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Surfer SEO and MarketMuse are some of the best SEO and content tools on the market. Both tools help businesses plan, create and audit content to increase search engine rankings.
Both are perfect for beginners and experts — people who have never worked on SEO before and people who have been in the industry for a while.
While they’re great, there are (more affordable) alternatives with many of the same features and then some.
Some Surfer and MarketMuse alternatives specialize in GPT-3 AI content generation — which neither tool does very well. Plus, some tools are chalk full of other features like keyword research, backlink research, and other AI functions like social media copy AI generation and AI email generations.
The landscape for content tools is huge. These are the best Surfer and MarketMuse alternatives.
Table of Contents
1. CopyAI
Copy.ai is an automated creative tool that generates marketing copy in seconds. Their tagline is, “Introducing the end of writer’s block,” and this message will be music to the ears of copywriters worldwide. It’s similar to Surfer and MarketMuse in its long form content generation abilities, but has a whole bunch of other copywriting features too.
Built on powerful AI, Copy.ai generates ad copy, social media content, website copy, blog content, and any other form of digital copy. It has the most styles of copywriting of any tool. You can create email content, Facebook Ad content, Google Ad content, sales outreach copy, and much more. It doesn’t specialize, so it’s great for an all-around digital marketer.
It has more content “types” than any other tool — they have north of 90 types of content generations. Copy.ai generates all kinds of digital copy. All you have to do is select the type of copy you want—such as a blog intro, description, ad copy—fill out some basic details about the piece, and Copy.ai will generate the copy.
Features:
- Instantly generate 10 pieces of unique copy at a time
- Beat writer’s block by inputting some basic keywords and letting Copy.ai do the rest
- Try the tool for free for 7 days
- 90+ different tools to explore
- Support for Facebook, Google, email, sales and more
| Pros | vs Surfer SEO & MarketMuse |
|---|---|
| Over 90 different tools across social media copy, email copy, sales copy, and much more. | Surfer and MarketMuse focus primarily on long form content — creation and optimization of articles for publishing on a blog. There are no short copy generations as Copy AI has. |
| AI content writing suite that enables you to create full blog posts in half the time. The outputs are pretty good and the team is constantly working to tweak the algorithm and make better. | While Copy AI has a long form content creation, it is not as strong as Surfer’s or MarketMuse. Copy AI also has no content grading and optimization like Surfer and MarketMuse. |
| Works across many languages. | Both Surfer and MarketMuse also work across many languages. |
| Very affordable: Copy AI is much cheaper than either Surfer or MarketMuse for most use cases. | Surfer and MarketMuse tend to be more enterprise products with enterprise pricing. |
| Limited to just copy. | MarketMuse and Surfer both have keyword research with search volume, competitiveness and more. Copy AI lacks SEO features like this. |
| Incredible Facebook community of SEOs and builders. | MarketMuse hosts nice webinars and Surfer has a solid community and support documentation — but neither are as robust as Copy AI. |
Pricing:
There are three plans, one of which is free for 7 days:
- Free for 10 credits
- Solo: $35/mo
- Multiple Seats: Custom
2. GrowthBar
GrowthBar isn’t just a content generator, but that’s definitely its most remarkable feature.
It’s a Swiss Army Knife of SEO tools — it features keyword research, backlinks, competitive metrics, keyword tracking, blog ideas generator, and a one-click blog post outline generator. It’s the ultimate tool for bloggers and content creators.
What it does:
GrowthBar has a wide range of SEO features, but the hero feature content generator is what has earned GrowthBar 5 stars on Capterra and G2 Crowd.
So how does it work? Well, GrowthBar…
- Writes your entire blog post: GrowthBar takes your input keyword/topic, scans the web using a powerful SEO decision engine, and makes suggestions in a content editor using GTP-3 AI — the largest, most powerful language model on earth.
- Creates content outlines: GrowthBar is completely drag and drop. So you can create your perfect blog post with perfect headlines, Images, keywords and AI generated text. Then export to Google doc or Word doc. Plus, GrowthBar’s Content Grader will tell you how optimized your final post is.
- Grades your articles: GrowthBar grades your articles so that you can see how optimized they are for SEO.
- Keyword research and more: GrowthBar surfaces billions of data points so you can make sophisticated decisions about your content strategy.
Features:
- AI content creation
- AI topic creation
- Writing editor interface
- Keyword research
- Competitor analysis
- Google Ads competitor research
- Backlink analysis
| Pros | vs Surfer SEO & MarketMuse |
|---|---|
| AI content writing suite that enables you to create full blog posts in half the time and optimize them with SEO best practices including word count, headlines, keyword density, images and much more. | Surfer and MarketMuse both have some AI content creation, however neither has the quality of outputs as GrowthBar. |
| Keyword research across 2+ billion keywords including competitiveness, CPC, and search volume. Plus, there is a proprietary metric called “value of position 1” that enables users to see how valuable a keyword is before pursuing it. | Surfer and MarketMuse both have solid keyword research equal to GrowthBar’s. |
| GrowthBar has backlinks and competitive analytics. | Neither Surfer or MarketMuse have this feature. |
| GrowthBar has rank tracking. | Neither Surfer or MarketMuse have this feature. |
| GrowthBar does not have a keyword and opportunities planning workflow. | Surfer and MarketMuse both have a keyword/opportunities planning function, which enables you to uncover opportunities with the click of a button. |
Pricing:
Monthly Pricing plans are:
- Standard: $29
- Pro: $79
- Advanced: $129
3. Jasper
Jasper (formerly known as Jarvis) is one of the best content generators on the market. Their AI instantly generates high-quality copy for almost endless options beyond your marketing classics, including the “Explain it to a child” setting to real estate listings and Quora answers.
At higher pricing tiers, Jasper enables users to write long-form content with the assistance of AI. This means that for every few sentences of “human” content, you can click to produce some AI-generated content. In theory, this should save you a ton of time as you write.
Jasper enables users to create a number of different content types and even choose the tone of the content they’re creating. It has 11 language options, perfect grammar, and—depending on your plan—offers a long form writing assistant called Boss Mode. Plus, Jasper actually has a direct integration with Surfer SEO — meaning you can get great SEO content recommendations as you write.
Features:
- AIDA framework
- PAS framework
- Product description
- Content improver
- Blog post topic ideas
- Blog post outline
- Blog post intro and conclusion paragraphs
- Feature to benefit
- Sentence expander
- Facebook ad headline and primary text
- Personal bio or company bio
- Google ad headline and and description
- Marketing angles and ideas
- Review responder
| Pros | vs Surfer SEO & MarketMuse |
|---|---|
| AI content writing suite that enables you to create full blog posts in half the time. | Surfer and MarketMuse both have some AI content creation, however neither has the breadth or depth of Jasper. |
| Has an integration with Surfer SEO so that you can score your articles as you write them (with best-in-class AI). | NA |
| Has a suite of 60+ other content generations like Facebook/Instagram ad copy, email copy, sales copy, and much more. | Neither Surfer nor MarketMuse goes beyond long form blog content. |
| Works in 25+ languages. | MarketMuse works in only English and Spanish. Surfer works across 20+ languages. |
Pricing:
As of now, pricing is on a sliding scale per-word-per-month. Most users will find that between $79/mo and $149/mo should suffice for their content creation needs.
Also read: Jasper Review: What You Need to Know Before Buying
4. Content Harmony
Content Harmony’s data-driven workflow helps you build awesome blog post briefs and optimize your content with an AI-driven topic model. Admittedly, Content Harmony is quite similar to Surfer, but it does have some features that set it apart for the enterprising marketer.
Content Harmony specializes in content briefs — meaning with one tool and in half the time, you can create a content brief by analyzing search intent, studying competitor document structure, citing authoritative sources and much more. Plus, there are team collaboration features so that you can share with writers, editors and marketers.
It is definitely a really powerful tool if your primary use case is content briefing.
Features:
- Analyze search intent and write briefs accordingly
- Review overlapping keywords and entities that have to be included
- Study competitor document structure and mimic what works
- Outline builder includes key questions from across Google and social networks so that your posts are complete
- Cite & link to authoritative sources.
| Pros | vs Surfer SEO & MarketMuse |
|---|---|
| Outline blog posts in half the time, share, and collaborate with your team to make great content that ranks. | Surfer and MarketMuse both enable you to outline articles pretty easily. But they do lack the breadth of outlining features that Content Harmony has. |
| Drag and drop headlines to create briefs fast. | Surfer does have a drag and drop feature for both headlines and paragraphs of original text. |
| Best-in-class search intent analysis, image analysis and content grader so that you know how your outline (or complete article) stacks up against competitors in the Google SERP. | Surfer and MarketMuse both have content grading like Content Harmony. |
| Keyword research that includes search volume, search intent, and competitiveness. | Surfer and MarketMuse both have solid keyword research features. |
Price:
10 briefs for $10! After that it’s $99 per month.
5. Ahrefs
One of the most popular and well-known SEO tools, Ahrefs‘ rank tracker gives you exactly what you expect. While Ahrefs is known for its incredible backlink database, their rank tracker is strong. It enables you to monitor visibility and traffic with traditional analytics, track positions distribution and add filters and tags to keywords with the more advanced features. You can also add additional tracking metrics to keywords like CPC, return rate, estimated search volume, and more.
Features:
- Site explorer – Paid and organic traffic stats and backlink audits
- Site audits – Look “under the hood” of any site and find out how it’s performing.
- Rank tracker – Monitor your own keyword rankings against your competitors over time
- Content explorer – Take a deep dive into how your content is performing and identify areas to make improvements
- Advanced keyword analytics
- Rank tracking for mobile and desktop
- Can automate email campaigns for rank tracking
| Pros | vs Surfer SEO & MarketMuse |
|---|---|
| No AI writing suite, but Ahrefs does have the best keyword research, backlink research, and rank tracker in the industry. | Surfer and MarketMuse only have keyword research. While Ahrefs is more of a complete SEO suite (not a content tool) a sophisticated marketer will need a tool like Ahrefs alongside Surfer or MarketMuse. |
| Ahrefs has a content explorer so you can keep tabs on competitor content — featuring metrics like how many times revised, author, language, social shares, etc. | Surfer and MarketMuse take a different approach to content planning by scanning the web for you and coming up with a content roadmap. Ahrefs is equally powerful, but you have to know what you’re looking for. |
Price:
Start with a 7 day free trial, then depending on how many users, projects, keywords, crawl credits, etc you’d like, you can choose a membership to suit your needs. Starting at $99/mo.
6. Copysmith
Copysmith supports marketers by assisting in the generation, collaboration, and launching of quality content. Individuals can manage, organize, and store all their copy on one platform. They have pivoted to support ecommerce teams and agencies — so they’re more niche than the rest on this list. But it is able to take care of many use cases outside of ecommerce as well.
Copysmith offers templates of all types and friendly dashboards that are easy to navigate. It’s easy to use and very friendly for modern marketers!
Features:
- Usability: All teams can utilize Copysmith and the accurate content it produces
- Content Templates: Over 30 templates are available for use, including ad ideas, ad headlines, captions, FAQ ideas, YouTube video descriptions, brand essence copy, SEO meta tags, landing page taglines, sales copy, and more. See a full list of templates here.
| Pros | vs Surfer SEO & MarketMuse |
|---|---|
| Over 30 different tools across social media copy, email copy, sales copy, and much more. They specialize, however in creating copy for product descriptions and other e-commerce use cases. | Surfer and MarketMuse focus primarily on long form content — creation and optimization of articles for publishing on a blog. There are no short copy generations like Copysmith. |
| Enables bulk content generation and has a handy Chrome Extension. | Neither Surfer or MarketMuse have bulk actions. So if it’s your goal to do many tasks at once, you will need to do them manually. Surfer does have a very useful Chrome Extension called Keyword Surfer. |
| Only works in English. | Both Surfer and MarketMuse also work across many languages. |
| Very affordable: Copysmith is much cheaper than either Surfer or MarketMuse for most use cases. | Surfer and MarketMuse tend to be more enterprise products with enterprise pricing. |
| Limited to just copy. | MarketMuse and Surfer both have keyword research with search volume, competitiveness and more. Copy AI lacks SEO features like this. |
Price:
Copysmith offers three different pricing packages, beginning at $19/month and ranging to $118/month.
Also read: Copysmith vs Copy AI
Conclusion
There is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to finding a strong Surfer or MarketMuse alternative. You need to look at your use case to this question, as the best way to optimize your website for search engines will vary depending on the specific industry, website, and keywords you are targeting. However, some tips on optimizing your website for search engines include using keyword-rich titles and descriptions, optimizing your website for mobile, using schema markup, and publishing high-quality content… and of course using the right tool.
If you’re looking to write and grade blog content, look no further than GrowthBar — our choice for the best alternative… of course, we’re a little bit biased.
