Since 2013, Search has recognized the importance of app deep links in a mobile-centric world.
In this post, we’ll review the current state of app deep links — take a look at what they
are, the benefits of using them, and how to implement them effectively.
Read more at Read More
Meta tags are snippets of HTML code that live in your webpage’s <head> section. Your website’s visitors won’t see them. But search engines, browsers, and social media platforms can see and use them.
You can think of meta tags as a way to tell Google and other search engines about what your page contains and how they should display it in search results.
Some meta tags are more important than others. In fact, there are really only a couple of meta tags you need to worry about.
I’ll explain exactly what these are below and how you can optimize yours.
Here’s what a basic meta tag looks like:
<meta name="description" content="This is a description of my webpage that should appear in search results.">
Let’s break down this structure:
Some meta tags use different attributes. For example, the charset meta tag looks like this:
<meta charset="UTF-8">
And the viewport meta tag uses the following structure:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
You don’t need to memorize these formats. Most content management systems (like WordPress, Shopify, and Wix) handle the technical implementation for you.
What matters is understanding which meta tags are important for SEO and how to optimize them for better visibility online.
Important note: I’m going to discuss a few elements that are not strictly speaking “meta tags.”
Tags like <title> are HTML elements in their own right, not meta tags by definition. But they do provide search engines with useful information.
Plus, they’re often referred to in the same way as other meta tags. So I’ve covered them here anyway. But for the sake of accuracy, if it’s not within theHTML element, it’s not a true meta tag.
Let me make it clear early on:
Your meta tags are not the most important aspect of your site’s SEO. They matter, but there are usually other areas you can likely optimize for greater impact.
But optimizing them won’t hurt your SEO. And in some cases it can actually make a big difference.
Your title tag and meta description are the primary elements people see in search results before they even visit your site.
Think of them as your website’s elevator pitch. You have just a few seconds to convince someone to click through. A compelling title and description can be the difference between a click on your result or your competitor’s.
By writing meta descriptions that address user intent and include a clear call to action, you can increase your click-through rates (CTRs). This means more traffic without necessarily needing higher rankings.
But:
Google often chooses its own titles to display, and even more commonly chooses its own descriptions. That’s because it puts a focus on displaying a description relevant to the search query.
For example, here’s a result that displays our chosen meta description for a post about backlinks:
And here’s the description Google displays for that same post but for a different query:
So while you can improve your CTRs by optimizing some meta tags, it’s not always going to have measurable results.
Want to prevent a page from appearing in search results? There’s a meta tag for that. Need to tell Google which version of a page is the original? There’s a meta tag for that too.
These technical meta tags help avoid common SEO issues like duplicate content, indexing of private pages, or incorrect international targeting.
Meta tags like viewport and charset ensure your website displays correctly across different devices and browsers.
While these may not directly impact your search rankings, they certainly impact user experience. This ultimately affects how long people stay on your site and whether they convert.
When someone shares your page on Facebook, X/Twitter, or LinkedIn, specialized meta tags determine how your content appears. These are called Open Graph or Twitter Card tags.
Without these tags, social platforms might pull random text or images from your page. This can lead to unappealing or confusing social snippets.
Unlike many areas of your site that require significant time and resources to optimize, you can update your meta tags relatively quickly.
For most websites, you can improve your meta tags in minutes through your CMS or with simple plugins. For example, Rank Math has an entire section dedicated to “SEO Titles & Meta”:
However:
As I’ll discuss later, not all platforms make it easy to change your meta tags. Some (like Squarespace) don’t give you much control at all.
Not all meta tags are created equal when it comes to SEO impact. Some directly influence your rankings and visibility. Others play supporting roles or have become obsolete over the years (like the keywords meta tag).
So to keep things simple (and prioritize your efforts and resources), let’s focus on the meta tags that actually matter for your website.
| Tag | SEO Impact | Supported By Google |
|---|---|---|
| Title Tag | High | Yes |
| Robots | High | Yes |
| Canonical | High | Yes |
| Hreflang | High (for international sites) | Yes |
| Meta Description | Low | Yes |
| Viewport | Low | Yes |
| Charset | Low | Yes |
Now let’s break down each important tag in detail.
The title tag isn’t technically a meta tag (it’s an HTML element in its own right). But it’s one of the most important tags in your page’s header from an SEO perspective, so I’ll cover it here.
<title>Backlinko: SEO, Content Marketing, & Link Building Strategies</title>
Your title tag appears in three key places:
As an example, compare these two title tags. They both contain a number, which may help boost CTR (depending on the query).
But the date in the TeamUpdraft title tag is from last year, making it seem outdated. Meanwhile, the WP Rocket title also tells me their list contains free and paid options.
This helps cater to a wider audience with different budgets. It also adds something unique that could boost engagement by helping it stand out on the search engine results page (SERP).
The robots meta tag controls how search engines interact with your pages. It looks like this:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
The default value is “all” which you can think of as “index, follow” (even though Google’s documentation doesn’t list these as accepted values). You can still include “index, follow” without any negative impact, but it’s not necessary.
If you don’t add a meta robots tag to your page (which Google’s John Mueller says is perfectly fine), Google assumes there are no restrictions.
If you do want to restrict indexing/following of links, you can use:
You can also use the robots meta tag to control how your site appears in search results via the snippet rules. These include:
If you don’t add any of the above rules, Google will just apply its defaults. In other words, if you don’t have any preferences, you don’t need to worry about these meta tags.
Most pages should use “all” or not specify any meta robots tags. This applies to any pages you want Google to index and follow the links on.
But you may want to use “noindex” for:
You can even target specific search engines:
<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex, nofollow">
The canonical tag technically isn’t a meta tag (it goes within the <link> element). But it is something you add to your <head> section that the user won’t see.
It helps prevent duplicate content issues by specifying the “primary” version of a page.
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.yourwebsite.com/primary-page/">
You can learn more about these in our full guide to using canonical tags.
For multi-language websites, hreflang tags help search engines show the right version to the right audience. They’re not meta tags by definition. But like canonical tags, they are important for SEO and your user won’t see them.
They look like this:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://es.example.com/page.html"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="it" href="https://it.example.com/page.html"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://en.example.com/page.html">
If you don’t run a multilingual site, you don’t need to worry about these tags.
But if you do, here’s how to optimize your hreflang tags:
It’s easy to make mistakes here, so I recommend checking out our full guide to hreflang tags for more information.
The description meta tag looks like this:
<meta name="description" content="Your compelling ~120-character description that includes your target keyword and encourages clicks.">
While not a direct ranking factor, your meta description can impact click-through rates.
But:
You shouldn’t assign too much value to these, for two reasons:
So while you can and (I cautiously say) “should” optimize your meta descriptions, there are likely more important things you can do if you’re limited on time or resources.
With that out of the way, here are a few best practices:
You can optimize your meta descriptions by:
Here’s an example of an optimized meta description:
It captures the main benefits of the product, making it clear to a searcher why it’s the right one for them (and why they should click).
This meta tag ensures your site displays properly on mobile devices. It looks like this:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
This simple tag helps improve your site’s mobile friendliness. While not a direct ranking factor itself as a tag, Google does prioritize sites that provide a great experience on all devices. So it’s a good idea to make sure you implement this one correctly.
Further reading: Mobile SEO: The Definitive Guide
Most content management systems (like WordPress) will set this tag for you. And you’re unlikely to want or need to change it.
You can tweak values like the width and height, but for most cases, you won’t need to.
Just make sure you have one, and ideally use the following values:
The charset meta tag defines the character encoding for your page. It looks like this:
<meta charset="UTF-8">
If you use the wrong character encoding or implement it incorrectly, you might see some character display issues in your browser:
Like the viewport meta tag, you’re unlikely to want or need to make any changes to this. Your CMS will likely add this automatically for you.
But if you’re adding it manually, Google recommends you stick with Unicode/UTF-8.
Open Graph is a separate type of meta tag that isn’t going to impact your SEO. But these tags can affect how your content appears when you or others share it on social media.
Here’s what Open Graph meta tags look like:
<meta property="og:title" content="Your Compelling Social Title"> <meta property="og:description" content="Your engaging social description"> <meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg"> <meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/page"> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
Here’s an example of a blog post with Open Graph meta tags:
And here’s how that post looks when it’s shared on X/Twitter:
Here are some tips to optimize your Open Graph meta tags:
Before I move on, it’s worth noting a few other meta tags that you may come across.
Here are the main ones and what you can use them for:
Here are a few meta tags that Google doesn’t support (and so you probably shouldn’t use):
How you add or make changes to your meta tags depends on how your site is set up.
If you built your site from scratch or have a custom setup, speak with your developer about adding or changing your meta tags.
If you’re doing it yourself, you can add or change them in the <head> section of your page’s code.
If your site runs on a content management system (CMS), how much control you have over your meta tags is going to vary depending on the platform you use.
WordPress takes care of a lot of meta tags for you. To verify this, I just added a fresh install of WordPress to a domain I own. I deleted all the default plugins my host added, and I only have the 2025 default WordPress theme on the site.
Here are the meta tags it added:
The platform will:
What it didn’t do:
Note that it might vary depending on whether you run a WordPress.com-hosted domain or are self-hosting and using the WordPress.org software. It might also depend on the theme you use.
You can edit your theme files to adjust your meta tags. But it’s just as easy (or easier) to use plugins. You might even already use a plugin that can do a lot of this for you.
For example, Yoast will take care of your page title tags and meta descriptions.
It’ll also let you adjust your Open Graph tags:
You can find out more about using this plugin to boost your SEO in our Yoast guide.
As I mentioned earlier, Rank Math is another option that lets you control a lot of your site’s meta tags. These include site-level and page-level controls over Open Graph tags:
You can edit your Shopify store’s main title and meta description for the homepage by going to the Preferences menu in the left-hand sidebar menu:
You can also change your social sharing image here (for Open Graph).
For other pages like products, access the product page and scroll down to “Search engine listing” and click “Edit”:
Wix lets you add meta tags through the “Advanced SEO” menu:
Wix takes care of a lot of meta tags for you by default, including:
Squarespace doesn’t give much control over your meta tags. In fact, you can only really change your title tag and meta description.
Do this via the SEO settings in your post or page and editing the “SEO Title” and “SEO Description” fields:
Having issues with your meta tags can drastically harm your site’s SEO.
Let’s look at how you can find some of the most common problems.
Semrush offers one of the most comprehensive tools for finding meta tag issues with Site Audit.
Just set up an audit for your site and let it run.
Then, head to the “Issues” tab and search for “tag.” This will highlight issues related to your meta tags.
Site Audit will flag issues like:
Note: A free Semrush account lets you audit up to 100 URLs. Or you can use this link to access a 14-day trial on a Semrush Pro subscription.
You can use the Detailed Chrome extension for quick on-page meta tag checks.
It’ll show you that page’s title tag, meta description, canonical tag, robots tag, and more. This makes it very handy for validating quick changes to specific pages.
You can also just check your page’s meta tags manually by right clicking and selecting “Inspect”:
Then, search for “meta” to quickly identify your page’s meta tags:
This isn’t all that scalable, but it’s handy for checking specific pages.
Meta tags clearly play a role in your site’s overall SEO. But making changes to them usually won’t have a huge impact on performance unless you already have major issues.
There are lots of other aspects of SEO and technical SEO in particular that can actually move the needle.
To find out more about these changes and how to make them to boost your site’s performance, check out our guide to technical SEO.
The post Meta Tags: What They Are & How to Use Them to Boost Your SEO appeared first on Backlinko.
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Strategic ecommerce keyword research can help you reach the right audience and directly impact your bottom line.
Just look at Cosmetify’s success.
This beauty retailer was struggling with an all-too-common challenge: no traffic on its revenue-generating pages.
The team identified and mapped transactional keywords to these money pages.
Dorothy Edgar, SEO Manager at Cosmetify, shares more about her strategy:
“We also created new money pages to fit customer needs and gaps in our current website hierarchy. For example, we segmented the fragrance category page into ‘women’s perfume discounts.’ Then, we added optimized content to all these pages.”
The result?
A 12.6-position average keyword boost and a 250% jump in organic revenue in 2024.
That’s just one example of the impact you can create with strategic keyword research.
Want these results for your business?
Use this 6-step framework to find revenue-driving keywords — without wasting time or budget.
Get started with our free Keyword Research Planner Template for ecommerce brands.
Keyword research reveals how your customers search, think, and make buying decisions online.
These rich audience insights can benefit your ecommerce business in many ways.
Keyword research helps you meet buyers where they are.
You get an insider’s view of your buyers’ psyche and willingness to purchase.
For instance, when people search for “benefits of running,” they want to learn more about this topic.
When they search for “best running shoes for flat feet,” they’re comparing different products.
In short: Choose keywords to target potential customers across the buyer journey and drive conversions.
The peak shopping season around holidays and festivals is ultra-competitive.
But ecommerce keyword research reveals micro-seasonal trends that your competitors might overlook. These less-competitive opportunities can drive more revenue with less effort.
Keep in mind that micro-seasonal trends differ across geographies and occasions.
For example, “back to school” is a trending topic in the United States from July to August.
If you run an online stationery store, target relevant keywords to tap into this demand.
You can also use this research to gauge your buyers’ interest in a new product idea.
A surging search volume for certain terms signals emerging consumer preferences.
For example, more people searching for “plastic-free activewear” could show growing interest in this product.
Analyze your keywords to find an untapped market for a new product category or niche.
Before I break down our 6-step framework for ecommerce keyword research, let’s cover the basics.
Ecommerce brands can target several types of keywords.
But, three stand out for driving customers through the buying funnel: informational, commercial, and transactional keywords.
Informational terms drive top-of-funnel traffic to your website.
These keywords make your brand more discoverable, especially when shoppers are looking to solve specific problems.
Target these search terms to provide helpful context about your products and put your brand on potential customers’ radar.
Informational keyword examples:
Pro tip: Don’t just go after “best” and “how to” keywords. Use tools like AnswerThePublic or Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool to find hidden gems in your niche.
Commercial keywords bridge the gap between research and purchase.
Shoppers use these keywords to compare different products’ features that match their needs.
Commercial keyword examples:
Transactional keywords lead searchers to purchase and drive revenue.
These terms show a clear buying intent because shoppers use terms like “buy” and “book” or other strong purchase signals like pricing.
Transactional keyword examples:
Here’s how these three keyword types map to the ecommerce funnel:
While these three keyword types map directly to the ecommerce funnel, they’re not the only ones worth targeting.
Navigational keywords help searchers find a specific ecommerce brand, product, or page.
These queries also include category-specific navigation patterns people use to find specific products.
For example, “Under Armour men’s joggers” shows clear intent to find a specific brand and product.
Navigational keyword examples:
Long-tail keywords are longer phrases searchers use for a highly specific need or niche topics.
Take the keyword “best running shoes for women with flat feet” as an example.
It’s longer than usual and searches for a hyperspecific product.
That level of detail can still bring in meaningful traffic — especially if it aligns with strong purchase intent.
Long-tail keyword examples:
Buy a keyword tool → Find high-volume search queries → Add to landing pages.
That’s the outdated approach to finding keywords for ecommerce brands.
It’s a recipe for draining your time and money.
Let me break down a 6-step ecommerce keyword research process to drive sales and rewrite your growth trajectory.
Before you sign up for a keyword research tool, build some groundwork for your strategy.
Your first step? Listen to your customers.
The way people search for your products can be very different from how you describe them.
This misalignment could mean missed opportunities.
But when you speak your customers’ language, your content hits home.
Let’s look at the difference:
A skincare brand markets one of its products as a “10% niacinamide serum with zinc PCA.”
On the flip side, its target buyers search for “best serum for large pores” or “how to reduce facial oiliness.”
Same product. Completely different language.
Here are some more before (brands’ language) and after (customers’ language) examples:
Here’s how to fix this language gap:
Let’s understand this with an example from Made In, a cookware brand.
Made In describes its Carbon Steel Wok with this product description. It talks about the wok’s weight, bottom, seasoning time, and more.
But customer reviews echo praise for one unique feature: the wok’s heat distribution.
Now, re-read the description.
You’ll realize it misses the one value proposition that most customers are raving about.
Once you’ve ticked off Step #1, it’s time to expand your keyword universe.
Most ecommerce sites limit themselves to product-related keywords — like a coffee maker brand targeting “single-serve coffee maker” or “burr grinder with timer.”
The result? Missing out on valuable traffic opportunities.
Customers search for your products in dozens of different ways based on:
Go beyond your product-specific terms and find seed keywords that match your customers’ search habits.
One way to do this is by listing your products, alternative names, categories, and use cases.
For a product like “coffee maker,” you can start with seed terms like:
Here’s a more detailed matrix for this brand:
| Core product | Alternative names | Product categories | Use cases |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coffee maker | Coffee machine | Drip coffee maker | Brewing coffee |
| Espresso machine | Coffee brewer | Single-serve coffee maker | Morning routine |
| French press | Coffee pot | Pour over coffee | Office coffee |
| Cold brew | Percolator | Coffee grinder | Entertaining guests |
| Moka pot | Coffee system | Coffee accessories | Specialty drinks |
When this exercise is complete, add all the keywords to your planner.
As we go through the next steps, gather more details about each keyword and add insights in different columns.
Not all keywords are created equal.
A person searching for “how to set up a camping tent” is in a completely different mindset than those searching for “buy a lightweight camping stove.”
The first searcher needs educational content. Show them a product page, and they’ll bounce.
The second one is ready to buy. Send them a how-to guide, and you’ll lose the sale.
Take a quick look at the search results and you’ll see this in action:
Knowing these differences allows you to target people across the entire buyer journey.
Follow this process to map keywords to varying search intents.
Keyword type: Informational
In the awareness stage, your buyers are simply discovering their needs.
They want to better understand their problems and find solutions. They’re not ready to buy yet.
Take Andy, for example.
He struggles with a small, messy closet.
So, he searches for “how to organize a small closet” and “closet organization ideas.”
Andy can discover your furniture brand if you have educational content on this topic.
Keyword type: Commercial
In the consideration stage, people want to do their research before buying something.
They evaluate many products and weigh their options for making an informed decision.
At this point, Andy searches for “IKEA vs Target closet” and “best closets for small apartments.”
Keyword type: Navigational and transactional
In the decision stage, your prospects are ready to buy.
They’ll search for high-intent keywords that shorten the path to purchase.
So, Andy will search for “buy PAX closet” to access the IKEA product page directly.
Once you’ve identified a broad set of terms, map them to relevant pages on your site.
Use our planner template to define the content format for each keyword.
Keyword mapping gives each page a clear purpose and aligns keywords to these pages.
Nicola Hughes, Head of SEO at TAL Agency, shares how this benefits ecommerce brands.
Her team worked with a premium food and beverage brand to revamp its organic SEO performance and drive more sales.
“We listed all the collection and product pages on the site to define a purpose for every page. From there, we conducted in-depth keyword research to learn what our audience was searching for.
We mapped 1-3 high-intent keywords per page to align content with search queries across every stage of the funnel.”
This tactic, along with a few more, improved the brand’s click-through rate from 17.1% to 22.1%. It also led to 620% quarter-over-quarter growth.
Competitor keyword research tells you what’s working in the market — without blowing your budget on trial and error.
Look at direct and indirect competitors to find high-potential keyword opportunities.
An ecommerce keyword research tool like Semrush makes it easy to perform a keyword gap analysis.
Go to the Keyword Gap tool and add your competitors to discover the terms they’re ranking for.
I added three skincare brands and hit “Compare.”
In the analysis, I could see how many search terms each brand targets.
This Venn diagram shows that Koba has the smallest share of keywords out of the three.
The tool also curates a set of missing and weak terms that Koba should target.
Keyword Gap analysis presents a list of 14.1K untapped keywords for Koba. Other competitors are already targeting and
ranking for these search terms.
I can select relevant phrases from this data and add them to a new list of competitor-specific terms.
But only finding competitor keywords isn’t enough.
You have to analyze how competing brands target these terms.
Hover over any term in a competitor’s column. You’ll see the page where they use this specific phrase.
Further reading: Free Competitor Analysis Tool (Analyze SEO & PPC)
Now, you’re looking at this long list of target keywords and wondering, “Where do I even start?”
If your first instinct is to go for high-volume queries, pause and hit reset.
A keyword with 10,000 monthly searches might look tempting. But it’s probably difficult to rank for.
For example, we have two queries:
The second keyword is much more attainable since it targets a specific need.
That’s why our planner has space to note the search volume and ranking difficulty for each phrase and choose the right terms.
You can use Semrush to prioritize the right keywords.
Go to the Keyword Overview tool and add your seed keyword. I added “exercise bike for home gym” and hit “Search.”
Keyword Overview’s comprehensive analysis tells me that this keyword:
So, searchers use this keyword to explore different brands and products.
Pro tip: Look for keywords with a high CPC, which signals a strong commercial intent. If advertisers are willing to pay top dollar for a keyword, it probably converts well.
Keyword Overview also gives me a handy list of pages ranking in the search results.
I can analyze metrics like backlinks, traffic, and more to see what I’m competing against.
Once you’ve captured this data, go to Keyword Magic Tool to expand your list of target keywords.
Filter related terms by volume, difficulty, intent, and other metrics to shortlist the most relevant terms.
When you have a set of shortlisted keywords, do an effort-impact analysis.
For each keyword, assess the effort required to create content and rank well. Then, determine its overall impact on your marketing strategy.
This analysis will clarify the order of priority:
Let’s see this in action with the example of a fitness equipment retailer.
| High Effort | Low Effort | |
|---|---|---|
| High Impact | best home gym equipment
|
workout bench reviews
|
commercial gym equipment
|
home gym setup ideas
|
|
| Low Impact | vintage exercise equipment
|
gym equipment maintenance tips
|
olympic weightlifting equipment
|
how to clean resistance bands
|
As a result, the retailer should prioritize phrases like “workout bench reviews” and “home gym setup ideas” to get quick wins.
The brand should also invest effort into terms like “best home gym equipment” and “commercial gym equipment.”
In the final step, you’re all set to build a content strategy around your keywords.
Each keyword serves a specific purpose — to educate, convince, or convert buyers.
When building your content strategy, match keywords to a specific phase of the buying process.
Then, align each keyword cluster with the right content format, like:
Use the “Content Format” column in the planner.
This lets you organize keywords well for each term in your strategy.
Finally, consolidate your strategy for various keyword opportunities in a content calendar. Focus on quick wins, seasonal trends, and more.
Let’s see how this would work for a dog food and clothing brand.
| Buyer Journey Stage | Keyword | Goal | Content Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Awareness | “best dog food for puppies” | Educate buyers on options | Blog post, guide |
| “how to measure a dog for a coat” | Educate buyers on sizing | Blog post with visuals or infographic | |
| Consideration | “wet dog food pros and cons” | Help buyers compare options | Blog post, comparison video |
| “best dog raincoats” | Help buyers decide | Video or blog comparing products | |
| Decision/Conversion | “buy organic dog food online” | Drive conversions | Product landing page |
| “dog jacket sale” | Drive conversions | Promotional landing page or email |
Even with good keyword research, you can still make costly mistakes.
Your SEO growth can fall flat if you’re stuffing keywords, targeting very broad terms, ignoring search intent, or overlooking long-tail queries.
Watch out for these bigger missteps that can hurt your SEO and sales performance.
Many ecommerce sites target similar keywords across multiple pages, leading to keyword cannibalization.
This internal competition prevents search engines from ranking any page.
Plus, it confuses shoppers by showing them irrelevant pages from your site.
Prevent this by mapping these terms to varying search intent and your product hierarchy.
For instance, a camping equipment retailer can follow this map:
Here’s what correct and incorrect keyword mapping looks like:
Each page on your website serves a different purpose in the conversion funnel. Keyword mapping reflects this hierarchy.
Prepare better: Use our free Keyword Mapping Template to prevent any costly mistakes.
Many ecommerce brands make the rookie mistake of using only transactional keywords.
Sure, “buy board games for children under 10” sounds like a great keyword.
But you’re leaving money on the table if you don’t target other search terms across the buyer journey.
Optimize your website to take buyers from discovery to purchase.
This would include:
Keyword research helps you understand exactly what buyers want and meet them where they are.
The result?
More qualified traffic, easier conversions, and, ultimately, higher revenue for your ecommerce store.
Use our free Keyword Research Planner Template to follow this guide effortlessly and create a strong strategy.
And when you’re ready to level up your SEO strategy, check out our in-depth guide on ecommerce SEO to make your store search-ready.
The post 6 Proven Steps to Master Ecommerce Keyword Research appeared first on Backlinko.
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We’re celebrating 15 years of Yoast, and we can’t celebrate without offering some SEO insights. So, here are 15 SEO essentials to focus on in this year and beyond. Whether you are a beginner or an SEO expert, these tips will help you focus on what’s important right now.
In collaboration with our Principal SEO, Alex Moss
Artificial intelligence is making every part of SEO faster and more efficient, from keyword research to real-time performance tracking. Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs help you plan content quickly and uncover opportunities you might have missed. These platforms use data in new ways to help you improve your strategy based on live trends and competitor changes. Use tools like ChatGPT or Gemini for research, inspiration, coding, and data analysis.
Thanks to AI tools, you can automate time-consuming tasks like technical audits, site crawls, and content analysis. The time you win by doing that helps your team focus on the bigger picture, from setting the strategy, building authority, and creating content that connects with audiences and brings something new to the world.
Yoast SEO’s AI features offer guidance to help your content succeed.
Did you know?
Yoast is 15 years old!
We’re celebrating 15 years of Yoast this year and have all kinds of nice stuff planned. Of course, we’re also offering a deal on our SEO products. Use coupon code yoast15_gift4you at the checkout for a 15% discount!
In 2025, Google shows more quick answers than ever. You’ll see AI overviews, featured snippets, knowledge panels, People Also Ask boxes, and more. To be featured in those places, your content has to be high-quality and unique, above all, unique – regurgitating what’s already out there won’t cut it. But, it also has to be easy to read and scan. Don’t forget to use lists, highlighted snippets, and concise definitions at the top of your articles.
Keyword research helps you to find the questions your audience is asking. Write clear answers to those questions, making them as concise as possible. Use tools like AlsoAsked to find opportunities to rank even when a user doesn’t click through to your site.
Video dominates search results and offers a good way to diversify traffic sources. The growth of a platform like TikTok shows that many people prefer consuming video content. Create videos that answer questions, demonstrate your products, or explain complex topics. Optimize the videos to make them easy to find, and don’t forget to add a transcript and timestamps to help with indexing and user experience.
Depending on your video strategy, hosting them on YouTube and embedding them on your site can boost engagement and dwell time. YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, and building a solid presence there can reach a massive audience.
SEO for your products is not just about rankings, but also about conversion. Your product titles and descriptions should naturally include your most important keywords while also sounding persuasive. Don’t forget your category pages! Proper optimization helps customers find what they need. At the same time, you are building a strong internal linking structure.
Structured data is essential for e-commerce stores because it can trigger rich results, highlighting reviews, pricing, and stock status. When done well, these show up nicely in Google, boosting your visibility. Rich snippets make your SERP listings more trustworthy and clickable. Do everything you can to get more traffic and, eventually, more sales. Our Yoast SEO for Shopify app can help your business succeed.
If your business is locally oriented, local SEO should be at the top of your strategy. Keep your Google Business profile updated with opening hours, services, and nice photos. Post regularly about special offers, events, or published blog posts to show you are active and encourage engagement.
Build citations in trusted local directories and get high-quality local backlinks. You should publish high-quality, localized content or case studies from regional customers. This signals that you are active in a geographic area, which could help local search visibility — Yoast Local SEO helps you do this.
UX and SEO are deeply connected; we all know that. If people can’t use your site, they won’t stick around. Focus on a clean layout with plenty of whitespace and add clear call-to-actions for the user to click on. Make your site load quickly and test it regularly on mobile devices.
Heatmaps, scroll maps, and user recordings made with tools like Hotjar can show where people get stuck on your site. Friction could occur with long loading times, confusing menus, missing CTAs, or other similar issues. Solving these can help reduce bounce rates, increase engagement and conversion.
Joining SEO communities isn’t just about asking for help when facing issues; it’s about much more. Platforms like LinkedIn, X, Reddit, Facebook groups, or SEO forums sometimes offer insights and advice you can’t get anywhere else. Sharing wins, failures, and experiments helps you stay connected to the SEO community and lets you build a name for yourself.
These platforms often surface research, news about Google core updates and warnings about issues some time before becoming common knowledge. News might be shared just early enough for you to take advantage of it before your competitor does. Building relationships can help you get business opportunities, collaborations, or friendships.
AI tools and chatbots are trained on information from the web, so it’s important to understand how your content is surfaced by large language models (LLMs). These systems, like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, reshape how users uncover information. The results are often served without a way to click to your site. If your brand is not visible in these generated answers, you could be missing out in a growing share of visibility.
Research your topics and content to see how the system responds to your queries and if your content appears in the answers. Audit your content to see if you structured it so LLMs can understand it. Use clear language, be factual, build your topical authority, and use easy-to-understand layouts. Most of all, be sure that the crawlers of the AI services can reach your site without issues.
Sometimes, ranking higher isn’t about adding more content to your site; it’s often about cleaning up what you have. Content pruning means removing, merging, or updating poorly performing content. Ancient blog posts that no longer get any traffic, outdated product pages, and thin articles with no value may impact your site’s overall performance.
Start with a content audit using Semrush, Screaming Frog, or Ahrefs. Find pages with limited traffic, few backlinks, and poor engagement. You can update these posts if you have enough insights to add. If they’re no longer relevant, merge them into a single, more authoritative page. If nothing works, delete and redirect. Keep your site lean and focused to improve the overall quality and authority, which also helps you fix keyword cannibalization.
Part of SEO is making your site easy for crawlers and search engines to understand. Structured data markup is one of the best ways to tell Google what your pages are about. With the correct schema items, you can highlight things like product prices, event dates, business locations, recipes, and more.
Plugins like Yoast SEO make this process much easier. Start with your most important pages and products, select the proper schema, and fill in the details needed. Once you have the basics done, you can expand it to more complex structured data if needed.
If you’ve been living under a rock, you might have missed that today’s world is all about mobile. We’ve been spending more and more hours glued to our mobile phones. So, having a perfect mobile site is no longer an option. Make sure that it adapts to all screen sizes, that the buttons work, and that no nasty pop-ups overlay the screen.
Test your site often in various browsers on Apple and Android devices. See if it offers a great user experience. If not, fix it. Fixing even small accessibility issues or loading performance can greatly impact user satisfaction.
Google is no longer just rewarding keyword-optimized pages, but genuinely helpful, people-first content. Your articles should satisfy user intent by providing clear, trustworthy and actionable information. Instead of writing the same things everyone has already done, create unique content that informs, solves problems, and adds value for your readers.
When thinking about your content, ask yourself the questions that Google recommends: “After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?” and “Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and depth of knowledge?” If your content doesn’t do any of these things, you might need to rethink it. Focus on things you know well, avoid clickbait and write for your readers, not search engines.
Core Web Vitals gives you a sense of your site’s health, especially with speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. They measure three main things: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which looks at loading performance. The second is Interaction to Next Paint (INP), which shows how quickly your site responds to user actions. The third one is Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which checks for unexpected layout shifts when your page loads. Google uses these metrics to determine whether your site gives a good user experience.
You can monitor your Core Web Vitals in Google PageSpeed Insights, Search Console, or Lighthouse. Improvements you can often make include optimizing images, using faster hosting, reducing reliance on JavaScript, and setting proper dimensions for media. Test your site often to see if your improvements improve the user experience.
Not everyone wants to read a 2000-word blog post. Some people enjoy graphics, videos, or podcasts. You can quickly repurpose your content in various formats, instead of starting over every time.
Doing so makes your site more interesting for readers and search engines alike. Adding helpful videos to articles or offering downloadable checklists or research reports makes your content more appealing.
In SEO, change is a constant. There are algorithm updates, new AI features emerge, and best practices change. It’s a lot, so staying up to date with the news is essential. Follow reliable sources like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, the Yoast SEO newsletter, or our monthly SEO update to get the needed insights.
Plan some time every week to read up on SEO news. Join the conversation whenever you feel like it. Use the new insights to improve your strategies. Sticking to last year’s strategy will not cut it if your competitors are faster to adapt!
Here’s to 15 years of Yoast and 15 more years of helping the world rank better. Whether you’re launching your first site or revamping your SEO strategy for the AI age, it doesn’t matter — we’ll help you succeed.
Which SEO tip do you swear by in 2025? Please share it with us on our social media platforms (X, LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram), or in the comments below.
The post 15 years of Yoast: 15 SEO tips for 2025 and beyond appeared first on Yoast.
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We’re ready to open registrations for the first ever Search Central Live Deep Dive, a 3-day event
that will be held in Bangkok, Thailand this year on July 23-25!
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If you optimize your articles for similar terms, your rankings might suffer from keyword or content cannibalization: you’ll be ‘devouring’ your chances to rank in Google! Especially when your site is growing, your content could start competing with itself. Here, we’ll explain why keyword and content cannibalism can harm SEO, how to recognize it, and what to do about it.
Keyword cannibalization happens when multiple pages on your website target the same or very similar keywords. This often occurs unintentionally, especially as your site grows and more content accumulates. Pages that are too similar in focus might confuse search engines, which may struggle to decide which to rank higher. As a result, your pages compete with one another, and all of them can rank lower.
For example, if you publish two posts — one optimized for “does readability rank” and another for “readability ranking factor” — Google may see them competing for the same query. Instead of one strong result, both might hover around lower positions, weakening your site’s overall performance.
Content cannibalization is closely related but centers on the issue of multiple articles covering the same topic, regardless of whether they’re optimized for the same keyword. It’s a broader issue that affects thematic overlap more than exact keyword matching.
Where keyword cannibalization focuses on duplicating keywords, content cannibalization involves too many pages delivering overlapping value. This undermines user experience, spreads authority thin, and can make your content performance uneven.
Both keyword and content cannibalization can hurt SEO.
In short, cannibalization limits your content’s potential by weakening each page’s authority and clarity.
As your site grows, you’ll have more and more content. Some of these articles are going to be about a similar topic. Even when you’ve always categorized it well, your content might compete with itself. You’re suffering from keyword or content cannibalization. Finding and fixing keyword cannibalization issues should be part of your content maintenance work to prevent all this.
Start with a site search. Use site:yourdomain.com “keyword” in Google to surface all pages relevant to a particular term. If you see two or more of your URLs targeting the same term, they may be in conflict.
Next, use tools like Google Search Console. Look under the Performance tab. Filter by query to view keywords that bring in impressions and clicks, then see which pages receive traffic from those terms. Then, use SEO tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush to track keyword rankings and expose overlapping URLs targeting the same terms.
Look especially for pages that rank beyond the top five positions for the same term. When two of your URLs rank closely together outside the top spots, it’s often a sign that neither is performing optimally.
Content cannibalization is subtler. You might not see overlapping keywords, but you may notice thematic overlap.
Start by scanning your site’s URLs and content categories to catch pages covering the same topic in different formats. Look for similar slugs, repeated folder structures, or articles under the same tag or category. This quick check often reveals duplicate coverage, especially on larger sites or those with multiple writers.
Trace what each page is targeting. Create a list of your key pages and their target keywords or main topics. This helps you spot when multiple pages aim for the same term or cover the same subject. It doesn’t matter whether you use a tool or a spreadsheet, but keyword mapping helps explain the purpose of content. It also helps avoid overlap and ensures that all pages on your site have a place in your strategy.
In Google Search Console, use the Page filter to see how each URL performs. The data gives insights into impressions, clicks, and average position. Look for pages that are getting traffic from similar queries. Multiple pages appearing for the same or closely related terms could signal content cannibalization. You can also use the Query filter to search by keyword and review which pages compete for it.
You should know your content, its performance, and where overlaps exist. Fixing keyword or content cannibalization means auditing, evaluating, and restructuring your pages. It doesn’t mean you should delete content blindly. Every page on your site should have a purpose and support your site’s overall SEO strategy. Below are practical ways to resolve both types of cannibalization.
In many cases, solving keyword cannibalization means deleting and merging content. We will run you through some of that maintenance work as we did it at Yoast to show you how to do this. In particular, we’ll show you some thinking around a cluster of keywords related to keyword research.
The first step is finding all the content on the keyword research topic. Most of that was simple: we have a keyword research tag, and most of the content was nicely tagged. This was also confronting, as we had many posts about the topic.
We searched for site:yoast.com "keyword research" and Google showed all the posts and pages on the site that mentioned the topic. We had dozens of articles devoted to keyword research or large sections mentioning it. Dozens or so mentioned it in passing and linked to other articles.
We started auditing the content for this particular group of keywords to improve our rankings around the cluster of keywords related to keyword research. So we needed to analyze which pages were ranking and which weren’t. This content maintenance turned out to be badly needed. It was surely time to find and fix possible cannibalization issues!
Go to Google Search Console and find the Performance section. In that section, click the filter bar. Click Query and type “keyword research” into the box like this:
This makes Google Search Console match all queries containing keyword and research. This gives you two very important pieces of data. A list of the keywords your site has been shown in the search results for, and the clicks and click-through rate (CTR) for those keywords. A list of the pages that were receiving all that traffic, and how much traffic each of those pages received.
Start with the total number of clicks the content received for all those queries, then look at the individual pages. Something was clear: just a few posts were getting most of the traffic. But we knew we had loads of articles covering this topic. It was time to clean up. Of course, we didn’t want to throw away any posts that were getting traffic not included in this bucket of traffic, so we had to check each post individually.
We removed the Query filter and used another option: the Page filter. This allows you to filter by a group of URLs or a specific URL. On larger sites, you might be able to filter by groups of URLs. In this case, we looked at the data for each post individually, which is best if you truly want to find and fix keyword cannibalization on your website.
After reviewing each post in this content maintenance process, we decided whether to keep it or delete it. If we deleted a post (which we did for most of them), we decided which post we should redirect it to.
For each of those posts, we evaluated whether they had sections to merge into another article. Some posts had paragraphs or sections that could be merged into another post. When merging posts entails more work (and time) than adding one paragraph or a few sentences, we recommend working in a new draft by cloning one of the original posts with Yoast Duplicate Post plugin. This way, you can work on your merged post without making live changes to one of your original posts.
We had a list of action items: content to add to specific articles, after which each piece of content could be deleted from the articles it came from. Using Yoast SEO Premium, it’s easy to 301 redirect a post or page when you delete it, so that process was fairly painless.
With that, we’d removed the excess articles about the topic and retained only the most important ones. We still had a list of articles that mentioned the topic and linked to one of the other. We reviewed them and ensured each was linked to one or more of the remaining articles in the appropriate section.
Another example: We once had three separate articles covering how to do an SEO audit, split into parts 1, 2, and 3. Each post focused on a different section of the audit process, but none of them ranked well or brought in meaningful traffic. On their own, the articles felt incomplete, and splitting the topic likely made it harder for users (and search engines) to find everything they needed in one place. We decided to take a step back.
After reviewing performance data and gathering insights on what users were actually searching for, we merged the three posts into a single, more useful SEO audit guide. We rewrote outdated sections, expanded key points, added a practical checklist, included tool recommendations, and tightened up the structure. Since updating and combining the content, that article now ranks for more keywords than the separate posts ever did, draws more consistent traffic, and performs better overall. It’s a good example of how merging overlapping content, when done thoughtfully, can give users more value and improve SEO at the same time.
Ever wanted to quickly make a copy of a post in WordPress to work on some changes without the risk of ruining the published post?
Even if keywords differ slightly, topics may still overlap, and there are things you can do to improve that.
Create a main page — a cornerstone article — that covers the broad topic in depth, then link to more specific articles that explore subtopics. This helps define a content hierarchy, improves internal linking, and signals which page should rank for the core topic to search engines. Supporting content can still rank independently, but will pass relevance and authority back to the pillar.
If you have several pages covering similar ideas, but none are ranking well, combine them into one stronger, more complete resource. Prioritize the page with the most traffic or links, and bring valuable sections from the others. This helps reduce redundancy, improve content quality, and give search engines a clear page to index for that topic.
Redirects are an important tool for your cannibalization actions. After deleting content, remember to use 301 redirects to send visitors from the old URLs to the updated one. Of course, you can also send them to the most relevant page as an alternative. This keeps existing rankings, backlinks, and traffic from the original pages intact. Plus, it also helps to avoid broken links or indexing issues.
Another way to avoid future keyword or content cannibalization issues is to prevent them, of course.
Analyze the content for your most important topics regularly. Look for overlapping pages, outdated posts, or content that doesn’t fit your keyword strategy. Regular audits will help you find issues early, which can help keep your site focused and maintain search visibility.
Before creating new content, please ensure no existing page targets the same keyword. Giving each page a clear, unique focus prevents internal competition and helps search engines understand which page to rank for a given query.
Start every piece with a brief that outlines the target keyword, search intent, key points to cover, and how it supports your existing content. Such a strategy helps your articles stay focused and avoids topic overlap. In addition, it ensures that the new content you add is truly unique to your site.
Maintain a simple record of which topics and keywords are already covered on your site. This makes it easier to spot gaps, avoid duplication, and plan new content that fits your overall strategy. A keyword map also helps when updating or pruning existing pages.
Also, if you’re running an e-commerce site with many similar product pages, make sure category pages are well-optimized and that your products clearly support them through internal linking.
Cannibalization happens, and many site owners have tried to address it in one way or another. Of course, there are right and wrong ways to do this.
Don’t delete content because you think it no longer serves a goal. Before you do that, look at traffic data, backlinks, and search performance before taking drastic measures. For instance, a page may look outdated, while in reality, it still drives traffic or has solid external links. Simply deleting it could lead to unwanted ranking losses.
Adding a canonical tag isn’t always the right fix. If two pages are too similar, merging or redirecting them may be better. Canonicals help when content overlap is minimal and both pages still serve a purpose, not as a quick workaround for duplication without analysis.
Just because two pages cover a similar topic doesn’t mean they should be combined. If each one is aimed at a very specific audience or answers a different question, merging them could hurt relevance and rankings. Always consider the intent behind each page before deciding to consolidate.
Internal links help search engines understand which pages are most important. If you skip this step, you may weaken page authority and miss chances to guide crawlers — and users — to your key content. Linking related pages strategically can reduce confusion and support stronger rankings.
A growing website means a growing risk of content overlapping. This could be a risk to the visibility of all that content. To prevent this, perform regular content audits and carefully plan and structure your content.
Whether you’re fixing overlapping blog posts or aligning product pages under a clear hierarchy, regularly addressing cannibalization helps search engines — and users — find the most relevant, valuable pages on your site.
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Google search ad spending grew 9% year over year in Q1 2025, according to new data from digital marketing agency Tinuiti. Increasing costs, rather than click volume, drove most of that growth.
Google Search overall:
Google Shopping Ads:
Competitive landscape.
Performance Max:
Microsoft Search:
Brand: Brand keywords saw particularly aggressive CPC increases, with costs for text ads containing an advertiser’s own brand name rising 19% compared to just 3% for non-brand keywords.
Why we care. The latest trends show search platforms continue to extract more revenue per click, putting pressure on advertisers’ margins even as competition ramps up between Google and Microsoft. With Microsoft growth rate (+17% YoY) being higher than Google’s growth (+9% YoY), suggesting Microsoft continues to be a strong contender for marketing strategy.
Political factors have also made a big impact, with Temu dropping out of shopping ads, therefore it’s likely there will be further shifts in Shopping traffic and costs in Q2 of 2025.
What we’re watching: Performance Max adoption remained high at 93% of retailers running Google shopping ads, though its share of spending fell from 69% in Q4 2024 to 53% in Q1 2025 as some advertisers shifted budget back to standard shopping campaigns for greater control.
Key takeaways.
The report. Tinuiti’s Q1 2025 Digital Ads Benchmark Report.
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OpenAI’s ChatGPT search had 41.3 million average monthly users across the EU between October and March. That’s nearly 4x growth from the prior six-month stretch, when it reported having 11.2 million users.
Why we care. Brands and businesses need to understand how (or whether) their content is being surfaced in AI-generated responses. ChatGPT search is nowhere near replacing Google Search, but it is an emerging channel for visibility and discoverability.
What ChatGPT reported. According to OpenAI’s EU Digital Services Act (DSA) page:
What is a recipient. The EU counts a “monthly active recipient” as the number of unique users who engage with an online platform at least once.
Yes, but. Google still dominates search. According to Google’s DSA Disclosure report, Google Search had:
That means, in the EU, Google Search (signed in and out) is nearly 20x bigger than ChatGPT search.
Dig deeper. Google Search is 373x bigger than ChatGPT search
What’s next for OpenAI. ChatGPT search is approaching the EU’s threshold for a “very large online platform” under the Digital Services Act (DSA). That milestone — 45 million monthly active users — would put ChatGPT search under increased scrutiny in the EU.
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ChatGPT can now personalize searches using your memories.
Memory with Search is a new addition to ChatGPT search, and was quietly added as an update in its changelog.
What is Memory with Search. ChatGPT said it can “use memories to inform search queries when ChatGPT searches the web using their-party search providers.”
Not a lot of detail there. But OpenAI’s ChatGPT search page offers more information:
‘If you have ‘Memory’ enabled, when ChatGPT search rewrites your prompt into a search query it may also leverage relevant information from memories to make the query better and more useful. For example, if the user has ‘Memory’ turned on and asks ChatGPT ‘what are some restaurants near me that I’d like,’ and has memories is that the user is vegan and lives in San Francisco, then ChatGPT may rewrite the user’s prompt to ‘good vegan restaurants San Francisco.’ You can learn more here about Memory, including how to disable it or control individual memories.
ChatGPT Memory. OpenAI announced the official launch of Memory on April 11. ChatGPT Memory consists of saved memories (memories users ask ChatGPT to remember) and chat history (insights gathered from past chats to improve future ones). Access to ChatGPT Memory is still rolling out now.
Why we care. ChatGPT’s use of memories and rewriting prompts into search queries (to be more nuanced, contextual, and user-specific) means AI search is shifting toward being more deeply personalized. This could impact how and when your brand or business appears in AI-generated answers.
Opt out. Users who don’t want to use Memory can head to Settings > Personalization > Memory and turn off the slider for Reference saved memories.
The announcement. ChatGPT – Release Notes (April 16)
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Google has rolled out a new feature for Google Business Profile verifications. When you verify using video verification, you can now preview that video before you submit the video for review.
Google is calling this “Video Previews.”
Video Previews. Video Previews give you the option to review the video you are about to submit to the Google Business Profile team. This will allow you to ensure that video includes all the necessary elements before you submit it to Google.
Here is what it looks like:
What Google said. Google’s Lisa Landsman wrote on LinkedIn, “Now, you can review your recordings before submitting, ensuring clarity and accuracy – saving you valuable time and reducing the need for resubmissions.”
Why we care. All too often, a business will submit a verification requirement but leave out some important detail. With video previews, you can now preview the video before you submit it, to give you one more chance to ensure that the video you are submitting meets all the requirments you need to verify your business in Google Business Profiles.
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