SEO Tools and Resources

How content is structured in an article or blog post might not seem controversial. But, apparently, Google doesn’t want you to create bite-sized chunks of content simply to please LLMs. Called “chunking,” this technique helps get your content noticed by AI models and reflects how readers actually engage with online content. Chunking may make content more retrievable or citable in AI search, but ultimately, it improves the flow of content and makes concepts easier for people to understand. Let’s talk about how chunking works and when to use it. What is chunking? Chunking is the practice of organizing text into distinct, self-contained units of meaning. When cont…

For 20 years, the web has run on a simple trade: publish content that meets a person’s needs, rank in search, earn traffic, then monetize that traffic through products, services, affiliate referrals, or ads. Zero-click answers and AI search are rewriting that relationship. The new question is whether AI will cite you as a source — and whether that visibility can turn into revenue. To understand who gets included and who gets routed around, I ran over 200 AI visibility audits across 10 industries. The pattern was consistent: Most sites are easy to parse, but hard to justify citing. And the industries that rely on discovery traffic the most are often the ones ma…

While OpenAI becomes increasingly independent from Microsoft and, by extension, Bing, has it replaced this new found freedom for a dependent relationship with Google? Has OpenAI’s increasing independence from Microsoft and, by extension, Bing, become an overly dependent relationship with Google? Our study comparing shopping query fan-outs (QFOs) in ChatGPT from both Google and Bing carousels seems to have provided at least somewhat of an answer to that question. Let’s take a look at how this study was conceived and what we found. Brief shopping fan-out background and technical explainer In November 2025, a few researchers in the AI research space, including myself,…

Google AI Max drives revenue but at a higher cost, according to Smarter Ecommerce’s Mike Ryan, who analyzed 250+ campaigns. Outcomes vary, and much more testing is still needed. Why we care. AI Max isn’t a minor update. It’s Google’s most significant reimagining of Search campaigns in years, shifting away from keyword syntax toward pure intent matching. For you, that’s both an opportunity (possible growth) and a risk (an efficiency tradeoff). By the numbers. The result of the analysis: Median revenue: +13% Median CPA: +16% ROAS range: +42% to -35% Advertisers who activate AI Max typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar…

Video advertising has never been easier to distribute. Platforms can deliver impressions and views at an enormous scale across YouTube, paid social, short-form video, and connected TV. But distribution isn’t the same as effectiveness. Many campaigns generate impressive platform metrics while producing little measurable business impact. The problem usually isn’t targeting, budget, or platform choice. It’s a deeper strategic issue: campaigns are optimized for outputs like views and impressions rather than outcomes like attention, persuasion, and action. Most video ads fail because they misunderstand attention Poor targeting, limited budgets, and platform choi…

If I hear “always be testing” one more time, I might scream. It was great advice in 2016. In 2026, it’s a great way to light your budget on fire. That mantra made sense when budgets were loose and platforms forgave a lot of chaos. Launch five audience tests simultaneously? Sure, why not! Swap out three creative variables at once? Go for it! But the rules have changed. Our new reality has tighter budgets, longer learning phases, and signal fragmentation everywhere. One poorly structured test can distort your performance for weeks, not days. That performance hit compounds fast. Modern experimentation is expensive and risky. Why pay that price when we have the p…

Do you think you’re able to answer the question every marketing leader dreads hearing from leadership: “Why isn’t our marketing effort doing more?” How do you even go about answering that? Let’s look at what I mean using a fictional location analytics company we’ll call Acme Area Analytics. The Acme team reviews its reports. Nothing appears broken. Campaigns are running, leads are still coming in, and performance metrics are mostly stable. Yet sales momentum isn’t clearly accelerating, and it’s hard to pinpoint why. Insights are scattered across site analytics, brand monitoring and SEO tools, CRM systems, and paid media dashboards. Each platform reflects p…

Until a few years ago, schema helped search engines extract basic facts and display visual enhancements like star ratings and sitelinks. However, in the AI-driven search world, schema plays a different and fundamental role for local SEO, helping Google and other AI systems understand who you are, what you do, where you operate, and how confidently your information can be reused. Improving rankings isn’t as relevant. Now, schema helps reduce confusion for Google and reinforces your business as a stable, trustworthy local entity across traditional search, local packs, AI Overviews, rich results, and external AI platforms. Let’s dig into how schema helps local S…

Google is reaching out directly to advertisers via email, requiring them to confirm whether their campaigns contain EU political ads — with a hard deadline of March 31st. Why we care. This isn’t optional. EU regulation now requires Google to verify political ad status across all active campaigns, and advertisers who don’t act before the deadline could face compliance issues. What’s happening. Google is asking every advertiser to declare whether their existing campaigns include EU political ads. The requirement applies to all current campaigns and must be completed by March 31, 2026. How to comply: Google has outlined three ways to submit the confirmation: …

Google’s Liz Reid, VP and head of Search, drew a clearer line between Google Search and Gemini but said it’s still unclear whether the products will converge, diverge further, or be superseded. The big picture. Reid said Search is an information product focused on helping people connect with the web, while Gemini is centered more on assisting with productivity and creation. She added that the boundaries are fluid, especially as AI products evolve quickly and agentic experiences reshape how people use the internet. What she’s saying. In short, Reid said Search and Gemini share technology but have different product “north stars.” They could overlap more over time, b…

OpenAI is backing away from putting checkout directly inside ChatGPT. Instead, purchases will shift to retailer apps that connect to ChatGPT, The Information reported. Why we care. ChatGPT aims to be more than a discovery engine. Right now, though, product discovery inside ChatGPT is gaining traction faster than purchases. That suggests AI-powered shopping is only influencing the consideration stage (at least for now), not driving conversions. What happened. OpenAI had planned to let shoppers buy products directly from listings in ChatGPT search results. Instead, an OpenAI spokesperson said that Instant Checkout is moving to Apps, where purchases happen inside con…

Google’s AI Mode is increasingly citing Google itself — and often sending users back to another Google search, according to new SE Ranking research. Why we care. AI search is meant to surface the best sources on the web. If Google increasingly cites itself, you may see fewer direct links and less traffic as more users stay inside Google. The details. Google.com was the most cited source in AI Mode answers, accounting for 17.42% of all citations, SE Ranking found. That makes Google.com the most referenced domain — more than the next six domains combined: YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Amazon, Indeed, and Zillow. Accelerating trend. In June 2025, Google cited i…

As ad dollars begin shifting toward ChatGPT, ad tech firms have started working to make that transition as seamless as possible. What’s happening. Adthena launched a new tool, AdBridge, designed to convert existing Google Ads campaigns into formats ready for ChatGPT advertising. The pitch is simple: don’t rebuild from scratch — repurpose what already works. The tool analyzes advertisers’ search campaigns to generate keyword lists, negative keywords, and competitive insights that can be directly applied to ChatGPT campaigns. It also surfaces which brands are showing up in specific auctions, how often they appear, and which prompts are triggering those placements — …

Some advertisers say ad reviews are taking more than seven days — far beyond normal timelines. What’s happening. Matthew Skelton, a senior PPC specialist, has flagged a pattern many advertisers are now recognizing: Demand Gen campaigns stuck in “in review” status for days at a time. The delays are showing up across multiple accounts and industries, with no obvious policy violations or warnings to explain the holdup. Notably, the issue doesn’t appear to be affecting other campaign types. Search and Performance Max campaigns are still moving through review as expected, pointing to a problem specific to Demand Gen. Why we care. For advertisers using Demand Gen t…

After bottoming out at 1.3% in December 2025, the click-through rate (CTR) on Google’s AI Overviews climbed to 2.4% in February 2026. That’s an 85% jump in two months, according to new data from Seer Interactive. What moves CTR. When an AI Overview appears, pages cited in it get more clicks than pages on that same results page that aren’t cited. But both still get fewer clicks than searches with no AI Overview: No AI Overview: ~3.3% CTR AI Overview with citation: ~2.1% CTR AI Overview without citation: ~0.9% CTR Where clicks are shifting. Searches without AI Overviews are getting more valuable. CTR on those queries increased from 2.8% in early 2025 …

Think about the last time you binged those true crime documentaries. The next time you opened your streaming app, the homepage likely shifted. Investigative series rose to the top. Maybe a notification alerted you when a new series dropped. Promotional emails highlighted only what you hadn’t watched. You didn’t see the data parsing or the decisioning behind it. You just looked forward to enjoying the next title. That’s the standard. According to the Adobe 2025 AI and digital trends report , 71% of consumers want personalized — or personally relevant — offers and information, and 78% expect seamless experiences across channels. Yet fewer than half of brands consistentl…

AI systems are getting better at generating Spanish. They’re not getting better at understanding Spanish markets. What we’re seeing instead is a consistent pattern: more than 20 Spanish-speaking countries collapsed into a single default. Spain becomes “standard.” Mexico becomes interchangeable. The rest get flattened into statistical averages. The failure modes are structural — dialect defaulting, format contamination, and regulatory hallucination — and they’re amplified in a generative search environment where one synthesized answer replaces 10 blue links. That distinction is now a visibility constraint. Generative systems resolve ambiguity. When your content…

Paid search platforms are getting better at deciding who should see your ads, often without relying on the keywords you choose. As that shift accelerates, optimization is moving away from query-level control and toward signals like audience data, landing page context, and conversion behavior. Understanding that change is key to knowing what to actually optimize for now. When keywords gave us control and what comes next A decade ago, our world was defined by the illusion of control. Every decision we made was anchored in the keyword. Hypersegmentation and single keyword ad groups (SKAGs) ruled the land. If possible, we’d build a unique landing page for eve…

If you’re reading this, you’re likely an SEO aficionado like me. I’m a seasoned SEO with 10+ years of agency experience. Being on the agency side gave me deep SEO expertise, exposure to top industry talent, and experience working with some of the world’s most well-known brands. I did a bit of everything on the agency side — from technical SEO to content marketing to new business. Working at an agency is nothing like working in-house. After a long run on the agency side, I moved in-house for the first time. Here are seven things I’ve learned since making the switch. 1. Owning performance changes how SEO is evaluated On the agency side, when performance d…

Microsoft teased new AI reporting features within Bing Webmaster Tools that enhance the AI performance reports and other reports around AI. The new features that were showcased include citation share, grounding query intent, GEO-focused recommendations. More details. Several shared screenshots of this presentation that was given by Krishna Madhavan from Microsoft at SEO Week today in New York City. Here are some of those slides: Bing Webmaster Tools just dropped some VERY COOL stuff at #SEOWeek 2026 Citation Share, Grounding Query Intent (15 pre-defined intents), and GEO-focused recommendations. The gap between Bing's transparency and Google's is getting harde…

In our Rethinking SEO in the age of AI article, we briefly explored how AI might move beyond simple prompt-and-response interactions. One emerging direction is agentic AI. Systems that can take action, not just generate answers. While this space is still evolving, we’re already seeing early signs of tools that can identify gaps, suggest improvements, and adapt to changing trends with minimal input. If these capabilities continue to develop, they could reshape how we think about maintaining continuous discoverability in SEO. Table of contents Understanding the coexistence of web and AI agents What will SEO mean in agentic web? Role of agentic AI in SEO Understanding …

Understanding the ins and outs of paid media can seem like an overwhelming process when you’re first entering the field. As AI has rapidly changed ad platforms in recent years, keeping up can feel challenging. Thankfully, you’re not alone. You’re part of a supportive industry with a wealth of content and knowledge to share. Here are seven tips to help you learn and become a more confident PPC manager. 1. Be curious Curiosity is foundational to growth in PPC. You’ll learn best by taking initiative to understand ad platforms, how campaigns are structured, and what options are available on the backend. Of course, be careful about tweaking settings you’re not famil…

Branded search is often treated as predictable and easy to manage. In practice, it isn’t. PPC teams see rising CPC on brand terms. SEO teams see declining branded CTR, even when rankings hold. These issues are usually investigated separately, with different dashboards, hypotheses, and fixes. Both signals often stem from changes within a single SERP. What look like two separate problems are, in reality, one shared environment reacting to shifts in competition and visibility. The issue isn’t a lack of data. Most teams already have basic reports and brand monitoring tools, including PPC and SEO platforms. The problem is how the data is used. To understand wh…

From today, your AI tools, dashboards, and automated workflows can now talk directly to Yoast SEO, thanks to the new Abilities API, built to work hand in hand with WordPress 6.9 .As WordPress evolves, we evolve with it, and the release of the Yoast SEO Abilities API is an extension of these new capabilities. What does that mean in plain English? If you use AI assistants, automated workflows, or custom dashboards, they can now automatically find and read your Yoast content scores, without anyone needing to build a custom connection or dig through documentation. It just works. What can these tools see? Once connected, any compatible tool can instantly pull…

Watch this video on Vimeo On PPC Live The Podcast, I spoke with Peter Bowen, a Google Ads specialist with nearly 20 years of experience and a strong focus on B2B lead generation. Pete shared two major lessons from his career: always check the basics, and never assume the systems around your ads are working just because the campaigns look fine. The currency mistake that cost 10 times the budget Pete Bowen shared an early mistake where a South African client’s account was set up in the UK, defaulting the currency to pounds instead of rand. That simple oversight led to spending roughly 10 times the intended budget, delivering great results at first — but u…