SEO Tools and Resources

Your paid social operation is on fire. You know how your audience thinks, the creative process is dialed in, and the results get better every year. Leadership greenlights an expansion to Google Ads — a new channel and, critically, a new source of revenue. As it turns out, applying that same strategy really just buys you an express ticket to a very difficult conversation. Google rewards a different kind of thinking. Intent signals and campaign logic are different, and the mistakes that eat at your budget don’t always make themselves clear. Brands that apply their existing Meta playbook often find themselves looking at shiny dashboards and dull balance sheets. T…

You’ve done everything right. You have a fast website with comprehensive content, pages ranking in the top 10, and a strong backlink profile. Yet when you search the query you rank for, your site doesn’t appear in Google’s corresponding AI Overview. This is a retrieval problem, not a ranking issue. And the difference between the two is the most important shift SEOs need to understand right now. AI Overviews don’t work like traditional organic rankings. Instead of considering which page has the most signals, AI Overviews look for the page that gives the cleanest, most usable answer. If your content doesn’t meet that standard, your traditional search ranking is …

For a long time, links were the primary signal of authority in search. If you wanted visibility, you built backlinks. If you wanted credibility, you earned placements. That still matters — but it’s no longer enough. In AI-driven search, authority is shaped by how often your brand is mentioned, cited, and clearly associated with a topic. Visibility comes from being referenced in AI-generated answers. With that shift in mind, the goal is to create content that earns consistent brand mentions and citations — the signals that now drive AEO visibility. The philosophy driving content that fuels AEO growth In 2026 organic discovery, authority incorporates entity r…

Is it possible to get an accurate view of the current state of SEO? There have been multiple attempts to reach consensus on what works, predict what might be coming, and identify the factors that may play a role in “good” (or “bad”) SEO. As useful and productive as some of this may be, none of it offers the same grounded data as the Web Almanac, a project I was honored to be a part of. With the publication of the 2025 SEO chapter, we can now review the data and spot the emerging trends from 2025 and what that could mean for SEO in 2026. SEO standards on the rise 2025 has been another year of increasingly higher SEO standards — which can only be a good thin…

In this case study, we went deep instead of broad. We focused on one question: why wasn’t a brand present in a single ChatGPT prompt across ~70 iterations? We chose one prompt: “What are the best hotels in New York City?” We analyzed mentions, citations, fanouts, and SERPs in Google and Bing. We also planned to analyze GPT memory, but it made no discernible difference to mentions, citations, or fanouts. What we did and what we found We chose NYC hotels because it’s a crowded, mature market with juggernauts and up-and-comers. We also have no connection to the NYC luxury hotel space — we intentionally picked an area where we could stay objective and learn fr…

If you rank your own product #1 in “best of” listicles, it’s not just a search-quality issue — it may violate FTC rules that took effect in October 2024. Driving the news. As Lily Ray noted on LinkedIn, the FTC’s Consumer Review Rule (16 CFR Part 465) prohibits several deceptive practices tied to reviews and testimonials, including: Presenting company-controlled content as independent reviews. Publishing reviews of products or services never actually used. Attributing reviews to people who didn’t write them. Penalties can reach up to $53,088 per violation, and each page may count separately. Ray also shared a reference table she generated with the help …

Google Search is evolving beyond links and answers into a system that completes tasks, potentially fundamentally changing how users interact with the web. That’s according to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, speaking on the Cheeky Pint podcast. Why we care. Google is signaling a move from information retrieval to task execution. Search becoming agentic. Traditional search behavior is already changing and will continue to, Pichai said. “If I fast-forward, a lot of what are just information-seeking queries will be agentic in Search. You’ll be completing tasks. You’ll have many threads running.” Pichai also described a future where Google Search acts less like a…

Traffic from agentic AI sources is rising at Dell, but the impact remains minimal and inconsistent, according to the company’s ecommerce lead. The details. Dell is seeing increased visits from platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, according to Breanna Fowler, head of global consumer revenue programs. But the growth isn’t “earth-shaking,” and agentic shopping has yet to deliver meaningful results, Fowler told Digital Commerce 360. Dell is still testing how to integrate with LLM-driven shopping, with efforts in early proof-of-concept stages and internal debate over long-term strategy, Fowler said. Fowler expects agentic AI to function more like an aggr…

Google is removing complexity from one of its most important measurement tools. By merging enhanced conversions for web and leads—and allowing multiple data inputs at once—advertisers get more accurate tracking with less setup friction. What’s happening. Google Ads is consolidating its enhanced conversions features into a unified system with a single on/off toggle. At the same time, it’s eliminating the need to choose a single implementation method. Advertisers will be able to send user-provided data through multiple channels simultaneously—including website tags, Data Manager, and API integrations. The current split between “enhanced conversions for web” and “en…

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 …

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…

Version 4.6 of Yoast Duplicate Post is here, and it’s all about making your editing experience feel more natural in WordPress’s Block Editor, and making sure “Rewrite & Republish” works reliably every time you need it. A more modern editing experience Everything where you’d expect it. The Duplicate Post controls now sit in the Block Editor’s sidebar, right alongside WordPress’s own settings, no more hunting around. If you’re still on the Classic Editor, nothing changes for you. Buttons that look the part. The “Copy to a new draft” and “Rewrite & Republish” actions are now proper bordered buttons, consistent with the rest of the WordPress interface. Cle…

Google is expanding how inventory appears in Google Ads Search campaigns, giving automotive advertisers a more visual, product-rich format directly in text ads. What’s happening. Google Ads now supports vehicle feed integration on Search ads, allowing advertisers to pull inventory from Google Merchant Center and enhance existing text ads with details like make, model, price, and images. How it works. Vehicle listings appear as clickable assets alongside standard Search ads, either below or beside the main text. Users can click through to a specific vehicle detail page or a broader landing page, depending on the interaction. Why we care. This update lets automo…

Adobe will shut down the SEO feature in Marketo Engage at the end of March 2026, according to its February 2026 release notes. The tool will be deprecated on March 31, and you must export any existing SEO data before then. (This page includes links to the export instructions.) The SEO tile will be removed from the platform on April 1. What happened? Adobe’s Keith Gluck said deprecating low-use features lets the Marketo Engage team focus on other areas of the platform. For your SEO needs, Adobe announced in 2025 that it was acquiring Semrush, a full-featured SEO and visibility tool. (Reminder: Semrush owns Third Door Media, the publisher of Search Engine Land.…

Google is testing AI-generated review replies in Google Business Profile. Why we care. Responding to reviews can impact conversions and trust. But generic AI replies could be risky and erode trust, especially on negative reviews where authenticity matters most. Response quality matters more than whether a business replies to reviews. What it looks like. Here’s a screenshot: The details. Google appears to be rolling out a limited test of Reply to reviews with AI inside Google Business Profile. The feature generates suggested responses to customer reviews. Users can review, edit, and manually submit replies. Availability is inconsistent across acc…

A strange pattern has emerged in Google’s paid search results — multiple competing ads are displaying the exact same web statistics, raising questions about a potential bug or intentional design shift. What’s happening. Several paid search ads are surfacing the same website statistics simultaneously, despite the fact that these signals are typically unique to each individual site. The uniformity makes the data appear unreliable, and it’s unclear whether this is a display glitch, a testing experiment, or something more deliberate. Why we care. Trust signals in search ads exist to help users make informed decisions and to boost click-through rates by giving user…

With AI, you can generate dozens (if not hundreds) of articles in hours and publish at scale. But publishing is the easy part. What happens after they go live is what matters. Together with the research team at SE Ranking, we ran a 16-month experiment to track how well AI-generated content performed on brand-new domains with zero authority. As you will see, the results are hard to call a success. Here’s the full story behind our experiment. Methodology The goal was simple: test how far AI content — with no human editing, rewriting, or enhancement — could go in search. How quickly would it get indexed? Could it rank for relevant queries? Most imp…

The EU’s top antitrust enforcer signaled a decision on whether Google is violating the Digital Markets Act is imminent, without committing to a timeline. What she said. “It will come,” Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera told Dow Jones Newswires, adding the cases are complex and the commission is committed to decisions based on evidence and fair procedure. The backdrop. The European Commission launched its probe into Google’s search business in March 2024 under the Digital Markets Act. The commission gave itself a soft 12-month deadline to wrap up — it has already fined Meta and Apple, but Google’s case remains unresolved nearly two years in. The pressure i…

In an increasingly automated environment, paid search performance is constrained by a simple reality: Algorithms can only optimize toward the signals they’re given. Improving those signals remains the most reliable way to improve results. That sounds straightforward, but in practice, many people are still optimizing around signals that don’t reflect real business outcomes. Let’s dive into how algorithms function, how you can influence them, and where some people fail. How bidding algorithms actually work Modern bidding systems are often described as “black boxes,” suggesting they operate mysteriously. But that description isn’t helpful. At a high level…

AI citations in ChatGPT are far more concentrated than citation distributions in traditional search. Roughly 30 domains capture 67% of citations within a topic. That’s according to Kevin Indig’s latest study, which also found that broad topical coverage, long-form pages, and cluster-based models outperform the old “one keyword, one page” approach. The details. Citation visibility wasn’t evenly distributed. In product comparison topics, the top 10 domains accounted for 46% of citations; the top 30, 67%. AI visibility was slightly less concentrated than classic organic search, but still highly centralized. Indig’s conclusion: you’re effectively shut out u…

Google released the March 2026 core update today, the company announced. This is the first core update from Google in 2026, and follows the quick March 2026 spam update from a couple of days ago. It also follows the February 2026 Discover update. What Google is saying. Google updated its Search Status Dashboard to state: “Released the March 2026 core update. The rollout may take up to 2 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. The rollout may take up to 2 weeks to complete..” About core updates. Core updates roll out sev…

You know SEO improves traffic, authority, and trust. What we don’t talk about enough is how a strong SEO foundation can help other channels, including PPC. This practical case study will show you how performance marketing scales in a high-consideration B2B medical device market and how getting SEO fundamentals firmly in place enables paid media to deliver at scale. B2B medical device marketing breaks most performance playbooks Marketing a premium pelvic floor chair has little in common with selling SaaS tools or consumer products. This is a high-ticket medical device with a long sales cycle and a strong reliance on medical expertise. Buyers include doctor…

Just six weeks after launching its ad pilot, OpenAI has hit a significant milestone — and the platform is still in its early stages of rollout. The numbers. Over $100 million in annualized ad revenue, generated from less than 20% of eligible US free and Go tier users seeing ads daily Around 85% of Free and Go users are eligible to see ads — meaning the current revenue represents a fraction of the platform’s eventual ad capacity More than 600 advertisers are now on the platform What’s coming next. Self-serve advertiser access is on track to launch in April Geographic expansion into Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is being explored OpenAI ha…

AI search often fails to identify which Spanish-speaking market it’s serving. Instead, it blends regional terminology, legal frameworks, and commercial context into a single response, creating answers that don’t map to any real market. The result is answers that mix multiple countries into something no user can actually use. This is the “Global Spanish” problem. How AI turns ‘correct’ Spanish into useless answers Ask a chatbot in Spanish how to file your taxes — cómo puedo declarar impuestos — and watch what happens. The response is grammatically perfect, well structured, and seemingly helpful. Then, in a single bullet point, it casually lists “RFC, NIF, SS…

Reddit today opened its Pro publishing tools to all publishers, removing the waitlist and offering free access in a public beta to expand distribution and engagement. Why we care. Reddit Pro gives you a centralized tool to track where your content spreads, streamline posting, and find the right communities. It transforms Reddit from a manual posting exercise into a structured distribution channel. The details. You can now sign up for Reddit Pro, verify your domain (typically within three business days), and access the Links tab. With Reddit Pro, you can: Track where your content is shared across Reddit. Auto-import articles via RSS for quick posting. Ge…