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For years, digital marketing has seen constant debates about the “death” of SEO. But as long as people search for information, products, and services online, optimization will remain essential. Search platforms may evolve – whether Google, social media, ecommerce, or AI-driven search – but the core principle stays the same: content must be optimized for discoverability. This article examines: Why optimization remains crucial across search platforms – from Google to social media, ecommerce, and beyond. The enduring relevance of SEO. Its evolution in an AI-driven landscape. Understanding SEO beyond Google SEO is often associated solely with Google, but that is an overly narrow perspective. While Google dominates search, optimization principles apply to multiple platforms, including: Ecommerce platforms: Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and others require SEO for product listings to rank higher in searches. Social media platforms: YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and TikTok have search functionalities, and content must be optimized to reach the right audience. App stores: Both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store require app store optimization (ASO) to rank apps effectively. Voice search and AI assistants: Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant depend on optimized content to deliver accurate results. Enterprise and internal search engines: Large businesses and organizations optimize internal search engines to help employees find relevant documents and resources. Streaming and podcast platforms: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other audio platforms use optimization for show titles, descriptions, and metadata to improve discoverability. News and blog SEO: Publishers optimize articles for Google News and organic rankings to attract readers. As long as users continue to search for content on digital platforms, optimization will remain an essential practice, regardless of what we call it. Dig deeper: Search everywhere optimization – 7 platforms SEOs need to optimize for beyond Google Optimization is about user preferences, not just search algorithms The core of SEO is not just about appeasing search engine algorithms. It’s about understanding what users need. Optimization ensures content is structured, tagged, and presented to meet users’ expectations. Keyword optimization and intent matching Search engines aim to deliver results that match user intent. Whether someone searches for “best running shoes for beginners” or “how to start a business,” optimized content ensures they get the most relevant answers. Dig deeper: Rethinking your keyword strategy – Why optimizing for search intent matters Fast-loading and mobile-friendly experiences Page speed and mobile responsiveness play a crucial role in user experience. Websites that load slowly or display poorly on mobile devices lose engagement, which impacts rankings and visibility. Content structure and readability Search engines and users both prefer well-organized content. Headers, bullet points, meta descriptions, and schema markup help search engines understand content better, leading to improved rankings. Dig deeper: What is content readability and how to make your content easier to read Engagement signals Platforms use engagement metrics such as click-through rates and time on page to determine content quality. Well-optimized content keeps users engaged, signaling to algorithms that it is valuable. Personalized search Search engines personalize results based on user behavior, location, and preferences. Optimization helps you tailor content to meet specific audience needs. Dig deeper: How to boost your marketing revenue with personalization, connectivity and data Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. Business email address Sign me up! Processing... See terms. SEO shifts with the times: You need to stay ahead Search behavior is constantly evolving, and SEO must keep up. What worked five years ago may not work today, but that doesn’t mean optimization is irrelevant. Rather than disappearing, it is shifting to align with new search trends, technologies, and user expectations. AI and machine learning in search Some believe traditional SEO is becoming obsolete, but AI-powered search still relies on optimized content to deliver relevant results. Google’s RankBrain, BERT, and other AI-driven updates have shifted search from simple keyword matching to natural language processing and semantic search. This means SEO is no longer just about keywords but about understanding user intent and structuring content for AI discoverability. To stay ahead, SEOs must adapt by: Using structured data to help AI interpret content accurately. Focusing on entity-based optimization rather than just keywords. Optimizing for conversational search experiences. Rather than diminishing SEO, AI search reinforces the need for high-quality, well-structured content. SEOs who evolve with these changes will remain essential in the digital landscape. Dig deeper: AI optimization – How to optimize your content for AI search and agents Zero-click searches, AI Overviews, and featured snippets Google is increasingly showing direct answers in featured snippets, reducing the need for users to click on traditional links. AI Overviews take this further, synthesizing multiple sources. However, both still depend on authoritative, well-structured content. SEOs must focus on content clarity, schema markup, and authority signals to ensure their content is featured in these results. Voice search With smart speakers and voice assistants growing in popularity, people now use conversational queries like “Where’s the nearest Italian restaurant?” Optimizing for voice search requires a shift to long-tail keywords and local SEO. Video and image search optimization Platforms like YouTube and Google Lens rely on optimization strategies such as captions, alt text, and structured metadata to rank video and image content. SEO is alive and will keep evolving SEO is not going anywhere. As long as people search for information, the need for optimization will persist. The terminology may change – some may call it “digital discoverability,” “content optimization,” or “search experience management” – but the core principle remains the same: If you want your content to be found, you need optimization. As part of the search industry, SEOs must educate business owners about building a complete web presence. It’s not just about ranking on Google; it’s about ensuring visibility across all digital touchpoints, including: AI-driven search. Social media. Ecommerce. Emerging platforms. And more. The credibility of any search platform depends on the efficiency of its organic search results. History has shown that neglecting organic search – as seen in Yahoo’s decline – can lead to a loss of trust and relevance. The lesson is clear: optimization remains a cornerstone of digital success. Rather than fearing change, SEOs should focus on evolving strategies to stay ahead in a dynamic landscape. View the full article

Over the last month, Jamie Dimon has rapidly emerged as one of the most vocal proponents of the return-to-office movement. During a recent appearance at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, the J.P. Morgan Chase CEO could not help but complain—again—about workers who were pushing back on RTO policies. When fielding a question about his recent colorful remarks on RTO, Dimon noted that it was only “people in the middle” who were unhappy about going into the office. “If you work in a restaurant, you’ve got to be in. You all may not know this, but 60% of Americans worked the whole time,” he said, seemingly in reference to the pandemic. “Where did you get your Amazon packages from? Your beef, your meat, your vodka? Where did you get the diapers from?” “You got UPS and FedEx and manufacturers and agriculture and hospitals and cities and schools and nurses and sanitation and firemen and military. They all worked,” he added. “It’s only these people in the middle who complain a lot about it.” Dimon has had a lot to say about workers who are reluctant to return to the office. This month, J.P. Morgan started requiring that employees come into the office five days a week, officially ending its hybrid work policy. The new mandate—which was announced at the start of the year and echoes a broader shift across corporate America—stirred up discontent among the company’s workforce and even prompted an online petition making a case for hybrid work, which has since drawn nearly 2,000 signatures. Dimon, however, was quick to dismiss employee concerns. “I don’t care how many people sign that fucking petition,” he said during an internal meeting, according to a recording obtained by Reuters. “Don’t give me the shit that ‘work from home Friday’ works.” Dimon added that the company would not allow managers to approve or make decisions about in-office requirements. “There is no chance that I will leave it up to managers,” he said. “Zero chance. The abuse that took place is extraordinary.” He also argued that employees did not pay attention during Zoom meetings and called for J.P. Morgan to increase efficiency by 10% through through cutting down on training sessions and the number of documents produced by the company—as well as meetings. (J.P. Morgan was not immediately available for comment.) Like plenty of other CEOs, Dimon has embraced a full return to the office under the pretext of promoting collaboration and productivity. But Dimon has been far more blunt and outspoken than some of his peers—not to mention more dismissive of dissent from employees. While he later apologized for the language he used in the internal meeting, noting that he should “never curse” and “get angry,” Dimon has continued to double down on his stance that employees should work from the office full-time. “I completely respect people that don’t want to go to the office all five days a week—that’s your right,” he told CNBC recently. “But they should respect that the company is going to decide what’s good for the clients [and] the company, not an individual. So they can get a job—and I’m not being mean—they can get a job elsewhere.” Dimon also referenced the petition again, though he struck a different tone than he did when speaking to his staff. “There’s a petition,” he said. “And they have the right to feel that way. But we’re not going to change. We’re going back to the office.” Of course, as J.P. Morgan employees have returned to the office this month, they have reportedly encountered many of the same issues facing workers at other companies, from limited workspace to noisy colleagues. And despite his open disdain for remote work, Dimon does seem to believe in its efficacy for certain workers—namely, the people staffing J.P. Morgan’s call centers. “We did it to see if they’d be effective,” he said at the Stanford event. “They’re highly effective. They work from home.” View the full article

Initially when Google Ads released the ability to add negative keywords to your Performance Max campaigns, Google limited it to 100 keywords. We asked why only 100 back then. Well, Google listened to the ad community and increased that from 100 to 10,000 negative keywords.View the full article

Google has updated its Google Ads review process policy documentation to clarify that it uses both AI and human evaluation for removing ads, assets, destinations, accounts and other content that goes against the Google Ads policies. View the full article

Google is testing a quick way to copy a link to a search results page and share it with a friend. There is this paperclip icon at the top right of the search results page that lets you copy link to the clipboard. That then generates a goo.gl URL shortener link to share.View the full article

A president who can’t run again is freer from public opinion than business seems to realiseView the full article

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: I think my manager is burned out. What can I do? A: It’s tough out there for managers, especially middle mangers who are often caught in the—well—middle and may find themselves enforcing unpopular policies that they didn’t create. It’s not explicitly your job to fix your boss’s problems (and you don’t have the power or authority to do so if you aren’t in a leadership role). But, a manager sets the tone for their team and if they are burned out, their entire team will likely follow suit. It may feel unfair, but giving a bit of thought to this question will make your (and your coworkers’) lives much better. This is a super-charged opportunity to practice your “managing up” (aka managing your manager) skills. Fast Company contributor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic outlined several signs that your manager might be experiencing burnout and how to address them. Here are a few. They don’t seem to care how everyone else is doing Chamorro-Premuzic says that a burned-out boss might start to be less open to feedback, be suddenly uninterested in team morale, or no longer receptive to concerns. If your boss is acting like this, you can normalize small breaks and occasional team check-ins, where there’s more opportunity for casual interactions. Chamorro-Premuzic also says you can be supportive in subtle ways, like offering to help with tasks or expressing appreciation for their work. Being a manager can feel thankless. If your manager feels like no one cares about them or notices their work, they’re less likely to offer you and your coworkers the same appreciation. If you show them you care about them, hopefully that care will trickle down. Their energy is all over the place Scientific studies on burnout show that energy and motivation can wax and wane when someone is facing chronic stress. What this might look like in your manager is that you are being micromanaged on some days when they are overly worried about how your work reflects on them, and then completely ignored on other days, as they feel overwhelmed by their own workload. If your boss is acting like this, Chamorro-Premuzic advises that you can help them by providing structure and consistency in your work so they know what to expect. Institute routines like regular project updates or weekly recaps, and suggest ways they can delegate so their workload is more distributed. (Bonus: Taking on work above your level might set you up for a future promotion.) Longer hours and blurred boundaries If your manager is emailing late at night, working weekends, not taking time off, those are all pretty clear signs that they are habitually overextending themselves, and on the fast track to burn out. If your boss is acting like this, it probably feels tricky to push back but it’s another place that you can lead by example by setting clear boundaries. You can also gently remind them that you and your colleagues can take on their tasks when they aren’t there. (In other words: The world won’t fall apart if they take a vacation and it might help them reset.) Yes, your manager’s job satisfaction isn’t explicitly your job, but if we truly want to work in a more humane workplace it means we should care about everyone’s well-being, no matter where they are on the org chart. Want more advice on helping burned out managers? Here you go: Managers are not okay. Why we’re headed to a ‘manager crash’ in 2025 It’s time to check on your middle managers 5 red flags of your boss’s behavior you should not ignore View the full article

Google has released version 2.9 of the Google Ads Editor. This new update brings a number of new features including support for manager account (MCC) owned labels, shopping ads on excluded brands, age exclusions in PMax campaigns, enhanced CPC deprecation, multi-tab export/import to Google Sheets, ad previews for RSA and asset groups and more.View the full article

Google Ads may now be pushing you to create an experiment ad when you dismiss the recommendations Google Ads is suggesting. So when you dismiss a recommendation, Google Ads can get feisty and push you to at least create an experiment based on that recommendation.View the full article

Have you ever wished you could just skip the Instagram algorithm altogether and guarantee your content gets seen by your target audience? Or, rather than asking folks to click over to your bio to find your products, content, or website, just include a link right in the post? Well, meet Instagram ads. They are paid posts on the platform that you can use to promote your business, product, or services and reach new people. Ads appear in the same format as organic posts across Instagram Stories, Reels, Explore, and in-feed posts. But unlike organic Instagram posts, Instagram ads have a link to redirect users to a website to shop for your products or check out your services. They also have the “sponsored” label. With ads, you’re also not completely reliant on the Instagram algorithm to reach your target audience: You can control (to some extent) the demographics of the audience you want to reach. If you have the budget, Instagram ads can be an excellent addition to your Instagram marketing strategy. But navigating the ad manager is like untangling a spiderweb. In this guide, I’ll take you from the A to Z of Instagram advertising. By the end of this piece, you’ll be equipped to run Instagram ads successfully (and with confidence!). 💡Note: You need to have an Instagram business account to run ads on the platform. Learn more about how you can switch to a professional account to run ads in our guide to the various types of Instagram accounts.How much do Instagram ads cost?Cost is one of the primary factors in deciding whether you’ll add Instagram advertising to your marketing strategy. The good news? Instagram ads are quite flexible! You can spend as much or as little as you like. Your ad objectives, placements, formats, competition, niche, seasonality, all affect how much your Instagram ads will cost. The bad news? This is what often makes Instagram ads complicated. It’s difficult to pull out the “right” number out of a hat and decide how much you should invest to get a positive return on investment (ROI). Bïrch shares up-to-date Facebook advertising costs data from hundreds of millions of spend per month in the U.S. As of February 2025: Metric Cost Average Instagram cost per impression (CPM) $13.66 Average Instagram cost per click (CPC) $1.36 Average Instagram cost per engagement (CPE) $0.063 Average Instagram cost per lead (CPL) $9.23 Average Instagram cost per install (CPI) $1.99 Play around in Bïrch to get an accurate sense of how much you should expect to spend (and get) from running Instagram ads. You can also dissect the data to dig deeper. For instance, you can filter for average CPM by campaign objectives. The above numbers will help you set the right expectations, but how much you should invest in Instagram advertising depends on your budget and risk appetite. Ideally, choose a number large enough for you to care about and improve but small enough not to be damaging. 📚Related reading: How I Turned $75 Per Day in Ad Spend Into 1 Million Views on My Instagram Reel With Only 1,000 FollowersHow to run Instagram adsThere are two ways to run ads on Instagram: 1. Boosting a post 2. Using the Meta Ads Manager Boosting a post is the easier choice, but it doesn’t have the granular control the ad manager has. Let’s understand how both methods work (and where they differ). 💡Note: If you manage and run ads on a Facebook Page, you can link your Instagram business account to it and run the same ads on both channels. But I wouldn’t advise doing this if you aren’t familiar with Instagram at all. Learn the basics of Instagram before running the same ad on Instagram and Facebook.1. Boosting an Instagram postTo boost an Instagram post, all you have to do is click on the “Boost post” option on your Instagram posts. Once you click on “Boost post,” you can: 1. Choose what you want users to do when they see this post as an ad — visit your profile, visit a website, or message you. 2. Choose your target audience — Instagram has a “Suggested audience” option to reach people who are similar to your followers. You can also manually enter your desired audience demographics — including location, age, gender, and interests. 3. Decide your daily ad budget (minimum $1 every day) and get an estimate of the daily reach you’ll get using this ad. 4. Decide your ad duration — you can keep running the ad until you manually pause it or set a fixed timeline. 💡Note: You can follow the same process and run ads via your app, too. But if you download Instagram from the iOS app store, you’ll be charged an additional 30% service fee via Apple. To forego that, I’d recommend using the web to boost posts or add funds in advance to your Instagram ad account.Pros of running ads via boosting: The process is quick and easyYou don’t have to create an account on Meta Ads ManagerBoosting posts is cost-effective, especially if you’re on a tight budgetYou don’t have to link your Instagram account to any Facebook PageYou can double down on your best-performing organic posts by boosting them (it already has the social proof of likes, comments, and shares)Cons of running ads via boosting: You don’t get refined targeting optionsYou cannot run a campaign with an objective and various postsYou can’t run an ad that’s not already been posted organicallyYou can’t boost Instagram Reels that have copyrighted music, GIFs, interactive stickers, or camera filters from a third-party appYou can’t boost Instagram Stories if they have effects added outside of Instagram or if they have interactive elements or stickersBoosting a post is an excellent option if you’re a beginner to social media advertising and need to learn the ropes before you dive into the ads manager. You can amplify your content quickly and with more affordability. But it’s best to move to the Meta Ads Manager as soon as you need advanced targeting options. 2. Using the Meta Ads ManagerIf you’ve already used the Meta Ads Manager to run Facebook ads, you’re in luck: The process and the best practices are the same for running Instagram ads. Pros of running ads via Meta Ads Manager: You can create customized reports for stakeholdersYou get granular control over your ads and target audienceYou can integrate your website’s data to understand your audience better and improve targetingYou can choose from your existing organic content or upload new ad content from scratchCons of running ads via Meta Ads Manager: You cannot manage campaigns from within the Instagram appYou have to spend time learning how to use the Meta Ads ManagerYou have to create a Facebook Page to run ads via Meta Ads ManagerMeta Ads Manager can be less cost-effective and more risky than boosting successful postsIf you’re new to the Meta Ads Manager, the landscape can be overwhelming. But don’t worry — the ad manager is quite intuitive to use. Here’s how to find your way around: 💡Note: You need to have a Facebook Page to run ads using the Meta Ads manager. You can then link your Page and Instagram account to run ads on Instagram. You can only link one Instagram account to one Facebook Page.Step 1: Create an ad account and add your teamGo to the Meta Business Suite to access the ad manager. First, create an account with Meta Business Suite if you don’t have one already. Then, follow the below steps: 1. Go to “Business Settings” after you’ve logged in to your Meta Business Suite. 2. Click on “Ad Account” under the “Accounts” header. 3. You can claim an existing ad account using the ad account’s ID or create a new ad account by giving it a name and entering your region’s currency. If you’re working with a team, go to “Ad account settings” in your ad manager and find “Ad account roles.” You can offer your members three kinds of access: Admins have the same permission as the ad account’s owner. They can create ads, edit payment methods, and modify the access levels of other team members.Advertisers can create ads, edit campaigns, and access performance reports. But they can’t modify existing permission settings or your payment methods.Analysts can only view ads and access performance reports.Step 2: Design an Instagram campaignThere are three levels to every campaign on Meta. The campaign level is the bigger picture of what kind of campaign you’re going to runThe ad sets level is about your target audience and the frequency you’ll advertise to themThe ad level is what your prospective buyers see on their mobile appImage source We’ll cover the campaign level in this step. To get started, click on “Create” in the Meta Ads Manager. Once you click “Create,” Meta will ask you to select a campaign objective. This is the desired action you want your target audience to take after seeing your ad. For example, if your business goal is to increase brand awareness, your ad objective is “awareness.” But if you want to redirect users to a sale on your website, “traffic” is the right objective. In total, there are six objectives to choose from: Awareness: Choose this option when your goal is to increase brand awareness about your product or service.Traffic: Choose this option when you aim to boost traffic on your website.Engagement: Choose this option when you want to build a community using Instagram.Leads: Choose this option when you want to collect leads for your business using Instagram.App promotion: Choose this option when you want to promote your company’s app and boost app installs.Sales: Choose this option when you want to use ads for conversions.💡Note: The above ad objectives options are for the “auction” buying type — which is the most common choice in Meta Ads Manager. There’s a fixed price on the CPM if you choose Reservations. But you need to have a minimum spend commitment to reach that CPM and there’s overall less flexibility in changing your budget and targeting once you place the ads. Here’s Meta’s advice on choosing the right buying type.Step 3: Create ad set(s) for your campaignThe specifics of the options you see in your ad sets depends on your objective in step two, but you can expect the following: Conversion location In ad objectives like sales and traffic, you have to choose where you’d like to redirect the viewers watching your ads — your website, your DMs, etc. Performance goal This is how you measure the success of your ads. You can choose from various metrics depending on your objectives. For example, in the awareness ad objective, your performance goal can be maximizing ad reach, the number of impressions, or the ad recall. Similarly, in the traffic ad objective, your performance goal can be to maximize the number of clicks. Budget and schedule You have to decide how much you’ll spend daily or in the lifetime of your campaign and set the schedule of your start and end date. If your business experiences seasonal demands, you can also choose to increase your budget during specific days or times. Audience controls Select your target audience’s demographics — location, age, gender, and languages. Ad placements Placements are exactly where you want to place ads on your Instagram account. Apart from Instagram’s various content formats (Stories, Reels, in-feed posts, Explore), you also get the option to run the same ads on your Facebook Page, Messenger, and Search results. You can also customize your settings for specific mobile devices and WiFi connections. ⚡Remember: You can have multiple ad sets within the same campaign. For example, let’s say you’re running a sale on a product category. One of your ad sets can redirect people to product A, and another can lead them to product B. Both ad sets are part of the same Instagram ad campaign (the sale), but they carry different products.Step 4: Craft your Instagram ad(s)At the last level, you upload the ad content you want to run on Instagram. This is the ad your audience will see in their mobile app. There are four primary sections at the ad level: Ad setup You can upload a new ad from scratch, use an existing post to run as an ad, or use any mockups you have in Meta’s Creative Hub. You also have to choose an ad format — a single image or a single video, a carousel, or a collection (group of items that opens into a fullscreen mobile experience). Destination Choose where you’d like to send people when they click on your ad. You can add a specific URL, an event on your Facebook Page, or call you directly. If you’re redirecting ad viewers to a website, it’s imperative you set up Meta Pixel in your ad account to track performance accurately. Meta Pixel is just a piece of code you need to add to your company’s website to measure precise ad results and optimize targeted audiences. Here’s an article from Meta explaining more. Ad creative This is where you upload your image or video. You can also source the ad content from a URL. In the creative setup, you have granular control over the thumbnail, ad copy, display label, call to action, and more. Tracking Here, you can set up various ways to track your ad performance (like the Meta Pixels we talked about earlier). You also have simpler alternatives like UTM parameters. Buffer has a free UTM builder that can come in handy here. 😉 Once you hit “Publish” your ad(s) will be live! Voila 🥳 That might seem like a lot, but it’s easy to pick up the pace and keep going once you start. Meta Ad Manager is easy to use and has directions at every step of the way. 5 best practices for successful Instagram adsRunning ads isn’t just about the logistics — there’s a ton of strategy work going behind improving the ROI from each ad. Here are five beginner-friendly pro tips. 1. Use Meta Advantage to your advantageMeta has various Advantage+ options placed everywhere — from your ad set to your ad creative. Meta Advantage is using the best of AI within Meta to improve the ROI of your Instagram ads. Whenever you see Advantage+ while running your Instagram campaigns, use them — especially if you’re a beginner. This will allow Meta to do its magic and give you the most bang for your buck. I’d advise even pros to experiment with A/B testing Meta’s advantage recommendations versus their manual placements to check which performs better. Meta’s machine learning system is strong and reliable — use it to not only enhance your performance but also reduce your efforts. 2. Rely on Meta’s campaign score to improve your Instagram adsMeta provides a campaign score between 0–100 to show you how well you’ve optimized your ads based on Meta’s recommendations. While this number doesn’t dictate future performance, think of it as a predictive score to analyze where you can improve your ad performance. Try to get the green light (unless you have a solid reason to go against Meta’s recommendations). Similar to campaign score is the audience definition: This is how wide or broad of an audience you’re reaching with your ad campaigns. You don’t want your audience to be too specific (unless you’re selling in a niche, local market) — otherwise, you miss people who might’ve been interested in your products or services. 3. Keep your ad visuals and copy clear, concise, and crispClear > clever, every time. Especially when it comes to Instagram ads. Don’t have cluttered visuals or an ad copy that’s clever, but hard to read. Remember people are scrolling on the platform when they’re busy or idle — you want to grab attention fast. Here are some actionable tips: Answer “what’s in it for me?” right away for potential customers and use copywriting formulas to your advantageDon’t bury the offer (like a discount code) in an ad’s caption. Highlight it in the pictures and videos clearlyEnsure your ad preview looks eye-catching in all ad placements if you’re using the same creativeShow real people using your product in ads to help people resonate with your brand4. Track your ad performance to improveMeta’s reporting features are excellent to help you understand what’s working well in your ads and what needs improvement. In the Overview tab, you can customize the duration for which you want to see ad insights and also filter data using various parameters. For example: You only want to monitor ad performance you landed on the Instagram Explore page. You can filter for this using search.You only want to see your ad's engagement metrics (post likes, comments, shares). You can customize this using columns.You only want to track ads you published in the U.S. market. You can refine your ad manager dashboard using breakdown.You can find similar numbers for Boosted posts, but they’re not as in-depth as the Meta Ads Manager. Monitoring the numbers you care about regularly is useful for ensuring you’re meeting your social media goals. Set time aside in the middle of and at the end of every campaign to analyze your ad performance and understand how you can improve. 5. Start with boosting your best-performing postsIf you’re overwhelmed, strapped for time, or on a shoestring budget, experiment with Instagram ads using “Boost posts” instead of setting up a whole campaign in the ad manager. Boosting posts is like the trial version of Instagram ads — it can help you learn the ropes, get some confidence, and spend your money cautiously before you dive deep. For best results, boost your best-performing Instagram posts. They already have the credibility of likes, comments, and shares. And what’s performed well organically will likely do well in ads, too. Instagram ads aren’t in a siloInstagram advertising is a great addition to your Instagram strategy. But ads alone aren’t the only way to grow on Instagram. While ads may boost your Instagram reach in the short term, advertising without organic efforts is not a well-rounded social media strategy. As you dabble with the Meta ads manager, don’t forget to also continue your organic marketing efforts side-by-side. Wondering where to begin? Here are some ideas on what to post on Instagram. And to make your Instagram marketing journey even easier, sign up for Buffer (for free!) and start scheduling Instagram posts, storing content ideas, using AI to make your life easier, and a lot more. View the full article

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Mortgage giant Rocket Companies—the parent company of Rocket Mortgage, formerly known as Quicken Loans—announced on Monday it has entered into an agreement to buy Redfin in an all-stock transaction valued at $1.75 billion equity, or $12.50 per share. If completed, the move would integrate Redfin’s real estate search platform, which attracts nearly 50 million monthly visitors, with Rocket’s mortgage services. “Redfin is known for its beautiful product but is also [a] data powerhouse in an AI-driven world—100 million properties, 50 million engaged monthly users, thousands of the amazing real estate agents and 4 petabytes of data,” Rocket Companies CEO Varun Krishna wrote on LinkedIn on Monday. “Rocket has developed a platform that spans 40 years of mortgage expertise and a digital nationwide lending platform, across 3,000 counties and parishes. Redfin and Rocket are an amazing match for each other.” According to the press release, there are four benefits Rocket Companies sees from the Redfin acquisition: First, it will introduce more consumers to the Rocket ecosystem. “Rocket Companies will benefit from Redfin’s nearly 50 million monthly visitors, 1 million active purchase and rental listings and staff of 2,200+ real estate agents across 42 states,” the company writes. Secondly, it expects that will drive growth in the purchase of its mortgages. Third, the companies 14 petabytes of combined data will help drive its AI and personalization technology. “This data will strengthen Rocket’s AI models enabling easier and more personalized and automated consumer experiences,” Rocket writes. Lastly, the company expects to achieve “more than $200 million in run-rate synergies by 2027, including approximately $140 million in cost synergies from rationalization of duplicative operations and other costs.” And it expects “more than $60 million in revenue synergies from pairing the company’s financing clients with Redfin real estate agents, and from driving clients working with Redfin agents to Rocket’s mortgage, title, and servicing offerings.” In other words, Rocket Companies appears to be making a strategic move to expand its market share by integrating Redfin’s customer funnel with its mortgage business and build a powerhouse in residential real estate, creating a one-stop shop for homebuyers. “While Rocket Mortgage increased its purchase loan market share by 8% from 2023 to 2024, it still pales in comparison to crosstown rival UWM [United Wholesale Mortgage],” Colin Robertson, the founder of The Truth About Mortgage, tells ResiClub. “Their tie-up with Redfin gives them the potential to capture 1 in 6 purchase loans going forward, which could see their market share quadruple from 4% to 16%+.” The Rocket Companies’ proposed acquisition of Redfin comes during a prolonged housing transaction downturn—marked by a sharp drop in existing home sales and refinancing—triggered by the 2022 mortgage rate shock and strained affordability. The slump has led to industry upheaval, business failures, and a wave of mergers. While both of these firms have been affected by the slump, Redfin, in particular, has taken it on the chin. At its peak during the Pandemic Housing Boom, Rocket Companies had a $55.6 billion market capitalization—compared to its $26.6 billion market capitalization at business close today. While at its peak during the Pandemic Housing Boom, Redfin had a $10 billion market capitalization—well above its $1.2 billion market capitalization today. Since mortgage rates spiked in 2022, Redfin has faced a continuous wave of layoffs, with 1,362 layoffs in 2022, 201 in 2023, 82 in 2024, and nearly 500 already announced in 2025. Back in October 2022, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman told me that shuttering their iBuyer unit amid a then correcting market out West was causing Redfin to sell at big losses. Kelman explained it like this: “We’re sitting on $350 million worth of homes for sale that we bought with our own money, or worse bought with borrowed money. And what we always told investors is that we would protect our balance sheet by acting quickly. We don’t have hope as a strategy. We immediately started marking down things… When the shiitake mushrooms hit the fan, [investors] want to get out first. The way to do that is to figure out where the lowest sale is, and be 2% below that. And if it doesn’t sell in the first weekend, move it down [again].” In November 2023, Kelman told me that things were still slumped for the business, adding that existing home sales were “mostly dead as a doornail, so it couldn’t be worse.” In August 2024, Kelman put Redfin’s situation bluntly, telling analysts that the Plan B if mortgage rates didn’t come down was to “drink our own urine or our competitors’ blood, stay in the foxhole.” Click here to view an interactive version of the chart below. “When I took a look something like 50% of Homes.com’s traffic is paid,” Amanda Orson, CEO and founder of Galleon, tells ResiClub. “And that paid demo does not count their extraordinary ad spend on TV ads. It’s just not a sticky site. Redfin on the other hand spends very little and generates an absolute truckload of organic traffic. For now. That advantage is not permanent, of course. I can’t think of another company for whom the acquisition of Redfin would get a better yield for its highest and best use than Rocket.” Big picture: If the benefits of the Redfin acquisition come to fruition, it could not only cement Rocket Companies as the top player in the mortgage space (currently No. 2 by total dollar loan volume) but also further lay the groundwork for the company to pursue its broader real estate ambitions—and perhaps even challenge Zillow, which is working to build a housing “Super App.” View the full article

Getting our SEO plugin up and running should be quick and stress-free. That is why we are introducing a simpler installation flow that takes just a few clicks. If you have ever felt confused about installing plugins, this new option is here to help you. Get started with the Yoast SEO Free installation: Go to our new Yoast SEO Free page Click the install button and follow the on-screen prompts Complete the setup, and you are all set Because everything is more user-friendly, you will save time and avoid the usual guesswork. This improved flow is perfect for new users and anyone who does not feel comfortable around zip files or manual uploads. Installation should be the easiest part of your SEO journey. Try it today by heading to the Yoast SEO Free page and trying the plugin. You will be optimizing your site in no time. Get Yoast SEO today and join the 13+million websites using Yoast. The post A smoother way to get started with Yoast SEO Free appeared first on Yoast. View the full article

Compare top sitemap generators like Yoast SEO, XML-Sitemaps.com, & Writemaps to choose the right one. View the full article

Country’s two biggest mobile operators drop opposition and sign deals View the full article

Speed up your WordPress site while keeping everything working as it should. Adjust hosting, caching, security, and plugins for best results. The post How To Improve Speed And Performance For A WordPress Site appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Decision not to impose retaliatory levies signals break with EU approach View the full article

For the first time since 1984, the airline Korean Air is updating its charmingly retro look to new branding that’s better suited for the modern era. The rebrand, designed by the global creative consultancy Lippincott, includes a new wordmark, refreshed logo, and pared-down color scheme. It’s set to debut across Korean Air’s operations and on the livery of its aircraft in the coming weeks. The rebrand comes just a few months after Korean Air officially completed merger negotiations with Asiana Airlines, South Korea’s second-largest airline. The two companies will become one mega-airline. [Image: Korean Air]As Korean Air begins to integrate Asiana Airlines’ operations with its own, Asiana Airlines’s brand identity will be slowly phased out. And, as part of the merger, Korean Air is likely to add new destinations to its offerings, expanding its international profile. Korean Air’s new look is meant to differentiate this upcoming phase of it’s 55-year history as it becomes an increasingly global brand. [Image: Korean Air]Reimagining an ‘iconic’ brandKorean Air’s former branding had a distinctly ’80s aesthetic, including a stylized, chunky wordmark and vibrant color palette of sky blue, cerulean, and red. The company’s planes have reflected this branding for decades through a distinct blue livery. Dan Vasconcelos, a partner at Lippincott, says that the ’80s branding is “iconic,” adding that “it’s not every day that you get to evolve brand assets that have been untouched for over 40 years.” [Image: Korean Air]As the first step of this major undertaking, his team decided to tackle the brand’s logo. Since its 1984 refresh, Korean Air’s logo has been a red, white, and blue interpretation of the Taeguk, the symbol at the center of the South Korean flag which represents balance in nature. Vasconcelos says the team tested hundreds of potential new versions of the Taeguk symbol. Ultimately, they landed on a fluid, ribbon-like iteration, rendered in one seamless blue stroke. The design is inspired by Sangmo Nori, a traditional Korean performance art. “[Sangmo Nori] involves performers wearing sangmo, a hat with a long ribbon attached to it, which they spin and twirl in intricate patterns while dancing energetically,” Vasconcelos says. “It represents abundance, prosperity, and joy. We felt that the ribbon in the tradition carried great symbolism: it’s universally recognized for its elegance while being resonant in Korea.” [Image: Korean Air]The Taeguk’s tapered edges also reference traditional calligraphy, a reference the Lippincott team brought into the rebrand’s custom typeface as well. Type studios Dalton Maag and Sandoll designed the bespoke font, which is a modern, all-caps sans serif featuring small calligraphic flourishes. It’s designed for optimal legibility in both English and Hangul (the Korean alphabet). The font is also the basis of Korean Air’s new wordmark and all other copy across its branding. [Image: Korean Air]A simplified color palette that reads ‘premium’To give Korean Air a more luxury feel, Lippincott has simplified the brand’s color palette to a core range of blues, cutting out the former red accents. “Doubling down on the blue allowed us to be more single-minded and confident, a trait of premium brands,” Vasconcelos says. “Think of Hermes, Louis Vuitton, or Tiffany—they are bold in their use of color but do it with simplicity and flair.” [Image: Korean Air]In keeping with the brand’s tradition, Vasconcelos’s team decided to buck the white livery trend used by most national trends and stick with Korean Air’s blue fuselage. During the research process, he says, the blue livery was a particularly memorable brand asset for customers. [Image: Korean Air]Other elements of the livery have been tweaked to align with the company’s plans to expand: The word Air has been removed from the livery to project Korean Air’s standing as South Korea’s largest airline, and the brand’s Hangul name has also been removed with global audiences in mind. [Image: Korean Air]“My client Kenny Chang [SVP and CMO of Korean Air] sums it up well by saying that the vision for Korean Air is to be a global airline which happens to be based in Korea,” Vasconcelos says. “This helped inform key design decisions such as removing the airline’s Hangul name from the livery as well as designing a symbol that, while infused by national iconography, isn’t too similar to the national flag.” Korean Air’s streamlined rebrand is both elegant and logical, given the company’s growing ambitions. Still, time will tell if the brand will have the staying power of its former visual identity, which resonated strongly with the airline’s audience for more than 40 years. View the full article

When the Eaton Fire burned through Altadena in January, Patricia Lopez-Gutierrez and her children had to flee from the house they’d been renting for a decade. Lopez-Gutierrez also lost work: She’s a housecleaner, and her clients lost their own homes in the fire. “I’ve been here for 18 years, and I really don’t want to leave this area,” she said through a translator. “My children and their schools are here. I’m trying to get more work so I don’t have to leave.” As she struggles to pay her bills—including at her rental house, which ended up surviving the fire but was so heavily damaged by smoke that she’s desperate to find a new place to live—she turned to St. Vincent de Paul, one of several local organizations providing direct assistance to fire victims. The nonprofit paid a utility bill for her in January, and then a car payment and dental bill this month. It was enough, for now, to make it possible for her to keep paying rent. The fire destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena, one of the more affordable corners of L.A. County. St. Vincent de Paul, working with a team of 18 volunteers, has helped around 150 families so far, prioritizing families with children and renters who lost their homes. In many cases—particularly for Hispanic residents who worked as housecleaners or gardeners—residents also lost their jobs. Others have minimum-wage jobs that make it difficult to afford to rent a new house or apartment. While St. Vincent de Paul covers bills directly (paying rent to a landlord, for example, or paying a doctor’s office), many other organizations are simply giving residents cash directly. Pasadena Community Foundation, a local foundation, has given grants through a wildfire fund to help support dozens of organizations doing that work. The Dena Care Collective, a new organization launched by End Poverty in California (EPIC) and FORWARD, has raised more than $1 million to help support families and businesses in the immediate aftermath of the fire with direct cash payments. “There is significant empirical data that highlights the efficacy of direct cash payments to families,” says Aja Brown, the former mayor of the city of Compton, who grew up in Altadena and is helping lead the Dena Care Collective along with former Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs. “There’s also a wealth of data that substantiates [the fact that] bureaucracy and governmental systems are slow to react. And quite frankly, they aren’t designed for emergency relief. Getting cash in the hands of families is the most impactful and the most efficient way to help families; they innately understand what’s best for [their] aid and the relief based on their current conditions.” Cash is a critical tool for people living in poverty in ordinary times; in Stockton, a study of a program that gave a series of no-strings-attached checks to low-income residents found that people who got the payments were more likely to go from unemployment to full-time employment and take other steps for their future, like moving to a better apartment or fixing their car. In a disaster, quick access to cash is even more important to help people stay afloat. “In a disaster like this, of course people need cash, because water bottles aren’t wealth,” says Tubbs. “Clothing isn’t cash. People need money to be able to rebuild, to be able to move, to be able to persist.” GiveDirectly, an organization founded on the premise that sending money to the world’s poorest households can help them begin to overcome poverty, has raised more than $2 million for low-income households impacted by the L.A.-area fires. While getting some money from FEMA can sometimes take a month or two, the nonprofit is able to act more quickly. (FEMA gave eligible residents $770 to help cover immediate needs after the disaster, but getting any additional support took longer—and $770 doesn’t go far in a city like L.A. Immigrants who don’t have legal status also can’t get help from FEMA.) Two weeks after the fires, the organization sent notifications to residents via a food stamp app inviting them to enroll for the cash payments, a process that takes roughly a minute. On average, the payments arrived three days later. The organization is giving transfers of $3,500, enough to cover two weeks at a lower-end Airbnb in the L.A. area, a month of food for a family of four, and a month of healthcare and transportation. Of course, the support is only a small and temporary part of the solution. As rents have steeply risen in and around L.A.—something that was happening earlier and then exacerbated by the disaster—people who were displaced are struggling to find places to live. Some renters are now doubled or tripled up with friends in tiny apartments. Homeowners who bought homes decades ago in Altadena—or inherited mortgage-free homes from parents or grandparents who paid little for them—are often now finding that their insurance won’t cover the cost of rebuilding. Others lost coverage as insurers have dropped policies in areas at risk of fires. Even those who still have housing, like Lopez-Gutierrez, are dealing with new challenges. In her case, her landlord wants to raise her rent, even though he hasn’t repaired damage from the fire (and despite the fact that price gouging is illegal). She’s trying to find a new rental, but her low credit score is making that difficult. Even if bills are covered for a month or two, many families still don’t know what will come next—especially since the rebuilding process will be slow. Before the fires, when St. Vincent de Paul helped pay unexpected bills for residents, the situation was different. “It’s the housecleaner whose son or daughter had to go to the emergency room and there was a $1,000 bill and they can’t afford rent,” says Dave de Csepel, an investor who helps lead the volunteer work at St. Vincent de Paul. “So we come in, pay that rent, and life goes on—we bridge them to get to the next month.” Now, he says, “This is a tidal wave that has hit this community. This is the beginning. It’s hard to see how all these families come out of this. We love the diversity of our community and we want to have folks stay in the area. But it’s hard to keep everyone together, and I’m afraid that there are a lot of hard times ahead for these families.” View the full article

Loan officers have said the majority of outreach from recruiters looks like impersonal "telemarketing." View the full article

Built on efficiency, acronyms are abbreviations that some may find to simplify life, and others may find to make life much more difficult. Do you love them or hate them? Whether navigating the hustle and bustle of a traditional office, the quiet focus of a remote setup, or the flexible blend of a hybrid model, understanding these shorthand expressions may play a huge part in seamless communication. View the full article

In summer 2022, when artificial intelligence-based text-to-image generation tools hit the mainstream, architects were cautiously excited. The ease of generating real-ish images of design concepts and buildings with just a few simple sentences was irresistible, and many architects began experimenting with ways of letting AI quickly do some of the sketching and ideating they’d gotten used to spending hours or days laboring over. “It’s almost like you’re speaking a building into existence,” one architect said. But now, with AI maturing and getting integrated into tools and industries far and wide, a surprisingly low number of architects are actually using AI in their work. Architects are slow to adopt AI Only 6% of architects report regularly using AI for their jobs, and only 8% of architecture firms have implemented AI solutions, according to a new report from the American Institute of Architects. Based on a survey of 541 members of the architecture profession, the report shows an industry-wide shyness around AI adoption, with many unsure what AI can do for them, and a large percentage—39%—downright uninterested in finding out. Some architects are making AI a part of the way they practice, though, and the report shows strong interest in using AI more, particularly among architects younger than 50. The report finds that while only 8% of firms are actively using AI on a day-to-day basis, 20% are currently working on implementing AI solutions. More than half of architects have at least experimented with AI tools, and three-quarters are optimistic about AI automating some tasks. “The reality is that there are a lot of industries that are still figuring this out,” says Evelyn Lee, president of the AIA. “I do think that architects, when it comes to new technology implementation, we do tend to lag a little bit.” But there’s big opportunity Lee, who has a tech background, says architects can do more with AI than just generate quick imagery. Other use cases include marketing, project management, and construction document creation. According to the report, image-based content production is still the main way architecture firms use AI, but Lee suggests that the tech may be more useful for the operational side of the business, where it could resolve simple tasks, like eliminating the need for manual time sheets, as well as more labor-intensive jobs, like maintaining and updating building material libraries. “There’s a really big opportunity there for AI to illuminate the library and the wealth of materials available right now,” she says. “So much of what we learn about new materials is from the individual manufacturer’s rep showing up and saying ‘Here is the latest ceiling tile.’” That could help architects improve the way their projects are designed, lower their costs, and even reduce their environmental footprint by finding new sustainable materials to integrate into their projects. AI tools could speed up product delivery “The biggest opportunity ultimately is on the product delivery side,” Lee says. As AI begins to be more fully integrated into the software that architects use to design their projects, it can speed up the process of turning design concepts into detailed plans and eventually into the construction documents used to get projects built. That could open the door for smaller architecture firms to be more competitive. There are more than 19,000 architecture firms in the U.S., and almost three-quarters of them have fewer than 10 employees, according to another recent AIA report. “The software will allow them to do more, quicker, better,” Lee says. “That’s a huge opportunity for AI to be leveraged to democratize the design delivery process.” View the full article

For the first two-and-a-half years of the generative AI revolution, the AI arms race has been waged between competing companies seeking to make bank from the promise and potential of the technology. But things are maturing in the AI world—and with it, there’s another frontline for AI: the military. Scale AI, the company set up by Alexandr Wang, has been awarded what CNBC reports is a multimillion-dollar deal to help develop Thunderforge, which the U.S. Department of Defense calls “an initiative designed to integrate artificial intelligence into military operational and theater-level planning, and fusing cutting-edge modeling and simulation tools.” Wang told CNBC that “our AI solutions will transform today’s military operating process and modernize American defense” and that they “will provide our nation’s military leaders with the greatest technological advantage.” The move is unsurprising—militaries are always keen on keeping at the cutting edge of technology, trying to eke out an advantage against competitive armies—but disappointing, says Margaret Mitchell, researcher and chief ethics scientist at Hugging Face, an AI company. “We already know we’re moving forward to push AI systems farther and farther out from our control,” she says. “Many in the industry and in the media are treating more and more powerful systems as if they are inevitable, and therefore making it so.” Mitchell adds that technology has always relied on military clientele to act as a crucible for, and accelerant of, new innovation. “Military use has long been a staple of technological development,” she says. “Massively destructive outcomes are fully predictable based on history and how the tech marketplace works.” (Scale AI declined to comment. The Defense Department did not respond to Fast Company‘s request for comment.) That level of destruction could be catastrophic, argues David Krueger, assistant professor at the University of Montreal, studying AI safety and risk. “I think it’s likely to lead to the end of humanity, to human extinction,” he says, speaking generally about the use of AI for military purposes, calling the military use of AI “one of the most obvious ways in which AI poses an existential risk to humanity.” Krueger says that AI is being used in many areas to hand off human control and outsource it to AI systems. “I think this is a risk in every domain, and I think in the military, it’s particularly concerning, and something which will require international collaboration to avoid getting out of hand and risking human extinction.” Scale AI has said that the Thunderforge program will operate with human oversight, and Noah Sylvia, a research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), points out that “as AI functions go, I would say it is not as controversial as a lot of other ones, because this is what you could term an enterprise function.” Scale AI is far from the only company to ink a deal with the U.S. military to leverage the power of AI to support such activities. A number of companies have also agreed terms to provide their AI technology for military purposes. “I think part of the reaction is because they started out in a very civilian-oriented company, and over the past few months, especially, we’ve seen all of these civilian companies suddenly turn towards defense more,” says Sylvia. Indeed, the press release by the Defense Innovation Unit announcing Scale AI’s deal for Thunderforge points out the same program will also include Anduril’s Lattice software platform and state of the art LLMs enabled by Microsoft. “I struggle to see a way out of it,” says Hugging Face’s Mitchell. Even if individual countries or companies were to decide to step aside from using AI for military purposes, or to decline to provide support to countries that are seeking military AI—as Hugging Face has refused to do in the past—others would likely step into the breach. “We need some ability to coordinate to prevent actors from building AI systems,” says the University of Montreal’s Krueger. “I think that should be—in fact—the number-one priority in foreign policy for every country at this point because it’s an incredibly important issue, and it’s going to be difficult to address it.” Developing cross-country guidelines for how to consider the use of AI in military environments will be vital in the future, says Mitchell. She suggests a multipoint plan that includes keeping AI systems within strict operational boundaries, making it impossible for systems to autonomously deploy weapons, introducing safety mechanisms, and advancing what’s deemed state of the art in input data analysis and output evaluation to gain a deeper understanding into what systems can and cannot do. She also has two simpler suggestions. “Do not deploy technology whose actions you cannot reasonably foresee,” she says. And secondly: “Do not fully cede human control.” View the full article

Central bank likely to miss 2% goal more often in future due to ‘exceptionally high’ uncertaintyView the full article

Leaked Slack chats show Matt Mullenweg is considering pushing WordPress releases to late 2027 The post Mullenweg Considers Delaying WordPress Releases Through 2027 appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Tune into the SEO for Paws live stream conference. Engage with industry experts and support a charity supporting pets affected by the war in Kyiv. The post SEO For Paws Free Live Stream Conference Returns For 2025 appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article