SEO Tools and Resources

Could ChatGPT launch an advertising product within the next year? The answer seems to be yes, based on internal OpenAI documents. OpenAI appears to forecast a billion dollars in new revenue from “free user monetization” in 2026. That figure is forecast to grow to nearly $25 billion by 2029 of OpenAI’s total $125 billion projection. The chart. Here’s a chart (shared by Juan González Villa on X) of OpenAI’s projection of rising revenues that includes “new products (including free user monetization).” Yes, that means ads: Why we care. ChatGPT has an estimated 600 million monthly users. The ability for advertisers to reach ChatGPT’s users represents a signif…

Google today expanded its Checkout on Merchant feature to Demand Gen campaigns serving on YouTube In-stream inventory. Previously available only for Performance Max campaigns and organic shopping results, this update brings the streamlined checkout experience to more advertising channels. By the numbers. Advertisers providing checkout URLs have seen an average 11% increase in conversion value at similar CPA in their Demand Gen campaigns, according to Google data. How it works: Checkout on Merchant creates an accelerated path from product discovery to purchase. Users can quickly add products to cart or proceed to checkout on merchant websites. Merch…

Google Analytics introduced a new AI-powered feature called Generated insights that automatically detects and explains significant data fluctuations. The feature uses natural language to surface trends and anomalies — potentially saving you hours of manual work and so you can react faster to what’s really going on. How it works. The Generated insights feature identifies unusual patterns (e.g., unexpected conversion spikes), then analyzes several combinations of dimensions and metrics to determine probable causes. It then delivers explanations in plain language directly within the Analytics interface. Generated insights appear natively within detailed reports…

Widely used bidding and targeting algorithms have left paid social advertisers with fewer levers to drive differentiated campaign performance in 2025. One of those levers – and perhaps the biggest in B2B campaigns – is creative. But this article isn’t about how to design beautiful, on-brand, high-performing creative elements. It’s about building a testing process that helps you identify which creative is actually moving the growth needle and where to go from there. This article covers: B2B creative trends to know for 2025. Paid social creative testing recommendations. Common paid social creative testing mistakes. General. LinkedIn. Meta…

Fueled by “impressive YoY growth,” paid search advertising revenues hit a new high in 2024, according to a new report. In total, search accounted for $102.9 billion of a record $258.6 billion in U.S. digital advertising revenues, according to the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report: Full Year 2024, conducted by PwC. That is a $14.1 billion increase compared to 2023. Why we care. Paid search becomes more expensive and challenging every year, with less transparency. But advertisers continue to pour money into paid search because it drives results for brands and businesses. Paid search is still king. Search continues to own the largest market share of adverti…

TikTok launched two new ad placement controls – Video Exclusion List and Profile Feed Exclusion List – giving brands more power to block specific videos and user profiles from appearing alongside their ads. The update is part of TikTok’s broader Safety Suite, and comes alongside the debut of a new Brand Safety & Suitability Playbook to help advertisers navigate their options. What’s new. Two new tools are now available globally via the Brand Safety Hub in TikTok Ads Manager. Advertisers can manage their lists directly or partner with third-party verification firms: Video Exclusion List. Advertisers can block individual video IDs from appearing next to the…

The dust still hasn’t settled. If you’re a recipe, travel, or lifestyle blogger, chances are the past few weeks have felt like a gut punch. On March 13, Google rolled out its first core update of 2025 – a sweeping algorithmic change that lasted 13 days and left many independent creators reeling. Some saw their traffic drop by half, and others fell completely out of the rankings for posts that had been steady performers for years. The volatility didn’t just shake the search results; it shook people’s confidence in the entire system. Just eight days earlier, on March 5, Google launched its much-anticipated AI Mode, officially opening the floodgates fo…

As AI-powered SEO platforms evolve, they’re rewriting the economics of search engine optimization. This transformation threatens to upend the traditional agency model in three ways: Dramatically lower costs. Automate technical capabilities. Provide unbiased, data-driven decisions. Yet, this disruption might lead to industry consolidation and expansion as fewer but larger agencies emerge to serve an expanding market of SEO adopters. This article looks at how to survive the new agency economics. The economics of disruption Today’s SEO agency model typically involves monthly retainers ranging from $2,000 to $20,000, depending on the scope and co…

Ad headlines are one of the foundational building blocks of your campaign. These tiny bits of text create a first impression for your target customer, and play a real role in convincing them to click (or scroll right past). And yet, if you’re honest with yourself, does writing headlines usually come as an afterthought? In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about crafting Google Ads headlines across campaign types, including: How many headlines do you need in Google Ads? What is a long headline in Google Ads? Will my search ad headlines always show up? How to get Excellent Ad Strength with your headlines How to craft ad hea…

Most advertisers will confidently tell you that the cost per click (CPC) on Google Ads rises year after year. But is that actually true? And if it is, how quickly are CPCs inflating? Surprisingly, there’s no simple answer. To get closer to the truth, we’ll explore three reliable data sources – and explain why this question matters more than most advertisers realize. The problem of CPC inflation If you advertise on Google, CPC inflation should be high on your list of concerns. Why? Because rising CPCs directly erode advertising performance. For example, if CPCs increase by 5% this year, your budget will deliver 5% fewer clicks – assuming all othe…

Bring your Shopify products to life in Google searches. Highlight product variants that shoppers care about—color, size, pattern, material and audience demography—and watch your clicks and sales soar. Why you and your customers will love it Attract more shoppers Make it easier for Google to show exactly what customers are searching for. Stand apart Richer product details and search snippets help you outshine competitors. Confidence and clarity Easily check your structured data in the Schema tab—no more confusion. No extra cost Available immediately for all Yoast SEO for Shopify users. Here’s how to try it: To access the Yoast …

If you optimize your articles for similar terms, your rankings might suffer from keyword or content cannibalization: you’ll be ‘devouring’ your chances to rank in Google! Especially when your site is growing, your content could start competing with itself. Here, we’ll explain why keyword and content cannibalism can harm SEO, how to recognize it, and what to do about it. Table of contents What is keyword cannibalization? What is content cannibalization? Is cannibalization harmful? How to identify cannibalization issues How to fix cannibalization issues Preventive measures Common mistakes in addressing cannibalization Final thoughts on keyword and content cannibalizat…

Alphabet spent much of its Q1 2025 earnings call last night talking up the growth of AI Overviews, but dodged a question seeking clarity on how Google’s AI-generated answers impact click-through rates and conversion. Why we care. Did Google decide that last night wasn’t “the moment to go into details of click-through rate and conversion and so on” because they don’t want to state what is becoming clear to most of us? That click-through rates from AI Overviews are, simply, lower? Because, on the organic side, data shows that is certainly the case (see our Dig Deeper section, below). Many websites have seen traffic decline since AI Overviews launched last May. The e…

Google Analytics just made it easier to get quick insights and more accurate attribution. The Reports snapshot section now includes pre-built templates focused on user behavior, sales and revenue, and marketing performance. That means less time building custom reports and more time actually using the data. Alongside the templates, the card library has been updated, making it easier to browse and add the visualizations that matter most to your business. These templates help users quickly surface relevant insights without needing to manually create or configure reports. On the attribution front. Google Analytics will now use aggregate identifiers to att…

Link building is often 40% of an SEO budget – sometimes more in competitive industries. But here’s the problem: most companies aren’t calculating ROI before building links. That’s a fast way to burn through your budget without knowing what you’re getting in return. If you spend $5,000, $10,000, or even $50,000 a month on link building, you should know what kind of return to expect. This guide will show you how to calculate link building ROI before sending a single outreach email. We’ll cover how to assess a page’s revenue potential, estimate the cost of link building, and determine whether the investment pays off. You’ll know exactly how to forecast ROI, avoid…

Claude Sonnet 3.7 is the top-performing large language model (LLM) – it outperforms competitors like Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, and X’s Grok. That’s according to SEO agency Previsible’s new AI SEO Benchmark report. By the numbers. Claude Sonnet 3.7 “performed the best across the board,” earning an 83% score. But that score fell short against human SEOs (who scored 89%). LLMs averaged: 85% on content tasks. 79% on technical SEO. 63% on ecommerce SEO. Here’s how the other language models scored: Perplexity: 82% Gemini 2.5: 81% ChatGPT 4o: 79% ChatGPT o3-mini: 78% Copilot: 78% Deepseek: 78% Gemini 2.0 Flash: 71% Llama 4: 7…

Google started placing ads inside chat conversations with some third-party AI assistants, according to a Bloomberg report, marking another step in its push to monetize AI-powered search alternatives. Driving the news. Google’s AdSense network — traditionally used for placing ads in search results and across websites — is now running ads within chatbot interactions, according to people familiar with the rollout. The company reportedly began testing the feature earlier this year with conversational AI search startups iAsk and Liner. A Google spokesperson confirmed that AdSense is available “for websites that want to show relevant ads in their conversational AI e…

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 …

The fundamentals of SEO haven’t changed. You still need technical access, content clarity, and external credibility. But the requirements inside those pillars are evolving fast. AI-driven discovery systems are now shaping how your brand is surfaced, trusted, and recommended. And for many enterprise teams, the response has been: A content brainstorm. A wait-and-see approach. Or nothing at all. That’s not a strategy gap. It’s an execution problem in the making. Is your company preparing for what’s coming after ‘SEO’ fades away? Your SEO team may be running efficiently – protecting rankings, publishing content, and salvaging what they can from G…

ChatGPT announced the addition of shopping features to search last week. But how exactly is ChatGPT search choosing products and ranking them? Here’s what you need to know from OpenAI’s documentation. How product results are selected. When ChatGPT detects shopping intent in a query, it selects products based on a mix of the following: User intent and context Based on the user’s current query (e.g., “funny dog costumes”). May include saved memory (e.g., past dislikes, such as “clowns”). May factor in custom instructions (e.g., preferences like “I want affordable options”). Structured third-party data. Product metadata such as: Price. Product des…

Users who arrive on websites from LLMs are generally less likely to engage than those from traditional organic search. That’s according to a new study published today by Dan Taylor of SALT.agency. This new data seems to challenge claims by Google and Microsoft Bing that citations from AI search results result in higher-quality clicks. Why we care. It’s good to know that SEO remains a valuable channel. But it’s not good to know that search engines seem to be making fallacious statements to the entire community, all to support their “AI is the best thing ever” narrative. By the numbers. In most sectors, organic traffic outperforms LLM referrals in driving engage…

As AI-generated answers take over the search landscape, understanding what gets cited – and why – has never been more critical. Explore citation data across leading AI engines, see how B2B and B2C intent shapes visibility, and learn actionable SEO tactics to help your brand get found. This analysis is powered by Rankscale.ai, a platform tracking AI query visibility across the web. Why care where AI results come from? Understanding how generative AI engines cite their sources is crucial for effective SEO today. Visibility in responses from ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews hinges on getting your brand mentioned in the cont…

Google Ads today announced AI Max, a new tool to reach untapped queries and tailor ads with a single click. Rolling out globally in beta later this month, Google said AI Max integrates its most advanced targeting and creative tools into Search campaigns. Smarter matching. Broad match and keywordless tech help advertisers tap into high-performing queries they may have otherwise missed. Google AI learns from existing keywords, creative, and URLs to identify new opportunities. Real-time creative adaptation. New “text customization” (formerly “automatically created assets”) creates headlines and descriptions tailored to a user’s query – adapting on the fly to matc…

Meta introduced a small but potentially powerful tweak to its Advantage+ Catalog campaigns: dynamic overlays. Advertisers can now add price, discount, and shipping labels directly onto product images – styled like stickers – to make promotions pop in the Facebook Feed. How it works. You’ve got four label options now: Current price. A strikethrough sale price. Percentage off. Free shipping. You can turn each on or off, style them how you want, or let Meta choose what performs best. Each overlay can be toggled on or off, and you can customize the look – or let Meta decide what to show based on performance signals. The big picture. It’…

SEO is all about optimizing for, well, search. In 2018, I defined SEO as: “The art and science of persuading search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, to recommend your content to their users as the best solution to their problem.” In 2025 (and beyond), we can define search, answer, and assistive engine optimization as “The art and science of persuading recommendation engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Siri, Alexa, and Copilot to recommend your solution to their users as the best in the market.” The aim is the same – get the conversion. The difference? We have more engines. The recommendation is often further…