SEO Tools and Resources

LinkedIn is making Reserved Ads generally available to all managed accounts, giving marketers the ability to lock in the first ad slot in the feed for premium visibility. What’s new. Reserved Ads let advertisers secure top-of-feed placement at a fixed rate, providing predictable delivery, consistent reach, and greater share of voice. Early results show the format drives up to 75% higher dwell time, 88% higher view-through rates, and delivers 99% of forecasted impressions, according to LinkedIn. How it works. Reserved Ads appear in the most visible ad slot on LinkedIn’s feed and support most Sponsored Content formats, including Video, Single Image, Carousel, Do…

Google has removed its long-standing unified pricing rules in Google Ad Manager, once again allowing publishers to set different price floors for Google demand versus other programmatic buyers. What changed. Publishers can now set bidder-specific floor prices in Ad Manager. For example, one buyer can be required to bid at least $5 while others compete at a lower $2 floor. Google has also rebranded “unified pricing rules” as simply “pricing rules.” The backstory. Before 2019, publishers often set higher floors for Google to counterbalance its data advantage. That flexibility disappeared when Google mandated uniform pricing across exchanges — a move later scrutinize…

Google recently rolled out “read more” links in Google search results, which appear at the end of the snippet’s description. When you click on the read more link, you are anchored down to a specific portion of the web page that you clicked on. Not all search result snippets include these read more links, but many do. What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of this in action, but you can probably replicate it for most of your queries now: Google was testing this, or variations of this, back in July and now it seems to have been rolled out. Why we care. These read more links do add an additional eye-catching link to the search result snippets. Hopeful…

Google has expanded Product Studio inside Merchant Center, rolling out three new creative features that go beyond its original image generation tool. What’s new. In addition to image generation, Product Studio now lets merchants animate static product images into short videos using suggested text prompts, a move aimed squarely at short-form ads and social-style creative. Google has also added one-click background removal to help isolate products and create cleaner, more consistent Shopping visuals. The third update increases image resolution, allowing advertisers to upscale older or lower-quality assets to meet modern visual standards. Why we care. P…

Google today began rolling out Gemini 3 Flash as the default model powering AI Mode in Search worldwide. The upgrade brings faster performance and stronger reasoning to AI-generated search responses, Google said. Why we care. With AI Mode, Google continues to transition toward an AI-first search approach. More queries could be answered directly in AI Mode, reducing reliance on traditional organic listings. Improved reasoning allows AI Mode to handle comparison and planning tasks, multi-intent searches, and research-style queries. What’s changing. Gemini 3 Flash now powers AI Mode in Search globally. It replaces earlier Flash-class models previously used in AI…

Google Search’s Danny Sullivan and John Mueller pushed back – yet again – on the idea that brands need a separate AI SEO strategy, during the latest Search Off the Record episode. Sullivan’s take is simple: the acronyms keep multiplying (GEO, AEO, etc.), but the advice stays unchanged: Write for humans, not for ranking systems, whether those systems are traditional search or LLM-powered experiences. Why we care. As AI search grows, a lot of publishers and SEOs are feeling pressured to try something new. Google’s take: chasing AI tricks can actually hurt and distract you from making content people actually like. Google says the north star hasn’t moved. Sullivan…

Google updated its JavaScript SEO best practices document, for the second time this week, this time to clarify canonicalization best practices for JavaScript. In short, Google said “setting the canonical URL to the same URL as in the original HTML or if that isn’t possible, to leave the canonical URL out of the original HTML.” What Google added. Google added a new section over here and it reads: “The rel=”canonical” link tag helps Google find the canonical version of a page. You can use JavaScript to set the canonical URL, but keep in mind that you shouldn’t use JavaScript to change the canonical URL to something else than the URL you specified as the canonical U…

For years, PPC advertisers have considered Performance Max (and Smart Shopping before it) to be a black box, even a black hole. While its powerful automation drives convincing results, the lack of transparency into channel performance has been a persistent frustration. Now, Google is beginning to provide some answers. The rollout of the new Channel Performance report marks a significant step toward the transparency advertisers have been demanding. This guide explains what the report is, highlights its strengths and weaknesses, and shows you how to use it. What is the Channel Performance report – and why is it a big deal? The Channel Performance r…

If you’re planning to build a website or publish a blog post, you’ve probably heard the word permalink pop up. But what is a permalink, really? In simple words, it’s the permanent link to a page on your website, like the official street address of your house. No matter how many times you update your content, this link remains the same and tells people (and Google) exactly where that page is located. In this blog, we’ll break down what a permalink is, why it matters, how to pick the right permalink structure, and how Yoast SEO helps you manage everything easily. Quick note: If your website is already established, changing existing permalinks can cause broken links and …

Microsoft Copilot is transforming search advertising by turning everyday conversations into intent-rich signals advertisers can act on. ROAS increases 13-fold when users engage with Copilot before performing a search, according to Microsoft. Drawing from billions of first-party audience insights across Microsoft’s consumer ecosystem – including Bing, Edge, Xbox, LinkedIn, and Activision – Copilot identifies high-value audiences using deterministic data built from search intent, web activity, and profile information. This allows advertisers to reduce wasted impressions and stretch budgets further. The mechanics of intent-rich search The core propositi…

Why this matters now Marketing budgets in 2025 have stayed the same, yet expectations keep rising. CMOs report budgets stuck at roughly 7.7% of company revenue, which means teams are expected to do more with the same dollars. In that context, the most practical use of AI is not a moonshot, but a set of clear fixes to everyday bottlenecks that slow teams down and drive costs up. This article breaks down four problems that marketers face right now and how AI is already solving them. The difference today is that Artlist AI, including image, video and voice generators, turns AI from a novelty into a reliable production system. When you use AI to streamline your workflo…

Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, is clarifying how keyword match types interact with AI Overviews (AIO) and AI Mode ad placements — addressing ongoing confusion among advertisers testing AI Max and mixed match-type setups. Why we care. As ads expand into AI-powered placements, advertisers need to understand which keywords are eligible to serve — and when — to avoid unintentionally blocking reach or misreading performance. Back in May. Responding to questions from Marketing Director Yoav Eitani, Marvin confirmed that an ad can serve either above or below an AI Overview or within the AI Overview — but not both in the same auction: “Your ad could trigger to s…

Google rapidly expanded AI Overviews in search during 2025, then pulled back as they moved into commercial and navigational queries. These findings are based on a new Semrush analysis of more than 10 million keywords from January to November. AI Overviews surged, then retreated. Google didn’t roll out AI Overviews in a straight line in 2025. A mid-year spike gave way to a pullback, suggesting Google moved fast to test the feature, then eased off based on user data: January: 6.5% of queries triggered an AI Overview July: AI Overview visibility peaked, appearing in just under 25% of queries. November: Coverage fell back to less than 16% of queries. Zero-c…

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…

Google’s pitch for AI-powered bidding is seductive. Feed the algorithm your conversion data, set a target, and let it optimize your campaigns while you focus on strategy. Machine learning will handle the rest. What Google doesn’t emphasize is that its algorithms optimize for Google’s goals, not necessarily yours. In 2026, as Smart Bidding becomes more opaque and Performance Max absorbs more campaign types, knowing when to guide the algorithm – and when to override it – has become a defining skill that separates average PPC managers from exceptional ones. AI bidding can deliver spectacular results, but it can also quietly destroy profitable campaigns …

Shopify powers more than 6 million live ecommerce websites, supported by a robust app ecosystem that can extend nearly every part of the customer journey. Anyone can develop an app to perform virtually any function. But with so many integrations to choose from, ecommerce teams often waste time testing add-ons that promise revenue gains but fail to deliver. Having worked across a wide range of Shopify implementations, I’ve seen which tools consistently improve checkout completion, recover abandoned carts, and increase revenue. Based on that experience, I’ve organized the most effective integrations into three tiers by priority – so you can implement the …

Google’s Nick Fox, the SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google, said in a recent podcast that doing optimization for AI search is “the same” as doing optimization and SEO for traditional search. He added, you want to build great sites, with great content, for your users. More details. This came up in the AI Inside podcast with Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis interviewing Nick Fox. Here is the transcript from the 22 minute mark: Jeff Jarvis ask, “And is is there are there is there guidance for enlightened publishers who want to be part of AI about how they should view, should they view their content in any say differently no?” Nick Fox responded, “The short an…

We celebrated a major milestone in June: the return of SMX Advanced as an in-person event. It was our first since 2019. More than a conference, SMX Advanced 2025 was a reunion. Search marketers from around the world came together to connect, exchange ideas, and learn the most current and advanced insights in search. But search never stands still. With rapid shifts in AI SEO, constant algorithm changes, and the challenge of balancing generative AI with a human touch, the need for truly advanced, actionable education has never been greater. Help shape SMX Advanced 2026 We’re committed to making the SMX Advanced 2026 program our most relevant, advanced, and e…

Google Search Console seems to have fixed the weeks long delay with the search performance reports. For the past few weeks, we had 50+ hour delays for these reports, but as of the past several hours, the reports seem to be up-to-date. Now up-to-date. If you go to the search performance report, you should just see anywhere between about 2 – 6 hours of delay, which is typically normal. At some point over the past few weeks, the delays were over 70 hours. This is what I see: The delays started a few weeks ago and it took about three weeks to clear the delay and backlog of data. Page indexing report. Meanwhile, the page indexing report delay we reported ma…

Managing large catalogs in Google Performance Max can feel like handing the algorithm your wallet and hoping for the best. La Maison Simons faced that exact challenge: too many products and not enough control. Then they rebuilt their segmentation with Channable Insights and turned a “black box” campaign into a revenue-generating machine. Step 1: Stop segmenting by category Simons originally split campaigns by product category. It sounded logical – until their best-selling sweater ate the budget and newer or overlooked products never had a chance to surface. Static segmentation meant limited visibility and slow decisions. Marketers stayed stuck making m…

Doing SEO well often means knowing what to focus on and when to do so. That is not always easy, especially when you are juggling content, updates, and day-to-day site management. That is why we are introducing a new SEO task list in the Yoast plugin. The Task List helps you improve your SEO step by step, directly inside your dashboard. It turns best practices into clear, actionable tasks, so you can make progress with confidence and without second-guessing your work. Why the SEO checklist matters: Turn SEO advice into clear actions Instead of vague recommendations or long documentation, the Task List shows you exactly what to do next. Each item fo…

Google Ads introduced View-Through Conversion (VTC)–optimised bidding for Android App campaigns, giving advertisers a visible toggle to optimise toward conversions that happen after an ad is viewed, not clicked. Previously, VTC existed only as a hidden signal within Google’s systems. Now, it’s an explicit optimisation option. The shift. Google is continuing to move app advertising away from click-centric logic and toward incrementality and influence, especially for formats like YouTube and in-feed video. This update aligns bidding more closely with how users actually discover and install apps. Why we care. Advertisers can now bid beyond clicks, improvi…

Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, admitted that Google “for sure messed up” by underinvesting in AI and failing to seriously pursue the opportunity after releasing the research that led to today’s generative AI era. Driving the news. Google didn’t take it seriously enough and failed to scale fast enough after the Transformer paper, Brin said. Also: Google was “too scared to bring it to people” because chatbots can “say dumb things.” “OpenAI ran with it,” which was “a super smart insight.” The full quote. Brin said: “I guess I would say in some ways we for sure messed up in that we underinvested and sort of didn’t take it as seriously as we should have…

Google has updated its JavaScript SEO basics documentation to clarify how Google’s crawler handles noindex tags in pages that use JavaScript. In short, if “you do want the page indexed, don’t use a noindex tag in the original page code,” Google wrote. What is new. Google updated this section to read: “When Google encounters the noindex tag, it may skip rendering and JavaScript execution, which means using JavaScript to change or remove the robots meta tag from noindex may not work as expected. If you do want the page indexed, don’t use a noindex tag in the original page code.” In the past, it read: “If Google encounters the noindex tag, it skips renderin…

The SEO industry is entering its most turbulent period yet. Traffic is declining. AI is absorbing informational queries. Social platforms now function as search engines. Google is shifting from a gateway to an answer engine. The result is a sector running in circles – unsure what to measure, what to optimize, or even what SEO is meant to do. Yet within this turbulence, something clear has emerged. A single marketing metric that cuts through the noise and signals brand health and future demand. A metric that marketers and SEOs can align around with confidence. That metric is share of search. Discovery is changing, and measurement must chan…