Lucjan Suski is the co-founder and CEO of Surfer, an all-in-one platform for key phrase analysis, content material creation, optimization and search engine marketing (Search engine marketing) development administration.
When did you initially get interested by search engine marketing?
Search engine marketing has all the time fascinated me from the angle of a product particular person. Most of the instruments that have been constructed on this area had inferior UX in comparison with what I used to be used to working as a Product Engineer for a number of product startups throughout totally different fields. I additionally knew that SEOs use their instruments closely, and utilization is straight linked to income, 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 employed as an Search engine marketing Specialist in KS, a advertising company based by our good friend Slawek Czajkowski. Michal shortly climbed the ladder and have become Head of Search engine marketing, and I began to select his mind concerning the issues he confronted day-after-day at work and methods to enhance the efficiency of Search engine marketing groups. Some have been apparent. For instance, a not-very-innovative factor like a rank tracker crossed our minds, however we shortly settled on one thing actually distinctive – an on-page optimization instrument that mechanically analyzed a whole lot of rating components to see what actually makes a distinction in relation to rating. Within just a few weeks, I put collectively a prototype that was instantly adopted by the company, and the remainder is historical past.
How does Surfer assist with key phrase analysis and turning into a topical chief in a distinct segment?
Well, the best way Google works now’s that you would write the perfect piece of content material on the planet on a subject, say “methods to drop some pounds”, however your possibilities of rating properly would nonetheless be slim to none.
What they need to see is a sustained, steady effort to publish content material in a sure area of interest. So, for those who’re masking weight reduction, be ready to write down about all issues weight reduction – diet, train, well being, and so forth.
Think of your web site as a e-book on a topic. Like a e-book, you have to cowl matters with examples and sources in several chapters whereas demonstrating why you’re a credible supply on the area of interest.
This idea has been extensively adopted and is named topical authority in Search engine marketing circles.
But simply writing about totally different subtopics in a distinct segment isn’t efficient. You should additionally work out which articles to write down, methods to hyperlink them, and even which to prioritize.
This is the place key phrase analysis instruments are available in. Unfortunately, most key phrase analysis instruments act as key phrase database instruments – they offer you a ton of key phrase info, however you’re left to behave upon them, to interrupt down the knowledge into steps that you would be able to truly implement in a content material technique.
That’s the place Surfer differs. We do not simply hand out a bunch of key phrases to you. Instead, Surfer takes a scientific strategy to key phrase analysis.
We break down which pages to write down about and in what order based mostly on which cluster they belong to. Clustering associated articles collectively helps web site house owners know which pages to hyperlink to, and naturally, we additionally present key phrase metrics like search quantity.
Keyword issue is a person metric. For instance, Forbes and I ought to have totally different metrics for a subject as a result of we’re not the identical. Unfortunately although, most Search engine marketing instruments ignore this.
We don’t, so our key phrases are customized to your area relying on the key phrases you’re already rating for and what your natural presence seems to be like.
Can you focus on Surfer’s content material era, and the way it differs from aggressive Generative AI instruments comparable to Jasper?
Our focus is on creating content material that ranks properly in search engines like google and yahoo. This is the place we’re totally different from different AI instruments.
Most AI instruments depend on creating well-written content material based mostly on their coaching information and prompts. Surfer’s objective is to create articles that may aid you appeal to natural site visitors by rating to your goal key phrases.
In order to do that, we make use of a sequence of proprietary algorithms to research the top-ranking articles to find out how they acquired there.
We analysis their content material, decide what heading constructions they use, NLP key phrases and phrases, and at what frequencies, amongst different issues.
So if the search outcomes present articles on “picture search engine optimization greatest practices” while you seek for “picture search engine optimization”, Surfer will write an article on “picture search engine optimization greatest practices” as a substitute of say, “picture search engine optimization instruments”
We additionally enable customers a number of customization options, from selecting a tone of voice, article kind and to edit headers and speaking factors they need to be included inside the articles earlier than the content material is generated.
Could you focus on how Surfer integrates with Jasper, and the advantages of this integration for the tip consumer?
Jasper’s Search engine marketing mode means that you can use Surfer straight inside Jasper to optimize Jasper-generated content material for search engines like google and yahoo. As I discussed earlier than, our focus is on content material that helps customers rank in search engines like google and yahoo and draw natural site visitors.
Surfer affords data-driven evaluation and optimization for on-page Search engine marketing to enhance your content material written inside Jasper.
The integration is kind of easy when you log in to Jasper and doesn’t require any nice setup on the consumer’s half.
The major profit for the consumer is enhanced content material optimization for Search engine marketing. The integration ensures that the content material not solely reads properly however can be optimized for search engines like google and yahoo proper from the drafting part. This can save time and sources by lowering the necessity for in depth revisions and Search engine marketing changes after the content material is created.
Since customers are guided by Search engine marketing insights from Surfer whereas writing, this enables for a extra streamlined workflow.
Most writers aren’t SEOs and don’t need to spend so much of time optimizing their content material. The integration permits non-Search engine marketing acquainted writers to deal with what they do greatest whereas aligning with Search engine marketing greatest practices.
Especially for companies and in-house content material groups, this integration permits for scaling content material manufacturing. Teams can produce extra content material in much less time, whereas sustaining excessive requirements.
After an article is printed there’s an choice to proceed to audit the articles, for post-publishing optimization. Can you focus on what that is, and the way it works?
Well, Search engine marketing is a long-term and continuous course of. Unlike social media or movies, you’ll be able to’t publish content material as soon as and neglect about it.
But after all, Search engine marketing additionally continues to usher in guests lengthy after you have got written an article, not like these platforms.
The purpose is that consumer habits adjustments, as do traits and preferences. And so individuals search for various things and need to accomplish duties that weren’t beforehand executed. In the world of search, that implies that publishers should adapt to those adjustments to remain related.
Besides customers, search engine algorithms are additionally frequently evolving. In truth, in 2016, Google introduced that it ran 130,336 search high quality checks.
This is a mind-boggling quantity that’s not possible for customers to maintain up with.
This is the place auditing or post-publishing optimization is available in. Surfer permits customers to maintain up with these adjustments by frequently updating for leads to the search engine pages.
So whereas one yr, we might even see ecommerce web sites within the search outcomes, we might even see guides the following yr for a similar search time period. Surfer ensures that you would be able to adapt your present content material in keeping with these adjustments.
Often, it takes weeks, if not months, for Google to discover a rating to your key phrase. But as a substitute of accepting what Google decides for you, it’s prudent to repeatedly optimize your articles for incremental features that may aid you rank increased in search outcomes.
Surfer’s audit instruments have a look at different pages which are rating and can make suggestions for lacking key phrases and their density in your content material, apart from different particulars.
Our strategy is to spotlight the low hanging alternatives that you would be able to take to maximise your search efficiency.
I’m a private believer that human writers ought to increase themselves with AI, versus changing human writers with AI. How would Surfer match on this world view?
Surfer will assist right here in two methods. First, although you need to write essentially the most helpful and distinctive content material by hand, you continue to must help it with articles which are much less thrilling. For these, you need to contemplate hiring high-quality AI writing instruments comparable to Surfer or Content at Scale. On high of that, we goal to enhance human content material writing with a toolset that automates all of the analysis that folks at the moment do manually, to allow them to deal with offering a novel standpoint. This is one thing that now we have in our roadmap for the longer term.
Between 2019 and 2023 Surfer has grown its income by 15x, what do you attribute this success to?
I believe it’s all about specializing in issues that may actually make a distinction. When you’re a small startup with out many shoppers, you’ll be able to’t spend time on issues like conversion charge optimization, which has the potential to spice up your development by perhaps 20%. At that stage, you want 10x and even 100x enhancements. Those enhancements are primarily coming from specializing in product innovation. We have been all the time considering, “how can we blow the minds of our clients”, and such a mindset was fairly straightforward to realize provided that over half of the co-founding crew consisted of Search engine marketing specialists. We had a really fast suggestions loop again within the day between myself and Slawek, Michal and Tomek, that led to delivering mind-blowing options quick.
What is your imaginative and prescient for the way forward for Search engine marketing and Surfer?
With the evolution of AI, Search engine marketing will proceed to evolve. Search engines will proceed to undertake the know-how, however I don’t assume we are going to see a fast disruption occasion the place search will change in a single day. Remember that we’re speaking about a few billion customers which are used to the search working the best way it really works at present. ChatGPT acquired large traction and was adopted by 100 million customers, however most of them aren’t resigning from looking out within the conventional method, they somewhat increase it.
At Surfer, we are going to preserve evolving our AI capabilities to assist individuals perceive what makes good content material and, in impact, rank increased. No matter what AI or non-AI method you like to write down your content material, Surfer AI will probably be there to assist make it higher suited to Search engine marketing.
Thank you for the nice interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Surfer.
