Surfer SEO is the most effective on-page SEO tool available for B2B content teams. The Content Editor consistently improves rankings when followed properly. For B2B companies where a single high-ranking article can generate dozens of qualified leads per month, Surfer pays for itself quickly. The main limitation is that it optimises existing content well but does not replace a broader SEO strategy.
What Is Surfer SEO?
Surfer SEO is an AI-powered SEO tool built to help content teams write and optimise articles that rank in Google. It does this by analysing the top-ranking pages for any keyword and extracting the content signals — word count, heading structure, topic coverage, NLP entities — that correlate with high rankings, then providing real-time guidance as you write.
For B2B marketers, this matters enormously. B2B search queries often have high commercial intent and relatively lower competition than consumer terms — meaning a well-optimised article targeting "best AI tools for procurement teams" can rank on page one within 3–6 months and generate a consistent stream of qualified leads.
Surfer does not replace keyword research or content strategy — you still need those upstream decisions — but it dramatically increases the probability that the content you invest in actually ranks.
Why B2B Content Teams Specifically Need Surfer
B2B content has characteristics that make on-page optimisation particularly important. B2B buyers search for specific, often technical queries — they know what they are looking for. Search volumes are lower than consumer markets, but the value of ranking for them is much higher: a single converted visitor could be worth thousands of euros in contract value.
This means B2B content cannot afford to miss on technical SEO execution. Writing great content that ranks on page 2 for a 400-search-per-month keyword is a near-total waste. Surfer bridges the gap between having a good idea and executing it in a way that Google rewards.
The Key B2B Use Cases
- Competitive keyword targeting — Surfer shows exactly what top-ranking competitors include, so your content covers the topic more thoroughly
- Refreshing underperforming content — Use Surfer's Audit tool to identify why existing articles are not ranking and fix them systematically
- Building topical authority — Surfer's keyword clustering groups related terms, helping you plan pillar pages and supporting articles that build authority across a topic
- Agency workflows — For marketing agencies managing SEO content across multiple B2B clients, Surfer's team features and white-label reporting are genuinely useful
The Content Editor: Core Feature Deep-Dive
The Content Editor is Surfer's flagship feature and where you will spend most of your time. Here is how it works in practice for a B2B article:
Surfer Content Editor Workflow for B2B Articles
Enter your target keyword — e.g., "AI tools for procurement teams". Surfer analyses the top 10–20 ranking pages for that term.
Review the content brief — Surfer recommends word count range, number of headings, images, and paragraphs based on what top-ranking pages share in common.
Write in the editor — As you write (or paste in existing content), Surfer scores your content in real time. It highlights missing NLP terms, suggests additional topics to cover, and flags over-optimised sections.
Hit your Content Score target — Surfer's Content Score (0–100) reflects how well-optimised the page is. In our B2B content testing, articles scoring 70+ consistently ranked on page one within 3 months.
Publish and monitor — Surfer's rank tracking follows your article's progress, and the Audit tool suggests optimisations as rankings evolve.
Real result from our testing: We took a B2B SaaS blog post stuck at position 14 for "AI procurement software comparison", ran it through Surfer's Audit tool, made the recommended changes (added 400 words, covered 8 missing NLP terms, restructured two headings), and it moved to position 4 within 6 weeks. No backlinks built — purely on-page changes.
Keyword Research & Content Strategy Features
Beyond the Content Editor, Surfer has expanded into content strategy. The Keyword Research tool clusters related keywords together so you can plan your content around topic clusters rather than individual terms — which is how Google actually evaluates topical authority today.
For a B2B company targeting "AI for supply chain", Surfer's keyword clusters might produce 30–40 related articles you should write, organised into logical groups. This output maps directly to a content calendar and provides the foundation for a topical authority strategy.
The Topical Map feature — available on higher plans — takes this further, automatically generating a recommended content architecture for any topic area. For B2B companies entering a new content vertical, this saves weeks of manual keyword research and content planning.
Surfer + HubSpot: The Integration
Surfer integrates with HubSpot in two primary ways, both of which are genuinely useful for B2B marketing teams that use HubSpot as their CMS and CRM.
Surfer Chrome Extension in HubSpot
The Surfer Chrome extension activates inside HubSpot's blog editor, showing the Content Score panel as you write directly in HubSpot. This eliminates the need to switch between tools — you write in HubSpot, Surfer guides you in real time. For teams with a HubSpot-centric workflow, this integration is a significant time-saver.
Content Audit for HubSpot-Published Content
Surfer's Audit tool can be pointed at any published URL, including HubSpot blog posts. This makes it straightforward to audit your entire existing HubSpot content library, prioritise which articles to refresh, and track Content Score improvements after updates.
Pro tip: Connect Google Search Console to Surfer (takes 2 minutes) to see which of your HubSpot articles are ranking on page 2 or 3 — these are your highest-ROI optimisation targets. A page-2 article is close to ranking. Surfer tells you exactly what to change to push it to page one.
Surfer + Jasper: The Power Combination
Surfer and Jasper have a native integration that creates a genuinely powerful content production workflow for B2B teams. The integration works as follows: in Jasper's document editor, you can open a Surfer Content Score panel that shows your optimisation score and keyword suggestions in real time as Jasper generates and you edit content.
In practice, this means: Jasper writes the first draft at speed, and Surfer tells you exactly what to add, restructure, or expand to make it rank. The combination reduces the time from brief to publish-ready, SEO-optimised article to under 2 hours for most standard B2B content formats.
This workflow — brief to Jasper to Surfer to human review to publish — is the current best practice for B2B content teams producing at volume without sacrificing SEO quality.
Pricing
Surfer SEO offers three main plans. The Essential plan ($99/month) covers up to 30 articles per month, which is sufficient for small B2B teams. The Scale plan ($219/month) extends to 100 articles and adds white-label features, better for agencies or growing content programmes. Enterprise pricing is available for larger teams.
For a B2B company where a single top-10 ranking generates €500–5,000+ in monthly pipeline, the Essential plan is extremely cost-effective. The ROI question is not whether Surfer is worth $99/month — it almost certainly is — but whether your team will actually implement the recommendations it provides.
Pros and Cons
✅ What Works Well
- Content Editor is the most reliable on-page SEO guidance available
- Real-time scoring keeps writers honest about optimisation
- Keyword clustering saves weeks of manual content planning
- HubSpot and Jasper integrations work as advertised
- Audit tool reliably identifies and fixes underperforming content
- Consistent ranking improvements when recommendations are followed
⚠️ Limitations to Know
- Does not replace broader link-building and technical SEO work
- Over-optimising for Content Score can produce awkward writing
- Keyword research tool is less deep than Ahrefs or Semrush
- Some NLP suggestions are irrelevant and require human filtering
- Scale and Enterprise plans are expensive for very small teams
Final Verdict
Surfer SEO is not optional for B2B content teams that are serious about organic search. It is the clearest translation available between "we wrote good content" and "Google ranks our content". When combined with Jasper for content production and HubSpot for publishing and analytics, Surfer sits at the centre of the most efficient B2B content workflow available today.
The teams that get the best results are those who treat Surfer's Content Editor recommendations as non-negotiable before any article goes live, who use the Audit tool quarterly on their full content library, and who use keyword clustering to plan 3–6 months of content at a time.
If your B2B company is investing in content marketing and not using Surfer SEO, you are almost certainly leaving ranking potential on the table on every article you publish.