Scrolling down your Audit report, you will see a few sections. Each one of these sections corresponds to a specific part of your page that we've analyzed. The analysis is enhanced with recommended ranges that are 100% based on your selected competitors.
Every section is filled with suggestions for you to follow. We may ask you to add or remove a specific term, build up your internal linking net, decrease the number of words on your page, increase the number of images, and more. That solely depends on the way your and your competitors' pages are built.
Let's take a look at each section in your Audit so you can understand it better and apply the suggestions when improving your page.
In the Audit, we provide a content score by comparing your page against your top competitors. This score is determined through an in-depth analysis of your page’s content, taking into account everything within the <body> tags of your source code, such as the navigation bar, footer, menus, and comments. As a result, the data can vary and impact your final score. The analysis evaluates both the written content and the surrounding elements on your webpage. For your Audit, your recommendations will be based on the current word count of your page.
In this section, you will see internal linking suggestions designed to guide your audience from one of the recommended pages to your Audited page. Surfer scans your website and finds relevant URLs. You can link these pages together yourself or use the Internal Links tool in the Content Editor to do it automatically.
The terms-to-use suggestions are based on the number of words on your Audited page and adjusted accordingly. Powered by our AI algorithms, following these suggestions will have the greatest impact on your rankings. This section will tell you exactly which words and phrases you should include, what’s missing, and the recommended ranges (how often to use them) based on your competitors. For the suggested number of occurrences, we calculate the average word density from your competitors’ pages and adjust it to fit your current word count. Using the suggested terms can also greatly improve your Content Score.
This section shows you a list of suggested changes to adjust the overall length of your article or specific sections. You’ll get advice on how many words to include in the body, headers, paragraphs, and bold text. The recommended word count matches the number of words found within the body tags of your and your competitors’ pages.
The exact keyword will be the term you used when creating your Audit query, together with your targeted location, and the page URL you will be auditing. In this example, the exact keyword is "cat food for kittens.” In this section, you'll see how often your competitors use this keyword on their pages, along with suggestions on where and how often you should use it in your content based on best practices, such as including at least one exact keyword in your title or H1.
Partial keywords are counted when the first three letters of a word in your content match the first three letters of the exact keyword. For example, if the main keyword is "cat food for kittens" partial keywords would include words starting with "par," "food," “for” and "kit." This section helps you improve your partial keyword coverage.
It shows you how to fill content gaps using partial keywords and where you can add them. This may not be your top priority as it is not as impactful as Terms To Use, so we recommend focusing on keyword density first. However, using partial keywords can still help optimize your content and boost your Content Score.
By applying this strategy, you can naturally add variations that competitors are using, saving you time and effort. It also makes your content flow better and improves the overall user experience.
This section in Audit compares how your page is built (headings, paragraphs, images, etc.) against top-ranking pages for your keyword. In the report, we take into account elements that are visible only, and not anchored elements.
Instead of fixed rules, it shows common patterns among competitors. For example, if most ranking pages use more headings and paragraphs, it usually means they cover the topic in more depth and in a more structured way.
These recommendations aren’t strict requirements, but they help you align your content’s format and depth with what’s already performing well in search results.
Surfer will check how long your title and meta description elements are compared to those of your competitors. Here, we will give you tips to ensure you are meeting the SERP average length.
In this section, you can see the server response time and how long it takes for Surfer to load the first byte of your website. It's important to keep this time as low as possible.
Quicker TTFB means fewer people leave your page quickly and smoother performance.
Page visitors expect your content to load quickly. This shows how quickly your content loads compared to your competitors.
Our crawler will measure how long it takes for your page to load and compare it with the average load time of your competitors’ pages.
When your Audit is running, Surfer crawls both your page and your competitors’ pages. Finished editing in Content Editor and published the updates live on your site? Hit the Refresh button to see the changes in your audit, instead of running a new query each time, to re-crawl your page and see the updates. Within a few minutes, your suggestions will reflect the changes you’ve made since your initial query.
If you see this message next to your URL, you’re probably wondering what it means. To explain, we run a special search (site:your-keyword) to check if Google considers this URL the most relevant for that topic. Based on the search results, we will suggest and point out a more relevant URL, so you will be seeing this message prompt next to your Audited URL. Should something be done, then? We trust your expertise, so you can ignore it if you feel it’s not an issue.
In each section, you will see “Show details” button where you will find for comparison between you and your competitors. Select it to see suggested areas to improve.
The Check icon or Mark as done button's purpose is solely organizational (within Surfer) and does not affect your live sit directly. Once you click on it, a special Done tag will be added to your query
