Trying to make your article show up at the top of SERPs can be like a puzzle. You will need to spend time doing keyword research, find topics that align with your audience’s search intent, and make sure that whatever you write is SEO-optimized.
Thankfully, there are AI writing tools out there that help SEO professionals optimize their content writing process and help them rank higher in SERPs.
In this article, we are comparing 2 of the most widely used writing assistant tools side-by-side to help you decide which fits your writing style better.
Insights From the Article• NeuronWriter uses AI to handle most of the work in making content better. It also checks out what your competitors are doing in search results and helps you plan your content. • Surfer SEO is a comprehensive tool that is great at using data to help with SEO. It helps find the right keywords to use, improves your content as you write it, and shows how you’re doing compared to others in search results. • The two tools differ in pricing, user experience, integrations, and customer support, with NeuronWriter being more affordable and responsive, while Surfer SEO offers a more user-friendly interface with better native integration and content optimization features. |
Neuron Writer vs. Surfer SEO
What are the unique perks Neuronwriter and Surfer SEO offers? Let’s dive in.
Surfer SEO
In 2017, Michael Suski started SurferSEO with a mission to give you an edge over your rivals. They’ve got a crew of 30 tech experts working hard to offer features like the SERP analyzer, content planner, and audit tool using advanced artificial intelligence.
Key Features
Keyword Surfer – Keyword Research Tool
Keyword Surfer allows you to explore 70 languages and pick any location to analyze the search volume of your main keyword and find related focus words. This helps you enhance your keyword research approach.
Moreover, with its Chrome extension, you can access valuable data right from your browser. This includes monthly organic traffic for Google pages containing your keyword, word count on those pages, and how frequently the main search term appears in the content.
As you scroll down, you’ll find an option to generate an outline for your chosen keyword topic. This feature streamlines the process of planning your content.
SERP Analyzer
This tool helps you improve your website’s search engine ranking by looking at the pages that rank highest on Google. You just type in a keyword, pick a location and language, and start the analysis.
It looks at the top 50 pages related to your keyword and gives you content ideas on what to do and what to avoid.
There’s a graph that shows how many words your content should have to appear in the top 10 search results. You can also see scores for the quality of the content and the number of backlinks for the top 50 pages.
You can even choose to exclude some pages from the analysis and check the content outline, audit, paste HTML, or take a screenshot for each page.
Other important features of the SERP analyzer include:
- Common backlinks: Links from the same site that competitors have.
- Prominent words & phrases: Words and phrases Google thinks are important for page positioning.
- Questions: FAQs about a keyword.
- Popular phrases: Phrases users often search before reaching most pages.
- Common phrases: Phrases found in all pages ranking for your keyword.
- Keywords: Related search terms pages also rank for.
Content Planner
If you want your website to show up for tough search terms, you have to create topic clusters to back up your main subject. That’s where Surfer SEO content planner comes in handy.
Just type in your main topic, and it sets up clusters for you to write about, post, and link together.
Content Editor
The content editor helps in content planning and optimizes on-page SEO for existing content. Simply add a keyword, and the tool examines the top pages, providing a structured outline indicating the image count, word length, paragraph count, and heading number.
This is a 2 step process.
I used the tool to generate an article outline on Surfer SEO, which was generated within a few minutes. The next step was to generate the entire article.
What I liked about it was that it allowed me to provide feedback on the content, which shows that the tool focuses on constant improvement.
However, I found the information to be very generic and lacking human touch. This means it wouldn’t have been captivating enough to keep the reader hooked on the article. But I did find some useful points that I used for this article.
Integration
Surfer can connect smoothly with various software like Jasper AI, WordPress, and Google Docs.
Languages
The NLP analysis can handle four languages (English, Danish, Polish, and Dutch), while the keyword tool works with 70 languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, and more.
Customer Support
Surfer SEO provides free certification courses, video tutorials, articles, and a Facebook community with over 10,000 members. They also have a useful bot that can help solve your on-page doubts.
However, if you aren’t satisfied with the response – you can choose to connect with an agent and expect a quick response within 24 hours.
Pricing
Surfer SEO has four pricing options:
1. The Basic plan costs $59 per month. With this plan, you can use the content editor ten times monthly, run 20 audits each month, and get free access to the NLP functionality for the first month only. You’ll also have access to the content planner and SERP analyzer.
2. The Pro plan, priced at $119 per month, includes NLP functionality, a content planner, and SERP analyzer. It allows you to use the content planner 30 times per month, conduct 60 audits monthly, and collaborate with three team members on your project.
3. The Business plan, at $239 per month, offers extra perks like white labeling for branding your services and access to the API for integration with other SEO tools. So, you can present the data and insights to clients or stakeholders as if they were your own, adding a professional touch to your services.
You can use the content planner, editor, and NLP, perform 140 audits monthly, invite up to 10 team members to collaborate and use the content editor 70 times per month.
4. The Custom plan is tailored to your business needs. Contact their sales team to discuss pricing and customize your plan accordingly. This works out as a cheaper option compared to the rigid options offered by Surfer SEO.
I recommend starting with the basic plan to get a feel of the app and understand if it suits your content optimization needs. Then, move on to the custom plan to get exactly what you want at an affordable rate.
NeuronWriter
Neuron Writer offers sophisticated writing assistance driven by GPT 4 technology. This handy AI writing assistant can help you create clear, organized content that is packed with keywords and primed for SEO.
NeuronWriter focuses on finding industry-specific articles and offers valuable suggestions to refine your writing, thus elevating your content quality.
Key Features
Competitor Analysis
To check out your competitors’ SEO performance, type in a keyword on NeuronWriter and click on the TOP Analysis tab. You’ll get a score that shows how tough it is to rank for that search term, along with other useful information about the top 30 competitors.
NeuronWriter gets all this data from Moz. Here’s what you’ll find:
- Their page titles
- What language they’re using
- How long their content is (in characters and words)
- How easy their content is to read
- Scores from Moz, like page authority and domain authority
- The number of external links they have pointing to their page
This information gives you a good idea of how well your competitors are doing with both their content and their SEO strategy. Plus, NeuronWriter also offers to help with your content creation process by giving you a checklist for SEO-optimized content.
Competitors Breakdown
The competitor breakdown tab gives you a clear picture by showing all your competitors on a graph. It overlays data points to help you understand where you stand compared to them.
You can also check off-page data at both page and domain levels. This helps you figure out if your competitors’ positioning on Google is mainly because of their backlinks rather than the quality of their content.
Knowing this, you can focus your on-page SEO efforts more effectively by omitting those URLs.
Content Planning
Once you’ve wrapped up looking at your competitors, you can pick which ones you want NeuronWriter’s AI content optimizer to check out. Once it’s done processing the data, you’ll get to see the content editing tools.
This tool checks out the content that shows up in search engine results and gives you advice on how to make your content better. Here are some things NeuronWriter’s content editor can do:
- It tells you how many H1 and H2 tags you should use.
- It suggests keywords for your paragraphs.
- It gives you keyword ideas based on natural language processing.
- It shows you the main (H1s) and secondary headings (H2) used by your competitors.
- It has an AI writer that can help generate content for you.
- You can save your work, import and export files, and work on drafts.
Customer Support
From my experience, NeuronWriter offers better customer support than Surfer SEO. However, the kind of support you receive depends on the pricing package you choose.
With the bronze plan, you’ll only have access to email support. If you go for the silver plan, you’ll get email support along with chat assistance. Opting for the gold plan gives you both email and chat support, plus a one-hour onboarding session.
Pricing
NeuronWriter has three options for you to choose from:
- The Bronze plan costs $19 per month and includes two projects, 25 content analyses, 15,000 AI credits, and email support.
- The Silver plan costs $37 per month and includes five projects, 50 content analyses, 30,000 AI credits, and email and chat support.
- The Gold plan costs $57 per month and includes ten projects, 75 content analyses, 45,000 AI credits, content sharing, email and chat support and 1 hour of onboarding.
Why Doing a Competitor Analysis is Important
While these tools offer competitor analysis, take special care while conducting it and do a good qualitative analysis of your competitors because both tools just assume that those in the top 30 or 50 have great content.
That definitely isn’t the case—some of the top pages may just be promotional pages or pages with domains that contain focus keywords.
Make sure to select relevant competitors that have articles with informational intent, have a good content rating and decent word count. Choose those directly competing in your niche that are authoritative and similar-sized to your business.
Surfer SEO vs NeuronWriter Comparison
| Content Optimization tool properties | Surfer SEO | Neuron Writer |
| Competitor Analysis | Analysis the top 50 pages in SERPs. | Analysis the top 30 pages in SERPs. |
| Plagiarism check | Offers a plagiarism check. | Offers a plagiarism check. |
| Collaboration | Up to 3 members within the pro plan and up to 10 within the business plan. | Unlimited number of members allowed for collaboration. |
| Content Writing Assistant | no AI writing assistant but allows integration with Jasper AI. | GPT-3.5. |
| Keyword research | Uses Chrome extension. | Allows you to optimize your content according to keywords of competitors for better positioning. |
| Discounts and money-back guarantee | 17% discount on an annual subscription to each plan and a 7-day money-back guarantee. | 60-day money-back guarantee. |
| WordPress Integration | Offered. | Offered but may encounter issues along the way. |
As you can see, Neuron and Surfer, known for their ease of use, can be used strategically to help your article get noticed online. They look at what your competitors are doing on search engine result pages and give you tips on how to improve your articles.
Now lets dive into some differences between the two tools.
Keyword Research
Surfer SEO has a dedicated keyword research Chrome extension that analyses your keyword and suggests Use keyword research tools to enhance your SEO strategy effectively.
Neuron doesn’t have a dedicated keyword research section in its dashboard, however, it analyzes your competitors through SERPs and suggests NLP terms needed to create high-quality content and boost your positioning.
User Interface and Ease of Use
I found Surfer SEO’s interface much more user friendly compared to Neuron because it offers simple metrics and recommendations that anybody can understand easily.
Neuron has all the functionalities of an advanced content editor, however, it lacks the sleek interface feel unlike Surfer SEO.
Content Optimization
When you’re looking to improve your content based SEO optimization, Surfer and NeuronWriter each have their own unique perks.
Surfer SEO dives into analyzing keywords, backlinks, and other things that help your content rank well.
Surfer SEO also gives you extra tips on how to tweak different parts of your webpage, like how many words you should have and how your headings are set up.
Neuronwriter, doesn’t give detailed recommendations like SurferSEO, but uses artificial intelligence to check out what the top search results are doing to generate recommendations accordingly. It can also be a little slow in updating content scoring compared to Surfer SEO.
Why Does The Content Score Matter?
The content score serves as an indicator of how well your content is likely to perform in terms of search engine positioning, user engagement, and overall effectiveness in meeting your goals.
I noticed varying content scores between Surfer SEO and Neuron. Surfer SEO had a higher score for the same piece of content. This can be concerning because if your content rating is high, you won’t optimize it further and improve it.
As a result, your content may end up being average and may not rank well.
When you notice differences between scores from tools like Surfer SEO and Neuron, it can help you understand what your content does well and where it needs improvement.
This way, you can make changes to boost your content’s chances of doing well in search results and keeping your audience engaged.
Creating Content for Search Engines: Going beyond AI Writing Tools
SEO is more than just ranking. The whole point of writing informational content is to push people deeper into the conversion funnel and convert them into customers.
If your content is dry and boring and sounds like every other competitor’s content, it will achieve the ultimate objective you’re looking for. Creating high-quality content is about having unique takes on the topics, that aren’t stolen from your competitors.
You need to focus on taking an angle that isn’t taken by anyone else, so try to get firsthand experience because such content (E.E.A.T) is unbeatable. But you should be able to demonstrate that you actually did it by using visual proof like images and videos.
Most SEO tools used to optimize content are similar to mechanics tools. You do not need every single one of these tools, and most jobs can be done with just a couple.
Google is constantly tracking bounce and exit rate, so you have to focus on not just rankings, but retaining them as well to keep your visitors engaged and on your site.
Final Verdict: Which One is Better Among Surfer SEO and NeuronWriter?
I hope by now you are able to understand the unique perks offered by these tools and are able to make an informed decision about which tool you can use to SEO optimize your content.
So, which content writing tool is better? That depends on your article’s content strategy.
Take a close look at each option, examining what sets them apart and where they overlap. Since both offer a specific timeframe within which you’re eligible for a refund, I suggest trying out both of them before coming to a final decision.
