SEO Tools and Resources

On April 15th, 2025, ​WordPress 6.8 was released. This release, named Cecil, is aimed at bringing more control when it comes to the design of your website. It also comes with features that improve performance and enhance security for users and developers. Let’s dive into a few of the highlights in this latest release. The Style Book for Classic themes The Style Book, previously exclusive to block-based themes, is now accessible for Classic themes that have editor-styles or a theme.json file. It also comes with a new look and a few new settings to play around with. You can find this feature, or see if you have access to this feature, by going to Appearance > Desi…

Discord has started testing unskippable, reward-based video ads — marking its most aggressive move yet into monetization outside of its Nitro subscriptions. The ads pause if users tab away, guaranteeing full impressions for brands. Details. Discord has begun rolling out In-Game Rewards — branded video ads tied to game-related perks. While these ads appear for everyone, users can opt into more personalized promotions via their privacy settings. Discord originally gained traction as a “safe space” for gamers and niche communities. With over 200 million monthly active users, it has quietly become one of the largest social platforms. Until now, monetization was limite…

Google today announced Search Live, a new feature that lets users have real-time conversations with Search using their smartphone camera. The tool builds on Google’s work in visual search and AI, combining the capabilities of Google Lens and Project Astra. How it works. Users can tap a new Live icon in either Lens or AI Mode. After pointing their camera at an object, they can ask questions about it. Search Live responds in real time with explanations, suggestions, and links to relevant websites, videos, and forums. What it looks like. Here’s a video showing how Search Live works: Why we care. Search Live highlights Google’s ongoing push toward multimo…

Search is dead, long live search! Search isn’t what it used to be. Search engines no longer simply match keywords or phrases in user queries with webpages. We are moving well beyond the world of lexical search, which is simply text-based with no understanding of the semantic connections between not only things but multimedia representations of things/concepts. Today, AI can understand, contextualize, and generate information in response to user intent largely utilizing probabilistic prediction and pattern matching. This transformation is being driven by generative information retrieval. Generative information retrieval is a fundamental shift in how sy…

It’s frustrating. You put time, energy, and a lot of hope into a webpage. But it just won’t rank. Your competitors’ pages are ranking well, even though (subjectively) they’re worse. Yours deserves to be top of Google. So, why isn’t it? Figuring out the levers to pull to get your content to the top of Google isn’t quick, but it can be done. Identifying the problem The key to identifying why your page isn’t ranking is to systematically rule out the other possibilities. For this, you’ll need data, industry context, and a methodical approach. Firstly, you need to verify if the page is not ranking at all versus not ranking well. This is key. If a pa…

Google Search may now be faster when you use Chrome for Google Search. Google is leveraging Speculation Rules API to prefetch results, ultimately making the overall Google Search experience faster. “Google Search has been making use of the Speculation Rules API to improve navigation speed from the search results page to the result links and they’ve been using a few features of the API that may be of interest to other site owners,” Google wrote on the Chrome Developers blog. More details. Google will prefetch the first two search results to speed up the search experience. Google said it does this through using the requires configuration, to ensure prefetches use t…

Jerry Dischler, the former Google executive who was in charge of Google Ads is now leaving the company right before his 20th year work anniversary. Dischler in November 2023 stepped down as the ad boss, during the height of the DOJ Google anti-trust case. What Dischler said. Jerry Dischler announced today that it would be his last day at Google. He posted a message on LinkedIn. He said, “After nearly 20 years, I’ve decided to leave Google, and today is my last day.” Here is the full post: After nearly 20 years, I’ve decided to leave Google, and today is my last day. Google is a remarkable company and I’m proud of the incredible things we’ve accomplished in …

With Google’s introduction of its vision match feature, users can now describe a product they’re looking for, and AI will generate suggestions similar to that item. The real kicker is that the product generated likely doesn’t exist. The AI will create something that you want, show you the product, and then try to match the AI product with items from the real world. It sounds like a streamlined, user-friendly shopping experience that could revolutionize online shopping yet again. But does it actually enhance our shopping journey? Are these AI-generated results truly more effective than the product results we get from traditional Google search? …

In 2025, the battle for attention is being won in under 60 seconds. Short-form video is increasingly delivering measurable performance outcomes. This article explores how you can harness short-form video and creator-driven content as part of a performance marketing strategy. The rise of short-form: More than just eyeballs With YouTube Shorts alone amassing over 70 billion daily views, engagement metrics are no longer the only measure of value. “The untapped potential of short-form video and creator content on YouTube,” a recent study from YouTube and eMarketer, highlights how powerful this format has become. The study found that creator content …

Over the last few years, AI has upended many aspects of our world, including search. The rise of generative AI threw many of us for a loop. If you’re one of them, still scrambling to make sense of this new normal, you might be wondering: what matters most in SEO now? The answer may surprise you. It isn’t fancy new tricks – it’s mastering the fundamentals that drive traffic and rankings. As AI answer engines, like ChatGPT search and Google AI Overviews, become part of everyday life, they’re changing how people interact with search. But at their core, these tools rely on some principles that have guided SEO for years: A strong technical fo…

Google AI Overviews are now available in more countries and regions and in more languages. Google announced today at Google I/O that AI Overviews are now available in over 200 countries and territories and more than 40 different languages. AI Overviews for more Google searchers. Google said they have expanded access to AI Overviews within Google Search to more searchers. In October, Google released them in over 100 countries and regions, now they are available in over 200 countries and regions. Google added more support for languages including support for for Arabic, Chinese, Malay, Urdu and more. You can see the full list of countries and territories that Go…

You need compelling titles and meta descriptions to attract visitors from search results and encourage users to click. Manually writing these elements for every page can be quite challenging. Generative AI can streamline this process by automating it. However, you should check the AI-generated suggestions critically. This post will show various methods for generating effective titles and meta descriptions using generative AI for SEO. Table of contents AI titles and meta descriptions for SEO Use the AI in Yoast SEO Premium to generate titles Using generative AI to create powerful titles Checking generated content using human expertise Balancing SEO optimization and u…

My SEO colleagues have a tall task on their hands, one that grows taller by the day as AI-powered search proliferates: compensating for eroding website traffic. Yes, I’m talking about zero-click search, which is taking root across AI search and LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini – and the AI Overviews creeping into more traditional SERPs. A recent report featured in these pages cites an organic SERP CTR drop between .64% and 1.41%. The smart money is on that CTR dropping as zero-click search behavior gains momentum. (Though recent Semrush data showed zero-click behavior declined slightly.) I would also bet on Google finding more ways to minimize th…

As we are approaching the halfway point in the year, you want to ensure your PPC campaigns are in the best shape possible going into peak season for many advertisers Whether you’re getting great results, struggling to perform, or somewhere in between, below is a checklist of 12 features to help set your campaigns up for success. 1. Align and reassess client objectives Campaign performance is only as good as its ultimate objective. Just because you see year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth or improved return on ad spend (ROAS) doesn’t mean you can get the party poppers out. What is the client’s priority objective? Has this changed? Is it still revenue growth…

A few weeks ago, we caught Google linking text within its AI Overviews to its own search results. Well, today that has become a new official feature within AI Overviews. “To help people more easily explore topics and discover relevant websites, we’ve added links to some terms within AI Overviews when our systems determine it might be useful,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land. What it looks like. Here is a screenshot we posted of this back then: Clicking on those underlined links in the text of the AI Overview, both at the top and in the middle section, will take you back to a new Google Search. The smaller link icons take you to the side panel lin…

Domain extensions have been a core part of the web since its early days. In SEO, debates have continued for decades about how a domain extension, such as a TLD (top-level domain) or ccTLD (country-code top-level domain), affects rankings. The discussion often concerns whether search engines like Google, Baidu, or Microsoft Bing prefer specific domain extensions when ranking websites in different countries. Some aspects are clearly outlined in official documentation, while others rely more heavily on anecdotal evidence and testing. Do domain extensions directly impact rankings? One of the most common SEO questions is whether a domain extension directly i…

Google is testing placing special and very clickable links in its AI Overviwws, but not to publishers or your own website, but rather back to its own search results. You got that right, Google is testing linking the AI Overviews back to new search queries on Google.com. What it looks like. I posted a screenshot and video from Sachin Patel who spotted this change on the Search Engine Roundtable – here they are: Clicking on those underlined links in the text of the AI Overview, both at the top and in the middle section, will take you back to a new Google Search. The smaller link icons take you to the side panel links, those go to publishers and external website…

Using transition words in your writing can help you enhance the readability of your content. They help your text flow and show readers the relationship between phrases and paragraphs. That’s why the readability checks in Yoast SEO provide feedback on your use of transition words. But what are transition words, and why are they so important? And how should you use them? Table of contents What are transition words? Why you should use transition words Types of transition words Why are they important for SEO? What does the transition word check in Yoast SEO do? How to improve your usage Conclusion What are transition words? Transition words like ‘and’, ‘but’,…

BigQuery is one of the most underutilized tools in PPC. While data professionals have been leveraging data warehousing and Structured Query Language (SQL) for years, many PPC specialists still rely on in-platform reporting and third-party tools such as Optmyzr and TrueClicks. But with Google’s evolving data limitations, increased automation, and the growing importance of first-party data, mastering BigQuery is becoming a game-changer for paid search experts. What is BigQuery? BigQuery is Google’s fully managed, serverless data warehouse that lets you store and analyze massive datasets using SQL. Unlike Google Ads, Google Analytics 4, or Google Search …

With the rise of AI-powered features, search engines are not just directing users to information but delivering answers directly. This shift is redefining how people interact with the web, raising questions about the future of SEO, content discovery, and digital marketing. Here’s what’s coming next. From ChatGPT to Grok 3: The breakneck pace of AI advancements The world has seen rapid and significant advances in AI technology and large language models (LLMs) within two years. Looking back just three years ago, Google’s Gemini and Meta’s LLAMA did not exist, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT was later released in late November 2022. Fast-forward to January 2…

Marketers love a good line graph that goes up and to the right, but with overwhelming data, graphs alone can’t communicate complex data effectively. A good data display should do more than convey information – it should reveal insights, guide decisions, and prioritize actions. In 2025, marketing data must evolve from reporting to storytelling, because effective charts don’t just show data; they help us understand what it means and what to do next. Why traditional reporting is no longer good enough One of the most common formats for SEO and PPC reporting is the classic, tried-and-true line graph. Even Google – in Search Console and Google Ads – defaults…

Advertisers can now tap into Promoted Pins on Maps as part of their Demand Gen campaigns. These pins leverage existing image assets and appear in key spots on Maps, like Browse, Directions, and Entity/Place Details modes. How it works. Existing image assets from campaigns can be repurposed for these pins. Pins show up in Maps when users browse areas, search for directions, or check out specific places. The move aims to increase visibility in these “browse-worthy” moments, helping to convert digital interest into physical visits. Why we care. Promoted Pins are designed to drive more foot traffic and in-store sales by putting businesses in front of users as …

The first core update of the 2025 year, the March 2025 core update, is now done rolling out and complete. It started on March 13, 2025 and completed about 7 days later on March 27, 2025. This update was a typical core update where Google updates its core ranking system to make search results more relevant and helpful. This update followed the December 2024 core update. It took a few months for Google to release a new core update despite expecting the core updates to be more frequent in 2025. What Google said. Google said about this core update: “The rollout was complete as of March 27, 2025.” What we saw. The initial rollout seemed to kick in within a …

Bad data = bad strategy. Duplicate conversions are one of the most overlooked – and most damaging – problems in conversion tracking. If your reporting inflates the number of conversions, your performance strategy is based on fiction. You’re not just getting the wrong numbers. You’re optimizing toward the wrong outcomes. This issue impacts everything: Bidding. Budget allocation. Long-term growth. This article breaks down: Why duplicate conversions happen. How to find them. Most importantly, how to eliminate them for good. The cost of inaccurate conversion data Paid search loves precision. Conversion data is your nor…

Google officially announced the deprecation of Structured Data Files (SDF) v7. The legacy version will be sunset on Nov. 4. Key changes post-deprecation. SDF v7 will no longer be supported; the default version will shift to v7.1 for all users. Any sdfdownloadtasks.create API requests referencing SDF_VERSION_7 will return a 400 error after November 4. Why we care. Advertisers and partners using SDF v7 must migrate to v7.1 or higher before the deadline to avoid service disruptions in Display & Video 360 workflows. What to do. Review the v7.1 release notes to understand differences from v7 and plan your migration. Need help? Use Google’s new Display & Vid…