Ch. 15: Surfer SEO vs reading the SERP myself

Ch. 15: Surfer SEO vs reading the SERP myself

Coffee-equipment site, month 14. I bought Surfer at $89/mo because two articles stalled at position 11. Surfer said add 'burr grinder,' 'grind size,' 18 more terms, hit a 78 content score. I did. One moved to position 7. The other didn't budge.

Month 16 I dropped Surfer and just opened the top 3 results in tabs and read them. The winner had a comparison table of 9 grinders with prices. Mine had a wall of text. I added the table. Position 7 to 2 in three weeks. Surfer never once told me 'they have a table and you don't.'

I kept Surfer for outline speed on new posts. Killed it for fixing stuck ones.

Lesson banked: term-frequency tools optimize the words. They're blind to format and intent. For a stuck page, read the SERP with your own eyes first.