable in this tool.
That’s why it’s essential to consider a Surfer SEO alternative.
I’ve been in the Tech industry for 20+ years now. I have seen the Internet, Mobile, Cloud, and Big Data impacting our daily lives. In my opinion, Generative AI falls into the same category. A Microsoft survey concluded that 70% of their Generative AI users were more productive in 2023.
I have reviewed and used several AI writing tools over the last year. In this article, let’s explore the top Surfer SEO alternatives. Each one of them can help you optimize your content in its unique way.
Surfer SEO Feature Overview
Before considering the alternatives, let’s briefly examine what Surfer SEO offers.
Surfer SEO is packed with powerful AI tools to assist you in all stages of content creation:
Content Editor
This editor is the heart of the Surfer SEO toolset. It’s the most popular tool that enables you to generate a list of relevant keywords. You can further create an outline and write SEO optimized content.
There are 3-steps for using the Surfer’s Editor. They include Outline building, optimized writing, review, and publishing. As you progress with the writing, you continue getting real-time inputs to optimize & includes specific keywords or phrases.
Surfer SEO offers a Content Score for your articles. It helps you to understand how optimized your article is. The content optimization score is for Google Search compared to competition for the same keywords.
Keyword Research Tool
This AI Surfer SEO tool assists you in establishing topical authority as part of your content strategy. This step is an essential part of proving your expertise. You can uncover several relevant topic clusters starting with your primary keywords for SEO.
It helps update your keyword planner with the relevant keywords to track and optimize.
Surfer AI For SEO Ready Articles
This AI Add-on tool creates ready-to-rank articles. It offers features that enable you to research, write, and optimize articles with the click of a button.
You can create content for your chosen keywords within 20 minutes!
This video has more details about Surfer AI:
SEO Content Audit
This Surfer add-on helps you find missed SEO opportunities and address low-hanging fruits. It enables you to get more organic search traffic easily.
You get steps to optimize your content to rank higher on a search engine.
Articles Outline Generator
The first step in content writing is finding relevant details about your topic. Creating a blog post outline is a crucial aspect of this step. An article outline is a way to organize your ideas concisely and Surfer does a great job on this front.
Other Platform Features
The other notable features of Surfer SEO include the following:
- Surfer’s Browser Extension is helpful for Keyword research. It is the fastest way to figure out search data for your keyword plan.
- Surfer SEO Integration integrates seamlessly with various platforms to enhance workflow. Examples are Jasper AI, WordPress, Google Docs, and Semrush.
These are impressive features in Surfer SEO and the best in its class. But there might be reasons you’d want to consider Surfer SEO alternatives.
Why Consider Alternatives for Surfer SEO?
Some of the reasons why you might want to consider a Surfer SEO alternative are:
1. Pricing: Surfer SEO’s pricing might not fit everyone’s budget. This challenge is especially true for beginners, small businesses, or freelancers.
2. Specific Features: You might need a specific feature that Surfer SEO doesn’t offer. For example, if you need an off-page optimization feature.
3. Flexibility: Other tools might offer more flexibility on usage and price plans.
4. Learning Curve: Surfer SEO can be overwhelming for beginners. This difficulty could be due to the complex user interface and a plethora of data to understand.
Now, let’s dive into the top Surfer SEO alternatives you might want to consider.
Surfer SEO Alternative Recommendations
1. SE Ranking
SE Ranking is a comprehensive SEO tool that offers a variety of features. These include keyword rank tracking, website auditing, AI competitor analysis, and content optimization.
Features Summary:
- Comprehensive SEO Toolkit: SE Ranking offers all the tools you need for a complete SEO workflow centered around your target keywords.
- Content Optimization: Like Surfer SEO, SE Ranking provides a robust content editor. It enables built-in competitor research and SEO optimization.
- Flexible Pricing: SE Ranking offers different price plans to suit various budgets.
Pricing: SE Ranking’s monthly price starts at $44, with options for different user levels and needs.
A SE Ranking standout feature that makes it a good alternative to Surfer SEO is its Content Management toolset. It helps simplify creation of content at all stages. There are options for everything, from generating ideas for content to writing texts for content marketing.
The Content Idea Finder analyzes keywords most closely related to your chosen topic. It can also provide a group of relevant keywords and related keywords.
The Content Editor assists you in building SEO briefs, writing AI optimized texts, and evaluating content quality. SE Ranking’s proprietary AI algorithm supports the editor. The content editor provides you SEO recommendations based on analysis of ranking content by competitors.
SE Ranking provides recommendations for the title, description, and slug and adds internal and external links. This feature differentiates it from Surfer SEO.
SE Ranking has a powerful AI Writer that generates H1s, headings, and subheadings. It also generates paragraph text on any given topic. All this while following the SEO copywriting best practices. On this count, SE Ranking & Surfer SEO are on similar ground.
SE Ranking’s Content Editor integrates well with Google Docs. It allows you to continue editing your article in Google Docs. You get seamless access to essential SE Ranking scores and SEO metrics for analysis.
Overall, SE Ranking’s Content Management Module is a formidable alternative to Surfer SEO for businesses looking to create top-notch content. Its comprehensive tools give you everything needed to generate quality content.
2. PageOptimizerPro
PageOptimizerPro (POP) is an on-page SEO tool that provides detailed insights. It is designed by SEO experts to optimize your content and rank organically.
Features:
- In-depth On-Page Analysis: POP provides detailed AI driven recommendations for on-page content creation and optimization. This feature is similar to Surfer SEO’s Content Editor.
- User-Friendly Interface: POP has a simple interface that makes it easy to understand and use for beginners.
- Competitor Analysis: Understand what your competitors are doing right and how you can do it better.
Pricing: POP’s starting costs are $27 per month, making it a more affordable Surfer SEO alternative.
Kyle Roof, who is well respected in the SEO community, created PageOptimizerPro (POP). He incorporated many years of his SEO expertise into this tool.
With POP, you can easily create well optimized pages for Google. POP is very user friendly and even an SEO beginner can easily use it.
It uses a patented ranking factor score for rating your articles. This process finds out what you need to include on your pages to get better rankings and hence more traffic.
You have the option of selecting your competitors against which you want to compare your article. You can also let the AI automatically choose relevant competitors based on your targetted keywords.
The POP Chrome extension is useful to carry out the content optimization process in your online editor of choice.
Using your primary keyword as input, the tool compares your content against top competitors. It produces a content optimization score and report.
The report indicates steps on how to create and upgrade your content. These include word count range, keywords variations, NLP phrases and header tags. You may refresh the score in real-time as and when you make content changes.
3. Frase
Frase is a content optimization tool that uses AI to help you create high-quality content.
Features:
- AI-Powered Content Optimization: Frase uses AI to provide real-time recommendations for content optimization.
- Content Briefs: Easily create content briefs for your writers with Frase.
- Competitor Analysis: Understand what your competitors are doing right and how you can outperform them.
Pricing: Frase’s price starts at $12.66 per month, with options for different user levels and needs.
Compared to Surfer SEO, Frase is a slightly more complex tool. It unites all phases of creation of content under one roof, from content briefs to content analysis.
Both tools offer similar features, but they have some notable differences. In terms of features, Surfer SEO is primarily a content optimization tool that provides a detailed analysis of on-page factors (such as keyword density, title tags, and meta descriptions).
Frase, on the other hand, offers a broader range of features. Including content research, SEO optimization, and content tools are a great plus. Frase analyzes pages based on geo-location.
Frase outperforms Surfer SEO when it comes to UI design and AI features. The user-friendly content editor is more intuitive and easier to navigate, based on feedback from user reviews.
Frase has a broader range of features and AI-powered capabilities. This makes Frase a better fit for a large business and more complex content strategies. Surfer SEO tools are a more focused approach targeted at smaller businesses or individual content creators.
4. Writesonic
Writesonic is an AI-powered writing assistant that can help you create high-quality content.
Features:
- AI-Powered Writing Assistant: Writesonic uses AI templates to assist you in writing high-quality content. Templates are available for a wide variety of use cases.
- Chatsonic: Writesonic provides a chat-like interface to enable conversational content development and optimization.
- Flexible Pricing: Writesonic offers different pricing plans to suit freelancers, small teams, and enterprises.
Pricing: Writesonic’s price starts at $13 per month. There are additional options for more users and wordcount volumes. Writesonic has free forever plans and so could be considered a Surfer SEO Free Alternative.
Writesonic’s functionality is grouped under six use case headings. They are:
- General Writing.
- Articles And Blog.
- Ad And Marketing Tools.
- Website Copy.
- Social Media.
- E-commerce.
You will find them all accessible in the Dashboard after login. There are 100+ templates covering a broad range of features.
ChatSonic is similar to ChatGPT. It returns real-time information, thanks to its Google Search integration. You can give it inputs and get response by voice too.
Writesonic includes Photosonic, which is an AI image generator. You can generate creative images using Photosonic. It is helpful when you need a related a banner for your post or logo, or social media.
Botsonic is a revolutionary chatbot builder by Writesonic AI. Anyone can now create an AI powered chatbot to integrate embeddable code on their website.
Writesonic has several convenient app integrations to enrich its features. The integrations enable SEO optimization with other software and faster content publication. One of the integrations is to Surfer SEO itself.
In short, Writesonic tools are budget-friendly and easy-to-use to generate SEO content.
5. Content At Scale
Content At Scale is a content development and optimization platform. It uses AI to help you create high-quality content.
Features:
- AI-Powered Content Development: Content At Scale is an AI writing tool optimized for creating long-form content. This feature is helpful for topics needing in-depth treatment.
- Content Optimization: Like Surfer SEO, Content At Scale provides real-time recommendations for content optimization.
- Flexible Input options: Content At Scale is capable of generating automated content from videos, podcasts or documents in any format.
Pricing: Content At Scale starts at $250 per month, with options to pay as you go for higher number of articles.
Content at Scale is an AI-driven content generation platform. It generates SEO-optimized, full-length blogs with keywords as inputs. You also have the option of providing inputs like videos, blogs, another document or podcast to create articles.
The tool uses a sophisticated blend of three different AI engines. This combination helps it produce human-like, high-quality content.
Content at Scale focuses on streamlining production of long-form text content. It makes the process quicker, more efficient, and hence cost-effective.
It produces an average of 3,000 word articles. They use syntax structures and vocabulary that closely resembles human writing.
Content at Scale includes integrations to WordPress and Shopify. These integrations help the seamless posting of content directly to your site.
Content at Scale has a built-in plagiarism checker to scan your content. This feature certifies that the content generated by the tool is unique.
Among the alternatives considered in this post, Content at Scale scores best when it comes to subject matter depth.
Conclusion: The Best Surfer SEO Alternatives for You
Surfer SEO is a powerful tool for your content generation needs. However, it’s not the best fit for everyone. Depending on your needs and budget, you might find one of these Surfer SEO alternatives to be a better fit.
SE Ranking is a comprehensive tool that offers a variety of SEO features. It includes keyword rank tracking, website auditing, competitor analysis, and content optimization.
PageOptimizerPro is a powerful on-page SEO tool. It provides detailed insights for optimizing your content.
Frase uses AI to help you create high-quality, SEO-optimized content.
Writesonic is an AI-powered writing assistant that can help you create high-quality content. They have templates for a wide variety of use cases.
Lastly, Content At Scale is a content development and optimization platform. It uses AI to help you create in-depth, long-form content.
Evaluate these tools and choose the best fit for your needs and budget. Remember, the best tool for you is the one that meets your ROI goals. It should also help you achieve your SEO and content needs.
I would love to know which SEO alternative worked best for you and why. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.
