Surfer SEO Vs. PageOptimizer Pro

updated on
July 2, 2023
Terry Williams
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Candidate #1
Surfer logo
Candidate #2
Page Optimizer pro
VS.

Criteria

Surfer logoPage Optimizer pro
Content editor
+1
+1
Keyword Research
+1
+0
Content optimization
+1
+0
Content Creation
+1
+1
Pricing
+0
+1

Key Differences Between Surfer SEO and PageOptimizer Pro

I'll start off by saying that both of these platforms are good options; you won't go badly astray with either. That being said, one is clearly superior, in my opinion. And I think by the end of this post, you'll agree with me that there's a clear winner.

Key differences?

Well, Surfer SEO is a comprehensive content marketing toolkit that encompasses a wide range of features and an impressive number of ranking factors. It's a gold standard SEO industry product relied on by marketing giants like Shopify and FedEx. But it's pricey.

PageOptimizer Pro, on the other hand, is a more basic (though still worthy) content tool that comes with fewer features and a bit less prestige. But it's more affordable. It won't do quite as much for you, but it won't break the bank either.

There you have it, in a nutshell.

The Winner

Surfer logo

Surfer SEO

Price
Features
Accuracy
try it today

Introduction

If there were a button you could click or a wand you could wave to rocket your website to the number one SERP spot, then—presto!—everyone's pages would be ranking highly, and experienced SEO professionals like me would be out of a job.

But, of course, there's not.

In the ever-changing SEO landscape, we in the trenches know that improving your rankings is less about finding a magic bullet and more about understanding and leveraging the factors that Google uses to evaluate web page quality.

Google wants high-quality pages to rank well. Period. When users type queries into the search bar, Google's aim is to understand their intent and immediately offer them a selection of the most relevant, engaging, and authentic resources possible (thus retaining their loyalty).

The trick, of course, is to optimize your web pages for Google's algorithms so that Google knows your content is the best there is.

Did you catch that?

While there are many elements that impact search engine optimization, content is king. Without high-quality content, you've really got nothing to optimize in the first place.

So, how do you go about creating and optimizing high-quality content? It turns out that, while there may not be a magical button to press, there are some pretty magical content optimization tools out there.

And if you're looking for top-notch content optimization software, chances are you've probably already heard about Surfer SEO and PageOptimizer Pro (POP).

Both of these platforms are highly regarded in the SEO community and have solid reputations for a reason. But, if you've got to select just one, which one should it be?

In this comparative review, I'll take a look at both Surfer and POP to give you a good sense of which one will best suit your particular needs. 

But first: What exactly are these platforms?

What Is a Content Optimization Tool?

Content optimization tools (aka content optimization software) leverage machine learning technology to offer you insights into your content strategy gaps and help you prepare content that attracts visitors.

In plain English, content optimization tools are designed to tell you exactly what you need to do in order to give your content the best chance of ranking highly. They can analyze pre-existing content and tell you what changes are recommended. They can also help you create guidelines for new content you want to write.

The programming behind content optimization tools is complex, but the user experience doesn't have to be. If you pick a good tool, you should be able to rely on it to dramatically improve the way Google perceives your content.

Sounds great, but ultimately a lot comes down to having faith in the tool itself. So, without further ado, let's dive into our comparison:

Overview

Surfer logo

Surfer SEO

Price
Features
Accuracy

Co-founded in 2017 by Michał Suski (a well-known SEO industry expert), Surfer SEO is used by thousands of digital marketers worldwide to rank their content on the first pages of search engines. The platform's user-friendly interface and integrations with tools like Jasper AI, Semrush, WordPress, and Google Docs make it a perfect choice for beginners and SEO experts alike.

Surfer's Polish founding team envisions the product as less of a tool and more of a movement—a movement to "democratize organic traffic with user-friendly, data-backed, on-page search engine optimization." Today, Surfer is used in over one hundred forty countries by more than fifteen thousand businesses. SerpFocus is one of those businesses (just saying).

Content editor

Surfer's content editor is super straightforward to use. But don't be fooled; it's still incredibly powerful.

To begin, enter the keyword you want to rank for...and then let Surfer work its magic. Very quickly, Surfer will provide you with a list of all the relevant keyword variations that'll help you to rank for your primary keyword. Be sure to use Surfer's filters to your advantage (e.g., categorize ideas by their intent and search volume). Also, remember to include NLP results and you'll be well on your way to creating rank-worthy content.

When you're actually writing content in Surfer's content editor (like I'm doing right now), you'll have a blank page on the left of the screen which is very similar to Google Docs or most other content creation platforms. Here, you can draft, edit, and format your content with standard features like font size, headings, bullets, bold/italics, link insertion, image insertion, and more.

On the right side of the screen, you'll see a list of keywords that Surfer recommends incorporating into your content to optimize it. Beside each word will be a number, which represents how many times that word should be used in your content (known as keyword density). Above the keywords, you'll see optimal goals for word count, headings, paragraphs, and images. And at the very top you'll have your Content Score meter, which tells you how close you are to perfectly optimized content.

If you prefer, you can access Surfer's content editor directly on Google Docs through the Surfer SEO Chrome Extension instead of through your Surfer SEO dashboard.

Keyword Research

Surfer SEO's keyword research tool helps you to take a primary keyword and discover similar terms along with their average search volumes and difficulty scores. Because Surfer supports more than twenty languages, you can also check the same keyword for different regions and see how its search volume and difficulty score vary by location. This feature is really worth noting, as it supports advanced planning of your content strategy—especially if your primary focus is not local SEO.

While major all-in-one SEO platforms like Semrush and Ahrefs provide even more in-depth keyword research features than Surfer, what Surfer has to offer is pretty functional and can take you a long way toward mining your full keyword research potential. I would say it definitely fits the bill for businesses in the beginner/intermediate range of their SEO development.

Content optimization

The SERP Analyzer tool in Surfer SEO is all about comparing your content (and on-page SEO) to the competition. Enter a keyword into the search box. and you'll discover the top-ranking pages for that keyword. Select the competitors you want to analyze (or let Surfer do the heavy lifting for you), and within a few minutes, you'll have a list of actionable suggestions for how to improve your own page.

Surfer's SERP Analyzer actually retrieves reliable information based on more than five hundred ranking factors that include page speed, NLP sentiment, meta tag structure, referring domains, keyword density, number of headings, text length, and more. On-page optimization suggestions from Surfer might include actions related to many of these factors.

Once you begin to apply Surfer's suggestions to your on-page SEO, your progress will immediately be reflected in your content score.

Content Creation

One of the main reasons why Surfer SEO exists is to help you create optimized, high-quality original content. I've already talked in-depth about Surfer's content editor, which works just as well for content creation as it does for content editing. If you prefer to compose your content in Google Docs, just install the Chrome Extension of Surfer SEO for simple integration.

Content outline builders are a helpful Surfer feature that supports you in planning and organizing your content. From brainstorming to headings, questions, and more, all of Surfer's built-in content outlines are centered around your specific keyword suggestions.

If you want to create original content with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Surfer SEO also integrates with Jasper AI—a formidable and well-respected AI writing software solution.

Other features

  • SEO Audit - This feature analyzes your top pages and calculates your content's performance accordingly. It also checks for website errors and provides you with a detailed analysis of your site's performance.
  • Collaborative Features - Surfer offers practical options for content sharing and editing amongst a team. Shareable URLs allow you to work with external writers and invite non-administrative team members to access documents as needed.
Page Optimizer pro

PageOptimizer Pro

Price
Features
Accuracy
try it today

PageOptimizer Pro was founded by Kyle Roof—an SEO expert who rose to fame by beating the Google algorithm (he got a page to rank that was full of gibberish other than a few targeted keywords). Since then, Roof has dedicated himself to running more than four hundred scientific SEO tests on Google, which have become the backbone of PageOptimizer Pro.

Optimizer Pro's tagline is "Advanced On-Page SEO Made Simple," and I do think the platform delivers on this claim. PageOptimizer Pro is user-friendly and effectively helps users to optimize their sites and increase their rankings. Used by major companies such as HubSpot, SurveyMonkey, and FreshBooks, the software has a well-earned following.

But how does it measure up to Surfer SEO? Let's find out.

Content editor

PageOptimizer Pro's content editor operates in real time and provides all of the information you'll need to create a perfectly optimized structure for your content. It makes suggestions that include actions for your headings, paragraphs, lists, images, image alt texts, and more.

Though you can't write original content directly within the content editor, you can easily tweak existing content using the suggested changes in the report card view. You can then copy the HTML code and paste it into your WordPress editor to save time on manual revisions.

Like Surfer SEO, PageOptimizer Pro provides a content optimization score that helps you track your progress as you apply each suggestion.

Keyword Research

Unfortunately, Optimizer Pro doesn't have a dedicated keyword research tool. It does provide a limited number of suggestions based on your primary keyword, but nothing even close to what Surfer offers. In POP, there are no search volume or keyword difficulty metrics nor question suggestions; only the keywords themselves. While PageOptimizer Pro does offer a location-specific feature similar to Surfer's, there's nothing superior about it (though it does support sixty-one languages).

To be fair, keyword research is not necessarily an innate component of on-page SEO optimization, but it’s a great bonus and the POP platform definitely falls short. It would be nice to see future evolution in this area.

Content optimization

To start optimizing content in POP, enter your domain as a project and then add the pages you want to optimize. Input the keywords you're hoping to rank for and select up to ten competitor pages for analysis (or let POP select them for you).

PageOptimizer Pro will quickly return actionable suggestions for how you can improve your content and on-page SEO and track your progress as you apply them.

Content Creation

Like Surfer SEO, PageOptimizer Pro offers a Chrome plugin for simple integration with Google Docs or WordPress. The platform offers suggestions on how to improve your content and improve its ranking. It also allows you to crawl competitor pages to discover their keywords and optimization strategies.

Other features

  • Secret Key Access - PageOptimizer Pro's main collaborative feature is a secret key that you can provide to writers or other team members so that they can access your recommendations without having to log into POP.
  • LSI Terms - Latent semantic indexing terms (phrases that are closely related to your target keywords) are provided by POP.

Features

Now that you've gotten a sense of the big-picture features of both platforms, let's do a direct comparison. Which software ultimately has better features: Surfer SEO or PageOptimizer Pro?

Surfer SEO's Features

Surfer logo
Let's review. Surfer SEO includes more than fifty ranking factors in its SERP Analyzer, allows you to select up to fifty competitors for analysis, includes a very functional keyword research tool, and integrates with Jasper AI. Surfer functions in many languages and includes an SEO audit tool. Plus, you have the option to create original content directly within the Surfer platform, and the user interface is intuitive, organized, and comprehensive.
Price
Features
Accuracy
read full review

PageOptimizer Pro's Features

Page Optimizer pro
PageOptimizer Pro is based on some in-depth mathematical patents with a compelling track record for "outsmarting" Google's algorithms. The platform includes straightforward content optimization recommendations and direct analysis of up to ten competitor websites. It is user-friendly, offers collaborative features, and integrates with WordPress and Google Docs. Notably, it does not include a keyword research tool.
Price
Features
Accuracy
read full review

The Verdict

For me, the choice is clear: Surfer SEO outranks PageOptimizer Pro in the features department.

With more marketing tools, a keyword research tool, and five times the number of competitor sites available for analysis, Surfer SEO goes above and beyond simply being a page optimization tool. Not only that, I personally find Surfer's user interface to be simpler, better organized, and more intuitive than POP's.

Pricing

Surfer SEO may have superior features and be the more comprehensive platform, but it is pricier than PageOptimizer Pro. Money talks. If budget is of primary concern, POP may still be the better page optimization platform for you (depending on your needs).
How pricey is too pricey? Let's take a look.

Surfer SEO's Pricing

Surfer logo
Surfer now offers a completely free lifetime plan. Though limited, it could be perfect for someone just starting a new website and wanting to grow it quickly. The free plan allows users to optimize and track one high-impression website and an unlimited number of low-impression websites (which is a common baseline for all of Surfer's plans).

Surfer SEO's paid plans start at $49 per month for its Basic plan and range up to $199 per month for its Business plan. You can contact Surfer directly for an agency-level pricing quote.

Differences between plans include the number of monthly articles and page audits as well as the number of team members who can access the software. All paid plans are enhanced with NLP, but only the Business plan includes extra services like white labeling, advanced reports, and access to the Surfer API. Annual subscribers receive a 17% discount.

PageOptimizer Pro's Pricing

Page Optimizer pro
PageOptimizer Pro offers a free seven-day trial but no free version. Its single-user plans start at $22 per month and range up to $87 per month, while its agency plans start at just $87 per month and range up to $109 per month.

The main difference between single-user plans is the number of reports available per month. Only agency-level plans include sub-accounts, Google NLP, and white-label PDF reports.

The Verdict

PageOptimizer Pro is clearly the substantially less expensive option.

That being said, you get what you pay for. With less features, POP is still a robust option. But if you want the full deal package, then I don't think Surfer SEO's pricing is unreasonably high either.

This one's a toss-up. We'll call it a tie.

Conclusion

In conclusion: Between Surfer SEO and PageOptimizer Pro, I'm recommending Surfer SEO as the superior page optimization tool.

If budget is a concern, however, PageOptimizer Pro is also a solid option and can definitely help you to improve your on-page SEO and increase your rankings.

As always, the team at SerpFocus is here to support you along your SEO and marketing journey. If you have further questions about content marketing and on-page SEO or would like to share your experiences with either of the platforms reviewed in this article, reach out to us today!

Surfer logo

Surfer SEO

Price
Features
Accuracy
try it today

From The Author

Terry Williams

With over 10 years optimizing sites, I've boosted search visibility for brands through customized strategies. Currently, I develop effective SEO solutions for a top agency, immersed in the latest trends and innovations. Read my full bio.

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