SEO Tools and Resources

Every business owner with a website is looking for ways to get noticed in the search results. There are loads of tactics to rank well as a local business, but unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. As with most things SEO, this is a combined effort. One of the ways to get noticed is by offering customers up-to-date information like opening hours and contact information. You can do this using Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business. But what is it exactly, and why is it so important for local SEO? Table of contents What is Google My Business? How does it work? Ranking factors Optimize your Google Business Profile listing Ranking factors beyond your co…

In 2015, PPC was a game of direct control. You told Google exactly which keywords to target, set manual bids at the keyword level, and capped spend with a daily budget. If you were good with spreadsheets and understood match types, you could build and manage 30,000-keyword accounts all day long. Those days are gone. In 2026, platform automation is no longer a helpful assistant. It’s the primary driver of performance. Fighting that reality is a losing battle. Automation has leveled the playing field and, in many cases, given PPC marketers back their time. But staying effective now requires a different skill set: understanding how automated systems learn and h…

In episode 325 of PPC Live The Podcast, I sat down with Inderpaul “Indi” Rai, Group Account Director at WeDiscover, to explore the lessons learned from mistakes, team dynamics, and the evolving role of automation and AI in paid search. Indi, a veteran with over a decade of experience in AdTech, MarTech, SEO, analytics, and multilingual paid search, shared candid insights on how errors can shape careers and client relationships. Embracing Mistakes to Grow Indi opened up about one of the most significant mistakes in his career: an automated budget feature in Search Ads 360 went unchecked during his holiday, resulting in the US account overspending by a substantial am…

Sick of seeing the error “Discovered – currently not indexed” in Google Search Console (GSC)? So am I. Too much SEO effort is focused on ranking. But many sites would benefit from looking one level up – to indexing. Why? Because your content can’t compete until it’s indexed. Whether the selection system is ranking or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), your content won’t matter unless it’s indexed. The same goes for where it appears – traditional SERPs, AI-generated SERPs, Discover, Shopping, News, Gemini, ChatGPT, or whatever AI agents come next. Without indexing, there’s no visibility, no clicks, and no impact. And indexing issues…

IndexNow, an indexing protocol spearheaded by Microsoft Bing’s search team, announced that IndexNow helps with real-time indexing and structured data support. This allows you keep you your products and shopping ads up to date within Bing and the search engines that use the IndexNow protocol. Plus, Microsoft announced that Amazon and Shopify both are using IndexNow for their platforms. Shopping and IndexNow. Microsoft wrote, “by implementing IndexNow with the schema below, you can skip the need for a separate merchant feed, streamlining how your updates get discovered.” This helps you keep your price update, product stock levels, or new product launches up-to-date…

When Meta launched advertising nearly two decades ago, performance was driven by manual inputs – targeting rules, account structure, and incremental optimization. Success depended on carefully defined audiences, granular budget control, and frequent testing. That operating model eroded over time as privacy changes and signal loss made deterministic targeting less reliable. Over the last two years, Meta responded by fundamentally rebuilding its advertising platform around AI. That rebuild began with Andromeda, a personalized ads retrieval engine, and expanded into Meta’s Generative Ads Recommendation Model (GEM). Together, these systems now determine …

We fully decrypted Google’s SearchGuard anti-bot system, the technology at the center of its recent lawsuit against SerpAPI. After fully deobfuscating the JavaScript code, we now have an unprecedented look at how Google distinguishes human visitors from automated scrapers in real time. What happened. Google filed a lawsuit on Dec. 19 against Texas-based SerpAPI LLC, alleging the company circumvented SearchGuard to scrape copyrighted content from Google Search results at a scale of “hundreds of millions” of queries daily. Rather than targeting terms-of-service violations, Google built its case on DMCA Section 1201 – the anti-circumvention provision of copyright law…

Think about how people ask about sunglasses. In the old search model, someone queries “best smart sunglasses” and scans the links in a SERP. In the new model, they ask, “What’s the deal with Meta Ray-Bans?” and get a synthesized answer with specs, use cases, and reviews – often without seeing a single webpage, including the SERP. That shift defines the new frontier: your content doesn’t have to rank. It has to be retrieved, understood, and assembled into an answer. The game used to be: write a page, wait for Google/Bing to crawl it, hope your keywords matched the query, and pray no one bought the ad slot above you. But that model is quietly collapsing. …

Vibe coding is a new way to create software using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Cursor, Replit, and Gemini. It works by describing to the tool what you want in plain language and receiving written code in return. You can then simply paste the code into an environment (such as Google Colab), run it, and test the results, all without ever actually programming a single line of code. Collins Dictionary named “vibe coding” word of the year in 2025, defining it as “the use of artificial intelligence prompted by natural language to write computer code.” In this guide, you’ll understand how to start vibe coding, learn its limitations and risks, and see examples of great tools…

Instacart today became the first retail media network to integrate directly with TikTok Ads Manager. This will allow CPG advertisers to use Instacart’s first-party retail data to target audiences, measure conversions, and drive shoppable experiences – all without leaving TikTok’s platform. The integration marks a major step in the convergence of retail media and social commerce. By embedding Instacart’s targeting and closed-loop measurement capabilities into TikTok, brands can connect with high-intent consumers at the exact moment of inspiration and track their impact through purchase. Why we care. For CPG advertisers, this partnership removes a friction point – t…

Gen Z consumers use Instagram and TikTok more often to discover products than Google. That’s according to a new survey from GRIN, a creator management platform. By the numbers. Asked where they most often discover new products, 18- to 27-year-old consumers said: Instagram: 30.4% TikTok: 23.2% Google: 18.8% YouTube: 14.5% However, Google isn’t going away anytime soon. Millennials (42.45), Gen X (41.1%), and Boomers (55.9%) and still rely on Google Search first. Why we care. Younger consumers search differently. They have more widely adopted social search than classic search compared to other generations. Social platforms have become hubs of inform…

Instagram launched Your Algorithm in the U.S. today, a tool that lets people see – and directly edit – the topics shaping their Reels recommendations. Why we care. This could reshape how users discover content. When people signal interest in specific niches, hobbies, or brands – from running shoes to vintage clothing to home organizers – Instagram may surface more of that content, boosting reach for brands that publish relevant Reels. How it works. A new Reels icon opens a personalized list of topics (e.g., sports, thrifting, horror movies, pop music, chess, day in the life, college football, skateboarding) Instagram believes “you’ve been into” lately, generated b…

OpenAI has announced Instant Checkout on ChatGPT. ChatGPT acts as an intermediary agent for commerce purchases on behalf of the customer. This provides a foundation that connects people and businesses for the next era of agentic commerce. What does the buying process look like? The Instant Checkout flow keeps ChatGPT at the center of every step – from discovery to payment confirmation. After finding a product through conversations with ChatGPT, the user taps “Buy” and confirms payment and shipping. ChatGPT passes this signal, and the merchant then gathers fulfillment options. ChatGPT presents these options to the user who makes a selection.…

With customers now discovering content across traditional search engines, LLMs, social media, and beyond, the need for an integrated, omnichannel strategy is more important than ever. Relying on isolated channel strategies no longer works. Customers engage with brands across multiple touchpoints before making decisions, and they expect seamless, personalized experiences. An effective omnichannel approach aligns all marketing efforts – ensuring consistency, maximizing visibility, and driving meaningful interactions. As omnichannel marketing continues to evolve, integrating SEO across all channels is essential for sustained growth. This article explore…

For more than a decade, international SEO has followed a familiar playbook: Create dedicated country- and language-specific URLs. Localize the content. Deploy hreflang. Let search engines rank and serve the correct version. In the AI-mediated search environment, that playbook is no longer enough. In 2026, consistent global visibility is determined less by traditional ranking mechanics and more by how effectively content is retrieved, interpreted, and validated. What still works in 2026 The following fundamentals continue to shape international SEO outcomes in 2026. Market-scoped URLs with real differences still win One of the clearest…

We’re excited to announce the beta release of Yoast AI Brand Insights, available as part of the Yoast SEO AI+ package. This new tool helps you understand how your brand appears in AI-powered answers, and where you can improve your visibility. Ideal for bloggers, marketers, and brand managers, Yoast AI Brand Insights gives you an overview of your brand presence across tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. For years, Yoast has helped you get found in search engines. Recently though, search is changing. People aren’t just using Google anymore, they’re turning to AI tools like ChatGPT for answers. Those answers often mention brand names as recommendations. So here’s…

A panel of three PPC marketing experts – Greg Finn (Cypress North), Kerri Amodio (Refine Labs), and Menachem Ani (JXT Group) – tackled a fundamental question at SMX Next: Is AI making marketers better? The panel discussed artificial intelligence’s evolving role in marketing, offering insights into its promises and pitfalls. The discussion was nuanced. While AI excels at increasing output quantity, there are serious concerns about quality. The new PPC mindset Finn notably argued that AI is potentially making marketing worse when used as a complete solution rather than a strategic tool: “Is it being able to produce more items and content, things lik…

Google is getting worse – or at least, that’s what “we” say. The common complaint: Search is dying, SEO is trash, and Google is nearly unusable. X, LinkedIn, and Reddit are awash with complaints about deteriorating search quality. The contradicting reality: Search remains the dominant channel for web traffic. Google still holds 90% of the search market, grew 20% year over year, and processes 5 trillion searches annually. If it were truly broken, wouldn’t we have left by now? The complex truth: Poet John Keats described “negative capability” as the ability to hold conflicting ideas without demanding a simple answer. That’s whe…

Michael Glavac shared a video of some of the longest and most comprehensive AI Overviews I’ve seen displayed in Google Search to date. These AI Overviews have over 600 works, reference over 60 different sites and are incredibly detailed. What it looks like. Here is a videocast of this that Michael shared on LinkedIn: More details. “Just came across this AIO that’s essentially a full article that referred to 61 sites,” Michael wrote. This AI Overview shows: 628 total words Each line referred to a minimum 4 sites/sources The sites/sources were not all relevant and there were some obscure sites that got pulled in, he added. In this case, the quer…

Once upon a time, search engine optimizers (SEOs) and search engine marketers (SEMs) conducted keyword research before every new project or pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. They believed, “To reach your target audience, you need to know what words they use.” SEOs were advised: “Use words that people would use to look for your content, and place those words in prominent locations on the page, such as the title and main heading of a page, and other descriptive locations such as alt text and link text.” SEMs were told: “Choose words that are relevant to your product or service to target users making searches using those same terms.” But this fairy t…

Google just made a move that disrupted rank tracking, potentially increasing costs and changing how search visibility is measured. In January, Google implemented a requirement for JavaScript to render search results, which significantly impacted SEO tools that rely on scraping. (You may recall there was suddenly a great deal of volatility in the SERPs that was initially attributed to another update. Still, it turned out to be a disruption in data collection that was causing the reports to be all over the place rather than the rankings fluctuating.) This change raises questions about the future of rank tracking and how SEOs can adapt. While some are read…

For a long time, SEO had the simplest math in marketing: Rank higher → Get more traffic → Fill the sales pipeline To the dissatisfaction of marketing executives, that linear world is breaking fast. Between AI Overviews, zero-click SERPs, and users getting answers directly from LLMs, the old “rank to get traffic and leads” equation is failing. Today, holding a top keyword position often yields significantly fewer clicks than it did just two years ago. This has forced many uncomfortable conversations in boardrooms. CMOs and CEOs are looking at traffic dashboards and asking tough questions, especially: “If traffic is down… how do we know SEO is act…

AI Max is Google’s latest foray into semi-keywordless targeting. While you need keywords for the system to have a starting place, Google uses signals beyond keywords in deciding how to show ads to searchers. In accounts with a strong history of broad match success, AI Max can be highly effective at finding new conversions. If accounts are not well-optimized or have not been successful with broad match, AI Max can be a huge money pit. To clear up a rumor before we get into the data: you do not have to use AI Max to have ads appear in AI Overviews. Broad match keywords can show ads in AI Overviews regardless of your AI Max usage. We’re looking at…

AI Overviews, ChatGPT, zero-click results, and other recent developments have all triggered the latest wave of goodbyes to SEO. Except SEO isn’t dead. It might even be thriving. Search engines still command approximately 88% of all search traffic. But alongside this, AI usage is almost doubling. So what gives? Well, consumers don’t care about AEO versus GEO versus SEO. Or even necessarily choosing between Google and ChatGPT. They simply use both. Why the either/or narrative is dangerous The marketing world loves a good binary. But opposing search engines and AI search against one another is a false choice. These aren’t competing realities. They’r…