Content marketing success depends largely on being found in Google Search for which search engine optimization is a must. Now, hiring an SEO expert can be expensive, and not everyone can spend equally on content creation and marketing. Thankfully, there are tons of SEO tools to assist you in this effort to outrank your competitor and emerge at the top on SERPs. SurferSEO is one such popular tool with its own share of pros and cons. While the pros may be its ability to integrate with Google Docs and other tools, and its powerful keyword research tool, its cons are worth considering too. Surfer does not help you do much else except content creation and optimization for search. For everything else, you either need more tools in your arsenal or switch to SurferSEO alternatives with more capabilities and better features.
Whether you’re looking to expand your toolkit or simply craving a change in scenery, there’s a whole world of SEO platforms to explore. We’ve made it easier for you by narrowing down to seven SurferSEO alternatives that are making waves in the world of SEO-friendly content creation. So, without much ado, let’s dive into our list of alternatives to SurferSEO for content optimization and creation.
1. Narrato
Narrato is an advanced SurferSEO alternative that can do a lot more than just create SEO-friendly content. Apart from an SEO content editor and an SEO content brief generator, Narrato has over 100 other AI tools and templates for all kinds of content.
The SEO features on Narrato such as SEO content briefs, AI keyword generator, and SEO meta title and description generator, ensure that you can focus on content optimization right from planning to publishing. The AI-generated SEO content brief for any topic or search term, gives you target keywords with counts, questions to address, competitor links for benchmarking, content structuring suggestions, and other parameters. The brief is fully customizable, allowing you to add your own notes and style guides. As you create content within the Narrato editor, the keyword counts and SEO score on the brief update automatically.
There is an AI FAQ generator too for adding more value to your web pages and blogs by answering the right questions and increasing your chances of appearing in Google’s Featured Snippets.
But that’s not all. Narrato even has an AI autopilot for content creation called AI Content Genie. This pioneering tool can automatically generate engaging social media posts and SEO-friendly blog posts every week from your website URL and themes provided one time. It also lets you schedule and publish the content to all social media channels, WordPress, and Webflow.
Other AI tools and templates include an AI blog writer, AI landing page copywriter, AI bulk product description generator, AI social media post generator, email writer, and many more.
All of these features, together with Narrato’s strong project management and team collaboration capabilities, make it a complete content marketing solution and a more feature-rich alternative to SurferSEO.
Pricing: When comparing SurferSEO vs Narrato pricing too, Narrato emerges as a better choice starting at just $9 per user per month, while the Surfer paid plan costs $49 per month with only 2 user seats.
2. Clearscope
Clearscope is another option for SEO content creation, similar to SurferSEO and Narrato. This SurferSEO alternative lacks AI writing capabilities, but it offers assistance with content ideation, optimization, and SEO analysis. However, you cannot get AI-generated articles or web copy through Clearscope.
Additionally, Clearscope works best in optimizing long-form content, but its accuracy and effectiveness on short-form content may not be as high.
This SEO tool also provides a content grade and readability score for your content and offers SEO suggestions, keywords, topics, and recommendations based on real-time data.
Pricing: Clearscope starts at $199 per month with unlimited users and projects, making it a good option as a SurferSEO alternative for large teams.
3. MarketMuse
MarketMuse is a powerful AI-driven SEO content planning tool that offers automated content audits, comprehensive content plans, and competitive content analysis. This SurferSEO alternative is designed to identify quality issues, missing topics, and other opportunities for improvement in your content. It also provides valuable insights for content optimization such as keywords with volume and keyword difficulty, CPC, trends, and more.
However, its use case is limited to SEO content optimization and planning. If you’re looking for a platform that allows you to create various types of content, including SEO content, social media content, and marketing collaterals, Narrato may be a better alternative to SurferSEO than MarketMuse.
Pricing: MarketMuse paid plans start at $149 per user per month, but it also has a free plan with limited features.
4. SEMRush
SEMRush is an alternative to SurferSEO offering some powerful tools to develop a robust content marketing strategy. It focuses on content research, SEO audits, insights, and strategy building. Despite being a search engine marketing tool, SEMRush also assists with social media marketing by helping your post at the right times, analyzing content performance, tracking competitors’ accounts, and managing brand reputation.
While it lacks AI content generation tools, SEMRush’s writing assistant can help you discover topic ideas and provide valuable tips for creating SEO-friendly content. SEMRush also has a host of other use cases in advertising, market research, and agency management solutions, making it a versatile alternative to SurferSEO.
Pricing: Paid plans on SEMRush start at $129.95 per month.
5. Frase
Frase is a content optimization tool with an AI writer for creating SEO articles and copy. This makes it an apt SurferSEO alternative as it also gives you the power to create SEO content faster using AI. Frase has a very simple UI with straightforward tools for SEO research, planning, content creation and analytics.
The research tools on the platform can give you insights from competitor analysis and SERP analysis, helping you build a stronger SEO strategy. The editor on Frase also shows you a content score, similar to Narrato, and other parameters like word count, structuring, keywords, etc. You can also compare your content’s keywords with your top competitors’ content.
When comparing Frase vs Narrato, however, it is important to remember that Narrato is a more dynamic alternative to SurferSEO as it does a lot more than just SEO content research and creation. If you need a tool that can create, plan, and repurpose content for all your marketing channels like social, email, and others, Narrato is a better choice than both Frase and Surfer.
Pricing: Frase is not the most affordable platform on this list, starting at $14.99 per user per month. You will find Frase alternatives at lower costs.
6. ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a popular alternative to SurferSEO and other generative AI tools. It can have many use cases for SEO content creation and planning, including keyword research, content ideation, topical research, and Q and A for search-optimized content.
Additionally, ChatGPT can generate content briefs, outlines, and SEO content based on prompts. Using the right ChatGPT prompts for SEO content creation can result in satisfactory outputs. Or you can use ChatGPT alternatives that provides in-built SEO tools for more efficient content creation.
For those seeking more convenience and faster content creation, Narrato is a ChatGPT alternative that provides ready-to-use templates and tools for one-click generation. However, both ChatGPT and Narrato can be used together to approach SEO content creation more comprehensively.
Pricing: ChatGPT will cost you $20 per user per month
7. SEO.AI
SEO.AI is an AI writer for SEO that can help you with everything that SurferSEO does. This SurferSEO alternative has an AI keyword research tool and an AI writer for creating long-form SEO-friendly content.
Similar to most of the other tools on this list, SEO.AI also gives you a content SEO score to show how well-optimized your content is and reports what changes you can make to improve the score.
However, the platform has very limited use beyond SEO research and writing. Narrato as an alternative to SEO.AI will give you a lot more features and capabilities alongside SEO tools at a lower price.
Pricing: SEO.AI is not extremely affordable either with paid plans starting at $49 per month for just 10 auto-generated articles and 40 SEO score audits.
Wrapping up
By exploring the seven SurferSEO alternatives we’ve discussed, you’re essentially unlocking a treasure trove of resources designed to up your SEO game. Whether you’re a small business owner on a tight budget, a content creator looking to enhance your visibility, or an SEO enthusiast keen on experimenting with different tools, there’s something in this list for everyone. Each of these platforms offers a unique set of features apart from helping you optimize your content for search. So go ahead, give them a whirl, and watch as your content starts to climb the ranks, drawing in more traffic and ensuring your message gets across to the right audience.
