Operationalizing Your Topic-First SEO Strategy
Last week, I walked through the shift from keyword-first to topic-first SEO – and why that mindset change matters more than ever for long-term visibility in both search and large…
SEO news from around the world
Last week, I walked through the shift from keyword-first to topic-first SEO – and why that mindset change matters more than ever for long-term visibility in both search and large…
WP Engine announced the release of its AI Toolkit, a way to easily integrate advanced AI search and product recommendations into WordPress websites, plus a Managed Vector Database that enables…
The game has changed, and quite recently, too. Generative engine optimization (GEO), AI Overviews (AIOs), or just an extension of SEO (now being dubbed on LinkedIn as Search Everywhere Optimization)…
A new study from GrowthSRC Media finds that click-through rates (CTRs) for Google’s top-ranking search result have declined from 28% to 19%. This 32% drop correlates with the expansion of…
Google’s John Mueller answered a question about llms.txt related to duplicate content, stating that it doesn’t make sense that it would be viewed as duplicate content, but he also stated…
DuckDuckGo now lets you filter AI-generated images out of your search results. The new setting appears in image search and aligns with the company’s effort to make AI features “private,…
If you rank well in traditional search results, does that mean you’ll get cited in AI Overviews? We decided to find out. We pulled one million keywords that triggered AI…
A report finds that AI chatbots are frequently directing users to phishing sites when asked for login URLs to major services. Security firm Netcraft tested GPT-4.1-based models with natural language…
If you’ve layered audiences into your Google Ads campaign and weren’t sure if you should select “targeting” or “observation,” you’re not alone. While the Google and Microsoft platforms give decent…
There was a post on social media about so-called hustle bros, and one on Reddit about an SEO who lost a prospective client to a digital marketer whose pitch included…
How much do traditional and AI search results overlap? AI models draw on search engine indexes to enrich their static training data in a process known as retrieval augmented generation…
Return on ad spend (ROAS) is a common metric or key performance indicator for paid search campaigns. PPC managers and digital marketing executives have been using it for a long…
There are many businesses relatively new to SEO that eventually face the decision to build or buy links because they are told that links are important, which, of course, links…
Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt discussed making changes to a web page, observing the SEO effect, and the importance of tracking those changes. There has been long-standing hesitation around…
3. Impressions are good data Thirdly, impressions are just good data. There are a lot of things in SEO that we don’t have good data for. Impressions, we do have…
The CEO of Conductor started a LinkedIn discussion about the future of AI SEO platforms, suggesting that the established companies will dominate and that 95 percent of the startups will…
Google’s June 2025 Core Update just finished. What’s notable is that while some say it was a big update, it didn’t feel disruptive, indicating that the changes may have been…
I’ve spent years working with Google’s SEO tools, and while there are countless paid options out there, Google’s free toolkit remains the foundation of my optimization workflow. These tools show…
Get the week’s best marketing content AI Overviews aren’t always in the first position in the SERPs. For example, here’s an AI Overview in the 2nd position. See where AI…
I was asked recently to take a closer look at the data for a website in Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This was for “Measurement Queen” Katie Delahaye Paine, a pioneer…
Brave Search and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the availability of the Brave Search API in the new AI Agents and Tools category of the AWS Marketplace. AI Agents And…
Perplexity has launched a web browser, Comet, offering users a look at how the company is evolving beyond AI search. While Comet shares familiar traits with Chrome, it introduces a…
OpenAI’s ChatGPT agent marks a change in how users interact with web pages and complete transactions. This could be the most consequential change to online interactions since the introduction of…
In a recent installment of SEO Office Hours, Google’s John Mueller offered guidance on how to keep unwanted pages out of search results and addressed a common source of confusion…
A former Google Search engineer is betting on the end of traditional SEO, and building tools to help marketers prepare for what comes next. Andrew Yan, who left Google’s search…
Average position has been a cornerstone metric in SEO reporting for years. It provides a simple, at-a-glance sense of where a site typically ranks in Google’s search results. That sense…
I recently saw Stephen Kenwright speak at a small Sistrix event in Leeds about strategies for exploiting Google’s brand bias, and a lot of what he said still feels as…
I set up some tests over a month ago to see if Google would rank content generated by Google AI Mode in the organic search results. Spoiler: it did not…
Someone asked if showing different content to logged-out users than to logged-in users and to Google via structured data is okay. John’s answer was unequivocal. This is the question that…
This post was sponsored by GatherUp. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. If your business has a great local, word-of-mouth reputation but very few online reviews,…