If you’ve been keeping up with tech news, you know AI is a hot topic right now. Artificial intelligence isn’t new—in, fact, the term itself has actually been around since the 1950s. But how we use AI in our daily lives is rapidly changing and advancing, and that includes how we use AI SEO tools to help with search engine optimization.
The Rise of AI in SEO Strategy
SEO also isn’t new in the world of technology. We’ve been using SEO strategies since the 90s, when the internet became readily available in households across the country and businesses began creating websites.
What IS relatively new, however, is how we go about building and implementing an SEO strategy. AI SEO tools have made tasks like keyword research and writing SEO content easier and more intuitive than ever, allowing people to make their websites attractive to search engines and moving them up in search engine rankings.
What Are AI SEO Tools and What Do They Do?
AI tools are any type of software application that uses machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence to perform certain tasks. AI SEO tools are exactly what the name implies—tools that perform SEO tasks.
AI tools for SEO can help with things like:
- writing meta descriptions
- writing SEO content like blog posts or landing pages
- doing keyword research
- looking up keyword difficulty
- coming up with content ideas
- optimizing existing content
- performing backlink analysis
- writing social media posts
In the hands of the right person, a good AI SEO tool can help businesses complete both on-page SEO and technical SEO tasks that will improve search engine rankings and get their content in front of the right people.
The Best AI Tools For Increasing Search Engine Rankings
There are plenty of paid and free AI SEO tools on the market right now, and it seems that a new SEO tool is popping up every other day. So how do you choose the right tools for your business?
The first step is identifying what you want it to do. Are you looking for help with keyword research? Or do you need something to help you with link building? Maybe you’re looking for a great AI tool for reporting on your SEO optimization efforts.
Once you’ve identified your needs, you can begin researching the best SEO tools for the job. Here are our top AI SEO software picks to help move your site up in search engine results pages.
#1: AI-Driven Keyword Research
Keyword research is the backbone of a good SEO strategy. It’s how you identify the most relevant and high-performing keywords for a website. AI keyword research tools analyze search intent and search volume, competition, and trends to suggest keywords that can help attract targeted traffic and improve search engine rankings.
- SEMrush: Offers comprehensive keyword analysis, including search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitive analysis.
- Ahrefs: Provides detailed keyword data, including search volume, click-through rates, and related keyword suggestions.
#2: AI-Powered Content Optimization
When you optimize content, you’re taking content already on your website and enhancing the quality and relevance. It’s one of the most important SEO strategies, especially for businesses that already have plenty of existing content created. AI-powered content optimization tools analyze content against top-ranking pages, suggest improvements, and ensure the content aligns with user intent and SEO best practices, improving its chances of ranking higher in search results.
- Surfer SEO: Surfer SEO Analyzes top-ranking pages and provides recommendations for optimizing content to improve rankings.
- Frase: Uses AI-generated content to help create and optimize pages by comparing them to the top-ranking articles for your target keywords.
AI for Content Optimization vs. Content Creation
AI tools are not only capable of optimizing content but they can write SEO content, too. Their advanced natural language processing (NLP) capabilities allow them to analyze large amounts of data to understand context, intent, and the nuances of language.
However, while AI can create optimized content, it still doesn’t measure up to the creativity and authenticity that human writers specializing in SEO content writing can produce. What really drives organic traffic is authentic, high-quality content that solves a user’s problems.
#3: Automated Technical SEO Audits
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website’s infrastructure to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results. AI tools can scan websites for technical issues that may affect their rankings in search engine results pages. These tools can help you identify problems such as broken links, slow page speeds, mobile usability issues, and provide recommendations for fixing them so your site meets search engine guidelines.
- Screaming Frog: A powerful tool for conducting comprehensive technical SEO audits, identifying issues such as broken links, duplicate content, and page speed.
- SEMrush: Has a site audit feature that scans for technical SEO issues and offers actionable insights to improve site health.
#4: AI for Competitor Analysis
Another important part of an SEO strategy is knowing who your competitors are and analyzing their strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and performance to identify opportunities and areas for improvement in your own SEO efforts. AI tools can offer insights into competitors’ keywords, backlinks, content strategies, and overall performance.
- Ahrefs: Offers detailed competitor analysis, including backlink profiles, organic search traffic, and keyword strategies.
- Spyfu: Provides insights into competitors’ top keywords, ad campaigns, and backlink strategies.
#5: Predictive Analytics for SEO Trends
Staying ahead in the world of SEO these days requires you to know where search trends are going and be able to predict user behavior from your target audience. Some of the best AI SEO tools can forecast future search trends and user behavior. These tools analyze historical data and current trends to predict which keywords, topics, and strategies will be effective, helping businesses stay ahead of the game and adjust their SEO strategies proactively.
- Moz: Uses predictive analytics to identify emerging trends and forecast keyword performance.
- Google Search Console/Google Analytics 4: Provides insights into user behavior and search trends to help predict future SEO opportunities.
#6: AI-Enhanced Local SEO
Local SEO is particularly important for small businesses and brick-and-mortar stores. It helps them promote their products or services to local customers in their target area. AI tools for local SEO can optimize local listings, manage reviews, and ensure consistency across various online directories, so businesses can attract more customers in their area and appear in location-based searches.
- Moz Local: Helps manage and optimize local business listings to improve local search visibility.
- BrightLocal: Provides tools for managing local SEO, including citation building, review management, and local rank tracking.
#7: Voice Search Optimization Tools
With the rise of smart speakers like Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple’s Siri, more people are using voice commands to search for information, make purchases, and manage their daily tasks. Voice search optimization tools use AI to optimize content for voice search queries. They help businesses understand how people use voice search, identify natural language patterns, and optimize content to match conversational search terms, which improves visibility in voice search results.
- Google Keyword Planner: Provides insights into keywords and phrases that are commonly used in voice search.
- Answer the Public: Helps identify natural language questions and phrases that people use in voice search queries.
#8: AI for On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing individual web pages to improve their search engine rankings and drive organic traffic, focusing on things like content, meta tags, and internal links. AI tools can help optimize individual web pages to rank higher in search engines—they can analyze various on-page elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and content structure and provide recommendations to improve relevancy and user experience.
- RankMath: A on-page SEO plugin for WordPress that uses AI to optimize content, meta tags, and schema markup.
- Yoast SEO: A popular SEO plugin for WordPress that provides AI-driven recommendations for on-page optimization.
#9: AI-Driven SEO Reporting and Insights
Even the best SEO efforts aren’t worth much without data that lets you know if you’re actually improving your website’s performance. AI-powered SEO reporting tools use artificial intelligence to generate comprehensive SEO reports and insights. These tools automate data collection, analyze performance metrics, and visualize trends, helping businesses track their SEO progress and make informed decisions.
- Google Data Studio (Google Looker Studio): Allows users to create custom SEO reports and dashboards with data visualizations.
- Chat GPT: Useful for creating summaries, generating content, and explaining data insights.
How to Use AI SEO Tools the Right Way
AI SEO tools are exactly that—tools. Their effectiveness largely depends on the expertise of the person using them. In the hands of someone experienced, these tools can enhance the efficiency of the SEO process and streamline tasks like keyword research, content optimization, and technical audits.
It’s important to remember that AI tools are not meant to replace humans but to support them by adding efficiency and accuracy. For knowledgeable professionals with a strong understanding of SEO best practices, AI SEO tools can enhance the process of executing a custom-tailored SEO strategy.
