Content Score is a value from 1 to 100, which describes the relevance and quality of your content. Get an overall sense of your optimization level and how much work is left. You can improve your Content Score by optimizing content structure and terms in your writing.
A score below 33 means your content is not optimized enough. You probably need to add more text and optimize important terms.
A score between 33 and 66 indicates your content is quite well optimized. At this stage, you should have most of your work done.
A score over 66 means your content is ready to go. Of course, aiming for 100 is definitely great, but anything over 66 indicates a decent optimization.
To increase the Content Score, follow the advice from the guidelines, especially:
Make sure you use prominent terms in headings.
Avoid over-optimization of any suggested term.
Add images with relevant alternative text.
When you use the Content Editor, the Content Score gives you an instant indication of how well-optimized your content is for your target keywords and AI visibility. But unlike traditional SEO tools that place heavy emphasis on surface-level factors like word count or how often a keyword is repeated, Surfer takes a smarter, more modern approach.
Our algorithm places greater weight on the quality and natural usage of relevant terms rather than on rigid structural metrics. This means:
We prioritize the use of meaningful, high-impact terms, those that appear consistently across top-performing pages on Google.
The way those terms are used within context matters more than simply stuffing them into your content.
Structural elements like word count, number of headings, or images still play a role, but they’re not the main drivers of your Content Score.
This reflects how Google evaluates content: not just by its length or the number of keywords it includes, but by how well it satisfies search intent and delivers value in relevant language.
By focusing on these semantic signals, your Content Score gives you a clearer picture of whether your content is likely to compete with top-ranking pages, helping you improve organic visibility, increase traffic, and build topical authority, without over-optimizing.
AI Search Content Score measures your AI-relevant Facts coverage.
Learn more about Facts »
There are three possible reasons why the score is not improving despite adding content that follows guidelines:
1. Your competitors are dominated by one or two domain(s). We need at least 3 different domains to do the calculations.
You can get fewer than three required domains when you, for example, run a query for a branded keyword. A branded keyword includes a specific company, product, or brand name (e.g., “Nike running shoes” or “Surfer SEO review”).
2. SERPs are dominated by the pages we can't crawl. The most common example is when all results are PDF files.
3. If the Content Editor is very old. When your Content Editor was created before we introduced Content Score (July 2020), CS will be 0. Please create a new Content Editor for the same keyword to get an accurate result.
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