Here's a sobering statistic that should grab every business owner's attention: 99.3% traffic loss. That's what happened to one company that relied too heavily on AI-generated content without proper oversight. But here's the thing: it's not AI that's the problem. It's how businesses are using it. The content creation landscape has fundamentally changed, and there's…
Note: This analysis is based on “ChatGPT Referrals to E-Commerce Websites: Do LLMs Outperform Traditional Channels?” by Maximilian Kaiser and Christian Schulze (October 2025), which represents the first large-scale empirical study comparing organic LLM traffic performance to traditional digital marketing channels. When ChatGPT began offering direct shopping links in August 2024, industry observers predicted a…
Here's the brutal truth: 68% of businesses that attempt DIY SEO abandon their efforts within six months, while 73% of companies working with professional SEO consultants see measurable improvements in their first quarter. The choice between professional SEO consulting training and going the DIY route is no longer just about budget, it's about survival in…
How brands measure visibility, authority and market perception in the age of AI-powered search For decades, SEO success was straightforward to measure. You tracked rankings, counted clicks, analyzed backlinks, and watched traffic flow into your site. If you appeared on page one of Google and captured the click, you controlled the conversation with your potential…
Why Your Website Needs One in 2025 The digital landscape has fundamentally changed. With 58% of Google searches now triggering AI-generated responses, your content needs to work harder than ever before. A comprehensive content audit isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore—it’s essential for survival in the age of AI search. New to AI search optimization? Learn…
As tools like DeepSeek and Perplexity change how we find information, does your website’s structure still matter? Here’s how to choose and optimize for both UX and discoverability. Introduction: The New Search Landscape The way we search for information has fundamentally changed. Gone are the days when Google’s ten blue links were our primary gateway…
You create great content. Your existing customers love it. But what about all those potential customers who are searching for exactly what you offer right now? If your content isn’t appearing in their search results—or getting cited by AI systems—there’s a good chance they’ll never discover your business. A content gap analysis reveals the missing…
The search landscape has fundamentally changed. AI Overviews now appear in over 50% of all queries (doubling since August 2024) and reach 2 billion monthly users. Google’s AI Mode is becoming the default search experience, which means traditional SEO strategies alone are no longer enough to maintain visibility. If you’ve noticed changes in your organic…
Content optimization has evolved far beyond stuffing keywords into meta tags and hoping for the best. In 2025, with AI Overviews now appearing on over 50% of all queries (doubling since August 2024) and reaching 2 billion monthly users, your content must satisfy both human readers and AI systems that increasingly determine which sources get…
A groundbreaking Pew Research Center study analyzing 900 U.S. adults reveals the dramatic impact of Google’s AI Overviews on website traffic, showing that users click through to websites only 8% of the time when AI summaries are present—nearly half the rate compared to traditional search results. This comprehensive analysis provides concrete evidence of what SEO professionals have termed “the great decoupling,” documenting how AI Overviews appear in 18% of searches and fundamentally change user behavior, with 26% of sessions ending entirely after encountering AI summaries versus just 16% with traditional results.
With 51% of search queries now handled by AI-powered engines and 58% of Google searches ending without clicks, the fundamental shift from traditional SEO to AI search optimization is no longer optional—it’s essential for digital survival. This comprehensive guide reveals how businesses can adapt their strategies for the new landscape where expertise trumps domain authority, semantic understanding beats keyword density, and success is measured by AI citation frequency rather than traditional rankings, providing actionable frameworks for optimizing across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT Search, Perplexity AI, and Microsoft Copilot.
An early hands-on review of ChatGPT’s SearchGPT reveals a search engine that addresses Google’s biggest weakness—providing abundant source links alongside AI-generated answers while maintaining a familiar, Google-like interface. The analysis explores SearchGPT’s unique features including conversational follow-up questions, comprehensive media search capabilities, and transparent source attribution, while examining whether traditional SEO strategies will remain effective or if entirely new optimization approaches will be required for this emerging search platform.
Introduction to the Recovery Journey Full Disclosure: The data I’m going to share with you is for one of my personal websites – Cars and Coffee Events. The website was hit hard by Google’s Helpful Content Update in September, and while the recovery is recent (three weeks and counting), it’s strong and shows no signs…
Search Engine Submission, aka submitting content to Google and Bing, remains an important aspect of SEO in 2024, although its necessity and the mechanisms for doing so have evolved over time. Here’s a breakdown of the current state of content submission to these search engines and why it still matters: Google Bing Why It’s Still…
If you’re diving into local SEO and want to keep an eye on how you’re doing in specific areas, there’s a bunch of cool tools out there ready to help you out. Here’s the lowdown on some of the top picks that can give you the inside scoop on your local keyword rankings: Each of…
The relationship between a website’s performance in organic search and its organic social media efforts is multifaceted and not straightforward. While social media signals are not a direct ranking factor for search engine algorithms like Google’s, there are several indirect ways in which social media can influence a website’s SEO performance. However, it’s important to…
In the ever-competitive world of digital marketing, the allure of a guaranteed top spot on Google’s search results is incredibly tempting for any business. However, promises of securing a #1 ranking often hide more than they reveal. This short article delves into the pitfalls and problems associated with SEO companies that guarantee these top rankings.…
SEO, at its core, is a practice deeply intertwined with the workings of search engine algorithms, which are notoriously fluid and complex. The unpredictability of SEO largely stems from this ever-changing nature of search algorithms, particularly those of Google, which dominates the search engine landscape. Here’s a deeper look into this aspect: Implications for SEO…
Scammers aren’t just targeting Consumers with send me money schemes. They’re going after business as well.
From an SEO perspective, the use of ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted) lists in your content can have various implications. While there’s no direct ranking boost from using either type of list, their impact on user experience and content structure can indirectly influence SEO. Here’s a breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages: Advantages of Ordered…
In the digital age, the term “organic search” has become increasingly significant, especially in the realms of digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). This article aims to demystify organic search and explain its importance in today’s online-centric world. Organic search refers to the search results that appear naturally on a search engine results page…
Google’s recent Helpful Content Update has the potential to change the SEO world the way Panda did 11 years ago.
An important part of your SEO strategy, the meta description is a description tag in HTML, that summarizes a webpage’s content.
Welcome to my 6th annual What’s in my SEO Toolbox post. If you’ve read this post in the past, you’ll note that there’s a lot of consistency with respect to my choices. There are two reasons for that. First, these are damn good tools and their developers keep improving them year after year. Second, as…
It’s nearly 2022, and it’s hard to believe that this [still] needs to be said, but it does. BACKLINKS MATTER. Not just a little. A lot. And what matters more than the backlinks? The anchor text in that backlink. Yes, the search engines have gotten really good at understanding the text around your link, but…
As an SEO, one of the things we know is that when we’re trying to get a page to rank for a keyword, the title of a page is one of the most important, if not the most important signal we can send to Google. It’s something we work hard at and there are certain…
Don’t get all excited. Google has expanded their definition of acceptable scores in the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console
Google’s Passages Update is live, and if you don’t think it matters to you, you haven’t seen it work yet. Trust me.
For anyone who really interested in the Customer Journey – not just how people find your website, but how they use it – Microsoft’s integration of Clarity with Bing Webmaster tools is a welcome step forward. Clarity allows website owners, administrators, and analysts, to see exactly what visitors are doing on their website without infringing…
How to Set Up Microsoft Clarity Step One: Log into your Bing Webmaster Tools account. Step Two: From the dropdown list at the top left of your screen, select the website you’d like to set up. Once you’ve done that, click the Add button at the bottom left of the screen. Step Three: Accept the…
It’s been 5 days. What we know about Google’s December Core Update. At this point, we know a few things: The update to the core algorithm is still going on There have been major increases and drops among music related websites Health and Medical sites have seen major drops The early indicators are that the…
At 10:34 am yesterday, Google’s Search Liaison Danny Sullivan announced that the December 2020 Core Update – the 3rd update to Google’s core algorithm this year – would begin rolling out at 1:00 pm. As is typical, the update should take between 1 and 2 weeks to complete. The most recent data is that the…
November has brought with it a couple of significant announcements from Google. The first has to do with a major core algorithm update that’s planned for next year, and the other has to do with a minor tweak to the current algorithm. Both can have major implications for your website’s visibility on search engine result…
When most people think about SEO, they think about three things: keyword research, backlinks and content. And they’re right to do so – all three of those things are fundamental to creating a solid, successful organic search campaign. But what those same people rarely take into consideration is the distinction between Brand and Non-Brand keywords.
If you haven’t noticed, May has been a very busy month for Google. They have announced 2 significant updates – one that’s already happened and one that’s coming next year. The Update that’s already happened On May 4th, Danny Sullivan, Google’s public liaison for search (@searchliaison), announced the May 2020 Core Algorithm update: An announcement…
Like most things having to do with, SEO this isn’t a simple answer. My first question is, where are you getting your zero search volume results data from? With the exception of Bing, almost every keyword research tool out there provides you with data that’s pulled from Google Ads. What That’s decidedly different than being…
In Google’s world, a “site link” is a specific term that refers to additional links that show up under main organic listings.
Over the last 15 years of being an SEO consultant, it’s been my experience that, after introducing yourself, you’re going to get one of four responses from the person you’ve just met. They’re either going to say: “I don’t know what that means. Can you explain it?” “We’re already working with someone.” “We hired an…
Welcome to the 3rd annual What’s in my SEO Toolbox post. SEO is always interesting. It’s always changing. But 2019 has been a particularly interesting year with respect to SEO. How? Well besides the typical algorithmic changes by the search engines, Google switched from desktop indexing to mobile indexing. And then there’s voice search (Alexa,…
As the world’s largest search engine, Google is used by people who are seeking information to all kinds of questions. Many of those questions are answered by Companies who publish answers to questions users have asked their customer service departments, but that’s not the only source of information. Often, the information users are looking for…
Most people think about a web site in terms of the creative design, or the content. That’s what you and your users see, but there’s much more going on behind the scenes. Your web site has to be hosted someplace and your hosting company uses a lot of hardware (web server, database server, media server,…
It was reported earlier this week by Barry Schwartz (Rusty Brick Consulting and Search Engine Roundtable) and Bill Hartzer that Search Engine Strategies – the series of SEO conferences started by industry pioneer Danny Sullivan back in the late 1990s – and ClickZ Live Events are no more. While the ClickZLive site (https://www.clickzlive.com/events) is still online, the SES conference…
On Tuesday evening, after a great presentation at WIX Lounge in NYC, my almost 2 year old Gen 3 Lenovo X1 Carbon running Windows 10 did an automatic update to Windows 10 Redstone. I didn’t ask for this. It just happened. And when I sat down at my desk on Wednesday morning the laptop was…
How yesterday’s science fiction has become today’s reality. In his keynote address at SMX West this morning, Beshad Behzadi (Google’s Director of Conversational Search) opened with two video clips. The first – from a 1960’s episode of Star Trek – showed Captain Kirk (William Shatner) asking the ship’s computer for information on two different people. The second was a trailer from the…
Google Updates Their Webmaster Guidelines If you’re not an SEO professional, you’re probably asking yourself, “Why do Google’s Webmaster Guidelines matter to me?” The answer is quite simple: Following Google’s Webmaster Guidelines “…will help Google find, index, and rank your site.” And that’s a good thing. If there’s any doubt as to how important these changes…
Before you answer, I should tell you that this is a trick question. There really isn’t a “right” time because if you’re going to do SEO properly, the right time is all the time. So maybe the better question is, is there a wrong time to think about SEO. The answer to that question is easy. Yes, there is a…
The answer to this question used to be a simple “no”. However that is not longer the case. What your inbound link profile looks like – how many links you have coming into your web site as well as the authority and trust value those links come from – can and will influence your sites…
Recently, I decided that I needed to focus on posting more business blogging. The problem was that, while I’m not a bad writer, I have trouble thinking about things to write about. So my wife did a little research on the subject to help me along. The first link she gave me was to a…
At one point or another, if you’re a business owner, you’ve probably received a robocall call that goes something like this: “It’s extremely urgent that we speak to the business owner! We’ve tried to reach you numerous times. Our records indicate that your Google Business Listing has not been claimed…” The caller on the other…
Paying attention to a few details before you roll out that new web site can make a big difference with your international SEO efforts You’ve done your due diligence. You have selected the countries where your company has a solid business opportunity; you’ve picked out your products and services; you’ve designed your web site and made sure that…
There’s a reason I never miss an SMX conference in the US. They are far and away the best SEO focused conferences out there. That’s mostly because Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman and the whole team at Third Door Media do an amazing job with the programming. But it’s also because SMX brings together some of the best…
What Makes Us Different When we started optimizing web sites for organic search, it was a fairly simple task: Figure out the subjects you want to rank for Identify the keywords related to those subjects Create some content around those subjects Put the keywords into the title, meta description and meta keywords fields Sprinkle the…
