Ranking your web pages in Google can be complicated and time-consuming. It requires a lot of work, such as keyword research, SERP analysis. writing your content, content optimization and in many cases building some links.
SEO and content creation are ongoing processes, meaning the work is never done. You have to monitor your results and based on the data, make decisions to take action, re-optimize your content, disavow bad links or work on your website structure.
This is where, AI SEO software / tools can come in handy.
In this article, I’ll describe how AI tools can take some of the complexity out of your SEO efforts. I’ll also discuss what the benefits of using AI for SEO, what to expect, and what not to expect. Finally also list the best AI SEO software tools for I’ve used, and would recommend – if you’re thinking of investing in such a tool.
After reading this article, you’ll have a better understanding of how AI can help you improve your Google rankings, and which tools are the right fit for your business.
Quick Summary – Best AI SEO Tools
- Frase.io – Helps improve your entire content creation workflow, from SERP analysis to content optimization to monitoring results. It takes a lot of effort out of research and provides a good overview of the SERP landscape. Lastly, it gives you recommendations on how to optimize your content.
- Surfer SEO – Maximizes your SEO efforts by providing focused suggestions for content optimization.
- Outranking.io – All-in-one AI content optimization platform, that helps your build better strategies, generate content, and track results.
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What is AI SEO Software
AI SEO tools are a type of software that helps you optimize your content for ranking in the search engines, without the need for expert SEO knowledge.
They scan your web page, as well as all other pages in Google search results in order to give you recommendations on how to outrank your competitors. They also simplify complex SEO tasks, such as keyword research (finding the right keywords to use), content planning (creating content briefings to send to writers), and many other things.
How AI can Help with SEO
Some of the advantages of using AI within your SEO processes are:
- Data-driven SEO suggestions – Get recommendations for content optimizations, based on automated research and competitive analysis.
- SEO scorecards – Get the insights needed to make decisions about necessary actions. Get insight into your current and potential optimization score.
- Uncover content opportunities – Suggestions on low hanging fruit, based on automated traffic analysis and rank movement.
- Centralized workflow planning – No more sharing of documents, sheets, and to-do lists.
Below are my recommendations for AI SEO (content optimization) tools.
Frase.io – Best SEO Content Optimization Tool
With Frase.io you can instantly begin optimizing new, as well as existing content. The layout of the dashboard is extremely user-friendly and clutter-free, making Frase.io a very easy product to start with. Frase.io pulls the top results from Google and automatically generates your content briefs, and post outlines, and provides recommendations for optimizing your content.
Frase.io helps you take the manual labor out of researching optimizing and creating content. Instead of doing of hours SERP analysis and making decisions on how to beat the competition, Frase.io does this for you. I recommend Frase.io to everybody who needs to create written, SEO-optimized content, be it entrepreneurs, bloggers, or digital marketers.
Key Features (Frase.io)
- Automatically generate SEO-optimized content, content briefs, and blog post outlines
- Shows relevant keyword ideas and topics (including clusters), based on the top search results
- Rates your work with SEO scores and provides suggestions for on-page content optimization
- Discover new content opportunities you have missed
- Integrate Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA) data for even more insight
- SEO Addon provides unlimited AI writer credits and extra SEO-related features, such as domain and backlink data, monthly keyword search volume, and autocomplete suggestions.
Frase.io Pricing
There’s a 5-day money-back guarantee (free trial). The basic plan allows you to create, and work on 7 documents per month. This is fine if you don’t need to create a lot of content. If your publishing rate is higher than that, you’ll have to upgrade your plan.
The cheapest Frase.io pricing plan starts at $44,99 /month, and you get a discount if you pay annually. The SEO Chrome Addon will cost you $35 /month extra.
Pros (Frase.io)
- Huge Time-saver
- Easy to use and easy to understand
- Affordable, compared to other services
- Update frequency and good support
Cons (Frase.io)
- AI Writer is not as good as other AI Writing Software
- Not exactly a con, but for even more SEO functionality, you need to get the SEO addon
Note: To learn more about Frase, have a look at this in-depth Frase.io review.
SurferSEO – SEO Research and Optimization
SurferSEO is amongst the most popular AI SEO tools on the market. The platform is very feature-rich and SurferSEO’s user experience is very intuitive. Because of this, anybody can start creating articles and blogs that can rank on Google.
SurferSEO as a company is well-organized. The platform has a strong roadmap for the future. The integrations and partnerships with related AI-based tools, such as Jasper.ai emphasize this. Because of this professional future-orientated mindset, I expect SurferSEO to remain one of the most popular tools on the market.
Key Features (SurferSEO)
- Content planner, which helps you easily generate a complete content strategy, based on relevant topics and keywords
- Content editor, which helps you write relevant optimized content, by showing you competitive guidelines. The editor also provides instant feedback in the form of different SEO scores such as keyword usage and keyword stuffing,
- Time-saving integrations for Jasper.ai (AI content generator tool) and Google Docs (for easy sharing), WordPress (no more copy-pasting). SurferSEO also offers Chrome extensions that show you keyword volume while browsing.
- SEO Audits for existing web pages that allow you to find SEO errors and insights for re-optimization.
SurferSEO Pricing
SurferSEO offers a 7-day money-back guarantee. If you need more time to test out the platform, you can have this extended to 30 days. SurferSEO pricing starts at 49,- / month, which is certainly reasonable to ask for such advanced features.
Pros (SurferSEO)
- Intuitive and easy to use – for SEO experts as well as newbies
- Deep integration with Jasper.ai is a winning combination
Cons (SurferSEO)
- (NLP) Credits don’t roll over to the next month
- The keyword research tool could use some improvement, but no deal-breaker.
Outranking.io – Strategy and Optimization
Outranking.io offers advanced AI-powered features, that are geared towards improving your content ROI (return on investment). Besides being one of the most complete AI SEO software platforms on the market, the team is always looking to implement new or improve existing features.
For example, Outranking.io brings automation to research by determining meaning from ranked pages. The tool can then extract meaning such as advantages, disadvantages, and related information, which is then used for outlines and highly relevant recommendations.
Key Features (Outranking.io)
- Provides suggestions for content optimization by recommending semantically related keywords (and clusters), mostly asked questions and NLP terms. This helps you align search intent to your text and rank for more than your focus keyword
- Data-driven guidance for all on-page SEO elements. These include headlines, meta descriptions, post titles, images, anchor texts, content depth, and more
- Internal link suggestions, that can help you rank your content quicker. Recommendations are made by providing your website’s sitemap
- In-depth content briefs, based on SERP analysis and user intent
- Guided SEO workflows for creating diverse types of content, for example, press releases, e-commerce pages, and more
- Integrates with Google Docs (for sharing), WordPress (for easy publishing), Grammarly (polishing your content), and SEMrush (SEO and PPC research)
Outranking.io Pricing
Outranking.io offers every new user a 30-day money-back guarantee. Pricing plans start at 40,- / month, which will give you 10 document credits. Pricing is comparable to most other AI SEO tools and thus you can’t go wrong. Outranking.io also offers a 20% discount on annual payments.
Pros (Outranking.io)
- Very advanced features and a complete suite of tools
- AI writer uses GPT-3 (which outputs high-quality texts)
Cons (Outranking.io)
- User experience could use some getting used to (slight learning curve)
Conclusion
Organic traffic can be extremely targeted and can convert very well. However, building an effective SEO strategy and writing optimized content isn’t easy. It can be very time-consuming and not everybody has the SEO expertise to do so.
By using an AI-powered SEO tool, it has become a lot easier to create optimized content that has the potential to rank well in search engines. AI SEO tools can take the complexity out of several SEO and content creation-related tasks, such as SERP analysis, on-page optimization, as well as keyword research.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
If you have any questions to which you cannot find the answer, feel free to contact me. Your question may end up on this list.
What is SERP Analysis?
SERP analysis is the process of researching the top search engine results for a given keyword phrase and understanding what the top-ranking web pages (or websites) are doing to achieve results. As a result, you can make informed decisions about what to do to outrank them. SERP analysis can be time-consuming and AI can help with the process.
What is an SEO Scorecard?
An SEO scorecard is an all-inclusive measurement tool that helps you answer the question: Is my website ready to rank? SEO scorecards allow you to evaluate your site’s current performance and compare it to previous months, so you can spot trends and problem areas. Plus, the scorecard will tell you exactly how your site stacks up against the competition, so you can know where to focus your search engine optimization efforts.
What is User Intent?
When creating content for your website or brand, it is important to know why you’re creating that content. Is your content meant to inform? Or is it meant to convert? User intent is the user’s reason for doing whatever it is they’ve decided to do on your web page(s). Understanding the intent behind user actions can greatly improve your site’s user experience as well as the decisions you make regarding optimization.
How will AI change SEO?
Even with the help of AI, there are still many decisions that need to be made by humans. For example: when are we launching an SEO campaign? This depends on other people’s decisions (your competition). So, yes, AI is quickly changing the SEO landscape, and it’s simplifying complex processes, so we can do more, with less effort.
On the other hand, the level at which AI can change SEO also depends on the search engines. How will they evolve? How will they organize the solutions they offer their clients. At this time, we can only make educated guesses, based on what we already know. What’s for sure, is that AI is already changing SEO, and it will keep changing the digital marketing space in the future as well.
What is Natural Language Processing (Google NLP)?
NLP algorithms enable Google to understand the meaning behind search queries. NLP enables the search engine to look for clues as to what the user wants. Based on those clues, it can return results that match the search query.
Why are Related Keywords important in SEO?
The use of semantically related search terms, such as close variants and synonyms can improve the number of keywords a web page ranks for. Search engines are smart enough to understand that your audience will use a variety of search queries to look for your business. Optimizing for related keywords can bring in more organic traffic to your web pages.
