Skip to main content
    AI for Marketing

    AI SEO tools, sorted by the job you need done

    Short answer

    The best AI SEO tools are the ones that match a job you actually have. Start with the free reports from Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, which now cover AI answers, then add one paid tool per gap: an AI visibility tracker, a content optimiser, a site crawler or a keyword database. None of them can see inside the engines' own ranking systems.

    By Jakub Cambor, founder of AI for Marketing, updated

    What are the best AI SEO tools?

    There is no single best AI SEO tool, because the work splits into four jobs and each tool is good at one or two of them: tracking whether AI answers mention you, improving the content itself, auditing the site's technical health, and researching what people search for. Pick by the job you are short of, start with what Google and Microsoft give away, and pay for a tool only when a free one runs out.

    AI SEO tools by job, with facts from each vendor's own pages
    JobStart free withPaid tools that do itWhat paying adds
    Tracking AI answersSearch Console's Generative AI report and Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance reportPeec AI, Semrush, Surfer, Ahrefs Brand RadarYour own buyer questions checked daily on several engines, with the brands named beside you
    Content optimisationReading the pages that already rank and the answers that already cite themSurfer, ClearscopeThe topics and questions ranking pages cover that yours misses, scored as you write
    Technical auditsScreaming Frog SEO Spider, free up to 500 URLs, and Search ConsoleA Screaming Frog licence, $279 a year per userCrawls beyond 500 URLs and the advanced features
    Keyword researchGoogle Keyword Planner in a Google Ads account, and your Search Console queriesSemrush, Ahrefs, or DataForSEO for raw dataVolumes and difficulty for any keyword, competitors' keywords, and history

    Sources: Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search; Bing Webmaster Blog, Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools (February 2026); Screaming Frog, SEO Spider pricing (opened September 2026); Google Ads Help, Use Keyword Planner; Peec AI, Pricing (opened September 2026); Semrush, Plans and pricing (opened September 2026); Surfer, Pricing (US dollar prices, opened September 2026); Ahrefs, Plans and pricing (opened September 2026); Clearscope, Pricing (opened September 2026)

    The free first-party reports deserve more use than they get. Google's guide to generative AI search points site owners to a Generative AI performance report in Search Console, and Bing's AI Performance report shows how often your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing's AI summaries, which pages, and the phrases the AI searched with when it found them. Neither tells you about ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude, which is the gap the paid trackers fill.[1][2]

    Entry plans for tracking AI answers, as listed in September 2026
    ToolEntry plan for AI trackingQuestions trackedWorth knowing
    SurferAI Search Analytics, $82 a month billed yearly50 prompts, refreshed dailyCovers ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and other models
    SemrushStarter plan50 prompts tracked daily for one domainComes inside the SEO plan rather than as a separate tool
    Peec AIStarter plan50 prompts, tracked dailyYou choose three models to track
    AhrefsLite plan, with Brand Radar AI as a paid add-on5 tracked AI prompts on LiteAdd-on packages count one prompt on one platform in one location as one check

    Sources: Surfer, Pricing (US dollar prices, opened September 2026); Semrush, Plans and pricing (opened September 2026); Peec AI, Pricing (opened September 2026); Ahrefs, Plans and pricing (opened September 2026)

    Surfer, Clearscope and Screaming Frog list US dollar prices; for the others, check the current price on their own pages, because it varies by region and by plan size. For content optimisation, Surfer's Discovery plan is listed at $49 a month billed yearly and Clearscope's Essentials plan at $129 a month for 50 tracked queries and 50 pages, both at the time of writing. The search volumes below show how many people are asking the same question you are.[7][9][6][5][8]

    What people search for each month
    SearchUKUS
    ai seo tools2602,400
    best ai seo tools1701,000
    All of these4303,400

    Monthly Google searches for each phrase, in each country.

    Source: Google Ads monthly search volume, via DataForSEO (September 2026)

    What can AI SEO tools do, and what do they miss?

    AI SEO tools are good at counting, crawling and comparing at a scale no person can: checking a set of questions on several engines every day, finding every broken link and slow page on a site, and listing the topics competitors cover that you do not. They miss what happens inside the engines, what real buyers actually typed, and whether any of it turned into revenue. Google is blunt about the first point: no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.[1]

    What an AI SEO tool can and cannot tell you
    Your questionA tool can tell youA tool cannot tell you
    Are we named in AI answers?Whether you were named for the questions it checks, on the days it checks themWhat your buyers typed, or what the engine will say next time
    Why is a competitor cited instead?Which pages the engine citedHow the engine weighed them against yours
    Is our content good enough?Which topics the ranking pages cover and yours does notWhether you say anything first-hand that nobody else can
    Is the site healthy?Broken links, redirect chains, duplicate titles, slow pages, blocked crawlersWhich fix will earn the most, and in what order
    Did it make money?Clicks, citations and positionsLeads and revenue, unless it is joined to your analytics and CRM

    The tracking tools also inherit the engines' own variability. The same question asked twice can come back with a different list of names, and even Bing describes the phrases in its AI Performance report as a sample of overall citation activity. Treat one day's result as a reading, not a verdict, and judge a tracker by the trend it shows over months.[2]

    • Does it cover the engines your buyers use, in the countries they buy from?
    • Can you enter your own buyer questions, or only the tool's suggested prompts?
    • How often does it check, and does it keep the history so months can be compared?
    • Does it show which pages were cited, not just whether your name appeared?
    • Is it priced per prompt, per check or per seat, and what happens when you pass the limit?
    • Can it export to a spreadsheet, Data Studio or an API, so the numbers sit beside your leads?

    Most of all, no tool writes the page that earns the mention. The content still has to answer the buyer's question with something the engines cannot find elsewhere. Harmonance, Jakub's own project rather than a client, is where the AI content method was first tested: content written with AI earned 10,976 organic clicks and 770,576 impressions in 152 days with no paid promotion, and client work adds a person's review before anything is published.[11]

    10,976

    Organic search from AI-written content

    10,976 organic clicks and 770,576 impressions in 152 days, with no paid promotion.

    Harmonance, Jakub's own project, not a client result. It is where the AI content method was first tested; client work adds human review before anything is published.

    Read the case study

    For a wider look at choosing marketing software, see the selection guide to AI marketing tools and the free tools worth using. If you would rather have the tools run for you, search is one of the channels the managed service covers, judged on the enquiries it brings.

    Proof from past work

    • 10,976

      Organic search from AI-written content

      10,976 organic clicks and 770,576 impressions in 152 days, with no paid promotion.

      Harmonance, Jakub's own project, not a client result. It is where the AI content method was first tested; client work adds human review before anything is published.

      Read the case study

    What you get

    Your marketing, run for you and proven to pay.

    • It starts with a 30 minute call with Jakub: what gets built, the channels and the fee, agreed together. A free written breakdown of your site is there if you would like one first.
    • Then your whole customer journey is run for you, not one channel: finding the right people, what they see and click, the speed and pages they land on, the way through your site to a sale, and the follow-up after it, with every step tracked.
    • Everything is actively managed and improved, with a short weekly report on what changed and what it made, and you approve everything before it goes out.
    • No lock-in and no minimum term. Cancel any time.

    What is run for you

    You get paid ads, organic search or outreach, whichever your numbers need, never all three by default.

    • If paid ads are part of it, ad spend is on top and you set the cap.
    • You never pay for software. The one exception is email outreach: the sending software, domains and mailboxes are yours, so you pay for those.
    Book a callGet your free breakdown

    What it is not

    • Not a single-channel agency: whatever makes you money next gets the work, not ads forever or SEO forever.
    • Not a junior team on a six-month lock-in: you work with Jakub directly, rolling monthly.
    • Not AI left to run on its own: every piece is reviewed by a person and approved by you.

    Custom automations, such as reporting digests, lead enrichment and routing, and support triage in tools like n8n, Make and Zapier, are available as an add-on to the managed service, not a separate offer.

    More questions

    Do we need a paid AI visibility tracker at all?

    Not at first. Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools cover Google's and Microsoft's AI answers for free, and a short list of buyer questions asked by hand once a month on ChatGPT and Perplexity tells you most of what a small business needs. A tracker earns its cost when you want daily checks, several countries or a record of which competitors are named instead.[1][2]

    Can an AI writing tool do our SEO content?

    It can draft it, and a content optimiser can check the draft against what already ranks, but Google's own guidance rewards content with a first-hand point of view that goes beyond common knowledge. That part has to come from someone who knows the business, so plan for a person to add it and review every page before it goes live.[1]

    Related answers

    Every answer, by topic

    Sources

    1. 1.Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Searchdevelopers.google.com
    2. 2.Bing Webmaster Blog, Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools (February 2026)blogs.bing.com
    3. 3.Screaming Frog, SEO Spider pricing (opened September 2026)screamingfrog.co.uk
    4. 4.Google Ads Help, Use Keyword Plannersupport.google.com
    5. 5.Peec AI, Pricing (opened September 2026)peec.ai
    6. 6.Semrush, Plans and pricing (opened September 2026)semrush.com
    7. 7.Surfer, Pricing (US dollar prices, opened September 2026)surferseo.com
    8. 8.Ahrefs, Plans and pricing (opened September 2026)ahrefs.com
    9. 9.Clearscope, Pricing (opened September 2026)clearscope.io
    10. 10.Google Ads monthly search volume, via DataForSEO (September 2026)dataforseo.com
    11. 11.Organic search from AI-written content: AI for Marketing case study