I’ve been testing SEO tools since 2019, and my website celebrated its sixth anniversary in July 2026.
During that time, I’ve seen the AI SEO space change completely. It went from a few experimental tools to hundreds of platforms promising to “automate SEO” and “make your brand visible in AI search.”
The problem is that most of them don’t really do that.
Over the past few years, I’ve tested more than 20 AI SEO tools, and in this post, I’m sharing what I think no longer works and where you could end up wasting your money.
Here’s what you’ll find:
The AI SEO tools I actually use in 2026, based on hands-on testing
What Google has told us about AI search and what really matters
Which tools sound promising but rarely make a noticeable difference
My thoughts on where each tool is worth the price and where it isn’t
If you’re trying to pick the right AI SEO software, this guide should help you avoid expensive mistakes and focus on tools that can genuinely support your search visibility.
Best AI SEO tools in 2026
Below, you’ll find AI SEO tools that I’ve tested, used in the past, or still use today, including Semrush for my SEO and AI-related work. I’ve intentionally kept the descriptions detailed so you can better understand how each tool works and decide whether it’s the right fit for your needs.
- Pricing: I always start with pricing because budget matters. I want to see if the cost actually matches the value you get.
- Promises vs. reality: Next, I compare the marketing claims with what the tool can really do. Some tools sound impressive on paper but don’t deliver much in practice.
- Talking to the team: I often reach out to people behind these tools to ask questions and get a better understanding of how everything works behind the scenes.
- Reddit feedback: Reddit is one of my favorite places for research. People tend to be very honest there, so it’s a great way to learn what works and what users struggle with.
- Hands-on testing: I’ve personally tested every tool mentioned below.
1. All-in-one AI SEO tools
Best for SEO agencies, in-house SEO teams, small and medium-sized businesses, and enterprises that need a traditional SEO toolkit with built-in AI search capabilities.
| Tool | Pricing | G2 Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Semrush One | Starts at $199/month. It includes 50 prompt tracking across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews. MCP access. You can track organic rankings of 500 keywords. Trial: 14 days | 4.5/5 stars |
| SE Ranking | Starts at $129/month for 2,000 tracked keywords and 100 AI prompts daily, with API and MCP access included. AI Search add-on from $89/month for 200 more prompts and unlimited AI Competitor Research. Trial: 14 days, no credit card | 4.7/ 5 stars |
| Ubersuggest | Budget-friendly options for SEO beginners. Starts at $39/month for the Individual plan, or $390 one-time for lifetime access. With the Starter plan, you can track 10 prompts for one domain and 125 keywords. Trial: 7 days | 4.2/5 stars |
| Ahrefs | Starts at $129/month. It includes 5 domains, 6 months of historical data, 750 tracked keywords, MCP server access, and Brand Radar with 5 prompts for AI search visibility tracking. Trial: No free trial is available. However, verified website owners can use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. | 4.5/5 stars |
2. AI SEO automation tools
These tools can help you automate repetitive SEO tasks. The tools mentioned below focus on areas like technical SEO audits, keyword research, content planning, and content generation.
| Tool | Pricing | G2 Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Search Atlas | Starts at $99/ month. You’ll need a Growth plan for $199/month to track visibility across AI models, like ChatGPT, AI Mode, and Gemini. 50 keywords for tracking. Trial: 7 days | 4.6/5 stars |
| Writesonic | The Starter plan at $99/month is required for AI search-tracking tools. 50 prompts tracking. Trial: 7 days. | 4.7/5 stars
|
3. AI visibility tools
Best for SEO agencies, SaaS, product, and service companies that want to track their brand appearance in AI search results and LLMs.
| Tool | Pricing | G2 Rating |
|---|---|---|
| KIME | Starts at $109/month for 50 prompts 2 AI models covered: AI Mode, ChatGPT. Trial: 7 days | 5/5 stars |
| Wellows | Starts at $29/month: 12 prompts on all 5 engines, daily 60 prompts on 1 engine, daily. Trial: 7 days | 5/5 stars |
| Otterly AI | For $29/month, you can track one domain using 15 prompts across major platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. There are other pricing plans to track 100 or more prompts. Trial: 14 days | 4.8/5 stars |
| Peekaboo AI | Starts at $30/month for one domain, with 40 prompts updated every two days. It tracks AI visibility across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, and AI Mode. Custom pricing. Trial: 14 days | 4.8/5 stars |
| Indexly | Starts at $99/month (tracks ChatGPT only). A Growth plan ($299/month) is required for AI visibility tracking in Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. 100 prompts. Trial: 14 days. | 5/5 stars |
4. AI-powered agents for SEO
Best for those who want to create custom AI agents to automate SEO workflows, marketing tasks, productivity processes, and other repetitive work.
| Tool | Pricing | G2 Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Gumloop | Paid plans start at $37/month (or $360/year) | 4.8/5 stars |
| Letaido | Starts at $99/month. This is an SEO agent platform developed by Ahrefs. It can help you create SEO workflows, automated reports, and custom SEO tools using Ahrefs data. | N/A |
| Claude | Personal plan free. Pro plan $200/year Works as an AI SEO agent after connecting Google Search Console and your preferred SEO tools. | 4.6/5 stars |
5. AI-powered content tools
For those looking for content generation tools with built-in SEO functionality.
| Tool | Pricing | G2 Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Koala Writer | Starts at $25/month for 45,000 words and MCP access for your AI assistant. One free article to test. | 4.5/5 stars |
| Surfer SEO | Starts at $82/month for AI Search Analytics plan. Includes 50 prompts tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews, and Gemini with daily updates. MCP access. Trial: Not available | 4.8/5 stars |
| Semrush Content Toolkit | $60/month Helps you research topics, build outlines, create images, write SEO-optimized articles in 7 languages, and publish content directly to your website. Also provides weekly content ideas. Trial: 7 days | N/A |
P.S. This post includes a few affiliate links. If you decide to try any of these tools, I might earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Just being upfront about it! I’m only recommending tools I’ve used myself and truly believe in.
Semrush One
- Best for: In-house marketing teams, agencies managing multiple websites, individual site owners, and businesses.
- Best features: Personalized recommendations, Keyword Magic Tool, On-Page SEO Checker, SEO Audit, Keyword Strategy Builder, AI SEO Toolkit, and more.
- Pricing: Starts at $199/month and includes the traditional SEO Toolkit + AI Visibility Toolkit. 14-day free trial for Semrush’s One.
I have used Semrush for years, and it is still the tool I open every single day.
Semrush has come a long way. It’s not the same tool it used to be. When I started using it in 2019, Semrush was primarily a keyword research and rank tracking tool. Today, it has over 55 features grouped into several toolkits: SEO, Content, AI Visibility, Social, Advertising, Local, Traffic and Market, and AI PR.
Here’s a quick overview of every existing Semrush toolkit:
- SEO Toolkit: This one combines all SEO-related features for keyword research, domain analysis, link building, and site auditing to help you create an SEO strategy and boost organic search rankings.
- Content Toolkit: This toolkit helps you optimize your content production process, from content brief generation to creation and optimization.
- AI Visibility Toolkit: A newer addition that lets you track how your brand shows up in AI search results. It contains 100M+ prompts, which power the Visibility Overview, Prompt Research, and Competitor Research reports. You can track AI search visibility of your brand in over 45 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, and Spain, for ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, and AI Mode.
- Social Toolkit: This one can help you manage all your social platforms in one spot.
- Advertising Toolkit: Research, plan, launch, and optimize your online ad campaigns.
- Local Toolkit: This one will help you manage your Google Business Profile and online reviews.
- Traffic and Market: This one can help you spy on your competitors (in a friendly way) to see what works for them and how they grow.
- AI PR Toolkit: This toolkit can help you find websites and publications AI tools mention most often, reach out to them with AI-powered pitching, and track your media coverage and AI visibility in one place.
Additionally, Semrush has been acquired by Adobe. This was totally unexpected news. So I’m guessing we’ll see Semrush grow even faster and roll out even more AI-powered marketing features soon.
Semrush’s old Pro and Guru plans now only give you access to the SEO Toolkit. So if you want to use it, you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Pro plan, which starts at $139.95/month.
However, if you’re interested in both SEO and AI, I actually recommend checking out Semrush One. It’s the newest toolkit that blends classic SEO tools with AI features to help you track and improve your brand’s visibility in AI search results. You can monitor up to 50 prompts and 500 keywords per day across five domains, which is pretty solid.
One thing I appreciate about Semrush is their fast support. If your card ever gets charged by mistake (it happened to me once), they refund it within a day. You just fill out a form, and they email you once it’s processed.
Before committing to any plan, I suggest trying their free trials first. It’s the easiest way to see if a tool actually works for you.
Here’s a little perk: My partner link gives you a 14-day free trial to Semrush One instead of the usual 7 days. Just a small way to get more time to explore and see if it’s a good fit! 
Below, I’ve put together a quick overview of Semrush’s AI and SEO features you’ll likely find helpful:
- Key Topics: Instead of digging through competitor pages one by one, this handy report shows you their top-performing non-branded topics by traffic. Super useful for finding new content ideas without wasting hours. Note that it works for the Semrush Guru plan users.
- AI Visibility Overview: In the Domain Overview tab, you can now see your domain’s AI Visibility score with the number of mentions and citations updated daily. You can also see how well your brand appears in AI-generated search results across different countries.
- I also find the Google SERP Positions Distribution report super insightful. It shows a share of your domain’s SERP positions across organic results, featured snippets, and AI.
- Personal Keyword Difficulty: It’s an AI-powered metric that shows how difficult it will be for your domain to reach the top 10 of the SERP for a specified keyword.
- Topical Authority: This metric shows the relevance of your domain to the target keyword.
- Keyword Strategy Builder: It uses AI to research and recommend topic clusters for your SEO content strategy based on relevance and traffic potential.
Position Tracking: It’s one of my favorite Semrush features that shows the ranking changes daily. Recently, they’ve made it possible for you to monitor your website’s visibility within AI Overviews.
If you have a Semrush One Pro+, you can also track your brand’s visibility in ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode.
- Site Audit: Besides tracking conventional technical issues, Semrush has recently added the AI Search Health report that shows you how well your website is optimized for LLMs. A higher report score means your content is more accessible, better structured, and more likely to be shown in AI search engines.
If you’re looking for more in-depth insights into your AI SEO efforts, Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit (included in Semrush One) can help you automatically evaluate your brand’s visibility across AI Overviews, and LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
It includes:
- 1 domain for brand performance analysis
- 300 daily queries in AI Analysis reports
- 25 prompts for prompt tracking
- AI Search Checks in Site Audit for up to 100 pages
- You can track AI search visibility of your brand in over 45 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, and Spain, for ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, and AI Mode.
- 213 million prompts in Semrush’s AI search database
I recently published a new article reviewing my hand-picked AI visibility tools. Check it out if interested.
Semrush MCP
With the Semrush MCP server, you can connect Semrush data to AI tools like Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, Visual Studio Code, Gemini, and ChatGPT.
In simple terms, your answers are powered by real Semrush data, not just generic AI responses.
MCP access is now open to regular Semrush users, not only enterprise accounts like before. So you can use all 50,000 API credits when working with LLMs.
I recently started testing the Claude + Semrush + GSC integration myself. It feels like you can ask almost anything, and LLMs pull insights straight from Semrush and GSC data to give you answers. I broke down exactly how I connected Semrush to Claude, step by step, in a separate post.
You can research and analyze keywords, review competitors’ performance and backlink profiles, and track organic trends without even logging in to the platform. That’s already a strong starting point!
You can learn more about my experience using various Semrush features in this Semrush review.
If you’ve been thinking about trying Semrush One, here’s a little perk:
My partner link gives you a 14-day free trial to Semrush One instead of the usual 7 days.
Just a small way to get more time to explore and see if it’s a good fit!
SE Ranking
- Best for: SEO agencies, in-house SEO teams, and mid-market marketing teams working across traditional and AI search.
- Best features: AI Results Tracker and AI Competitor Research across five AI engines, Rank Tracker, API and MCP access included in every plan.
- Pricing: Starts at $129/month for Core with 1 user seat, 2,000 tracked keywords, and 100 AI prompts per day. Growth is $279/month. 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
SE Ranking has been in the SEO tool market for years, and most people know it for keyword research, rank tracking, site audits, and backlinks.
Lately, they added the AI search visibility features to the platform, so you can now track both traditional SEO and AI search performance in one place.
Its AI Visibility toolkit works in two directions:
- The AI Results Tracker monitors your own prompts and keywords across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. You get brand mentions, website links, whether you land in the top three, and cached copies of the actual AI answers so you can see how each engine describes you.
- AI Competitor Research goes the other way: it profiles any domain’s AI presence without setting up a project, including which prompts surface that brand.
Because AI visibility is tracked alongside rankings, GA4 traffic, and backlink data, you can see your AI search performance in the context of your overall SEO performance instead of as a separate metric.
Below, you can see the domain overview report from SE Ranking for my website, Behind Rankings, from August 2026.
SE Ranking’s Insights reports surface prompts that already feature your brand, sources that get cited but don’t mention you, and untracked keywords that are triggering AI Overviews — so the starting list isn’t coming out of thin air.
Besides AI SEO and SEO automation features, SE Ranking offers a Content Marketing toolkit with two features: Content Editor and Content Idea Finder.
There’s also an MCP connector, so you can query live SEO and AI visibility data straight from Claude or ChatGPT.
I’ve been familiar with SE Ranking for years. It’s a solid SEO and GEO platform, supported by 1,500+ reviews on G2 and an impressive 4.7/5 rating.
I’ve published an in-depth SE Ranking review to help you better understand how this tool works and if it’s worth your money.
Not a good fit? Check SE Ranking alternatives.
Take a look at my detailed comparison of Semrush vs. SE Ranking if you are wondering which one is worth using.
Ubersuggest
- Best for: Small businesses, website owners, startups.
- Standout features: AI Search Visibility, AI Keyword Overview, AI Prompt Ideas.
- Pricing: $39/month for the Individual plan, or $390 one-time for lifetime access. The Individual plan includes one user and one website. Need more? Business is $69/month (7 sites, 2 users), and Enterprise is $135/month (15 sites, 5 users).
For $290, most AI SEO tools give you… maybe one or two months of access. With Ubersuggest, that same amount gets you lifetime access for one website.
I bought the Individual plan back in December 2024 because I wanted something affordable for my personal site.
In August 2026, I keep using Ubersuggest for organic performance tracking.
In my opinion, Ubersuggest is a great fit if you’re running a small business or doing SEO for your own website and don’t want to burn money on expensive tools. Neil Patel bought Ubersuggest back in 2017 with the goal of creating an SEO tool that could actually compete with the big (and pricey) players.
As of September 2026, here’s what you get for $39/month or $390 lifetime:
- One user seat for one domain
- 150 searches per day
- Track 5 competitors
- Analyze competitors’ top pages and keywords
- Crawl up to 1,000 pages per domain
- Up to 20,000 keyword suggestions
- 200 content ideas
- Track up to 2,000 backlinks from the past 3 years
- See new and lost backlinks over the last 30 days
- Track 10 AI prompts per project
- Research up to 25 prompts at a time
- Track up to 125 keyword rankings
That’s a pretty generous plan for the price, if you ask me.
For some of my target keywords, Ubersuggest provides more accurate updates than Ahrefs, which surprised me. If you are interested in how Ubersuggest compares to Semrush, I shared my insights in the Semrush vs Ubersuggest post.
AI Keyword Overview
Ubersuggest introduced a new report called AI Keyword Overview, and it’s part of their keyword research tools. It’s similar to the regular keyword report, but with extra data focused on optimizing for AI search.
Since I’m on the Individual plan, I don’t get access to everything, like the AI summary. Nevertheless, the data I do get is still very useful.
In the example below, you can see which brands show up most often in AI Overviews and LLMs for keywords like “AI SEO.” You can also check the main sources AI uses when answering prompts.
Fun fact: my site, Behind Rankings, showed up as the second source, which I was pretty happy about.
The report also shows the top 10 traditional search results, and interestingly, they don’t always match what AI Overviews and language models are surfacing.
AI Prompt Ideas
Another feature I find helpful is AI Prompt Ideas. It suggests relevant prompts based on your seed keyword.
I use it when writing FAQ sections for my blog posts. It saves me a ton of time because I don’t have to dig around elsewhere for prompt ideas.
For $29/month, you’re getting a pretty solid mix of SEO and AI-focused tools if you’re managing a website.
AI Search Visibility
Like other AI SEO tools, Ubersuggest also has an AI Search Visibility report that shows how your brand appears in AI search results. However, it works a bit differently.
On the Individual plan, you can track two broad topics. When I added “AI SEO,” Ubersuggest suggested a list of prompts to track. I’m not sure whether those prompts are real user queries or generated ideas, but I accepted them and moved on.
Here’s how prompt tracking breaks down:
- Individual: 2 topics, 10 prompts per topic, updated monthly
- Business: 3 topics, 15 prompts, updated biweekly
- Enterprise: 4 topics, 20 prompts, updated weekly
If you want to track more prompts, you can add 5 extra prompts per topic for $5/month.
Overall, I like the AI Visibility report. It’s clean, easy to read, and gives you a quick snapshot of how your brand is doing in AI search.
As of August 2026, I can only track three prompts for ChatGPT, since Gemini and AI Overview tracking is available as a paid add-on.
You can also manually add your own prompts if you already know what you want to track, instead of relying on suggested ones.
I also checked Reddit to see what other users are saying. There are quite a few unhappy comments from the past year, and one in particular stood out as detailed and fair.
I actually agree with the general takeaway: Ubersuggest is “fine, not great.”
It works well for small teams and startups that want a decent AI SEO tool but aren’t ready to commit serious budgets yet.
I met Neil Patel at the Full Circle Conference in Toronto, April 2026, and asked him a question many SEOs are thinking about right now: Does traditional SEO differ from AI SEO?
His answer was simple, only about a 10–20% difference, and the fundamentals haven’t really changed. What stood out even more was his take on Google. It’s not going anywhere. Usage is still growing, and he expects it to remain one of the main discovery channels, right behind social media.
What has changed is how people search. Users now jump between multiple platforms, often six or more, before making a decision. They read, watch, compare, and validate across different channels. That means SEO can’t live on your website alone anymore.
To me, that “10–20% difference” is really about this shift. We’re moving from traditional SEO to something broader—showing up wherever your audience is already looking. Not just Google, but across platforms and formats.
Ahrefs
- Best for: SEO professionals, In-house SEO teams, SEO agencies, individual site owners
- Best features: Brand Radar, Site Audit, Rank Tracker, Keyword Explorer
- Pricing: Starts at $129/month and includes 5 projects, 6 months of historical data, 5 AI-tracked prompts, and 750 tracked keywords. There’s also a free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools plan for verified website owners.
If you’ve been working in SEO for a while, you’ve probably heard of Ahrefs. Along with Semrush, it’s one of the biggest names in the SEO industry and has been for years.
Ahrefs offers a solid set of SEO tools, including:
- Site Explorer
- Keyword Explorer
- Content Explorer
- Site Audit
- Rank Tracker
- AI Content Helper
If you want to try Ahrefs without paying, I’d recommend starting with Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. It’s free for verified website owners and gives you access to some of Ahrefs’ most useful features. I think it’s a great way to see what the platform can do.
One thing I also noticed is that Ahrefs has finally improved its organic traffic estimates. For my website, the numbers are now much closer to what I actually see in Google Search Console.
There’s also an Ahrefs Starter plan for $29/month. It includes access to most of the core tools, making it a good option for small website owners who are just getting started with SEO.
If your main goal is improving AI search visibility, I’d recommend looking at Brand Radar. This is Ahrefs’ new solution for AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) needs.
Brand Radar is an AI visibility tool that helps you track your brand across AI search, LLMs, YouTube, and Reddit.
Besides brand mentions, Ahrefs also reports on what pages on your website have been cited, how many times they’ve been referenced, and on which AI platforms.
To me, that’s one of the most valuable parts of the tool. Knowing which pages AI systems are using helps you understand what’s actually driving your AI visibility and where you should focus your efforts.
According to Ahrefs, Brand Radar analyzes more than 421 million prompts every month.
Honestly, Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit is probably the only decent alternative to Brand Radar that I can mention in terms of the data value that you get.
Brand Radar is expensive. Pricing starts at $199/month if you only want to track Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. If you also want to monitor visibility across Google and other LLMs, pricing starts at $699/month.
Personally, I think that’s too expensive for most people. I’d either use the limited Brand Radar access that’s included with the Ahrefs plans or choose a dedicated AI visibility tool that’s more affordable (I’ll cover a few of those later in this article).
Search Atlas
- Best for: SEO professionals, In-house SEO teams, SEO agencies, individual site owners
- Best features: OTTO SEO, an automated SEO AI assistant, AI Content Writer, Site Auditor
- Pricing: Starts at $99/month for the Starter plan with 1 user seat and 5 site projects. AI visibility tracking features are available on the Growth plan for $199/month. 7-day free trial. Credit card required.
Search Atlas is a new all-in-one SEO platform that came out in 2024, and it’s already making waves as a fresh alternative to industry giants like Semrush and Ahrefs.
With Search Atlas, you can:
- Analyze any website’s traffic, keywords, and backlinks
- See which pages and keywords bring in the most traffic for your competitors
- Dig into their backlink profiles
- Discover the suitable keywords to target
- Optimize your content and track how it ranks
- Run technical SEO audits
- Find link-building opportunities and even automate outreach
- Save time with their WordPress plugin and SEO OTTO automation tool
- Speed up content creation using their SEO Content Assistant
- And honestly, a lot more!
I’ve also published an in-depth Search Atlas review recently to help you get a detailed overview of the tool’s features and data accuracy.
What’s great is that you don’t have to bounce between a bunch of different tools since everything’s right here in one place.
I haven’t used it for long, but from what I’ve seen so far, it feels like a strong competitor to Ahrefs and Semrush.
And if you’ve used Ahrefs before, you might notice the interface looks familiar. It also shares some features with Semrush, which makes it pretty easy to get used to.
I tested the Search Atlas Growth plan ($199/month) in March 2026. It comes with a solid set of features, but I noticed that Search Atlas sometimes crashes, and some reports take a while to load.
Here’s a peek at the Site Explorer feature.
I had to refresh the report several times just to view my website’s performance data because the tool kept crashing.
It’s also worth saying a few words about one of Search Atlas’ standout features — OTTO SEO.
OTTO is like your personal AI assistant for your website. Once you add a tiny pixel to your site, it gets to work behind the scenes, checking for technical issues, analyzing your content, and offering ways to improve.
I don’t recommend relying on the tool to automatically fix your website issues. There’s always a chance something could go wrong.
Instead, you can use OTTO’s suggestions and then decide whether it’s worth implementing to improve your site’s performance, but at that point, it mostly functions like a standard SEO audit report.
I also checked out what people are saying about Search Atlas on Reddit and LinkedIn. The feedback is mixed.
Some users say it takes a bit of time to get used to the tool, and a few wish the support team were a bit faster and more helpful.
I think any solid tool comes with a bit of a learning curve. Since Search Atlas is an all-in-one SEO platform, it makes sense that you’d need a little time to get comfortable with it. But honestly, if you’ve used Ahrefs before, the interface should feel pretty familiar and easy to navigate.
Here’s what Casey Cornell, the Founder of Pool Journals and Digital Consulting Owner, shared about Search Atlas:
“We use Search Atlas as our primary seo tool now as a replacement for expensive Semrush, I will say, it’s been buggy at times since they’re moving fast and always rolling out new products.
I connected it to my WP site to make changes on their 2.0 model and I didn’t like that if you removed the script at all, it will all go back to the old content. Make hard changes.
I think like anything SA is a “tool” and should be used as such. Not make it your entire SEO strategy in a single product.
I use their growth plan ($199/mo) I also don’t use their AI content because it wasn’t good a while back. I think gem and Claude are prob better not tbh. I like using it for auditing, KW data, local SEO & the GBP scheduler & maps.
A lot of our clients fall under the “local seo” blanket so it’s great for what it offers there.”
I actually had a chance to meet Fidan and other Search Atlas team members in person at the SEO IRL conference in Toronto in Fall 2025.
Writesonic
- Best for: SEO specialists, Content writers, small and mid-size businesses.
- Best feature: GEO, Chatsonic (AI agent), AI Article Writer.
- Pricing: Starts at $99/month for SEO, content, and AI search tracking + optimization. Comes with a 7-day free trial (no credit card needed). There’s also a free plan.
Writesonic is an automated SEO software platform. I’d heard a lot about it before and briefly tried it last year, but it didn’t really click for me at the time.
In January 2026, I decided to give it another shot and signed up for the Writesonic Professional plan at $249/month. This plan bundles SEO tools, content creation, and AI search tracking and optimization.
And honestly, $249+ per month is a big commitment, so the tool really has to earn its place in my stack.
If Writesonic can genuinely support AI-driven SEO workflows, then it might be worth the price. That’s why I upgraded and jumped straight in.
I’ve been testing two automated AI workflows so far, and I want to share my early impressions.
Using SEO automation for content creation
I’ll give credit where it’s due: Writesonic has one of the most detailed content creation workflows I’ve seen.
It’s clearly designed to help you “train” the AI to create content that matches your exact needs and tone. Even if you plan to build your own AI SEO agents one day, this workflow is worth exploring.
The content process has 10 steps. It starts by choosing the article type (I picked a listicle) and how the AI should gather research.
Since I already create detailed briefs and know exactly what I want, I chose “Custom Resources.”
The workflow itself is very well thought out. If you don’t like the suggested outline, you can update it, even in terms of how deep each paragraph should go.
Once you fill in all your requirements, which takes a lot of time if you want decent output, the AI generates content while:
- Analyzing your links to understand your writing style
- Reviewing competitor content for your target keywords
- Adding internal links automatically (up to 15 per article)
- Including quotes based on your preferences
- Matching your tone of voice
- Optimizing the content for SEO
At the end, you get a full article with images. The images actually looked good, but they didn’t fit my brand, so I removed them.
Chatsonic also added quotes from competitor sites. Since those weren’t real expert quotes, I deleted them too.
My take on the content quality
Before generating content, I spent some time collecting my writing samples, sharing about 300 words on my background and experience, and writing a very detailed prompt for listicle creation.
Writesonic lets you upload all of this to customize the AI’s writing style, which is honestly a great feature. Still, I didn’t end up using the content. It just didn’t meet my personal quality bar.
That doesn’t mean Chatsonic is bad. My content quality standards are very high, and I know many people would be totally fine publishing the content as-is.
What this really tells me about Chatsonic and any AI SEO agent is this:
Everything depends on how well you train the AI to match your voice and include your real experience.
That’s it. Nothing more.
Yes, prompts matter. But what matters even more is helping the AI truly understand you before expecting strong results.
If you want to learn more about its functionality and performance, I’ve published a detailed review of Writesonic with my honest feedback.
Writesonic’s AI Search Visibility (GEO) tools
Writesonic also offers GEO functionality for AI search and visibility tracking.
Let me tell you that I had a rough start. The feature didn’t work for almost two weeks after I upgraded. I emailed the founder, but didn’t hear back. I also contacted support, but they don’t offer live chat, which was frustrating.
When support finally replied, they gave me a list of steps to fix things on my end. Interestingly, the feature started working right after their response, so it seems like the issue may have been on their side.
Here’s what you can do with the GEO feature:
- See how your site ranks in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews compared to competitors
- View AI citations and which of your pages are being cited
- Track brand mentions
- Use suggested prompts based on your niche or add your own
- Research prompts using the Topics & Prompts feature
- Track AI bot visits and errors using AI Bot Analytics (requires a WordPress plugin)
Overall, the AI search tracking is solid. I started by tracking citation share for my site, but the numbers don’t match what I see in other tools.
For example, Semrush shows 117 mentions and 179 cited pages worldwide. Writesonic shows just 1 cited page and 0 mentions. If this changes over time, I’ll update the article, but for now, something feels off.
If you’re curious about Writesonic, I’d recommend testing it before committing long-term. The 7-day free trial helps with that.
If you do try it, go straight for the Professional plan. The cheaper plans don’t include AI features, and that’s really where Writesonic is meant to shine.
KIME
- Best for: Agencies, SaaS, product, and service companies that want to analyze, track, and improve their organic visibility in AI search results.
- Best features: Unlimited workspaces, Prompts report, Citations report, unlimited competitor tracking, Sentiment analysis report, and an Action report.
- Pricing: Starts at $109 for 50 prompts. 2 AI models covered: AI Mode and ChatGPT. 7-day free trial available.
KIME is an all-in-one AI visibility tool to help you track, analyze, and improve how your brand shows up in AI search results and LLMs.
I first heard about KIME in February 2026 when their team reached out and invited me to try the tool. Since I’ve been testing AI and SEO tools for years, it felt like a perfect opportunity to put a new AI visibility platform to the test.
KIME is based in Denmark and launched in the summer of 2025. As of April 2026, the team told me they have over 200 active users, and the number is growing.
For almost three months, I have been in regular contact with the KIME team, sharing my feedback as I tested the tool. And they actually listened! Not the polite “thanks for the feedback” kind of listening, but the kind where suggestions turn into shipped improvements within weeks. I think their users will really appreciate it.
Honestly, being responsive, flexible, and fast at rolling out new features is what helps a company stand out and earn loyalty. Many software companies talk about this. Few actually do it.
I have a lot to share about KIME, so if you are on the hunt for an AI visibility tracker, this one might be worth a closer look.
Here is what KIME offers:
- Every pricing plan includes unlimited workspaces. Each workspace tracks AI visibility for one domain.
- You can track prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Mode by default. More models are available if you reach out to support, including AI Overviews and other LLMs.
- Unlike many other tools, KIME lets you bulk upload prompts, which is a real time saver. There is also a dedicated report with suggested prompts to help you uncover more ideas.
- Prompt reporting insights are updated daily. In my experience, this is a real advantage since not every tool offers daily refreshes.
- You can group prompts by category and add tags.
- Brand mentions and content citations are tracked separately, which gives you a better picture of how your site performs in AI search.
- Compare your AI visibility against as many competitors as you want.
- Analyze your brand’s sentiment across all AI models and the criteria that shape how your brand is perceived.
- Get an actionable list of opportunities to improve your organic visibility.
Below, you can see the Overview report for my test workspace tracking Samsung. This report gives you a high-level look at whether your brand is being mentioned across LLMs and how often.
KIME tracks four key metrics:
- AI Performance Score: A score that shows how well your brand shows up in AI answers. It looks at where you appear in the answer, what is said about you, and how positive or negative the mention is.
- Overall Visibility: The percentage of your tracked prompts in which your brand is mentioned. It only counts if you appear, not how you are described.
- Overall Placement: Your average position within AI-generated answers. The lower the number, the higher up your brand appears.
- Overall Sentiment Score: How AI models perceive your brand. The score reflects whether mentions skew positive, neutral, or negative.
The simplest way I think about the first two is that Overall Visibility tells you how often you show up. Performance Score tells you how well you show up.
You can have high visibility but a low performance score (mentioned often, but in negative or low-ranking ways), or lower visibility with a high performance score (mentioned less, but always prominently and positively).
All metrics refresh daily, which is one of the things I appreciate about KIME’s reporting cadence.
You also get a handy chart that shows how your brand visibility rankings change over time, along with a quick leaderboard to compare yourself against competitors. It makes it easy to spot shifts in visibility and take action when something moves.
Overall, this is a solid overview if you need to report on AI visibility to your clients or team.
A closer look at the prompts report
You have three options for adding prompts:
- Add them one by one. This is the slowest method, so I would not recommend it.
- Bulk upload via CSV file.
- Use the Proposed tab to add recommended prompts.
Let me share a tip that might help you here. I recommend tracking shorter prompts like “best SEO tools” since they typically have higher search volumes. Long-tail queries like “what are the best SEO tools for fintech startups” are usually low volume, which means your visibility score could end up close to zero.
With the KIME Core plan, you can track 25 prompts. So you really need to pick the ones that matter most for your business.
Unlike many SEO tools, KIME lets you track an unlimited number of competitors. I think this is a real advantage. You can quickly spot performance trends, watch competitors who are rapidly growing their visibility, and act fast when your website performance changes.
The AI Perception Report
Below, you can see what the AI Perception report looks like. I have reviewed plenty of sentiment reports from various tools; this one stands out as clean and well-organized. It puts the most important information, sentiment over time, right at the top.
The Sentiment Mention List lets you see exactly how your brand is perceived in every AI-generated answer, when the response was generated, which AI model produced it, what country it was shown in, and whether your competitors appeared in the same response. The level of detail is impressive.
The Action Tab
There is one more feature worth talking about. Beyond tracking, KIME has an Action tab with suggested improvements to boost your AI visibility.
In my opinion, this adds value since you do not have to come up with ideas from scratch. When I first tested it, I flagged a suggestion that pointed to a URL that did not exist on my site. The team noted it and shipped a big update to fix this kind of issue and add more detail to each action. I tested it again, and the quality is noticeably better.
One detail worth knowing: actions refresh weekly. When you move action cards around the kanban board, new ones show up in the next cycle. If you ignore the tab, the same suggestions sit there.
What’s worth keeping in mind when using KIME
The default tracking models are ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. If you want to enable additional models later, you will need to contact the support team.
Depending on your pricing plan, you get 25 to 100 prompts or a customized package for prompt tracking. You can split these across as many workspaces as you need. They are not locked to one workspace.
Data reporting starts from day one after you add your prompts. You can set custom reporting ranges going back to your account start date, and there are preset views for 7, 14, and 30 days.
According to the KIME team, they intentionally built this tool for product and service companies across all industries and sizes. The strength of the tool is in accurately reporting AI visibility, even if it changes daily.
This also means that media companies, and blogs (my case), may see lower band visibility scores. If that is your case, I recommend paying close attention to the Latest Model Answers report. It shows the sources used to generate AI answers. LLMs and AI Overviews often pull pieces of information from your content and cite them with a link. That is what I suggest tracking, and KIME lets you do it as well.
Where does KIME get reporting data from?
According to the KIME team, their reporting data comes from a mix of API integrations, live search results, and their own scraping methods. In simple terms, they pull data from multiple sources to give you a more up-to-date and complete picture of search performance.
Pricing
Quick note before I dive into the KIME pricing plans: KIME is a Nordic European company, so all prices are in euros. I told the team that USD pricing would help North American users. As of September 2026, they’ve launched pricing in USD.
KIME splits its plans into two groups: brand plans for SaaS and service companies, and agency plans if you manage AI visibility for multiple clients.
Honestly, KIME is not cheap. It sits at the higher end of AI visibility tools, so keep that in mind before you commit.
If AI search visibility is a real priority for your business, the Explorer plan at $109/month is a good place to start. You can split those 50 prompts across unlimited workspaces, which gives you some flexibility from day one.
The Core plan at $459/month is where I think you get the best value. You get 200 prompts plus proper onboarding support, which makes a real difference when you are setting things up for the first time.
For agencies, the $569/month is fairly priced given the unlimited client workspaces.
KIME’s pricing tells you exactly who this tool is for: product, SaaS, and service brands that treat AI visibility as a real priority. If that is you, the cost is easy to justify. If you are just exploring, start with the 7-day free trial before you commit.
Wellows
- Best for: Brands, agencies, and marketing teams that want to track AI visibility and turn citation gaps into content and outreach opportunities.
- Best features: AI Brand Visibility Score, Prompt Tracking, GamePlan strategy reports, Outreach Opportunities, Content Optimization feature, Stability visibility score.
- Pricing: Starts at $29/month: 12 prompts on all 5 engines, daily
60 prompts on 1 engine, daily. The Standard plan is $97/month for 43 prompts across all 5 engines daily, or 216 prompts on 1 engine daily. Growth and Scale plans go up to $249/month and $497/month for full platform coverage. There’s a 7-day free trial.
The Wellows team reached out to me a few times before I tested the platform.
I had the chance to speak with Saleem Ahrar, Wellows’ COO, who shared some useful insights into how the platform works and where it’s headed.
As I was testing it, I asked Saleem about prompt tracking, data collection, and what the team is planning next. I wanted to understand how the platform actually works, rather than just repeat what’s already available on the web.
So, some of the information below comes directly from those conversations, along with what I found while testing the platform myself.
From what I learned, Wellows is designed for brands and agencies that want to monitor their visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode.
The Overview report in Wellows shows your AI Brand Visibility Score, citations, tracked prompts, historical performance, and visibility compared to competitors. You can also see which prompts generate the most citations, how AI platforms describe your brand, and which publishers might be worth reaching out to.
Prompt tracking is at the core of the platform, but the setup differs slightly from other AI visibility tracking tools.
Every prompt needs to be assigned to a topic. This lets you see which areas perform well for your brand or agency clients. If a prompt does not fit a specific topic, you can create a general category instead.
You can add prompts manually or upload them in bulk.
If you connect Google Search Console, Wellows can use queries that are already generating impressions, along with your industry and selected competitors, to suggest relevant prompts. If you don’t connect GSC, the platform generates suggestions based on your industry and competitors instead.
One thing to keep in mind is that prompt changes aren’t reflected immediately. New or removed prompts can take at least 24 hours to appear in the platform. Wellows also collects at least five days of data before showing volatility trends.
According to the team, this is intentional. They want to collect enough data to show meaningful trends rather than surface conclusions based on a very small sample.
I also asked how Wellows collects prompt data because, like many people in SEO, I care quite a bit about data accuracy.
According to the team, Wellows runs tracked queries against logged-out versions of each supported LLM and records the responses and citations as they appear in the actual interface. They deliberately don’t rely on API results because those responses can differ from what users see in the interface.
The team told me they would rather show what a real user sees than what an API endpoint returns. Personally, I think that’s the right approach.
Prompt monitoring isn’t the only functionality that Wellows offers. The platform also includes a GamePlan to help you improve your brand’s AI search visibility, along with outreach recommendations and tools for content generation and optimization.
The GamePlan is prepared by Wellows’ strategists using your AI visibility data and is usually delivered within 24 to 48 hours.
You can try any plan free for 7 days, which gives you a chance to see whether the platform actually fits your workflow before paying for it.
Wellows’ pricing plans start at $37 per domain per month and go up to $497. As you move up the pricing tiers, you get more prompts, responses, content generation, AI platforms, and countries for tracking.
What’s next for Wellows
The team told me their bigger goal is to turn Wellows into more of an execution platform, rather than keeping it purely as an insights tool.
It already recommends actions and helps generate content. The next step is to add a human-in-the-loop layer that would allow approved changes to be published directly to your website.
They’re also working on bot analytics that should show how LLMs are reading your existing content, as well as technical analysis to identify what makes certain pages more likely to be picked up and cited.
If you want to see how it works for yourself, you can start with Wellows’ 7-day free trial and decide whether it fits your workflow.
Indexly
Best for: Tracking AI search visibility, monitoring brand mentions in LLMs, and improving content visibility across Google and AI platforms
Best features: AI Visibility Tracking, AI Prompt Tracking, Citation Tracking, AI Traffic Analytics, Content Agents, Automated Indexing
- Pricing: Starts at $99/m for 2 websites. There’s also a 14-day free trial. To access AI visibility tracking for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, brand mentions on Reddit, and more, try the Indexly One for $299/m.
When Indexly was first launched, it focused primarily on indexing and technical SEO monitoring.
Today, it has evolved into a broader AI SEO platform that helps website owners understand where their brand appears in AI search and what they can do to improve visibility.
The platform allows you to monitor your brand visibility across AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and Google AI Overviews. You can track brand mentions, citations, sentiment, competitor visibility, and AI referral traffic from one dashboard.
Besides AI visibility tracking, Indexly also includes content agents that help create and optimize SEO/GEO-focused content, as well as automated indexing tools to help search engines discover new pages faster.
Otterly AI
- Best for: Solo marketers, hobby bloggers, startups, and small site owners who want to start tracking AI visibility without a large investment
- Pricing: From $29/month
- Free trial: 14 days
Otterly AI is one of the more affordable AI visibility tools on the market. Not everyone is ready to spend $100–$300 per month just to test AI visibility, and this tool offers a much lower entry point.
For $29/month, you can track one domain using 15 prompts across major platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot.
Despite the lower price, it still offers daily performance updates, which is something many more expensive tools don’t provide.
With Otterly AI, you can monitor brand mentions and citations across platforms such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Copilot. It also lets you analyze brand visibility trends over time, compare your presence against up to five competitors, track your average position across AI platforms, and export data or connect via API on higher-tier plans.
Gumloop
With Gumloop, you can build almost any AI workflow you can think of, including AI marketing automations, SEO workflows, reporting dashboards, lead generation agents, and more.
If you’re looking to automate your digital marketing processes, here are just a few things you can build with Gumloop:
- Automate keyword research
- Generate SEO content briefs
- Build AI content creation workflows
- Monitor your competitors
- Automate lead generation and lead research
- Enrich leads with additional company and contact data
- Pull marketing data into automated reports
- Summarize customer feedback with AI
- Connect your favorite marketing tools into one workflow
- Build email marketing workflows
- Analyze survey responses with AI
- Generate weekly or monthly marketing reports
- Repurpose blog posts into LinkedIn posts, X posts, or email newsletters
- Analyze engagement metrics across social platforms
- Research influencers for partnership campaigns
- Collect competitor content from social media
- And more!
Recently, I used Gumloop to build my first Content Decay agent. The workflow identifies blog posts on my website that have lost 25%+ of clicks or impressions and automatically groups them based on how serious the decline is.
Since I manage my website myself, my goal is to eventually create AI-powered automations for different parts of my site using Gumloop. That’s why I decided to upgrade to the annual plan ($360) and continue experimenting with what the platform can do. I’m also planning to share a detailed Gumloop review based on my hands-on experience.
If you want to try Gumloop, you can start with the free plan, which gives you 5,000 monthly credits. Just keep in mind that credits can disappear quickly, especially when testing more complex workflows. I’d recommend either building your own automations or exploring the pre-built agents available in their library to see what works best for you.
Letaido
Letaido is an AI SEO agent built by the same team behind Ahrefs.
Here’s how it works: The tool gives you a dedicated, always-on workspace where AI agents plan, use tools, and finish tasks on their own, then keep running on a schedule after that.
Letaido connects to the tools you likely already use, including Ahrefs (with a native integration at no extra API cost), Semrush, Notion, Slack, Linear, HubSpot, Google Ads, Mailchimp, WordPress, GitHub, and Google Drive.
Once connected, Letaido agents can:
- Research and prioritize keyword opportunities, then prep them for publishing
- Track rankings and traffic weekly without manual pulls
- Draft and maintain blog content
- Generate recurring reports on SEO performance, SERP volatility, and AI sentiment
- Ship internal tools, dashboards, and websites your team can access through built-in hosting
- Run scheduled jobs like audits and alerts around the clock
Ahrefs says it moved its own marketing team onto Letaido first. At the beginning, it started with five simple automationsm but now they run more than 20 workflows continuously, including video SEO opportunity tracking, blog performance reporting, and SERP volatility alerts.
Ahrefs built Letaido for teams, where multiple people and agents work on the same automations, see each other’s activity, and build on what’s already running instead of starting from scratch.
If you’re a one-person operation like me, most of what Letaido does overlaps with what you can already piece together using Gumloop or a well-configured Claude project.
Pricing is a flat $99/month for one workspace with unlimited users, AI credits powered by frontier models included, and access to prebuilt marketing skills, apps, and reports.
Extra workspaces start at $29/month, and AI usage beyond what’s included is billed at cost plus a markup. There’s no free plan.
Letaido only launched recently, and I couldn’t find independent reviews on G2 or Capterra yet, so I’d treat early impressions with some caution until more people have put it through its paces.
Claude
Claude is my main LLM for managing my website. I use Claude Pro to have dedicated projects and skills for all my needs, both work and personal. To use Claude effectively for AI and SEO work, I feed it lots of personal information about me, my writing style, and my work approach.
I connect Semrush MCP and Google Search Console directly to Claude, and my entire SEO content strategy creation process now happens inside one conversation. I describe what I need, Claude pulls live Semrush data, cross-references it against my GSC indexing and performance numbers, and hands back a plan I can actually act on. In my experience, this turns a one-week strategy project into a one or two-hour conversation.
Here’s my 5-step workflow inside Claude:
- Technical website audit — I ask Claude to pull a Semrush Site Audit and prioritize findings by organic performance impact instead of listing every issue. In one recent audit, Claude flagged four orphaned pages with zero inbound links and three revenue clusters needing stronger internal linking.
- Competitor analysis — Claude pulls a competitor’s organic performance against mine using Semrush’s domain and traffic data, then flags which of their top pages I already cover, cover weakly, or haven’t touched at all — that’s where new content ideas come from.
- Keyword research — I ask Claude to pull keyword data through Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool and Keyword Overview reports, group results into clusters by volume, difficulty, and intent, and flag “exploding” keywords where the trend is climbing but competition hasn’t caught up.
- SEO content plan — Once Claude has the audit, competitor gaps, and keyword clusters in one conversation, I ask it to build a content plan around my actual publishing capacity (1-2 new posts and up to 3 updates per month).
- Content production — Claude handles structure, keyword placement, image suggestions, on-page notes, and FAQ generation. I still write the rough draft myself — the part that needs my actual experience, opinions, and voice.
Before this workflow, I spent 10-12 hours per content piece. Now I’m at 4-5 hours for a high-quality, personalized piece — roughly half the time, same quality output.
Claude has also become my go-to for image generation, not just writing. I built a dedicated Claude Project with standing instructions: every time I publish a new post, I feed Claude a screenshot of the article, and it generates an Instagram Story promoting it, branded with my logo, headline, and author photo — then repurposes that same image into a LinkedIn post graphic, repositioning the composition to fill the frame. Same source image, two different platform-native outputs, without opening a design tool for either.
I use the Claude Pro plan, $200/year, which gives me custom connectors (including GSC), unlimited projects, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork. Compared to the $249/month I used to pay for Writesonic’s AI SEO platform, it’s a much better deal for what it does.
Surfer SEO
- Best for: In-house marketing teams, SEO content writers, individual site owners, and agencies that publish content at scale. If you regularly create content and want it to rank in organic search results and AI search results, Surfer is a go-to option.
- Best features: Surfer AI, AI Tracker, Topical Map, Content Editor, Content Audit.
- Pricing: Starts at $99/month, which includes optimizing 30 pieces of content and tracking 25 prompts daily in ChatGPT. If you want to track more prompts across LLMs and AI Overviews, the Pro Plan is available at $182/month.
I’ve always thought of Surfer SEO as an on-page tool for researching, writing, and optimizing content to rank better. But honestly, it’s grown into so much more and offers plenty of helpful features for site owners.
Here’s a quick overview of Surfer’s tools and AI features:
Content Editor: This is basically your AI-powered writing assistant. It can help you improve and optimize a draft you already have, or it can generate and optimize new content based on your needs. When your draft is ready, Surfer checks it against your competitors and suggests related keywords, structural improvements, and even internal links.
If you use the Auto-Optimize feature, it will automatically add missing keywords and content sections. I suggest reviewing the draft afterward to ensure the content sounds human and it’s not over-optimized.
In my example below, I added a pretty detailed outline to generate the content with Surfy and optimize it based on the suggestions. And if the text feels a little too robotic, you can run it through the AI Humanizer to quickly make it sound more natural.
If you ever feel like your content is missing something, Surfer’s Coverage Booster feature can help. It suggests facts based on what the top-ranking posts cover, so you don’t leave out important details.
Overall, it’s a handy feature that gives you plenty of content ideas. My tiny suggestion is to double-check the facts for accuracy before adding them to your content. Additionally, as an SEO content writer, I’d also recommend including something original that your competitors haven’t talked about yet. That’s what makes your piece more valuable and helps it stand out.
Here’s a quick look at Surfer’s Coverage Booster in action. All you have to do is accept the recommended improvements if they add more value to your content piece.
Content Audit: Once you connect your website via GSC, Surfer analyzes the performance of your web pages and recommends improvements to boost the organic visibility of every individual page.
Honestly, it feels like this report replaces the need for those long manual content audits we used to do to spot low-hanging opportunities. Instead, Surfer checks your pages daily and points out what you can improve. You can make the changes yourself or let the Auto-Optimize tool handle it for you.
Topical Map: This report helps you see how well your content clusters are covered and points out gaps you might be missing. If you notice a topic that fits your site but you haven’t written about yet, just add it to your content plan.
With Surfer, you also get the usual SEO must-haves like Rank Tracker to follow your keyword rankings daily and Keyword Research to explore content clusters and see their traffic potential.
On top of the usual SEO and content toolkit, Surfer’s team has also added AI-powered features to keep up with the latest AI SEO updates — Surfer AI and AI Tracker.
Surfer AI can help you create long-form content (2,000+ words) that’s optimized for rankings. Once you input your prompt and hit “Write with AI,” you’ll have a complete article ready in 15–30 minutes.
Right now, it works smoothly in multiple languages, including English, German, Dutch, Polish, French, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Portuguese, Brazilian, Portuguese, Italian, Czech, Japanese, and Norwegian.
AI Tracker is like your personal radar for brand visibility. It tracks mentions of your brand, products, or target prompts in AI-generated search results across Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.
Here’s how it works:
- Add your brand, prompts, and language
- Review and update the prompts if needed
- Let AI Tracker analyze your domain name
- Get visibility insights every week
AI Tracker is included in the Scale plan (up to 5 prompts). If you want more, you can purchase it as an add-on $95/month and track 25 prompts with daily updates.
Before recommending Surfer as one of the AI SEO tools in this article, I also checked what current and past users say about it.
Surfer has more than 419 reviews on Capterra with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5. Many users point out how easy it is to use, the helpful features, and the solid customer support.
For me, what stands out is Surfer’s wide range of on-page optimization tools and its new focus on AI-powered features that are supposed to make the content creation process more productive and help brands see how visible they are in AI-driven search results.
If you want to test Surfer yourself, keep in mind that they don’t offer a free trial. Instead, they have a 7-day money-back guarantee. So if you sign up for one of their monthly plans (Essential or Scale) and feel it’s not the right fit, you can contact their support within a week and get a full refund.
Koala Writer
- Best features: KoalaWriter, Koala Images.
- Pricing: Starts at $25 monthly for 45,000 generated words and an MCP server for your AI assistant.
- Free trial: Koala offers a free plan, which lets you generate up to 5,000 words per month.
I’ve been using Koala SEO Writer for several years to create content for my website. Funny enough, I even used it to generate my own Koala review.
Of course, I added my own insights and personal take, and now that article ranks in the top 10 for my target keywords.
What I like about Koala AI is how easy it is to use. Plus, it gives you a ton of ways to customize your content before it’s generated.
Here’s what you can do:
- Choose the tone of voice
- Set the word count
- add your target keyword
- pick a country for optimization
- Customize the outline
- Generate content in over 100 languages
- And more!
You can use Koala’s free plan to generate up to 5,000 words per month for free. That’s basically enough for one article with some edits.
If you need more content, the Koala’s paid plans start at $25 monthly for 45,000 words.
Semrush Content Toolkit
- Best features: Topic Finder, SEO Brief Generation, AI Article Generation, Content Optimizer
- Pricing: $60 per month
- Free trial: 7-day free trial
Semrush Content Toolkit (formerly ContentShake AI) is an SEO writing tool by Semrush. Its goal is to help writers, SEOs, and creators quickly generate high-quality, SEO-optimized articles.
It can generate content automatically, integrate keywords, and work across different niches.
Plus, it supports 7 languages: English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, and Portuguese.
You can also connect Semrush Content Toolkit to your WordPress blog and publish articles directly to your site. No need to format or click a “Publish” button manually.
It also provides built-in stock images and an AI image generator, so you won’t have to spend hours making visuals as I do in Canva.
Semrush also suggests fresh topic ideas every week based on your niche and target location. It’s helpful if you’re always looking for new content ideas (like me!)
Plus, it checks out what competitors are doing and finds trending topics to keep your content relevant.
Oh, and it can even tweak each piece to match your writing style, target audience, and brand voice. Pretty handy, right?
Semrush Content Toolkit has one paid plan at $60/month, unlocking everything:
- Unlimited SEO-friendly articles
- 25 fresh content ideas every week
- Unlimited brand voices
- Localized content suggestions
- Free SEO boost with SERP insights
- AI-powered image search and creation
- Built-in AI chat
- Content optimizer
- Handy Chrome extension
AI SEO tools that sound helpful but rarely improve rankings
This is the part most tool roundups skip.
After testing more than 20 AI SEO platforms since 2019, I have noticed a pattern: some tools generate impressive-looking reports and dashboards, but the outputs do not translate into actual ranking improvements or traffic gains.
Here is what tends to underperform and why.
1. SEO content optimizers and on-page tools
These tools compare your article to top-ranking pages and tell you which keywords or topics you are missing. The logic seems reasonable. The results, in 2026, are not.
Here is a real example that happened to my site. After Google’s January 2026 update, my AI SEO tools article dropped from its top-three position. I ran it through several SEO content optimizers to see what they would suggest. Most gave the content a solid score, even though it had clearly dropped in rankings. I added a few of their recommended keywords. No improvement.
The problem is that these tools are measuring keyword density and topic coverage against what already ranks. But Google’s January 2026 update, as confirmed at Google Search Central, was about rewarding genuine experience and depth, not keyword completeness. Adding keywords does not fix a quality signal problem.
Fresh, experience-driven content beats any optimizer. And that is coming directly from the Google team, not my opinion alone.
2. AI content generators
I do not see much value in paying for tools that primarily generate content when you already have Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini.
If you use Claude with a well-crafted prompt that reflects your writing style, real insights, and audience context, the output is solid. That is how I created my AI SEO statistics post. The key is that you have to train the AI on your voice and feed it real experience. Generic prompts produce generic content.
Paying $50 to $200 per month for a tool to do what a free LLM does with the right prompt is usually not worth it.
3. AI visibility tracking tools that ask you to manually input prompts for tracking
The idea is that they’ll monitor where your content appears when people use those specific prompts in ChatGPT, Claude, or other LLMs.
But we don’t actually know which prompts we should be tracking! It’s not like traditional keyword research, where you, in most cases, know the search terms.
Prompts are way more conversational and long-tail than regular search queries. People might ask the same thing in dozens of different ways, and each variation could pull up completely different results.
Collecting all these prompts manually would take forever! You’d basically need to guess every possible way someone might phrase a question related to your topic. That’s just not realistic.
I’ve tried some AI SEO tools that work this way and quickly realized I was spending more time thinking up prompts to track than actually improving my content. Total waste of time and money.
What you actually need are tools that offer prompt research capabilities for your specific topics and can automatically detect when your brand gets mentioned or cited.
These tools crawl LLM responses across various prompts and alert you when you show up, instead of making you play a guessing game about what to track.
How AI SEO works
One marketer I really respect, Omid Ghiam, put it perfectly when talking about AI and SEO:
“AEO, AI engine optimization, matures as good SEO. But good SEO isn’t common!”
I was at the gym watching one of Omid’s videos when this hit me, and I knew I had to share it here. It’s something a lot of SEO folks and website owners miss completely.
Being visible in LLMs, AI Overviews, and AI Mode eventually comes down to doing SEO the right way — the way it should’ve been done from the start.
SEO was always supposed to be about making content that matches what people are actually looking for and gives them real value. Google just needed more time than we thought to fine-tune things, so quality, human-created content wins over generic stuff.
What actually matters for AEO, GEO, or whatever label you want to use, is the same stuff that’s always mattered for SEO:
- Fresh content
- High-quality content
- Schema markup
- Strong technical performance
- Meeting Google’s EEAT standards
There’s nothing groundbreaking here. The problem is that most people take shortcuts instead of doing SEO properly. And that’s exactly why opportunities still exist.
Semrush’s latest study on AI Mode reveals even more insights on the impact of AI on SEO:
- AI Mode and other LLMs pull data straight from Google’s top 10 results.
- Perplexity.ai matches Google’s top 10 domains in over 91% of cases! 🤯
- Roughly 92% of AI Mode answers show a sidebar with about 7 links. These links have a 51% domain overlap and 32% URL overlap with Google’s top 10 search results.
- Reddit appears in 40.11% of results across AI Mode, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, often beating brand websites.
All this tells me is that Google still relies on someone’s content to answer people’s questions.
So where is all that information coming from?
From our content.
Which brings up the real question: How will Google choose which pages to recommend? 🤔
I’m convinced it all comes back to E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust). I repeat it all the time because it’s more important now than ever.
As an SEO expert, I’m actually excited about the future of AI SEO.
It’s no longer just about ranking #1.
It’s about building trust so your content actually shows up when people search for answers.
I met JC, a Senior SEO Strategist at Tripadvisor, during the AI SEO conference in Toronto, and I loved how he summed up the future of SEO in the AI era:
“AI SEO comes back to the fundamentals.”
I couldn’t agree more, as long as SEO is done the right way, the way it always should’ve been done!
So if you want to take advantage of this shift, now’s the time to think about how AI can support your business. Check out my AI search optimization tips for practical ways to get started, and one of the easiest ways to begin is by using the right AI tools.
If you’re curious where the SEO industry is heading, I put together my thoughts and published a post about the future of SEO.
Can AI content rank?
Ahrefs’ study of 600,000 analyzed pages discovered that AI-generated content doesn’t hurt your Google rankings.
When content is genuinely helpful, matches what people are actually searching for, and is optimized properly, it can rank well no matter how it was created.
With AI tools, you can do more on your own without hiring a whole team. But we’re not at a point where AI can consistently create content that’s truly helpful and worth reading.
I honestly believe that it’s good that SEO becomes more personalized and companies are obliged to reveal who’s creating content. This way, I, as a user, make a decision whether their content can be trusted or not.
Google has clear guidance when it comes to AI-generated content on the web. If you haven’t read their statement, here’s the link to their article on “Google’s guidance on AI-generated content” and an excerpt from it:
“When it comes to automatically generated content, our guidance has been consistent for years. Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies.”
Basically, Google doesn’t care how you produce content if it’s helpful for people. However, using generated content purely for ranking manipulations is a serious policy violation.
Here’s something you can do right now: make sure your content lines up with E-E-A-T.
You’ve probably seen E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust) mentioned a lot lately. It’s not new, but it matters more than ever.
The goal behind these updates is pretty simple: Google wants to figure out which websites are actually trustworthy and run by people who know what they’re talking about.
If you’re an expert running a niche site, writing about what you truly know, staying active on social media, and getting quoted or mentioned on other sites — that’s a strong signal. It shows there’s a real person behind the content.
Because of that, Google is more likely to boost websites where it’s clear who created the content and why they’re qualified.
And yes, if you use AI SEO tools, your content can still rank… as long as it’s clearly aligned with E-E-A-T.
How to align content with E-E-A-T (my experience):
- You can add an author bio to your blog posts so readers (and Google) know who wrote the content and why they’re credible.
- Link to the author’s social media profiles or other platforms.
- Mention any awards, certifications, or recognitions you have.
- Credit content editors, if you work with any.
- Share your content on social media and ask your authors to do the same.
- Encourage authors to include case studies, real stories, and personal opinions.
These tips come from testing AI SEO optimization on my own site. I’ve also seen very similar advice shared by other content creators on Reddit, which tells me this isn’t just a one-off opinion.
E-E-A-T matters even more for Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) topics, like health, personal finance, insurance, and investing.
AI tools will unlikely help you create and optimize content for rankings if you operate in these niches since Google prioritizes content written by certified, real-world experts, and that’s not something AI can fake (at least not yet).
What the Google team told us about AI SEO
In April 2026, I attended the first Google Search Central Live event in Canada, where Danny Sullivan, Director of Google Search, gave a talk specifically on AI in search.
I was in the room, and I took notes.
They actually answered the most burning question that many SEOs ask on LinkedIn daily: Is SEO and AI SEO different?
According to the Google team, SEO and AI SEO are not separate disciplines. The fundamentals that have always mattered, such as helpful content and genuine expertise, are the same fundamentals that AI search rewards. There is no new playbook. What changed is how strictly Google enforces the old one.
They’ve also introduced a distinction between commodity content and non-commodity content.
Commodity content is anything that already exists in roughly the same form everywhere else: generic listicles, standard advice, thin rewrites. AI can replicate that kind of content without sending any traffic to your site.
What AI systems actually surface is non-commodity content: content grounded in real experience, original data, or depth that cannot be easily summarized.
What this means for you: Any AI SEO tool that promises to improve your rankings by optimizing keyword coverage or content scores is working with the old model. What actually moves the needle is the quality and originality of the content itself. Use tools to work faster and spot opportunities — not as a substitute for that.
FAQ on AI and SEO
Wrapping up an article with an FAQ section is one of my favorite SEO strategies.
It helps you answer the questions people actually search for and gives your content a better chance of landing a featured snippet.
I often rely on AI agents to generate answers, but I always double-check and edit everything myself. It’s that sweet mix of AI support and real human writing.
What are AI SEO tools?
Artificial intelligence SEO tools are basically software that can help you rank higher not only on Google, but also inside LLMs like ChatGPT, AI answers, and AI Mode.
These tools can help you with many SEO-related tasks, such as keyword research, content optimization, SEO content writing, and technical SEO. Plus, some tools offer tips on how to boost your site’s performance in search results.
Some people are scared of AI tools because they worry AI might replace their jobs. In my opinion, this shift is already happening.
For example, one of my former bosses let go of a full-time copywriter because he felt her work wasn’t any better than what ChatGPT could produce. So he switched to AI-generated content instead. I’m sure other companies do the same.
Right now, not every job is being replaced, but the trend is changing fast. It’s something we all need to stay aware of.
If you’re in SEO, take a deep breath! SEO isn’t going anywhere as long as people continue using search engines.
However, search engine optimization has been transforming a lot with Google search generative experience (generative AI). So you, me, and every other SEO specialist need to stay updated and adapt as things evolve.
How does AI impact SEO?
As an SEO content writer, I’ve noticed how AI-generated content is taking over lately. A lot of companies and website owners seem to care more about sharing tons of content instead of making sure it’s actually good, and I have a feeling this trend isn’t going away anytime soon.
Relying too much on AI comes with some risks. For example, sites using mostly AI content could get hit hard by Google’s algorithm updates.
Another concern is that some websites might start seeing a decline in organic clicks and impressions now that AI Overviews are rolling out in over 100 countries.
The feature just launched in Canada on October 28th, 2024. I’m still testing how it works, but it already shows up a lot for informational searches. That could be a problem for websites that rely heavily on that kind of traffic.
How do you choose the right AI tool for SEO?
When choosing an AI tool for SEO, consider your specific needs and goals, such as content optimization, keyword analysis, keyword tracking, or backlink analysis.
For example, my main goal is to speed up content creation. That’s why I prioritize tools that help me accomplish this. Once the content is drafted, I can either optimize it manually for better rankings or use Semrush to gather keyword suggestions.
So, always start with a “Why?”
What are the best AI tools for keyword research?
The Semrush Keyword Overview report has a built-in AI functionality to help you research keywords your website can realistically rank for. It’s one of the best keyword research tools I’ve used.
How does Koala AI compare to Writesonic for automated SEO content writing?
Both Writesonic and Kola Writer AI can help you generate content with AI.
Unlike Writesonic, which has a 10-step detailed process to ensure your content is customized to your requirements, Koala AI only lets you customize the outline before generating content. However, Koala supports multiple different languages for content generation, while Writesonic can only help you generate content in English.
There’s also a huge difference in price. Writesonic is at least $249/month for its SEO + content + AI features. On the other hand, Koala starts at only at $9/month.
Are there any free SEO tools that incorporate artificial intelligence?
SE Ranking AI Visibility tool lets you check your domain’s AI visibility against competitors up to 5 times daily for free.
Ahrefs and Writesonic have plenty of free AI Writing tools.
Semrush offers a lot of SEO and AI tools as well as content generation tools.
How do you use AI for on-page SEO?
You can use LLMs, like ChatGPT, to generate meta titles, meta descriptions, and schema.org for a page.
LLMs can also suggest keywords related to your main topic that you can add to your content.
What should I consider when choosing SEO software with AI features?
I suggest checking whether you can track AI visibility without manually adding prompts, since that would be too much work.
It’s also very important to research prompts based on your keywords. This way, you’ll be able to optimize your content with questions your audience actually uses in LLMs.
I also suggest making sure your preferred AI SEO software can help you create optimized workflows, since managing everything manually is too much work.
Can AI help in creating more effective SEO content?
AI can help you create decent content only if you train it to do so.
In my case, I train AI tools with my blog posts. This way, AI SEO agents learn my personality and writing style.
What are the top AI tools for creating SEO-rich blog content?
Writesonic (a 10-step content creation process), Semrush Content toolkit, Koala AI, Frase, Surfer SEO, to name a few.
There are lots of tools for content generation, but none of them will create a helpful and unique content piece. Trust me, I’ve tried many solutions. The best you can do is train an AI on your personality and tone of voice, and edit the content manually before publishing.
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7 Responses
Hi Victoria, we have a very unique business and have had no luck and wasted a lot of money on broken promises to help promote our business. I would love to speak with you to see if it’s something you can work with
Hi Victoria,
I hope you’re doing well! I own a small backpackers’ lodge in Botswana, and I truly believe that SEO optimization could make a big difference in helping me gain the worldwide exposure needed to adapt and thrive in the evolving post-COVID tourism landscape.
That said, I’ve had my fair share of promises about great results in the past, but unfortunately, they didn’t deliver much. This has left me hesitant about exploring SEO solutions further, mainly due to a lack of knowledge and the fear of more unnecessary losses.
Would you be able to assist me in finding an optimal SEO solution? I’d really appreciate your expertise in navigating this and helping me make informed decisions.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Best regards,
Hendrik
Hi Victoria, I run my website for Burnley Plumbing Supplies which did used to rank no1 in the early nineties. Now I am really struggling to understand what tools I need to use to get it ranking again. It’s a WordPress site with a woocommerce store. Is this something you could help with?
Hi Salim,
Thank you for your comment!
Could you please share the details over the email: [email protected]
Thank you!
Best,
Victoria
Really enjoyed this roundup, Victoria — thanks for putting it together! 🙌 A few additional thoughts what I’m seeing in the SaaS/AI-SEO world:
* The distinction you made between tools that “do it” vs. those that “do it well” is huge. It’s not enough for a tool to generate content or suggestions — it must *understand* context and intent.
* One thing that’s truly under-leveraged: using AI tools not just to *generate*, but to *test prompt variations* across engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot) to see what style or framing the model prefers.
* Also, building out **entity reinforcement** across related content (support pages, FAQs, forum mentions) seems to accelerate surfacing in LLM-responses — even without massive backlink profiles.
* Finally, your take on E-E-A-T is so on point. In my work with SaaS brands, adding author credibility real examples/stories has helped content get picked up by answer-style prompts much more than generic pieces.
Curious: have you tried tracking which prompts your content is already showing in (versus which ones you *want*)? That mapping seems like the starting battle map for AI Search Optimization.
Great post — really helpful for folks looking to move beyond just “what tools” toward “how to win with them.”
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Hey Khadin! This is a really insightful comment. Context is everything when it comes to generating content.
I’m working on a tool called Hypertxt (hypertxt.ai) that learns about your brand/business before suggesting ideas or generating content. It uses personalized content templates to position your business as the ideal choice to potential customers. It also has a built-in keyword research tool for targeting high-intent, low competition keywords.
Would be interested to hear your thoughts if you give it a try 🤘
Appreciate the honest take on what’s actually working vs what’s just hype in AI SEO. I think the biggest shift happening right now is that traditional SEO metrics like keyword rankings are becoming less meaningful as more search traffic moves to AI-generated answers. What I’m seeing is that the sites getting the most AI citations aren’t necessarily the ones ranking #1 on Google – they’re the ones with the clearest, most authoritative content on specific topics. Having proper technical foundations matters too: making sure AI crawlers can actually access your content, having structured data in place, and maintaining fresh content. The tooling landscape for measuring AI search visibility is still pretty early stage but it’s evolving fast.