SEO Tools and Resources

More than a third of consumers – including nearly 4 in 10 Gen Z users – have ditched Google Search in favor of Pinterest’s visual-first search experience, according to a new Adobe survey. And businesses are following their lead to capture traffic and engagement. By the numbers. Thirty-six percent of consumers said they start searches on Pinterest instead of Google. That includes 39% Gen Z users. Other findings: 39% of consumers use Pinterest as a search engine. 24% of business owners use Pinterest – and nearly a quarter of those businesses plan to boost ad spending on Pinterest this year. 80% of businesses say Pinterest drives more engagement than other sea…

Google continues to lose ground among younger generations, with 61% of Gen Z and 53% of Millennials using AI tools instead of Google or other traditional search engines. That’s according to a new Vox Media survey. Why we care. We continue to see early signs that Google search may be starting to slip – from Google’s market share dropping below 90% for the first time since 2015 to other surveys indicating searchers are frustrated with search quality. Things are changing rapidly – from the rise of AI answer engines and generative engine optimization, to the growth of social platforms for discovery (e.g., TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest). Many brands and marketers are still …

The largest annual survey of PPC professionals finds the industry under growing pressure — more opaque platforms, weaker measurement, and AI tools that help but haven’t transformed the day-to-day. Why we care. More than half of practitioners (53%) say PPC is harder than it was two years ago, up from 49%. The dominant reason isn’t competition — it’s that platforms are making more decisions advertisers can’t see or override, and that gap is only widening. With 89% of digital spend flowing to just three companies, advertisers who don’t build measurement infrastructure independent of platform reporting are increasingly flying blind. By the numbers: 1,306…

On episode 328 of PPC Live The Podcast I speak to Susan Yen, PPC team lead at Search Lab, discussing everything from Performance Max pitfalls to the growing (and sometimes risky) role of AI in marketing. Susan’s biggest PPC f-up: Performance Max gone wrong Susan’s most memorable mistake came when she dove headfirst into Performance Max (PMax) campaigns too soon. At first, results looked incredible — traffic spiked, conversions multiplied, and reports looked great. But soon, the client noticed the leads were poor quality or fake. After investigating, Susan discovered that traffic was coming from low-quality placements, conversion tracking was misconfigured, and …

Are you ready to take your SEO and PPC campaigns to the next level of success? Tackle the challenges of the New Year with actionable tactics, expert guidance, and the inspiration you need to succeed at the spring edition of the SMX Master Classes — happening live online this March. In-depth training. Actionable tactics. Invaluable Q&A. This spring’s lineup features seven outstanding courses tackling core topics critical to 2025 success: Your Training, Your Way. You asked, and we listened: For the first time ever, each Master Class will take place on different days, giving you the flexibility to attend multiple classes live and customize the perf…

What would you do if you realized that you had lost 15% of your market share last month? Can your brand afford to fall behind in Google Ads, even for a week? Right now, the recent tariff shifts (taxes on imported goods) are sending shockwaves through global industries. Supply chains are strained. Pricing strategies are in flux. And consumer behavior is shifting faster than many advertisers can track. When the ground moves this quickly, visibility into your paid search market share isn’t just helpful, it’s essential. Even a few percentage points can mean the difference between leading or lagging in Google Ads. That’s exactly what Adthena’s PPC Market Share Rep…

Website migrations are one of the most challenging aspects of SEO. No matter how much experience you have in technical SEO, how detailed your plan is, or how thorough your checklist may be, unexpected issues can still arise. That’s why post-migration monitoring is just as crucial as the migration itself – especially in the first month when hidden problems are most likely to surface. This article tackles some of the most surprising post-launch errors I’ve encountered, along with practical tips on how to identify and resolve them before they cause serious damage. Random 404 pages This issue drove me crazy. It’s a nightmare for SEO testing because it skew…

In an era where efficiency is key, many businesses question the time and resources spent on technical SEO audits. However, cutting corners in this critical area can lead to incomplete insights and missed opportunities. Let’s dive into why technical SEO deserves a firm investment in both human effort and time, starting with the often-overlooked challenge of crawl time. Crawl time: The primary hindrance Reducing human resource time in your SEO or digital marketing department by cutting technical SEO may be unwise. Why? The primary factor behind the time taken for audits is crawl time. With today’s complex web architectures, this is inevitable.…

If you’re managing multiple campaigns for your brand or your clients, you know how hard it is to scale landing page creation without sacrificing performance. This guide breaks it down—with real examples, tactical insights, and repeatable strategies from a designer who helped generate 14.8 million conversions using Unbounce. Inside, you’ll get: 5 high-performing landing page designs from SaaS, education, and entertainment industries Conversion-driven tactics you can apply to your own campaigns Smart tips for building faster, designing for mobile, and increasing results without reinventing the wheel Whether you’re designing in-house or outsourcing to …

Chinese ecommerce giant Temu was a dominant force in paid acquisition across Google, Meta, and other platforms – until mid-April, when it abruptly halted all U.S. advertising. This was a stunning move from one of the internet’s most aggressive spenders. Temu’s sudden absence opened up a flood of ad inventory – and with it, new questions: Who won? Who lost? And what does it say about market dynamics? The impact on the digital ad ecosystem was immediate and profound, based on research by Mike Ryan, head of ecommerce insights at Smarter Ecommerce. Catch up quick: Over three days in April, Temu’s Google Shopping impression share collapsed, signaling a total …

Temu completely shut off Google Shopping ads in the U.S. on April 9, with its App Store ranking subsequently plummeting from a typical third or fourth position to 58th in just three days. The company’s impression share, which measures how often their ads appear compared to eligibility, dropped sharply before disappearing completely from advertiser auction data by April 12. The timing coincided with the The President administration’s hardened stance on Chinese imports, raising tariffs to 125% while maintaining a more moderate approach to other trading partners. First seen. Mike Ryan, head of ecommerce insights at Smarter Ecommerce, shared this news on LinkedIn…

SEO didn’t stand still in 2025. It didn’t reinvent itself either. It clarified what actually matters. If you followed The SEO Update by Yoast monthly webinars this year, you’ll recognize the pattern. Throughout 2025, our Principal SEOs, Carolyn Shelby and Alex Moss, cut through the noise to explain not just what was changing but why it mattered as AI-powered search reshaped visibility, trust, and performance. If you missed some sessions or want the full picture in one place, this wrap-up is for you. We’re looking back at how SEO evolved over the year, what those changes mean in practice, and what they signal going forward. Key takeaways In 2025, SEO shifted its focus…

The Positionless Marketer is the new marketing professional who is a triple threat with data, creative and optimization power. They blow up the traditional marketing assembly line, where roles are rigidly defined. Instead, they have agility, intelligence and execution speed in defining success. A blueprint for the way Positionless Marketers achieve this level of independence and mastery is Stephen R. Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Covey’s principles, trusted by millions as an excellent foundation for personal and business growth, align with the principles of Positionless Marketing. Covey’s seven habits are divided into three basic groups. The …

The web’s purpose is shifting. Once a link graph – a network of pages for users and crawlers to navigate – it’s rapidly becoming a queryable knowledge graph. For technical SEOs, that means the goal has evolved from optimizing for clicks to optimizing for visibility and even direct machine interaction. Enter NLWeb – Microsoft’s open-source bridge to the agentic web At the forefront of this evolution is NLWeb (Natural Language Web), an open-source project developed by Microsoft. NLWeb simplifies the creation of natural language interfaces for any website, allowing publishers to transform existing sites into AI-powered applications where users and intelligen…

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…

For the past two years, we’ve been living in AI’s gold rush era. To borrow from Taylor Swift, think of it as the “Lover” phase where everything is shiny, new, and full of possibility. The behavior: Buy everything. The metric: Can it generate something cool? The vibe: Pure FOMO. But we’re entering a new era now. Call it the “Reputation” phase, which is darker, edgier, and entirely focused on receipts. A sign of this shift was in the headlines recently, blaring on about Microsoft lowering its AI sales targets. The hot takes rushed in to frame it as a disappointment, a slowdown, and even a sign that enterprise demand is cooling. They all misread the m…

Some brands are watching their organic traffic – and revenue – slip away. Others? They’re optimizing for this new search channel and seeing theirs rise. That’s why Semrush Enterprise built the AI Visibility Index. It’s the definitive study into how brands perform across the world’s leading AI search engines. Leveraging Semrush Enterprise’s AI Optimization (AIO) platform, the Index analyzes 2,500 real-world prompts in both ChatGPT and AI Mode across five key verticals: Business & Professional Services Digital Technology & Software Consumer Electronics Fashion & Apparel Finance Revealing which brands are leading the AI search landsca…

The web has strong opinions about what “AI-written” content looks like, and even stronger ones about what’s supposedly wrong with it. Scroll any content marketer’s LinkedIn feed, and you’ll find confident claims that em dashes and other AI “tells” signal bad, automated writing. The problem with these debates is that they often confuse taste with performance. What counts as “bad writing” will always be subjective. But if the goal for content marketers is to communicate clearly and compete in the information marketplace, the practical question should be: which LLM habits actually turn readers off? To find out, we analyzed a large dataset of content marketing pages t…

Most advertisers spend hours managing keywords, bids, and targeting – but overlook the one thing searchers actually notice: the ad itself. If your ads aren’t strong, nothing else in your account can save you. Why ad copy is the heart of your PPC account When I look at how many Google and Microsoft Ads accounts are being managed, I see a lot of time devoted to: Search term management. Complex bid strategies. Keyword research. Inactionable data analysis. In many accounts, the ads are often neglected. However, your ads are the most crucial part of your PPC account. Your ads are the only aspect of your account that a searcher sees. …

In the early days of SEO, authority was a crude concept. In the early 2000s, ranking well often came down to how effectively you could game PageRank. Buy enough links, repeat the right keywords, and visibility followed. It was mechanical, transactional, and remarkably easy to manipulate. Two decades later, that version of search is largely extinct. Algorithms have matured. So has Google’s understanding of brands, people, and real-world reputation. In a landscape increasingly shaped by AI-powered discovery, authority is no longer a secondary ranking factor – it’s the foundational principle. This is the logical conclusion of a long, deliberate evolution in search. …

When you work on your site’s SEO, reflecting on those efforts should be part of your ongoing strategy. Whether it’s for a client, your manager, or your team, creating an SEO report is the best way to do so. This helps you justify your efforts, keep track of performance and figure out what needs to be tackled next. And it’s not as hard as you would think. In this blog post, we’ll explain what SEO reporting is and take you through the process step by step. Table of contents What is SEO reporting exactly? What to include in your SEO report A general data overview Data on (content) performance Activities previous period A summary with recommendations Creating an SEO …

Affiliate networks aren’t one-size-fits-all. Between evolving tracking laws, new tech capabilities, and shifting fee structures, the best choice depends on your business model and goals. This guide breaks down top affiliate networks by use case, so you can make a smarter, more strategic decision. The data-driven approach to choosing an affiliate network If you’re ready to launch an affiliate program – a marketing channel where others promote you on a revenue-sharing or performance basis – but aren’t sure which affiliate network to choose, I’ve got you covered. Over the last 20+ years, I’ve worked as an affiliate, an in-house affiliate manager, managed…

If there’s one area of Google Ads that often baffles even seasoned practitioners, it’s audience targeting. Within audience targeting, there’s a special option called custom segments that allows us to build our own audiences using Google’s proprietary data. While custom segments can be immensely powerful, they are also immensely confusing. What is a custom segment in Google Ads? A custom segment lets you build a targeted audience based on the content a user has recently interacted with. Think of it this way: instead of saying, “I want to show an ad on a website about running shoes,” you’re saying, “I want to show an ad to a person who has recently shown in…

Educational videos are among the top 10 most-consumed video content formats globally, according to Statista. And it makes sense. Video is one of the fastest, most engaging ways to teach, demonstrate, and connect. But for creators and businesses alike, making a video that actually works (as in: educates, retains, or converts) requires more than hitting “record.” I’ve been creating online content for years, so I know what works and what doesn’t. Our online SEO training has helped thousands of marketers level up their skills through self-paced modules, monthly live Q&A webinars, and on-demand videos. Our “Ask Us Anything” video series and SEO a…

SEO is transitioning from rank, click, and convert to get scraped, summarized, and recommended. We’ve entered the era of invisible attribution known as the dark SEO funnel — where traditional top-of-funnel (TOFU) traffic is collapsing, the messy middle is getting messier, and SEO success can no longer be measured by clicks. Up to 84% of B2B buyers now use AI for vendor discovery, and 68% start their search in AI tools before they ever touch Google, new data from Wynter reveals. Buyers are using ChatGPT to narrow down their options and Google to verify. If you’re still judging SEO success by traffic, you’re optimizing for a model that no longer exists. Here’s…