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It’s no surprise that AI is changing the way SEO tasks are carried out. What used to take hours of manual research, writing, and editing can now be done faster (and often with better results).
This change in the SEO industry has brought about hundreds, if not thousands, of “AI SEO tools” that promise to help streamline and speed up your workflows. However, we’ve found it’s not a new tool bringing the game-changing AI to the industry. It’s Semrush bringing out the game-changing AI tools that actually boost your ranking potential and on-page optimisation.
Curious about how AI can help your SEO strategy? This guide will show you how to use AI for SEO using Semrush’s suite of toolkits, from finding content gaps and creating keyword clusters to writing search optimised content with a semantic SEO approach. Let’s get into it!
How to Use AI for Keyword Research
Back when ChatGPT first launched, people were using using AI for keyword research in all the wrong ways. Like asking ChatGPT for “SEO keywords” for their website and expecting to actually rank for them. But anyone with a real understanding of keyword research knows that without the keyword data (something AI tools like ChatGPT seriously lack), you’re not going to get very far.
Semrush’s approach to using AI for keyword research allows you to find keywords with realistic ranking potential. Here’s how their SEO Toolkit‘s AI tools can help.
Find Keywords with the Keyword Magic Tool
If you’re starting your keyword research from scratch, begin with Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool. We love the changes they’ve made to their keyword research features lately because they’re now personalised to your domain.
Enter a seed keyword and your domain to see thousands of related keywords with all the data you need to decide if they’re suitable.
With this tool, Semrush uses AI to generate a Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD) score to help you filter terms based on your domain authority, not just the average competition level. This means you can quickly spot keywords you actually have a chance of ranking for.
You can filter this list by your PKD score so get rid of any keywords that are too competitive for where you’re at, as well as by the search intent and search volume, much like you’d just their old keyword research tool.
Pro tip: To support semantic SEO, you can also use this tool to find synonyms, variations, and long-tail phrases to include in your content.
Analyse Keywords in the Keyword Overview Tool
Once you’ve narrowed down your list of target keywords, you can use the Keyword Overview tool for deeper insights (also backed by AI).
Here you can see more details on your PKD score and a relevancy score based on your domain’s current rankings, backlinks and content. You can also check the search intent of your chosen keywords matches the content you’re optimising and gauge search volumes in your target locations to make sure it’s worth targeting.
If you find that the keywords aren’t a good fit, or you’re looking for more semantically relevant keywords to include, you can also find your PKD score for related keywords on this page to dramatically speed up the process.
How accurate are AI keyword difficulty scores?
Semrush’s Personal Keyword Difficulty score is more tailored than generic keyword difficulty scores. It takes your domain metrics into account, making the score more relevant to your site’s current authority and backlink profile. While no metric is perfect, PKD gives a much clearer picture of which keywords you can realistically rank for, especially when combined with search intent and topic relevance.
Use the SEO Brief Generator for Secondary Keywords
If you’re looking for more secondary keywords or you really want to niche things down, head over to the SEO Brief Generator in Semrush’s Content Toolkit to find secondary keywords exclusively related to your primary keyword or topic. These are support terms that often appear on top-ranking pages for your target keyword and perfect for subheadings, FAQs and semantic content optimisation.
This tool does a lot more than just finding related keywords, but we’ll get to that later!
How to Use AI for SEO Content Strategies
Creating strong SEO content isn’t about targeting a keyword. It’s about covering a topic in full, aligning with the right intent, and building a structure that makes sense for both users and search engines. This is where AI really helps, not just by saving time, but by helping you make better decisions with the data you’ve got.
Create a Content Strategy with the Keyword Strategy Builder
Semrush’s Keyword Strategy Builder helps you create a content strategy around your target keywords or topic. You can use it on a high level to create a strategy for your entire site, or use a more refined approach by picking a target keyword and building a strategy to incorporate into your content outline to make sure you’re creating semantically optimised content.
It also helps you to gauge overall search volumes for a topic or cluster (more on that below) so you can prioritise the content that will bring the best ROI.
What’s the difference between semantic SEO and keyword targeting?
Traditional keyword targeting focuses on matching exact phrases in your content. Semantic SEO goes a step further so you’re covering the full meaning and context behind a search query.
For example, instead of writing a page to rank for the keyword “AI SEO tools,” semantic SEO means covering related topics like “how AI helps with SEO” or “AI keyword research tools”, answering common questions users might have about those tools and using natural language variations, synonyms, and related entities throughout the content.
Build SEO Topic Clusters with AI
Topic clusters are groups of related keywords that support a single, broader theme. They help you organise your site content in a way that’s easy for users to navigate and easy for search engines to understand.
The AI features within the Keyword Strategy Builder help automate this process. Instead of manually researching and grouping hundreds of keywords, just enter your main target keyword or topic and the tool will automatically group related keywords into clusters, organise them into logical themes and subtopics and highlight terms with strong traffic potential and low competition.
This structure improves your semantic SEO by covering all angles of a topic and showing clear relevance between pages. It’s also a great way to future-proof your site as Google continues to favour content that’s organised around real user journeys, not just standalone posts.
Run a Competitive Analysis with the SEO Brief Generator
Before you start writing, you should always analyse what already ranks for your target keywords, and more importantly, why. Semrush’s Brief Generator can do the heavy lifting here by analysing the top results to find the average word count, common headings & structures, subtopics and questions and how frequently the primary and secondary keywords are used.
All of this data allows you to create content that aligns with what’s already ranking in search engine results pages, making sure that you cover the topic in-depth and avoid missing any important subtopics.
Psst! We’re going to show you how Semrush uses this data to speed up the process for you in the next section.
How to Use AI for SEO Content Writing
Once your strategy is in place, it’s time to turn your research into content. AI content writing is a skill in itself and requires close attention to detail, a solid understanding of SEO principles and data analysis.
Semrush’s Content Toolkit helps to speed things up significantly when you’re creating content for SEO, especially when it comes to structure, keyword placement, and on-page optimisation.
Generate Content Headings & Content Structure with the Brief Generator
Strong headings and clear structure help both users and search engines understand your content. Semrush’s Brief Generator makes this easier by building an outline based on what’s already working in the search results.
Once you enter your target keyword, the tool analyses the top-ranking pages and gives you a suggested structure to help you cover the topic in full, avoid any subtopics and stay aligned with the search intent.
You can edit the outline to match your tone of voice or content goals, but it gives you a strong starting point to speed up your workflow.
Create Optimised Meta Descriptions with the Brief Generator
Meta descriptions might not directly impact rankings, but they do affect click-through rates. A well-written meta description can make the difference between someone clicking your page or scrolling past it.
Semrush’s Brief Generator makes this so easy it’s practically effortless.
In one click it generates a meta description based on the primary keyword, secondary keywords and what competitors are using in their meta descriptions. This gives you suggestions based on actual SERP trends, but just character count.
Pro Tip: Include your target keyword early in the description, but keep the focus on what value the reader will get from the page. Think benefits, not just features.
Optimise SEO Content Creation with the Content Optimizer
Once your draft is written, it’s time to refine it with Semrush’s Content Optimizer. This tool gives you real-time feedback on how well your content matches the top-ranking pages to help you understand what needs to be improved.
All you need to do is paste your content into the tool and it will highlight missing primary or secondary keywords, overused phrases and any readability issues you need to address. It also provides suggestions for extra terms to include for better topic coverage, content length recommendations and natural language improvements to avoid repetition or awkward sentence structures.
It’s also a great way to run quality assurance on your content before publishing, making sure it ticks every on-page SEO box while still sounding natural.
Pro tip: The goal here isn’t to stuff in more keywords. It’s to make sure your content reflects the full intent behind the query. Remember when we mentioned semantic SEO? Using synonyms, related phrases, and clear headings helps reinforce relevance without over-optimising.
Mistakes to Avoid When Using AI for SEO
AI tools can speed up your SEO process, but they’re not a magic fix or something you can leave on autopilot and expect them to boost your SEO. If used carelessly, they can actually create more problems than they solve. Here are the common mistakes to avoid:
Publishing unedited AI-generated content
AI can generate content quickly, but it often leads to repetitive phrasing and unnatural tone. It struggles to remember what it may have previously output, and tends to default to neutral opinions and typical AI words and phrases. To avoid this, always edit AI outputs so they match your brand and target audience.
Ignoring search intent
AI tools are less likely to understand whether the search intent of a keyword is right for your content. Alternatively, AI can make your content go off on a tangent or completely forget about search intent all together. This is why you have to work closely with AI at all times to make sure it stays aligned to your goals.
Relying on tools without competitor research
AI can give you suggestions, but it doesn’t replace the need to check what’s already ranking. Without looking at competing pages, you risk missing key subtopics or formatting patterns that matter in your niche. Luckily, Semrush has taken this into account and their Content Toolkit includes competitor research, but depending on the AI tools you’re using, this may not be the case.
Keyword stuffing instead of semantic targeting
Trying to force a keyword into every paragraph is one of those old SEO practices that’s more likely to hurt your chances of ranking than help it. Depending on how you’re generating your SEO content, it’s easy for AI to go overboard with keyword stuffing. Instead, focus on covering the topic in full using variations, related terms, and natural phrasing. That’s what search engines now expect.
Using AI for Smarter SEO Workflows
When you use AI tools for SEO, they should help you make faster and smarter decisions. After all, it’s all about making your workflows more manageable, scalable, and accurate, or there’s no point.
We expect AI SEO tools to keep improving, especially in areas like search intent prediction, content scoring, and real-time optimisation. But even now, there’s plenty you can already do to streamline your on-page SEO process and implement better SEO strategies.
If you want to boost your search engine rankings without spending hours manually researching or guessing what Google wants, make these Semrush tools and methods part of your everyday workflow and watch your SEO efforts improve!
