In the past few years, we've seen AI take center stage in the SEO space, with many claiming that SEO agencies and masters are a thing of yesterday with this new technology. While that's definitely an overstatement, it's hard to deny the role of AI in SEO today, especially as our AI SEO Benchmark Report found that AI tools help improve SEO rankings by a staggering 49.2%.
However, this feat isn't the result of solo AI efforts; human involvement contributes largely to it. Unlike AI SEO tools, which are relatively new, human SEO professionals have spent over a decade honing their skills and understanding search engine algorithms.
So, you've got the human component. What you need to complement it is an AI SEO optimization tool that can make you more competitive and visible on the SERPs. We've done the hard work for you. Below are some of the best AI SEO optimization tools that can help you implement your futuristic AI-driven SEO strategy.
- Mastering AI-Driven Technical SEO: How AI is Transforming On-Site Optimization
- 1. Semrush: Leading the Charge in AI-Powered On-Site Optimization
- 2. Screaming Frog SEO Spider: Automating Site Audits and Technical Fixes
- Lumar: AI Insights for Large Website Optimization
- ContentKing: Real-Time Monitoring for Technical SEO Issues
- Botify: AI-Powered SEO Optimization for Enterprise Sites
- Why AI is a Game-Changer for Technical SEO: Top Benefits You Can't Ignore
- Unlock the Full Potential of AI SEO Tools: Advanced Tactics for Technical Mastery
- Get the Website Technicalities Right With AI SEO Tools
- Frequently Asked Questions
Mastering AI-Driven Technical SEO: How AI is Transforming On-Site Optimization
The most typical use case of AI optimization tools is simple SEO, which encompasses keyword research and basic content creation. While it's not exclusively an AI SEO tool, ChatGPT is normally used for these purposes. It can also provide some idea of user intent, too.
ChatGPT SEO use cases also include outline generation, topic research, content creation, and meta description generation. However, it's not as adept at data analysis and technical SEO as designated AI SEO tools are.
AI SEO optimization is the more advanced use of AI-driven SEO tools to manage technical SEO tasks, like page load times, Core Web Vitals, site performance, structured content, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability. Basically, it deals with anything and everything associated with the technical health of a website.
That's not to say that generic tasks like keyword research aren't included in on-page SEO. They surely are. However, they have more to do with the content side of things, while technical optimization tackles the overall performance and functionality of a website.
For example, it includes crawlability, which simply means the ease of a search engine spider in going through a website's pages. Without it, even the most apt keywords or the best-written content will remain unseen, and the site will be rendered unoptimized.
Similarly, technical search engine optimization also entails mobile usability. Since over 6 billion people use mobile phones worldwide, you can't afford to overlook mobile optimization. Again, regardless of the content quality, a not-so-mobile-friendly site will lose most of the web traffic since it's not compatible with the device people prefer using to search the web.
Similarly, other factors like server response time, structure data, JavaScript rendering, international SEO, and image optimization determine your site's technical standing. AI optimization tools, particularly those with technical SEO features, help maintain these aspects of your website so that the factors that often escape the human eye don't go unnoticed.
1. Semrush: Leading the Charge in AI-Powered On-Site Optimization
When discussing AI SEO tools, Semrush inevitably comes up in the conversation. As an all-in-one SEO tool with a comprehensive suite of SEO features, Semrush has long been an industry favorite.
Its technical SEO offerings are just as remarkable and advanced as its generic ones. From the Site Audit tool to the Log File Analyze, Semrush's tools are designed to keep your website in top-notch technical condition. They also include AI features to further enhance their precision and efficiency.
Semrush Site Audit Tool
The Site Audit Tool is Semrush's most helpful tool for SEO professionals and marketers who want to keep their websites in good shape by regularly monitoring their technical performance. It lets you automate site audits, performing them at the frequency of your choice.
While most basic site audit tools merely scan your website for issues, Semrush's Site Audit Tool uses AI to prioritize these issues based on their severity. It also offers actionable recommendations that you can then use to fix the errors and heed the warnings.
The Thematic Reports section shows seven main technical SEO components: crawlability, HTTPS, international SEO, Core Web Vitals, site performance, internal linking, and markup. You can click the ''View Details'' button to further find issues with each category.
Meanwhile, the Top Issues tab is where you find the technical issues to prioritize fixing. The tool shows you the number of issues in each category, such as slow page load speed, incorrect hreflang tags (for international SEO), duplicate content, missing meta descriptions, and so on.
An excellent example of this tool's capabilities comes from Tuff, a small marketing agency with a single SEO marketing manager. Tuff used a two-step approach to leverage the Site Audit tool. First, they used it to fix issues on their own website and then to view the technical health of their clients' websites.
To start, Tuff used the Site Audit tool to pinpoint issues that may be the reason behind their site's traffic decline. After identification, they resolved these issues and used Semrush's other tools, such as the Keyword Gap tool, to find the keywords they could target to increase their traffic.
Following this, Tuff uses the Site Audit tool to run technical audits on their clients' sites. Based on this data, they uncover issues that may be holding the clients back from their search engine glory. Then, they create an improvement plan and work with their clients to work on it. With Semrush in its toolbox, Tuff has seen a pleasant increase in their client base and revenue.
Semrush Log File Analyzer
The Semrush Log File Analyzer is one of Semrush's new additions to its suite, and it helps you see your website from a search engine's perspective. Basically, it gives you a snapshot of what happens when a search engine crawler goes through your website.
The tool identifies the errors during the crawling session, the pages that weren't crawled, the efficiency of crawl budget expenditure, and the most crawled pages. It shows you crawl issues and redirects on your site through different categories and presents them in easily understandable visualizations.
Based on this information, you can then improve the crawl efficiency and remove errors that may be hindering search engines from properly indexing your site. It also gives you insights to optimize your crawl budget, which, ideally, should be directed towards the most important pages of your website.
Semrush SEO Writing Assistant
You might think that the SEO Writing Assistant from Semrush is just for content optimization, such as improving readability or suggesting keyword addition. However, since it works within the Semrush suite, the tool also has access to other Semrush metrics and insights.
So, it can help you improve certain on-page technical SEO elements, too. For example, the tool highlights and suggests recommendations for title issues like title length, number of characters, and the addition of target keywords.
If you don't add images to your content, the tool will recommend you do so. And if your images are missing alt attributes, the SEO Writing Assistant will highlight this error. You can write alt attributes within the tool by filling in the ''Description'' box of the images.
Plus, the tool identifies link issues, such as the absence of them altogether or not having enough of them in your content. If a link is broken or has a redirect error, the tool points it out. You can then replace or remove the link within the tool.
It's due to these optimization features that LiberEat, a startup providing a food allergen technology, uses the SEO Writing Assistant to optimize all its content. The company starts by monitoring the content its competitors are creating through the Organic Research tool. They then use the information to find relevant keywords for their brand using the Keyword Overview and Keyword Magic Tool in Semrush.
Once they have the keywords, they get human writers to create the content and use the SEO Writing Assistant to optimize it for search engines.
Michelle, the brain behind the company, says that all content for her website goes through the tool no matter what. In just three months of publishing this new, well-optimized content, the company has seen a 10x increase in organic traffic.
Pricing
Semrush's Pro plan costs $139.95 per month and comes with 5 projects and 500 keywords to track. It includes all SEO, PPC, and research tools, including site audit and the log file analyzer. However, it doesn't come with Semrush's content marketing toolkit, which includes the SEO Writing Assistant. To access that, you'll need the Guru plan at $249.95 per month.
If you want API access and extended limits on keyword tracking or projects, the Business plan will be ideal for you. It comes at $499.95 per month.
2. Screaming Frog SEO Spider: Automating Site Audits and Technical Fixes
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is another technical optimization tool that's not as comprehensive as Semrush, but it does the job well. It's essentially a website crawler that goes through your website to identify common SEO issues.
Being a web crawler, it's available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can download it to crawl 500 URLs for free. However, the free version lacks advanced features for technical SEO.
Key Features
As for what the crawler can identify, it finds broken links and server errors on your website. You can bulk export the errors and send them to your developers for fixing. It can also scan your website for duplicate content using an md5 algorithmic check, which helps the tool even find partially duplicate content like headings, descriptions, and page titles.
If there are any permanent or temporary redirects on your website, the tool will flag them to you. For sites with redirect loops and chains, the tool lets you get a list of all the URLs in the chain to help your developers fix them.
Like the SEO Writing Assistant, Screaming Frog analyzes meta descriptions and page titles. It raises an error if these elements are missing, duplicated, too short, or too long.
You can also use the tool to gather data from a web page's HTML, including prices, SKUs, social meta tags, and additional headings, using CSS Path, regex, or XPath. Additionally, Screaming Frog lets you review robots.txt files and generate XML sitemaps.
It also integrates with tools like PageSpeed Insights and the Search Console to fetch data on mobile usability, indexing errors, and other technical issues. The most notable feature of this tool is the ability to schedule audits. You can choose when to run audits automatically and export the crawl data to a certain location (such as a Google Sheets file), too.
Pricing
The free version detects broken links, errors, redirects, and missing hreflang attributes. It also lets you discover duplicate pages, visualize your site, review meta tags, and generate XML sitemaps. You can only crawl 500 URLs on this plan.
To get advanced features like crawl scheduling, mobile usability, AMP crawling, and more, you'll need the paid plan. It costs $259 per year and lets you crawl an unlimited number of websites.
Unlike Semrush, which comes with the log file analyzer, in Screaming Frog, you have to get it as an additional tool, costing $139 per year.
Lumar: AI Insights for Large Website Optimization
Lumar, previously known as DeepCrawl, simplifies website optimization by identifying, prioritizing, and fixing issues like site speed and web accessibility. According to its developers, Lumar can crawl up to 450 URLs in just a second, which is ideal for analyzing large websites.
Key Features
Lumar doesn't just identify issues, but it also provides detailed insights and recommendations on how to fix them. Its AI technology prioritizes technical SEO issues based on severity.
Some of the issues it can identify are page availability, indexability, duplicate content, and missing image elements. With over 250 reports, Lumar ensures that no technical SEO issue is left unmonitored.
Lumar also analyzes your site's speed and gives it a score out of 100 based on the latest Core Web Vitals. It then suggests top changes to prioritize, such as text compression or slow server response time. These suggestions are AI-assisted as they use OpenAI's ChatGPT to provide recommendations based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
The tool's notable offering is Lumar Protect, which you can integrate into your CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous deployment) pipeline to identify technical SEO issues during development rather than after the site goes live.
Lumar Protect has over 350 automated quality assurance tests, including site speed and accessibility tests. This feature is pretty handy for large websites that frequently undergo updates and changes.
One such website is Slotsia.com, which was managed by Catena Media, a lead generation company. They used Lumar to conduct a thorough audit of their website and discovered issues like missing hreflang attributes, broken pages, duplicate content, and non-indexable pages with search impressions.
After identifying these issues, David McAdam, the technical SEO strategist at the company, created a Google Sheet to categorize them into 3 priority areas based on severity: high, medium, and low.
Then, their developers fixed these issues, resulting in a reduction of 11.25% in the bounce rate and an increase of 28.12% in the average session duration. On the whole, the audit improved the site's conversion rate by over 365%.
Pricing
Pricing for Lumar is available upon request.
ContentKing: Real-Time Monitoring for Technical SEO Issues
The Conductor website monitoring tool, powered by ContentKing, is a real-time SEO auditing platform that helps you keep track of your website's technical SEO. Being a 24/7 monitoring tool, Conductor ensures that issues are immediately identified and flagged for prompt correction.
Key Features
The platform's AI capability keeps it awake 24/7 to monitor your website and immediately highlight technical SEO issues that can negatively impact your search engine rankings. It also sends you alerts so that you're always in the know of what's breaking your site's technical SEO.
Since the tool is cloud-based, you don't have to download anything. Also, you can get and share SEO reports anywhere, anytime. Conductor also has a Google Chrome extension that you can use to check page titles, meta descriptions, canonicals, and other SEO elements.
Conductor's proprietary Change Tracking™ technology lets you keep track of changes as they happen on your website. It further conducts a comparison analysis to show you (visually) which issues have been opened and resolved.
Although Conductor can flag all technical issues that we've specified for the tools above, it lets you customize your auditing suite based on the issues that are most important to you. It's up to you to skip certain issues (like 3xx redirects) that you don't think are important to your site.
Since the tool is integrated with the ContentKing Academy, you also get insights into what the issues entail and how to fix them. You can read about every issue within the platform when it's flagged, and the tool also directs you to additional resources for further education.
Telus, a Canadian telecom operator, uses all these features to monitor its website. The company identifies issues and resolves them continuously so that its website doesn't suffer at the hands of technical issues. They have also set up a reporting system for their stakeholders and team members using the Google Looker Studio (previously Data Studio) integration integration with Conductor.
Going forward, they also plan to integrate Conductor with Contentful, the content management systems their website uses. This integration will further streamline their SEO process by allowing editors to see the SEO KPIs in real-time.
Pricing
Conductor's pricing is based on two factors: plan and pricing bundle. You can find more information about how the tool calculates pricing (which is different for every website) in your account when you sign up.
Botify: AI-Powered SEO Optimization for Enterprise Sites
Botify is another AI SEO optimization tool that provides on-site analysis and optimization for enterprise-level websites. It also has a Google Chrome extension that sends you SEO warnings to indicators to fix quickly. The extension is suitable for monitoring your site's performance daily, especially if it features a lot of content or is frequently updated.
Key Features
The AI capabilities of Botify are its most significant selling point. It can crawl massive websites with millions of pages in a matter of hours, which is a must-have for enterprise-level sites. It can provide insights on over 1,000 metrics, including technical and on-page SEO.
Basically, the tool looks at your overall search presence by going through the crawl results and log files from your website.
You can also integrate your Semrush, Google Analytics, and Adobe Analytics accounts to view their data alongside Botify's insights. With this integration, you can have a fully comprehensive visual report of your site's performance in search engines.
You can further make smart technical SEO decisions based on the AI-powered recommendations within the tool. Botify also has a chat assistant that you can use as your personal SEO assistant. You ask it questions about your website's performance, and it provides you with instant answers.
Part of what makes Botify so credible is that it is used by some of the largest brands in the world, including Levi's. The company's SEO manager uses Botify's analytics to get baseline information about every page on their website. This helps them see if a page is not being crawled or indexed.
Levi's has also invested in SpeedWorkers by Botify, which automates the delivery of fully rendered pages to search engines for immediate indexing. This has helped them improve their search engine rankings and overall website performance. What made Botify such an appealing option for Levi's was that it could be scaled to their needs, as they have a global presence.
With Botify's use, the company has increased the number of URLs crawled by search engines by 36% and seen a 16% increase in global revenue gains in just 90 days through these optimizations.
Pricing
The pricing for Botify is available upon request.
Why AI is a Game-Changer for Technical SEO: Top Benefits You Can't Ignore
Using AI for technical SEO comes with a ton of benefits. Here are some of them.
Automation of Complex Audits
There was a time when SEO professionals would have to spend hours manually auditing a website for technical issues. They would then have to go through these issues and determine which ones they should fix first. Then came the actual fixing part.
With AI SEO tools, this process has condensed significantly. AI Tools like Screaming Frog and Semrush automate the entire process of website auditing. They take mere minutes to scan every page on your website for technical issues. Not only that, they also create visual reports, making it easy for you to quickly spot what's wrong.
Further, their AI algorithms prioritize the issues to be resolved and present them to you, along with recommendations on how to do so.
Improved Crawl Efficiency
The way search engines crawl websites is that they have bots that go through a website's pages and collect data that they deem relevant. However, these bots can sometimes get stuck in an infinite loop, unable to navigate through a website's structure and thus failing to collect all the necessary information.
You don't want that to happen with your website. Even worse, you can't have the crawler spending time on non-essential pages on your website, missing the important ones that you want indexed.
AI SEO tools for technical optimization ensure this is no longer an issue. They mimic the behavior of search engine bots to show you what they see in real-time. You can then see which issues a search engine crawler may encounter and fix them accordingly.
Scalability for Large Websites
Some websites, like our very own at Influencer Marketing Hub, have been around for years. During this time, they have posted thousands of web pages. Similarly, some businesses have multiple websites for different locations or countries. So, it's not just thousands of pages across one website but several websites.
Apart from the size, some sites are also more complex than others, either due to the nature of their content or their technical structure. Manual technical SEO audits can be time-consuming. And sometimes, it's just impossible to manually check such large and complicated websites.
AI's processing speed is part of the reason we have started using it in different use cases across businesses. This very speed is what makes AI perfect for technical SEO audits on large websites.
AI tools can analyze thousands of web pages in no time, showing you issues with your website's structure almost immediately. For example, Lumar can analyze 450 URLs per second. That's less than a minute to scan through 27,000 web pages!
Continuous Real-Time Monitoring
As we already mentioned, AI tools facilitate real-time, 24/7 website monitoring. Previously, you’d have to do it all yourself: running site audits at regular intervals, waiting for the results, analyzing them, and finding the right fixes for them. Now, it can all be automated.
You don't even have to run scans or audits to detect issues with your website. These tools are automatically doing it in the background, and they send notifications to inform you about issues as they occur.
For larger websites, where content is uploaded almost every day, real-time monitoring is the key to maintaining a healthy website. It also helps smaller websites that have to ensure all their important pages are indexed so that they can compete with the bigger fish.
Unlock the Full Potential of AI SEO Tools: Advanced Tactics for Technical Mastery
One of the best AI SEO tips we can give you is to use the tools you've chosen to their full potential. That's a sure-shot way to get the most out of your AI SEO efforts.
Unlocking Advanced Features
Pretty much every AI SEO tool has some basic features that everyone uses. But then there are advanced features that few people use, and even fewer take full advantage of. Explore all the features your tool has to offer and see how they can help you. For example, you can try different filters or advanced analytics to get more specific and targeted insights.
In the Site Audit tool by Semrush, you can go to the Compare Crawl tab to compare different crawls of your website and track changes over time. Here, you'll see how the changes developers have made to the site have improved or worsened its performance.
Similarly, you can check the Statistics tab to get a numerical view of all technical SEO elements on your website. For example, how many pages get one internal link? How many pages do not have any markup? This information gives you an idea of what areas you need to focus on for improvement.
In Botify, an advanced feature you should definitely check out is SpeedWorkers, which renders pages fully before sending them to search engines for indexing. Since Google's crawl budget is limited, SpeedWorkers helps ensure that the most important pages of your website are crawled and indexed first.
Seamless Tool Integrations
You can also integrate your AI SEO tools with other SEO or analytics tools to get more specific insights. For example, many tools integrate with Google Analytics to show you how your SEO efforts are impacting website traffic.
Semrush is one such tool. You can integrate it with Google Analytics and the Search Console to monitor the impact of your site's technical SEO on organic search performance and user experience. Since this data is from your real website visitors, you can gauge which issues may be affecting user experience more and prioritize them for optimization.
Screaming Frog also integrates with PageSpeed Insights to give you a comprehensive view of your site's loading speed. Similarly, Conductor integrates with the Google Looker Studio to give you customizable dashboards and reports on your site's organic search performance. Telus, the telecom company we mentioned earlier, actually uses this integration in its SEO strategy.
Botify also supports many integrations, such as Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics. You can also connect it to your Semrush account for an even deeper analysis of your site's SEO performance.
Advanced Use Cases
As you unlock the advanced features of AI SEO tools, you also get to implement them for advanced use cases. A basic site audit can only do so much. You need to take it a step further with AI recommendations and predictive analytics.
For example, Semrush's Log File Analyzer can predict crawl budget issues based on the Google bot's behavior on your site. You can use this data to optimize your site structure for better crawling and indexing.
Similarly, you can enable JS rendering in Semrush's Site Audit tool to investigate key aspects JavaScript may be affecting. It also gives you a side-by-side comparison of content before and after JS rendering. Semrush further gives you tips on how to improve your site's JavaScript performance for better SEO.
If you're currently in the process of creating a website and want to weed out site structure and technical SEO issues from the start, you can opt for Lumar Protect. It fits right within your development pipeline and lets you avoid site issues with 350+ automated quality assurance checks.
Continuous Monitoring for Excellence
If there's one thing SEO influencers and experts shout from rooftops, it's that SEO isn't a one-time thing. You have to do it continuously, whether it's to find AI SEO keywords or detect technical issues.
Most of the AI SEO tools we've mentioned let you monitor on-page SEO continuously with their site audit feature. In Semrush, you can also set up regular crawls to check for new issues as they arise. Likewise, Screaming Frog lets you schedule SEO audits and report downloads.
On the other hand, Conductor takes a 24/7 technical audit approach, where it's looking for issues on your site all the time. It also provides alerts when something significant happens. You can then take action right now or later based on how critical the issue is.
Get the Website Technicalities Right With AI SEO Tools
It's easy to get carried away with content marketing and keyword research since they're ongoing tasks that never stop. However, amidst all of that, don't skimp on the technical side of things. They are just as important, if not more so, in making sure both search engines and users can access and navigate your website.
On-page optimization errors, especially technical issues, can make your website invisible to search engine crawlers. Even if web pages are indexed, if they're not optimized correctly, they'll still have a hard time ranking or getting people to stay and return. Due to this, even your most remarkable content won’t get the traction it deserves.
The AI SEO tools we've mentioned in this guide make sure your website is well-optimized for search engine crawlers. From identifying issues to suggesting fixes, they do it all. All you have to do is heed their suggestions and make the recommended changes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best AI tools for SEO optimization in 2024?
At Influencer Marketing Hub, we have analyzed some of the top AI SEO optimization tools based on their performance and features. Here’s an overview of these tools.
AI SEO Tools | Main Features | Best For | Chrome Extension | Pricing |
Semrush | Site Audit, Log File Analyzer, SEO Writing Assistant | Businesses of all sizes | Yes | Starts at $139.95 per month |
Screaming Frog | Website crawler | Businesses of all sizes | No | Free; $259 per month |
Lumar | Technical audit, Lumar Protect | Mid market businesses and enterprises | No | Available upon request |
ContentKing | Technical audit, Change Tracking | Small and mid-sized businesses | Yes | Varies by website needs |
Botify | Technical audit, AI assistant | Enterprises | Yes | Available upon request |
What are the best AI tools for SEO optimization in 2024?
At Influencer Marketing Hub, we have analyzed some of the top AI SEO optimization tools based on their performance and features. Here’s an overview of these tools.
Can I use free AI tools for effective SEO optimization?
Tools like ChatGPT, Google Trends, Ubersuggest (free version), and AnswerThePublic are great starting points. They help with keyword research, content ideas, and SEO insights without costing a dime. However, free tools have their limitations, especially when it comes to technical SEO and advanced optimization. So, these tools may be good for the basics but not for in-depth analysis, which is what you'll need for effective SEO optimization.
How do AI tools like Semrush improve keyword research?
AI-powered tools like SEMrush make keyword research a breeze by offering data-driven insights you'd otherwise spend hours gathering. They suggest relevant keywords, show search volumes, reveal user intent, and predict trends based on real-time data. Semrush can also create a content strategy based on the keywords and identify keyword gaps between you and your competitors. So, such tools can go a long way in improving your keyword research process.
Which AI tools can help optimize my ecommerce website's SEO?
Semrush is an excellent tool to optimize your eCommerce site's SEO since it provides almost every feature you'll need, such as keyword analysis, competitor analysis, technical site audits, and content marketing. If you have an international presence, Semrush can also monitor your international SEO efforts. Plus, its local SEO features help you rank for geographical keywords and attract local customers. Other AI-powered tools that you can try include Copy.ai, Moz, ChatGPT, and BrightEdge.
How does AI improve technical SEO audits?
AI makes technical SEO audits way more efficient by automating complex tasks like crawling your site for broken links, identifying slow-loading pages, monitoring markups and international SEO attributes, and flagging indexing issues. Instead of manually checking hundreds of elements, AI tools like Semrush Site Audit and Lumar spot errors in minutes. They also offer actionable recommendations, like how to fix schema markup or improve Core Web Vitals. Some even predict how these changes will impact rankings so you can prioritize fixes that give the most SEO boost.
Can AI tools automate the link-building process?
AI tools can help streamline parts of link-building, but they don't fully automate it (at least not effectively). For example, they can identify backlink opportunities by analyzing competitors' profiles and write outreach emails for you. However, building relationships with website owners still requires human interaction. Similarly, AI tools can suggest strategies for link-building, but you'll need human input to actually execute them.