SurferSEO vs PageOptimizer Pro: Content & Entity Optimization Comparison

SurferSEO for Content Writing and Entity Optimization

SurferSEO is an SEO content optimization platform that helps writers create articles tailored to rank well on search engines. Its approach is heavily SERP-driven, meaning Surfer analyzes the top-ranking pages for a given keyword and extracts common keywords and entities those pages cover (Content Raptor vs SurferSEO: In-Depth SEO Tool Comparison). By doing so, SurferSEO ensures you include all the relevant terms and topics (often called “NLP suggestions”) that search engines expect for your topic.

(Surfer | SEO Content Editor — Your Powerful Writing Assistant) SurferSEO’s Content Editor interface provides real-time feedback on your draft. In this example, the article has a content score of 82/100, and the right-hand panel shows Content Structure guidelines (recommended word count, number of headings, paragraphs, and images based on competitors) and a list of Terms to use. The terms include important keywords and entities (with an “NLP” filter to highlight those identified via natural language processing). These features guide writers to cover relevant topics and achieve the optimal content length and structure for better rankings.

Key SurferSEO features for content writing:

• Real-Time Content Editor & Optimization: Surfer’s Content Editor provides an editing workspace with a live Content Score and term suggestions. As you write or paste content, Surfer tracks how well optimized it is for your target keyword. It evaluates factors like keyword usage, content length, heading count, and even presence of images. The tool gives you real-time suggestions to add specific words or phrases (including entity keywords identified via NLP) to improve your score (Surfer SEO vs Page Optimize Pro (2025) - Which is Better?) (Surfer SEO vs Page Optimize Pro (2025) - Which is Better?). This immediate feedback loop helps ensure your article stays on track SEO-wise.

• Keyword and Entity Suggestions: Surfer suggests a list of relevant terms (“Terms to Use”) drawn from competitor pages. This includes traditional keywords, LSI phrases, and named entities related to your topic (Content Raptor vs SurferSEO: In-Depth SEO Tool Comparison). If you enable Surfer’s NLP integration, it highlights terms that Google’s natural language algorithms might consider important. Including these NLP-derived entities and keywords in your content helps cover the topic comprehensively. Surfer sorts suggested terms by relevance and even allows filtering to show only NLP terms or those you’ve ignored (How to use the customization panel in Content Editor | Surfer Knowledge Base).

• Content Structure Guidance: Surfer provides data-driven guidelines for how to structure your article. It analyzes the top-ranking content and recommends an optimal word count range, number of headings, paragraphs, and images to include (How to use the customization panel in Content Editor | Surfer Knowledge Base). For example, Surfer might show that the average top article has, say, 2,500–3,000 words, 15 headings, 80 paragraphs, and 5 images. Your content brief will reflect these targets, and the Content Editor’s sidebar visually indicates your progress (e.g. words written vs. recommended range) (Surfer | SEO Content Editor — Your Powerful Writing Assistant). This helps you match the depth and thoroughness of competing articles. You can also customize these numbers if you think a competitor is an outlier or want to adjust for your needs (How to use the customization panel in Content Editor | Surfer Knowledge Base).

• SERP Analysis and Outline Planning: Beyond the editor, Surfer has a SERP Analyzer tool for in-depth analysis of search results. It examines factors like text length, heading usage, and even the presence of certain NLP entities across top pages (SurferSEO vs. Clearscope: What's the Best Keyword Tool for 2025?). Surfer’s Outline Builder uses insights from competitors (and Google’s People Also Ask questions) to suggest a detailed outline with potential headings and questions to answer (Surfer | SEO Content Editor — Your Powerful Writing Assistant). This feature helps ensure you don’t miss critical subtopics when structuring your article. You can incorporate these suggestions to create a logical flow that covers what readers (and search engines) expect on the topic.

• Suggested Word Count & Readability: Surfer’s recommendations include a target word count. It bases this on what is currently ranking – for instance, if top results average ~2,500 words, Surfer might suggest a similar length (How to Use Surfer SEO's Scoring Software to Rank Higher in ...). It also keeps an eye on readability and paragraph length for you. By following Surfer’s guidance on word count and content depth, you ensure your Medium story isn’t too short or too long compared to competitors, and that it fully addresses the topic.

• Content Score: SurferSEO computes a content score (typically on a scale up to 100) that reflects how well your draft aligns with the optimization guidelines. For example, a score below 33 indicates the content is under-optimized (likely missing many terms or too short), while a score above 66 means you’ve covered most important areas (Getting Started: Content Editor | Surfer Knowledge Base). This scoring mechanism gives a quick quality gauge – writers often aim for a high score (70–80+). The score updates dynamically as you add or remove content (in the Surfer editor or via the Google Docs extension), which gamifies the optimization process.

• Integration & Workflow: SurferSEO offers a Chrome extension that lets you bring these content suggestions into Google Docs, so you can write in a familiar environment while the Surfer sidebar shows your content score and term checklist (Surfer SEO vs Page Optimize Pro (2025) - Which is Better?). Many writers draft an article in Google Docs with Surfer’s live guidance, then copy it over to Medium for publication. Surfer also integrates with certain AI writing tools (e.g., Jasper.ai) – you can have AI generate content that already follows Surfer’s recommendations (Surfer SEO vs Page Optimize Pro (2025) - Which is Better?) (Surfer SEO vs Page Optimize Pro (2025) - Which is Better?). Overall, Surfer serves as a writing assistant that merges your writing process with SEO best practices.

In summary, SurferSEO assists at every step of content creation: from planning an outline with the right subtopics, to suggesting specific keywords/entities to include, to guiding the ideal length and format of the piece. By following its data-driven recommendations on headings, paragraphs, and terms, writers can craft Medium articles that are both reader-friendly and highly optimized for search visibility.

Optimizer Pro (PageOptimizer Pro) for Content Writing and Entity Optimization

PageOptimizer Pro (POP) is a specialized on-page SEO tool created by Kyle Roof, focused on fine-tuning content to rank higher. It works by generating a detailed optimization report for a given keyword and your content, largely based on what top competitors are doing. POP places strong emphasis on entity-level optimization and NLP, using Google’s own natural language processing to guide content improvements (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T) (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T). While Surfer can be used during writing, PageOptimizer Pro is often used to audit and improve drafts or existing posts.

(PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T) PageOptimizer Pro’s Google Entities report helps optimize content at the entity level. In this POP dashboard screenshot, we see “Common Categories” and “Common Entities” from Google’s perspective. The tool shows which content categories Google associates with your article (and which expected categories are missing), as well as a list of specific entities (people, places, concepts, etc.). Green tags are entities present in your content, while red tags indicate relevant entities not yet covered. This feature lets Medium writers identify important topics or terms (extracted via Google’s NLP) that should be included to fully satisfy the topic’s context and search intent.

Key PageOptimizer Pro features for content optimization:

• Competitor Analysis & NLP Keywords: When you run a POP report for your target keyword, the tool first scans the top Google results (competitors) to gather data. It identifies which keywords and NLP-recognized terms are essential for that topic (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T). In other words, POP looks at the content of high-ranking pages and uses Google’s Natural Language API to see what entities and keywords those pages contain. The output is a list of important terms and entities your content should include. POP explicitly integrates Google NLP – it shows you how Google “reads” your text, and what category it thinks your content falls under, so you can adjust accordingly (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T) (POP: On-Page SEO & Content Optimization Tool Suite). By comparing your draft against competitors, POP pinpoints gaps (terms or entities you missed) and overuses. This ensures you’re writing in a way that aligns with how Google interprets the topic.

• Detailed Content Brief and Recommendations: PageOptimizer Pro produces a Content Brief (or report) with a comprehensive set of on-page recommendations. This brief is essentially a to-do list for optimizing your article. It covers elements like: target word count, how many times to use your exact keyword, variations and synonyms to include, and where to place them (in headings, in body, etc.) (POP: On-Page SEO & Content Optimization Tool Suite). It breaks down suggestions by sections:

• Title (H1/Meta Title): whether your title uses the target keyword or related terms.
• Meta Description: suggestions for including the keyword (if you were editing your own site; on Medium you might have limited control here).
• Headings (H2/H3): what subtopics or terms your headings should contain, based on competitor headings (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T).
• Main Content: a list of NLP words/entities to use in the body text and the recommended frequency for each (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T).

POP’s recommendations are very specific. For example, it might say you should use a particular entity (say “content marketing strategy”) 5-7 times in the article, and even suggest using it in one of the headings if competitors commonly do so. It essentially gives you a content scorecard to “fill out.” Many of these suggestions come from analyzing the density and placement of terms in top-ranking pages and comparing them to yours (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T).

• On-Page SEO Scoring: PageOptimizer Pro assigns an optimization score (often shown as a percentage or out of 100) to your content, indicating how close you are to the ideal on-page optimization for the target keyword (POP: On-Page SEO & Content Optimization Tool Suite). The goal is often to reach a score of 100 by following all recommendations in the brief. The POP content brief explicitly gamifies this: you can tick off optimization tasks until you hit the perfect score. For example, if your Medium draft initially scores 50%, the report might show you need to add certain terms or adjust headings to incrementally improve that score. (Note: POP’s content editor doesn’t auto-update the score in real-time; you click “refresh” after making changes to see the new score (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T).) This scoring system is a clear indicator of how well you’ve implemented POP’s suggestions.

• Entity and Category Optimization: One standout feature of POP is its Google Entities analysis (often under a “Google NLP” or “Entities” tab in the report). Here, POP uses Google’s NLP to determine the content’s category (for example, Google might categorize an article under “Business & Industrial” vs. “Cooking & Recipes” – you want this to match your intended topic) (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T) (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T). It also lists specific entities (e.g., “Surfer SEO”, “keyword research tool”, “Google”) that Google finds in your text, along with entities present in competitors’ content. POP then shows which relevant entities your content lacks. This is extremely useful for entity optimization – it guides you to include those missing persons, places, brands, or concepts so that Google has full confidence about your article’s subject (POP: On-Page SEO & Content Optimization Tool Suite). For a Medium story, this could mean mentioning key industry terms or notable names that top articles have covered, making your content more semantically complete.

• Content Structure and Sections: POP also gives advice on content structure, albeit in a more basic way than Surfer. In the report’s “Content Prompts” or brief, it will indicate if you have too few or too many subheadings compared to competitors, or if certain topics are not addressed in your subheadings (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T). It might say “Competitors on average have 8 H2 headings; you have 5” or flag that a certain subtopic appears in many competitor headings but not yours. POP’s brief also shows competitor title tags and common questions (when data permits) (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T), which can inspire adjustments to your own headings or content sections. Essentially, it helps ensure your article’s structure (H2s/H3s and overall flow) aligns with what’s working for the top results.

• Content Editor & Workflow: PageOptimizer Pro provides a built-in Content Editor where you can apply the recommendations. You can either paste your Medium draft into this editor or import it via URL (if it’s already published). The editor will pull in your text and overlay the optimization recommendations in a sidebar (the “to-do list” of terms to add, etc.) (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T) (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T). As you edit the content in POP’s interface, you can periodically update the score to see improvement (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T). Once done, you would copy the optimized text back to Medium. Alternatively, POP offers a Chrome Extension that works as an overlay on platforms like Google Docs, WordPress, etc., showing the suggestions as you write (POP: On-Page SEO & Content Optimization Tool Suite). If Medium’s editor is supported by the extension (it might not officially list Medium, but if it’s a standard content editor, it could work), you could potentially optimize directly while writing on Medium. If not, the common workflow is to optimize in POP or Google Docs, then transfer to Medium.

• Additional POP Features: Besides pure content recommendations, POP has some unique tools:

• E-E-A-T Analysis: POP can audit Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust signals on your page and site (it checks 20+ factors like author bio, external references, etc.) (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T) (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T). This is more relevant if you own the site – for Medium, you can’t control the whole site’s E-E-A-T, but it might still give tips (like ensuring your Medium profile is filled out, links to social proof, etc.).
• Schema Suggestions: POP’s newer features include an AI-powered schema generator that looks at competitor sites to recommend schema markup for your page (POP: On-Page SEO & Content Optimization Tool Suite). This isn’t applicable to Medium posts (since you can’t add custom schema on Medium), but it’s part of how POP goes beyond content into technical SEO.
• AI Content Writing: POP now has a GPT-4 powered content generator (POP AI Writer) to create draft content based on the brief (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T). This could speed up writing, though it costs credits and is more geared toward users with their own sites. For Medium writers, it might be used to get an initial draft which you then edit and optimize.

In essence, Optimizer Pro/PageOptimizer Pro acts like a strict SEO coach for your writing. It excels at making sure every on-page element (from keywords in your headings to the presence of specific entities in the text) is tuned to what Google likes about the top-ranking content. While it requires a bit more manual work (following the report checklist), it provides very granular guidance. For Medium articles, POP can help you refine your draft so that it aligns with the content of high-ranking pieces – including covering the right entities and subtopics – even though you might not implement all technical suggestions (like schema or meta tag tweaks) on the Medium platform. The end result is a highly optimized article that reads naturally but checks off the SEO boxes.

Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Below is a side-by-side comparison of SurferSEO and PageOptimizer Pro, focusing on their content writing and entity optimization features:

Optimizing for Medium vs. Traditional Websites

When using these tools for Medium articles as opposed to a traditional blog on your own website, the core content optimization guidance remains the same. SurferSEO and PageOptimizer Pro are chiefly concerned with the content’s relevance and completeness in the eyes of search engines, which applies regardless of where the content is published. However, there are a few considerations to keep in mind for Medium:

• Limited Technical SEO Control on Medium: On your own site you could tweak things like <title> tags, meta descriptions, URL slugs, or add schema markup. On Medium, those aspects are largely handled by the platform (your article title becomes the meta title, and you have a generic meta description unless Medium allows a custom one). SurferSEO’s recommendations are mostly about the content itself (which you can fully implement on Medium), so you won’t run into platform limitations. PageOptimizer Pro might flag meta-description issues or suggest schema, but as a Medium author you can’t implement those. It’s best to focus on the content-related suggestions and not worry if POP shows a to-do that Medium doesn’t let you do. For instance, if POP says “Add keyword to meta description,” you can ensure the opening lines of your story contain the keyword (since Medium likely uses the first paragraph for descriptions), but you cannot directly edit a meta tag on Medium.

• Content is King on Medium: Medium has high domain authority, which often helps articles rank, but that also means a lot of competition. To stand out, your Medium article should be as comprehensive and optimized as any top blog post. Both Surfer and POP help achieve that by aligning your article with what’s working in top Google results. This includes using relevant entities, covering subtopics, and having sufficient length and media. Medium’s internal algorithms also favor engaging, well-structured content – using these tools to create a well-structured piece with logical headings and thorough coverage can improve reader engagement, which indirectly benefits SEO.

• Use of Medium Tags and Internal Distribution: While not directly related to Surfer or POP, remember that Medium has its own tagging system and curation. SurferSEO might suggest some secondary keywords or topics – you can use those as Medium tags to increase discoverability on Medium itself. PageOptimizer Pro’s entity suggestions might hint at related topics; incorporating those not only appeases Google but can make your content more relevant for Medium’s readers too. Neither Surfer nor POP specifically addresses Medium’s internal distribution, but by creating a highly relevant article, you improve the chances of Medium curators featuring it, which can lead to more engagement and external backlinks.

• Workflow for Medium: You might write in an external editor with these tools, then publish to Medium. Surfer’s Google Docs extension or POP’s recommendations can guide you as you draft. Once the content is optimized (high content score or POP score), simply copy it into Medium’s editor. Double-check formatting (headings, bullet points) carry over correctly. The optimization these tools provided will carry through in the published Medium story’s text. Medium’s platform doesn’t hinder using any of the keywords or headings you’ve prepared.

In conclusion, SurferSEO and PageOptimizer Pro can significantly enhance your Medium article’s SEO performance just as they would for a self-hosted blog post. SurferSEO offers an integrated, real-time way to craft content with the right keywords and structure, making it very convenient for writing Medium articles that are primed for ranking. PageOptimizer Pro offers a powerful second-opinion, auditing your draft against SEO benchmarks and ensuring no stone is left unturned in terms of entities and on-page signals – though you’ll adapt its advice to Medium’s platform constraints. By leveraging the strengths of either tool (or both), you can write Medium posts that not only read well for your audience but also check all the SEO boxes to attract organic traffic from Google (Content Raptor vs SurferSEO: In-Depth SEO Tool Comparison) (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T). The result is content that is richly optimized and more likely to compete with traditional webpages in search rankings, giving your Medium stories a better shot at visibility.

Sources: Official SurferSEO documentation and content editor guide (How to use the customization panel in Content Editor | Surfer Knowledge Base) (Surfer | SEO Content Editor — Your Powerful Writing Assistant), SurferSEO and Clearscope comparison (SearchAtlas) (SurferSEO vs. Clearscope: What's the Best Keyword Tool for 2025?), SurferSEO vs PageOptimizer Pro reviews and feature descriptions (Surfer SEO vs Page Optimize Pro (2025) - Which is Better?) (PageOptimizer Pro Review: This Tool Fixes E-E-A-T) (POP: On-Page SEO & Content Optimization Tool Suite), and PageOptimizer Pro official feature pages (POP: On-Page SEO & Content Optimization Tool Suite) (POP: On-Page SEO & Content Optimization Tool Suite). These sources illustrate how each tool functions and the kind of recommendations they provide, which informed the above comparison and guidance.