Lucjan Suski is the co-founder and CEO of Surfer, an all-in-one platform for key phrase analysis, content material creation, optimization and SEO (Search engine marketing) development administration.

When did you initially get considering SEO?

Search engine marketing has all the time fascinated me from the attitude of a product particular person. A lot of the instruments that had 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 instantly linked to income, that’s why I began to dig deeper.

May you share the genesis story behind the launch of Surfer?

Again 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. Throughout that point, my brother Michal was employed as an Search engine marketing Specialist in KS, a advertising company based by our buddy Slawek Czajkowski. Michal shortly climbed the ladder and have become Head of Search engine marketing, and I began to choose his mind in regards to the issues he confronted daily at work and methods to enhance the efficiency of Search engine marketing groups. Some had 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 routinely analyzed a whole bunch of rating components to see what actually makes a distinction in the case of rating. Inside a number of 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?

Nicely, the best way Google works now’s that you could possibly write the very best piece of content material on the planet on a subject, say “ shed weight”, however your possibilities of rating properly would nonetheless be slim to none.

What they wish to see is a sustained, steady effort to publish content material in a sure area of interest. So, in the event you’re masking weight reduction, be ready to write down about all issues weight reduction – vitamin, train, well being, and so forth.

Consider your web site as a guide on a topic. Like a guide, it’s essential to cowl matters with examples and sources in numerous chapters whereas demonstrating why you’re a credible supply on the area of interest.

This idea has been extensively adopted and is called topical authority in Search engine marketing circles.

However simply writing about totally different subtopics in a distinct segment isn’t efficient. You have to additionally work out which articles to write down, hyperlink them, and even which to prioritize.

That is the place key phrase analysis instruments are available. Sadly, most key phrase analysis instruments act as key phrase database instruments – they provide you a ton of key phrase data, however you’re left to behave upon them, to interrupt down the knowledge into steps you can 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. As an alternative, Surfer takes a scientific method 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.

Key phrase 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. Sadly 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 like.

Are you able to focus on Surfer’s content material technology, and the way it differs from aggressive Generative AI instruments similar to Jasper?

Our focus is on creating content material that ranks properly in engines like google. That 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 knowledge and prompts. Surfer’s objective is to create articles that may enable you entice natural site visitors by rating to your goal key phrases.

In an effort to do that, we make use of a collection of proprietary algorithms to research the top-ranking articles to find out how they acquired there.

We analysis their content material, decide what heading buildings they use, NLP key phrases and phrases, and at what frequencies, amongst different issues.

So if the search outcomes present articles on “picture website positioning finest practices” once you seek for “picture website positioning”, Surfer will write an article on “picture website positioning finest practices” as a substitute of say, “picture website positioning instruments”

We additionally enable customers a number of customization options, from selecting a tone of voice, article sort and to edit headers and speaking factors they wish to be included throughout the articles earlier than the content material is generated.

May you focus on how Surfer integrates with Jasper, and the advantages of this integration for the top consumer?

Jasper’s Search engine marketing mode permits you to use Surfer instantly inside Jasper to optimize Jasper-generated content material for engines like google. As I discussed earlier than, our focus is on content material that helps customers rank in engines like google 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 mixing is sort of easy when you log in to Jasper and doesn’t require any nice setup on the consumer’s half.

The principle profit for the consumer is enhanced content material optimization for Search engine marketing. The mixing ensures that the content material not solely reads properly however can also be optimized for engines like google proper from the drafting part. This will save time and sources by decreasing 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 are usually not SEOs and don’t need to spend so much of time optimizing their content material. The mixing permits non-Search engine marketing acquainted writers to give attention to what they do finest whereas aligning with Search engine marketing finest practices.

Particularly for companies and in-house content material groups, this integration permits for scaling content material manufacturing. Groups 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. Are you able to focus on what that is, and the way it works?

Nicely, Search engine marketing is a long-term and continuous course of. Not like social media or movies, you possibly can’t publish content material as soon as and neglect about it.

However after all, Search engine marketing additionally continues to herald guests lengthy after you’ve written an article, not like these platforms.

The reason being that consumer habits modifications, as do developments and preferences. And so folks search for various things and wish to accomplish duties that weren’t beforehand finished. On the earth of search, that implies that publishers should adapt to those modifications to remain related.

In addition to customers, search engine algorithms are additionally frequently evolving. In actual fact, in 2016, Google introduced that it ran 130,336 search high quality assessments.

It is a mind-boggling quantity that’s inconceivable for customers to maintain up with.

That is the place auditing or post-publishing optimization is available in. Surfer permits customers to maintain up with these modifications by frequently updating for leads to the search engine pages.

So whereas one 12 months, we might even see ecommerce web sites within the search outcomes, we might even see guides the following 12 months for a similar search time period. Surfer ensures you can adapt your current content material consistent with these modifications.

Typically, it takes weeks, if not months, for Google to discover a rating to your key phrase. However as a substitute of accepting what Google decides for you, it’s prudent to repeatedly optimize your articles for incremental features that may enable you rank greater 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, moreover different particulars.

Our method is to focus on the low hanging alternatives you can 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, regardless that you wish to write probably the most precious and distinctive content material by hand, you continue to have to help it with articles which are much less thrilling. For these, you must contemplate hiring high-quality AI writing instruments similar to Surfer or Content material at Scale. On prime of that, we intention to reinforce human content material writing with a toolset that automates all of the analysis that individuals presently do manually, to allow them to give attention to offering a singular standpoint. That is one thing that we have now in our roadmap for the long run.

Between 2019 and 2023 Surfer has grown its income by 15x, what do you attribute this success to?

I feel it’s all about specializing in issues that may actually make a distinction. If you find yourself a small startup with out many shoppers, you possibly can’t spend time on issues like conversion fee optimization, which has the potential to spice up your development by possibly 20%. At that stage, you want 10x and even 100x enhancements. These enhancements are primarily coming from specializing in product innovation. We had been all the time pondering, “how can we blow the minds of our prospects”, and such a mindset was fairly straightforward to realize provided that over half of the co-founding group consisted of Search engine marketing consultants. 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’s 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 like google and yahoo will proceed to undertake the know-how, however I don’t suppose we are going to see a speedy disruption occasion the place search will change in a single day. Keep in mind that we’re speaking about a few billion customers which are used to the search working the best way it really works at this time. ChatGPT acquired large traction and was adopted by 100 million customers, however most of them are usually not resigning from looking out within the conventional means, they somewhat increase it.

At Surfer, we are going to hold evolving our AI capabilities to assist folks perceive what makes good content material and, in impact, rank greater. It doesn’t matter what AI or non-AI means you favor to write down your content material, Surfer AI will probably be there to assist make it higher suited to Search engine marketing.

Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Surfer.