Content Editor is a tool that helps you write and optimize your articles to achieve higher search engine rankings for your topic.
With the help of Surfer’s algorithms and top-ranking pages (competitor analysis), you will be given guidelines on structuring your article by sharing a detailed list of relevant keywords to include in your content to rank well. Not only that, but you will also receive real-time feedback on overall on-page optimization with the help of Surfer’s Content Score.
Content Editor will provide guidelines and frames for writing your article manually. With Content Editor, you will maintain complete creative control over the writing process, but you will save plenty of time on research. It serves as a helpful tool rather than an automated content generator.
Surfer AI takes the provided guidelines and automates the article-creation process. It generates content based on the user's suggestions and parameters. If you want Surfer to write for you, check out these articles.
Start by figuring out which keywords you’d like to rank for with your Content Editor (usually, a single main keyword is enough). Once you have picked the best keywords to target, you can move to creating a Content Editor:
1. Navigate to the Content Editor section on the left menu bar.
2. Select + New Content.
3. Enter keywords you’d like to rank for (up to 20 per editor). Select a location and a corresponding language, a crawler type (desktop or mobile), and optionally a folder to store your Content Editor. Select Create-Deep analysis to proceed.
4. Wait for the deep analysis to end. It may take a couple of minutes.
5. Select a Template that fits your document best. You can also create and select custom Templates based on your existing content. Select Next-Context & instructions.
6. Next, you can:
review your competitors by selecting the Ranking content tile,
toggle on/off, review, and edit Brand Knowledge if necessary,
select a Brand Voice,
modify the expected Word count if necessary (Surfer will suggest a number based on your high-ranking competitors),
add context & instructions for even more accurate AI-generated output.
Select Next-Writing mode to proceed.
7. Choose if you want to:
Write it yourself: the content editor will be generated empty with ready-to-follow Guidelines. Happy writing!
Generate content: Surfer AI will generate the outline (toggle on the option to review and edit it beforehand if you wish), and then the content itself, paragraph by paragraph. Voila!
You can quickly create a Content Editor for an already published page using the Import from URL option at the top of the main Content Editor section.
This method runs a deep analysis, then instantly generates Guidelines and populates the editor with your page’s content.
You can also use Create content in bulk (from the dropdown next to + New Content) to generate multiple editors at once.
Content Editor Guidelines is a step-by-step workflow panel located on the right side of the Content Editor. It guides you through the entire content creation process—from research to publishing—by organizing tasks into clear, expandable workflow steps. Each section contains specific actions to help you optimize, review, and finalize your article efficiently.
Workflow steps:
Research & Create Outline
Explore competitors, questions, and notes to understand the topic and generate or refine your article outline.
Write & Optimize
Improve your content for SEO and AI Search by covering recommended entities and facts, and tracking optimization progress.
Internal Links
Connect your Google Search Console to scan and insert relevant internal links that strengthen your content structure and SEO.
Pre-Publish Review
Evaluate your article’s quality with readability scoring, plagiarism checking, and AI readability analysis before publishing.
Publish or Export
Finalize your content by adding meta tags, copying or downloading it, creating social media posts, or exporting directly to WordPress.
At the top of the panel, you’ll also find the Content Score, which measures how well your article is optimized compared to competitors. Learn more about how it works in the Content Score guide.
Writing your articles from scratch while ensuring they're SEO-optimized can be daunting and sometimes lead to writer's block. You can maximize the Auto-Optimize feature to boost your content and Content Score.
Once you've completed (or are close to) writing your article, you can use Auto-Optimize with a single click.
Let our algorithms analyze the best opportunities to enhance your content and help it rank higher. Relevant NLP terms will be added to enrich your content while preserving its message.
The results are shown in real-time, and you can approve or discard the optimization suggestions.
Click on a suggestion to see the exact section or heading that was auto-optimized. Feel free to compare the idea to the original version. You also have the option to restore the original. Hit save and close after review.
Learn more about how the Auto-Optimize feature works »
The more content pages your domain has, the harder it gets to do internal linking manually.
The Internal Linking feature is meant to help you streamline this process with just a few clicks. There is no need to scour through dozens, or maybe more, of URLs to link to your pages.
Just connect your Google Search Console and select the Insert Internal Links button from the editor. You can select the GSC account of the domain where your article will be published.
The feature will automatically search for and display a list of internal links that would fit your article.
Once you’ve accepted the suggestions — and even added your own links to the list — you can move on to the next step: automatically detecting relevant anchor texts and inserting them into your article.
Before saving, you can still review, edit, or discard any suggestions to ensure everything fits perfectly.
Read more about the Automated Internal Linking feature »
The Customization Panel allows you to customize your content guidelines before you dive into writing. This step is optional - by default, Surfer chooses the best setup, but you can make any necessary adjustments and refine your guidelines.
Organic competitors – Based on your choice, Surfer will recalculate the content structure and terms for your content.
Content structure – You can change the number of words, paragraphs, images, and headings.
Terms to use – All words and phrases you'll need in your content. You can add or remove phrases that you find irrelevant.
Topics & Questions – Here, you can define your content draft. Surfer suggests multiple ideas, but you can add yours as well.
Learn more about the Customization Panel
Folders help you organize your content projects by grouping related documents in one place, making it easier to manage your work and collaborate with your team.
You can create folders directly from the Content Editor section, then move documents into them based on topics, clients, or stages of work (e.g., drafts, in progress, published).
This structure improves navigation, reduces clutter, and helps you quickly find what you need as your content library grows.
Do you still need help? Don't worry! You can contact us at [email protected] or via live chat by clicking the icon in the bottom-right corner.
