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Blog > 9 Top AI SEO Tools I Recommend in 2025
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AI tools offer a lot of value for SEO professionals in many ways. You can use AI to tackle:
Let's take a look at some AI SEO tools I, personally, find very useful as a writer and SEO specialist.
Semrush is the primary SEO tool I (along with my Exploding Topics teammates) use for SEO analysis, including keywords and topic research.
Enter a keyword into the Keyword Overview Tool and it will show you key data about your keyword such as volume, difficulty, and intent.
Any half decent keyword research tool will show you this information, so Semrush isn't unique in that.
But when it comes to the number of keyword ideas it shows, Semrush usually surpasses other tools: it uses AI to analyze your chance of ranking.
Semrush gives you personalized data based on your domain name and topical coverage.
This new AI-powered metric is called "Personal Keyword Difficulty", or PKD.
Use trending keywords to create content your audience craves.
Keyword difficulty can vary greatly between a brand with strong topical authority on a subject and a brand with weak authority.
So if you want a personalized analysis, you can enter your domain name and Semrush will show you additional stats relevant to your website.
These personalized insights make our jobs easier at Exploding Topics to focus on keywords that are relevant and also attainable.
Note: Personalized suggestions provided by AI are guidelines. They're not a replacement for your SEO experience and judgment, but they can help guide you towards the right answers.
Who uses the Keyword Overview Tool, and how much does it cost?
The Keyword Overview Tool is widely used by career bloggers, marketing teams, and small-to-large businesses that want reliable data combined with AI tools focused on content marketing.
This tool is part of the Semrush Pro plan starting at $139.95 per month (and which includes a ton of additional SEO tools).
Use its 7-day free trial to start getting AI insights and make your keyword analysis easier.
Semrush AI Optimization lets you track important metrics across multiple AI search platforms: ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude.
It's a step up from the Keyword Research Tool. Enterprise AI Optimization is most helpful for companies with dedicated marketing teams.
According to recent research from Semrush, the average LLM visitor is worth 4.4x the average visitor from organic search.
So large brands really need to pay attention and adapt.
That said, as a writer, I found the Semrush AI Toolkit super helpful when I used it in my own research. It offers insights and metrics that I've never seen before.
And now that search is changing, incorporating AI monitoring in SEO is something all brands need to look at to get a first-mover advantage.
With that in mind, Enterprise AIO shows you a bunch of helpful data right here on the first page:
You can filter the chart by different LLM search tools.
It's critical that businesses can adapt to the ways their customers are searching now that tools like ChatGPT are becoming our go-to for almost everything we do.
Enterprise AIO provides visibility metrics and specific recommendations to improve your presence in the AI answers they see.
In fact, many of these AI metrics are completely new to SEO.
This chart shows you the kinds of topics your potential customers are searching for:
Of course, you can do your own basic research on how LLMs and AI search engines are presenting your brand and your products.
But due to the nature of the way these tools work, digging in to find real insights using manual prompting takes time.
It's likely unrealistic to research your reputation manually in the long term.
The Semrush AI toolkit solves that problem. You get actionable opportunities instantly:
Enterprise AIO is designed for large companies with multiple sites and dedicated marketing teams.
But when I tried it, I was surprised at how simple and accessible the dashboards are.
I believe this is a tool any business could benefit from.
To use it, you'll need a Semrush license. The AI toolkit costs $99/ month on top for each domain you'd like to monitor.
I love Ahrefs for its constant innovation with AI features that are on par with Semrush, but unique in their own way.
Like, Semrush, it provided a good set of keyword metrics that are actionable and beautifully presented.
Features like the "Also rank for" section add real value. This shows related keywords that domains ranking for your core keyword also rank for.
Ahrefs also addresses the problem of initiating keyword research by providing keyword suggestions with AI.
Typically, you need to have a fairly good idea of what your seed keywords are to initiate your research.
With AI keyword suggestions that populate almost instantly, you can then check the usual metrics like volume, difficulty, and related keywords in bulk.
For me, it's a common experience to find that Ahrefs has no real data about these AI generated keywords.
So you might end up scrapping most of the keyword ideas generated this way.
That said, it's still super helpful in steering you in directions you might not have thought of with some keywords with real data you can apply.
But my personal favorite is the search intent analysis feature.
Using AI, Ahrefs classifies search intents by looking at the SERPs for your target keyword.
This goes beyond traditional intent categories that just assign a label.
Instead, Ahrefs describes the actual topics people are interested in reading about related to that search query in order to satisfy their intent.
It's great for coming up with ideas for content angles you can include in your post and identifying the format that's likely to resonate with your audience.
Ahrefs is popular among freelancers and agencies as well as content marketers, freelancers, and small to large enterprises.
Its keyword research features with AI insights can appeal to any marketer focused on organic channels. We covered this in our Ahrefs review.
The Keyword Explorer tool is included in the core Ahrefs feature set with plans starting from $129/month.
Exploding Topics isn't a conventional keyword research tool.
It's one of the only few reliable ways to find emerging topics before they become mainstream.
While it's not a full-featured keyword research tool like Semrush or Ahrefs, it excels in its AI forecasting technology to detect topic ideas that are likely to snowball into huge trends.
Finding new and trending topics to write about is a strategic way for small businesses and individuals to stand out from larger competitors.
I really like that you can search for potential trends by topic, such as social trends, education trends, or lifestyle trends.
When it comes to first-to-market ideas and seasonal trends, Exploding Topics can be a valuable addition to your existing keyword research toolkit.
Exploding Topics is best for niche content creators, investors, and businesses that want to find keyword opportunities before it becomes mainstream.
Exploding Topics starts at $39 per month (billed annually) and offers channel breakdowns, 10 Trend Analyses, and 100 Tracked Trends.
RankIQ uncovers niche blogging opportunities.
RankIQ helps bloggers find low-competition keywords and identify underserved topics. These topics are often easier to rank highly in search engines in a short period of time.
The best feature for me is the huge range of niches it covers. It differs from other keyword research tools because it doesn't rely on seed keywords.
Instead, you select a niche, and RankIQ will use its unique database of super niche-specific, easy keywords that you can target to rank quickly.
It also has a decent content optimization tool that uses AI to grade your articles.
However, in my experience, RankIQ's unique strength is its curated keyword database.
RankIQ is best for bloggers looking for niche research and content optimization features in one place.
You can access RankIQ SEO research and content optimization features for $49 per month.
SurferSEO is a handy tool for speeding up your content optimization process.
The tool works by analyzing top-ranking content and finding patterns for keyword usage and topics. It provides real-time suggestions based on this analysis to help you create well-optimized content.
In fact, the tool can use AI to write the entire article for you based on the recommended content structure and keywords.
The "Auto-Optimize" option is decent enough when inserting keywords into your content.
That said, it has a tendency to ruin the flow of a sentence by shoving in keywords without sufficiently altering the surrounding text so that it sounds natural.
Simply adding keywords isn't a guarantee of success anymore. You need to display expertise and originality that's superior to your competitors to succeed in SEO in 2025.
Still, I think SurferSEO is good enough to get you off to a good start when you're optimizing underperforming content.
Just don't trust it blindly and you'll find it useful for saving you time while creating well-optimized content.
You can find a full Surfer SEO vs Ahrefs comparison here.
SurferSEO largely appeals to content writers and SEO brief creators working in teams for medium to large enterprises.
It's priced at $79/month for its cheapest plan.
Jasper is an AI content marketing tool with a distinctive brand voice feature.
Jasper’s language learning model uses your content to continuously train and refine its output. The result is that, over time, it will produce writing that mirrors your brand voice.
Some of other Jasper tools that offer a lot of time-saving potential include:
Jasper is best for large marketing teams that want to maintain a consistent brand voice.
However, it is expensive, sp the price likely makes it less attractive for small businesses.
After the 7-day free trial, you'll pay $39/ month for the Creator plan. To add brand voices or knowledge assets, it costs $59/ month per seat.
Alli AI makes instant changes to website code, tags, and headers at scale.
Alli AI solves the problem of manually updating many pages across large websites. It integrates with content management systems (CMS) to extend their capabilities and overcome some of their limitations.
The fact that Alli AI can make small changes, like title tag updates across a huge range of pages can be great for getting a boost in your rankings.
For bigger websites, SEO is often a numbers game. The faster you can optimize your pages, the more you're likely to see an overall uplift in organic traffic.
Alli AI's ability to not only find technical SEO issues on your site but also fix them automatically can save you hours.
This is the major feature that makes this tool stand out for me.
While Alli AI also gives keyword research, keyword tracking, and internal linking suggestions, I wasn't too impressed by these features in my testing.
Internal linking suggestions are particularly weak. It has a tendency to suggest more and more links for pages that don't really make sense , such as a blog subfolder.
Alli AI helps large blogs and websites become more visible and attract more traffic by fixing technical SEO issues automatically. It’s essential for marketing agencies and SEO teams that need to update thousands of pages at a time.
Pricing begins at $169 per month for 1 website.
ChatGPT is an AI language model that uses prompts for content creation, ideation, and analysis.
This powerful content creation tool doesn’t have complex SEO capabilities since it lacks access to information about keywords, traffic, and domain authority.
But we regularly use ChatGPT for SEO. It helps with research, competitor analysis, and sorting large keyword lists.
For example, with the right prompts, ChatGPT 4o and above models do a good job of analyzing search intents for keywords and clustering them by semantic similarity.
It's a particularly useful tool when you're working with large SEO data (as long as it fits the context window).
Besides, the simple fact that it can access spreadsheets as attachments and Google Sheets directly by connecting your Google account makes it convenient when I need my SEO sheets analyzed with ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is best for small business owners, bloggers, and publishers.
You can use ChatGPT for free. If you want more updated and improved content, ChatGPT-4 starts at $20 per month for individuals.
Not all tools labeled “AI” actually use advanced machine learning. The best tools deliver better results by learning from your interactions and input, and then generate more useful and customized data as time goes on.
When investigating SEO AI tools, check to see if they will improve over time based on your needs.
Your SEO needs should guide what you choose. Choose a premium AI writing assistant if all you need is the writing functionality.
If you want to implement full-fledged SEO strategy that drives results, you’ll be best served by a tool that covers keyword analysis, competitor research, and more.
AI tools should easily integrate with the software you're already using, including your analytics software, CMS, email marketing platforms, and more.
Seamless integration enables an efficient workflow and eliminates manual data transfers.
Search engines update their algorithms regularly, and SEO tools should be flexible to adapt as the market evolves.
Look for solutions that are actively developed to stay on top of current keyword strategies, the most important on-page elements, and the latest search trends.
Quick access to helpful support is critical for fixing problems fast. Look at customer reviews on G2, Reddit, social media, and elsewhere to see how other customers have fared.
Responsive customer support usually offers multiple contact points like live chat, email, or phone.
An AI tool should handle large volumes of data or complex tasks without slowing down or becoming too expensive to maintain.
Look for tools that offer flexible plans to accommodate future growth.
Finally, look into the tool’s pricing and make sure it matches your budget and needs. Do your research and thoroughly explore pricing structures.
Avoid hidden fees, and always use free trials to assess an AI tool’s value compared to its price.
A great deal of a marketer’s time is spent on repetitive, time-intensive tasks. AI can automate many of these tasks, freeing up time for creative strategies that make an impact.
Some of the most beneficial uses of AI for marketers include:
AI can remove guesswork and help marketers make more data-driven decisions, leading to better outcomes.
As Semrush is the most comprehensive AI SEO tool on the market, this example shows how it can help with specific SEO tasks.
Semrush’s ContentShake app combines optimization and content ideas. When you begin using it, you’ll go through a workflow to choose your main goal.
Next, add your business description and target country, such as “content strategist” and “United States.”
The ContentShake dashboard will show several ideas for blog posts. In this example, it suggested topics around content marketing.
Semrush’s AI Writing Assistant provides access to 75+ formulas, tools, and templates.
Start with Article Generator and add a few details like the language, blog title, target keyword, and at least three subheadings.
The generator will produce a high-quality, natural-sounding article. It also provides an SEO score and tips to boost content relevance.
You can also run a plagiarism check and make sure your content is 100% unique.
Inspect your website’s performance without combing through graphs, trend lines, or needing an SEO expert to break it down for you.
Semrush’s AI Copilot will instantly summarize the most important highlights about your site:
All the important information about your site is laid out in plain English. You can explore each of these performance factors in detail by clicking on a result.
Copilot also sends daily tips like keyword opportunities, link-building suggestions, and technical issues, such as missing H1 tags or 4xx errors. It explains the impact of these issues and how to fix them, saving you time by interpreting the data for you.
SEO has long been a daunting task for many marketers and business owners.
Thanks to AI, SEO tools like Semrush, Exploding Topics, and ChatGPT make it easy to implement meaningful changes that lead to greater traffic and content performance.
Use real-time topic data to create content that resonates and brings results.
Exploding Topics is owned by Semrush. Our mission is to provide accurate data and expert insights on emerging trends. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.
Use real-time topic data to create content that resonates and brings results.
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Written By
Deb Dutta
Deb Dutta is a paid media specialist and martech SaaS writer. She specializes in transforming complex technical features into comp… Read more
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