Lucjan Suski is the co-founder and CEO of Surfer, an all-in-one platform for keyword research, content creation, optimization and SEO (Search engine optimization) growth management.
When did you initially get considering SEO?
Search engine optimization has all the time fascinated me from the attitude of a product person. Many of the tools that were inbuilt this space had inferior UX in comparison with what I used to be used to working as a Product Engineer for several product startups across different fields. I also knew that SEOs use their tools heavily, and usage is directly connected to revenue, that’s why I began to dig deeper.
Could you share the genesis story behind the launch of Surfer?
Back in 2016, after a few years working as a Product Engineer, I began to entertain the thought of a startup as a technical co-founder. During that point, my brother Michal was hired as an Search engine optimization Specialist in KS, a marketing agency founded by our friend Slawek Czajkowski. Michal quickly climbed the ladder and have become Head of Search engine optimization, and I began to select his brain concerning the problems he faced day-after-day at work and ways to enhance the performance of Search engine optimization teams. Some were obvious. For instance, a not-very-innovative thing like a rank tracker crossed our minds, but we quickly settled on something really unusual – an on-page optimization tool that robotically analyzed tons of of rating aspects to see what really makes a difference with regards to rating. Inside a number of weeks, I put together a prototype that was immediately adopted by the agency, and the remainder is history.
How does Surfer help with keyword research and becoming a topical leader in a distinct segment?
Well, the way in which Google works now could be that you possibly can write the most effective piece of content on the planet on a subject, say “the best way to reduce weight”, but your possibilities of rating well would still be slim to none.
What they need to see is a sustained, continuous effort to publish content in a certain area of interest. So, in the event you’re covering weight reduction, be prepared to write down about all things weight reduction – nutrition, exercise, health, and so forth.
Consider your website as a book on a subject. Like a book, you should cover topics with examples and sources in several chapters while demonstrating why you’re a reputable source on the area of interest.
This idea has been widely adopted and is often called topical authority in Search engine optimization circles.
But just writing about different subtopics in a distinct segment isn’t effective. You could also determine which articles to write down, the best way to link them, and even which to prioritize.
That is where keyword research tools are available. Unfortunately, most keyword research tools act as keyword database tools – they offer you a ton of keyword information, but you’re left to act upon them, to interrupt down the data into steps you could actually implement in a content strategy.
That’s where Surfer differs. We do not just hand out a bunch of keywords to you. As a substitute, Surfer takes a scientific approach to keyword research.
We break down which pages to write down about and in what order based on which cluster they belong to. Clustering related articles together helps website owners know which pages to link to, and naturally, we also provide keyword metrics like search volume.
Keyword difficulty is a person metric. For instance, Forbes and I must have different metrics for a subject because we’re not the identical. Unfortunately though, most Search engine optimization tools ignore this.
We don’t, so our keywords are personalized on your domain depending on the keywords you’re already rating for and what your organic presence looks like.
Are you able to discuss Surfer’s content generation, and the way it differs from competitive Generative AI tools reminiscent of Jasper?
Our focus is on creating content that ranks well in search engines like google and yahoo. That is where we’re different from other AI tools.
Most AI tools depend on creating well-written content based on their training data and prompts. Surfer’s purpose is to create articles that may allow you to attract organic traffic by rating on your goal keywords.
To be able to do that, we employ a series of proprietary algorithms to research the top-ranking articles to find out how they got there.
We research their content, determine what heading structures they use, NLP keywords and phrases, and at what frequencies, amongst other things.
So if the search results show articles on “image search engine optimisation best practices” while you seek for “image search engine optimisation”, Surfer will write an article on “image search engine optimisation best practices” as an alternative of say, “image search engine optimisation tools”
We also allow users several customization features, from selecting a tone of voice, article type and to edit headers and talking points they need to be included inside the articles before the content is generated.
Could you discuss how Surfer integrates with Jasper, and the advantages of this integration for the tip user?
Jasper’s Search engine optimization mode means that you can use Surfer directly inside Jasper to optimize Jasper-generated content for search engines like google and yahoo. As I discussed before, our focus is on content that helps users rank in search engines like google and yahoo and draw organic traffic.
Surfer offers data-driven evaluation and optimization for on-page Search engine optimization to enhance your content written inside Jasper.
The mixing is kind of straightforward when you log in to Jasper and doesn’t require any great setup on the user’s part.
The predominant profit for the user is enhanced content optimization for Search engine optimization. The mixing ensures that the content not only reads well but can be optimized for search engines like google and yahoo right from the drafting phase. This will save time and resources by reducing the necessity for extensive revisions and Search engine optimization adjustments after the content is created.
Since users are guided by Search engine optimization insights from Surfer while writing, this enables for a more streamlined workflow.
Most writers aren’t SEOs and don’t need to spend lots of time optimizing their content. The mixing allows non-Search engine optimization familiar writers to give attention to what they do best while aligning with Search engine optimization best practices.
Especially for agencies and in-house content teams, this integration allows for scaling content production. Teams can produce more content in less time, while maintaining high standards.
After an article is published there’s an choice to proceed to audit the articles, for post-publishing optimization. Are you able to discuss what that is, and the way it really works?
Well, Search engine optimization is a long-term and continual process. Unlike social media or videos, you possibly can’t publish content once and ignore it.
But after all, Search engine optimization also continues to herald visitors long after you’ve written an article, unlike those platforms.
The explanation is that user behavior changes, as do trends and preferences. And so people search for various things and need to perform tasks that weren’t previously done. On this planet of search, that implies that publishers must adapt to those changes to remain relevant.
Besides users, search engine algorithms are also continually evolving. The truth is, in 2016, Google announced that it ran 130,336 search quality tests.
It is a mind-boggling number that’s unattainable for users to maintain up with.
That is where auditing or post-publishing optimization is available in. Surfer allows users to maintain up with these changes by continually updating for ends in the search engine pages.
So while one 12 months, we might even see ecommerce web sites within the search results, we might even see guides the following 12 months for a similar search term. Surfer ensures you could adapt your existing content according to these changes.
Often, it takes weeks, if not months, for Google to search out a rating on your keyword. But as an alternative of accepting what Google decides for you, it’s prudent to repeatedly optimize your articles for incremental gains that may allow you to rank higher in search results.
Surfer’s audit tools have a look at other pages which might be rating and can make recommendations for missing keywords and their density in your content, besides other details.
Our approach is to focus on the low hanging opportunities you could take to maximise your search performance.
I’m a private believer that human writers should augment themselves with AI, versus replacing human writers with AI. How would Surfer fit on this world view?
Surfer will help here in two ways. First, although you ought to write the most precious and unique content by hand, you continue to have to support it with articles which might be less exciting. For those, you need to consider hiring high-quality AI writing tools reminiscent of Surfer or Content at Scale. On top of that, we aim to reinforce human content writing with a toolset that automates all of the research that folks currently do manually, in order that they can give attention to providing a singular standpoint. That is something that we’ve got in our roadmap for the longer term.
Between 2019 and 2023 Surfer has grown its revenue by 15x, what do you attribute this success to?
I feel it’s all about specializing in things that may really make a difference. If you find yourself a small startup without many purchasers, you possibly can’t spend time on things like conversion rate optimization, which has the potential to spice up your growth by possibly 20%. At that stage, you wish 10x and even 100x improvements. Those improvements are mainly coming from specializing in product innovation. We were all the time pondering, “how can we blow the minds of our customers”, and such a mindset was quite easy to realize provided that over half of the co-founding team consisted of Search engine optimization experts. We had a really quick feedback loop back within the day between myself and Slawek, Michal and Tomek, that led to delivering mind-blowing features fast.
What’s your vision for the longer term of Search engine optimization and Surfer?
With the evolution of AI, Search engine optimization will proceed to evolve. Search engines like google and yahoo will proceed to adopt the technology, but I don’t think we’ll see a rapid disruption event where search will change overnight. Keep in mind that we’re talking a few couple of billion users which might be used to the search working the way in which it really works today. ChatGPT got massive traction and was adopted by 100 million users, but most of them aren’t resigning from searching in the normal way, they slightly augment it.
At Surfer, we’ll keep evolving our AI capabilities to assist people understand what makes good content and, in effect, rank higher. Regardless of what AI or non-AI way you favor to write down your content, Surfer AI shall be there to assist make it higher suited to Search engine optimization.
