My Surfer SEO Review and Results | How to Rank on Page One of Google!
In this video, I'm going to share
with you my Surfer SEO Review, including an overview of all the features, all of
its pros and cons, and my results after using it for six months. If you're new to my channel,
my name is Corrie. I'm a writer, blogger, and content creator. It's my mission to share
with you everything I know about how to make money online with your writing, so if you want to
stay in the loop on all my latest writing tips, be sure to subscribe. Full disclosure, I am an
affiliate for Surfer SEO and there are affiliate links in the description box below. This means
that if you make a purchase after clicking on one of my links, I may earn a commission at no extra
cost to you. So, spoiler alert, I love Surfer SEO. And if you've been watching this channel
for a while, you probably already know that, so it'll be no surprise that this will be
a highly favorable review. But even though I've done several tutorials on how to use Surfer's
various features, I haven't actually done a review of this tool yet.
And that's not an accident. When
I review something, I want to make sure that I know what I'm talking about so I can give you the
full scoop on it. And the thing with SEO tools is, your results don't come overnight, particularly
with new content. It takes time for Google to crawl your site, and index it, and it takes
a few weeks of juggling around the SERPs before you can really see where you land in the
rankings. But I've been using Surfer for about six months now so I feel like I have a pretty
good handle on how well it works and what its limitations are.
As you may already know, I have
a small fitness blog called thefitcareerist.com, and that's been the website that I've been
using Surfer on for the basis of this review. So without further ado, here's my Surfer
SEO review. So let's start with the basics: what exactly is Surfer SEO? Surfer has a lot of
functions, but I would say that it is first and foremost an on-page optimization tool. It helps
you optimize existing and older content for on-page SEO so that you can increase your chances
of ranking higher in the SERPs. It can help you research keywords, analyze your competitors, plan
your content strategy, and it can even help you outline and write the actual content. What's so
special about Surfer is that it not only helps you write the content to contain an optimal amount of
your target keyword phrase, but it also gets you to include all these other keywords and terms that
Google likes to see to rank that piece of content. You can also use it to audit and improve existing
articles.
Last but not least, Surfer recently introduced Grow Flow a few months ago, which
essentially streamlines your SEO strategy so that you know exactly what you need to be working
on week after week. So for this Surfer SEO review, I'm going to give you a high-level overview of how
all of these functions work, and what I think its strengths and weaknesses are. All right, so from
your dashboard, you sort of get an overview of everything you're working on, and then on the
left is where you'll see each Surfer function. So, the way I think of the process is working from
the bottom up. So we'll look at Keyword Research first. This is where we can put in keyword ideas
we want to rank for and do some research around it. This tool has unlimited use so you can
run as many keywords through here as you want. This tool is best when used for general
keyword terms. So, for example, if I put in "workout plans" and click on the purple
button, I get all kinds of related keywords. And I can organize it by SERP similarity or
search volume.
So "workout plan" as you can see has a really high search volume of 40,500 searches
per month. But large search volumes like that are usually pretty hard to rank for because there
are so many pages ranking for the same terms. But then you can get these long-tail keyword ideas
here by scrolling through and checking out the volume. I also like this feature on the left where
you can look up questions related to your keyword. Questions make for great keyword phrases and are
often a lot easier to compete for. But now we should ask, "well how does this particular
function stack up against other SEO tools? And honestly, it's a little bit rudimentary.
It's definitely helpful, but there are a lot of other keyword research tools out there with
more functionality.
For example, I would say that Ahrefs is a superior tool for keyword research
because not only can you find competitor websites with it, but it will show you what keywords those
competing websites are ranking for. And I kind of wish that Surfer had something like that. But
again, it is primarily an on-page optimization tool so this is more of a nice-to-have feature in
my opinion. Next up, we have the SERP Analyzer. Now, this is helpful because let's say you found a
keyword phrase that you're interested in targeting and you want to get some idea of how competitive
it is to rank for. Because the search volume is kind of an indicator but not really because
we already know that broader search terms are naturally harder to rank for.
So what you can do
is choose two or three of those related keyword phrases you found in the keyword research tab and
then run each of them through the SERP analyzer. So for example, here I've looked up the search
term, "what is a good workout routine," and here we get a quick snapshot of what the competition is
like for this keyword. So here we can quickly see how many words the top spots are and what pages
are ranking in the top 10. You can also see how strong a website is overall with this shield score
here and also how well the content is optimized as per Surfer's content score. So by looking at this,
you can quickly get a feel for if this keyword is something you have a shot at ranking for. I really
do love this feature because it can save you so much time when you're doing competitor analysis so
that you can determine exactly which keyword you should target. Having said that – and this kind
of goes back to the keyword research function – I wish there was a little bit more digging we
could do here.
For example, I would love it if you could click on one of those websites and
then see what other keywords they're ranking for. Nevertheless, this is a very handy feature
to have and it can save you a ton of time. Next up we have the content planner, and
this is one of my favorite Surfer features. Say you have a keyword that you really want to
rank for but the competition for it is pretty stiff, you can just pop the search term into the
bar here and create a content planner for it. So for this example, I'll put, "what is a good
workout routine," and click on the summary.
Now look at this, each of these cards is a blog post
idea for a different keyword term. So the idea is you write articles about all these things that
are related to the main topic and over time, Google will see you as an authority on that main
topic, making it easier for you to rank for that term. And you can sort these cards by difficulty
and search intent to figure out which cards you should write blog posts for first. This is such
an awesome feature because it just puts your whole blog content strategy out there in front of you,
and you pretty much never have to worry about what you're going to write about again.
You just
pick one of these cards, create a content editor for it, and off you go. And I'll show you the
content editor in just a second, but next in our list is the audit function. So, here you can
run audits on pages you have published previously and see if there's anything you can do to increase
its rankings in the search. I find this tool is best for those articles that are ranking at the
bottom of page one or on page two. And I don't want to give away all my audits, I give away a
lot of my strategy to you guys but I gotta be a little bit protective of my rankings here. But
here's an audit I ran on a blog post for my niche site about shoes, just so you can see what it
looks like. And here you can see it gives you an overall content score and then it lists a bunch of
ways that you can improve it, from backlinks and internal linking to missing keyword terms and page
structure. So, there's a lot of really valuable information here and the idea is you make little
tweaks to your blog posts using these suggestions and over time, it increases your rankings.
I
also like that it has this refresh button. So, say you make a few changes and you want to see
how it affects things for a couple of weeks and then you come back and you're ready to make
some more changes. You can click the refresh button and it will rerun the report for
you, and it doesn't count as a new audit. I'm on the base plan that gives you 20 audits
a month so it's nice to know that you can run audits on the same page multiple times without
it cutting into that monthly limit. And now for the main course, which is the content editor. This
is really the meat and potatoes of the tool right here, and this is where you're actually going to
plan and write and optimize your content. Once you create a content editor with your keyword, you can
write your blog post or content the same way you would in Google docs, but on the right-hand side
here you've got some special information to help you write the document. So in this tutorial, I
did a few months ago you can see I was writing an article titled, "signs you were gaining muscle.
And there's a gauge at the top for your content score and everything you need to do to get that
gauge into the green zone is outlined for you there, from how many words headings and paragraphs
you need to the actual terms you need to use throughout your article.
Better still, there's an
AI feature that comes up with outline ideas for you and you can just click on them to add them to
your document. Now I will say that a pet peeve of mine is that the AI content that Surfer generates
for you is not fantastic. Surfer's AI is pretty basic, and as a result, I pretty much always end
up rewriting the content. That said, this feature is excellent for outlining your blog post quickly
and figuring out what you want your talking points to be. But once it comes time for actually
writing the content, I will usually copy and paste the outline over to Jasper and let Jasper
do the heavy lifting on the content creation. The good news there is that Jasper actually has
a Surfer integration feature so that you can use Surfer while you're in the Jasper editor. But
overall, Surfer's content editor is hands down the best on-page optimization tool I have ever used.
It leaves no doubt that you've done everything you can possibly do to optimize that content for
Google.
And this is the reason that Surfer is 100% worth investing in. There's one more awesome
feature that Surfer has and it's called Grow Flow. Grow Flow is basically a weekly checklist that
Surfer gives you to streamline your SEO strategy. The checklist consists of around 9-10 items to
do every week. Every week, it will guide you to add missing keywords and internal links to
your existing content, and it'll give you one keyword to write an article about. I think this
is such a cool feature because most of these tasks don't take long to do. And if you spend 15 to
20 minutes every week working on this checklist, you can make great strides on your website
without getting overwhelmed. And as you mark each item off as done, Grow Flow will keep track
of your progress and give you a report showing how many impressions and clicks you've gained since
making those changes. Grow Flow is my favorite thing about Surfer after the content editor, and
the awesome thing about it is you can try Grow Flow for free.
Just check out the referral link
in the description box and you'll get one week of Grow Flow tasks for free. Just make sure that
you're able to give Surfer access to your Google Search Console in order for it to work properly.
Okay, so now for the part of the Surfer SEO review that I know you've been waiting for, and that is
my results. This is why I waited so long to do a review because I wanted to make sure that the tool
actually works and that my early success with it wasn't just a fluke. On the other hand, I don't
want to share all my site numbers and keywords with you to protect myself from "keyword
pirates." But, I will tell you that yes, Surfer SEO works. And I will share with you a
few wins that I've had with it so you know that I'm not just talking through my hat. And keep in
mind that these results are for a small site with relatively low domain authority.
So, exhibit
A is this blog post I wrote with the keyword, "how to reduce the effects of sitting all
day." And actually, I wrote this blog post live about four months ago on February 20th. And
you can see here that I'm ranking on page one. Actually, last week I was in the top three or
top five and I see it dropped a few places, but that's okay. I am really impressed that I'm
able to rank on page one at all because – with health topics especially – you're often competing
against really big high authority sites like Webmd and Mayo Clinic and Mindbodygreen.
My
next example is for an article I wrote at Surfer's suggestion through Grow Flow, and it
was for the keyword, "exercise mat vs yoga mat." This has a search volume of 720 searches per
month and I published it on April 12th. And here you can see I'm on page one a little more
than two months later. And for my last example is a blog post I wrote for the keyword phrase,
"signs you are gaining muscle." This is another one that I wrote live here on YouTube less than
two months ago on April 24th, and not only am I ranking for this keyword which has a search volume
of 390, but I'm also ranking right near the top for "signs of gaining muscle female," which
has a pretty impressive search volume of 3600. Again, this blew me away because usually it takes
me three or four months to get anywhere near page one, and I'm already ranking over Pop Sugar and
Livestrong, which are pretty big sites.
So, that was a lot of information we covered just now and
I know it can be a lot to take in. So, I wanted to summarize the pros and cons for you before we
wrap up this video. So let's start with the cons: First the keyword research and competitor analysis
tools are really handy to have, but they're still relatively rudimentary when compared with other
keyword research tools. As of now, it lacks the ability to do deep competitor analysis. And
second, the AI is great for coming up with outline ideas, but the actual content it generates is
pretty basic and usually not good enough to use. And now for the main pros: The content planner is
so powerful for coming up with a content strategy and never worrying about what you need to write
about next.
The content editor and audit functions are fantastic for on-page SEO; you'll never
doubt again if you've done everything you can to optimize your on-page SEO. Surfer integration with
Jasper makes it even easier to write optimized content quickly. Grow Flow takes all the overwhelm
out of your SEO strategy by giving you weekly, bite-sized tasks. And last but not least, Surfer
is pretty affordable compared to its competitors. For example, the base plan for keyword
research tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush is $99 and $119 dollars per month respectively.
And as for on-page optimization, I would say Surfer's closest competitor is Topic,
which is $99 per month for their base plan. Surfer's base plan is only $59 per month. And if
you already have a Jasper account, you can get your first month of Surfer for just one dollar
by signing up through your Jasper dashboard. So, that was my honest Surfer SEO review.
And I've got to say, when I first signed up for Surfer back in January, I really didn't know
how much I could expect when using it for a small site like mine. But Surfer really came through
for me and I'm so glad that I gave it a chance. I hope you found this review helpful, and again,
if you want to give Surfer a try yourself, you can find my referral link in the description
box.
And if you have any questions about Surfer SEO or anything I talked about in this video,
feel free to leave them in the comments and I'll get back to you. In the meantime, thanks
for watching and I'll see you in my next video..
