SEO Tools and Resources

The Positionless Marketer is the new marketing professional who is a triple threat with data, creative and optimization power. They blow up the traditional marketing assembly line, where roles are rigidly defined. Instead, they have agility, intelligence and execution speed in defining success. A blueprint for the way Positionless Marketers achieve this level of independence and mastery is Stephen R. Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Covey’s principles, trusted by millions as an excellent foundation for personal and business growth, align with the principles of Positionless Marketing. Covey’s seven habits are divided into three basic groups. The …

The web’s purpose is shifting. Once a link graph – a network of pages for users and crawlers to navigate – it’s rapidly becoming a queryable knowledge graph. For technical SEOs, that means the goal has evolved from optimizing for clicks to optimizing for visibility and even direct machine interaction. Enter NLWeb – Microsoft’s open-source bridge to the agentic web At the forefront of this evolution is NLWeb (Natural Language Web), an open-source project developed by Microsoft. NLWeb simplifies the creation of natural language interfaces for any website, allowing publishers to transform existing sites into AI-powered applications where users and intelligen…

AI recommendations are inconsistent for some brands and reliable for others because of cascading confidence: entity trust that accumulates or decays at every stage of an algorithmic pipeline. Addressing that reality requires a discipline that spans the full algorithmic trinity through assistive agent optimization (AAO). It also demands three structural shifts: the funnel moves inside the agent, the push layer returns, and the web index loses its monopoly. The mechanics behind that shift sit inside the AI engine pipeline. Here’s how it works. The AI engine pipeline: 10 gates and a feedback loop Every piece of digital content passes through 10 gates before it…

For the past two years, we’ve been living in AI’s gold rush era. To borrow from Taylor Swift, think of it as the “Lover” phase where everything is shiny, new, and full of possibility. The behavior: Buy everything. The metric: Can it generate something cool? The vibe: Pure FOMO. But we’re entering a new era now. Call it the “Reputation” phase, which is darker, edgier, and entirely focused on receipts. A sign of this shift was in the headlines recently, blaring on about Microsoft lowering its AI sales targets. The hot takes rushed in to frame it as a disappointment, a slowdown, and even a sign that enterprise demand is cooling. They all misread the m…

Some brands are watching their organic traffic – and revenue – slip away. Others? They’re optimizing for this new search channel and seeing theirs rise. That’s why Semrush Enterprise built the AI Visibility Index. It’s the definitive study into how brands perform across the world’s leading AI search engines. Leveraging Semrush Enterprise’s AI Optimization (AIO) platform, the Index analyzes 2,500 real-world prompts in both ChatGPT and AI Mode across five key verticals: Business & Professional Services Digital Technology & Software Consumer Electronics Fashion & Apparel Finance Revealing which brands are leading the AI search landsca…

The web has strong opinions about what “AI-written” content looks like, and even stronger ones about what’s supposedly wrong with it. Scroll any content marketer’s LinkedIn feed, and you’ll find confident claims that em dashes and other AI “tells” signal bad, automated writing. The problem with these debates is that they often confuse taste with performance. What counts as “bad writing” will always be subjective. But if the goal for content marketers is to communicate clearly and compete in the information marketplace, the practical question should be: which LLM habits actually turn readers off? To find out, we analyzed a large dataset of content marketing pages t…

Most advertisers spend hours managing keywords, bids, and targeting – but overlook the one thing searchers actually notice: the ad itself. If your ads aren’t strong, nothing else in your account can save you. Why ad copy is the heart of your PPC account When I look at how many Google and Microsoft Ads accounts are being managed, I see a lot of time devoted to: Search term management. Complex bid strategies. Keyword research. Inactionable data analysis. In many accounts, the ads are often neglected. However, your ads are the most crucial part of your PPC account. Your ads are the only aspect of your account that a searcher sees. …

Each month, we host an SEO update covering the latest in search and AI. During this month’s edition, our SEO experts Carolyn Shelby and Alex Moss, cover everything from the latest advances in Agentic AI to Google’s spam and core updates and why simply publishing more content is no longer enough and in many cases actively works against you. Read this recap for the highlights or watch the April 2026 SEO Update by Yoast to delve into the latest news. Watch the full recap on YouTube to dive deeper into these topics, hear some examples and hear the answer to audience questions. SEO and AI news from April 2026 Google introduces new AI agent signals and infrastructu…

In the early days of SEO, authority was a crude concept. In the early 2000s, ranking well often came down to how effectively you could game PageRank. Buy enough links, repeat the right keywords, and visibility followed. It was mechanical, transactional, and remarkably easy to manipulate. Two decades later, that version of search is largely extinct. Algorithms have matured. So has Google’s understanding of brands, people, and real-world reputation. In a landscape increasingly shaped by AI-powered discovery, authority is no longer a secondary ranking factor – it’s the foundational principle. This is the logical conclusion of a long, deliberate evolution in search. …

When you work on your site’s SEO, reflecting on those efforts should be part of your ongoing strategy. Whether it’s for a client, your manager, or your team, creating an SEO report is the best way to do so. This helps you justify your efforts, keep track of performance and figure out what needs to be tackled next. And it’s not as hard as you would think. In this blog post, we’ll explain what SEO reporting is and take you through the process step by step. Table of contents What is SEO reporting exactly? What to include in your SEO report A general data overview Data on (content) performance Activities previous period A summary with recommendations Creating an SEO …

Affiliate networks aren’t one-size-fits-all. Between evolving tracking laws, new tech capabilities, and shifting fee structures, the best choice depends on your business model and goals. This guide breaks down top affiliate networks by use case, so you can make a smarter, more strategic decision. The data-driven approach to choosing an affiliate network If you’re ready to launch an affiliate program – a marketing channel where others promote you on a revenue-sharing or performance basis – but aren’t sure which affiliate network to choose, I’ve got you covered. Over the last 20+ years, I’ve worked as an affiliate, an in-house affiliate manager, managed…

If there’s one area of Google Ads that often baffles even seasoned practitioners, it’s audience targeting. Within audience targeting, there’s a special option called custom segments that allows us to build our own audiences using Google’s proprietary data. While custom segments can be immensely powerful, they are also immensely confusing. What is a custom segment in Google Ads? A custom segment lets you build a targeted audience based on the content a user has recently interacted with. Think of it this way: instead of saying, “I want to show an ad on a website about running shoes,” you’re saying, “I want to show an ad to a person who has recently shown in…

Whether you lead a scaling brand or an established global enterprise, you already know the frustration. You’re watching massive digital budgets yield diminishing returns, while agile disruptors consistently beat you to the punch. When you audit the citations within AI Overviews, ChatGPT responses, and Claude summaries, the reality is stark. Smaller, faster competitors are claiming more of the most lucrative, bottom-of-funnel commercial queries. It’s time to challenge the outdated assumption that legacy domain authority is enough to protect your pipeline. We’ve entered an era where operational agility often beats legacy brand equity. AI models demand rapid, mac…

Website migrations have a well-earned reputation for going wrong, with even well-planned migrations leading to rankings slipping, traffic dropping, or tracking breaking. But most migration problems come from small oversights rather than complex technical failures. You can reduce your risk with a staged approach. The checks you complete during staging, on launch day, and in the first few weeks after go-live often determine whether a migration stabilizes quickly or becomes a long recovery project. Before launch: Catch issues on staging Most migration problems should be found and fixed on the staging site. If issues reach the live site, recovery is slower and mor…

Educational videos are among the top 10 most-consumed video content formats globally, according to Statista. And it makes sense. Video is one of the fastest, most engaging ways to teach, demonstrate, and connect. But for creators and businesses alike, making a video that actually works (as in: educates, retains, or converts) requires more than hitting “record.” I’ve been creating online content for years, so I know what works and what doesn’t. Our online SEO training has helped thousands of marketers level up their skills through self-paced modules, monthly live Q&A webinars, and on-demand videos. Our “Ask Us Anything” video series and SEO a…

SEO is transitioning from rank, click, and convert to get scraped, summarized, and recommended. We’ve entered the era of invisible attribution known as the dark SEO funnel — where traditional top-of-funnel (TOFU) traffic is collapsing, the messy middle is getting messier, and SEO success can no longer be measured by clicks. Up to 84% of B2B buyers now use AI for vendor discovery, and 68% start their search in AI tools before they ever touch Google, new data from Wynter reveals. Buyers are using ChatGPT to narrow down their options and Google to verify. If you’re still judging SEO success by traffic, you’re optimizing for a model that no longer exists. Here’s…

Somewhere inside your CRM is a customer who does not exist. They open emails at impossible hours. They redeem promotions with machine-like precision. They browse product pages across three devices in under five minutes. They convert, unsubscribe, re-engage and transact again. On paper, they look highly active. In reality, they may be a composite of behaviors stitched together from AI assistants, shared accounts, recycled addresses, autofill tools and automated workflows. This is the Data Doppelgänger Problem. And it is about to become one of the most expensive blind spots in modern marketing. For years, identity resolution was framed as a hygiene issue. Clean …

Missed the final SEO Update by Yoast of 2025? Our in-house principal SEOs, Carolyn Shelby and Alex Moss, broke down December’s biggest search shifts, from Gemini’s integration to Google’s publisher deals, and answered your burning questions. Don’t forget to watch the replay and sign up for the next edition! Watch the full replay below (or read on for the highlights). 2025 in a nutshell: The three biggest SEO shifts 2025 was the year AI officially took over search. Here’s what mattered most: From rankings to retrieval: AI overviews and chat interfaces made being cited more important than ranking #1. EEAT became non-negotiable: Google (and users) demand…

For years, search campaigns have been an imperative part of one’s PPC strategy. However, the landscape is shifting and Google is increasingly prioritizing shopping within the user experience, changing how users interact with the SERPs and how we as advertisers approach strategy for ecommerce clients. With continued investment in AI-powered tools like Performance Max, which has absorbed much of what traditional search once offered, recent betas such as AI Max, and now Google testing a massive new carousel format for Shopping ads, the platform is clearly moving toward a Shopping-first ecosystem. As these changes roll out, traditional search ads are getting less…

The AI engine pipeline runs 10 gates from discovered through won. Discovered is the bot finding your page. Alongside selected, crawled, rendered, and indexed, those five infrastructure gates get you legible to the machine. Annotated, recruited, grounded, and displayed are the four competitive gates where the algorithm decides whether your brand is the brand it’s prepared to put in front of a buyer. Won is the gate that pays for everything: the click happens, the recommendation lands, and the agent transacts. Won has changed beyond recognition in the last 24 months. It used to mean a click on a search result, the human doing the picking, the brand competin…

Every digital PR (DPR) team’s been there: New data drops and the team huddles while someone stares at a blank Google doc spiraling over angles and journalist targets. Eventually, a pitch limps out the door just in time to hit “Send” before end of day. The pitch then lands in a top-tier publication, everyone celebrates, and the next month the whole team does the exact same thing over again, like it never happened. But here’s the thing nobody talks about: That winning pitch is a valuable asset, and most teams will just leave it sitting in their sent folder collecting virtual dust. Whether it was a data study, a product launch, or an expert quote, that pitch is …

For years, SEO and PPC defined two sides of search – one focused on organic authority, the other on paid performance. Both aimed to capture traffic but often worked in silos, optimizing toward different goals. Now, that separation is ending. The rise of generative AI has redrawn the map, merging once-distinct disciplines into a single, fluid ecosystem. Search engines like Google and Bing have evolved into conversational AI platforms that deliver instant, often singular answers while seamlessly integrating ads. This shift – marked by zero-click results, conversational interfaces, and pre-packaged information – means no single strategy can guarantee…

People are already turning to AI to answer questions, compare products, and make decisions in seconds. That shift exposes a fundamental problem: the web’s underlying structure was never built for machines. As AI agents mature, the way information is delivered – and the need for traditional webpages – could change dramatically. Disruption is normal – even when we don’t see it coming The idea that the web as we know it could end, which I mentioned during a live OXD podcast in Salzburg, drew reactions ranging from thoughtful to angry. Someone even insisted, “The web will always be there.” But anyone paying attention knows that “always” and “never” r…

We are navigating the “search everywhere” revolution – a disruptive shift driven by generative AI and large language models (LLMs) that is reshaping the relationship between brands, consumers, and search engines. For the last two decades, the digital economy ran on a simple exchange: content for clicks. With the rise of zero-click experiences, AI Overviews, and assistant-led research, that exchange is breaking down. AI now synthesizes answers directly on the SERP, often satisfying intent without a visit to a website. Platforms such as Gemini and ChatGPT are fundamentally changing how information is discovered. For enterprises, visibility increasingl…