Our honest takes after we’ve been using Surfer SEO for months now, we will review Surfer SEO according to our experience. First off, let we be clear on one thing. Surfer SEO is NOT an AI Content Writer Tool, but a “Content Optimizer” Tool, unless you opt in for their “Scale AI” plan which comes with 10x AI Article credits. This means that if you subscribe to their cheapest plans, “Essential” and “Scale”, you still have to write your own content.
The plan comes with Auto-Optimize for up to 30, or 100 article, respectively. The tool only optimize by adjust/re-writing, inserting keywords and give you suggestions on Word Count, Headings, and how many specific keywords should be in the article. Let’s continue reading to find out more, especially, how much is Surfer SEO’s price per AI Article, in bulk.
AI Content and SEO Tools
With the rise of AI in the world, tools such as ChatGPT, Image Generator, Spreadsheets, Customer Support AI, Marketing, etc, you name it, can help decrease the worktime of the employees and save a tons of money and expenses. In fact, a lot of companies are starting to use AI Tools for various application. For example, 93% of HR managers use AI tools to reduce costs, states that the employees express their confidence that AI will help with many tedious works, and many believes that, the tasks that AI can replace human will get more complicate in the coming years.
Currently, there are literally hundreds of AI Content Writer tools out there. Which one is the best AI Content Writing Tools, is up for a debate. As digital landscapes evolve, content tools are becoming better and better everyday. These tools are designed to analyze, optimize, and generate or even write the entire content that is fit for SEO to boost rankings. Obviously, writing with the AI writing tools speed up content writing process significantly, weather you’re a blogs, social media or even student who are writing a report for their class.
Tool like Surfer SEO are shown to be the frontline of SEO writing tools recently. Their Content Optimizer SEO-friendly tool can improve search engine rankings. With the use with good keyword research tool, you can make sure that your content has a higher chance to rank. However, bloggers should note that, regardless of which tools you use, it has to be final touched by human because there are also tools that can detect if an article is AI written or not. It should be no surprise that Google is using these tools to detect and potentially de-ranking any website that are using AI Writing Tools excessively.
AI Writing and Copywriting
It’s not about replacing the human touch but about enhancing/optimizing it. Although, AI-generated content improves by a LOT in the past years, at the end of the day, it has a high chance that some of the information written by AI is incorrect and it is up to us, human, to give it a final touch.
But, is it against Google’s policy? Let’s look at their statement:
“Is AI content against Google Search’s guidelines?”
https://developers.google.com/
– Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines. This means that it is not used to generate content primarily to manipulate search rankings, which is against our spam policies.
Emphasis on the term “Appropriate use”, yes, so this means that, you can use it, but not excessively. AI tools is used to “enhance” rather than replacement to human. The importance of adding a human touch to AI-generated content cannot be overstated, as it engages the audience and resonates with the readers and most importantly, it makes the content “unique”. Now, enough said about the philosophy, let’s go into our Surfer SEO Review section.
Surfer SEO Overview
Surfer SEO is an advanced content optimization tool designed to track the keywords you’re using – weather it’s too few or too many, words count – compared to other articles out there, and give a score to indicate how well the article is doing in terms of SEO. But, how much is surfer SEO? Let’s quickly look at their price:
As mentioned earlier, their first two plans does NOT include the AI Article generation tool. If you look at the above image, at the bottom, they mentioned that AI article is $19/article. For basic plans, hey give you “Auto-Optimize” feature which tells you the score of the article as well as give you some suggestions on how to improve it. Here is what it looks like at first glance:
Search engines needs some method to identify if the given content is relevant to the search, and therefore it is data-driven analysis by using keywords. With Surfer SEO, they provide you with a powerful optimization tool to improve your site’s performance. It’s built to analyze the content of your web pages against many on-page factors, including the use of a SERP analyzer (additional paid feature) tool to further optimize and enhance search engine rankings. Its Content Editor which guides you with suggestions to increase your content score,. Helping your articles to climb up the search engine rankings.
Bulk Price of Surfer SEO’s AI Article Writer?
When you’re scouting for the best AI content writing tools, you’re essentially looking for an “AI to write an article” for you not “Content Optimizer”, right? With their “Scale AI” plan, they’ve include 10X AI Article credits, meaning you can use AI to write 10 articles with this plan.
Now, let’s say that you buy their “Essential” plan, which is their cheapest option, at $89 per month. You write 5 articles and feel tired, so you decide to buy 10x AI article option, then that would cost you another $190, total of $190+89 = $279/month. This is why Surfer SEO offers you a “Scale AI” plan which already include the 10x AI article at only $219, saving you around $60, along with other benefits like 40X Auto-Optimize, and Up to 100 articles features (which we doubt you’ll ever use that much in a month).
Let’s go back to their pricing page. See that banner at the bottom? “Is your plan missing something?”, here you can see that the price per AI generated content is $19 each (used to be $29), and they also provide an option to buy more credit at a discounted price if you buy in bulk.
If you look through their website, you’ll come across the Scale AI plan which includes the ability to write an article with their AI Writer tool, which their are charging at $19 per credit, OR “Buy In Bulk” for even a better price. But, they don’t mention exactly how much the price will scale down if you buy more of their ready-to-rank AI articles. We are here to give you an answer!
Surfer AI Article Price in Bulk
Unless you’re already subscribe to one of their plan, you will not see this option. Here is how the price will scale down if you buy 10, 25, 50 or 100 “Scale with Surfer AI” option:
*Note: As of writing this article, prices may subject to change any time, but we will try to keep up with the updated information!
From the prices above, we’ve prepared a table of the “price per article” for their AI Surfer’s bulk buy:
| Plan | Total Price | Per Article |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Articles (9+1) | $171 | $17.10 |
| 25 Articles (22+3) | $418 | $16.72 |
| 50 Articles (42+8) | $798 | $15.96 |
| 100 Articles (82+18) | $1,558 | $15.58 |
Is it worth it, you ask? The answer is “Kinda”. Comparing to other tools we’re using, it’s definitely better because Surfer usually writes more in-depth article, better article’s structure, and well optimized for SEO. The work requires for you to give it a ‘human-touch’ is less compared to other tools. Additionally, consider this: if you were to hire someone (human) to write an SEO article for you, a medium-quality content can easily cost you somewhere around $50-$200 per article or more. And, even if you did that, a review and minor edits are still necessary anyway, right?
However, with multiple free tools such as ChatGPT, HubSpot, and some paid AI Content tools such as Frase, Koala, Neuron Writer, Copy.ai, Jasper, Rytr to name a few, are much cheaper than Surfer, $219/month with only 10 articles ($21.90/article). Surfer surely seems to be on a steeper side. But, if they’re the industry leader, then their price justify the quality to some extent.
Content creators are using the Surfer SEO tools to boost their writing efficiency and to ensure that their content is both high-quality and SEO-friendly. What distinguishes Surfer from others is their ability to learn from data, grabbing contents from the given keyword(s) from other places, and analyze what makes the content in this specific keyword good, and how to improve it. It’s getting smarter over time, and keeping them ahead of the curve.
Maximizing with Surfer SEO
Price-wise, it’s true that we consider Surfer to be quite expensive. However, if you want to amp up your SEO game, Surfer SEO AI is a powerful tool to consider. They’re ahead of the curve for SEO professionals and agencies aiming to enhance organic traffic and speedup the content creation process. Utilizing Surfer’s Content Optimizer along with their AI Content generator will allow your website to aligns with SEO best practices and significantly boosts your SEO rankings.
Extra Notes on Surfer’s AI Article Credits
If you’re up for a long-term planning for your blog and looking to lower the costs, you can opt for the 100X AI Articles (82+18) plan which brings down the cost per article to only $15.58. The best part is that the credits will stay with you, so you can use it whenever you like as long as your plan is active, so be caution about that.
Additionally, the 10X AI Article credit that comes with the Scale AI do not rollover. This means that if you did not use all 10x, it is wasted and will be reset by the end of the billing period (month or year). Therefore, do plan ahead before you subscribe.
Pricing and Plans Discount for Yearly Billing
Like many other subscription base plan from other vendors, Surfer AI has an annual pricing plan that will save your costs even further. We’ve calculate price per month, as well as how much money it will save you in a year as seen in the table below:
| Plan Name | Monthly | Yearly | Save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | $89 | $69 | $240 |
| Scale | $129 | $99 | $360 |
| Scale AI | $219 | $179 | $480 |
This allows you to choose what’s economical and most effective for you. Additionally, surfer offers a 7-day trial which comes with 5x Auto-Optimize feature and 1x FREE credit for their AI Content Tool. So, if you want to see if it’s any good, then give it a go for free now.
Keyword Research Tools and Audit Features
Another two main features of Surfer SEO is 1) Keyword Research Tool and 2) Audit features. The Keyword Tool gives you the search volume and KD (Keyword Difficulty) for you to analyze and use those keywords in your content. Our take is, the function is ok, if you want to do a quick search, but if you’re serious about in-depth keyword research, then better go with specialized Keyword Research tools such as Semrush or Ahrefs which will give you more functions.
The Audit feature analyze your specific blog post, as well as the keywords you are targeting, its search volume and how many is recommended. This is similar to the “Content Score” provided when you’re using their Content Optimizer. We feel that although, it’s nice to have function, but if you’re already subscribe to one of the Keyword Research Tool like Semrush, then they provide you with more insights to the blog post, as well as ideas on how to improve it.
Advanced Features – SERP Analysis
Surfer SEO also equips you with advanced features such as a SERP analyzer which digs into your competitors’ content to improve your search engine rankings. It provides you with the insights about what’s helping them to rank higher in search engine results pages, guiding you to tune your approach for better SEO rankings.
Surfer claim that this tool analyze over 500 on-page factors like word count, page speed, and sentiment, types of headers used, and the number of images. This comparison is essential to scale your on-page SEO to compete effectively and enhance your search engine rankings. However, this feature is NOT included but is an add-on option which cost extra $29/month. If you want the package that include the SERP analyzer, then you’ll have to contact them and go with their custom plan.
Now, let’s look at some of the AI Content Writer out there and compare their features:
Frase vs Surfer SEO
Purpose and Core Functionality:
- An AI-powered content creation and optimization tool that helps users research, write, and optimize content for SEO. It focuses on the entire content creation process, from identifying topics and researching user questions to creating content briefs and optimizing existing content.
Key Features:
- Content Briefs: Automatically generates content briefs based on the target keyword.
- Question Research: Identifies common questions asked by users to help address user intent.
- Content Optimization: Offers suggestions for keyword usage, headings, and other on-page elements.
- AI Writing Assistant: Helps in generating content, providing both informational and SEO-focused writing assistance.
User Interface and Experience:
- Known for its user-friendly interface, Frase allows users to navigate through its features with ease. The content creation and optimization process is streamlined, making it accessible for users with varying levels of SEO knowledge.
Integration and Compatibility:
- It can integrate with Google Search Console and also offers a WordPress plugin, making it convenient for users who work within the WordPress ecosystem.
Neuron Writer vs Surfer SEO
Purpose and Core Functionality:
- An AI-driven content creation and optimization tool designed to help users write and rank content in search engines. It emphasizes the use of AI to generate content ideas, optimize content for SEO, and improve overall content quality.
Key Features:
- AI Content Writer: Give you the Credits for Words instead of Credits for an Article.
- SEO Content Optimization: Provides suggestions for improving content based on target keywords and competitor analysis.
- SERP Analysis: Offers insights into ranking pages to inform content strategy.
- Task Management: Includes a feature to manage content tasks and workflow.
User Interface and Experience:
- Offers a clean and intuitive interface for both beginners and experienced users. Its AI writing and optimization features are integrated in a way that simplifies the content creation process.
Integration and Compatibility:
- Can integrate with CMS platforms like WordPress, allowing for a direct publishing workflow. It also offers various plugins and extensions for browsers.
Tools Combination Ideas: Koala & Surfer
Now, since Surfer AI Writer is priced at $19/article, you can use another tool such as Koala Writer in combination with the Surfer SEO if you’re on a budget. The procedure is:
1. Generate a content in Koala Writer
2. Put it into Surfer Auto-Optimizer, run it
3. Final edit by you (or your team)
Let’s look at the pricing for Koala Writer:
Compared to Surfer SEO, this option seems to be much cheaper, at 100,000 words for only $49/month only. Further more, considering that the content generated is actually in-depth and well structured, therefore we think that, overall, it’s not a bad option at all.
The Bad: However, note that although Koala’s Professional plan gives you 100,000 words of credit. The best writing option is “GPT-4 Turbo” which will use 2.5X credits, so keep this in mind that a 2,000 words article will use up around 5,000 words credit. To go deeper into our experience, we tried their Starter plan which gives us 45,000 words of credit. But was able to create only 12-13 articles, each with around 1,500-2,500 words. You can also go with lesser writing option which is “GPT-3.5” to save some credits but it’s not as advance as GPT-4 in our opinion.
The Good: Can be integrated with WordPress, Shopify, Webflow and Ghost, so you don’t have to copy the article over. What’s good about his is that, when use the AI Writing function, it can automatically insert ‘internal links’ into your article, which is very useful! Also, their Professional plan comes with “Polish” feature, which essentially tidy up the wordings of the article to improve the readability. This option will appear once the article is generated.
Additionally, KoalaWriter also comes with KoalaChat, which basically is GPT-4 Turbo. So, you don’t have to subscribe to ChatGPT.
Can AI Replace Human in Content Writing?
You might be wondering: Will AI Replace Writers? Our takes is that, maybe, but definitely not in the near future (5-10 years). Why? Well, for one thing is that the internet is still dominated by Google, and they are the one who writes the rule. Although, Google didn’t state directly that using AI is against their guideline, but at the end of the day, what Google care the most is user-experience.
Imagine searching on one topic and all you see on the search result is full of pages with the same (AI Generated) content. That’s just spam, isn’t it? Not only Google, but nobody wants that. What you want to see is the result that are relevant to your search, different topics, different angle, new insights, right?
This ultimately means that, Google will give more credit to the content that is unique, provide values to the reader (their customer), and is fact-checked. While AI Writer, is getting pretty good at this, but some generated content is far from achieving any of that.
AI can definitely assist in generating content by analyzing search engine results pages and suggesting terms that improve topical authority, it doesn’t quite get the unique sense on ‘YOU’ and ‘your brand’. In our opinion, it’s a perfect tool to help with the content editing process, but the core creativity still rely on YOU. However, in the future, say 10-20 years from now, who knows?
