SEO Tools and Resources

Throughout 2025, SEO professionals reported the same story to leadership: organic traffic was down, clicks were declining, and attribution no longer made sense. AI-driven search experiences, zero-click results, and platform-level answers widened the gap between discovery and measurable visits, making it harder than ever to accurately report on organic performance. For many organizations, this showed up as double-digit, year-over-year declines in reported organic traffic and leads. The C-suite asked the obvious questions: Why are clicks down? Why does organic traffic look 25% lower than last year? Is SEO actually hurting the business? The problem wasn’t t…

Marketers are spoiled for choice when it comes to great sources of content. We now have more tools (hello, ChatGPT!) and job boards than ever, making it even easier to find writers and create content. But abundance comes with a downside: a race to the bottom, where speed and cost often take priority over quality. If you’re aiming for great (not just “good”) content, some sources are better than others. This guide breaks down where to find top-tier writers and how to build a content process that doesn’t sacrifice quality for speed. Struggle 1: What qualifies as a ‘great’ content writer? Qualifying a good writer can feel a lot like qualifying a new …

Microsoft has rolled out multi-turn search globally within Bing search results. Microsoft will add a Copilot search box to the bottom of the Bing search results, as you scroll down the search results page, this feature will dynamically appear. What is multi-turn search. This is when a searcher goes from the Bing search results, types in a follow up query into the Copilot search box at the bottom of the search results. Here is a screenshot of this feature: Here is a video of it in action: What Microsoft said. Jordi Ribas, CVP, Head of Search at Microsoft, posted this news on X – he said, “After shipping in the US last year, multi-turn search in Bing i…

Google is rolling out a beta feature that lets advertisers run structured A/B tests on creative assets within a single Performance Max asset group. Advertisers can split traffic between two asset sets and measure performance in a controlled experiment. Why we care. Creative testing inside Performance Max has mostly relied on guesswork. Google’s new native A/B asset experiments bring controlled testing directly into PMax — without spinning up separate campaigns. How it works. Advertisers choose one Performance Max campaign and asset group, then define a control asset set (existing creatives) and a treatment set (new alternatives). Shared assets can run across both …

One of the most profitable Google Ads targeting tactics is retargeting: showing ads to people who are already familiar with your business. But if you still think that “retargeting” means a Display campaign chasing users around the web with banner ads, you’re missing out on how “Your data segments” actually function today. Let’s explore how you can leverage your proprietary audience data in new ways, and what mistakes to avoid in 2026 and beyond. What are “Your data segments” in Google Ads? Retargeting means showing ads to people who are already familiar with your business. Google uses the euphemistic name “Your data segments” to refer to all the retargeting lis…

Google is enhancing Meridian, its open-source Marketing Mix Model (MMM), to help marketers make smarter, more precise budget decisions. Why we care. Understanding ROI across channels is increasingly critical. These new Meridian updates allow for a more precise understanding of what drives sales, factoring in both media spend and non-media variables like pricing and promotions. The big picture. Here’s what’s new: Non-media variables: Marketers can now include pricing, promotions, and other business levers to measure their impact on sales more accurately. Channel-level contribution priors: New features let you guide the MMM with your own business knowledge,…

In competitive industries where keywords are costly, every edge matters. Beyond keyword targeting, consider layering audience targeting onto your Search campaigns to gather richer performance data. This added layer can improve results within Search and provide valuable insights you can apply to other Google Ads campaigns – or even to PPC platforms like Microsoft Ads, Meta Ads, and TikTok. Key audience targeting options for Search campaigns Here’s a quick overview of audience types you can target in Search campaigns – and how to make the most of each. Demographic audiences. Custom audiences. Remarketing audiences. Interests audiences. Affi…

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…

Most of what people are calling “AI SEO” right now is just legacy SEO with new buzzwords. AI SEO is different. When you look at how AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Mode actually source and compress information, there are things you can do that literally did not exist in the Google 10-blue-links world. This article walks through those AI SEO-only tactics, backed with real data, not wishful thinking. The context: clicks are collapsing, but answers are not You already feel this in your numbers. A few facts to anchor the conversation: Studies on Google’s AI Overviews showed click-through rates to top organic results drop by roughly 30 to …

Google announced new branded queries filters are rolling out gradually within Google Search Console reporting. You can filter your performance reports by branded or non-branded queries and Google can show you the percentage of branded versus non-branded traffic driven to your site from Google Search. This was first introduced at the Google Search Central event in Tel Aviv today, so this news leaked from there first. What are branded queries. Google defined what it considers a branded query. Google wrote: A branded query is a query that includes your brand name (for example, Google), variations or misspellings of the brand name (for example, Gogle), and brand-…

Jonathon Heard, Industry Head, Insurance at Google, spoke at Simply Business headquarters in London yesterday and told the audience that Google Search will soon route complex queries entered into the Google Search box directly into AI Mode, bypassing Google Search completely. Plus, he also said that Google is indeed working on breaking out better reporting in Google Search Console for AI Mode and AI Overviews. Bypassing Google Search. Jonathon Heard said, “with Gemini 3, we’re gonna auto route complex queries through to AI mode automatically. So they’re live in the US at the minute they’re being tested.” An audience member then asked Jonathon Heard, “When you …

Demand Gen campaigns may be the newest addition to the Google Ads toolbox, but they haven’t received the same attention or hype as Performance Max. At the core is their divergence from Google’s long-standing focus on capturing existing demand – a model that makes attribution and ROI measurement straightforward. Two years after the public launch, we’ve transitioned from the campaign being in beta to testing additional controls, including inventory selection. Here’s what I’ve learned from being part of the initial release and using Demand Gen regularly over the past couple of years. How Google Ads Demand Gen campaigns work Like Performance Max, Demand Ge…

Microsoft Ads introduced two updates that could significantly improve campaign management and reporting for advertisers. The changes: Asset-level disapprovals: Ads will now be disapproved at the asset level—whether a single image, headline, or text line—allowing the rest of the ad to continue running. This reduces wasted spend and prevents entire campaigns from being paused due to a single issue. Conversion reporting transparency: Advertisers can now measure the average time it takes for 90% of conversions—online or offline—to be recorded after a click. This provides critical clarity for evaluating campaign performance and optimizing bidding strategies. Th…

Now that anyone can use AI to generate keywords and spin up a paid search campaign in minutes, it’s easy to assume the hard work is done. But creating structured, scalable performance still requires a genuine understanding of how search works. Techniques like n-grams, Levenshtein distance, and Jaccard similarity give search marketers the ability to interpret messy search term data, apply client context, and build reliable frameworks that AI alone can’t produce. Here’s how. What n-grams reveal in PPC and SEO analysis Think of n-grams as the “n” words that make up a keyword. For example, in the term “private caregiver nearby,” we have: 3 unigrams (one …

ChatGPT is currently down for many users of the popular OpenAI service. When you try to ask ChatGPT a question, you likely won’t get a response. OpenAI confirmed the issue on its status page saying, “We’re currently experiencing issues.” OpenAI added, “We have identified that users are experiencing elevated errors for the impacted services. We are working on implementing a mitigation.” What it looks like. Many are seeing just a black dot as a response to their questions within the ChatGPT interface: Offline for many. The OpenAI status screen shows the uptime by service: Downdetector shows the service has been reported as offline by thousands o…

Managing budgets across multiple paid media channels is one of the most important skills in a PPC marketer’s toolkit. You’re constantly deciding how to allocate spend across channels and campaigns, how to handle big budget swings, and whether to set total or daily budgets. In an AI-driven ad platform world, campaign budgets remain one of the few levers marketers still fully control – and they deserve careful thought. Structuring your budget effectively Depending on your business model, you may have more or less input into the overall paid media budget. However, you usually have more control over how that budget gets broken out across channels and cam…

Social media now drives more traffic to small and medium-sized businesses than search, and many SMBs are beginning to track AI-generated referrals. They also see competitors showing up in AI summaries as an emerging threat, according to new survey data published today by WordStream by LocaliQ. Why we care. Small businesses now see AI summaries as an emerging and important channel. These summaries shape buyers’ early decisions and can steer them toward competing products. AI referrals have also become clear and trackable, convincing businesses that they can – and should – optimize for them. Google traffic losses rise. Forty percent of SMBs say they’ve lost traffic …

Evaluating SEO tools has never been more complicated. Costs keep rising, and promises for new AI features are everywhere. This combination is hardly convincing when you need leadership to approve a new tool or expand the budget for an existing one. Your boss still expects SEO to show business impact – not how many keywords or prompts you can track, how fast you can optimize content, or what your visibility score is. That is exactly where most tools still fail miserably. The landscape adds even more friction. Features are bundled into confusing packages and add-on models, and the number of solutions has grown sharply in the last 12 months. …

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…

Google today released the December 2025 core update. Google said this core update “Today we released the December 2025 core update.” This is the third core update of 2025, and the fourth overall update in all of 2025. Google previously had the August 2025 spam update, before that was the June 2025 core update and before that was the March 2025 core update. Google also wrote: “Released the December 2025 core update. The rollout may take up to 3 weeks to complete.” Google added on LinkedIn, “this is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.” Core updates happen multiple times per year. C…

As a Google Ads practitioner, you probably spend the bulk of your time optimizing Search, Shopping or Performance Max campaigns. That makes sense — the Google SERP is the foundation of Google Ads. But there is a big opportunity sitting right inside your Google Ads account that too many advertisers are ignoring. I’m going to go ahead and declare it: Demand Gen is the most underrated campaign type in Google Ads, and that has to end. If you’ve been hesitant to test Demand Gen, or if you tried it once and “it didn’t work,” let this be your sign to add it to your strategy in 2026. Demand Gen offers a fundamental shift in how we can use Google’s ecosystem to drive growt…

Less than 200 years ago, scientists were ridiculed for suggesting that hand washing might save lives. In the 1840s, it was shown that hygiene reduced death rates, but the underlying explanation was missing. Without a clear mechanism, adoption stalled for decades, leading to countless preventable deaths. The joke of the past becomes the truth of today. The inverse is also true when you follow misleading guidance. Bad GEO advice (I don’t like this acronym, but will use it because it seems to be the most popular) will not literally kill you. That said, it can definitely cost money, cause unemployment, and lead to economic death. Not long ago, I wro…

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…

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…

The SEO versus GEO debate has dominated industry discourse over the past year. New acronyms appear weekly, sentiment swings quickly, and even trusted voices often contradict positions they held just months earlier. That volatility isn’t happening at the edges of the industry. It’s coming from a small group of highly visible SEO influencers whose framing of AI-era search shifts in response to news cycles, platform announcements, and branding pressure. To understand how widespread – and how unstable – this discourse has become, we analyzed how 75 leading SEO influencers discuss AI-driven search on LinkedIn. The goal wasn’t to decide which acronym woul…