Get found on Google and in AI answers

The problem

Most small business websites are invisible. They exist, they look reasonable, and almost nobody arrives at them except people who were already given the link. The reason is rarely a technical mystery: the site does not answer any question people actually search for, and it has no authority signals to compete with the sites that do.

A newer version of the problem now sits on top. A growing share of questions is answered directly by AI assistants, so someone can get the information they wanted, form an impression of your category, and never click a result at all. That shifts the goal from ranking a page to being the source that gets summarized.

What AI can actually do here

Two separate jobs, and buying tools before knowing which one you have is the common mistake.

The first is research: what do people search for in your category, how competitive is each phrase, what do competitors rank for that you do not, and what is technically broken on your own site. That is measurement, and it produces a prioritized list rather than a vague intention to do SEO.

The second is optimization: given a keyword you have chosen, what should this specific page contain to compete with what already ranks. Tools score a draft on structure, coverage and length against current results, which turns "write for SEO" into something concrete.

Both categories now also track visibility inside AI assistants, monitoring how often your brand appears in generated answers. Treat this as informative rather than directive. It is new, results move, and nobody yet has a reliable method for influencing it beyond the durable basics: be genuinely useful on a subject, be citable, and be technically accessible.

What no tool does is write something worth reading. Optimization applied to thin content produces thin content that scores well, which increasingly ranks briefly and then does not.

How the tools differ

Semrush is the research suite: keywords, competitors, backlinks, site audits and AI visibility tracking. Its free plan gives 1 demo project and 10 daily reports, enough to look around. The SEO plan is $117.33 per month billed annually, against $139 monthly, with 5 websites and 500 keywords tracked daily, rising to $455.67 annually on Advanced with API access.

Surfer SEO is the on-page tool: it scores your draft against what currently ranks while you write. Discovery is EUR 49 per month billed yearly with 120 documents, Standard EUR 99 with 360 documents, and higher tiers add AI prompt tracking across several assistants.

They are complements rather than alternatives: one decides what to write, the other shapes it. If you can only buy one, buy the one that matches your gap. See Semrush vs Surfer SEO.

When you don't need a tool

If you have published fewer than ten useful pages, you do not have an SEO problem, you have a content problem. Write ten pages that answer real customer questions properly, then measure. Tools cost hundreds a month and cannot analyse work that does not exist.

If your customers come from referrals, local reputation or a specific network, organic search may simply not be your channel. Plenty of profitable businesses never rank for anything, and spending a marketing budget on the channel that is already working usually beats opening a new one.

And if nobody will act on the reports, do not buy them. This category rewards a person with time to write and fix things, and produces nothing at all without one.