Best SurferSEO Features for Writing Success
The editor also suggests the number of words, headings, paragraphs, and images to fully optimize your content based on the competition on the web.
Highlights
Easy Topic Ideas: Effortlessly turn ideas into captivating topics.
Competitor Insights: Peek into competitors' top keywords and strategies.
Optimized Writing: Enhance content with smart keyword and structure recommendations.
For the longest time, I refused to give in to the modern tools that promised to make my writing process easier. If you’re old school like me, you might face the same wordsmith’s inner battle, terrified that your talent would be stained with technology.
While I still feel strongly about preserving the human factor in writing and not letting AI take over this niche, I’ll admit that certain tricks along the way turned out to be lifesavers. SurferSEO is one of those tools that will help you get a stronger grasp of the SEO aspect of your writing, while still preserving full control over your creativity.
Instead of focusing on theory, I decided to lead by example and show you exactly what features converted me into an SEO tools fan–so let’s get right into it.
Topic Explorer
Having an idea but struggling to transform it into a captivating topic must be one of the biggest challenges every writer faces. SurferSEO’s Topic Explorer offers assistance in the early stage of the process–whether you have your mind set on the main keyword, or you need suggestions.
Domain Map–an excellent tool that will give you a detailed overview of the organic performance, while showing the search volumes and positions for the top keywords; in a nutshell: a sneak peak into competitor’s SEO strategy
Topical Map–a feature that will create maps of related topics and content ideas based on topical relevance; an excellent hack in building topical authority and optimized content strategy
Keyword Research–my personal favorite, this feature offers insight into search volumes of keywords you want to target, as well as their trends and variations to help you decide whether the keyword you’re going after is worth your time, or you should take a different approach
Generating an Outline
Once I’ve found the topic or the keyword I want to focus on, I will go into the Content Editor to start my piece. However, before the actual writing part, SurferSEO prompts you to enter the main keyword, as well as additional important keywords to shape and optimize your article.
Based on this information, the Content Editor will create not only a list of keywords to implement into your work, but numerous other valuable recommendations to fully optimize your content.
Writing Optimized Content
The SurferSEO Content Editor is, without a doubt, the most useful feature this tool offers. The menu on the right, under the Guidelines tab, will offer the list of keywords, and suggest the number of times each keyword should be implemented.
The editor also suggests the number of words, headings, paragraphs, and images to fully optimize your content based on the competition on the web. If you’re unsure how to implement a certain keyword, a click on the keyword will show you instances of these keywords in other articles, so you can get a better idea.
The Outline tab provides a list of questions to answer and headings to use in your article. The Brief tab on the right offers a list of the top five competitors on Google for the given topic if you prefer to skim their content manually.
In my writing process, I like to choose the Insert Outline option in the editor and get a rough structure, supported by bullet points.
As you can see, simply adding the suggested outline bumped up the content score to 48. What I will do next is go in and edit the structure, being mindful of the suggested keywords. The outline gives me an idea of the headings I could use and the points I could touch on, but I never fully rely on AI-generated content.
In my work, I will only use AI as a tool to generate ideas and improve my work, whereas I’ll keep all my content original–and this is a requirement for the majority of clients I’ve worked with.
Throughout the piece, I will try to add as many suggested keywords as I can. However, in this optimization process, I aim for maximum readability and factual correctness; and I will never sacrifice the natural flow of the article for the sake of SEO. Therefore, the key takeaway here would be to view the SurferSEO guidelines as precisely that–guidelines, not requirements.
User Experience and Integration
Finally, SurferSEO represents an excellent addition to every writer’s strategy, as it is compatible with platforms such as Google Docs and WordPress. You can also easily export the SurferSEO data to implement in your SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner analysis.
The simple interface makes the tool easy to use, even for beginners. I especially appreciate the Notes section which allows me to create reminders for myself, or my client to leave important notes before I start writing.
Final Thoughts
Is SurferSEO an absolute must in your writing process? No–especially if you don’t have to worry about the SEO portion of content writing. Will it simplify the process, aid with the structure, and provide excellent SEO recommendations? Absolutely. I found it shortened my structure preparation time, helped with topic research, and made me more confident in how optimized my work is.