Surfer SEO vs WriterZen: Which Is The Best SEO Tool?

Want the best optimization tool but are stuck with making a choice from Surfer SEO vs WriterZen? No worries! I’m here to help you.

I’ve tried both tools and will share my experience with you. Both optimization tools are good in their ways but after exploring their features in this blog post, you can make an informed decision as to which is best for you.

Surfer SEO vs WriterZen (Overview)

	Surfer SEO	WriterZen
SERP Analyzer	More advanced, analyzes top 50 pages ranking for a keyword with the detailed insight and action to take	Analyzes only the top 20 ranking pages to provide insight
Keyword Research	Free keyword research tool with chrome extension + a function that generates the content outline for the topic you want to write about	Keyword research is tied to credit and is attached to the keyword explorer. 1 keyword research equals one credit
Content Planner	Has a standalone content planner tool that creates topic clusters for you based on the keyword you entered	Its content planner is tied to the topic discovery feature
Audit Tool	Yes, the stand-alone audit tool analyzes your page URL against your competitors and offers insight on how to boost your ranking	No, but a similar function can be seen in the content creator feature
Supported languages	Keyword research =70 languages NLP = 4 ( English, Danish, Dutch & Polish)	English only
AI Writing Assitant	No in-built but integrates with Jasper AI, a top AI writing tool	Yes, has an in-built, mid-range AI writing tool
Plagiarism Check	No, but Jasper AI which it integrates with gives you access to Copyscape an advanced plagiarism checker	Yes, but no advanced
Integration	Integrates with Semrush to help you with off-page SEO	No
Collaboration	Yes, you can share content URLs with others, invite up to 10 members of your tea to collaborate with you on a project	Yes, you can only share content URL
Import & Export Data	Yes	Yes
Content Editor	Yes, you can use it to plan your content before writing or improve the performance of an already published page	No, but the content creator feature has functions that can handle this.
SEO Course	Yes, and it’s free. You learn how to use Surfer to plan, create, edit and optimize your content as a Pro. You also get certified at the end of the course	No
Free Trial	No	Yes
Refund Policy	7-day money-back guarantee	48-hour money-back guarantee
Pricing Plans	Basic ($59/month) Pro ($119/month) Business ($239/month) Custom Plan (contact sales team)	Basic ($39/month) Standard ($59/month) Advanced ($99/month)
Customer Support	Has an active Facebook community of 10K plus members where the Surfer team including the founder, Michael Suski is happy to help you. There are plenty of video tutorials and knowledge-based articles. You can email them and get a response within 24 hours	Has plenty of video tutorials and FAQs to help you. Also, you can shoot them an email and get a response within 24 hours
Website	Surferseo.com	WriterZen.net

What is Surfer SEO?

Surfer SEO is an all-in-one AI Content SEO tool that helps you plan, create, edit and optimize your content to rank on search engines. Michael Suski, a renowned SEO expert, founded this intelligent tool in 2017 with the aim of helping you outrank your competitors through the insights artificial intelligence provides. Surfer has advanced features like SERP Analyzer, Content Planner, Audit Tool. It boasts of a team of 30 developers and techies. Plus over 30,000 content and digital marketers trust Surfer to create and optimize their content.

Features of Surfer SEO 

Let’s dive into the features of Surfer for you to see what to expect from the tool.

1. Keyword Research Tool ( Keyword Surfer)

You can use it to check the search volume of your main keyword or also see other related keywords. This keyword research tool is available in 70 different languages and you can choose any location of your choice.

When you install the Chrome extension, it provides the following data for a target keyword directly from your browser:

• Monthly organic traffic of pages ranking on Google’s search results for a particular keyword 
• Their word count
• Number of times their main keyword appeared in the content 

When you scroll down, you will see an option to generate an outline using Surfer for the keyword you want to write about.

2. SERP Analyzer 

This is the engine of Surfer SEO. It analyzes pages ranking on Google for a particular keyword and provides a detailed insight on what to do and avoid to get your on-page optimization right. Enter the keyword you want to analyze, set a location, choose a language and click run SERP Analyzer. 

Surfer scans the over 50 pages ranking top for such keywords and provides insight which can be seen in the screenshot below.

First, you see a graph that tells you the word count your content should have to compete for positions 1-10. Also, Surfer lists and analyzes the 50 top pages that dominate the search result for that keyword.

You see the content score, backlink score, and option to exclude any of the pages in your analysis. There is also a shortcut to view the content outline, run an audit, paste HTML and take a screenshot for each of the pages. 

Let’s explore Surfer’s SERP Analyzer more and check out other features that matter.

Common backlinks: These are links that  all top-ranking pages acquired from the same website 

Prominent words & phrases: They are phrases and words that Google thinks are relevant and can influence the ranking of such pages.

Questions: What users ask about a particular keyword 

Popular phrases: Group of words that most users search before landing on most of the pages ranking for the target keyword

Common phrases: These are phrases are appear in all the pages ranking for a target keyword

Keywords: They are related keywords pages ranking for a target also rank for.

The idea is to know how and when to include each of the keywords or phrases the SERP analyzer provides in your content to optimize it for search engines.

3. Audit Tool

Use the audit tool to boost the ranking of your pages on search results. Enter your URL, keyword and click Run an Audit. Within seconds, Surfer collects data for that page, analyzes it against its competitors, and provides an insight into the performance of the page.

It shows you the content score for that page and compares it against the pages ranking on positions 1-10. Also, it shows missing backlinks which may affect the ranking of your page. Missing backlinks are websites linking to your competitors but not you.

So it’s up to you to work to acquire backlinks from such websites. Internal link structure is a ranking factor and the audit tool shows internal links on your page and that of your competitors. Here you check if they’re relevant to the page. The audit tool provides the following insights:

• NLPs in the content 
• Load time
• Time to byte 
• Partial & exact keyword
• Title & meta description length 
• Page structure 
• Word count 

4. Content Planner

Content planner helps you build clusters. Ranking for competitive terms requires you to create and write topic clusters to support the main topic.

When you enter the focus topic you want to write for, the content planner creates the clusters you should write, publish, and inter-link to boost your chances of ranking for the head term. 

5. Content Editor

You can use the content editor to plan your content before writing and also boost the on-page SEO of a page you have published already.

Enter the keyword you want to write and Surfer will analyze the top-ranking pages and return a structure your content should follow and that includes:

• Number of images 
• Word count 
• Number of paragraphs 
• The number of headings your content should have

The content editor has advanced options which you can use to enable the NLP, customize your content structure, and narrow it down to fit your needs.

For example, you can exclude social media pages like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter to ensure that your content structure captures only what your main competitors have done. 

There are suggested terms that influence the ranking of your competitors’ pages and therefore should be in your content. 

How does Surfer arrive at the suggested words and phrases that should be part of your content?

It uses NLPs to verify terms that influence ranking, its algorithm, and core keywords in your competitors’ pages. 

Below is a video on how to write SEO content with Surfer’s content editor

6. Content Writing

When you are done with creating a structure with the content editor, it’s time to write your content. The content editor has space to write your content, or connect with Google Docs or Jasper AI. Since Surfer integrates with Jasper AI  you can easily enable it and have the Jasper assistant write for you.

7. Collaboration

Surfer allows you to invite up to 10 members of your team to work with you. Also, you can share the link to your project with your colleagues without giving them access to your backend. 

8. Integration 

Working with other tools on Surfer is possible via integration. Jasper, a top AI writing assistant integrates with Surfer to help you write long and short-form content of different types and then optimize with Surfer.

WordPress and Google Docs also integrate with Surfer and you can optimize your content within these interfaces. 

In addition, Surfer recently partnered with Semrush, another superb SEO tool. The goal is to take your off-page SEO strategy to another level. Integrating Surfer with Semrush will help you understand the link-building strategy of your competitors. You can monitor their changes in rank for keywords and recent referring domains; this is to identify websites worth acquiring links from. 

9. Languages 

Surfer supports different languages for its features and below is the breakdown:

NLP Analysis: 4 languages ( English, Danish, Polish, Dutch)

Keyword Tool: 70 languages which include major languages like English, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, etc.

10. Customer Support 

Surfer SEO offers support on its active Facebook community of 10K plus Surfer users. Michael Suski, the founder of Surfer, and other friendly team members at Surfer are willing to help you.

There are plenty of tutorial videos and knowledge-based articles to help you resolve issues yourself.

Register for the free SEO course where you learn how to use Surfer like a pro. Of course, you get certified at the end if you pass the test. You can email the support team and get a response within 24 hours. 

Surfer Pricing Plans

Surfer SEO has 4 pricing plans:

1. Basic Plan: $59/month ( Best for personal use)

This plan is suitable if you’re an individual who manages a website or blog and wants to optimize your pages. It allows you to use the content editor 10 times per month, and run 20 audits per month. Also, you can access the NLPs for free ( first month only).

This means that the NLP feature won’t be available on your plan for the subsequent months and the implication is that you won’t have insights on core terms that influence the ranking of the keyword you want to write about. The content planner and SERP analyzer are included in this plan. 

2. Pro Plan: $119/month ( Best for freelance SEO content and copywriters)

The Pro Plan supports the NLP, Content Planner, and SERP Analyzer. It allows you to use the content editor  30 times per month, run 60 audits per month and invite 3 members of your team to collaborate with you. 

3. Business Plan: $239/month ( For SEO & content marketing agencies)

The business plan has more features than the basic and pro plans. The white labeling which allows you to brand the service you offer to clients isn’t available on the first two plans.

It also gives you access to the API which you can use to integrate with other SEO tools that are important to you.

The Content Planner, Editor, and the NLP features are available. In addition, you can run 140 audits per month, invite up to 10 team members to collaborate with you, and use the content editor 70 times per month. 

4. Custom Plan: Talk To Sales For Pricing 

If you’re a large company that hasn’t found what suits your needs in Surfer, you can contact the sales team to get it done. 

Note: Surfer offers you a 17% discount when you make an annual subscription to any of the plans. There is also a 7-day money-back guarantee

What is WriterZen?

WriterZen is an SEO tool that helps you create, and optimize your content to rank for keywords on Google and drive massive traffic.

David Nguyen founded this AI SEO tool to help content writers, copywriters, webmasters, freelancers, and content marketing agencies up their content SEO game.

The keyword explorer pulls its data from Ahrefs and offers detailed insight on what your competitors have done to rank on the first page of Google for a particular keyword.

There are templates to write your content and a free plagiarism checker to ensure that your content has no duplicate on Google’s database.

Features of WriterZen

Let’s look at what WriterZen has to offer.

1. Topic Discovery

If you’re starving for topics to write about, this tool can help you. When you enter a seed topic, WriterZen shows you the search volume of the main topic you entered and the number of other topics related to it.

You can sort them by relevancy or order and also see the pages ranking for each of the topics when you click on them. With a click, you can export the topics in a .xls file to Microsoft excel.

If you are conversant with  Answer the Public keyword tool, you won’t find it hard to use the Topic Discovery feature of WriterZen. 

2. Keyword Explorer

WriterZen’s keyword explorer pulls its data from Google Keyword Planner and Google Suggest via Google’s API. When you enter your focus keyword, choose a location, language, and click search, you see the search volume and cost per click of the keyword.

WriterZen offers credits that are deducted when you conduct keyword research( 1 keyword research = 1 credit). The number of credits you get depends on the plan you subscribed to. Another important insight it provides is the SERP overview.

It pulls this data from Ahrefs. Here you see the top 10 pages that rank for your target keyword, their Domain Ratings, Page Ranks, Backlink Profile, etc.

When you scroll down, you see keyword trends in the last 12 months plus keyword ideas which are secondary keywords related to your focus keyword. 

3. Content Creator 

With the content creator, you can structure your SEO content from scratch based on relevant data from Google. When you enter the keyword or topic you want to write about, WriterZen collects, analyzes the data from Google, and provides a detailed insight which is as follows:

Competitive Analysis

You see the first 20 pages ranking on Google for such keywords including their word counts and the last time the data was updated.

Down below is the suggested insight which provides questions users ask about that keyword and other related keywords which you should discuss in your content. 

Keywords to consider 

WriterZen tells you the important keywords that influence ranking based on what is found in the top-ranking pages.

You get to know your competitor’s keywords and opportunities keywords. It gives a detailed analysis of each of the keywords which include:

• Their search volume
• Number of usage in heading 
• Relevance 

4. Content Writing

This is the interface where you write your content and it has the following functions:

• Font size
• Alight left, right, center, and justify
• Insert image and table
• Import and export content 
• Share content 

You can enable the AI Assistant to write for you within the content writing interface.

Also, you see your content score, word count, number of headings, paragraphs images at the top right corner of the content writing interface. 

Below is a video on how to use WriterZen’s content creator

5. AI Assistant

The AI assistant writes content for you based on the input you provide. There are 60 templates you can use to get the best out of WriterZen’s AI assistant. Some of them are How to, outline, rewrite bullets to paragraph templates.

If you use the bullet to paragraph templates, the AI assistant will generate a paragraph when you select an outline in a bullet point. You can also highlight a paragraph it generates and the AI will continue to write from there.

WriterZen’s AI assistant is okay to write short-form content but can’t be compared to advanced AI writing tools like Jasper AI and Rytr. For example, you can only write in one language (English) while Jasper allows you to write in 24 languages. 

6. Plagiarism Checker 

WriterZen’s plagiarism checker scans your content sentence by sentence to see if it is copied from other websites. However,  it limits its scan within Google database. So if any sentence in your content is copied from other search engines like Bing and Yahoo,  it won’t detect it.

You can copy and paste or import( TXT file only) into the plagiarism checker. The content must be a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 5000 words.

At the end of the scan, you see your plagiarism score and the sentences affected. You can export the content or share it with your writer to fix all plagiarized sentences. 

7. Customer support 

WriterZen has a help center where you can read up articles to resolve issues yourself. You can watch its tutorial videos or shoot them an email to get help. 

WriterZen Pricing Plan

It offers 3 different pricing plans:

1. Basic Plan: $39/month ( Best for personal use)

This plan is suitable if you are working on a single project. You can look up a keyword on the keyword explorer 50 times within 24 hours.

It offers 25,000 keyword credits for auto-clustering functions and bulk all-in title checks. SERP overview from Ahrefs, Insight segmentation, and export functions are also supported.

You can use the Golden keyword filter and sales per keyword stimulation that convert keyword rank to its value in USD.

Other features available on the Basic Plan are:

• 50 content briefs per month 
• Generate 5000 words using the AI writing assistant 
• Check plagiarism(25,000 words per day)  and share your content 
• Look up topics 50 times per month 
• Import 3000 keywords
• Save 20 keywords to your personal keyword database

2. Standard Plan: $59/month ( Best for freelancers working on multiple projects)

The standard plan has more advanced features and fits you if you’re a freelance SEO content writer working with multiple clients.

You can do keyword research 70 times a month. There are 70,000 credits for bulk all in title check and auto-clustering functions.

SERPs overview Ahrefs data, Export functions, Insight segmentation, Golden keyword filter, Sales per keyword stimulation are all available. 

For content creation,  you can create 70 content briefs per month, write 25,000 words per month using the AI assistant,  share your content with others, and import content using URL. 

Other features of the Standard Plan are:

• Use the Topic Discovery to look for topics 70 times per month
• Use competitors’ headline generators to make a comparison 
• Import 70,000 keywords for clustering function and golden keyword filter
• Check up to 40,000 words for plagiarism per month( 7000 words per check time)
• Import  content using URL and also share the link to your content with others
• Save 50 keywords to your personal keyword database 

3. Advanced Plan:$99/month ( Best for content & digital marketing agencies)

This is the best plan WriterZen offers. Its features are suitable for large content and digital marketing agencies that run content SEO campaigns for brands.

It offers 3 or 4 times what you get on the Basic and Standard plans. It allows you to perform keyword searches up to 150 times per day and offers 100,000 keyword credits, auto-clustering functions, and all-in title checks.

Golden keyword filter, Insight segmentation, Export function, SERPs overview Ahrefs data, and Sales per keyword stimulation are available here.

Its content creator feature allows you to create 150 content briefs, write 150,000 words using the AI assistant per month, import and share content via URL. 

Other features include:

• Search for topics 150 times per month
• Show competitors headlines using the headline generator 
• Import up to 12000 keywords from external sources for golden keyword filter and clustering function
•  Check for plagiarism( 100,000 words per day & 12,000 words at a time)
• Import content from multiple sources
• Share your report with colleagues 
• Save up to 100 keywords to your personal keyword database 

Note: WriterZen offers you a 30% discount on all annual plans. There is a 7-day free trial and 48 hours money-back guarantee.

Surfer SEO vs WriterZen [ Major  Differences]

Surfer and WriterZen are different in some ways and we look at them below:

1. Analyzing Competitors

While WriterZen analyzes only the top 10 pages ranking on Google for a particular keyword, Surfer analyzes 50+ at once which offers more detailed insight on what your competitors have done to rank on top search results. It also provides insight on where to place keywords that influence ranking. 

2. Keyword Search

Surfer SEO has a free keyword research tool as a standalone feature with a Chrome extension. This means you can pull data for keywords directly from your browser.

It is available in 70 languages and has an additional option for you to create an outline for the keyword you want to write about.

The keyword research tool is also supported in each of the plans. This is not so with WriterZen which has no Chrome extension for its keyword research tool and supports only one language( English).

Also, one credit is deducted from the credits assigned to you anytime you conduct keyword research. 

3. Plagiarism Check

Although Surfer has no in-built plagiarism checker, its integration with Jasper AI that connects with Copyscape is better compared to the in-built plagiarism checker on WriterZen. For example, WriterZen’s plagiarism check dictates plagiarized content available on Google’s database while Copyscape scans other search engines apart from Google to dictate copied content.

4. Team Work

Surfer has more advanced collaboration features that make it easy to work with your team. For example, the business plan allows you to invite up to 10 members of your team. WriterZen’s collaboration features don’t go beyond sharing a URL of your content which Surfer also supports.

5. Writing Assistant 

WriterZen has an in-built writing assistant but its features are limited. Although Surfer has no in-built writing assistant, its integration with Jasper AI is a better option if you want a top-notch AI writing tool.

Jasper offers 50+ advanced templates that cover different types of writing. It supports 24 input and 26 output languages which means you can translate your content from one language to another.

You can command it to write long-form content for you which you can optimize with Surfer SEO. Unfortunately, you can’t command WriterZen’s writing assistant to write long-form content for you. Plus it supports writing in English language only.

Final Thought 

That’s it with the Surfer SEO vs WriterZen. I trust you are in a better position to make an informed decision as to which is better to optimize your content to rank on Google.

Compare the features of each of the tools, look at the differences between them and decide which suits your needs.

If I’m to suggest, Surfer SEO comes top if you want an advanced content intelligence tool that offers detailed insights to optimize your content. Go for WriterZen if you want a mid-range page optimization tool with a basic AI writing assistant feature.