SEO Tools and Resources

SEO is a way to get more traffic to your website. By ranking high on Google, you attract more people to your site, which leads to more sales and returning visitors. You must optimize your content for the right words to get people to your site. However, you should consider search intent to increase your chances of ranking, convincing people to buy your stuff, subscribing to your newsletter, or even returning to your website. We’ll tell you what search intent is and how you can optimize your content for search intent. Table of contents What is search intent? Four main types of search intent How to optimize your content for search intent Conclusion on search intent for…

Do you have a website or are you thinking about creating one? And do you want to attract more people to your business? If the answer is yes, then there’s no doubt about it: SEO should be part of your marketing efforts. It’s a great way to build your brand and get people on your site. But what does it actually entail? In this post, we’ll give you an understanding of what SEO is and how you can get started! What is SEO? The acronym SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Let’s first get a definition from one of our principal SEO experts at Yoast, Alex Moss: SEO is both the art and science of improving a website, and pages within, to be as visible…

Site Kit by Google is a free WordPress plugin that connects your site to important tools like Analytics, Search Console, and Ads. After installing, it’s easy to verify your accounts, after which you see data in your dashboard. That data is nice to have, but it has limits, especially if you need detailed reports. Table of contents What is Site Kit by Google and why use it? What does it look like? What Google services can you connect? Managing Analytics in Site Kit by Google What’s Enhanced Conversion tracking? Key Metrics widget for quick performance insights Is Site Kit by Google enough for your goals? Should you use Site Kit by Google? What is Site Kit by G…

It’s clear to me that the current “LLM situation” is untenable. These platforms are offering a very expensive set of products with relatively unlimited access. At the same time, you have content creators and publishers in a state of panic as decreased traffic has become the norm. Add to this that platforms ranging from Google’s AI Mode to ChatGPT lack clarity on how to monetize their products, and it becomes clear we’re kicking a can down the line, and sooner or later, all bills come due. The LLMs providing such broad access at no cost are unsustainable long-term. Content publishers offering their content to LLMs for free without traffic or other compensati…

The open web is the part of the internet built on open standards that anyone can use. This concept creates a democratic digital space where people can build on each other’s work without restrictions, just like how WordPress.org is built. For website owners, understanding and leveraging the open web is increasingly crucial. Especially with the rise of AI-powered systems and the general direction that online search is taking. So, let’s explore what the open web is and what it means for your website. What is the open web? The open web refers to the part of the internet built on open, shared standards that are available to everyone. It’s powered by technologies like HT…

Demand Gen marks a shift in Google Ads toward visual advertising beyond keywords and text. Relying on traditional strategies when testing it wastes budget, hurts performance, and limits opportunity. To succeed, you have to think more like a social advertiser than a search advertiser. At SMX Next, Industrious Marketing owner Jack Hepp explained why many businesses struggle with demand gen campaigns — especially in B2B and lead generation — while also sharing insights relevant to ecommerce. Understanding the Shift: From Intent to Interruption Demand Gen reflects Google’s shift from intent-first search advertising to visual, discovery-based campaigns. I…

From answering complex queries to generating creative content, large language models (LLMs) are designed to deliver “zero-click” results – concise, direct answers that eliminate the need for further research. This shift raises a critical question: if users no longer need to visit a website to get the information they want, what happens to web traffic? While the broader implications for the future of websites are a conversation for another day, there’s a more immediate and tactical issue worth examining – links. Specifically: What kind of links are LLMs providing, and how can brands generate traffic from them? The critical role of links in LLM outputs L…

We know AI responses are probabilistic – if you ask an AI the same question 10 times, you’ll get 10 different responses. But how different are the responses? That’s the question Rand Fishkin explored in some interesting research. And it has big implications for how we should think about tracking AI visibility for brands. In his research, he tested prompts asking for recommendations in all sorts of products and services, including everything from chef’s knives to cancer care hospitals and Volvo dealerships in Los Angeles. Basically, he found that: AIs rarely recommend the same list of brands in the same order twice. For a given topic (e.g., runn…

The title tag is one of the most important SEO elements. It can have a great impact on your rankings. In my experience, optimizing title tags can give rankings a strong boost. There are many different ways to optimize a title tag. One is to make sure it fits within the 55- to 60-character limit (which I think is a bit outdated today). Other SEOs suggest it’s OK to have title tags up to 70 characters long (or longer). There are also concerns that having the title truncated in search results or rewritten by Google can negatively affect organic performance and click-through rate. This article explores the basis for such concerns, Google’s official state…

Brand-agency partnerships look very different today than they did even a few years ago, and by 2026 that gap will only widen. Internal marketing teams are more sophisticated, digital channels are more specialized, and the role agencies play is no longer one-size-fits-all. As a result, the companies that get the most value from agency relationships aren’t always the biggest spenders. They’re the ones that are clear about what they need and what they don’t. That clarity starts with understanding the true role an agency should play inside your organization. Too many partnerships struggle because expectations and responsibilities were never properly al…

What they didn’t teach you in the marketing org chart: how to win when the window is closing. Picture a marketer who sees VIPs starting to lapse on a Thursday morning. By noon, they’ve pulled the data, developed three creative variants, launched a triggered journey and measured incremental improvement. No tickets, no queues, no committees. By Monday, the save rate is up 18%. That’s not luck; that’s Positionless Marketing. It’s do-it-now competence, powered by technology. The mindset comes straight from a classic business book: Mark McCormack’s “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes from a Street-smart Executive.” His playbook celebrates prac…

AI Overviews are no longer an experiment – they’re live, prominent, and already changing how people interact with Google Search. For content creators and marketers, that means traditional SEO strategies are under new pressure. When Google answers a query before users scroll, visibility no longer depends just on rankings. It hinges on whether your content is selected, cited, or even needed. This shift calls for more than short-term tweaks. It demands a rethinking of how SEO works both now and in the future. So, what can you do when AI Overviews take the spotlight in search? How to stay visible when Google’s AI Overview answers first When AI Overviews…

Consumers are redefining what loyalty looks like. Values like sustainability, authenticity, and transparency are driving decisions — and personalization is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s expected. Whether you’re shaping in-house campaigns or developing strategies for clients, this new white paper, Beyond the Purchase: The Future of Consumer Behavior in 2025, breaks down the trends that matter most for marketers right now. Inside, you’ll discover: How values-based marketing is reshaping customer expectations Where immersive experiences like AR, VR, and live streaming fit in Why hyper-personalization and real-time engagement are key to conversion How t…

Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) have been around for many years now, but for some reason, so many Google Ads practitioners still find them confusing. RSAs can be incredibly powerful if you know how to use them correctly. What is a Responsive Search Ad? A Responsive Search Ad, or RSA, is the default ad type for Google Search campaigns. When you create an RSA, you must provide three things: Final URL: The landing page where you want users to go after clicking on your ad. Headlines: The clickable part of your search text ad. Minimum 3, Maximum 15. 30-character limit each. I generally recommend having 8-10 headlines in your RSA. We previously covered ad headlines …

PPC is evolving beyond traditional search. Those who adopt new ad formats, smarter creative strategies, and the right use of AI will gain a competitive edge. Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Product Liaison, and Navah Hopkins, Microsoft’s Product Liaison, joined me for a conversation about what’s next for PPC. Here’s a recap of this special keynote from SMX Next. Emerging ad formats and channels When discussing what lies beyond search, both speakers expressed excitement about AI-driven ad formats. Hopkins highlighted Microsoft’s innovation in AI-first formats, especially showroom ads: “Showroom ads allow users to engage and interact with a showroom whe…

The platform behind your site plays a bigger role than you might think. From site speed and mobile responsiveness to content scalability and technical SEO, the foundation you choose can make or break your organic performance. If your goal is seamless, secure, and engaging digital experiences that also support strong search visibility, it’s time to re-evaluate your CMS. Join MarTech’s Future-Proof Your Content Strategy with the Right CMS, and discover exactly what marketers need to consider when evaluating content management systems. You’ll learn: Must-have CMS features for delivering top-notch digital experiences. How to tackle security, compliance, an…

AI agents are poised to reshape how people buy online – not by helping users find where to convert, but by doing the work themselves. In ChatGPT’s Agent mode, I prompted more than 100 agentic actions – from shopping and booking travel to reserving restaurants, buying apartments, and finding jobs. A clear pattern emerged: agents are gradually edging out transactional search as they move beyond information retrieval to act on your behalf, dramatically reducing cognitive load. They handle the drudgery – searching, filtering, and comparing options to find the best fit – before handing off to a human at the decision gate, such as the point of conversion or a critic…

We’ve all asked a chatbot about a company’s services and seen it respond inaccurately, right? These errors aren’t just annoying; they can seriously hurt a business. AI misrepresentation is real. LLMs could provide users with outdated information, or a virtual assistant might provide false information in your name. Your brand could be at stake. Find out how AI misrepresents brands and what you can do to prevent them. Table of contents How does AI misrepresentation work? Different AI brand challenges Real-world examples How to correct AI misrepresentation Use AI brand monitoring tools Optimize content for LLMs Get professional help Use SEO monitoring tools Conclusi…

If you’re like me, you’ve heard plenty of talk about entity SEO and knowledge graphs over the past year. But when it comes to implementation, it’s not always clear which components are worth the effort. I’ve struggled to determine when and where entity concepts actually impact SEO, especially when time is limited. While modern search engines are semantic, traditional tactics like keyword research and link building still work well and often overlap with entity-based strategies. Through trial and error, I’ve learned when these approaches add value and when they’re just unnecessary extra work. So, for the practical SEO professional who doesn’t have endl…

Google’s pitch for AI-powered bidding is seductive. Feed the algorithm your conversion data, set a target, and let it optimize your campaigns while you focus on strategy. Machine learning will handle the rest. What Google doesn’t emphasize is that its algorithms optimize for Google’s goals, not necessarily yours. In 2026, as Smart Bidding becomes more opaque and Performance Max absorbs more campaign types, knowing when to guide the algorithm – and when to override it – has become a defining skill that separates average PPC managers from exceptional ones. AI bidding can deliver spectacular results, but it can also quietly destroy profitable campaigns …

Many search teams are seeing better rankings, more visibility, increased traffic, and more leads. Yet feedback on pipeline, revenue, and sales outcomes isn’t showing the same positive results. When SEO KPIs are green and graphs are up and to the right, business outcomes don’t always reflect the same success. Why strong search performance doesn’t translate to business outcomes Search performance can look healthy on the surface while breaking down in places search teams don’t own or fully see. It’s tempting to turn immediately to attribution models, data quality, or KPI definitions. Ultimately, the issue is often how performance breaks down after th…

Content has long been the fuel for SEO, and its importance continues as AI-driven search relies on rich, trustworthy information. I’ve always believed in doing the “good” and “right” things when it comes to creating content at scale – but even good things can become problems when overdone. Too often, SEO and AI visibility efforts get reduced to publishing more blogs, landing pages, or articles in the pursuit of quick wins that executives want to see. While content is critical, treating SEO as a production machine creates the illusion of progress. Activity without performance bloats sites with duplicative, commoditized, or low-value pages that both search…

Google’s AI Overviews frequently surface affiliate content without sending traffic or clicks back to publishers. The good news for publishers is that affiliate businesses do not need to rely on Google alone. To kick off the new year, here are other sources of traffic and ways to diversify income while sticking to what you do and love. These are strategies I help partners with regularly. This article was inspired by a podcast conversation about whether this was the end of affiliate marketing. It isn’t. Affiliate marketing is more than Google, and it will continue to thrive. Skool and educational platforms Skool and similar platforms let you launch a…

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 …

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…