SEO Tools and Resources

The newly released Dotdigital Global Benchmark Report 2025 reveals a surprising trend: email volumes rose 23.9% year-over-year, and engagement metrics improved alongside them. Click-through rates doubled. Click-to-open rates jumped by 50%. Unsubscribes remained low at just 0.13%. The report analyzes billions of cross-channel interactions across industries, offering marketing teams rare insight into how leading brands are outperforming. With smarter segmentation, deeper personalization, and multi-channel orchestration, the data suggests that more can indeed mean better—when it’s done right. Why It Matters For digital marketers, ops leads, and marketing direc…

Your WordPress site might be packed with great content and stunning visuals, but without proper search engine optimization (SEO), it could be hard to find. SEO ensures your site gets noticed, eventually driving traffic to your content and boosting engagement. Thankfully, SEO doesn’t have to be complicated. Many WordPress plugins simplify key tasks like optimizing content, structuring your site, and improving performance, all of which contribute to better rankings. Below, we’re exploring reliable and widely used SEO plugins that can help your site stand out and attract the audience it deserves. Here at Kinsta, ranked as G2’s top WordPress hosting pro…

Relying solely on Google for search visibility is no longer viable today. Search behavior is diversifying, particularly among younger demographics. Gen Z is increasingly turning to platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, and Reddit for information discovery. This shift highlights the need for brands to embrace a total search strategy – an approach that integrates multiple search and discovery channels to create a more holistic and resilient search presence. The risks of Google dependency Google’s algorithm changes frequently, and core updates can significantly impact website rankings overnight. Over-reliance on a single search engine makes brands vulner…

The days of building campaigns around long lists of keywords are fading. Today, AI-powered Google campaigns and features like Performance Max (PMax) and AI Max are changing the rules. These keywordless campaigns lean on automation, audience signals, and machine learning to find new opportunities, often faster and at greater scale than humans can. At SMX Next, three PPC pros — Nikki Kuhlman, VP of search at Jumpfly; Brad Geddes, founder of Adalysis; and Christine Zirnheld, director of lead gen at Cypress North — explained where PMax and AI Max fit into your broader campaign strategy, where humans still make the difference, and how to strike the right balance betwee…

Ranking No. 1 is still an accomplishment, but by now, most SEO professionals understand that it doesn’t mean what it once did. Search in 2026 is messy, multi-surface, and sometimes more passive than active: AI: AI Overviews and answer engines. Social: YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest as search platforms. Forums and UGC: Reddit, Quora, and UGC blended straight into results. SERP features: People Also Ask, What People Are Saying, etc. Jim Yu, Founder and CEO of BrightEdge, shared with me: “In the early days of search, success was simple: earn rankings, get clicks, grow traffic. But search has evolved through quick answers, featured snippets, maps, …

Generative AI (GenAI) has undeniably transformed the marketing function, from automated customer interactions to content creation. But while everyone has been focused on chatbots and creating new blog posts, a quiet revolution has been brewing in Digital Asset Management (DAM). It began with addressing long-standing challenges related to asset findability and reuse but today we are seeing a number of exciting new, high-value use cases that will take us well beyond asset tagging and unlock the true creative potential of your DAM solution. Asset tagging and retrieval One of the core tenants of DAM is asset reuse. Why invest time, resource and cost in reproducing an a…

BigQuery is one of the most underutilized tools in PPC. While data professionals have been leveraging data warehousing and Structured Query Language (SQL) for years, many PPC specialists still rely on in-platform reporting and third-party tools such as Optmyzr and TrueClicks. But with Google’s evolving data limitations, increased automation, and the growing importance of first-party data, mastering BigQuery is becoming a game-changer for paid search experts. What is BigQuery? BigQuery is Google’s fully managed, serverless data warehouse that lets you store and analyze massive datasets using SQL. Unlike Google Ads, Google Analytics 4, or Google Search …

Microsoft Bing appears to be testing an aggressive new ad display format that dramatically reduces organic search visibility in favor of sponsored content. The details: Users are reporting search result pages with at least seven paid advertisements. One or two organic results are visible on the first page. The format has been independently verified by multiple users. What they’re saying. The original poster, Red Leaf Web Design, expressed shock at the format, stating “BING Ads Gone Wild!” on X. Several of the Search Engine Land staff were also able to replicate the ad-heavy results, seeing as many as nine ads: Bing Ads Gone Wild! ONE organic result…

Microsoft is now testing a Google-like redesign of search ads in Bing, grouping multiple sponsored links under a single “Sponsored results” label and adding a “Hide” button that collapses the entire ad block. Driving the news. Sachin Patel spotted the Bing test in the wild and shared screenshots and video showing the new layout. In the test, only the first sponsored result carries an ad label, while subsequent ads appear unlabelled underneath it. Users can tap “Hide” to collapse the entire set of ads, then “Show” to reveal them again. How it works. The structure groups ad units in a way that can blur the distinction between organic and paid content. By collaps…

Microsoft released Copilot within Bing Webmaster Tools to all users today, the company announced today. Initially, Microsoft had a beta release to only 10,000 trusted users of Bing Webmaster Tools but now the feature is generally available to all users. What is Copilot in Bing Webmaster Tools. Copilot in Bing Webmaster Tools promises to provide “instant, accurate and contextually relevant answers to [user] queries.” It is engineered to provide “streamline workflows, enhance productivity, and provide valuable insights,” Microsoft initially said. Copilot in Bing Webmaster Tools aims at “helping webmasters manage their search optimization efforts more efficiently, im…

Microsoft today launched AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools in beta. AI Performance lets you see where, and how often, your content is cited in AI-generated answers across Microsoft Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries, and select partner integrations, the company said. AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools shows which URLs are cited, which queries trigger those citations, and how citation activity changes over time. Search Engine Land first reported on Jan. 27 that Microsoft was testing the AI Performance report. What’s new. AI Performance is a new, dedicated dashboard inside Bing Webmaster Tools. It tracks citation visibility across supported AI surfaces. Inst…

Microsoft has added the ability to compare date ranges within the Search Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools. This allows you to compare metrics and data points such as clicks, impressions, CTR, keywords, and pages across various date ranges. What Microsoft said. Microsoft wrote: “These enhancements enable in-depth analysis, providing invaluable insights for optimizing online presence and improving visibility. This means businesses can now make more informed decisions, identify key trends, and effectively adjust their marketing strategies to achieve better results.” Microsoft also made user experience improvements in time filters, the company added. …

Microsoft has been promising to give data on the performance of websites mentioned in AI results within Bing and Copilot since February 2023 and then again in April 2023. But then decided to let us down and only lump the data together with web queries, not giving us a clear view of how our sites perform within Bing’s AI experiences. Now Bing is reportedly testing showing a new report within Bing Webmaster Tools named AI Performance report. AI Performance report. This report is currently in a super limited beta – Microsoft has not announced anything about this publicly. But a source told us this report shows citation data from both Microsoft Copilot and partners. …

Black Friday 2025 was a bit of a head-scratcher. Year on year, spend rose, impressions fell, but clicks and engagement stayed strong. The data (so far): Source: Optmyzr-connected Google Ads accounts (5,000+ ecommerce, 16,000 lead gen advertisers active both years). Conversion value and ROAS are still coming in — we’ll update when the full picture is ready. Two big takeaways: Visibility got pricier. Spend up ~17% across ecommerce and lead gen. Impressions fell year over year. Translation: advertisers paid more to reach roughly the same audience. Engagement held steady. Clicks and CTR up across the board. Lead gen saw slightly l…

Black Friday is when performance peaks — and so do risks. In 2024, global spending reached $74.4 billion, with U.S. online sales up 10.2% year-over-year. Behind that growth, affiliate competition and coupon activity surged, pushing paid channels to their limits. During these high-traffic days, even a single unchecked campaign can waste hundreds of thousands of dollars. Coupon fraud, coupon scam tactics and unauthorized brand bidding mess with your paid traffic, distort performance data and steal conversions that should’ve stayed yours. That’s why strong PPC compliance and continuous promo code monitoring aren’t optional — they’re what keep acquisition costs stable…

In the early days of SEO, ranking algorithms were easy to game with simple tactics that became known as “black hat” SEO – white text on a white background, hidden links, keyword stuffing, and paid link farms. Early algorithms weren’t sophisticated enough to detect these schemes, and sites that used them often ranked higher. Today, large language models power the next generation of search, and a new wave of black hat techniques are emerging to manipulate rankings and prompt results for advantage. The AI content boom – and the temptation to cut corners Up to 21% of U.S. users access AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and DeepSeek mo…

For years, I told bloggers the same thing: make your content easy enough for toddlers and drunk adults to understand. That was my rule of thumb. If a five-year-old can follow what you’ve written and someone paying half-attention can still find what they need on your site, you’re doing something right. But the game has changed. It’s no longer just about toddlers and drunk adults. You’re now writing for large language models (LLMs) quietly scanning, interpreting, and summarizing your work inside AI search results. I used to believe that great writing and solid SEO were all it took to succeed. What I see now: Clarity beats everything. The blog…

Bluesky is quickly gaining attention as a growing social media platform – but what does that mean for the PPC community? Here’s what you need to know and how to prepare for potential ad opportunities What is Bluesky? Bluesky is a social media platform that was originally founded as a research initiative at Twitter in 2019. After becoming an independent company in 2021, it launched its invite-only beta in 2023 before opening to the public in February 2024. As of writing, Bluesky has a total of 33.1 million registered users, and its growth shows no signs of slowing down. How does Bluesky differ from other social media platforms? The platform, whi…

In digital marketing, a common belief is that everything can be measured – clicks, conversions, and ROI. Many advertisers assume that brand awareness is unnecessary and that performance marketing alone is enough to drive sales. After all, brand awareness campaigns don’t always generate immediate traffic or conversions visible in analytics. Their effects unfold over time, making them harder to measure than performance-driven campaigns. However, this overlooks a critical factor: brand strength acts as a multiplier for performance marketing effectiveness. A well-known brand increases ad click-through rates (CTR), lowers cost-per-click (CPC), improves con…

Most brands don’t realize how much traffic they lose each day to unauthorized bidding, affiliate violations, and ad hijacking. Industry data shows ad fraud reached an estimated $84 billion of global digital ad spend in 2023. If your branded CPCs keep rising or competitors keep appearing above you in searches for your own name, this PPC brand protection guide can help you understand why – and what to do next. What is brand protection in PPC? Brand protection is the practice of defending your brand from unauthorized use of your branded search terms in PPC and from deceptive or fraudulent ad placements. The goal: make sure people searching for your bran…

The search landscape is changing. With the rapid evolution of AI, the Google SERP is no longer a predictable grid of 10 blue links. This shift presents new opportunities for businesses, but it also creates new risks for your brand. Competitors, affiliates, and bad actors can now use sophisticated tactics to hijack your presence, mislead customers, and drain your budget. Your brand’s visibility is never fully secure, and these hidden threats don’t just waste money – they suppress your growth and limit your ability to acquire new customers. Protecting your brand isn’t a defensive chore; it’s a proactive strategy for unlocking budget and fueling your growth. …

Branded search refers to the results that Google or an LLM (like ChatGPT) shows when someone searches for your brand name. Whether you’re a small company or a large, established brand, ranking highly for these queries is essential – but it’s not always easy. If your brand is new or shares its name with other entities (such as a town, a film, or another company), search engines may prioritize other meanings. Even if your brand name is unique, it takes time for search engines and users to associate it with your business. Optimizing for branded search helps ensure your brand appears prominently and accurately in search results. What are branded keywords…

Do you think you’re able to answer the question every marketing leader dreads hearing from leadership: “Why isn’t our marketing effort doing more?” How do you even go about answering that? Let’s look at what I mean using a fictional location analytics company we’ll call Acme Area Analytics. The Acme team reviews its reports. Nothing appears broken. Campaigns are running, leads are still coming in, and performance metrics are mostly stable. Yet sales momentum isn’t clearly accelerating, and it’s hard to pinpoint why. Insights are scattered across site analytics, brand monitoring and SEO tools, CRM systems, and paid media dashboards. Each platform reflects p…

A great piece of content doesn’t just rank—it drives the right traffic, at the right time, with the right message. In Your Content Marketing Blueprint from MoreVisibility, you’ll get a practical blueprint for building a smarter content strategy rooted in search behavior. What’s inside: A framework to align your content with real search intent A method for using keyword data to uncover content gaps A Help / Hub / Hero structure to serve every stage of the funnel Tips for using AI to streamline content creation—without losing quality Whether you’re auditing existing pages or planning net-new content, this guide helps you focus on what actually wo…

Google made a handful of tweaks to its Channel Performance and Asset reports this week – including long-awaited ROI metrics like ROAS and CPA. But the most revealing update wasn’t in the announcement at all. A new, currently non-functional attribute called Campaign Type appeared in the Channel Performance report. Why we care. This addition — though inactive — signals that Google may soon expand the Channel Performance report beyond Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. The intrigue. For weeks, a tooltip in the interface has read: “Channel performance data is only available for Performance Max campaigns at this time.” That phrasing hinted expansion was coming. …