The digital world is fast. It’s transformative. And keeping up with the latest tools and technologies can often become a necessity. There’s a new term called AI SEO that has been coined. And it’s not just a single time investment module, but it’s more of a full-time job. Tools are an essential aspect of any business. When we are talking about digital marketing, tools definitely play a central role. Similar to many other existing tool sets, SEO also has a vast library. Now, with the addition of AI, we are seeing many interesting tools emerge in the field of AI SEO. 

I have not been able to test many of these tools but yes, I have taken a keen interest in them. 

Therefore, I am writing this article purely based on what I have learned about them. You can always check them out in your free-time and test a few as per your requirement. 

See which of them are workable & which of these tools can greatly benefit you. 

Some of them like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and other GPT LLM models, which are available for free, we have all tested them and checked their efficacy.

Let’s discuss a few that are the hidden gems. They have not been properly introduced yet. 

What is AI SEO?

As the name suggests, AI SEO is about leveraging AI tools to perform SEO practices in the digital realm. AI SEO is a search engine optimization strategy where a person uses artificial intelligence to optimize web pages (such as blog posts & landing pages) to rank up on Google SERP. These practices are not just limited to ranking on Google, they go beyond offering optimization techniques to rank up on LLM. Many AI SEO tools are resilient, which help with performance & content quality. It provides relevant recommendations to improve ranking factors. 

These recommendations often include elements such as backlinks, keywords & user experience. 

What Marketers Do to Leverage AI? 

As someone who has worked in the growing field of digital, I have produced many interesting content pieces. Some of them cover topics such as SEO, digital marketing, digital branding, web design, web development, hosting services and much more. Eventually, I have had the chance to test multiple writing tools, SEO tools and AI tools to understand how the digital space works. 

To my knowledge, here’s how AI best support marketing flows: 

  • It helps with research and brainstorming 
  • It helps with effective project management 
  • It provides analytics & assessment 
  • And it helps with content creation tasks (for example, brief communication messages, writing ad copies, emails, blogs, websites and more.) 

How Marketers Use AI for SEO? 

And from what I have assessed, here’s how marketers use AI to perform effective SEO. 

  • They use AI tools to perform effective keyword research. 
  • They use AI tools to design AI-backed SEO marketing strategies. 
  • They use AI tools to find and fix technical SEO problems. 
  • They generate content outlines using AI tools such as ChatGPT. 
  • They use tools to speed up the research process. 
  • They find greater opportunities to optimize content for ranking. 
  • They analyze KPIs such as page views, clicks, & time spent on page. 
  • They use AI to generate structured data & schema markup. 

Overall, they use AI for SEO to automate repetitive tasks & build an overall smarter content marketing strategy. 

Well, we often get badly stuck in the never ending dilemma of AI versus human. But, here’s the fun fact, AI isn’t ever going to replace humans. 

Humans have something called the element of surprise which AI doesn’t. 

Humans can be pretty unpredictable and yet emotionally and logically on-point. This is just one of those things that AI can’t ever replace. 

And believe it or not, many great ideas came into motion by abrupt and unpredictable decisions. 

AI just wasn’t around. 

So what role does AI play in SEO? Well, AI utilizes advanced learning algorithms, leverage machine learning and use natural language processing to process and analyze big volumes of data giving SEO experts more exposure to create better SEO strategies & automate tasks. 

In simple words, AI gives SEO experts an opportunity to perform more accurate assessments. This way, they are better equipped to perform SEO practices which leads to better ranking. 

What Makes an AI for SEO Tools Worthy of Attention? 

Since the SEO tool library is vast, measuring their efficacy can often become complicated. 

To score them objectively, I have realized a few metrics which, in my opinion, are worth paying attention to; especially when you’re purchasing or planning to purchase a specific tool.

What SEO-centric functionality do they offer? 

Every tool has its own set of functionality which relates to certain elements of search engine optimization. After all, if they are designed for SEO powered by AI, they should fit the bill. These categories often include functions such as keyword analysis, on-page performance troubleshooting, website performance reporting, content ideation & planning or competitor analysis. Based on these factors, one should decide whether the tool is worthy or not. 

What value do these AI SEO tools offer? 

Another thing that many SEO specialists fail to do is to assess the AI SEO tool based on price-to-product quality ratio. The internet is full of useful tools and there are plenty of use cases which one can follow. To justify a subscription of a comprehensive tool, one always measures the tool’s efficacy based on the extensive feature set the specific tool offers. There are several freemium, premium and free options available. So before you decide on using one, decide whether it’s offering you the best price-to-product quality ratio especially for AI SEO. 

How is the user experience?

One more thing to consider when opting in for an AI SEO tool is to check the learning curve. Does the tool effectively integrate with your existing systems? Does it have the capacity to learn & adapt to your particular environment? And how effectively can you use it for your SEO tasks? The learning curve should be good enough to resonate with your particular requirements. 

How well it integrates with your business? 

For many digital marketing specialists, using software products and tools for SEO depends on how well it integrates with common platforms. AI SEO tools are often useful when you have to display reports in meetings, scheduling, or reporting. In fact, they are a great asset in customer relationship management providing detailed insights to sales professionals, business analysts, key account managers & project managers, to showcase SEO performance in real-time. 

Best AI SEO Tools to Consider in 2025

Being in the industry, I have always had the knack of exploring and finding new tools to assist me. Over the years, I have successfully found many such tools & have used them accordingly. 

Today, I am going to discuss some of the tools in the AI SEO domain which I found noteworthy. They are not just relevant, but in my opinion, they also offer great assistance to SEO pros.  

AI Search Grader 

AI SEO Grader

Price: Free

Purpose: Monitoring Analytics 

If you’re looking for a powerful tool to analyze and search up your brand in the AI domain, AI Search Grader is worth a shot. This tool is great for showcasing whether your brand appears in the AI searches or not. With AI Search Grader, SEO specialists can learn how your brand appears among LLMs such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and many other relevant models. 

AI Search Grader is great for making your brand discoverable in AI-driven parameters. It offers a more comprehensive view in the broader AI ecosystem and not just limits your access to Google. You can analyze your digital standings against competitors; which in turn, helps you identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities in your specified niche audience. 

The tool is also great for analyzing the tone of AI generated responses. It will show you whether your brand will appear as positive, negative or neutral in LLM related searches. 

If you’re an SEO specialist who is looking to maintain your online reputation, Search Grader is a complete package. You can find the tool titled AEO Grader on Hubspot.

SEMRush

SEMRush

Price: Packages start at $140/month. 

Purpose: Overall SEO analysis 

If there’s one tool that sets the tone apart for SEO marketers, it’s none other than SEMRush. As someone who has been working in the SEO industry for more than a decade, I believe SEMRush is one of those tools that’s a must-have in your digital arsenal. It provides a holistic approach to optimizing your site content with relevant SEO metrics and ensuring it ranks up in searches. 

While we all know how SEMRush helps with competitor analysis, backlink gap analysis, content marketing and keyword research, the question lies with how effectively it works in the AI domain. There are two ways SEMRush AI can help SEO marketing specialists; AI Article Writer and SEMRush’s Co-Pilot feature. The AI Article Writer offers content generation capabilities and a tool purposefully built for SEO can help users create articles in a single click which are SEO ready. It covers SEO suggestions and real-time optimization scores to make sure your content is properly SEO optimized and appears in the relevant searches for users who are in need. 

SEMRush’s Copilot also amplifies SEO strategy by allowing users to perform SEO analysis on the double. Consider Copilot as your junior SEO executive but with access to a lot of information from the database. It helps you find a range of opportunities for keywords and pages. By utilizing its capabilities, you can improve your position, monitor competitive movements, notify significant changes in landing pages and even track keyword performance. 

With SEMRush’s Copiloting capability for real-time SEO suggestions, and the flawlessness of AI Article Writer, one can easily rank up in the searches without breaking a sweat. 

If you want to test SEMRush, click here

Surfer SEO (Scale AI Plan) 

Surfer AI

Price: $219/month. 

Purpose: Great for SEO optimization during writing content. 

Surfer SEO is a comprehensive AI-powered tool which accelerates the content development process by optimizing web pages with sentiment focused keywords & phrases. 

Its standout feature is its outline feature which gives you a proper page structure to achieve top search performance. Surfer SEO offers comprehensive detail on topics, word count & semantically related terms which are essential to outrank competitors. It offers a data-driven approach to optimize content. Surfer’s AI capabilities are not only limited to the English language, but it extends to other language models. It supports almost 10 different languages meeting multi-lingual content demands & streamlining global content workflows. 

The tool follows a two-step process; first, it creates an outline, then proceeds to a complete draft. The outline will provide you with enough information and give you a direction to perform adequate research. It ensures your efforts in writing may not entirely go to waste. 

So what’s interesting about Surfer AI? Here’s what I think makes Surfer SEO worth your time. It can automatically adjust the best tone of voice for every article based on SERP analysis. 

Do you want to optimize your content on the best words and see it appear on relevant searches on Google? You may want to try Surfer SEO as it’s the #1 optimization tool available. 

Link Whisper

Link Whisper

Price: Starts at $77/year.

Purpose: Internal link building automation.

If you’ve ever felt the pain of manually managing internal links across dozens (or even hundreds) of pages, Link Whisper is the lifesaver you didn’t know you needed. This smart WordPress plugin automates the process of building relevant internal links that improve your site’s SEO performance. Instead of spending hours combing through content to connect pages, Link Whisper uses AI to suggest contextual links that actually make sense.

What makes Link Whisper stand out is its ability to detect orphan pages—those hidden gems on your site that don’t have any internal links pointing to them. By fixing these gaps, you strengthen your site structure and give Google a clearer map of your content. The tool even offers detailed reporting to show you where your links are weak, helping you optimize your content strategy over time.

Another useful feature is its bulk linking capability. Imagine being able to add dozens of internal links in just a few clicks. For SEO specialists who want to scale their linking strategy without drowning in manual work, this is a game-changer. Plus, it integrates smoothly with WordPress, so you don’t need any complicated setup to get rolling.

If you want to save time, build smarter site architecture, and improve your rankings without the grind, Link Whisper is definitely worth trying out.

SE Ranking

SE Ranking

Price: Starts at $55/month.

Purpose: All-in-one SEO platform for marketers and businesses.

If you’re searching for a versatile SEO toolkit that balances affordability with powerhouse features, SE Ranking deserves a spot on your radar. It’s designed for SEO specialists, agencies, and businesses who want deep insights into their site’s performance without juggling multiple tools.

SE Ranking covers everything from keyword research and rank tracking to backlink monitoring and website audits. But where it really shines is its balance of precision and simplicity. Unlike bulky enterprise platforms, SE Ranking keeps things clean and easy to use while still giving you a data-rich view of your SEO health.

One standout capability is its keyword rank tracker, which offers hyper-accurate daily updates across Google, Bing, Yahoo, and even YouTube. It doesn’t just stop at keywords, you can track competitors’ rankings, see changes in SERPs, and get ahead with actionable insights. The platform also comes with a Website Audit tool that scans for technical issues like site speed, crawlability, and broken links, so you can fix problems before they snowball.

For teams, SE Ranking’s white-label and reporting features make it easy to share polished results with clients. Pair that with its API access and integrations, and you’ve got a flexible platform that grows with your strategy. 

If you’re looking for a cost-effective alternative to pricier tools like SEMRush but don’t want to compromise on functionality, SE Ranking is definitely worth giving a shot.

MarketMuse 

MarketMuse

Price: Plans start at $149/month.

Purpose: AI-powered content strategy and optimization.

If content is the backbone of your SEO, MarketMuse is the tool that makes sure every piece you publish hits the mark. It goes beyond traditional keyword tools by using AI to analyze content quality, topical authority, and competitive landscapes, so you’re not just writing articles, you’re building authority in your niche.

MarketMuse stands out with its content briefs. Instead of guessing what Google (or your readers) want, the platform generates detailed outlines with suggested headings, subtopics, and related keywords. As a writer and marketer, you can create content that’s both comprehensive and laser-focused on search intent. Another powerful feature is its content audit and inventory system. MarketMuse scans your entire site, highlights content gaps, and shows you which pages need refreshing. 

And here’s where it gets interesting: MarketMuse doesn’t just optimize for keywords, it looks at topic clusters. In the long run, it helps you build long-term authority around themes, not just isolated terms. For SEO specialists trying to win the AI-driven “helpful content” game, this is a massive edge. If your goal is to consistently create content that ranks, resonates, and positions you as an authority, MarketMuse is definitely worth exploring.

Concluding Thoughts 

At the end of the day, SEO isn’t just about ranking higher—it’s about choosing the right tools that align with your goals, your audience, and the future of search itself. 

Whether you’re leaning on AI-powered insights or data-driven optimization, the right platform can be the difference between staying visible and getting lost in the noise. 

Pick wisely, test often, and let your strategy do the heavy lifting.