At iLawyer Marketing, we’ve been providing answer engine optimization for 3+ years now. Our services are in high demand because of the excellent work we do, specifically in the legal vertical where it is incredibly competitive (especially in the world of personal injury). In order to do the best AEO/GEO work, you need the best tools available. That’s even more important when the stakes are high and competition is fierce. Here are our top recommendations for the tools you need to do the best generative engine optimization possible. They are ranked in order of importance:
AEO Tracking/Analytics Tool
#1: Hoverboard AI
In our opinion, the best all-around AEO software tool is Hoverboard AI. W’ve tried probably a dozen over the years, including all the big name ones like Profound, Peec, etc., and for us Hoverboard AI is the best one on the market. It’s especially good for agencies or anyone who works in a team setting. Our favorite features:
- The “recommended actions” it gives you that are specific to each individual campaign. Seeing data is one thing, but analyzing thousands of data points and figuring out what to do it is often the hard part. Hoverboard AI’s “Actions” make this easy since it tells you exactly what steps to take to optimize your campaign. This is especially useful for less experienced people doing answer engine optimization work, but it’s incredibly helpful even for the most experienced ones as well.
- Competitor intel page so you can see what your top competitors are doing that you are not
- Ability to drill down to identify the most important sources and citations being used by each specific AI model, even down to the specific prompt you are trying to optimize for
- Event tracking so you can identify what’s working (or not working) in terms of your AEO efforts.
- Aggregate source data, which is especially useful for agencies who handle multiple projects. This makes it very easy to know which domains are the most influential to the campaigns on a day-to-day basis.
- White-label reporting (very important for some agencies)
Backup Choice: Peec AI
Peec AI is one of the stronger tools for Answer Engine Optimization currently available to agencies. It tracks how brands appear inside responses generated by major AI models, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude (Claude costs extra). Agencies input a set of prompts relevant to their client’s category and target audience, and Peec AI monitors how often the brand appears in AI answers, in what context, and with what sentiment.
The citation tracking capability is important, and they do it well. Similar to Hoverboard AI, Peec surfaces which web pages and sources the AI models are drawing on when they mention a brand, giving content teams clear direction on which pieces of content to strengthen and which authority gaps to fill. For competitive research, the platform shows which competitor brands are appearing in answer results for the same prompts, allowing agencies to benchmark share of AI voice.
Agencies running multiple client accounts can manage tracking across brands, categories, and platforms from a single dashboard. The data feeds into monthly reporting workflows naturally, making it easier to show clients tangible AEO results rather than vague “AI presence” talking points. It’s a nice tool overall, but Hoverboard is stronger overall.
Content Creation
#2: SerpIntelligence Content Tool
One of the most important parts about answer engine optimization is creating high quality content that is created by SEO friendly and answer engine friendly as well. While Hoverboard has a great content tool, it’s not as advanced as a tool that is completely dedicated to creating content. That’s exactly what SerpIntelligence is, a powerful content writing tool that is our favorite content tool on the market. What it lacks is the ideas list that you can create inside of Hoverboard, so our process is to generate the content ideas in Hoverboard and then use SerpIntelligence to actually do the writing.
Our process is straightforward: identify content opportunities in Hoverboard that are tied to both the prompts we want visibility for (and for related fan-out queries), then use SerpIntelligence to develop the drafts and do the heavy lifting.
For legal content, the quality of the input and review matters enormously, as does accuracy of information. Not only to search engines and answer engines but even more important to our clients! A useful article should answer the prospective client’s question directly, explain relevant details clearly, and reflect the firm’s actual experience and the tone of voice they want to convey. SerpIntelligence allows us to do exactly that.
When developing a piece of content, we recommend focusing on:
- A clear answer near the beginning. Readers should quickly understand whether the page addresses their question.
- Meaningful detail. Explain the circumstances, exceptions, and next steps that matter to the reader.
- Reliable supporting sources. Check factual claims against appropriate primary sources and include citations where they help.
- Firm-specific information. Incorporate verified attorney experience, relevant practice details, and original insights.
- Editorial review. Have a qualified reviewer check legal accuracy, jurisdiction-specific statements, and claims about the firm before publication.
A great content tool can speed up production considerably. Yes, you should be using AI to help you create content these days (you’d be dumb not to) but you absolutely cannot just copy and paste output from any AI content tool. The finished article still needs to meet the standards you would expect from anything published under your firm’s name and it should have a human reviewer/editor.
Backup choice: Content Harmony
Content Harmony is a strong alternative for teams that want a structured research, briefing, and optimization process.
Its main appeal is helping the marketing team who uses it to give writers a clear assignment. Teams can organize research into a brief covering the topic, relevant questions, and content requirements, then evaluate the draft’s topic coverage.
For agencies working with attorneys, in-house writers, or freelancers, that structure can reduce unnecessary revisions. A writer who understands the intended reader, the scope of the article, and the questions it needs to answer has a much better starting point.
#3: Screaming Frog
Technical SEO and website auditing
Before investing heavily in new content, make sure your important pages are accessible and your website’s technical setup supports discovery. This is important for SEO and for Answer Engines. You need to make sure your site is properly set up in order to be accessible by LLM crawlers.
Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider crawls websites and helps identify problems such as broken links, redirect issues, duplicate content, indexing directives, and structured data errors. It also supports JavaScript rendering, which can help you investigate how content is delivered on more complex websites.
For an AEO campaign, useful checks include:
- Whether important practice area pages return a successful response.
- Whether robots directives or accidental
noindextags affect key content. - Whether internal links make important pages easy to discover.
- Whether duplicate URLs or conflicting canonical tags need attention.
- Whether important information depends on JavaScript rendering.
- Whether structured data contains errors.
For example, you might publish an excellent article answering a common injury claim question, but leave it buried deep in the site with almost no internal links. A crawl can help uncover that problem and guide improvements.
Screaming Frog earns its place because technical issues can undermine otherwise strong content. Its findings should be paired with server logs or live access checks when investigating whether a particular AI crawler is being blocked.
#4: SparkToro
Audience research and outreach planning
AEO research should also help you understand where your prospective clients spend time and what they pay attention to.
SparkToro provides audience research covering areas such as website visitation, search behavior, social networks, media consumption, and topics of interest.
That information can help you build a more informed content and distribution strategy. Useful applications include:
- Finding publications to investigate for outreach.
- Identifying podcasts and other media opportunities.
- Discovering topics and questions relevant to your audience.
- Choosing channels for distributing original research.
- Understanding which communities deserve closer attention.
For legal marketing, specificity matters. Someone researching a workplace injury may have different questions and media habits from someone helping a parent after a nursing home injury.
SparkToro’s audience data can help inform those distinctions. It does not establish which websites an AI model trusts or guarantee that a media placement will produce citations. We recommend comparing its findings with the actual source data in your AEO tracking platform.
A publication that reaches your intended audience and repeatedly appears in relevant AI answers is a particularly useful prospect to investigate.
#5: Ahrefs
Competitive SEO and backlink research
Ahrefs Site Explorer helps you investigate competitors’ backlinks, organic search visibility, and important pages. Those capabilities make it a useful companion to a dedicated AEO tracking tool.
Once you identify a competitor that consistently appears in relevant AI answers, you can use Ahrefs to examine its broader search presence. Which pages attract links? Which publications link to the firm? What topics does its website cover that yours does not?
Useful applications include:
- Competitor backlink research. Find publications, organizations, and directories linking to competing firms.
- Content research. Investigate competitor pages with search visibility and backlinks.
- Link opportunity research. Identify relevant sites that link to multiple competitors.
- Source evaluation. Examine a potential outreach target’s topical focus, backlink profile, and estimated organic traffic.
For example, if a competing firm appears in a relevant publisher’s attorney roundup, that is an opportunity to investigate. You would still need to assess the publication, its selection criteria, and whether your firm has a legitimate reason to be included.
We also recommend looking beyond Domain Rating. A high DR score alone does not tell you whether a website reaches prospective clients or influences the AI answers you care about. Relevance, editorial quality, and observed citations provide additional context.
How These Tools Work Together
Start by using Hoverboard AI to establish where your firm appears and which competitors and sources show up for your target questions. Use those findings to prioritize content opportunities, then develop and review that content with SerpIntelligence.
Screaming Frog helps uncover technical problems affecting your pages. SparkToro informs audience research and distribution. Ahrefs adds context about competitors’ content and backlink profiles.
After implementing changes, keep tracking the same relevant prompts over time. Review visibility alongside referral traffic, qualified inquiries, and signed cases wherever attribution is available. Being mentioned in an AI answer is useful, but the business objective is to attract the right prospective clients.
At iLawyer Marketing, we combine these tools with years of experience in competitive legal markets. If your firm wants to improve its visibility in AI search, contact our team to discuss an AEO strategy that will help you target the exact types of cases you are wanting to sign.