SEO Tools and Resources

Search traffic is down. AI Overviews are pushing results lower. Budgets are being slashed. Is this the end of SEO as we know it? Not so fast. I interviewed SMX Advanced speaker Eric Enge about the future of search, the rise of generative AI, and how SEOs can still win big in a rapidly changing landscape. Some of the topics covered: Why 35% traffic drops aren’t the end of the world. How AI-driven search changes what it means to “rank.” Why user engagement and brand signals matter more than ever. What to expect at SMX Advanced 2025 in Boston. Reminder: SMX Advanced returns June 11-13 in Boston. Get your tickets now! This transcript has b…

The European Commission has formally opened new proceedings to spell out how Google must share key Android features and Google Search data with rivals under the Digital Markets Act. The Commission on Tuesday opened two formal “specification proceedings” to guide how Google must comply with key DMA obligations, effectively turning regulatory dialogue into a structured process with defined outcomes. Why we care. The European Commission is escalating its oversight of Google under the Digital Markets Act, with moves that could reshape competition in mobile AI and search — and limit how much advantage Google can extract from its own platforms. If Google is required to …

The EU’s top antitrust enforcer signaled a decision on whether Google is violating the Digital Markets Act is imminent, without committing to a timeline. What she said. “It will come,” Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera told Dow Jones Newswires, adding the cases are complex and the commission is committed to decisions based on evidence and fair procedure. The backdrop. The European Commission launched its probe into Google’s search business in March 2024 under the Digital Markets Act. The commission gave itself a soft 12-month deadline to wrap up — it has already fined Meta and Apple, but Google’s case remains unresolved nearly two years in. The pressure i…

Table of contents What are backlinks? What are AI citations? Why AI citations matter for visibility? How are AI citations and backlinks different? How to earn both? Create deep, original, and useful content Write for real questions, not just keywords Leverage structured data Build relationships for natural backlinks Focus on clarity and quotability Monitor, analyze, and adapt Exploring Yoast’s AI features Backlinks or citations: What truly matters for visibility? For years, backlinks have been the gold standard for building authority, driving link juice, and climbing up the SERPs. But with the rise of Generative AI, the search landscape is shifting. Instead of…

Welcome to our weekly Search Engine Land series, Everything you need to know about Google Ads in less than 3 minutes. Every Wednesday, I’m highlighting a different Google Ads feature, and what you need to know to get the best results from it – all in a quick 3-minute read (or, you can scroll down to watch the video). Let’s explore Target CPA bidding, one of the four Smart Bidding strategies in Google Ads. If you’re looking to gain more control over your Google Ads campaign costs, Target CPA may be the right bidding solution for you. I’ll cover: What is Target CPA bidding? How does Target CPA bidding work? How to set up Target CPA bidding in your Google…

A new profile of Elizabeth Reid, the head of Google Search, confirms that Google is moving away from its longstanding model of sending its users to websites. As one former unnamed senior executive put it: “Giving traffic to publisher sites is kind of a necessary evil.” As for the iconic Google Search bar? It will slowly lose prominence in the Google Search experience, due to the continuing growth of voice and visual search, Reid said. Necessary evil. Google has been increasingly focused on keeping users inside Google properties, reducing the need to click through to external sites. A former Google senior executive told Bloomberg that supporting publishers was inci…

HubSpot’s SEO collapse has been the talk of the SEO world for the last several days. As a reminder, here’s a screenshot of HubSpot’s organic traffic drop, based on Semrush data: Among the endless reactions and perspectives, two former HubSpot employees shared five good reminders about SEO strategy. 1. SEO takes time Pruning content and focusing on E-E-A-T were among the many obvious remedies SEOs pointed out following the news of HubSpot’s apparent organic traffic decline. Well, these aren’t simple tweaks for a brand the size of HubSpot. They’re massive undertakings, according to this LinkedIn post by Bianca Anderson, HubSpot’s former SEO strategis…

Welcome to our weekly Search Engine Land series, Everything you need to know about Google Ads in less than 3 minutes. Every Wednesday, I’m highlighting a different Google Ads feature, and what you need to know to get the best results from it – all in a quick 3-minute read. Today, we’re discussing exact match keywords – the intuitive and the not-so-intuitive facts you need to know about how keyword match types work today. I’ll cover: What are keywords? Keyword match types in Google Ads: Broad, Phrase, Exact The evolution of exact match keywords When to use exact match keywords The power of negative keywords What are keywords in Google Ads? …

The idea of starting an article series about AI in a time when so many articles are being at least partially generated by AI and potentially primarily consumed by AI might cause one to pause and consider the value of the effort. All of us digital marketers hope to find a future where we can still add value and find fulfillment in a world where our efforts and careers are increasingly at risk of being replaced by AI every day. Sometimes, it all feels a bit empty and potentially useless, but here we are. In case it is not already obvious, I am a bit of a doomer when it comes to AI. So inevitably, I have labored over this article like a true human, almost exactly li…

You’ve probably heard the saying: Fast, cheap, or good – pick two. The concept goes something like this: If you want something fast and cheap, don’t expect it to be good. If you want it good and fast, it’s going to cost more. And if you want it good and affordable, well, you’ll need to give it time. It’s a simple way to explain how tradeoffs work in projects. In SEO, these tradeoffs are especially important to understand because you’re often creating problems that will cost more to fix later. This article looks at variations of this project management concept and how it applies to SEO. Then I’ll explain why a quality-first approach l…

Favicons are those little icons you see in your browser tabs. When you have many open tabs in your browser, they help you recognize and find the page you were looking for. They are important for your branding because Google shows them in the mobile and desktop search results. So, let’s take a closer look at those little icons and your branding here! What is a favicon? A favicon is a tiny, square image that represents a website. You see it in your browser’s address bar, open tabs, and bookmarks. Its main job is to help users quickly identify and find a site among many open tabs or results. Often, these match a website’s logo or theme, making it instantly recognizabl…

Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) offers more than just a list of links. Its layout can change based on what you’re searching for, presenting various SERP features tailored to your needs. You might see different elements like featured snippets, shopping options, or local listings and also AI Overviews. Understanding these can help you navigate the results more effectively. This guide will help you identify and differentiate between the paid and organic results you encounter. Table of contents What are SERP features? A new SERP feature: Google AI Overviews It depends on what you’re searching for Browsing through the result page Sponsored results and ads Orga…

Journalists have been using the inverted pyramid writing style for ages. Using it, you put your most important information upfront. Don’t hedge. Don’t bury your key point halfway down the third paragraph. And don’t hold back; tell the complete story in the first paragraph. Even online, this writing style holds up pretty well for some types of articles. It even comes in handy now that web content is increasingly used to answer every type of question a searcher might have. Find out how! Table of contents What is the inverted pyramid? The power of paragraphs The pyramid, SEO, and AI Answering questions Summaries vs. the pyramid How to write with the inverted pyramid in…

ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity: these are the new operating environments. Your content must be invokable inside them, or no one will see it. At SMX Advanced, I broke down how to build an AI visibility engine: a system for making your net-new facts reusable by humans and agents across synthesis-first platforms. It goes beyond publishing to show how teams can deploy structured content that survives LLM compression and shows up for buyers during their purchasing decisions. It’s what we’re building with clients and inside XOFU, our LLM visibility GPT. Here’s how it works. Find the FLUQs (Friction-Inducing Latent Unasked Questions) Friction-Inducing L…

For years, SEO success was measured by charts pointing up and to the right. We celebrated traffic spikes, shared screenshots, and treated rising sessions as proof of strategy. But those days are gone. The Great Decoupling represents the decline of informational traffic The SEO playbook that was glorified for the last 10 years prioritized generating useless hordes of informational traffic. Marketing teams and agencies alike bamboozled executives by pumping up traffic numbers to obscene levels. People on LinkedIn celebrated programmatic SEO case studies and “SEO heists” that racked up irrelevant clicks – encouraging copycat behavior that ultimately …

For more than two decades (nearly as long as I’ve been in SEO), backlinks have been core to SEO. Google’s PageRank changed search by using backlinks as a proxy for trust. A link wasn’t just a pathway; it was a vote. The more votes you had and the more authoritative the voters were, the higher you ranked. But as Google and AI systems matured, entity-based understanding emerged. AI models became better at understanding content, context, and credibility without always needing a hyperlink as a crutch. Today, visibility isn’t driven solely by links. It’s strengthened by the broader signals your brand has earned: how often it’s mentioned, cited, and trusted across …

The difference between a 2% margin and a 20% margin increasingly comes down to whether you’re renting attention or owning the answer. For years, search rewarded the ability to buy visibility. That model is weakening. As AI systems increasingly resolve queries without a click, the value shifts from traffic acquisition to answer formation. When you move from buying clicks to engineering answers (i.e., structuring content so it can be surfaced, cited, and trusted by AI systems), you change what you own. Instead of renting placement, you build answer equity: durable inclusion in the outputs that shape decisions. The goal isn’t to turn off paid search. It’s to…

Brandon Saltalamacchia’s office, adorned with a dazzling collection of retro gaming paraphernalia, offers a glimpse into the passions that have driven his professional life. In this interview with Saltalamacchia, you’ll learn about his humble beginnings as an independent publisher to navigating the labyrinthine challenges of SEO in a Google world. The early days: A camper van and a dream Saltalamacchia’s foray into independent publishing began in 2017 while working full-time for Future Publishing. A self-described “newb” in SEO and content marketing, he channeled his love for camper vans into a small passion project — a website dedicated to van life. “It w…

Automation has shaped PPC for decades, and the landscape keeps shifting. I’ve seen that evolution firsthand, from helping build the first AdWords Editor to developing early Google Ads scripts and writing about automation layering. Now we’re entering another major transition. As AI changes how we search and get answers, it’s also transforming how automation itself gets built. And this time, the momentum isn’t coming from ad platforms like Google – it’s coming from AI companies like OpenAI. Until recently, AI mostly helped with human language tasks like writing ad copy, summaries, or reports. But the latest generation of LLMs can increasingly gene…

We rely on search engines to find information every day, but what if there was a better way? Instead of manually gathering details from multiple sources, AI agents can do the heavy lifting for you. They don’t just retrieve information. They analyze, organize, and personalize it in real time. This article explores: How AI agents help businesses create more personalized customer experiences. The key components and frameworks behind AI-powered agents. How multi-agent systems can collaborate to solve complex tasks. From information retrieval to intelligent problem-solving AI agents represent a fundamental shift in how we interact with AI. …

AI Overviews, which place generated answers directly at the top of search results, are improving the search experience for users. For businesses that rely on content to drive traffic from search engines, the impact is far less positive. Google has been moving toward more “helpful” results for years, and zero-click searches are nothing new. AI Overviews accelerate that shift, absorbing much of the traffic opportunity that search has historically provided. How AI changes the work of search For years, search followed a familiar pattern: A user entered a short query, such as “team building companies.” Google returned a page of paid and organic res…

We’ve established the AI resume as the new C-suite-level asset that defines your brand at the bottom of the funnel, and we’ve mapped the strategic landscape that shows how it operates across explicit, implicit, and ambient research modes. So, how do you build this asset to thrive in a three-part environment? The answer is shifting from ranking in search results to the discipline of brand-focused algorithmic education – a multi-speed strategy aligned with the trio of technologies powering all modern recommendation engines. The digital marketing ecosystem has been reshaped by AI assistive engines – platforms like Google AI, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot that no…

Does it feel like your organic traffic is disappearing? You aren’t imagining it. AI Overviews and answer engines are sidelining classic SEO results. To stay visible, brands need to adapt – fast. The good news: you don’t need to rewrite your entire SEO playbook. With a few smart tweaks, you can shift from SEO to GEO and reclaim your share of search in the age of generative AI. GEO, or generative engine optimization, focuses on entities – not just pages. That means your brand, products, services, and experts. By strengthening these signals, you increase the chances your business is cited, referenced, and recommended inside AI-generated answers and conversationa…

Did you know that even a one-second delay in page loading speed can cause up to 11% fewer page views? That’s right, you might have the best content strategy and a solid plan to drive traffic, but visitors won’t stay long if your site lags. Page speed is one of the biggest factors in keeping users engaged and converting. In this guide, we’ll uncover the most common causes of slow websites and explore proven ways to boost website performance. Whether your site feels sluggish or you simply want to make it faster, these insights will help you identify what’s holding it back and how to fix it. Table of contents What do we mean by ‘website performance’ and why is it i…

Watch this video on YouTube Frederick Vallaeys’ route into PPC started with a student side hustle, not a career plan. While at Stanford in 1998, he spotted a resale opportunity in used Blockbuster video cassettes and needed a way to find buyers. That led him to GoTo, an early search engine where advertisers could bid on keywords – and gave him his first glimpse of the power of paid search. More than 20 years later, Vallaeys has become one of the best-known voices in PPC, a former Googler, one of the early builders in the Google Ads ecosystem, and founder of Optmyzr. In this interview, he looks back at the early days of Google Ads, how automation changed e…