SEO Tools and Resources

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…

You no longer need to login or create an account to use ChatGPT Search from OpenAI. You can now just use ChatGPT without an account. The announcement. OpenAI announced this on X, saying: ChatGPT search is now available to everyone on http://chatgpt.com — no sign up required. ChatGPT search is now available to everyone on https://t.co/nYW5KO1aIg — no sign up required. pic.twitter.com/VElT7cxxjZ — OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 5, 2025 More details. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Search in October 2024 and then made it free for all users in mid-December. Now, you don’t even need an account to use ChatGPT Search. How it works. According to OpenAI: “The search …

SEO is essential for improving a website’s visibility on search engines like Google, both globally and locally. However, a one-size-fits-all approach won’t effectively attract customers in specific regions. To stand out in a particular geographic area, you must implement localized SEO strategies tailored to local search behavior, competition, and cultural preferences. This article explores key actions to enhance your website’s visibility within a specific region. From global to local strategies: Understanding your potential local market To increase visibility in a specific region, start with market research to understand your potential users in the are…

SEO agencies are perfectly positioned to expand their services to include website management. The connection between SEO and site maintenance is clear: both prioritize keeping websites fast, functional, and optimized for search engines. Tasks like improving load times, fixing errors, and maintaining security align with what SEO agencies already do. By offering website management alongside SEO, agencies can build new revenue streams, potentially including reselling site hosting. Unlike project-based SEO work, site management creates opportunities for ongoing, predictable income through recurring service plans. This is a strategic way to grow your business and…

You’ve probably played around with Demographics in your Google Ads campaigns, but have you experimented with Detailed Demographics? This audience targeting technique is a powerful tool for reaching your ideal customers – and excluding your not-ideal customers. This article will cover: Basic vs. Detailed Demographics: What’s the difference? What type of Detailed Demographics are available in Google Ads? How to use Detailed Demographics in your campaigns Sample use cases for Detailed Demographics Basic vs. Detailed Demographics: What’s the difference? Your basic demographic options in Google Ads are age, gender, parental status, and household i…

Shopify is one of the most impressive internet success stories. According to BuiltWith, the Canadian ecommerce giant now powers almost five million stores worldwide. Merchants choose Shopify for its ease of use, robust features, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. Let’s go over the main reasons for choosing Shopify. Table of contents What is Shopify and what does it do? How does Shopify work? 7 Key benefits of choosing Shopify Unique selling points of Shopify Considerations before choosing Shopify These are the main reasons to choose Shopify What is Shopify and what does it do? Shopify is an ecommerce platform that has everything under one roof. It’s a c…

Is your landing page converting better—or worse—than your competitors’? If you’re not sure, now’s the time to find out. Unbounce’s new Conversion Benchmark Report provides a clear, data-backed look at how landing pages are performing across industries. The report includes median conversion rates by sector, giving marketers a useful baseline to assess their own performance. The report also offers helpful guidance for interpreting your own results—whether you’re outperforming the median or identifying areas for optimization. It reminds marketers that conversion rate is just one piece of the puzzle: lower conversion rates might still represent high-value leads, and e…

Have you been hit by a 5xx server error in Google Search Console? 500 errors are an HTTP status code that indicates you messed up something and need to start a late-night debugging session. 500 errors are offensive. I can only compare it to eating fermented shark in Iceland – something you’ll want to spit out almost immediately. 500 server errors create a poor user experience and can reduce your crawl budget. If they persist, Google may start ignoring your site altogether. Your website should be commitment-worthy. If you’re an SEO professional, you’ve likely stayed up until 3 a.m. with coffee and your DevOps team trying to fix a 500 error. You’ll want t…

As generative AI continues to shape website performance, much of the conversation has focused on its negative impact. Factors like AI Overviews, increased zero-click searches, and a growing demographic that turns to ChatGPT instead of traditional research methods may all play a role. While these shifts raise concerns, it’s equally important to examine the traffic these AI engines are driving to websites. To better understand this, we analyzed traffic data from 391 SMB websites, breaking them down by industry and AI search engine referrals. Our goal was to see exactly how much traffic these companies were getting – and whether it was significant enough y…

Google announced plans to update how Google Tag Manager (GTM) interacts with Google Ads to streamline data collection and improve tracking reliability. This change is scheduled for April 10. Key changes: Google tag loads first. GTM containers with Google Ads and Floodlight tags will automatically load a Google tag before firing events. Easier feature access. Users can turn on Enhanced Conversions, Cross-domain tracking, and Autoevents directly from Google tag settings. Smoother data collection. If Customer Data Terms of Service are accepted, User Provided Data collection will be enabled automatically across events. Why we care. This update aims to en…

Google released a new help page detailing Asset testing for retailers, a specialized experiment type for Performance Max campaigns that lets you measure the effectiveness of your creative assets. What’s new. The new experimental feature tests asset impact within a single PMax campaign: A control group (feed-only) is compared against a treatment group (with added assets). The results are viewable in the Experiment report. Split testing without duplicate campaigns. Unlike traditional A/B testing that requires running parallel campaigns, this new feature splits traffic within a single Performance Max campaign: Control group: Shows product feed-only ads. …

Google will begin redirecting its country code top-level domain names (ccTLD) versions of its Google domain to Google.com. That means if you frequent google.fr (in France), google.ng (in Nigeria) and so on, you will be redirected to Google.com. Why the change. Google said, “Over the years, our ability to provide a local experience has improved. In 2017, we began providing the same experience with local results for everyone using Search, whether they were using google.com or their country’s ccTLD.” “Because of this improvement, country-level domains are no longer necessary,” Google added. Google said, “we’ll begin redirecting traffic from these ccTLDs to google.com…

If you manage both SEO and PPC, striking the right balance is key to maximizing efficiency and ROI. When paid search campaigns compete with high-performing organic listings, brands end up spending more while gaining little additional traffic. Keyword cannibalization dilutes search performance, inflates costs, and reduces overall marketing effectiveness. This guide will help you recognize the warning signs of PPC cannibalization, test its impact, and implement strategies to ensure both channels work together for optimal results. Signs your PPC campaigns are cannibalizing your SEO rankings Declining organic click-through rates If your organic ranking…

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. …

After 25 years of working in SEO, I’ve seen firsthand how traditional keyword research methods fail to keep up with Google’s advancements. In my SMX Next presentation, I challenged SEOs to go beyond outdated keyword methodologies and embrace an intent-driven approach. Here are six key insights from that session. 1. Traditional keyword research is failing us Traditional keyword research is no longer enough. We’ve relied on tools that provide data on competition, search volume, and relevance, but they don’t uncover the hidden context behind searches. For years, SEOs have prioritized high-volume, low-competition keywords, assuming this would drive r…

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…

Google’s AI Overviews expanded greatly in three sectors – entertainment, restaurants, and travel – during the March 2025 core update. By the numbers. Between March 13 and 27, according to data shared with Search Engine Land by enterprise SEO platform BrightEdge, the presence of AI Overviews grew by: 528% for entertainment queries (e.g., [Julia Roberts movies], [Movies filmed in Chicago]). 387% for restaurant queries (e.g., [date night restaurants], [Thai restaurant near me], [downtown restaurants]). 381% for travel queries (e.g., [things to do in Santa Fe], [things to do in Hawaii], [things to do in Las Vegas]). But. Part of the reason for these high…

Advances in AI search are opening a new chapter, with consumers exploring Google alternatives. ChatGPT has hit a new milestone of 300 million weekly active users. Perplexity has grown to serve 100 million queries per week. Google’s global market share trended below 90% for the first time since 2015. The rapid rise of AI search platforms brings significant opportunities and growing challenges. On one hand, brands can boost visibility and drive demand like never before. On the other hand, they face new hurdles, such as copyright concerns, increasing infrastructure costs, and the ongoing challenge of measuring ROI. Despite shifts in search interf…

Target ROAS is the most sophisticated of Google’s smart bidding strategies. In previous articles, we’ve tackled Maximize Conversions, Target CPA and Maximize Conversion Value. This article explores the ins and outs of Target ROAS bidding, including: What does conversion value mean in Google Ads? What does ROAS mean? How Target ROAS bidding works in Google Ads 8 Expert Tips for using Target ROAS effectively Should you use Target ROAS bidding in Google Ads? What does conversion value mean in Google Ads? Before we can discuss Target ROAS bidding, or even ROAS, we need to understand what “conversion value” means in Google Ads. Conversion…

If users don’t interact with your page in Google’s search results, Google may remove that page from its results – or possibly even its index. That’s according to a recent short video Google’s Martin Splitt posted on the Google Search Central YouTube channel. This information confirms what Google said in their recent (since 2019) communication and once again with the Navboost details from the DOJ trails, and the data leak. What Google said. Here is a partial quote from the video, which I will embed below: “If they are not showing up so it’s either that the query is a bit weird or that the query hasn’t actually been asked that much or that we have other pag…

Google concluded a 14-year legal battle over advertising billing practices, agreeing to a substantial settlement without admitting any wrongdoing. The resolution marks a significant moment in the company’s complex history of digital advertising regulations. The big picture. The lawsuit centered on allegations that Google manipulated its AdWords platform between 2004 and 2012, specifically targeting two key issues: artificially reducing advertiser discounts through Smart Pricing and distributing ads beyond advertisers’ designated geographic location. Context. Advertisers accused Google of violating California’s unfair competition law, claiming the tech giant misled…

The concept of the funnel is so fundamental to digital marketing, it’s hard to imagine a world where it doesn’t serve as the go-to metaphor for lead generation and capture. There’s only one problem: it doesn’t fit with the way real humans engage with information on today’s internet. With access to more data than ever before—and tech to interpret that data for marketers looking to write the right content to drive organic traffic—we now know the better framework for marketers to embrace is the spiderweb. Sign up today to join Search Engine Land and Ryan Brock for this live event and learn how to shift your thinking around your organic content strategy to create the …

Your online presence is a crucial part of your professional identity, and how you manage it can make all the difference. Personal branding helps build trust with colleagues, clients, and recruiters – and it all starts with personal SEO. While many focus on polishing their resume or LinkedIn profile, your digital footprint extends far beyond these platforms. This article will guide you through proven strategies to optimize your online visibility and ensure you stand out. What is personal SEO and why does it matter? Personal SEO involves optimizing your online presence so that your name appears at the top of search results for relevant queries. This…

Public relations (PR) is no longer just a supporting tactic, it’s becoming a core strategy for brands looking to stay visible in the age of AI search. AI-powered search engines increasingly rely on brand mentions, reputation, and authority signals pulled from across the web – areas where PR excels. In this new landscape, the question isn’t whether PR matters to search – it’s how much it now leads the charge. AI is changing human content discovery habits The rise of AI-powered search engines is radically changing how people discover information online. Traditional “blue links” on Google’s search results pages (SERPs) are being displaced by: AI-ge…

The U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of states unveiled their proposed remedies today aimed at dismantling Google’s illegal monopoly in search and search advertising. These include breaking off Chrome and banning default search payments. The remedies. They break down into five categories meant to enable and increase competition: Distribution remedies. This would mean ending payments that “freeze the ecosystem in place,” including Google’s multi-billion-dollar payments to Apple and Android device makers. Chrome divestiture. This would separate Chrome from Google – organizationally and financially. Chrome accounts for 35% of all Google search queries …