The Best Surfer SEO Alternatives in 2024

Surfer SEO is widely regarded as one of the original NLP optimization tools in the market, offering valuable insights to help users optimize content for better search engine rankings. It has earned its place as a powerful tool in the SEO landscape, with data-driven suggestions that have made it a favorite among content marketers and SEO professionals.

However, it does have some notable limitations. One common issue is that some of its recommendations, particularly around internal linking, can be irrelevant. While these suggestions are generally more accurate than many other tools, there is still room for improvement. 

Plus, the high cost of its AI writer, which is offered as an expensive add-on makes it less competitive compared to other AI writing tools on the market. Additionally, Surfer’s core plans come with steep pricing and restrictive usage allowances, which may be prohibitive for smaller teams or businesses. 

Furthermore, Surfer's inconsistent approach to offering a free trial—sometimes offering a money-back guarantee instead—can create uncertainty for potential users who want to test the platform before committing.

Given these factors, there are several alternatives that offer greater flexibility, affordability, and functionality, making them better suited to different use cases and business needs.

1. AirOps

AirOps is a tool designed to streamline operations by integrating AI into various business workflows. It strongly emphasizes SEO and content optimization. By leveraging over 40 AI models, AirOps aims to provide a solution that adapts to its users' unique challenges and requirements, focusing on delivering measurable growth through organic search traffic optimization.

At its core, AirOps facilitates creating, managing, and optimizing AI-driven growth workflows. This makes it an invaluable asset for marketing teams, SEO content creators, and e-commerce managers.

AirOps vs. SurferSEO: How Do They Compare?

If you’re a former SurferSEO user, here’s what differences you can expect once you switch over to AirOps.

• Customization and Control: AirOps can help entry level users with ready-made AI workflows and growth templates tailored for specific scenarios. However, if you’re looking to personalize your workflow, AirOps offers granular control over AI processes through customizable workflows, unlike SurferSEO's more predefined approach.
• Data Integration: AirOps integrates first-party data and third-party market signals for a tailored SEO strategy. With AirOps, you can combine what you know and what the market says to create a comprehensive SEO strategy. SurferSEO only focuses on content optimization based on SERP analysis.
• Tool Ecosystem: Apart from content creative and SEO data, AirOps provides a broader toolset, including content creation, optimization, e-commerce listings, custom AI workflows, Growth templates, and content strategy tools. Meanwhile, SurferSEO solely focuses on NLP optimization and AI content creation.
• Optimization Suggestions: AirOps’ AI uses best SEO practices, user engagement practices, and competitor analysis to optimize your existing content. SurferSEO only uses NLP optimization. The effectiveness of NLP optimization has been under heavy scrutiny since the inception of the platform.

AirOps Features and Benefits

With AirOps, you’re getting a well-rounded suite of features to help any business that’s looking to upscale with AI. Here are the primary features of AirOps that make it a powerhouse in the AI industry.

Content Strategy Solutions

AirOps offers a comprehensive content strategy solution that helps businesses uncover high-potential content opportunities. Using AI-driven insights, it analyzes brand data and industry trends to reveal topics and keywords that competitors may overlook. 

This feature allows businesses to prioritize content that is not only relevant but also likely to perform well, enhancing their SEO efforts. By focusing on low-competition, high-value keywords and programmatic SEO strategies, businesses can invest confidently in content that will boost traffic, conversions, and revenue. 

AirOps' content strategy capabilities help businesses create impactful content by balancing difficulty and potential, optimizing their strategy to deliver maximum ROI.

Content Creation and Optimization

AirOps combines content creation and optimization to help businesses produce high-quality, SEO-driven content that resonates with their audience. By leveraging AI, it automates the creation of human-centered content while maintaining brand consistency at scale. 

The tool allows companies to blend first-party and third-party data, ensuring content is always fresh and original. AirOps also optimizes content for search engines, enhancing organic visibility by implementing custom SEO strategies. Businesses can produce on-brand content quickly, dominate keyword rankings, and drive consistent traffic growth. 

With the ability to automate technical SEO tasks and generate visuals, AirOps offers a comprehensive solution for efficient content creation and optimization.

Knowledge Bases

AirOps' Knowledge Bases feature enables businesses to centralize their brand expertise, transforming it into a valuable marketing asset. By connecting brand data to large language models (LLMs), companies can generate content that reflects their unique voice and perspective. 

This tool ensures consistent messaging across all channels, making AI-generated content sound like a genuine member of the team. It also supports repurposing content across multiple platforms, helping businesses scale their content efforts without sacrificing quality. 

With semantic search capabilities and integration with first-party and third-party data, AirOps Knowledge Bases help businesses maintain a strong, cohesive brand presence.

Workflows

AirOps Workflows offer a powerful tool for automating growth strategies and content creation processes. With over 40 AI models and customizable brand assets, businesses can build precise workflows that execute ambitious marketing ideas with minimal manual effort. 

The drag-and-drop interface allows users to create AI-powered workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and scale content across various channels. Whether deploying SEO strategies, generating content, or automating web scraping for real-time market insights, AirOps Workflows empower businesses to focus on innovation and growth. 

Integrations

AirOps Integrations provide seamless connectivity between business tools, enabling smooth content creation, data management, and workflow automation. It connects popular CMS platforms like Webflow, Contentful, and Shopify, allowing businesses to import, enrich, and publish content effortlessly. 

The platform also integrates with SEO tools like Semrush for keyword analysis and premium sources like Getty and Unsplash for visuals. By leveraging multiple AI models and bringing custom data into workflows, businesses can optimize their operations and streamline content management. 

AirOps helps companies improve their marketing strategies by connecting essential tools and enabling efficient collaboration across teams.

AirOps Pricing

Our pricing plans are structured to support businesses at every stage of growth, from startups to established enterprises.

• Starter: $0/month for 1,000 tasks per month
• Starter (Paid): $199 per month for 10,000 tasks per month
• Scale: Custom pricing meant to scale content operations
• Agency: Custom pricing meant for enterprises with a large number of users. Support unlimited users.

Want to see what AirOps can do for your business? Start building today and boost your growth AirOps.

2. SE Ranking

SE Ranking is an all-encompassing SEO software that serves a broad purpose from keyword research to competitor analysis and website audit. It is designed for SEO professionals, digital agencies, and business owners who aim to enhance their online visibility and track their SEO progress. 

SE Ranking Features and Benefits

SE Ranking offers a suite of tools to streamline your SEO efforts across various fronts.

Rank Tracker

This tool allows you to track your website's search engine rankings for specific keywords. It provides accurate and up-to-date ranking information, helping you gauge your SEO success.

Track keyword rankings across different search engines and locations to see how well your pages perform.

Competitor Analysis

With the Competitor Analysis tool, you can delve into your competitors' SEO strategies to discover what works for them. This feature provides insights into their keyword rankings, backlink profiles, and other crucial SEO metrics.

Understanding your competition's strategy can help you craft a more effective SEO plan to outrank them.

Content Editor

The Content Editor tool offers guidance on creating SEO-friendly content that can rank higher on SERPs. It suggests keyword usage, content structure, and other elements critical for SEO.

Creating optimized content becomes streamlined, ensuring your pages have the best chance to rank well for your target keywords.

SE Ranking Pricing

SE Ranking's pricing structure caters to a variety of users, from individual SEO professionals to large agencies and enterprises, offering flexibility to choose based on the scale of SEO efforts and the business size.

• Essential Plan: $65/month
• Pro Plan: $119/month
• Business Plan: $259/month

3. Clearscope

Clearscope is a comprehensive content optimization platform for content marketers and SEO professionals. The tool enhances content relevance to meet search engine criteria, thus improving organic visibility. Clearscope utilizes advanced algorithms to provide actionable insights, making it simpler for writers and marketers to produce content that ranks.

Clearscope Features and Benefits

Clearscope offers a range of features designed to streamline the content optimization process, ensuring your content is both reader-friendly and SEO-compliant.

Competitor Map

This feature allows users to visualize their content's performance relative to competitors. It highlights the content grade and organic ranking position of your and your competitors' content, offering strategic insights.

Seeing where your content stands among competitors helps you identify areas for improvement and opportunity within your SEO strategy.

Content Outlines

Clearscope generates detailed content outlines based on the content organization of SERP competitors. This feature simplifies the process of structuring your articles in a way that's favored by search engines.

A structured outline based on successful competitor content can drastically reduce the time needed to plan and create new articles.

Semantic Grouping of Terms

The tool's ability to semantically group related terms helps in organizing content more logically. This improves readability for users and aligns with how search engines understand and rank content.

By focusing on semantic relevance, Clearscope ensures that your content covers a topic comprehensively, which can lead to better rankings.

Clearscope Pricing

Clearscope offers three main pricing tiers, each with a unique set of features, to cater to various business sizes and content production volumes.

• Essentials Plan: $189/month
• Business Plan: $399/month
• Enterprise Plan: Custom Pricing

4. Frase

Frase is a cutting-edge content optimization platform that employs AI to aid content creators in developing SEO-optimized content from keyword research to final article. Frase streamlines the content creation process, making it faster and more efficient to produce content that ranks well on search engines.

Frase Features and Benefits

Frase offers a suite of tools designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of content creation and SEO strategy.

Research and Analysis

Frase analyzes top search results and extracts valuable insights, allowing users to understand what makes content successful. This feature simplifies the research process by aggregating and summarizing the information you need to create competitive content.

With this, content creators can easily identify gaps in their content strategy and adjust their approach accordingly.

AI Writing Assistant

The AI Writing Assistant in Frase helps draft content that is both reader-friendly and optimized for search engines. It assists in generating introductions, headings, FAQs, and more, streamlining the writing process.

This feature encourages productivity and creativity, ensuring that content meets SEO standards and effectively engages the audience.

Content Optimization

Frase provides real-time optimization suggestions, including keyword usage and content structure, to ensure your content aligns with SEO best practices. The platform offers actionable insights to improve content quality and search engine visibility.

Optimizing content with Frase leads to higher rankings and increased organic traffic, making it a valuable tool for marketers and SEO professionals.

Frase Pricing

Frase's pricing structure offers options for individuals and teams of various sizes, each with access to a core set of features and additional capabilities tailored to their needs.

• Free Trial: $0/month
• Solo: $15/month 
• Basic: $45/month
• Team: $115/month

5. MarketMuse

MarketMuse is an AI-driven content planning and optimization platform that enhances content quality, relevance, and SEO performance. By leveraging advanced AI technology, MarketMuse provides actionable insights, enabling content marketers and SEO professionals to create content that resonates with their target audience and ranks well in search engine results.  

MarketMuse Features and Benefits

MarketMuse stands out with its unique approach to content optimization. It combines AI with deep learning and data analytics to offer comprehensive support throughout the content creation process.

On-Demand Inventory

This technology offers a deep understanding of your site's content landscape. It helps identify strengths and weaknesses across your content inventory.

Identifying gaps and strengths in your content allows for strategic improvements and better content planning.

Personalized Metrics

MarketMuse provides insights into how challenging it will be for your site to rank for specific keywords, considering your site's unique competitive landscape.

These metrics help tailor your content strategy to your specific needs, offering a more personalized approach to SEO.

Topic Authority

The platform's unique Topic Authority metric helps you understand your positioning as a subject matter expert. This insight is crucial for developing content that establishes your domain's authority.

Understanding your Topic Authority can guide the creation of content that enhances your expertise and credibility in your field.

MarketMuse Pricing

MarketMuse offers diverse pricing plans tailored to individual content creators, SEO professionals, and large teams or agencies. It focuses on providing scalable solutions for content optimization.

• Free Plan: $0/month
• Optimize Plan: $99/month

• Research Plan: $249/month
• Strategy Plan: $499/month

6. Content Harmony

Content Harmony is a content marketing tool that streamlines the workflow from keyword research to content creation and optimization. It combines AI and competitor data to help teams build better content in half the time.  

Content Harmony Features and Benefits

Content Harmony introduces a suite of features to enhance content marketing efforts with efficiency and data-driven insights.

Analyze Search Intent

Content Harmony analyzes the search intent behind your target keywords, providing insights to shape your content strategy.
This feature digs into the 'why' behind user queries, enabling the creation of content that precisely meets user needs.

Competitor Document Structure Analysis

The platform studies the document structure of top-ranking competitor content and offers guidance on how to structure your own content.
This assists in understanding the winning content formats in your niche, allowing for strategic content planning.

AI-Driven Topic Modeling

Built on IBM’s AI, Content Harmony's topic modeling cuts through the noise to highlight critical terms and keywords to include in your content.
This ensures your content covers all relevant aspects of a topic, boosting its comprehensiveness and SEO potential.

Content Harmony Pricing

Content Harmony's pricing plans are designed to accommodate various content production volumes, from occasional content creation to high-volume publishing needs.

• 5 Content Workflows Plan: $50/month
• 12 Content Workflows Plan: $99/month
• 25 Content Workflows Plan: $199/month

If you’re looking for greater volumes, you can look up their pricing for 50, 100, 150, and 200+ pieces per month on their website.

7. Scalenut

Scalenut is an AI-powered platform for content research, planning, writing, and optimization. Designed for marketers, SEO strategists, and content creators, Scalenut combines artificial intelligence with SEO intelligence to streamline the content creation process. This tool aims to elevate content quality and improve SEO performance, enabling users to produce content that ranks higher and engages the audience more effectively.  

Scalenut Features and Benefits

Scalenut offers a wide array of features designed to automate and enhance the content creation and optimization process.

Cruise Mode

Cruise Mode allows users to generate factual and optimized SEO content, maintaining the brand tone throughout the process. This feature simplifies content creation, making it possible to draft high-quality content in minutes.

Cruise Mode streamlines the drafting process, significantly reducing the time spent on content research and structuring.

AI-SEO Features

Scalenut's AI-SEO features provide smart content planning and improved SEO performance. Users can save time with automated keyword and SEO research, quickly identifying relevant topics and targeted keywords.

By optimizing new and existing content, Scalenut enhances search engine visibility and attracts more relevant organic traffic.

Chrome Extension

The Chrome Extension by Scalenut enhances SEO writing capabilities directly within the Google Docs environment. This feature helps content creators write paragraphs, rephrase sentences, and simplify complex structures with ease.

Implementing Scalenut’s Chrome Extension into daily writing tasks ensures content is engaging, insightful, and optimized for search engines.

Scalenut Pricing

Scalenut's pricing plans cater to a broad spectrum of users, from individual creators to large teams and agencies, offering scalable solutions based on content production needs.

• Essential: $39/month
• Growth: $79/month
• Pro: $149/month

8. Semrush Writing Assistant

Semrush Writing Assistant is an advanced tool designed to support content creators by providing instant recommendations for content optimization directly in their writing environment. It is part of the Semrush suite, which aims to enhance the SEO and readability of written content, ensuring it's primed for both search engines and human audiences.

Semrush Writing Assistant Features and Benefits

The Semrush Writing Assistant offers a wide range of features designed to streamline the content creation process, making it easier for writers to produce high-quality, SEO-friendly content.

Real-time SEO Recommendations

The tool analyzes your content in real time, offering suggestions to improve overall SEO performance. This includes checking keyword usage, readability, tone of voice, and originality.

By leveraging these insights, writers can adjust their content on the fly to better align with SEO best practices, potentially boosting the content's visibility and engagement.

Content Template Generation

Based on the target keywords, the Writing Assistant generates a content template outlining key SEO recommendations, including suggested keywords, text length, and readability score.

This feature simplifies the content creation planning phase, providing a solid SEO foundation before the writing begins.

Integration with Popular Platforms

Semrush Writing Assistant seamlessly integrates with Google Docs and WordPress, allowing writers to use it within their preferred content creation platforms without disrupting their workflow.

The ease of integration ensures that content optimization becomes a natural part of the content creation process, rather than a separate, time-consuming task.

Semrush Writing Assistant Pricing

The Semrush Writing Assistant is part of Semrush's broader suite of tools, and pricing plans are designed to accommodate a range of needs, from individual bloggers to large enterprises.

• Pro Plan: $139.95/month
• Guru Plan: $249.95/month
• Business Plan: $499.95/month

What to Look for in a SurferSEO Alternative?

When searching for an alternative to Surfer SEO, consider these essential criteria:

• Comprehensiveness of Tools: The platform should offer a broad range of SEO and content optimization tools.
• Ease of Use: A user-friendly interface ensures you can navigate and utilize the platform effectively.
• Integration Capabilities: Integrating with other tools and platforms enhances workflow efficiency.
• AI-Powered Insights: Leverage AI for advanced data analysis and actionable insights.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Find a solution that offers the best value for the features and benefits provided.

What Is the Best SurferSEO Alternative?

Get Started with AirOps

AirOps is the best SurferSEO alternative due to its comprehensive suite of SEO and content optimization tools, powered by over 40 AI models. Our platform delivers advanced data-driven insights and boasts seamless integration capabilities with popular platforms like Google Sheets and Salesforce. This combination ensures you have the most efficient, effective, and user-friendly experience optimizing your content strategy.

With AirOps, you benefit from a solution that is both cost-effective and highly functional. Our focus on AI-driven growth workflows empowers your content teams to produce targeted, high-quality content with minimal manual effort.

Create flexible, AI-driven SEO strategies with AirOps – the smart alternative to SurferSEO. Start building today!

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