SEO Tools and Resources

Google’s quiet retirement of the num=100 parameter might look trivial to the rest of the world, but for SEO professionals, it’s another step deeper into the dark. That small setting allowed us to see the full top 100 results at once, which made competitive research and rank tracking more complete. Its disappearance comes on the heels of Google requiring JavaScript execution for scraping (temporarily breaking many rank trackers) and alongside AI Overviews that steal clicks surface answers without disclosing sources. Piece by piece, the data we’ve relied on to measure SEO impact is slipping away. We are entering a black box era. Note: If your impressi…

Search has transformed. AI-powered results, featured snippets, “People Also Ask,” and Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) are redefining how — and where — visibility happens. Join Wayne Cichanski, Vice President of Search & Site Experience at iQuanti for SEO Beyond Just the Ten Blue Links! He’ll share a data-driven SEO 2.0 framework designed to help brands systematically claim high-impact search shelf-space — and convert visibility into measurable results. In this live session, you’ll learn: How to analyze and win across modern SERP features A blueprint for aligning structured data, content, and intent Real-world strategies for navigating S…

SEO keeps evolving faster than most of us can handle. If you’re finding it hard to keep up with all the changes in search, you’re not the only one. I’ve talked to dozens of marketing teams this quarter, and they all tell me the same thing: the old SEO playbook just isn’t working anymore. Whether you’re running your company’s search strategy or working with clients, you need a smarter approach that puts users first and works across all the places people search online. This guide shows you key areas that are driving SEO success right now in 2025. It’s based on what’s working for the most successful marketing teams I work with. You’ll get practical ti…

If you feel like you’re being pulled in different directions with your SEO program, you aren’t alone. How do you know where to focus first for the most impact? And when that’s done, what do you do next? It can be challenging to decide which SEO tasks to prioritize because they all impact the end user in some way – but some more than others. This is where discernment comes into play. This article will help you build a path to get your SEO program organized from point A to point B and figure out how to prioritize tasks to get ROI quicker. Frameworks for identifying high-impact SEO opportunities When every SEO task feels urgent, knowing where to focus fi…

AI has made it easier than ever to scale SEO fast – but with it comes high risk. What happens when the party is over and short-term wins become long-term losses? Recently, I worked with a site that had expanded aggressively using AI-powered programmatic. It worked until it didn’t, resulting in a steep decline in rankings, which I doubt they will recover. It’s not worth the fallout when the party is over. And, eventually, it will be. Here are the lessons learned along the way and ways to approach things differently. When the party ends The risks of AI-driven content strategies aren’t always immediately apparent. In this case, the signs were …

2026 is around the corner – and the SEO space has never been this noisy. Every day brings something new. It’s easy to get stuck in panic mode, worrying you’re missing the next big thing, or to spend hours scrolling LinkedIn threads that lead nowhere. In both cases, you end up with nothing concrete – and with stakeholders still expecting clear impact. As we head into 2026, the real challenge is building a strategy with discipline – one that cuts through the noise and balances: Short-term wins that prove impact and build trust. Long-term bets that future-proof visibility. The boring but essential, business-as-usual (BAU) tasks that keep your foundati…

SEO is at a crossroads. As AI reshapes the digital landscape and Google continues to drive less traffic to brands, marketers face a critical challenge: how to balance strategies that deliver results today with innovations that prepare for tomorrow. This article outlines eight key considerations to help you navigate these changes and stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of SEO. Why SEO feels overwhelming right now In 2024, five of the top 15 SEO stories on Search Engine Land were about AI, with several others covering major changes at Google that have led to less traffic being sent to brands. These shifts leave us with a lot to think about. Studies a…

SEO never stands still, and neither do we here at Yoast. In our November 2025 edition of the SEO Update by Yoast, our principal SEOs, Carolyn Shelby and Alex Moss, broke down the latest shifts in search, structured data, and AI. Whether you’re running an e-commerce store, managing a content-heavy site, or just keeping up with Google’s ever-changing rules, this edition highlights what actually matters. Google updates Google is refining its search results, phasing out certain structured data features, including FAQ snippets and COVID-19 updates. But that doesn’t mean you should strip structured data from your site. It still plays a role behind the scenes, especiall…

Look, I get it. Every time a new search technology appears, we try to map it to what we already know. When mobile search exploded, we called it “mobile SEO.” When voice assistants arrived, we coined “voice search optimization” and told everyone this would be the new hype. I’ve been doing SEO for years. I know how Google works – or at least I thought I did. Then I started digging into how ChatGPT picks citations, how Perplexity ranks sources, and how Google’s AI Overviews select content. I’m not here to declare that SEO is dead or to state that everything has changed. I’m here to share the questions that keep me up at night – questions that sugg…

SEO and PPC are two of the most important strategies for increasing your website’s visibility. While they both aim to attract more traffic, they operate differently. They also serve different purposes. Here, we’ll discuss SEO vs. Pay-per-click advertising and how to choose the best option for you. Table of contents Understanding SEO and PPC What’s the difference between SEO and PPC? Pros and cons of SEO Pros and cons of PPC Conclusion SEO vs Pay-per-click Understanding SEO and PPC As we all know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It consists of everything you do to get your site higher rankings in the original search results. Those tactics are th…

Marketers have debated SEO versus PPC for years, usually shaped by whatever has worked – or failed – for them in the past. Organic search promises compounding visibility, while paid search delivers immediate control. Most teams ultimately favor one over the other based on experience, budget constraints, or a survival instinct. But in 2026, this old debate no longer fits the reality of search. Why this debate has changed The search landscape has shifted, and the old SEO-or-PPC debate no longer fits. Search behavior has evolved. Search results pages have evolved. The platforms – and the machine learning driving their bidding systems – have e…

In June, Fractl and Search Engine Land surveyed 2,000 consumers and uncovered a startling statistic: 82% find AI-powered search more helpful than traditional search. While the SEO industry panicked, thought leaders and snakeoil salesmen took to LinkedIn to lay claim to this new frontier of AI-driven brand visibility: “It’s called GEO!” “No, it’s AEO!” “Oh, we use AISO! Wait, I meant LLMO now!” …Or, maybe, it’s just effective SEO? Industry banter aside, we’ve entered a world where old-school search and AI-driven discovery coexist – and the terminology isn’t trivial. It’s the roadmap for how brands show up across fast-growing search platform…

Every few years, SEO gets a shiny new acronym. Voice search. AMP. E-A-T. Each promised to rewrite the rules, and each eventually found its way into the same corporate graveyard of experiments and half-baked roadmaps. I know, because I bought in. For a year and a half, I buried myself in schema markup—building page-level knowledge graphs, connecting entities, mapping relationships until entire sites resembled semantic webs. It was meticulous, elegant, even beautiful in its own way. And it delivered nothing. Not because technical work doesn’t matter—SEO is inherently technical. The issue in enterprise is that Google is a black box. You can pour months into structured da…

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…

SerpAPI said it will “vigorously defend” itself after being sued by Reddit for allegedly scraping and reselling data from the platform via Google Search results. The response. SerpAPI called Reddit’s language “inflammatory” and said it was “extremely disappointed” to learn of the lawsuit without prior communication. “Our work is guided by a simple principle: public search data should be accessible,” the company said. SerpAPI argued its position is backed by the First Amendment and called Reddit’s actions a threat to “the free and open Web we all enjoy.” What they’re saying. According to SerpApi: “For eight years, SerpApi has operated transparently and…

Content marketing is everywhere. We do keyword research, analyse markets, and publish landing pages and blog posts. The goal? To attract clicks, convert users, and climb the rankings. But what happens when that stops working? The internet is drowning in generic, AI-generated material. Search is becoming ambient, answer-led, and keyword-less. And search engines no longer need to crawl or rank your site to serve users. In fact, they’d often prefer not to. In these ‘solved query spaces’, answers are synthesised. Content is commodified. The old tactics don’t work anymore. If we want to reach and influence audiences, we need a new approach. We must st…

Even when it ranks in Position 1, Mail Online loses over half its clicks when AI Overviews appear in Google’s search results. Calling the click-through rate (CTR) “pretty shocking” Carly Steven, SEO and editorial ecommerce director for the UK newspaper, told the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress (as reported by PressGazette): “On desktop, when we are ranking number one in organic search, it [clickthrough] effectively is about 13% on desktop and about 20% on mobile. When we are still ranking number one organically but there is an AI Overview present, that drops to less than 5% on desktop and 7% on mobile, so a pretty profound change in clickthrough.” Why we c…

Shopify is experiencing a major login outage on one of the peak shopping days of the holiday season, leaving merchants unable to access their dashboards, POS systems, mobile apps, or even contact Shopify Support. What’s happening. Shopify’s status page shows a series of escalating alerts beginning at 14:54 UTC, warning that merchants “may experience issues when trying to login.” Minutes later, the platform confirmed the outage affects POS, mobile logins, and support access. By 15:26 UTC, Shopify urged merchants to stay logged in on any devices that are currently active to avoid further complications. Why we care. A login outage during a top-tier sale…

Shopify is expanding its advertising ambitions with the launch of the Shopify Product Network, a new system that surfaces products from across participating merchants—even if the item isn’t carried by the store a shopper is currently visiting. The pitch. If a shopper searches for “organic cleaning supplies” on a Shopify store that doesn’t carry that product, the Product Network may show alternatives from other merchants. Items can also appear natively on another merchant’s homepage, indistinguishable from the store’s own inventory. Shoppers purchase all items in a single cart, often without knowing some items come from other merchants. Shopify’s angle. The Product…

Shopify has become the leading online shopping platform in just a few years. It has become an anti-Amazon, helping small and large retailers worldwide run successful online stores with minimal effort. Although the ecommerce platform makes everything easy, there’s a lot you can do to improve the SEO of your online shop. In this ultimate guide, we’ll help you get on the right track by giving you many tips and tricks. In addition, we’ll tell you the best SEO app, and we have a Shopify SEO checklist for you! Table of contents Introduction What is Shopify? What is Shopify SEO? SEO basics for Shopify Technical SEO for Shopify How to increase sales in Shopify Learn more? Tr…

Shopify is changing how it handles checkout. If you’re running Google Ads or Analytics, you’ll need to act soon. Key deadlines. Shopify Plus merchants must migrate by Aug. 28, 2025. Non-Plus merchants have until Aug. 26, 2026. Missing these dates could result in a total loss of conversion tracking on your Thank You and Order Status pages. The fix. Use the Google & YouTube app. The Google & YouTube app, developed by Google for Shopify, is now the go-to way to handle all things measurement, ads, and analytics. Why migrate now? No code hassle: Easy, direct integration with Google Ads, Analytics, YouTube, and Merchant Center. Future-ready: Support…

In 2025, the battle for attention is being won in under 60 seconds. Short-form video is increasingly delivering measurable performance outcomes. This article explores how you can harness short-form video and creator-driven content as part of a performance marketing strategy. The rise of short-form: More than just eyeballs With YouTube Shorts alone amassing over 70 billion daily views, engagement metrics are no longer the only measure of value. “The untapped potential of short-form video and creator content on YouTube,” a recent study from YouTube and eMarketer, highlights how powerful this format has become. The study found that creator content …

Optimized targeting is one default Google Ads feature that gets a ton of vitriol. Sure, it’s not the best choice for everyone. However, there are definite use cases for this automated targeting feature. Let’s explore: is optimized targeting your friend or foe in Google Ads? We’ll cover: What is optimized targeting in Google Ads? Which campaign types are compatible with optimized targeting? Which bid strategies are compatible with optimized targeting? Optimized targeting vs. Audience expansion Optimized targeting vs. Performance Max How to evaluate optimized targeting: is it working? Should you use optimized targeting? What is optimize…

Since its launch in June we have been rolling out our integration with Site Kit by Google. Every Yoast SEO Premium customer now has access to it. The update brings key Google Analytics and Search Console insights directly into your Yoast Dashboard, giving you a clear view of your site’s performance without switching between tools or tabs. Previously, only users of Yoast SEO (free) and Yoast SEO Premium who already had the Site Kit plugin installed could use the integration. Access is now available to all Yoast SEO Premium customers even if Site Kit is not installed, and it will become available to remaining Yoast SEO (free) users soon. What you can do with the new…

This first release of 2026 brings Site Kit by Google insights into your Yoast SEO Dashboard. After introducing the integration in phases throughout 2025, we are pleased to share that the rollout is now complete and available to all Yoast customers using WordPress. What you can see in your Yoast SEO Dashboard You can now view key performance data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics via Site Kit in your Yoast SEO Dashboard, without changing tools or tabs. These insights include search impressions, clicks, average click through rate, average position, and organic sessions, which are combined with your Yoast SEO and readability scores so you can better un…