SEO Tools and Resources

For years, ecommerce ran on a simple model: Google drove traffic, and your site did the selling. Rankings, clicks, and conversion rate determined performance. That model just changed. With the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and AI Mode, Google can now discover, compare, and complete purchases inside its own AI experiences. Search is shifting from a traffic channel to a transaction layer. Visibility now depends on whether Google’s AI selects your product data. When AI makes the recommendation and closes the sale, optimization moves upstream. The question isn’t just whether you rank. It’s whether you’re chosen. Here’s what changed and what SEO and AI optimiza…

Google published a new help page detailing how its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) works — offering merchants clearer guidance on how checkout flows operate across Google properties. What’s happening. The documentation explains how UCP and its UCP-powered checkout enable a native “Buy” button that moves the transaction directly onto Google surfaces, while merchants remain the seller of record. To activate the feature, merchants must implement the native_commerce attribute in Merchant Center. Payments run through stored Google Wallet credentials, and processors must support Google Pay tokens. Why we care. UCP was first introduced as part of Google’s agentic …

If your brand’s content arm has been active for a few years, I’m guessing you have plenty of material that can be revised to help you show up more prominently in AI search answers — we’ll call this AEO throughout the article. I’m getting bombarded with brand marketers’ questions about how to get AEO traction these days. “Revise your old content” is a favorite answer that often produces an “aha” moment for the other party, possibly because the nature of AEO is so forward-looking. That answer sparks a few important follow-up questions I’ll tackle below. How do you reformat content for better AEO performance? I like to lean on three principles when I tackle co…

If you’re not actively managing your branded search campaigns, you’re leaving money on the table and your reputation in the hands of competitors, review aggregators, and affiliate marketers. Brand protection through PPC isn’t just about bidding on your own name. It’s a strategy that spans defensive bidding, query monitoring, ad copy testing, and reputation management across the entire customer research journey. Why brand search deserves more than basic defense Most PPC managers treat brand campaigns as an afterthought. Set up a campaign, bid on the exact brand name, maybe add some close variants, and call it done. But the reality is far more complex, espe…

Google updated both its image SEO best practices and Google Discover help documents to clarify that Google uses both schema.org markup and the og:image meta tag as sources when determining image thumbnails in Google Search and Discover. Image SEO best practices. Google added a new section to the image SEO best practices help document named Specify a preferred image with metadata. In that section, Google wrote: “Google’s selection of an image preview is completely automated and takes into account a number of different sources to select which image on a given page is shown on Google (for example, a text result image or the preview image in Discover).” Here is ho…

Google is expanding its recurring billing policy to allow certified U.S. online pharmacies to promote prescription drugs with subscriptions and bundled services. What’s happening. Certified merchants can now offer: Prescription drug subscriptions — recurring billing for prescription medications. Prescription drug bundles — combining drugs with services like coaching or treatment programs, as long as the drug is the primary product. Prescription drug consultation services — recurring consults to determine prescription eligibility, either standalone or bundled with medications. Requirements for eligibility. Merchants must maintain certified status, submit…

In November 2025, Yoast announced a collaboration with NLWeb, an open web protocol developed by Microsoft designed to simplify building conversational interfaces for the web. Today, we are proud to introduce the first major result of that work: Yoast SEO Schema Aggregation. This is an opt in feature that brings your website’s structured data together in a clearer and more consistent way. By choosing to enable it, you can help search engines and intelligent agents better understand and use your content. If you want to see which schema types are available for your WordPress setup, our schema overview explains what is included across different product plans. Br…

Google is rolling out VRC Non-Skip ads, expanding how brands reach connected TV audiences on YouTube. What’s happening. VRC (Video Reach Campaign) Non-Skips are now live globally in Google Ads and Display & Video 360. The format is built specifically for the living room experience, ensuring ads run as non-skippable placements optimized for connected TV (CTV) screens. Why we care. YouTube has become the No. 1 streaming platform in the U.S. for three consecutive years, making the TV screen a critical battleground for brand budgets. With guaranteed, non-skippable delivery, advertisers can ensure their full message reaches viewers in premium, lean-back environment…

What do conversion rate optimization (CRO) and findability look like for an AI agent versus a human, and how different do your strategies really need to be? More and more marketers are embracing the agentic web, and discovery increasingly happens through AI-powered experiences. That raises a fair question: what does CRO and findability look like for an AI agent compared with a human? Several considerations matter, but the core takeaway is clear: serving people supports AI findability. AI systems are designed to surface useful, grounded information for people. Technical mechanics still matter, but you don’t need entirely different strategies to be findable or to im…

For more than a decade, the dominant model was simple — identify a keyword, write an article, publish, promote, rank, capture traffic, convert a fraction of visitors, and repeat. But that model is breaking. Content marketing is collapsing and rebuilding simultaneously. AI systems now answer informational queries directly inside search results. Large language models (LLMs) synthesize known information instantly. Information production is accelerating faster than distribution capacity. Public feeds are already saturated. The cost of producing content has fallen to nearly zero, while the cost of being seen has never been higher. That changes everything. Here’s a…

Every year, Google suspends tens of millions of Google Ads accounts for advertising policy violations. One specific policy area that confuses many legitimate advertisers is Google’s “three-strikes” system. Essentially, if Google decides your account has repeatedly violated any of 15 specific Google advertising policies, you’re at risk for temporary (and potentially permanent) suspension of your Google Ads account. To help you prevent a single policy issue from snowballing into a full account suspension, here’s how Google’s three-strike system works and what you should do at every stage to keep your ads running. Case study: Appealing a Google Ads strike Over…

Meta is updating its ad measurement framework, aiming to simplify attribution in what it calls a “social-first” advertising world. What’s happening. Meta is narrowing its definition of click-through attribution for website and in-store conversions. Going forward, only link clicks — not likes, shares, saves or other interactions — will count toward click-through attribution. The change is designed to reduce discrepancies between Meta Ads Manager and third-party tools like Google Analytics. Between the lines. Social media has overtaken search as the world’s largest ad channel, according to WARC, but many attribution systems were built for search-era behaviors. O…

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…

Google will begin enforcing a minimum daily budget for Demand Gen campaigns starting April 1, 2026. What’s happening: The Google Ads API will require a minimum daily budget of $5 USD (or local equivalent) for all Demand Gen campaigns. The change is designed to help campaigns move through the “cold start” phase with enough spend for Google’s models to learn and optimize effectively. The update will roll out as an unversioned API change, applying across all buying paths. Technical details: In API v21 and above, campaigns set below the threshold will trigger a BUDGET_BELOW_DAILY_MINIMUM error, with additional details available in the error metadata. In API v2…

Imagine a web ecosystem where not just humans but AI agents communicate with websites, going beyond traditional browsing. Unlike conventional web experiences, where people click, scroll, and search, AI agents can navigate, interpret, and even perform tasks autonomously on your site. This is not a futuristic concept. It is already unfolding. This is the emergence of the agentic web. Table of contents The big shift: From web for users to a web for users and agents Protocol thinking and the infrastructure of agentic web communication What does this mean for SEO professionals? Yoast’s collaboration with NLweb and what it means for WordPress users Key takeaways …

Google posted a new help document on “Things to know about Google’s web crawling.” While many of those “things to know” are already known, Google felt it would be a good idea to make this document in order to provide “basic educational information about crawling to better highlight various resources about crawling that are available to site owners.” The document has 9 items posted in it right now including: Frequent crawling is a good sign! Google wrote, “If we’re crawling your site a lot, it’s an indication your pages have fresh or highly relevant content that people want to find, and that our systems are recognizing that demand. Online shopping is a great …

Chrome 146 has introduced an early preview of WebMCP behind a flag. WebMCP (Web Model Context Protocol) is a proposed web standard that exposes structured tools on websites, showing AI agents exactly what actions they can take and how to execute them. Here’s some context around what that actually means. The internet was originally built for humans. We designed buttons, dropdowns, and forms for people to read, understand, and use. But now there’s a new type of user emerging: AI agents. Soon, they’ll be able to complete registrations, buy tickets, and take any action needed to complete a goal on a website. Right now, AI agents face a major challenge. They must c…

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…

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…

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: …

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…