Best AI SEO Tools for Keyword Research and Analysis

Written by: Elena Daskalova
Oct / 06 / 2023

You’re missing a lot if you’re avoiding using SEO AI tools to improve your overall strategy! As AI popularity increases and search engines embrace generative AI, it’s up to us to adapt to the new trends. Yes, even Google releases updates in short periods to keep up with the current trends and improve how content is created. 

But does it mean it’s the end of the classic SEO we know? Surely, there are some significant changes, but one thing is still the same: Spotting relevant queries and creating user-oriented content to match their needs, issues, and questions. This approach applies to every industry, including eCommerce, SaaS, hospitality, IT, education, etc. 

Using AI tools for keyword research is a great way to understand the long-tail queries, the intent behind every keyword, and the best way to match them with the content. While the traditional tools may overwhelm you with data, AI ones are pretty straightforward. 

So, do you want to learn how to leverage premium and/or free AI tools for SEO analysis and extensive keyword research? Look no further!

How to Choose an AI SEO Tool?

Choosing an SEO tool powered by AI will help you spot the most relevant keywords, create opportunities from the content gaps, and improve the SEO performance of your website. 

But how do you choose the best AI for SEO? What features should it provide to prove its worth? Can you leverage free AI SEO tools only, or must you consider paying for them? Here are some factors to consider:

Needs and Goals

The first thing is what you need the SEO tool for and what are your short-term and long-term goals. Based on that, you can find fitting tools to improve your keyword research process, SEO and content audit, spot the underperforming posts on your site, or one that will brainstorm many content ideas. 

Most commercial SEO tools offer many features, but that means you either get a daily limit or must buy some of the paid plans to access it. But if you need keyword research only, you can leverage free tools or just the related search on search engines. 

Features and Capabilities

Free language models like ChatGPT and Bard can surely list keyword suggestions and even analyze provided content. But you must know how to prompt it, i.e., tell the LLM (large language model) what you want and expect. 

If you want to use a specialized AI SEO platform, you’ll have to compare the features and capabilities or sign up for a demo before committing to it. For example, tools like Ahrefs and SemRush will let you perform extensive keyword research and audit some websites, but features like AI-generated content and estimating content quality aren’t directly available. 

So, check the features and decide based on your needs and expectations. 

Compare Prices and Subscriptions

This is the most challenging decision to make. Once you’re sure you want to use SEO analysis tools together with keyword research, you need to spot the fitting ones and compare the prices and subscriptions. 

Be careful, and analyze their pricing plans. Do they offer a 7-day free trial, or maybe a 10-day free trial before buying the premium plan? What is their refund policy? Can you stop the subscription whenever you want? Does the price make for the profit you make?

All these elements will surely help you find the best AI-powered SEO tool for your business that covers many aspects of SEO, including keyword research and web performance analysis, and provides helpful insights. 

What is an AI SEO Keyword Generator?

AI keyword research tools or keyword generators use artificial intelligence to research and analyze data and help you generate an extensive keyword list with ranking keywords. 

Once you have the list, you can filter out the most relevant queries and check on their keyword difficulty, search volume, and traffic potential using traditional SEO tools. That way, you can create a SEO strategy based on the relevant queries but also enrich it with the suggestions the AI tool provided.

So, are you ready to leverage these AI-powered SEO tools (keyword generators) to scale your performance?

Here are some keyword suggestions tool SEO you can choose from:

Ahrefs Keyword Generator

Ahrefs is a popular SEO tool featuring keyword research, site explorer, content audit, backlink audit, and even more. Still, they offer a free keyword generator you can use for keyword research. 

You simply need to enter an initial search query, choose the location of the target search engine, and find the relevant keywords. 

Ahrefs AI SEO tool and free keyword research generator

Next, you’ll get a list of relevant keyword ideas, helping you maintain a keyword research document as ongoing content creation inspiration.

Ahrefs keyword research list as an AI SEO tool

Ryan Robinson Keyword Tool

This is another AI-powered SEO keyword research tool that additionally suggests ideas for content. It’s easy to use, as you only need to enter your seed keyword and explore additional ones or look for creative ideas. 

AI SEO tool Ryrob for keyword research

The free ryrob.com keyword tool will list keywords, including their search volume and difficulty, to make the optimization easier for you. Still, if you use the “Ideas” tab, you’ll find long-tail queries to get inspired from:

Ryrob AI SEO tool example

SEO.ai

SEO.ai is an AI-based SEO keyword ranking tool to help you spot relevant keywords. The interface is pretty intuitive, so you can optimize your content. Keep in mind that only the keyword generator is free, but you have additional paid pricing plans and even a 7-day trial to test the other features. 

The free keyword generator lists the keywords only, but if you want more advanced data, you’ll need to try it for free or subscribe to the paid plans to use better SEO AI tool analysis.

AI-based SEO tool SEO,ai

TwinWord

TwinWord Ideas is an easy-to-use keyword generator that lists relevant KW suggestions based on the seed keyword you enter. It uses Google data to give you an insight into search volume, difficulty, competition, relevance, etc., and you can filter keywords related to popular topics. 

TwinWord Ideas AI SEO tool and keyword generator

Keep in mind that the free version supports up to 60 searches per day. Still, it’s enough to find the relation between queries, being one of the best free AI tools for SEO keyword research.

Using the free AI-based keyword generators is great so you can get an initial idea of the content and SEO strategy. You can group the generated keywords based on the terms, search intent, and purpose and draft content clusters. 

In some cases, they work exceptionally, giving you a sufficient list of keywords to use for blog posts and other SEO tasks. But if you need something more advanced, there are great SEO tools with AI-based features you should consider. 

Some SEO tools offer a combined approach with some features available for free, while others come with premium packages. 

So, let’s explore some of them:

Keyword Insights

By accessing KeywordInsights.io, you can start an inexpensive trial to generate millions of relevant keywords, group them based on the topic, and even optimize the content directly from the tool. 

As they say, their solution saves plenty of time, and it’s great even for those who lack SEO expertise but want to learn how to optimize their content. 

Free features: Keyword Insights offers free SERP explorer and SERP similarity tools, so you can check on how some result performs in a specific location or quickly check the overlap between two keywords you want to target.

Frase.io

Frase is an AI-based tool you can use for many SEO and writing tasks. It checks the current SERP positions for a specific search query and suggests subheadings, keywords, and entities you can use to optimize your content. 

Additionally, you can optimize your existing content by providing URLs and target keywords. The tool will analyze the content and suggest improvements or even fill up the gaps with AI-generated paragraphs. 

Frase is one of the most popular AI SEO tools you can consider adding to your toolset, with many AI and SEO features combined for extensive keyword research and implementation.

Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is a great choice for researching various keywords and NLP entities in order to write and optimize your articles. It comes with a free SEO Chrome extension you can use to track the search data for specific keywords.

Additionally, they offer a free AI article outline generator you can use for keyword ideas and advanced optimization. Therefore, it’s one of the best SEO tools keyword list generator to harness the power of AI writing.

Surfer SEO AI tool

Still, to get access to the extensive features, you need to find your most appropriate pricing plan and use the advantage of this AI-based SEO tool to create exceptionally optimized content. 

The paid AI SEO tools that feature some free features can be a great addition to your SEO toolkit. If you are an agency, or your budget allows you that, consider investing in a quality SEO tool with many additional features to improve your efficiency and write exceptional content that matches relevant queries. 

Using Large Language Models as Keyword Research and Analysis Tools

When looking for AI SEO solutions, you can consider using ChatGPT and Bard. Still, they aren’t SEO tools by definition, and you’ll need to properly prompt your requirements in order to get what you’re looking for. 

So, let’s see how it works. 

ChatGPT

Is there anyone who doesn’t know what ChatGPT is? One of the most popular LLMs in the world gives you an option to write chat-like prompts and ask for help or assistance. 

You’ll often see it listed among the AI SEO trends because ChatGPT has a lifetime free version, and also a paid one. But if you know how to use the potential it offers, you can leverage the SEO capacities and perform a great keyword research. 

So, here’s an example of a prompt, and the result we got:

Our Prompt:

You need to behave like an SEO expert who knows how to perform keyword research. 

The seed keyword is “AI SEO tools.”

I need you to start keyword research to match informational and commercial intent. 

The result:

Informational Intent Keywords:

  • What are AI SEO tools?
  • How does AI improve SEO?
  • Benefits of using AI in SEO
  • AI SEO vs. traditional SEO
  • AI SEO algorithms explained
  • The role of artificial intelligence in search engine optimization
  • How to leverage AI for better SEO results
  • AI-powered content optimization techniques
  • Understanding AI-driven keyword analysis and research
  • Implementing AI strategies for SEO success

Commercial Intent Keywords:

  • Best AI SEO tools 2023
  • AI-driven SEO software providers
  • Top AI SEO solutions for businesses
  • Compare AI SEO tools
  • AI SEO tool pricing
  • Affordable AI SEO software
  • AI SEO tool reviews and ratings
  • AI SEO tool free trial
  • AI SEO software for e-commerce
  • AI-powered SEO agency services

As you can see, it’s all about proper prompting, and ChatGPT can become an extensive keyword research tool powered by AI. You can use the generated keywords to extend the keyword list you have, or to make the content more useful, matching the search intent and audience’s expectation.

Google’s Bard AI

Bard is another chat-based large language model (LLM) provided by Google. According to them, it’s still in the experimental phase, but it works like a charm when it comes to SEO and keyword research. 

As you suppose, the secret is in the prompts. You can use the same prompt as for ChatGPT and compare the results. 

So, with the same one, we got these results:

Informational intent keywords

  • What are AI SEO tools?
  • How to use AI SEO tools
  • Benefits of using AI SEO tools
  • Best AI SEO tools
  • AI SEO tools for beginners
  • AI SEO tools for small businesses
  • AI SEO tools for enterprise

Commercial intent keywords

  • AI SEO tools pricing
  • AI SEO tools reviews
  • AI SEO tools comparison
  • AI SEO tools free trials
  • Buy AI SEO tools
  • AI SEO tools coupons

Additional keywords

  • AI SEO software
  • AI SEO platform
  • AI SEO services
  • AI-powered SEO
  • Automated SEO
  • Machine learning SEO

As you can see, you get a great list of keywords generated with the AI language model. Choose the relevant ones and check the queries with your preferred SEO tool to see how competitive they are and what your traffic potential is when using them for content creation.

Disclaimer: All the prompts and results in this chapter are for informational purposes only. The suggested keyword examples are generated by the language models in order to give the reader an image of what to expect from ChatGPT and Bard. 

How to Master the Use of AI SEO Tools?

Every SEO strategy is based on an initial idea, goals, expectations, and estimations. So, you need to decide what you want to achieve and then leverage some of the mentioned AI-powered SEO tools. Whether you collaborating with an SEO expert, using local SEO outsourcing, or whatever approach you’re using to achieve SEO results, an AI SEO tool can be highly beneficial.

A single tool won’t help a lot, so you must choose a few of them for a holistic approach. For example, the keywords generated with LLMs can be relevant for a broad topic, but you need to check if they match the content strategy, your product, or your intent. 

AI-generated outlines can be a nice start, but you still need to spot the opportunities for growth and winning great ranks that paid SEO tools give you.

Remember, creating helpful content that is also good to rank on search engines is not a simple process. The keywords resulting from keyword research will guide you through the whole strategy, helping you understand what your audience wants to know but also what you should do to signal the search engines you’re worth ranking.

Even then, you can’t expect huge changes overnight. You must keep working on your SEO strategy and holistic approach and track the progress. That way, you can improve some SEO aspects or change what doesn’t work for your niche or industry.

About the Author

Picture of Elena Daskalova

Elena Daskalova

Experienced content writer with a focus on SaaS content marketing and copywriting. With a passion for crafting compelling stories, paired with expertise, delivers narratives that drive customer engagement and growth.