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 optimisation) development administration.
When did you initially get enthusiastic about search engine marketing?
Search engine optimisation has at all times fascinated me from the attitude of a product individual. 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 straight related to income, that’s why I began to dig deeper.
Might 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 optimisation Specialist in KS, a advertising and marketing company based by our buddy Slawek Czajkowski. Michal rapidly climbed the ladder and have become Head of Search engine optimisation, and I began to select his mind concerning the issues he confronted every single day at work and methods to enhance the efficiency of Search engine optimisation groups. Some had been apparent. For instance, a not-very-innovative factor like a rank tracker crossed our minds, however we rapidly settled on one thing actually distinctive – an on-page optimization instrument that routinely analyzed a whole lot of rating components to see what actually makes a distinction on the subject of rating. Inside 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?
Properly, the way in which Google works now’s that you might write the perfect piece of content material on the planet on a subject, say “how one can drop pounds”, however your possibilities of rating nicely 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 overlaying weight reduction, be ready to jot down about all issues weight reduction – diet, train, well being, and so forth.
Consider your web site as a ebook on a topic. Like a ebook, you could 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 broadly adopted and is named topical authority in Search engine optimisation circles.
However simply writing about totally different subtopics in a distinct segment isn’t efficient. You have to additionally work out which articles to jot down, how one can hyperlink them, and even which to prioritize.
That is the place key phrase analysis instruments are available in. Sadly, most key phrase analysis instruments act as key phrase database instruments – they offer you a ton of key phrase data, however you’re left to behave upon them, to interrupt down the data into steps that you could 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 jot down about and in what order primarily based 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 problem 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 optimisation instruments ignore this.
We don’t, so our key phrases are personalised to your area relying on the key phrases you’re already rating for and what your natural presence seems to be 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 nicely in search engines like google and yahoo. That is the place we’re totally different from different AI instruments.
Most AI instruments depend on creating well-written content material primarily based on their coaching knowledge and prompts. Surfer’s objective is to create articles that may assist you to entice natural site visitors by rating to your goal key phrases.
With a view to do that, we make use of a collection of proprietary algorithms to investigate the top-ranking articles to find out how they bought 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 search engine optimization greatest practices” once 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 permit 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.
Might you focus on how Surfer integrates with Jasper, and the advantages of this integration for the tip consumer?
Jasper’s Search engine optimisation mode lets you 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 optimisation to enhance your content material written inside Jasper.
The mixing is kind of easy when you log in to Jasper and doesn’t require any nice setup on the consumer’s half.
The primary profit for the consumer is enhanced content material optimization for Search engine optimisation. The mixing ensures that the content material not solely reads nicely however can also be optimized for search engines like google and yahoo proper from the drafting part. This may save time and sources by decreasing the necessity for intensive revisions and Search engine optimisation changes after the content material is created.
Since customers are guided by Search engine optimisation insights from Surfer whereas writing, this permits 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 optimisation acquainted writers to give attention to what they do greatest whereas aligning with Search engine optimisation greatest practices.
Particularly for businesses 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?
Properly, Search engine optimisation 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 optimisation additionally continues to usher in guests lengthy after you’ve gotten written an article, in contrast to these platforms.
The reason being that consumer conduct adjustments, as do tendencies and preferences. And so individuals search for various things and need to accomplish duties that weren’t beforehand carried out. On this planet of search, that implies that publishers should adapt to those adjustments to remain related.
Apart from customers, search engine algorithms are additionally regularly evolving. In actual fact, in 2016, Google introduced that it ran 130,336 search high quality exams.
This can be 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 adjustments by regularly updating for ends in 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 could adapt your current content material according to these adjustments.
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 positive aspects that may assist you to rank larger in search outcomes.
Surfer’s audit instruments have a look at different pages which might be rating and can make suggestions for lacking key phrases and their density in your content material, apart from different particulars.
Our method is to spotlight the low hanging alternatives that you could 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, though you need to write probably the most useful and distinctive content material by hand, you continue to have to assist it with articles which might be much less thrilling. For these, you need to take into account hiring high-quality AI writing instruments similar to Surfer or Content material at Scale. On prime of that, we intention to enhance 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 now 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 possibly can’t spend time on issues like conversion charge 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 at all times considering, “how can we blow the minds of our prospects”, and such a mindset was fairly straightforward to attain provided that over half of the co-founding crew consisted of Search engine optimisation 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’s your imaginative and prescient for the way forward for Search engine optimisation and Surfer?
With the evolution of AI, Search engine optimisation will proceed to evolve. Search engines like google will proceed to undertake the know-how, however I don’t assume we’ll see a fast disruption occasion the place search will change in a single day. Keep in mind that we’re speaking about a few billion customers which might be used to the search working the way in which it really works at the moment. ChatGPT bought 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 fairly increase it.
At Surfer, we’ll preserve evolving our AI capabilities to assist individuals perceive what makes good content material and, in impact, rank larger. It doesn’t matter what AI or non-AI means you favor to jot down your content material, Surfer AI will probably be there to assist make it higher fitted to Search engine optimisation.
Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to go to Surfer.
