Surfer SEO and Semrush are different tools with complementary features; comparing the two is something of a moot topic.
With Surfer’s integrated keyword research, competitor analysis, and real-time feedback, users can easily create SEO-friendly material.
In contrast, Semrush is an all-inclusive SEO suite that provides a wide variety of SEO tools, keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink monitoring and analysis, and more.
Because, in a perfect world, you’d be using both programs concurrently, it could be more useful to make a straight comparison between them. Examining the similarities and contrasts between the two is the best way to learn about their capabilities.
In a word, if you want to supercharge your SEO approach and boost your website’s rating, you should think about combining Surfer SEO and Semrush as complementary programs.
Surfer SEO vs Semrush Overview
The primary difference between Semrush and Surfer SEO is the breadth and depth of Semrush capabilities and tools. With Semrush, you can access over 40 features and tools for on-page and off-page SEO (including social media marketing, for example). On the other hand, Surfer SEO is limited to on-page optimization.
However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give Surfer SEO a go. To offer you with important competitive data, Surfer SEO analyzes a website utilizing 500+ ranking signals. This platform also provides one of the greatest tools to optimizing content.
You should prioritize your requirements over considerations regarding features and tools. When Semrush’s extensive suite of features is too much, I find Surfer SEO as the best option. However, for more seasoned SEO specialists, Surfer SEO’s features may appear lacking.
Key Features of Semrush vs Surfer SEO
Features of Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO has a lot of benefits thanks to its many useful features. Everything you need, including keywords, analyses, and optimization indications, is conveniently located on the right side of your screen.
Surfer SEO analyzes over 500 ranking factors to compare yourself to the best-ranked competition. Then, it will highlight areas in which your content quality falls short in comparison to the competitor and provide you with excellent resources to improve in that area.
Surfer SEO always displays keywords and a content ranking score on the right side of the screen. The confidence in and accuracy of the content rating are both very high.
If you want your content to rank higher, you need to employ appropriate keywords in the appropriate place. In addition to using the right number of headings and paragraphs, you should also include images that are optimized for search engines.
Keyword research tool
Search engine optimization depends mainly on keyword research. If you don’t do keyword research, no one will find your page, as it won’t rank well in Google.
Surfer SEO is a great optimizing tool, because it gives you the best choice of keywords and phrases to implement in your writing.
With the help of Surfer SEO’s SEO keyword research, you can find the best phrases to employ to reach your target market.
As a result of the tool’s monthly study and comparisons with the competition, a small number of useful and related keywords are generated.Â
The Surfer SEO’s output can be exported to Excel for a more structured view.
It also displays frequently asked questions (FAQs) that are relevant to the specified keywords.
Content EditorÂ
Before publishing updated content, Surfer SEO examines all authoritative websites. By doing so, you’ll be able to outrank the competition and provide users with superior answers, information, and direction.
Using the Surfer SEO content editor, you can improve your writing on any subject by giving each paragraph the same amount of text, evenly scattering keywords, and making the most of your heading content.
You have to select and give a target keyword phrase to the content editor to compile a list of related keywords and phrases for your usage. Where do we go from here? A better position on Google!
SERP Analyzer
Ranking highly in search engine result pages (SERPs) requires detailed analysis of your competition. You will learn enough about the competition and gain perspective on what’s most important as you move forward with optimizing your own content.
Such characteristics can range from inbound links and word count to Natural Language Processing (NLP) analysis and beyond.
Features of Semrush
While both Semrush and Surfer SEO offer several useful features, Semrush has a few that are unique.Â
Included in this set of options are a market explorer, a position tracker, and a domain overview tool.Â
In addition, Semrush can show you precisely what to revise so that you get more visitors to your site and sales leads.
The distinguishing characteristics of the Semrush are listed and defined below.
Domain overview tool
This is a highly integrated Semrush feature. You can check out the metrics for not only your website but also your competitors. You’ll learn more about your present procedures and objectives, and you’ll be able to pinpoint the keywords that bring in the most visitors.
You’ll need to input your root domain to use the feature, after which all relevant data will be displayed for evaluation. In addition to analyzing important factors like the quantity of backlinks and paid organic keyword resources, this function may tell you how much traffic you would get if you use paid search.
Position tracking
To monitor the keyword performance, you have to make sure to include the keywords you’ve identified as priorities for your site’s ranking to the tool.
You may track the rise or fall in rank of certain keywords for both you and your competitors with weekly filtering updates.
The geo-targeting tool of this feature is the most important addition, because it allows you to calculate your success on the local search engine.
Service region options include selecting a certain country, state, or even a specific zip code, among others. You can also improve your site’s overall success and scalability by holding live SEO workshops, which is possible by position tracking.
Traffic analysis
Assessing website traffic is crucial once you have determined which search terms have brought visitors to your site. As a result, you should always track the IP addresses and geographic locations of your website visitors.
You can get a good idea of how many visitors you had over a given time period with the help of Semrush’s traffic analysis tool. The following are the additional metrics and statistics:
- A user’s bounce rate
- Traffic referral source
- Pageviews
- Average time spent on a website and more can be gleaned from these metrics
Market explorer feature
By using the market explorer tool, you can obtain a competitive advantage in the market and see what others don’t see.Â
To achieve this, you have to simply fill the name of the industry, and Semrush will provide a list of competitors that have been searched and are relevant to your sector.
To further your competitive advantage in the market, the market explorer will also direct you to honest business role models and present a list of suggestions.
Find out how the competition attracts more visitors than you do, how they do it, and what kind of people make up their audiences.
Keyword research
Find out which search terms perform best for SEO.
- Find out which search terms to use in your pay-per-click ads.
- Find out what your intended audience is looking for.
- Discover suggested long-tail alternatives to your seed keywords.
- Find other potential keyword phrases to use.
- Make a list of relevant keywords to organize your thoughts.
- Find out the monthly search volume, amount of difficulty, and level of competitiveness for targeted keywords.
The results of your keyword research will tell you which keywords and subjects are most important in the near and far future. The above-mentioned are twelve proven methods for conducting keyword research that you can start using immediately.
Surfer SEO vs Semrush: Pros and Cons
Surfer SEO Pros and Cons
Pros
- The design of the interface is simple to use.
- It has the flexibility to conduct keyword analysis based on your own unique charts and comparisons of data.
- Surfer SEO is one of the best resources to enhance the performance of already-published content in search engine results.Â
- Keyword and content optimization are both available through Surfer. You’ll need to invest in an additional platform, such as Clearscope or MarketMuse, if you want to edit content for your keywords.Â
- The free Chrome add-on is highly recommended.
- Grow Flow is just one of many recent, useful additions.
- Consistency with other popular programs like Google Docs and Jasper.
Cons
- For their most basic monthly plan, you only get 30 content editor credits, which can be used up very quickly.
- The content editor and the content audit function outperform the keyword research tool. Â
- Their suggested internal links aren’t always useful.
Semrush Pros and Cons
Pros
- You can use the backlink gap and the keyword gap to check if your plan is covering all the relevant business keywords and off-page sources.
- Use the SEO material template to quickly and easily produce high-quality material that takes all SEO considerations into account.
- If you want to group all your campaigns’ keywords together, Keyword Magic Tool is the way to go. This capability is exclusive in this tool.
- You can see how the market has been trending by looking at domain history. Therefore, it prevents you from investing when the time is not optimal.
- It helps you identify hazardous backlinks by comparing them to competitors’.
- SEO can benefit greatly from position tracking.
- It has tools for analyzing the competition, which might shed light on where you excel and where you need improvement.
- Semrush is the best tool for measuring featured snippets.
Cons
- The Keywords Difficulty tool shouldn’t be relied upon.
- The prices are a little high when compared to the market average.
- The user interface isn’t always the most streamlined or straightforward.
- When conducting competition research, crawls aren’t always fruitful.
- Getting started might be difficult, and there are a lot of settings to get your head around.
Surfer SEO vs Semrush: Pricing Plans
Surfer SEO Pricing Plans
Surfer SEO has three different price plans:
Basic plan: $59 per month
Content editor with 10 articles per month
20 SEO audits per month
Keyword research for SEO
NLP-enhanced rules
Grow Flow (to get weekly SEO tips and to optimize and keep track of 2 websites)
Pro plan: $119 per month
Content editor with 30 articles per month
60 SEO audits per month
Keyword research for SEO
NLP-enhanced rules
Grow Flow (to get weekly SEO tips and to optimize and keep track of 5 websites)
Business plan: $239 a month
Content editor with 70 articles per month
140 SEO audits per month
Keyword research for SEO
NLP-enhanced rules
Grow Flow (to get weekly SEO tips and to optimize and keep track of 10 websites)
Semrush Pricing Plans
Semrush also has three different price plans:
Pro plan: $119.95 per month
Add up to 5 projects
500 keyword searches per day bring up to 10,000 hits
Analyses of keywords, domains, and backlinks
Mobile rankings
Guru plan: $229.95 per month
Up to 15 projects
Each report has 30k hits from 1500 keyword searches
Analyses of keywords, domains, and backlinks
Mobile rankings
Content business platform
Business plan: $449.95 per month
Up to 40 projects
5,000 searches per day for keywords (50,000 hits per report)
Analyses of keywords, domains, and backlinks
Mobile rankings
Content business platform
Measure of Share of Voice
Integration with Looker Studio
Access to API
Conclusion
Based on the results of my search, Surfer SEO and Semrush are both great SEO tools that offer different ways to improve your website’s ranking and get more people to visit it.
The best tool for you may depend on the type of website you have and what you want to do with it. Surfer SEO has a market explorer, domain analysis, and an SEO writing helper, while Semrush has keyword research, site auditing, and backlink analysis.
In the end, it’s best to try out both tools and see which one fits your needs best.
