With SEO, creating content is only half the battle. How do you get it to rank? Each of the tools in this comparison, Surfer SEO and Ahrefs, can help with that, but they do so in very different ways. Surfer SEO's data-driven approach focuses on optimizing content for search engines before it is published.
Ahrefs, on the other hand, helps you analyze and improve your existing content. This gives you a clear picture of how to tackle your SEO goals so that you can create a plan for improving your rankings. In this guide, we’ll compare Surfer SEO and Ahrefs and give you insights to define which tool best suits your content scaling and SEO goals.
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What is Surfer SEO?
Surfer SEO is a cloud-based on-page optimization platform that helps users create and optimize content for better rankings in search engine results. The tool democratizes SEO by making it accessible and understandable for everyone. It leverages data-driven insights and advanced algorithms to analyze top-ranking pages and provide actionable recommendations that improve your content’s SEO performance.
Key Features of Surfer SEO
Keyword Research
Surfer SEO simplifies keyword research by allowing you to enter a primary keyword and receive a list of related keywords along with their monthly search volumes. This helps ensure that you target terms people are searching for. Additionally, Surfer offers a free Chrome extension that displays keyword search volumes directly on Google, making research seamless without leaving your browser.
Content Planner
The Content Planner generates clusters of related keywords around your main topic to help you build a comprehensive content strategy. By connecting your domain, it also identifies missing keywords and assesses the difficulty of ranking for them, highlighting areas of your website that need improvement.
Content Editor
The Content Editor is one of Surfer SEO’s standout features. Starting with a focus keyword, it suggests related and NLP (Natural Language Processing) keywords that align with user intent and sentiment, helping your content sound natural and human-written. It provides real-time content scoring based on keyword usage, word count, headings, and other SEO factors. The editor also provides an outline, questions to answer, and recommendations for content structure to help you optimize your article effectively.
SERP Analyzer
This tool allows you to analyze the top-ranking competitors for your chosen keyword. It reveals how competitors optimize their pages, including backlink profiles and on-page SEO factors. This insight helps you craft superior content that can outrank existing pages.
Audit Tool
Surfer SEO’s Audit tool automates the process of reviewing your existing content. It checks internal links, identifies missing backlinks, analyzes on-page ranking factors, and compares your content with competitors. The audit provides a content score and actionable steps to improve your SEO, saving time and effort.
How Surfer SEO Works
Surfer SEO uses advanced algorithms and AI-driven natural language processing to analyze over 500 ranking signals from top-performing pages. It evaluates keyword density, content relevance, structure, and other SEO factors to generate precise recommendations. By examining the search engine results pages (SERPs), Surfer extracts valuable insights on keyword usage, content layout, and optimization strategies that align with search engine preferences.
Pricing
Essential
$79 per month, billed annually.
Scale
$175/month, billed annually
Enterprise
(custom pricing)
Who Should Use Surfer SEO?
Surfer SEO is ideal for SEO professionals, content marketers, bloggers, and small business owners who want to improve their organic traffic through data-backed content optimization. It is beneficial for those who need to create SEO-friendly content quickly and efficiently, whether with or without prior deep SEO knowledge.
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What is Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is a powerful SEO software suite that helps you build compelling content and link-building strategies. Marketers, SEO professionals, and website owners favor Ahrefs for its extensive data and insights, which help improve search rankings and drive valuable traffic. You can use Ahrefs to conduct thorough keyword research, evaluate competitors, analyze backlinks, and optimize content. The software provides a comprehensive suite of tools that make navigating the complex world of SEO more manageable and data-driven.
Key Features of Ahrefs
Keyword Explorer
Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer is a powerful tool that supports keyword discovery in over 100 languages, making it ideal for targeting diverse global markets. It provides detailed metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and click potential, broken down into organic and paid search data. This feature also pulls keyword suggestions from ten different search engines, including Google, Bing, Amazon, YouTube, and Baidu, helping you uncover a broad spectrum of keyword opportunities for both SEO and PPC campaigns.
Site Explorer
The Site Explorer tool offers an in-depth look at any website’s organic search performance and backlink profile. It reveals which keywords drive traffic to competitors, the quality of their backlinks, and the top-performing pages. This insight is crucial because Google prioritizes backlinks from authoritative sites over sheer quantity. Site Explorer helps you identify valuable backlinks to retain and low-quality links that could harm your rankings, enabling smarter link-building decisions.
Rank Tracker
Rank Tracker allows you to monitor your website’s keyword rankings over time and compare them with competitors across 170 countries. It tracks both desktop and mobile performance, providing customizable reports on organic traffic sources. This tool helps measure the effectiveness of your SEO efforts and adjust your strategy based on real-time ranking data.
Content Explorer
Content Explorer acts like a search engine for marketers, scanning billions of web pages to find high-performing content related to your keywords. It offers metrics such as page traffic, traffic value, referring domains, domain rating, and social shares across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. This helps you identify trending topics and successful content strategies to emulate for your marketing campaigns.
How Does Ahrefs Work?
Ahrefs combines comprehensive keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink audits, and content discovery into one platform. Its intuitive interface and detailed visual reports make it accessible even for beginners, while its advanced filtering options cater to experienced SEO professionals. The tool’s ability to analyze organic keywords, estimate traffic value, and highlight link-building opportunities empowers users to craft data-backed SEO strategies that improve search rankings and drive valuable traffic.
What Will Ahrefs Cost You?
Ahrefs’ plans can get pricey. Their current pricing structure is:
Lite
$108/month, billed annually
Standard
$208/month, billed annually
Advanced
$374/month, billed annually
Who Should Use Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is suited for anyone serious about SEO. If you’re a beginner looking to learn and improve your site’s health or an experienced marketer aiming to outperform competitors, then this tool is for you. Its multilingual keyword support and extensive backlink database make it especially valuable for businesses targeting international audiences or those seeking to establish a strong, authoritative online presence.
Surfer SEO vs Ahrefs
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Keyword Research
Ahrefs and Surfer SEO provide practical keyword research tools with unique methodologies. Surfer SEO focuses on semantic similarity and identifies relevant user-intent-driven keywords. Its distinctive “Questions” feature uncovers related queries people ask about a topic, which helps content creators target keywords effectively. Ahrefs offers a more comprehensive keyword research suite through its Keywords Explorer, providing extensive metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, click distribution, and SERP overview. Additional features such as “Having same terms” and “Also rank for” enable users to discover keyword variations and long-tail opportunities, making Ahrefs the more powerful choice for comprehensive keyword discovery.
Content Optimization
Surfer SEO excels in content optimization, providing a real-time content editor that analyzes the top 20-50 search results for your target keyword. It offers actionable recommendations on word count, keyword density, headings, and images while you write, effectively guiding users to create SEO-friendly content with a clear structure. Ahrefs offers several content-related features through its Site Audit tool, including the detection of missing alt text and duplicate content. Still, it lacks a dedicated real-time content editor comparable to Surfer SEO’s. For on-page content optimization, Surfer SEO stands out as the superior tool.
Backlink Analysis
Ahrefs is widely recognized as the leader in backlink analytics, boasting one of the largest backlink databases in the industry. It allows users to analyze competitor backlink profiles, track new and lost backlinks, assess domain rating, and identify link-building opportunities through broken link analysis. These features are essential for off-page SEO strategies. Surfer SEO does not offer backlink analysis capabilities, focusing solely on on-page SEO and content optimization. Therefore, for backlink insights and link-building strategy, Ahrefs is the clear winner.
SERP Analysis
Both tools provide SERP analysis but with different emphases. Surfer SEO’s SERP Analyzer focuses on on-page factors, such as common word count, keyword density, and headings, among the top-ranking pages, helping users optimize content elements effectively. Ahrefs’ Site Explorer offers a broader perspective, including metrics such as referring domains, domain rating, and traffic value, which provide insight into the overall competitiveness of a SERP. Given these complementary strengths, SERP analysis effectively serves as a tie between the two platforms.
Rank Tracking
Both Surfer SEO and Ahrefs offer rank tracking features. Surfer SEO provides a straightforward rank tracker that updates daily and supports tracking up to 1000 keywords per website, depending on the plan. Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker is more advanced, offering options to monitor desktop versus mobile rankings, geographic locations, and featured snippets. It also features visual tools, such as position history charts and share of voice reports, making it more suitable for detailed rank monitoring.
Pricing & Value
Surfer SEO is generally more affordable compared to Ahrefs’ entry price. While Ahrefs is more expensive, it offers a broader and deeper feature set, providing better overall value for SEO professionals who need comprehensive tools. For users primarily focused on on-page optimization and content creation, Surfer SEO’s lower cost and specialized features may be sufficient. Both platforms offer trials. Surfer SEO trial is free for 7 days, whereas Ahrefs charges for a 7-day trial.
Integrations & Ease of Use
Surfer SEO has an advantage in integrations and user-friendliness. It seamlessly connects with content platforms like Google Docs and WordPress, allowing optimization during content creation. Its clean, intuitive interface makes it accessible even for beginners. Ahrefs, while powerful, has a steeper learning curve due to its extensive toolset. It offers valuable features, such as an SEO toolbar and Chrome extension, but lacks native integrations with popular content editing tools, which can slow down the workflow for content creators.
Customer Support
Both platforms provide solid customer support through live chat, email, knowledge bases, and active user communities. Ahrefs goes further by offering phone support and free educational resources such as Ahrefs Academy and specialized courses, supported by a highly knowledgeable and responsive support team. This makes Ahrefs the preferred choice for users seeking comprehensive support and learning resources.
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Making the Right Choice
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Focus and Strengths
Surfer SEO is tailored primarily for content creators and marketers who want to optimize on-page content effectively. Its standout features include a content editor that provides real-time optimization suggestions and a SERP analyzer that helps align content with top-ranking pages. This makes it ideal for those whose primary goal is to enhance content quality and structure to improve rankings. Additionally, Surfer SEO is more affordable and user-friendly, making it accessible for solopreneurs and small teams focused on content-driven SEO strategies.
In contrast, Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO platform designed for professionals who require an all-in-one tool that covers keyword research, backlink analysis, technical SEO audits, and rank tracking. Its vast database and reliable data make it indispensable for competitive analysis and link-building strategies. While Ahrefs lacks advanced content optimization features, such as an AI writing assistant, it excels in providing deep insights into backlinks and competitor domains, making it the preferred choice for larger-scale SEO efforts and agencies.
Feature Comparison and Use Cases
When it comes to keyword research, Ahrefs offers a broader and more detailed dataset, including keyword difficulty and competitive gaps, which is valuable for uncovering untapped opportunities. Surfer SEO, meanwhile, focuses on semantic keyword integration to enhance content relevance and topical authority but with a narrower scope. For backlink analysis, Ahrefs is the clear leader, providing extensive link data and opportunities that Surfer SEO does not prioritize.
Surfer SEO excels in content optimization with its intuitive interface and seamless integration with content creation tools like Google Docs and WordPress, facilitating smooth optimization throughout the writing process. Ahrefs, while powerful, has a steeper learning curve and lacks native content tool integrations; however, it compensates with robust SEO audits and educational resources. Choosing between the two depends primarily on whether your priority is creating optimized content or conducting thorough SEO research and technical analysis.
The Verdict
If your primary focus is on crafting and optimizing content that ranks well, Surfer SEO is the best fit due to its specialized tools and affordability. However, if you require a versatile SEO platform that covers everything from backlinks to keyword research and technical audits, Ahrefs stands out despite its higher cost. Many SEO professionals find value in using both tools in tandem to comprehensively cover all aspects of SEO.
For those seeking a solution that bridges the gap between Surfer SEO’s content optimization and Ahrefs’ comprehensive SEO capabilities, Arvow presents a compelling alternative. Arvow combines advanced AI-driven content optimization with robust SEO analytics, including backlink tracking and keyword research, all in one platform. This integration helps marketers and SEO professionals overcome the limitations of using separate tools, offering a streamlined workflow and cost-effective solution for holistic SEO management.
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Content scaling is the process of creating content at a larger volume without sacrificing quality. As your business grows, so do your content needs. Scaling helps you meet those ever-increasing demands efficiently. The better you get at scaling, the more you can automate the process to alleviate the burden of producing high-quality content. Your goal should be to create engaging content that satisfies both search engines and your target audience. As you improve your content scaling processes, you’ll be able to make more of this content to help you reach your business goals while reducing the stress of hitting your targets.
How to Scale Your Content
There are several ways to scale content production. First, you can increase your output by adding more resources. This could mean hiring more writers or bringing on additional freelancers or contractors to help with your content production. You can also look for ways to improve your existing processes and make them more efficient. Another way to scale content is to automate as much of the process as possible. Look for tools that can help you identify content gaps, produce outlines, generate draft content, optimize for SEO, and even publish your posts.
Why Scaling Content Is Good for SEO
As you scale content production, you’ll not only create more material to help reach your business goals, but you’ll also improve your search engine optimization (SEO) in the process. This is because SEO is a lot like building a road. The more you can create and improve content to satisfy search engines and your target audience, the better. As you scale, you’ll be able to make more of this content to help you reach your business goals while reducing the stress of hitting your targets.
How Arvow Can Help You Scale Content Production
Arvow is an AI writing tool that helps you produce SEO content faster. With Arvow, you can create blog posts and articles that rank in search engines, build authority, and drive organic traffic to your site. The more you can automate this process, the better. With Arvow, you can create high-quality content in just a few minutes. Use the app to identify content gaps and outline your posts. Then let the AI write a fully optimized draft for you.
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