SEO Tools and Resources

Look, I get it. Every time a new search technology appears, we try to map it to what we already know. When mobile search exploded, we called it “mobile SEO.” When voice assistants arrived, we coined “voice search optimization” and told everyone this would be the new hype. I’ve been doing SEO for years. I know how Google works – or at least I thought I did. Then I started digging into how ChatGPT picks citations, how Perplexity ranks sources, and how Google’s AI Overviews select content. I’m not here to declare that SEO is dead or to state that everything has changed. I’m here to share the questions that keep me up at night – questions that sugg…

SEO and PPC are two of the most important strategies for increasing your website’s visibility. While they both aim to attract more traffic, they operate differently. They also serve different purposes. Here, we’ll discuss SEO vs. Pay-per-click advertising and how to choose the best option for you. Table of contents Understanding SEO and PPC What’s the difference between SEO and PPC? Pros and cons of SEO Pros and cons of PPC Conclusion SEO vs Pay-per-click Understanding SEO and PPC As we all know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It consists of everything you do to get your site higher rankings in the original search results. Those tactics are th…

Marketers have debated SEO versus PPC for years, usually shaped by whatever has worked – or failed – for them in the past. Organic search promises compounding visibility, while paid search delivers immediate control. Most teams ultimately favor one over the other based on experience, budget constraints, or a survival instinct. But in 2026, this old debate no longer fits the reality of search. Why this debate has changed The search landscape has shifted, and the old SEO-or-PPC debate no longer fits. Search behavior has evolved. Search results pages have evolved. The platforms – and the machine learning driving their bidding systems – have e…

In June, Fractl and Search Engine Land surveyed 2,000 consumers and uncovered a startling statistic: 82% find AI-powered search more helpful than traditional search. While the SEO industry panicked, thought leaders and snakeoil salesmen took to LinkedIn to lay claim to this new frontier of AI-driven brand visibility: “It’s called GEO!” “No, it’s AEO!” “Oh, we use AISO! Wait, I meant LLMO now!” …Or, maybe, it’s just effective SEO? Industry banter aside, we’ve entered a world where old-school search and AI-driven discovery coexist – and the terminology isn’t trivial. It’s the roadmap for how brands show up across fast-growing search platform…

AI tools and visibility have dominated the SEO conversation in the past two years. But while discussions focus on these new technologies, most of the biggest SEO risks in 2026 will come from somewhere else: within your own organization. Fragmented data, unclear ownership, outdated KPIs, and weak collaboration can quietly destroy even the best strategies. As SEO expands beyond the website and into AI-driven discovery, the role of the SEO team is becoming broader, more influential, and, paradoxically, harder to define. Here are some of the risks your team should start thinking about now. Relying too much on AI for everything Many SEO teams now rely on AI for …

Every few years, SEO gets a shiny new acronym. Voice search. AMP. E-A-T. Each promised to rewrite the rules, and each eventually found its way into the same corporate graveyard of experiments and half-baked roadmaps. I know, because I bought in. For a year and a half, I buried myself in schema markup—building page-level knowledge graphs, connecting entities, mapping relationships until entire sites resembled semantic webs. It was meticulous, elegant, even beautiful in its own way. And it delivered nothing. Not because technical work doesn’t matter—SEO is inherently technical. The issue in enterprise is that Google is a black box. You can pour months into structured da…

You could be ranking in Position 1 and still be completely invisible. I know that sounds counterintuitive. But here’s what’s actually happening: A potential customer opens ChatGPT or Perplexity and asks, “What’s the best [tool/agency/platform] for [your category]?” Your competitor gets mentioned. You don’t. Your No. 1 ranking did absolutely nothing to help you. This is the new SEO reality, and it’s catching many smart marketers off guard. LLMs synthesize consensus across multiple sources, rather than relying on a single source. This means you need corroborating mentions distributed across the web. The game has shifted from ranking to consensus, and if y…

Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, admitted that Google “for sure messed up” by underinvesting in AI and failing to seriously pursue the opportunity after releasing the research that led to today’s generative AI era. Driving the news. Google didn’t take it seriously enough and failed to scale fast enough after the Transformer paper, Brin said. Also: Google was “too scared to bring it to people” because chatbots can “say dumb things.” “OpenAI ran with it,” which was “a super smart insight.” The full quote. Brin said: “I guess I would say in some ways we for sure messed up in that we underinvested and sort of didn’t take it as seriously as we should have…

SerpApi is asking a federal court to dismiss Reddit’s lawsuit over alleged scraping of Reddit content from Google Search, saying Reddit is trying to use copyright law to control user posts and public search results. The motion follows Reddit’s amended complaint filed in February. SerpApi says the filing still fails to show copyright ownership, circumvention of technical protections, or concrete harm. SerpApi’s argument. SerpApi CEO Julien Khaleghy, in a blog post today, argued the lawsuit fails for several reasons: Reddit doesn’t own most of the content at issue. Its user agreement states that users retain ownership. Reddit holds only a non-exclusive …

SerpAPI said it will “vigorously defend” itself after being sued by Reddit for allegedly scraping and reselling data from the platform via Google Search results. The response. SerpAPI called Reddit’s language “inflammatory” and said it was “extremely disappointed” to learn of the lawsuit without prior communication. “Our work is guided by a simple principle: public search data should be accessible,” the company said. SerpAPI argued its position is backed by the First Amendment and called Reddit’s actions a threat to “the free and open Web we all enjoy.” What they’re saying. According to SerpApi: “For eight years, SerpApi has operated transparently and…

SerpApi is asking a federal court to dismiss Google’s lawsuit, arguing the company is misusing copyright law to restrict access to public search results. The motion was filed Feb. 20, according to a blog post by SerpApi CEO and founder Julien Khaleghy. Google sued SerpApi in December, alleging it bypassed technical protections to scrape and resell content from Google Search. The details: SerpApi argues Google is improperly invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). According to Khaleghy: The DMCA protects copyrighted works, not websites or ad businesses. Google doesn’t own the underlying content displayed in search results. Accessing pub…

Content marketing is everywhere. We do keyword research, analyse markets, and publish landing pages and blog posts. The goal? To attract clicks, convert users, and climb the rankings. But what happens when that stops working? The internet is drowning in generic, AI-generated material. Search is becoming ambient, answer-led, and keyword-less. And search engines no longer need to crawl or rank your site to serve users. In fact, they’d often prefer not to. In these ‘solved query spaces’, answers are synthesised. Content is commodified. The old tactics don’t work anymore. If we want to reach and influence audiences, we need a new approach. We must st…

Even when it ranks in Position 1, Mail Online loses over half its clicks when AI Overviews appear in Google’s search results. Calling the click-through rate (CTR) “pretty shocking” Carly Steven, SEO and editorial ecommerce director for the UK newspaper, told the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress (as reported by PressGazette): “On desktop, when we are ranking number one in organic search, it [clickthrough] effectively is about 13% on desktop and about 20% on mobile. When we are still ranking number one organically but there is an AI Overview present, that drops to less than 5% on desktop and 7% on mobile, so a pretty profound change in clickthrough.” Why we c…

Google Ad Grants accounts can now optimize for real-world foot traffic. Advertisers using the nonprofit program are able to set “shop visits” as an account-level goal — a move that enables campaigns to optimize toward in-person visits. Driving the news. Previously, attempting to mark shop visits as a goal inside Ad Grants would trigger an error. That restriction appears to have been lifted, allowing eligible accounts to include store visit conversions in their primary goal configuration. The update means nonprofits and local organizations can now align bidding and optimization with physical visits — particularly impactful for visibility in Maps placements and …

Shopify is experiencing a major login outage on one of the peak shopping days of the holiday season, leaving merchants unable to access their dashboards, POS systems, mobile apps, or even contact Shopify Support. What’s happening. Shopify’s status page shows a series of escalating alerts beginning at 14:54 UTC, warning that merchants “may experience issues when trying to login.” Minutes later, the platform confirmed the outage affects POS, mobile logins, and support access. By 15:26 UTC, Shopify urged merchants to stay logged in on any devices that are currently active to avoid further complications. Why we care. A login outage during a top-tier sale…

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…

Shopify has become the leading online shopping platform in just a few years. It has become an anti-Amazon, helping small and large retailers worldwide run successful online stores with minimal effort. Although the ecommerce platform makes everything easy, there’s a lot you can do to improve the SEO of your online shop. In this ultimate guide, we’ll help you get on the right track by giving you many tips and tricks. In addition, we’ll tell you the best SEO app, and we have a Shopify SEO checklist for you! Table of contents Introduction What is Shopify? What is Shopify SEO? SEO basics for Shopify Technical SEO for Shopify How to increase sales in Shopify Learn more? Tr…

Shopify is changing how it handles checkout. If you’re running Google Ads or Analytics, you’ll need to act soon. Key deadlines. Shopify Plus merchants must migrate by Aug. 28, 2025. Non-Plus merchants have until Aug. 26, 2026. Missing these dates could result in a total loss of conversion tracking on your Thank You and Order Status pages. The fix. Use the Google & YouTube app. The Google & YouTube app, developed by Google for Shopify, is now the go-to way to handle all things measurement, ads, and analytics. Why migrate now? No code hassle: Easy, direct integration with Google Ads, Analytics, YouTube, and Merchant Center. Future-ready: Support…

In 2025, the battle for attention is being won in under 60 seconds. Short-form video is increasingly delivering measurable performance outcomes. This article explores how you can harness short-form video and creator-driven content as part of a performance marketing strategy. The rise of short-form: More than just eyeballs With YouTube Shorts alone amassing over 70 billion daily views, engagement metrics are no longer the only measure of value. “The untapped potential of short-form video and creator content on YouTube,” a recent study from YouTube and eMarketer, highlights how powerful this format has become. The study found that creator content …

Optimized targeting is one default Google Ads feature that gets a ton of vitriol. Sure, it’s not the best choice for everyone. However, there are definite use cases for this automated targeting feature. Let’s explore: is optimized targeting your friend or foe in Google Ads? We’ll cover: What is optimized targeting in Google Ads? Which campaign types are compatible with optimized targeting? Which bid strategies are compatible with optimized targeting? Optimized targeting vs. Audience expansion Optimized targeting vs. Performance Max How to evaluate optimized targeting: is it working? Should you use optimized targeting? What is optimize…

Since its launch in June we have been rolling out our integration with Site Kit by Google. Every Yoast SEO Premium customer now has access to it. The update brings key Google Analytics and Search Console insights directly into your Yoast Dashboard, giving you a clear view of your site’s performance without switching between tools or tabs. Previously, only users of Yoast SEO (free) and Yoast SEO Premium who already had the Site Kit plugin installed could use the integration. Access is now available to all Yoast SEO Premium customers even if Site Kit is not installed, and it will become available to remaining Yoast SEO (free) users soon. What you can do with the new…

This first release of 2026 brings Site Kit by Google insights into your Yoast SEO Dashboard. After introducing the integration in phases throughout 2025, we are pleased to share that the rollout is now complete and available to all Yoast customers using WordPress. What you can see in your Yoast SEO Dashboard You can now view key performance data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics via Site Kit in your Yoast SEO Dashboard, without changing tools or tabs. These insights include search impressions, clicks, average click through rate, average position, and organic sessions, which are combined with your Yoast SEO and readability scores so you can better un…

Small publishers are seeing sharp traffic declines from AI search experiences, according to new data from thousands of global sites using Chartbeat analytics. The details. Publishers with 1,000 to 10,000 daily pageviews lost 60% of search referral traffic over two years, Chartbeat found. Mid-sized sites with 10,000 to 100,000 daily pageviews lost 47%. Large publishers with more than 100,000 daily pageviews were down 22%. Reality check. AI referrals aren’t replacing lost search traffic. Google Search pageviews fell 34% year over year. Google Discover dropped 15%. ChatGPT referrals rose 200% but still account for less than 1% of total traffic. …

Undoubtedly, one of the hot topics in SEO over the last few months has been how to influence LLM answers. Every SEO is trying to come up with strategies. Many have created their own tools using “vibe coding,” where they test their hypotheses and engage in heated debates about what each LLM and Google use to pick their sources. Some of these debates can get very technical, touching on topics like vector embeddings, passage ranking, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and chunking. These theories are great—there’s a lot to learn from them and turn into practice. However, if some of these AI concepts are going way over your head, let’s take a step back. I’ll walk you…

Marketers love a good line graph that goes up and to the right, but with overwhelming data, graphs alone can’t communicate complex data effectively. A good data display should do more than convey information – it should reveal insights, guide decisions, and prioritize actions. In 2025, marketing data must evolve from reporting to storytelling, because effective charts don’t just show data; they help us understand what it means and what to do next. Why traditional reporting is no longer good enough One of the most common formats for SEO and PPC reporting is the classic, tried-and-true line graph. Even Google – in Search Console and Google Ads – defaults…