Surfer SEO Review 2025 [SEO Workflow, Features, Own Experience, Plus, Minus, & More]

Welcome to the Surfer SEO Review!

This is a time to answer all your queries regarding Surfer SEO. 

• Is Surfer SEO worth it?
• Why go with Surfer SEO and not with other professional SEO tools?
• What are its SEO related benefits?
• What are its problems?
• More…

I tested and have been using the Surfer SEO for a couple of months! 

Yes, there are plenty of plus points of this amazing On Page SEO tool.

But there are negatives too.

Before investing a cent, go through this honest review of Surfer SEO where I will share my experience, letting you know if its content and SEO-related features are worth trying.

Ready to dive in?

Let me first share with you a quick summary of this review.

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Is Surfer SEO Worth It? [Quick Summary]

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Surfer SEO Brief Overview:

When I first got to know about Surfer SEO, I was like what the heck it is?

Is it an AI writing assistant? Is it a keyword research tool? Is it a Content editor?

In short Surfer SEO is an On Page SEO optimization tool that comes with the additional functionality of Keyword Research, Topic Research, Content Optimization, and AI content creation.

Yes, it is a mix-up of a few SEO tools, which help you effectively implement your SEO workflow (from keyword research to content creation to optimization) and improve your rankings in organic search.

You’ll find these core tools (features) under the Surfer SEO dashboard:

That’s all. 

It has just 5 core On Page SEO tools but they are pretty powerful that’s why Surfer SEO popularity is getting higher every day.

Their primary goal is to simplify the On Page SEO and content creation workflow so that users can save time & hiring costs. 

Before using Surfer SEO, I thought it was another AI writing tool that just rewrote the content like ChatGPT does.

But the way Surfer SEO works is something other AI SEO tools lack. And it is due to its working that today, more than 150k customers are connected with Surfer SEO.

“Generate ready to rank articles in minutes” – This is what they are claiming. 

I know this sounds like a highly salesy line of some marketing campaign.

But their “working process” backed it. 

They are using NLP, Machine learning, Competitor analysis, over 500 ranking signals, and then suggest a detailed On Page SEO optimization to-do-list. 

Their AI writing assistant is advanced too. 

It reads & analyzes 300k words before generating the content. This is huge and no other AI writer has such advanced capability.

Although there is no guarantee that Surfer SEO generated or optimized content will rank #1 position because the final ranking still depends on your site authority but it definitely increases the chances.

Yes, don’t believe in myths where people are claiming Surfer SEO is better than big SEO tools including Semrush, SE Ranking, & Ahrefs.

Surfer SEO just did the On-Page SEO part whereas these other SEO tools are big and cover entire SEO core features. 

So this is a brief introduction to Surfer SEO.

Now let’s proceed to the main section of this Surfer SEO review where I’ll talk about my experience with this tool in detail and cover what is good and what isn’t.

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Exploring Surfer SEO Core Features: A Complete Walkthrough With Plus & Minus

Key Features	Available in Surfer SEO
On Page Optimization Suggestions	✓
Keyword Research	✓
AI Content Creation	✓
Topic Research	✓
SERP Analysis	✓
Content Audit	✓
Auto Optimize	✓
SEO Content Editor	✓
Plagiarism Checker	✓
AI Content Detection	✓
Internal Links Inserter	✓
Backlinks Analysis	✕
Rank Tracking	✕
Technical OFF Page SEO Audit	✕
Content Marketing	✕

Surfer SEO Content Editor: Functionality for Write, Optimize & Generate AI Articles

The main highlight of Surfer SEO is its Content Editor tool.

You can use it to optimize existing articles, write articles from scratch by following its content guidelines, and lastly generate AI articles.

1.) Reviewing the Content Editor

I set my primary keyword (shown in the below image) and directly jump to the content editor.

Here how it looks like:

I know it looks scary for the first time but I hardly take 2 minutes to understand what’s going on inside this content editor.

Surfer SEO presents me so many options in the editor:

• Auto outline generator ✓
• Option to generate SEO title, headlines, & questions for the content
• Option to write with Surfer AI ✓
• Overall Content Score ✓
• Auto optimize option ✓
• Auto insert internal links option ✓
• Guidelines to optimize for different keywords ✓

At first glance, Surfer SEO’s content editor seemed like a typical editor of an AI writing tool.

You might wonder on what basis Surfer SEO presents these guidelines.

Well, these guidelines are generated using competitive analysis, 500+ ranking signals, and NLP.

But there’s a twist. There’s a unique feature: the option to customize the guidelines.

By default, Surfer SEO analyzes five competitors and sets On-Page SEO guidelines for:

• Content Structure
• Word Count
• Images
• Headings
• Terms to Include
• Questions & Topics to cover
• More

As I mentioned, these guidelines are customizable, so if you think any parameter needs adjustment, you can easily do that.

Generally, we don’t blindly trust any SEO tool for our work.

But here, you can set the guidelines according to your preferences, mix it up with the Surfer SEO guidelines, and work on the content editor, ensuring that your content is written according to these guidelines.

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2.) The Existed Articles Optimization Capability:

Before experimenting with AI content creation, I wanted to see How Surfer SEO judges my existing content and gives me optimization suggestions.

I imported one of the existing articles into the Surfer SEO content editor.

Like previous, Surfer SEO has set the guidelines by doing a competitive analysis and gave an overall score of 71/100.

So I tapped the “Auto Optimize” Button.

It took 5 minutes.

Once the process is done, My content score is raised to 85 and all the metrics are now green.

But what exactly does Surfer SEO optimize?

Well, When I go into detail and observe the adjustments carefully, I see:

• By rewriting and expanding the paragraphs, Surfer SEO added the missing terms (Keywords) that have been mentioned in the guidelines.
• It also removed the terms if it exceeded the count mentioned in the guidelines.
• Rewrite paragraphs through AI so that they sound more human and implement NLP.

These optimizations sound good to me but you have to tweak the guidelines a bit before running an optimization. 

Otherwise, it is adding keywords blindly and unnecessarily which might create another big problem for your content.

And Surfer SEO is good at making your paragraphs sound human. This is especially helpful for writing product reviews. 

But in cases where you need to optimize your content with a formal or specific voice tone, that isn’t possible with Surfer SEO.

For that, you should look at a dedicated AI writing tool like Jasper AI, which can also integrate with Surfer SEO.

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3.) How Good is The Surfer SEO AI Content Creation Tool?

By reviewing the content editor, we understand Surfer SEO has tools to generate not just the content body but plenty of other things including Headings, Outline, Titles, Headings, Questions, & More.

So, the question is: 

Does Surfer SEO AI writing generator have what it takes?

Can content generated by Surfer SEO AI rank well?

Let’s experiment.

In the content editor dashboard, the first thing it asked me to put up the focus keyword I am looking to target in the new article.

I really like how Surfer SEO presents me with related keywords with search volume and keyword difficulty right into this AI writing dashboard. Saves time!

Before the launch of the AI content creation process, you have to define article type, tone of voice, and 5 competitors that are ranking in SERP in real time.

You can supply custom information as well. Example Links, Facts, etc.

If you want to pass specific information to the AI that should be included in the content, you can easily do so.

This can significantly improve the accuracy, facts, and quality of the content. 

Generally, this functionality is rarely seen in other AI writing tools including ChatGPT.

I faced no challenge in the first step.

As soon as I tapped on the “Create Outline button” Surfer SEO started doing the magic and came back to me with a detailed outline in 2-3 minutes.

To be honest, 70-80% of pointers mentioned in the content outline are great but there is human involvement required to refine a few things up.

Surfer SEO generated the engaging title as well.

You can customize all pointers or even add pointers from your own in the outline at this stage.

After making some tweaks to the outline, Surfer SEO generated my content in just 2 minutes.

This is what I observe by reading the content generated by Surfer SEO AI:

1. Firstly, Surfer SEO generated everything along with the content: the title, headings, outline, and FAQs, making my content a complete piece.

2. The writing tone is appropriate and based on the SERP results.

3. The keywords are included as per the guidelines.

4. Some images were added, but they are stock images and not very useful.

5. Reading the content till the end, it doesn’t feel like an AI-written copy or something created by ChatGPT.

6. Over 2,000 words were generated, which is great for ranking on Google.

7. The overall quality of the content is good, accuracy is maintained, and I didn’t find any trace of duplication or plagiarism (tested with Grammarly).

8. The content on-page SEO is already optimized, but if you need to make changes, such as removing some keywords or reducing the word count, you can go back to the content editor, tweak the guidelines, and regenerate the content.

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Final Words on Surfer SEO Content Optimization & AI Content Generation

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Surfer SEO Combined Topic Research & Keyword Research into One Powerful System

I have experience with the KWFinder keyword research tool, Semrush Keyword Magic Tool, and plenty of others.

So how does this new Surfer SEO Keyword Research feature stand against its major competitors?

Well, the Surfer SEO process of doing keyword research looks interesting & different to me. 

The reason is that they combined their keyword research tool with their topic explorer feature.

So to access a keyword research tool, you first have to access its topic research tool which consists of a couple of tools:

I’ll review them all one by one.

1.) Surfer SEO Keyword Research Tool

The keyword research tool of Surfer SEO was on my screen. At first, I thought it would work like all other keyword research tools.

To confirm, I entered a seed keyword into this tool.

Well, the results are these:

Well, Yes Surfer SEO keyword research works differently and it believes in finding topic ideas along with keyword ideas. 

In the above image, you will see different keyword clusters. 

Well, Keyword clustering is a process SEO experts use to target keywords with the same intent.

The manual process of performing Keyword Clustering is time-consuming, Surfer SEO does it for you automatically.

The first keyword cluster (see image) is for the seed keyword you enter. 

The rest are the new content/topic ideas organized with their respective keyword clusters.

Writing an article by targeting keyword clusters helps your website page attract plenty of user impressions and hence quality traffic.

With Chrome extension, It brings keyword ideas and search volumes directly to Google search results.

Every search reveals crucial details like CPC, related terms, and visibility metrics.

I guess this is another much easier way to perform keyword research.

So this is the overview.

Well, As an SEO Expert, this is my personal opinion:

Metrics:

Surfer SEO manages to pull up the essential metrics we need for our Keyword Research process such as Search Volume, KD, and Keyword Intent.

However, there are a few downsides:

You can’t get metrics like CPC, and SERP Features.

Number of Keyword Suggestions:

When we talk about the number of related keywords you get based on a seed keyword, Surfer SEO lacks it.

I mean it just shows a few 10-15 keywords under each keyword cluster. Nothing else.

Other tools like Semrush give a lot of extra keywords.

Plus Surfer SEO doesn’t show LSI keywords, Question keywords, and other long tail keywords.

Keyword Search Volume Accuracy:

There are very few keyword research tools in the market that accurately show the search volume of keywords.

Well, Surfer SEO might show fewer keywords, but the search volume of those keywords is highly accurate.

Take a look at the above image. Surfer SEO shows the search volume of the keyword “Hostinger coupon code” close to that of Semrush.

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2.) Surfer SEO Domain Map Tool

This is a unique tool of Surfer SEO and I have never seen any other SEO tool so far.

It’s not rocket science but a tool that asks you to connect with the Google search console so that it can get access to your top keywords.

Then based on those keywords, it will suggest or generate new topic ideas.

I know finding content ideas is one of the painful jobs of any content creator. But with this tool, you can find content gaps easily on your website.

Sounds good?

Let’s try and see how impactful this tool is.

So as soon as I integrate my Google search console with this tool, I have this on my screen.

It simply groups my ranking keywords and shows them as topics covered and new article ideas.

And if you like a content idea, you can click on it to directly access its keyword cluster and create an article.

I feel 70-80% of content ideas are generated well by this tool, and the main point is that by covering these content ideas, you can easily pass internal links from different pages of your site.

Why?

Because these new content ideas are related to your existing ranking keywords.

By doing this, your site’s on-page SEO strategy becomes stronger.

I faced no problems at all using this amazing content ideas generator tool of Surfer SEO.

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3.) Surfer SEO Topical Map Tool:

The problem with the Domain Map Tool is that if your site is not getting good traffic or if your site is new, then obviously fewer keywords will be ranking on your site.

In this case, that tool won’t be able to provide you with topic ideas.

To solve this problem, Surfer SEO introduces the “Topical Map” tool, which suggests topic ideas and their keyword clusters based solely on your input keyword.

I tried and found 447 Article ideas in seconds, which is huge. The good thing is I can integrate my Google search console here and filter the covered topics as well.

Final Words on Surfer SEO Keyword Research & Topic Explorer:

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Surfer On Page SEO Audit System

The last core feature Surfer SEO gives us is related to On Page SEO Audit.

Well, here the Audit can be conducted in 2 ways:

• The complete audit of the whole site content at once (Via Google Search Console)
• Audit by URL

1.) Single Page Audit

I entered a URL and its focus keyword in the “Audit” tool and hit enter.

The great thing with Surfer SEO is that it can audit the mobile and desktop versions separately and give you an On-Page SEO improvement checklist.

This is significant because only major tools offer audits for both desktop and mobile. Surfer SEO, though new, is competing strongly with established players. Impressive!

Anyway, Just after 2-3 minutes, Surfer SEO came back to me with the On-Page SEO audit report of my page.

This tool audits:

• Internal Links: Show internal links opportunities by scanning your site.
• Terms: Suggest keywords/terms to add/remove.
• Word Count: Analyze word count and give suggestions for headings, body, and other blog length.
• Exact Keywords: Suggest if you used the focus keyword in the essential parts of the content or not.
• Page Structure: Tell if you have covered all elements (h1-h6, Paragraphs, etc) properly on your page.
• Title & Meta Description: Tell if the length is appropriate or not.
• TTFB: Analyze if the server response is good or not.
• Load Time: Analyze if the load time of a page is good or not.

So does this Surfer On-Page SEO Audit make sense?

Well, Surfer SEO sets the guidelines for each piece of content by analyzing the real time competitors appearing in SERP.

Because of this approach, the on-page suggestions for each piece remained unique and trustworthy to follow.

Some suggestions are good for an on-page SEO strategy, but I feel you don’t have to follow the entire checklist.

For example, I have a piece of content that is already ranking in the top position, and the tool suggests increasing its word count. But I know that won’t make a difference.

Their suggestions for keywords and terms are really good.

They don’t ask you to overload your content with dozens of keywords. 

Instead, they analyze competitors and provide an average count of terms that you can follow in your content.

Surfer SEO itself advises not to follow these suggestions blindly. 

To utilize this on-page SEO audit effectively, you need to be smart and have some practical knowledge of SEO.

Otherwise, things might go wrong. You might end up over-optimizing your content and getting penalized instead.

Surfer SEO is currently in the growing stage, so its audit reports are at a medium level. 

If you compare it to a more advanced SEO tool like Semrush, you’ll see that Semrush offers a much broader scope in its audit functionality.

For example, Semrush audits the sitemap, cannibalization issues, schema markup, SERP features, images, and more. These features are still not available in Surfer SEO.

But I know things will change soon.

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2.) Entire Site Content Audit

The “entire site content audit” of Surfer SEO works by integrating with Google Search Console. 

It then crawls and audits all the site pages, providing an overview report with these On-Page metrics:

• Content Score
• Position Change: One last month
• Traffic
• Impression
• CTR Rate

This report is summarized & crisp and not as detailed as you saw in the previous section.

From here you can learn which page of your site gets the low content score and then you can open it in the content editor and further optimize using the “Auto optimize” feature.

And the best part? Surfer SEO will send you a weekly email updating you on which pages have dropped in rankings and informing you of any new optimization opportunities.

These automatic alerts would save you a lot of time for sure.

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The “Miscellaneous Features” of Surfer SEO

So far I have covered the core features.

But there is a lot more.

Yes, Lot more good tools you can use in Surfer SEO.

1.) SERP Analyzer

SERP Analyzer scans the search results for your entered keyword and attempts to show their on-page SEO strategies.

You can use this information to prepare and improve the on-page SEO strategy of your content.

It is a great and useful tool for competitor analysis, though the level of analysis is medium compared to the big SEO tools.

Some useful metrics you can get from Surfer SEO’s SERP Analyzer are:

• Top 100 SERP Competitor profile with content score & domain score.
• Top keywords your competitor page is getting traffic from.
• Popular words/phrases your competitors have used on their page.
• Average number of referring backlinks they are getting.
• Estimated traffic competitors are getting across different positions.
• Average number of keywords present in the body.
• Number of words in the meta title.
• Average number of headings used by the competitor.
• Average number of words shown in “above the fold” content.
• A number of dofollow, nofollow, sponsored, etc links are present in the competitor page.
• More

One plus point of this SERP Analyzer is that you compare your page with any competitor and see how your page is performing and what things are missing.

Just covered those things and your page ranking could be improved for sure.

Everything is good except one thing.

You cannot access the “SERP feature metric” here. 

This metric tells us who won the search engine featured position and what type of featured snippet is appearing in the SERP.

I guess this is a downside.

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2.) AI Humanizer Tool

This free tool from Surfer SEO is for AI content detection and transforming into something that sounds more human.

I know how important this tool can be for a blogging or content production business.

These days, many writers are delivering cheap content using AI tools like ChatGPT, causing significant losses to business owners because AI-generated content doesn’t yield results.

Detecting these cheap writers can be difficult.

However, Surfer SEO has launched a tool specifically for this problem.

To test the efficiency of this AI detection tool, I generated AI text using ChatGPT and put it into the Surfer SEO AI Detection tool:

Well, it detects the AI text within seconds. The AI detection works great.

And this is the “Humanize” version of the AI text made by Surfer SEO.

I wouldn’t say it performed exceptionally well in converting the AI text into a human-like form. I’d rate it a 3 out of 5.

You rate it.

I guess it would work better if it had functionality to accept commands from users. Jasper Chat uses user commands and transforms the text the way they want it.

So this is the review of Surfer SEO primary tools.

This tool is in a growing stage and as soon as new features are plugged in we will use them and share our experience.

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Words on Surfer SEO Pricing

Surfer SEO plans start from $89 per month and go up to $219 per month.

• Essential Plan: Suitable for freelancers, copywriters, and bloggers
• Scale Plan: Suitable for small teams or agencies. 
• Scale AI Plan: suitable for businesses, agencies, or anyone who requires AI Content creation

You can save up to $480 if you opt for annual billing.

Surfer SEO’s plans might seem a bit confusing because the starting plans offer some features through add-ons.

Their Essential and Scale plans do not include AI content creation by default.

But in unexpected requirements, you can order it for an additional $19 per article without upgrading your plan.

For Bulk AI content demand, You can explore the Scale AI plan, which we are currently using.

I recommend starting with the 7-day free trial, as it allows users to try out all core features without any risk.

Compared to other SEO tools, Surfer SEO is not really cheap. I would say if you need a robust AI content creation tool, then it’s worth it, otherwise, you can invest a bit more and get your hands on the industry’s best SEO tools.

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Surfer SEO Pros & Cons

Pros:

• It’s an extremely easy-to-use tool even for SEO beginners.
• Helps to optimize your website’s content.
• Analyzes your website’s structure and on-page elements.
• The article generated in the Surfer SEO content editor can be exported to WordPress in one click.
• The new features are coming at a rocket speed.
• All SEO metrics would be delivered in real time
• After testing, It was found that articles produced by Surfer SEO AI sound human and have the potential to rank in Google. 
• Because of the “guidelines customization” option the SEO expert works with Surfer SEO smartly and ensures the output is written/edited with high chances of ranking potential.

Cons:

• Offers a basic keyword research tool that mostly produces lesser keyword data
• It’s not an all-in-one SEO toolkit and doesn’t offer as extensive data as Semrush, Ahrefs, etc

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What are the Alternatives to Surfer SEO?

I picked 2 alternatives after deep research which can be good replacements for Surfer SEO.

1.) Semrush

Why?

Semrush covered various core SEO features including keyword research, backlinks analysis, content optimization, position tracking, and more. Surfer SEO only covers On-Page SEO aspects.

Yes, this is the main reason to go with Semrush.

Semrush is a complete advanced SEO suite but it can’t generate AI articles like Surfer SEO does.

The Semrush plans start from $108/month, slightly higher than Surfer SEO.

Grab Semrush FREE trial for 14 days

2.) Frase 

Why?

Frase AI can create SEO-optimized content quickly by generating content briefs, topic research, and question ideas to help overcome writer’s block.

Frase offers more affordable pricing plans compared to Surfer SEO, making it a cost-effective option for content creators and small businesses.

Just do remember Frase supports only 8 languages whereas Surfer SEO welcomes content with all the languages.

You can always explore Surfer SEO Alternatives and explore the complete list.

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FAQs | SurferSEO

Here are some of the most commonly asked questions about SurferSEO.

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