Find Your Starting Point

“I need to research keywords” — Start with Keyword Tools. AI-driven keyword research, intent classification and people-also-ask discovery.

“I want to optimise existing content” — Jump to Content Optimization. Surfer, Clearscope, Frase and MarketMuse score and rewrite for ranking and AI visibility.

“I want to audit a whole site” — See SEO Analysis or SEO Tools. Crawlers, schema validators, technical audits and Core Web Vitals.

“I’m monitoring competitors or rankings” — Go to Monitoring. Rank tracking, change detection and alerting.

“I’m chasing backlinks” — Check Link Management. Outreach, link auditing and disavow workflows.

“Pages are slow or failing Core Web Vitals” — See Performance Optimization. Image optimisation, CDN-aware tooling and front-end performance audits.

Browse by Subcategory

Content Optimization

AI-driven content scoring, brief generation and on-page optimisation. Surfer, Clearscope, Frase, MarketMuse, ContentShake and SEO GPT.
Browse 6 tools

Performance Optimization

Page-speed optimisation, image compression, Core Web Vitals fixers and front-end audit tooling.
Browse 5 tools

SEO Tools

All-in-one SEO platforms — SE Ranking, Semrush, AIPRM and AI-augmented site auditors.
Browse 7 tools

Keyword Tools

Keyword research, intent classification, people-also-ask mining and competitor keyword gap analysis.
Browse 7 tools

SEO Analysis

Site audits, schema validators, technical SEO crawlers and AI-visibility scoring suites such as Profound, Otterly and Peec.
Browse 10 tools
Backlink discovery, outreach automation, link auditing and disavow workflows.
Browse 7 tools

Monitoring

Rank tracking, competitor change detection (Hexowatch), uptime and SEO regression alerting.
Browse 10 tools

Start Here

New to SEO tooling? These have free tiers, work in the browser and cover 80% of everyday optimisation.

  • KeywordsPeopleUse — AI-driven keyword research and people-also-ask mining. Free tier covers small sites.
  • Frase — brief generation and content scoring against the top SERP results. Cheaper than Clearscope to start with.
  • Google Search Console + a free site auditor — the absolute baseline for any site owner.
Good for: small sites, content-led blogs, founders doing their own SEO
Less suited for: enterprise, high-volume publishing, technical SEO of large catalogues

Level Up

Already publishing regularly? These add depth in keyword strategy, content optimisation and AI-visibility tracking.

  • Surfer SEO or Clearscope — SERP-aware optimisation with real-time content scoring.
  • Profound / Otterly / Peec — the new GEO scoring suites that track how often your brand surfaces in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity answers.
  • Hexowatch — competitor change detection so you never miss a pricing or content shift.
Good for: growing sites, brands tracking AI visibility, in-house SEO teams
Less suited for: very small sites with no published content yet

Go Pro

Enterprise SEO — large catalogues, multi-market sites, regulated industries.

Good for: large publishers, e-commerce, multi-market organisations
Less suited for: solo creators or tiny sites — the tooling overhead doesn't pay back

ContentShake

Semrush ContentShake crafts SEO-focused content with AI, generating optimised copy and publishing directly to WordPress.
#content-creation #seo #writing
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Hexometer

Hexometer monitors websites 24/7, catching SEO and performance issues automatically.
#monitoring #seo #performance
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AIPRM

Curated SEO prompts for ChatGPT and Claude — speeds up keyword research, brief writing and on-page optimisation.
#seo #prompt-management
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Eloise AI

AI writing assistant focused on concise, well-formatted content for blog and SEO use.
#writing #content-creation #editing
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SEOmatic

SEOmatic generates SEO-friendly programmatic pages at scale — ideal for catalogue and template-driven sites.
#seo #programmatic #no-code
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Frase

Content briefs, keyword research and content optimisation in one suite. Lower entry price than Clearscope.
#seo #content-creation #keyword-research
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SEO GPT

SEO Vendor's AI writes ranking-shaped content with an emphasis on bypassing AI-detection filters.
#seo #content-creation
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SE Ranking

Full-suite SEO platform — rank tracking, backlinks, on-page audit and AI content scoring.
#seo #all-in-one
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Clearscope

High-end content optimisation. Real-time scoring against top SERP results; integrates with Google Docs and WordPress.
#seo #content-optimisation #integration
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Hexowatch

Competitor and page change detection. Alerts on copy, price or structural changes across the sites you monitor.
#monitoring #competitor-analysis #updates
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ProfilePro

Automates SEO for Google Business Profile — posts, photos, Q&A. Local-search focused.
#seo #local-seo #automation
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Surfer SEO

SERP-aware content scoring with multi-language support and the most active product cycle of the on-page tools.
#seo #content-optimisation
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Algolia

AI-powered on-site search. Improves discovery, navigation and conversion on content-heavy sites.
#search #site-search
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KeywordsPeopleUse

AI-driven keyword research with people-also-ask, related questions and Reddit-mined intent data.
#keyword-research #seo
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How to Choose an AI SEO Tool

Start from the job, not the brand. Keyword research, content optimisation, technical audit and rank tracking are different jobs — suites bundle them but you usually only need one or two well.

Treat AI visibility as a separate axis. Classical SEO and GEO (generative engine optimisation) overlap but don’t collapse: a page can rank #1 on Google and still be invisible in ChatGPT answers. The new GEO scorers (Profound, Otterly, Peec) test for the latter.

Read the licence on AI-generated content. Some tools quietly retain rights to your prompts or output. For published commercial work, check the terms.

Don’t over-buy on suites. A £150/month all-in-one is rarely better than a £30 specialist tool plus Google Search Console for small sites.

Where Subcategories Overlap

Content Optimization & Keyword Tools — keyword tools surface what to write about; content optimisers tell you how to shape the article once you start writing. Use them in that order.

SEO Analysis & SEO Tools — SEO Analysis is the audit/diagnostic side; SEO Tools are the broader platforms that often include audits as one feature.

Monitoring & Link Management — both watch external signals: monitoring tracks page or rank changes, link management tracks backlink gains and losses.

Performance Optimization & SEO Analysis — Core Web Vitals are an SEO ranking signal but the tools that fix them (image optimisers, CDN config) are separate from SEO crawlers.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?

GEO is the practice of structuring a website so AI assistants reliably extract, summarise and cite its content when answering user questions — the AI-era counterpart to classical SEO.

Which AI SEO tool is best in 2026?

Surfer, Clearscope, Frase, MarketMuse, SE Ranking and the new GEO scoring suites (Profound, Otterly, Peec) all rank well. The hub lists each.

Do AI assistants use SEO signals at all?

Yes — schema markup, sitemap freshness, robots.txt and content clarity are read by every major AI crawler. The site's free AI SEO Foundations course covers the rules.

How do I track AI visibility?

Prompt-test the four major assistants monthly, grep server logs for AI-bot user agents and watch citation referrers in analytics. The course linked above explains the workflow.

Are these tools free?

Most have free tiers; pro tiers run £30–£150 per user per month.