Keyword Surfer review

Keyword Surfer is a keyword research tool from Surfer SEO. It shows the word count of competitors’ pages, the number of keywords, cost per click, estimated monthly web traffic, and more.

• Design/UX: 4.5/5
• Features: 3.5/5
• Customer support: 4.5/5
• Value for money: 5/5

Overall: 4/5

This review will explore Keyword Surfer’s best features, user experience, customer support system, benefits, and downsides.

What is Keyword Surfer

Keyword Surfer is one of the many tools Surfer, the Poland-based company, offers. It analyses different websites’ performance when you search for a term or phrase on Google.

This free Chrome extension provides extensive data when you input any search term in Google. It automatically runs whenever you use the search engine and shows keyword data on the right part of the screen.

Keyword Surfer displays relevant and similar terms along with their average search volume. As a result, you can estimate content traffic with keyword ideas.

Overview of key features

Keyword Surfer helps users identify keyword phrases with high search volumes and incorporate the best ones into their SEO content strategies. Here are some of its prominent features.

• Keyword widgets – The tool shows your competitors’ performance at a glance with icons and widgets.
• Chrome extension – Surfer’s chrome extension supports efficient user management. You don’t need a Surfer account to use this extension.
• Grow flow widget – The tool displays keyword ideas and personalised recommendations to maximise your SEO efforts.
• Keyword counter – Keyword Surfer measures keyword density and shows how often competitors use the target phrase in their posts.
• Word count – Keyword Surfer shows the total number of words in your competitors’ content.
• Keyword ideas – The tool lists keyword ideas whenever you search for a term or phrase. It also displays their search volume and similarity scores.
• Data download – You can select the words you need, copy them to a clipboard, and export the list in CSV format.
• Supported countries – Keyword Surfer supports and provides datasets from 70 countries.
• Collections – This feature helps add and monitor keywords before exporting as CSV.
• Traffic Metrics – Keyword Surfer shows the monthly domain traffic for competitors’ websites.
• Google Ads CPC – Keyword Surfer utilises the Google AdWords tool to measure cost-per-click (CPC) data. You can see how much advertisers pay for Ad campaigns.
• Paid Surfer features – Surfer has other SEO tools in its arsenal that handles keyword research, SEO audits, outline generation, content edits and optimisation.

Features

Keyword Surfer offers speedy content and keyword research for SEO strategists. It eliminates the tedious task of opening and managing multiple tabs by providing more than five data points on Google’s results page.

These are some of Keyword Surfer’s best features.

Keyword Widgets

Keyword Surfer displays keyword ideas, estimated traffic, word count, search volume, CPC, and more in easily accessible widgets and icons. Additionally, the tool enables users to trigger its functions from Google’s search results page without having to open the Surfer app.

Chrome Extension

Keyword Surfer is a Chrome extension that enables users to generate keyword ideas, view search volumes, CPC, and more, directly on Google’s search results page. After installing the plugin from the Chrome Web Store, you can start using this tool.

The extension provides valuable insights into keyword trends, search volume, and other SEO practices. You can observe how different industries and markets use keywords in their web content without opening a new tab.

Keyword Surfer’s user-friendly layout and fast loading speed enable quick navigation, allowing you to find what you’re looking for on Google’s SERP.

Grow Flow Widget

Surfer’s freemium feature, Grow Flow, makes it easier to improve your website and grow your online presence. It suggests essential tasks that can help improve your search rankings on a weekly basis.

Some of its recommendations include:

• Adding missing keywords to articles or existing web pages to improve performance
• Including relevant links with untapped potential
• Providing keyword suggestions to create authority-based content

Grow Flow is accessible when you sign up for any of the Surfer SEO plans.

Keyword Counter

Keyword Surfer measures the number of times your competitors use an exact keyword in their posts and articles. The tool indicates this number beside a key icon next to the word count.

Keyword Surfer doesn’t include variations of the keyword in its count. Therefore, you can only work with the exact words.

Word Count

This feature helps content creators gauge the word count used in top-ranking articles and apply it to their own work.

However, some users doubt the authenticity of the data, as the word count often appears higher than the actual count. This is likely because the extension counts all words in the HTML, including content that is hidden and not part of the main content of the page.

For example, Keyword Surfer reports that the above Semrush article has a word count of 4400. However, Word Counter revealed a lower number, 4030.

Keyword Ideas

After typing a search phrase on Google, Keyword Surfer provides a list of keyword ideas for your content or web pages, along with their search volume and similarity scores.

This helps you explore similar keywords that can improve your site’s rankings and performance.

Data Download

Keyword Surfer enables users to save keywords and search data to a clipboard before exporting them in CSV format. This data can then be analyzed in an Excel spreadsheet and used to create an outline with relevant information.

Supported Countries

Keyword Surfer helps you validate and streamline your content with relevant data from your location. The tool pulls datasets from 70 countries, including the UK, US, Canada, Germany, Australia, South Africa, India, and Japan.

Collections

You can monitor the overlap score and search volume for each keyword that you add. The software allows users to store keywords in easily accessible folders for efficient monitoring. Additionally, you can export the folders in CSV format when you need to analyze the data.

Traffic Metrics

Keyword Surfer shows the monthly traffic for competitors’ websites. However, the results represent the entire domain, not individual web pages.

To increase your content’s visibility, you can identify similar keywords for websites with high traffic and adopt some of their strategies.

Google Ads CPC

You can obtain CPC data and monthly search volume from Google’s search page. Additionally, Keyword Surfer reveals CPC data using the Google AdWords tool, which indicates the cost of using specific keywords and phrases in paid ads. Knowing the CPC can help you determine if it will produce a good ROI if you want to outsource search engine marketing. Keyword Surfer assists in identifying which keywords are worth targeting.

Other Surfer Features

If you’re looking for more than what the free tool offers, we recommend checking out Surfer SEO’s paid tools.

Here are some of the highlights of Surfer SEO’s paid offering:

Grow Flow

Surfer’s AI-driven growth management platform provides SEO insights for digital marketers and fast-growing companies. This tool generates tasks that help users increase their site’s organic traffic and improve search rankings.

Grow Flow provides insights on how to improve your SEO for things such as:

• Content creation
• Keywords
• Internal linking opportunities
• Backlinks (using Semrush data)

It summarises these insights on a weekly basis. To get the most out of this tool, it is best to connect it to your Google Search Console.

You can access this feature on Surfer’s dashboard or on Google search result pages. Detailed breakdowns of your website’s performance can be found in the reports tab.

Grow Flow is free to use for small websites that receive less than 100 daily impressions.

Content Editor

This tool helps writers create well-structured articles that are better optimized for both users and search engines. Surfer SEO offers real-time feedback on-page optimization, including its Content Score feature.

Surfer SEO uses AI technology to analyze your content’s prominence against competitor pages. With instant feedback, you can adjust your writing quality to improve your rankings.

In addition, Surfer supports multiple languages, so you can write articles in any language you prefer.

Keyword Research

Surfer helps you find relevant topics for your content calendar for topic clustering. You can also get suitable keyword suggestions by inputting your seed keyword or phrase. This tool saves you time by eliminating manual research and provides high-ranking keywords that match your target.

SEO Audit

The audit tool is designed to uncover missed SEO opportunities and secure quick wins. It can also optimize existing content to improve its rankings.

Surfer displays your page’s SEO metrics and compares them to your target keyword. Additionally, the tool provides insights on content length, keyword density, NLP sentiment, missing backlinks, heading numbers, meta tag structure, and more.

Outline Generator

Surfer’s AI tool analyzes your topic and suggests an outline for your next article. You can find this function at the bottom of the Keyword Surfer extension when you search for topics on Google.

The tool takes your Google search phrase and generates an outline for your article, including H1 to H4 headers. You can then choose the relevant sections or headings and incorporate them into your content to ensure it remains cohesive.

Integrations

• Surfer API: The software has an API so you can integrate it into your own tools.
• Jasper: This integration helps you write content five times faster with AI.
• Semrush: Surfer connects with Semrush to discover the backlinks your competitors acquired recently.
• WordPress: Surfer reduces copy-pasting and allows users to publish content directly to WordPress.
• Google Docs: You can write new articles and optimise content in real time.

Design / UX

Keyword Surfer has a modern design and an easy-to-use user experience that helps users optimize their sites.

The extension’s features are displayed on Google’s search pages in a way that doesn’t make the results page too cluttered. Within the Surfer dashboard, it avoids unnecessary features and instead focuses on specific tools and does them well.

Customer support

Surfer offers excellent customer support and a comprehensive Help Center. The platform covers all the basics with the following:

• An extensive knowledge base
• Educational materials, including an SEO master class
• A blog
• A Facebook community

You can find resources on Surfer’s various features, tools, billing, payments, and more.

Surfer boasts an efficient customer service response time, with agents typically responding to messages within minutes. You can contact them through a live chat on the website or in the app.

Pricing

Keyword Surfer is a free tool. However, Surfer SEO offers extra features for a price.

Here’s a brief breakdown of Surfer SEO’s cost.

Monthly

• Free
• Basic ($59)
• Pro ($119)
• Business ($239)

Annually

• Free
• Basic ($49)
• Pro ($99)
• Business ($199)

Surfer shaves 17% off the monthly price when you pay yearly, which saves you quite a bit.

FAQs

Final thoughts

Keyword Surfer is a good alternative to Keywords Everywhere. First, it is free, and you can combine it with Surfer SEO’s other tools to enjoy extensive keyword research and SEO strategies.

Although it underperforms in some areas (e.g. it doesn’t have long-term trends data), it does well as a standalone keyword analyzer and research tool.

If Keyword Surfer doesn’t meet all your needs, you can also combine it with Keywords Everywhere’s Chrome extensions.