Semrush vs Ahrefs: Which Free AI SEO Course First?

AI Visibility Essentials with Semrush is a free Semrush Academy course by Rita Cidre with expert segments from Leigh McKenzie. It runs twenty short video lessons, about one hour twenty minutes, and issues a certificate when you pass the final assessment. The curriculum moves from tracking keywords to tracking prompts: measuring AI visibility against competitors, share of voice and brand perception, prompt research, finding untapped citation sources, creating citation-worthy content and technical SEO for AI systems. The tool walkthroughs use the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit. The Semrush course review covers each lesson group.

The Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) Course from Ahrefs Academy is free, taught by Sam Oh, and needs no sign-up. It runs twelve recorded lessons, about one hour twenty-six minutes. The stated goal is getting your brand mentioned, cited and recommended by ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini. Lessons cover brand mentions and how to get cited by AI, keyword and prompt research for AEO, technical AEO including robots.txt, GPTBot and llms.txt, and tracking AI traffic in GA4 and Ahrefs Web Analytics. Our Ahrefs AEO course review has the lesson list.

Semrush leads with measurement. Its strongest material is the prompt-tracking and share-of-voice work, which is also the part that depends most on its own toolkit. Ahrefs leads with the mechanics of being cited: what to publish, how to be crawlable by AI agents, and how to attribute the traffic afterward. Both teach prompt research; only Ahrefs spends a lesson on the technical side of AI crawlers.

Neither uses the term GEO on its course page, so both carry a No in that column. Ahrefs names AEO in its title. Semrush names neither label and talks about optimizing for LLMs and AI visibility instead. Entity SEO is not stated by either provider. Both are self-paced with no live support and no community.

The certificate is a real difference for one kind of buyer. Semrush issues one on passing its assessment, which matters for a resume or a client deck. Ahrefs does not state one on the course page, and its no-sign-up delivery suggests the priority is watch time rather than credentials.

The biggest shared limitation is the vendor lens. Each course is a strong free introduction that also happens to be a product tour. Expect the Semrush lessons to solve problems with Semrush and the Ahrefs lessons to solve them with Ahrefs, and plan to translate the method to whatever you actually pay for.

Both are free, so the honest answer is to take both; together they cover under three hours. Start with Ahrefs if you want the citation and technical mechanics quickly and without an account. Start with Semrush if measurement and reporting are your job or you want the certificate. If you finish both and still need someone to look at your site every week, that is when a paid membership or a fixed course belongs in the comparison, and the free AI SEO courses guide lists what else costs nothing first.

Compare more AI SEO courses or browse the full review directory.

Unsure which format you need? The AI SEO course definition covers that before any brand comparison.