Top 9 Best Surfer Seo Alternatives in 2023 – Rank Your Content Fast!

If you’re looking for the best Surfer SEO Alternatives, then you’ve come to the right place. In this article, I will review the 9 best Surfer SEO Alternatives.

Finding the best Surfer SEO alternative is no easy task – it’s an incredible content optimization tool, highly developed, and used by thousands of professional SEOs, bloggers, and organizations since 2017.

Surfer has an SEO tool, content editor, and content brief creator built in. You can quickly create content or optimize existing content (your old stuff…or even, gasp, your FIRST few blog posts…gulp!).

Surfer integrates with WordPress, helps you quickly build a content outline, and makes you a better writer. Updated pricing from May 2023.

That’s tough to beat, but if a contender for you exists, it’s on this list…

My job is to be your disinterested moderator and help condense down the most important factors. We’ve broken this list up based on what each tool is best for, and who it’s best for. In some cases we expand a bit more on what we love (or don’t…). Even our top choice isn’t going to be the best for every single person.

And for those of us who love Surfer (can’t remember…am I not supposed to start a sentence with “and”?), just keep it! Why change what’s working for you?

But what about those who may be seeking an alternative? A cheaper solution? A backup? Maybe you’re an agency, or simply sick of bouncing around to multiple tools. Maybe you want something more feature rich – what if you had an AI writer embedded at no additional cost? All of these options exist, but not in all tools, so let’s take a look and see what works best for you!

What is Surfer SEO and how did it get so popular?

What is Surfer?

Simply put, Surfer SEO is a powerful tool that helps you optimize your website quickly and easily. By analyzing the top websites in your industry, it tells you exactly what they’re doing to rank so you can learn from their success (notice we didn’t say “copy them”!). With Surfer SEO, you can increase your organic traffic (aka: free traffic!), and improve your search engine rankings in no time.

Why do people Use it?

Surfer SEO is the perfect tool for anyone who wants to get an edge in their SEO game. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced SEO pro, Surfer SEO helps you save time and effort with its easy-to-use keyword research, page analysis, content optimization, and rankings tracking features.

Also, it’s been around a long time (relative to the world of content optimization tools anyway…), having launched in 2017.

Life Before surfer

So let’s say you wanted to write a blog post. This is actually pretty intimidating, especially when you’re new to content creation. Once you start to understand the process, and it’s definitely a process, you figure out that if you want to rank you need to understand what Google thinks is important to readers. And to figure that out, it takes a ton of research, time, and oodles of coffee.

A simplified process back in the day looked something like this:

• Research keywords in an SEO tool or Keyword tool like Ahrefs/SE Ranking/Mangools
• Look through the SERPs for what’s working
• Using your unique experience and audience’s interests, write a blog post outline, and a content brief if you’re outsourcing.
• Build your blog post, heading by heading, hoping you’ve included the right keywords, terms, and general content.
• Publish and prey to the google Gods…

So essentially, tools like Surfer handle most of that now. How do you put a price on all that time savings and certainty?

You find your keywords first, and then do most of your remaining research within Surfer. Which is great! It scours the SERPs, and gives you the pages that Google adores the most, helps you build an outline, and suggests the keywords, phrases, and other factors you might include giving your post the best shot at ranking.

Finally, it even includes a score (based on how your article competes.) so you can continue to optimize until you meet or beat the competition – it’s sort of a game!

As you’ll see, many other tools have caught up and look eerily similar!

Even if you’ve used Surfer for years, most of the tools we’ll review in this post have very intuitive controls, and the learning curve would be very quick if you decided to make a change.

Surfer Negatives

• It gives you a TON (too much of a good thing?) of information, which can ultimately be confusing and counter-productive
• In forums, Facebook groups, and SEO-circles, many have suspicions that the algorithm isn’t that accurate, resulting in a fear of less-than-optimal SERP outcomes.
• When compared to other optimizers, the scoring can be wildly different.
• Some reports of glitches that end up erasing work – which could be really painful – but this seems isolated.
• With all of these options – many with generous limits – is the value still there?

Ultimately you CAN’T go wrong with Surfer – it’s the 600lb content optimization gorilla in the room for a reason and when you’re the captain of the ship, you’re going to be challenged!

Let’s get started!

Best Surfer SEO Alternative – Best Overall: Frase

Why did we choose Frase?

Aside from the rave customer reviews, countless rewards, and proven results… this tool is transforming the way content optimization is done. With its cutting-edge AI technology, Frase enables users to easily optimize content for SEO and other popular metrics. In the end, it’s just simply the best overall option for most people.

As the world grapples with the prospect of how AI writing will affect bloggers – does google go after AI writing, or embrace it? I scoured the web, and have seen numerous mentions in the forums about Frase, when combined with the right direction, isn’t currently being detected. Take that for what it’s worth, but it’s a factor in the mind of many.

Google has said it’s mostly interested in ranking content that’s actually helpful to readers, and how it’s generated isn’t really a factor.

Frase helps marketers maximize their content’s visibility and engagement potential, giving them the power to reach their target audience more effectively—all with just a few clicks.

It does its job very well, and its overall purpose can be broken down into four key areas:

Research, Write, Optimize, and Analyze.

Research

I use Frase to quickly generate research-backed content briefs that are optimized for search engine success. It condenses the web’s top topics and ideas into one comprehensive panel.

In no time at all, make full briefs with remarkable keywords, headers, and concepts; store your favorite templates to make repeat work easier; and use the Outline Builder for a hassle-free outline process. What if you could reap the benefits of having all of your content optimized right now?

Write (AI)

Create captivating, SEO-optimized content with ease by clicking a button. Although, I can’t recommend using AI to 100% write your blogs…it just isn’t there yet, it’s something Google is watching out for (probably…), and honestly, AI writing is boring.

But AI does help you eliminate writer’s block, construct outlines, blog openers, product descriptions, FAQs and more automatically. It’s not all bad.

Click “Write for Me” to start your sentences and compose entire new passages automatically.
Harness AI templates to produce consistent output such as blog beginnings, effective copywriting patterns, questions and answers, headers, and beyond. Enhance the fluency of what you write by leveraging automated passage paraphrasing and rewriting. Compose eloquently by nailing the right tone or style.

Optimize

Next, optimize to boost your content’s relevance and authority by including the right keywords in the right places.

Frase’s intuitive text editor creates content that is optimized for search engine rankings. With its helpful list of related topics, as well as suggested mentions for each, you can write like a professional and craft articles that Google will love.

Use the topic model to identify the keywords you should feature in your work, and compare them to those used by your competitors so that your writing stands out. Make sure that your content is relevant and authoritative through the utilization of the right words in the right places. With Frase’s guidance, you can boost the visibility of your article with ease.

Analyze

A dashboard that automatically identifies and categorizes your best content opportunities. Frase uses your Google Search Console data to serve up actionable insights about what you should work on next.

Identify pages that are starting to slip in the rankings and may need to be refreshed

Identify high-growing opportunity keywords you are not ranking for yet

What makes Frase the Best Surfer SEO Alternative?

This tool provides content optimization that, in some cases, goes beyond what Surfer SEO has to offer. Their AI-driven platform gives you detailed insights into how to optimize, write and publish content that engages users and ranks higher in search engine results pages. With automated features such as keyword suggestion and readability analysis, it makes content optimization faster and easier than ever before.

From a pricing perspective, the second tier ($45) for Frase is similar to the base tier at Surfer ($49). However, you get 30 articles per month at Frase, vs 10 with Surfer. And if you add on the pro pack, you get unlimited OpenAi (Chat GPT-3) powered AI writing, and significantly enhanced SEO features.

Take a look at the pricing here.

Support & Customer Service

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to be taken care of. Frase is amazing at being accessible to their customers. Like any good tech company, they’ve also done a great job with creating tons of online videos, resources, and educational assets – so you never stay stuck for long, but if you need them they’re there.

Check out this awesome little deep dive they put together: Click Here or…

Quick intro video for the non-commital :):

We partnered with Frase to bring you an incredible introductory deal. Click the link below, get a $1 trial (for 5 days), and then 60% off your first month’s subscription!

Best Surfer SEO Alternative – Best Up and Comer: NeuronWriter

Why we Chose NeuronWriter as our Primary Optimization Tool

I was initially drawn to NW because it was on lifetime deal on Appsumo. Immediately, I realized it looked very similar to Surfer, and as I dug in it was striking that the founder, Pawel, was so active and involved in the feedback process for improvements and roadmap requests.

Pawel’s background is heavily focused on SEO, and he is actively involved in the community, keeping a close watch on how Google’s next move may affect SEO outcomes. The team at NW has been incredibly focused on this and dialed NW into the idea of search intent, E-E-A-T, and semantic/topical authority.

We kept a close eye on Neuronwriter, and bought into the tool when we were convinced that their team was implementing things quickly, and according to their brand of “not just stuffing keywords, but building topical authority driven by user intent.”.

We highly recommend Neuronwriter, have seen positive results, and believe the future is bright for this technology. It is now our primary tool, and we aren’t looking back!

Who is it best for?

Admittedly, NW wasn’t the most user-friendly tool when it first launched, but it continues to streamline and improve the UI. I began using it full-time in Sept 2022 and was a little lost at first. It’s since become a very easy tool to understand, and the NW team’s focus moving forward is to match the UX of leading tools like Surfer.

It’s well-suited for anyone who has at least some exposure to the world of SEO. For anyone who’s struggling, they have put together a significant amount of resources on youtube, and embedded them into the web app – now in the form of a beginner’s certification.

Pricing

You’ll notice two things: pricing is based in Euros on their website – don’t worry, they use Stripe, can be trusted, and so you won’t have any trouble getting started.

Next, you might notice the limits are generous and allow you to do some serious work – even at the base tier with 25 monthly content analyses:

Best Surfer SEO Alternative – Best All-in-One Solution: GrowthBar

Who is growthBar best for?

We peg Growthbar as an ideal tool for:

• Beginners to experts, but especially beginners who’re new to content creation. It’s a great value and includes everything you’ll need to write a great blog post. And for experts, you can use this great suite of tools to quickly identify promising keywords and begin drafting a solid outline.
• Internal corporate/business content creators.
• Small Business man or woman who wear many hats and need to optimize or update a lot of content quickly.
• Anyone who might have access to additional keyword data.

Impressive list of Logos amassed on GrowthBar’s website, and a ringing endorsement!

Considerations when using GrowthBar – Keyword Research

Growthbar partners with Spyfu for their keyword research, which is great but not based on a massive keyword database so there are limitations! Since the entire journey starts with a keyword, and significant care goes into identifying keywords, we recommend using an additional source to at least verify your findings. We use SERanking, and really like it. Here is a non-exhaustive list of options:

• Best overall Keyword Research choice for us was SERanking (Starts around $30/month)
• 600lb Gorilla in the room: Ahrefs (Starts at $99/month)
• Mangools (Similar to SERanking, comprehensive, and affordable – starts around $40)
• SemRush is another very popular comprehensive tool (starts at around $99/month)

Pricing

Growthbar offers a 5 day trial no matter which option you pick, but there are three. We recommend “Standard” of course!

Currently, you get 50% off Growthbar, so move quick.

Growthbar Pricing

Best Surfer SEO Alternative – Best New Product To Replace them All

Who is Content at Scale best for?

• Bloggers who need to ramp up posting fast, or rework existing posts in volume.
• Bloggers who outsource their content production or want to!
• Affiliate bloggers, especially those who run multiple blogs.
• Professional content creators and agencies.
• New bloggers who have a moderate amount of money to invest.
• People who really understand how to do proper keyword research.

Considerations when using Content at Scale

You want to be sure that you’re giving the tool well research keywords because it will write based on whatever you give it – so it’s only expensive if you waste your credits. You are using a new tool, so be flexible and communicate often with the support team as they seem very flexible and ready to help.

Make sure you’re using a good keyword research tool. Again:

• The best overall Keyword Research choice for us was SERanking (Starts around $30/month)
• 600lb Gorilla in the room: Ahrefs (Starts at $99/month)
• Mangools (Similar to SERanking, comprehensive, and affordable – starts around $40)
• SemRush is another very popular comprehensive tool (starts at around $99/month)

Pricing

There are currently three plans:

Don’t forget to use my code for a 20% bonus on your monthly blogpost credits! As an example, the starter plan will be increased from 20 posts to 24

Best Surfer SEO Alternative – Hidden Gem 1: ContentPace

Why we use ContentPace

We are not professional SEOs at DolanMoore.Com, so we need tools that don’t distract us from creating content for our audience. We were blown away at the cleanliness of the ContentPace dashboard, editor, and audit tools when first trialing the software.

Assuming it must be a tradeoff, “oh, this thing can’t work too well!”, we shelved it for a bit – but when we started comparing the outputs to other tools, we were amazed by how similar it was.

It fills a gap left by some of the other tools: a clean UI that gives very digestible tips (rankings 1-10 had 22 pictures, 2400-3200 words, etc), and easily exportable content briefs. All at a great price! Had to be a catch, right? So far…no catch.

Content Briefs – Outsource Much?

If you wanted to outsource your writing, you’d want a way to make sure it was written in a way that’s up to your standards, right? A way to avoid a bunch of nicknackpattywhack, right?

ContentPace makes that super easy with downloadable briefs, or links to online access. Below you can see the output from the clickable link, but the downloadable XLS report goes even deeper into the weeds for your content team!

For now, we highly recommend ContentPace. That may change in the future, but we’ll only be out $69 if it does!

Pick an option below – as a beginner it’s hard to go wrong either way with ContentPace!

Best Surfer SEO Alternative – hidden Gem 2: DashWord

Why we like it: Usability!

Take a look below at how Surfer gets things started when you open up a query. It’s so much information it makes your head spin:

Now, take a look at how WordDash handles the same task. As you can see, things immediately become less daunting! We love this and think most people will. In fact, this reminds us of ContentPace, but with Ahrefs providing keyword data, something ContentPace doesn’t offer. But unlike ContentPace, WordDash doesn’t have a lifetime deal and isn’t nearly as generous in their limits.

What We Like the most about WordDash

• Keywords powered by Ahrefs
• Clean interface
• NLP technology has been honed down to give you only the semantically important information you need to include and rank.

This product is especially unique because it does two really important things well: first, the keywords are piped in directly from Ahrefs. Secondly, its clean NLP editor optimizes your writing very well.

If you were to compare it with GrowthBar, it doesn’t have an AI writer embedded. But frankly, we don’t care! WordDash is not pretending to be an all-in-one blogging tool, it’s a highly refined NLP content optimization tool that has a premier keyword tool built in. As far as we’re concerned…that’s enough!

Who is WordDash for?

It’s so simple to use, anyone with some experience can use it. However, we believe moderately experienced bloggers will be most at home and make the most of it.

Additionally, the pricing model is not screaming “we’re the cheapest in town!”. This is a premium tool, and even though it has an introductory tier, it’s really positioned for bloggers who are disenchanted with the complicated nature of Surfer, who outsource their work, and also; content teams.

Well done, WordDash!

Surfer SEO Alternative – Best for Teams & Agencies: ContentHarmony

Who ContentHarmony Is For

We appreciate the fact that CH is fairly straight forward about who it’s for. We don’t use this tool, but it has plenty of fans. If you’re a content creation agency that outsources work, or a backlink agency, this may be the perfect tool to take your business to the next level.

What we like

The interface is super clean and does a great job focusing on the process of content creation. Check out this video:

Additionally, the keyword tool distill down the difficulty of ranking for the keyword you’ve selected in a very familiar way using MOZ on the backend:

Final Thoughts

We recommend this product for teams and agencies first and foremost. But feel free to check out the website and sign up for the 10 for $10 promo if you think this may be a fit.

Surfer SEO Alternative – Best for Large Teams & Corporate Content Managers: ClearScope

Surfer SEO Alternative – Best Legacy Tool for Updating Posts: PageOptimizer Pro

Who is POP for?

PageOptimizer pro is a very well-known tool and may be especially well-suited for beginners or anyone looking for a simple tool that gets the job done.

Pricing

There are three tiers available for single users, and other plans for agencies if that’s better for your needs.

With all the great reviews and endorsements, I recommend giving POP a try! You get a free 7-day trial.

And don’t forget: use my link below and get an additional 5 credits added to your account if you move forward with POP!

Conclusion

There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to content optimization tools. Depending on your content strategy and goals, you will need to select the best tool for your needs. We have listed some of the top content optimization tools that experts are recommending for 2023. All of the tools offer powerful features to help you optimize your content and maximize reach and engagement. Take the time to research and choose the best tool for your needs and objectives — you’ll thank yourself later