SEO Tools and Resources

Google is rolling out VRC Non-Skip ads, expanding how brands reach connected TV audiences on YouTube. What’s happening. VRC (Video Reach Campaign) Non-Skips are now live globally in Google Ads and Display & Video 360. The format is built specifically for the living room experience, ensuring ads run as non-skippable placements optimized for connected TV (CTV) screens. Why we care. YouTube has become the No. 1 streaming platform in the U.S. for three consecutive years, making the TV screen a critical battleground for brand budgets. With guaranteed, non-skippable delivery, advertisers can ensure their full message reaches viewers in premium, lean-back environment…

What do conversion rate optimization (CRO) and findability look like for an AI agent versus a human, and how different do your strategies really need to be? More and more marketers are embracing the agentic web, and discovery increasingly happens through AI-powered experiences. That raises a fair question: what does CRO and findability look like for an AI agent compared with a human? Several considerations matter, but the core takeaway is clear: serving people supports AI findability. AI systems are designed to surface useful, grounded information for people. Technical mechanics still matter, but you don’t need entirely different strategies to be findable or to im…

For more than a decade, the dominant model was simple — identify a keyword, write an article, publish, promote, rank, capture traffic, convert a fraction of visitors, and repeat. But that model is breaking. Content marketing is collapsing and rebuilding simultaneously. AI systems now answer informational queries directly inside search results. Large language models (LLMs) synthesize known information instantly. Information production is accelerating faster than distribution capacity. Public feeds are already saturated. The cost of producing content has fallen to nearly zero, while the cost of being seen has never been higher. That changes everything. Here’s a…

Every year, Google suspends tens of millions of Google Ads accounts for advertising policy violations. One specific policy area that confuses many legitimate advertisers is Google’s “three-strikes” system. Essentially, if Google decides your account has repeatedly violated any of 15 specific Google advertising policies, you’re at risk for temporary (and potentially permanent) suspension of your Google Ads account. To help you prevent a single policy issue from snowballing into a full account suspension, here’s how Google’s three-strike system works and what you should do at every stage to keep your ads running. Case study: Appealing a Google Ads strike Over…

Meta is updating its ad measurement framework, aiming to simplify attribution in what it calls a “social-first” advertising world. What’s happening. Meta is narrowing its definition of click-through attribution for website and in-store conversions. Going forward, only link clicks — not likes, shares, saves or other interactions — will count toward click-through attribution. The change is designed to reduce discrepancies between Meta Ads Manager and third-party tools like Google Analytics. Between the lines. Social media has overtaken search as the world’s largest ad channel, according to WARC, but many attribution systems were built for search-era behaviors. O…

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…

Google will begin enforcing a minimum daily budget for Demand Gen campaigns starting April 1, 2026. What’s happening: The Google Ads API will require a minimum daily budget of $5 USD (or local equivalent) for all Demand Gen campaigns. The change is designed to help campaigns move through the “cold start” phase with enough spend for Google’s models to learn and optimize effectively. The update will roll out as an unversioned API change, applying across all buying paths. Technical details: In API v21 and above, campaigns set below the threshold will trigger a BUDGET_BELOW_DAILY_MINIMUM error, with additional details available in the error metadata. In API v2…

Imagine a web ecosystem where not just humans but AI agents communicate with websites, going beyond traditional browsing. Unlike conventional web experiences, where people click, scroll, and search, AI agents can navigate, interpret, and even perform tasks autonomously on your site. This is not a futuristic concept. It is already unfolding. This is the emergence of the agentic web. Table of contents The big shift: From web for users to a web for users and agents Protocol thinking and the infrastructure of agentic web communication What does this mean for SEO professionals? Yoast’s collaboration with NLweb and what it means for WordPress users Key takeaways …

Google posted a new help document on “Things to know about Google’s web crawling.” While many of those “things to know” are already known, Google felt it would be a good idea to make this document in order to provide “basic educational information about crawling to better highlight various resources about crawling that are available to site owners.” The document has 9 items posted in it right now including: Frequent crawling is a good sign! Google wrote, “If we’re crawling your site a lot, it’s an indication your pages have fresh or highly relevant content that people want to find, and that our systems are recognizing that demand. Online shopping is a great …

Chrome 146 has introduced an early preview of WebMCP behind a flag. WebMCP (Web Model Context Protocol) is a proposed web standard that exposes structured tools on websites, showing AI agents exactly what actions they can take and how to execute them. Here’s some context around what that actually means. The internet was originally built for humans. We designed buttons, dropdowns, and forms for people to read, understand, and use. But now there’s a new type of user emerging: AI agents. Soon, they’ll be able to complete registrations, buy tickets, and take any action needed to complete a goal on a website. Right now, AI agents face a major challenge. They must c…

Lately, I’ve been spending most of my day inside Cursor running Claude Code. I’m not a developer. I run a digital marketing agency. But Claude Code within Cursor has become the fastest way for me to handle many tasks I want to do, including pulling and analyzing data from Google Search Console, GA4, and Google Ads. The setup takes about an hour. After that, you can ask things like “which keywords am I paying for that I already rank for organically?” and get an answer in seconds instead of spending an afternoon with spreadsheets. (I wouldn’t have been the one spending an afternoon with spreadsheets anyway, but now nobody has to.) Here’s the step-by-step process I d…

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 has long been considered the gold standard for ad spend compared to social platforms. But scale doesn’t equal immunity. Click fraud remains a persistent risk, and the safety of your budget depends entirely on where your ads are running. While Google Ads offers immense reach, its campaigns aren’t created equal. Some are significantly more exposed to malicious activity than others. To protect your margins, you must understand what constitutes click fraud, where it originates, and how to shield your campaigns. What are invalid clicks? Invalid clicks are interactions that lack legitimate consumer intent. Because they aren’t driven by real human interest, the…

Google is communicating that starting April 1st, Customer Match uploads through the Google Ads API will stop working for certain users, in a message sent to API developers. Specifically, developers who haven’t uploaded Customer Match data in the past 180 days using their developer token will no longer be able to do so via the Ads API. What’s changing. If you fall into that inactive bucket, any attempt to upload Customer Match lists through the Google Ads API after April 1 will fail. Instead, Google wants you to move those workflows to the Data Manager API. The change applies only to Customer Match uploads — all other campaign management and reporting tasks should …

Google has removed the “design for accessibility” section from within the Understand the JavaScript SEO basics documentation. Google said this was removed because the information was “out of date and not as helpful as it used to be.” The old text said that using JavaScript for page content “may be hard for Google to see.” But Google now says that has not been true for many years, thus why Google removed the section. The old section. The old section read: “Design for accessibility: Create pages for users, not just search engines. When you’re designing your site, think about the needs of your users, including those who may not be using a JavaScript-capable br…

PPC platforms are asset-hungry. What began as simple text ads and keyword bidding has evolved into an AI-driven ecosystem. Tools inside Google Ads can now remove backgrounds, generate lifestyle scenes, and even create synthetic humans in minutes. But just because the technology allows it doesn’t mean every brand should use it. That shift forces PPC advertisers to confront difficult questions: Are you willing to trade efficiency for authenticity? How far up the stack should your brand let AI operate? If clients knew exactly where and how you were using AI, would they trust you, or would they question you? A brand integrity hierarchy offers a way t…

Google introduced a new availability value in Google Merchant Center — built specifically for vehicle sellers who don’t carry every model on the lot. The new attribute, “build to order,” lets dealers flag vehicles that aren’t physically in inventory but can be customized and ordered by customers. What needs to change. Sellers must update two areas: their structured data (set availability to BuildToOrder) and their Merchant Center feed (set availability to build to order). Consistency between structured data and feed submissions is critical to avoid disapprovals. [availability] Why we care. Until now, sellers had limited ways to signal that a vehicle wasn’t avai…

Google is investigating a disruption affecting Google Ad Manager, according to an update posted on the Google Ads Status Dashboard. The incident began at 13:49 UTC on March 4. By 13:54 UTC, Google said it was reviewing reports that some users could access Ad Manager but weren’t seeing the most up-to-date data. What’s happening. The issue appears to impact reporting consistency. Specifically, Ad Exchange match rate and Ad Exchange request values are not aligning between Ad Manager’s interactive reports and the legacy reporting query tool (now deprecated). Why we care. Reporting discrepancies in Google Ad Manager can directly impact how you evaluate performance …

Google is rolling out an update to AI Mode for recipe results that it hopes will make recipe bloggers happy. Google’s Robby Stein said on X, “We’ve heard feedback on recipe results in AI Mode, and we’re making updates to better connect people with recipe creators on the web.” The changes aim to make it easier to click over to recipe sites, though I am not 100% certain yet whether the recipe summaries turn recipes into AI slop. “Starting today, when you search for meal ideas like “easy dinners for two,” you can tap on the dish to see links to relevant recipe sites, plus a short overview of the dish to help with inspiration,” Stein added. What it looks like. Her…

Every once in a while, a product launch doubles as a marketing masterclass. Recently, Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty released a new fragrance, and it wasn’t just the scent that captured attention. It was the bottle. Designed with accessibility in mind, the easy-to-use packaging quickly became the story, sparking conversations and praise from accessibility advocates and consumers alike. The takeaway for marketers is hard to miss. An inclusive design decision became the campaign itself, delivering more cultural impact than any ad spend could buy. And the lesson for marketers is equally clear: accessibility drives loyalty, enhances brand reputation, ensures compliance, and a…

There’s a growing problem in SEO and content marketing that doesn’t get talked about enough: everything is starting to sound the same. The same phrasing and structure, the same bland tone, the same safe language, the same robotic rhythm. The web is filling up with perfectly optimized content that no one actually enjoys reading. And that’s the real risk. Not that AI will replace SEOs, Google will penalize AI content, or automation will destroy search. The real danger is that brands lose their voice, their personality, and their identity in the name of efficiency. AI should make your SEO better, not blander. Faster, not flatter. Scalable, not soulless. Her…

You’ve probably heard developers talk about the DOM. Maybe you’ve even inspected it in DevTools or seen it referenced in Google Search Console. But what, exactly, is it? And why should SEOs care? Let’s take a look at what it is, why it’s important, and how to best optimize it. What is the DOM? The Document Object Model (DOM) is a browser’s live, in-memory representation of your webpage. It acts as the interface that allows programs like JavaScript to interact with your content. The DOM is organized as a hierarchical tree, similar to a family tree: The document: This is the root of the tree. Elements: HTML tags like <body>, <p>, and <a…

How content is structured in an article or blog post might not seem controversial. But, apparently, Google doesn’t want you to create bite-sized chunks of content simply to please LLMs. Called “chunking,” this technique helps get your content noticed by AI models and reflects how readers actually engage with online content. Chunking may make content more retrievable or citable in AI search, but ultimately, it improves the flow of content and makes concepts easier for people to understand. Let’s talk about how chunking works and when to use it. What is chunking? Chunking is the practice of organizing text into distinct, self-contained units of meaning. When cont…

For 20 years, the web has run on a simple trade: publish content that meets a person’s needs, rank in search, earn traffic, then monetize that traffic through products, services, affiliate referrals, or ads. Zero-click answers and AI search are rewriting that relationship. The new question is whether AI will cite you as a source — and whether that visibility can turn into revenue. To understand who gets included and who gets routed around, I ran over 200 AI visibility audits across 10 industries. The pattern was consistent: Most sites are easy to parse, but hard to justify citing. And the industries that rely on discovery traffic the most are often the ones ma…

While OpenAI becomes increasingly independent from Microsoft and, by extension, Bing, has it replaced this new found freedom for a dependent relationship with Google? Has OpenAI’s increasing independence from Microsoft and, by extension, Bing, become an overly dependent relationship with Google? Our study comparing shopping query fan-outs (QFOs) in ChatGPT from both Google and Bing carousels seems to have provided at least somewhat of an answer to that question. Let’s take a look at how this study was conceived and what we found. Brief shopping fan-out background and technical explainer In November 2025, a few researchers in the AI research space, including myself,…