The internet is a crowded place—you already know that. But did you know that more than five million new blogs are published every day, and 91% of all pages never get organic traffic from Google (mostly because they don’t have backlinks, according to one source)?
To keep up, some marketers have started tapping into a new source of creative genius and SEO know-how: artificial intelligence. While still relatively untapped, AI has allowed early adopters to move faster and smarter than ever before.
From auditing entire websites to auto-generating content (in minutes), AI has single-handedly reshaped the way SEO is done.
How is AI transforming SEO?
AI, for starters, is an umbrella term for technologies like natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, computer vision, and others. It has allowed for automation and greater efficiencies in areas like…
- Content generation
- Keyword research
- Content optimization
- Image optimization
- Link building
- SEO analytics
AI has also been leveraged by search engines themselves to better interpret search queries. Google’s BERT update, as an example, uses AI to understand the full context of a user’s search. Rather than just scanning for certain keywords, the system tracks and interprets the relationship of words that appear before and after the term.
Similarly, many AI tools for SEO help you to deliver content that meets Google’s expectations for relevance and authority. They allow you to go beyond basic SEO best practices and apply advanced logic for content creation, optimization, and promotion.
When should you consider an AI SEO software?
Such tools come in many different shapes and sizes. There are a variety of solutions that you can choose from (which we’ll get to in a sec), but all-in-all, AI tools are typically beneficial for several reasons.
- You’re short staffed. Perhaps you lack an SEO expert on staff, a writer, or even a developer. AI tools can help you operate like a fully staffed team by providing both the brains and “hands” to get things done.
- You need a way to scale content. Even if you have a team of trusted writers, you may be running on fumes. An AI-based content generator can assist with drafting copy or building outlines that your writers can run with, plus double-check their work for SEO-friendliness.
- You’re in a creative rut. Aside from writing copy, AI tools can help you to discover new trends and themes to address in your content. Some tools will even crunch data from your Google Analytics account and/or social profiles to identify popular, high-converting topics.
- You have a large site, which needs auditing and optimization. Doing this on your own would require tons of time, versus tapping an automated SEO tool would take no time at all.
- SEO is not performing as expected. Perhaps you’re losing hope in your current strategy; you’re not seeing the ROI from SEO that you expected. AI tools can help to identify problems, as well as opportunities, within minutes—plus provide immediate recommendations to improve your game.
What to look for in an AI SEO tool
When it comes to selecting the right tool for your business, you’ll want to keep your eyes out for the following traits in your provider.
Transparency
You’ll inevitably have questions as you test a new tool and start to entrust it with more of your business. When questions crop up, your provider shouldn’t treat AI like a black box. While some details may be difficult to explain, your provider should be willing to discuss how its tech generally works and what kind of results you should (and should not) expect from it.
Pricing
AI SEO tools range from free to thousands of dollars a month. Pricing typically depends on user seats, feature access, number of projects or queries, and other factors. Regardless of the total dollar amount, your provider should clearly communicate what you get with each package. More robust solutions will typically charge at least $100 a month or more, but beware of systems that chase quantity over quality. Go into sales conversations with a good idea of what capabilities you actually need and avoid getting easily wooed by “shiny” new features.
Ease of use
No matter how sophisticated the software may be, it may not be worth the trouble if it’s too hard to navigate. Check that your tool is easy to use, both for you and your team members. Consider, how long will you have to spend training new team members? If the answer is “too long,” then you may want to look for alternatives.
Support
Customer support is often an afterthought—but a common reason why people leave their software provider. Check that the team behind your SEO tool is easily accessible in case questions come up. The team should ideally have real-world experience managing SEO for businesses like yours, so they can provide the best advice.
Top 6 AI Tools for SEO
1. ContentEdge – AI copywriter and SEO assistant
ContentEdge is one of the most affordable AI copywriting tools, built by the SEO masterminds at RankScience. It was initially used in-house as a way to scale operations. Then, after a successful beta run with RankScience clients, ContentEdge was opened up to the general public.
ContentEdge is now trusted by more than 5,000 users. It includes the ability to generate blog outlines and content blocks on the fly. All you have to do is provide a keyword and a short description of what you’re looking for—ContentEdge will then produce 100% unique content via GPT-3 technology.
Aside from this signature tool, ContentEdge offers essential SEO features like keyword research, competitive analysis, and a content relevancy checker. The latter allows you to evaluate an existing web page and compare its readability, length, and relevance against other top-ranking pages. You can optimize your page directly inside ContentEdge and receive real-time recommendations by the program.
All in all, ContentEdge is a great tool for SMBs looking to scale their content marketing efforts without growing their headcount.
- Core features: AI copywriter, content relevancy checker, keyword research, domain research
- Pricing: Free trial, packages starting at $49/montb
2. Alli – Technical SEO recommendations
Source: Capterra
Alli is a plug-and-play tool that’s compatible with WordPress, Shopify, and most other content management systems. You just need to be able to copy and paste Alli’s code snippet in your site’s source code. Alli will then audit your whole website and generate a daily task list of optimizations that you could make on your site.
The software makes 20,000+ automatic code changes on the average site, according to the company. With a simple click of a button, you can make technical or content-based changes on your site to boost SEO.
Alli is best for large sites or agencies that need a robust solution for managing their online properties. According to users, it helps to be somewhat proficient in SEO in order to avoid getting overwhelmed by Alli’s “endless” list of recommendations. You may also need to use your own judgment to determine what optimizations are urgent and/or which ones don’t actually need changing.
- Core features: Audit management, dashboard, competitive analysis, localization automation
- Pricing: Free trial, plans starting at $99/month
3. Diib – Growth opportunity finder
Diib is a popular tool among agencies (20% of Diib users are agencies) that need help centralizing web analytics, gauging performance, and identifying opportunities to grow. The platform consolidates data from Google Analytics, mobile data, social media, and other sources to generate actionable goals for your team.
Diib helps you to prioritize those goals as well, based on opportunity cost. For instance, Diib may recommend that you address mobile bounce rate issues on your site, lest you lose $530 per month in potential mobiel sales.
The platform offers the ability to monitor web performance on a central dashboard or schedule weekly “snapshot” emails. You can add up to 30 websites on a dashboard with a paid plan and receive custom “growth plans” per site.
- Core features: Answer Engine, social media monitoring, daily health score, benchmarking, weekly snapshot email
- Pricing: Plans ranging from free to $29.99/month
4. LinkHunter – Link building assistant
Source: Capterra
LinkHunter’s AI tool is intended to help you build better backlinks. Backlinks, after all, are one of the top two criteria considered by Google, according to strategists at Google.
LinkHunter lends a hand by finding hundreds of sites that are likely to link out to your content. It determines compatibility by looking at overlaps in key topics and niche. To further help you identify the best opportunities, LinkHunter provides quick stats (like domain authority) that represent each site’s SEO value.
It’ll additionally provide contact information for each site if it’s publicly available. And if you decide that you’d like to reach out, you can submit contact forms or generate emails directly inside LinkHunter.
At a time when 36% of businesses hire outside experts to build backlinks, LinkHunter simplifies and speeds up the work—helping teams overcome a common hurdle in SEO.
- Core features: Link finder, email management, email templates, contact form submissions
- Pricing: Plans starting at $49/month
5. AI Image Enlarger – Image enhancement
AI Image Enlarger is a no-frills image enhancer, just as the name suggests. It uses AI to enlarge images up to 800% and increase image resolution without sacrificing quality.
You just need to upload an image and choose how much to enlarge it by. The platform will email you when your image is ready. With AI Image Enlarger, you can also denoise, sharpen, and retouch photos when you’re in a pinch.
Whether you’re a blogger, designer, business owner, or student—AI Image Enlarger helps to develop photos for printing, presentations, and other uses.
The platform is powered by SRCNN (short for Super-Resolution Convolutional Neural Network), which learns how to recover high-resolution images from low-res inputs.
- Core features: Image enlarger, image sharpener, image denoiser, face retouch, image enhancer, background remover
- Pricing: Free trial, plans starting at $9/month
6. PaveAI – Analytics reporting
PaveAI simplifies website analysis by extracting insights from a stockpile of data. It takes data from your Google Analytics account, ad accounts, and other marketing channels to produce a list of recommendations.
The platform’s data science algorithm looks at more than 16 million possible combinations to pinpoint the most important insights from your channels, according to the company. As an example, PaveAI may report that a majority of your blog readers are males between the ages 23 and 34. However, a majority of your leads are actually females ages 34 and 44, so you should be targeting them instead with your content.
PaveAI presents recommendations in an easy-to-understand way, allowing agencies and entrepreneurs to take greater advantage of their data and make decisions with greater confidence.
- Core features: Conversion tracking, goal tracking, user interaction tracking, campaign management
- Pricing: Free trial, plans starting at $39/month
The choice is yours
To stay afloat in today’s hyper-competitive digital world, you’ll want to seriously consider using an AI-powered SEO tool. Whether you need help optimizing images, reporting on site performance, or building content to help you rank, AI tools can take on the burden for you.