SEO Tools and Resources

You know that sinking feeling when you look at your organic traffic dashboard and see – nothing exciting. The line’s flat, and you’re dreading the conversation with your boss about why your SEO investment isn’t “working.” Here’s the thing: flat traffic doesn’t mean failure anymore. Some of the most successful SEO campaigns I’ve worked on recently had underwhelming traffic numbers but delivered incredible business results. Let me show you why that’s not necessarily a bad thing and how to communicate it effectively. Why flat traffic isn’t the red flag it used to be Last year, one of our clients in the home services space experienced organic traffic…

When Google launched Demand Gen campaigns in 2023, they were positioned as a way to build deeper engagement across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail. At the time, they felt experimental, sitting between awareness and performance. Since then, Demand Gen has improved significantly. The creative flexibility and audience control now make it a campaign type I use regularly for ecommerce clients. It has helped us scale revenue in a controlled way, maintaining brand consistency and enabling creative testing while still driving conversions. In practice, Demand Gen converts best when it is set up strategically alongside Performance Max and Search. Choosing…

Nick LeRoy, a longtime SEO consultant, is turning his platform into a fundraising engine. He’s offering consulting in exchange for donations to Minnesota-based immigrant support efforts amid escalating ICE activity in the state. LeRoy said recent events in Minnesota crossed “every ethical line” he had drawn professionally, prompting him to act rather than comment from the sidelines. He announced the initiative yesterday on LinkedIn and in a blog post. What’s happening. LeRoy is trading his services for donations to GiveMN, a Minnesota-based fundraising platform that distributes funds to individuals and families impacted by recent ICE raids and related unrest. …

Meta is rolling out ads on its Threads app to all users worldwide, starting next week, with a gradual rollout expected to take months. Threads, Meta’s X rival, has grown rapidly since its July 2023 debut, now surpassing 400 million monthly active users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly praised the app as a potential “next big hit,” projecting it could reach 1 billion users in a few years. Advertiser access. Advertisers have been able to test Threads ads in the U.S. and Japan over the past year, and last April the platform opened ad access to global advertisers. Meta is making it easy to expand campaigns to Threads via its Advantage+ program or manual campaigns, …

If the same URL appears in both a Google AI Overview and the classic 10 blue links, Google Search Console counts it as a single impression, not two. That clarification comes directly from Google’s John Mueller. The background. Mark Williams-Cook, director at SEO agency Candour and founder of AlsoAsked, shared it publicly on LinkedIn after a discussion sparked by Jamie Indigo. The question emerged as SEOs try to understand how AI Overviews affect visibility metrics when a page appears multiple times on the same results page. Williams-Cook initially assumed the URL might generate two impressions. That assumption was based on how older SERP features, such as tw…

OpenAI is preparing to launch impression-based ads inside ChatGPT as early as February, marking a faster-than-expected step into advertising. What’s happening. According to a report, OpenAI is already testing ads with select advertisers and plans to charge on a pay-per-impression (PPM) basis, rather than the more familiar pay-per-click model. The test is expected to be limited, with advertisers committing under $1 million each and no self-serve buying tools available yet. Why we care. Ads inside ChatGPT could create an entirely new ad surface tied to conversational AI — but the initial model favors OpenAI’s revenue certainty over advertiser measurement. While this…

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says Gemini won’t get ads — at least for now — as Google prioritizes trust and core assistant quality over monetization. What’s new. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Hassabis said Google has “no plans” to introduce ads into Gemini, emphasizing a focus on building a better, more capable assistant across use cases and form factors. He suggested that monetization can wait while the technology matures. The contrast. The comments come just days after OpenAI announced it would begin testing ads in the free and low-cost tiers of ChatGPT. Hassabis called the move “interesting,” suggesting it may reflect revenue pressure rat…

There’s a common assumption across the SEO industry that people no longer search for local services the way they once did. As tools like ChatGPT become more common starting points, that assumption often takes the form of keyword-style searches giving way to longer, more conversational prompts. To test it, we observed everyday users as they used ChatGPT to find local service providers, including healthcare and aesthetics practices. Participants were asked to begin their search on ChatGPT and behave as they normally would, whether that meant visiting websites, checking social profiles, or reading reviews. That observation was guided by a set of core question…

Yoast AI Brand Insights now lets you track how your brand appears in Google’s Gemini. You can see your Gemini data alongside ChatGPT and Perplexity, all in one dashboard. With a single analysis, you can see how different AI platforms describe your brand with the Yoast SEO AI+ plan. You’ll see which sources they use and how sentiment compares across the tools your customers use most. Why this matters AI platforms use different methods to answer questions about your brand, often leading to different results. Seeing these results side-by-side helps you spot gaps or missed opportunities in your brand’s AI presence. ChatGPT is designed as a conversational a…

As search marketers, we tend to focus on what we can control: keywords, links, Core Web Vitals, indexed pages. We have dashboards for our dashboards. But not everything that shapes search behavior lives inside GSC, GA4, or your favorite rank tracker. One of the most influential forces sits just outside traditional SEO reporting: the social media halo effect. When a Reel takes off or a LinkedIn post hits the right nerve, it doesn’t just earn likes and comments. It creates curiosity about the brand, the product, or the person behind the post. And that curiosity almost always shows up in the same place: the search bar. The problem is that most SEO teams …

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is often treated as a static metric. In practice, it is shaped by how different types of customers behave – and churn – over time. One of the most important dynamics to understand is the “shakeout effect,” where early churn removes lower-value customers from a cohort, leaving a smaller, more stable group with higher engagement and more predictable purchase behavior. This article takes a closer look at the shakeout effect in CLV analytics, why it happens, and how marketers should account for it when evaluating churn, retention, and long-term profitability. What is the shakeout effect in the context of CLV analytics? Imagine…

Google is quietly giving advertisers more granular control over how data flows when consent is limited. Driving the news. A new feature called Data Transmission Control is appearing in Google Ads, adding an extra layer on top of Advanced Consent Mode that determines how advertising, analytics and diagnostic data are actually transmitted. What’s new. Advertisers can now independently restrict advertising data, behavioral analytics and diagnostic data. When ad_storage consent is denied, there are two options: allow limited advertising data with identifiers redacted (while still enabling conversion modeling), or block advertising data entirely until consent is grante…

Google Ads is experimenting with a quicker way for new advertisers to get up and running. Driving the news. Over the past few weeks, some users have seen a new setup option in Google Ads: “Create an account with campaign for faster setup.” The feature surfaced publicly after being spotted by Anthony Higman on X, with others noting it only appeared recently. Why we care. Account setup can be a friction point for new advertisers. By bundling account creation with an existing campaign, Google can shorten time-to-launch — and reduce the chances that advertisers stall before spending. The big picture. Google has been steadily streamlining onboarding, nudging ad…

Google is rolling out a new update for the Trends Explorer page that is powered by Gemini. The goal is to make it easier for users and researchers to find more search terms to explore. “The updated Explore page has a new side panel that uses Gemini capabilities to automatically identify and compare relevant trends for your area of interest,” Google wrote. What it looks like. There is this new layout and new “Suggest search terms” button at the top right of the page. Here is a screenshot: When you click on “Suggest search terms,” you can enter in a keyword or a natural language sentence and Gemini will help you break out all the terms and compare them to each o…

Google has introduced “Personal Intelligence” in the Gemini app as a beta which allows Gemini to give you a more personalized response by connecting across your Google ecosystem, including Google Search, Gmail, Photos, and your YouTube history. Google said this is “Launching as a beta in the U.S., this marks our next step toward making Gemini more personal, proactive and powerful.” This will also be coming to Search in AI Mode soon, Google told us. While Gemini could already retrieve information from these apps, with Gemini 3, it can now reason across your data to surface proactive insights. Here is how it looks. Here is a video of how it works: Avai…

Google introduced a low-visibility setting that could impact brand control for location-based ads. Driving the news. In the Shared Library under Location Manager, Google Ads now includes an option called “Google Owned Location Data.” When enabled, Google can automatically pull imagery from its own library and use it in ads tied to your business locations. Why we care. While Google frames the setting as a way to support performance goals, it allows creative assets to appear in your ads that you didn’t upload, select, or explicitly approve — a potential issue for brand-sensitive advertisers. The big picture. Automation in Google Ads continues to expand beyon…

In 2025, the SEO industry debated whether AI required a strategy shift. In 2026, we are still debating, but we are moving further into the testing and execution phase. To navigate the new search landscape, we have to kill the channel silo and let the SEO team act as the strategic quarterback for brand authority. Organic search has always been a treasure trove of insights into consumer behavior, platform changes, brand presence, and organic influence. Right now, LLMs are binging on a diet of earned media. Press releases, social media content, UGC, your website, your retailers’ sites, YouTube videos, and Reddit threads all have a huge influence on th…

Between a teetering economy and AI tools rapidly replacing entry-level roles, marketing careers – and many others – can feel increasingly unstable. There is a silver lining for those willing and positioned to look for it. In marketing, it’s this: professionals who can adapt, think critically, and integrate AI thoughtfully into their work can accelerate workflows, sharpen strategy and targeting, and spend more time on initiatives that drive meaningful impact. It’s still early in the AI era, but more than a decade as a marketing leader has made certain patterns clear. Across my own team and the in-house teams we work with, some PPC marketers are better pos…

AI-powered search isn’t coming. It’s already here: Google’s AI Overviews now reach 2 billion monthly users. ChatGPT serves 800 million users each week. Perplexity processed 780 million queries in a single month. As rankings and clicks matter less, citations matter more. Businesses now need content that AI engines trust and reference when answering questions. That’s the role of AI content optimization. Want to see where you stand? Get a free GEO audit of your website in under 60 seconds. What is AI content optimization? Generative engine optimization (GEO) adapts digital content and online presence to improve visibility in AI-generated answers.…

Google’s AI Overviews feature has become the face of our search engine results. Type almost any question into your Google search bar, and the first answer you receive will be AI generated. Many are thrilled about this. Others are wary. Marketers and those in the online reputation management (ORM) field are among those urging caution. Why? Because Google AI Overviews are often littered with information stemming from online forums like Reddit and Quora. And oftentimes, this user-generated content can be inaccurate — or entirely false. Why Google AI Overviews heavily rely on content from Reddit and Quora But how and why have Google AI Overviews c…

As AI-led search becomes a real driver of discovery, an old assumption is back with new urgency. If AI systems infer quality from user experience, and Core Web Vitals (CWV) are Google’s most visible proxy for experience, then strong CWV performance should correlate with strong AI visibility. The logic makes sense. Faster page load times result in smoother page load times, increased user engagement, improved signals, and AI systems that reward the outcome (supposedly) But logic is not evidence. To test this properly, I analysed 107,352 webpages that appear prominently in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, examining the distribution of Core Web Vitals at the p…

If there’s one takeaway as we look toward SEO in 2026, it’s that visibility is no longer just about ranking pages, but about being understood by increasingly selective AI-driven systems. In 2025, SEO proved it was not disappearing, but evolving, as search engines leaned more heavily on structure, authority, and trust to interpret content beyond the click. In this article, we share SEO predictions for 2026 from Yoast SEO experts, Alex Moss and Carolyn Shelby, highlighting the shifts that will shape how brands earn visibility across search and AI-powered discovery experiences. Key takeaways In 2026, SEO focuses on visibility defined by clarity, authority, and trust rat…

Remember when a handful of links from sites in your niche could drive steady organic traffic? That era is over. Today, Google’s AI Overviews and the rise of answer engines like ChatGPT raise the bar. You have to do more to stay visible. Hiring an experienced link building agency is one efficient way to meet that challenge. It’s also one of the most important investments you’ll make. The right partner doesn’t just build links. They position your brand as a trusted, cited source in the AI era. So how do you choose the right agency for your company? While the interface has changed, the core ranking signals remain largely the same. What’s changed is their prio…

On episode 336 of PPC Live The Podcast, I speak to Anthony Higman, CEO of AdSquire. Anthony’s career journey is a full-circle story: from starting in a law firm mailroom to running his own company with views over Philadelphia. His experiences demonstrate how hard work, learning from mistakes, and perseverance can shape a successful career. Learning from Client Missteps Anthony shares one of his first “F-ups” with clients who forwarded him countless emails promising quick wins. While some were scams, others were legitimate opportunities misaligned with the client’s strategy. At one point, Anthony let a client pursue an SEO agency despite knowing they were unlikely t…

Advertisers can now compare two sets of assets while keeping “common assets” consistent across both versions. Tests can be set up from the Experiments page under the Assets sub-menu, allowing marketers to see which creative combinations perform best. Google previously launched a similar experiment type for retail campaigns last year, and this expands the capability to all Performance Max campaigns. Why we care. Performance Max campaigns rely heavily on automation, which has historically made testing specific creative assets tricky. This new feature gives advertisers more control over asset-level performance insights without disrupting the overall campaign. Th…