Surfer SEO alternatives: content optimisation tools and what they measure

A content optimisation tool fetches the pages currently ranking for a query, extracts what they have in common, and compares your draft against that. The comparison is mostly about terms, headings and length.

• Terms the ranking pages use, and how often, which becomes a checklist of words to include.
• Headings those pages carry, which becomes a suggested outline.
• Length, taken from the pages that rank rather than from any rule.
• Questions the results page shows, in the tools that read People also ask.

Nothing in that list is a Google ranking factor. Google has said repeatedly there is no word count that ranks, and no term frequency target exists. What the score captures is a resemblance to the pages that already rank, which is a decent proxy for covering the subject and a poor proxy for being worth reading.

• Cost per page. These are subscriptions priced for teams publishing constantly, and a founder publishing two pages a month does the sums.
• The score becomes the goal. Writers pad paragraphs to reach a number, and the page gets worse while the grade improves.
• It says nothing about whether the page should exist. A perfect score on a topic nobody searches is still a wasted week.
• Sameness. A tool that rewards resembling the top ten produces the eleventh version of the same page, with nothing of its own.
• It has no idea what your product knows, which is the only part a rival cannot copy.

• What you need: a brief before writing, a check after writing, or the questions readers ask.
• Volume: two pages a month, or twenty.
• Who writes: you, or writers who need an instruction to follow.
• Does it help you decide what to write, or only how to write what you already chose.
• What you give up when the subscription ends.

1. 1

   You want a graded editor for writers: Clearscope

   Content optimisation built around term coverage and a readable grade, aimed at editorial teams who need one instruction a writer can follow.

2. 2

   You want research and a brief: Frase

   Built around researching the results page and assembling a brief from it, with drafting features on top. Useful when the bottleneck is preparing the page rather than scoring it.

3. 3

   You want the questions, not a score: AlsoAsked

   It maps the People also ask questions as a tree, several levels deep, by country and language, with a small free allowance. Those questions are your headings, and this is the cheapest research on the list.

4. 4

   You already pay for a suite

   The large suites carry their own content tools beside keyword research and tracking. If a subscription is already on the card, use what it includes before adding another.

5. 5

   You want to know what to write at all

   That is a different question, and no scoring tool answers it. It comes from your own Search Console queries, the results pages of the searches you want, and what your rivals have that you do not.

Twenty minutes, no subscription, and it ends with something a scoring tool cannot produce: a reason for the page to exist.

1. 1

   Search the query and read what ranks

   Ten product pages means buyers, ten guides means learners, ten lists means people choosing. Match the format before anything else, because a page in the wrong format never competes.

2. 2

   Take the questions

   Read People also ask and the related searches at the foot of the page. Those are your section headings, phrased as readers phrase them.

3. 3

   Open the top three pages and list their headings

   That is the coverage a scoring tool would have charged you for. Write it in a note.

4. 4

   Write down what they all miss

   A figure from your own product, a worked example, a decision table, a tool. This is the part that makes the page worth ranking rather than worth counting.

5. 5

   Set the length from the competition

   Look at how long the top pages are and write what the subject needs. There is no word count that ranks, and padding to a target is the failure this whole category encourages.

6. 6

   Answer in the first two sentences

   The reader came for the answer, and an assistant quoting your page will take those sentences. Detail goes after them, never before.

A grade is a resemblance measure. Push it high enough and you have written a page that resembles ten others, which is the definition of a page with no information gain.

• Padding: sentences added to carry a term, which readers skim and assistants will not quote.
• Sameness: the same outline as the top ten, so nothing gives a reader a reason to read yours.
• False confidence: a high score on a page that answers a query nobody makes.
• Displaced judgement: the tool decides the outline, so nobody asks whether the page should exist.

We make Porteur, and it is not in this category: it is a report bought once that says which pages a site should build or fix and why, rather than grading a draft you have already decided to write.