What does Yoast SEO do?

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Yoast SEO is a free WordPress SEO plugin that helps your site perform better in search engines like Google. It also gives you the tools to bring your content to the highest SEO and overall readability standards. Here, we’ll explain how our plugin helps you build the best website possible!

Table of contents

What Yoast SEO does

Yoast SEO offers many tools and features to boost your SEO. Some of these features influence the SEO of your whole site, while others help you optimize individual posts and pages for search engines.

At Yoast, we believe in our mission, “SEO for everyone,” so you can access all the essential WordPress SEO tools in our free Yoast SEO plugin. But if you really want to boost your SEO, upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium. This upgrade gives you even more amazing SEO features, including great AI features like Yoast AI Optimize and AI Summarize! Keep reading to find out what Yoast SEO can do for your SEO!

SEO for your posts and pages

If you want your posts and pages to appear in the search results, you need to optimize them! So, when you use WordPress to create/edit posts, you’ll find a lot of Yoast SEO tools to help you draft and optimize great content. And if you think SEO optimization is all about keywords, think again. The tools and tips in our Yoast SEO plugins also focus on quality content and user experience. Trust us, because it will all help your rankings, directly or indirectly.

Here’s how the plugins will help you optimize your posts and pages:

Make sure you’re optimizing correctly (we’ll tell you if you aren’t)

After you’ve done your keyword research, you’ll have to start optimizing the pages and posts on your sites for the keywords and keyphrases you want to rank for. To do that, you can set a focus keyphrase for an article in Yoast SEO. Then, the plugin uses our content SEO analyses to determine how your content scores on different factors. It checks how many times you use your keyphrase, the length of your text, or whether you used any internal links.

The results of these analyses guide you in optimizing your post or page to rank with your chosen keyphrase. You’ll see red, orange, and green traffic lights to indicate how every factor scores. This gives you an overview of the overall score and what you can still tackle to increase your rankings!

We also give you tools to find out which keywords you can target successfully, and track how successful your content really is. For the keyword research part, we integrate with the leading online marketing platform, Semrush. For tracking the performance of your content in search, we integrate with the rank tracking platform Wincher.

The Yoast SEO analysis in the WordPress post editor sidebar shows things that can be improved
The content SEO analysis tells you how to optimize your text for a certain keyword with the use of red, orange, and green traffic lights.

Guidance for writing high-quality content — in many languages!

Optimizing your content to rank with the right keyphrase is important, but don’t forget your reader! Even if you write amazing content for search engines, your audience won’t benefit from it if they don’t understand it. When a person doesn’t understand your content, the chance of them buying something from you is close to zero. The same is true for the odds of them sharing one of your articles with their friends. So, you must ensure your content is also easy to understand. And that’s where the readability features come in.

Our readability checks let you adopt the feedback in a way that suits you, without losing your personal touch. If you’re interested in all the factors that increase readability, you can read more about the Yoast SEO readability features. What’s more, you can optionally enable the inclusive language analysis alongside readability and SEO checks

the Yoast SEO readability analysis in the WordPress meta box shows all green traffic lights for an article
The readability analysis tells you how to optimize your text to make it read easily using red, orange, and green traffic lights

All or most features are available in the following languages: English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Norwegian, Japanese, Slovak, and Greek.* We support more languages at various levels. Check the overview for other languages. 

* Unfortunately, it’s not possible to calculate the Flesch reading ease score for some of these languages. Check the overview below to see which languages.

Based on years of research

Yoast SEO’s readability features are well-researched analyses that give you feedback on how to optimize your writing. Now, this may sound strange, because the way you write can be very personal. Let us explain how it works.

The plugin uses an algorithm to check your content for factors that are proven to increase readability. We look at the use of transition words, the use of passive voice, sentence and paragraph lengths, word complexity, and more. However, we carefully crafted this algorithm to be as accurate as possible without being too strict.

Influence what Google shows in search results

Of course, you don’t just want your pages to appear in Google’s search results. You want your search results to look amazing, too! That’s why Yoast SEO has tools to let you plan and preview how each page will (probably) look when it appears on Google. This is probably something we can’t avoid here, as Google will occasionally decide it knows better and show something else instead. But by optimizing certain outputs on your page, you can indicate how Google should present your content to users. And that’s still something worth doing.

Titles and meta descriptions

With our plugin, you can specify an SEO title (the ‘headline’ of your search result) and a meta description (a short piece of text underneath your search headline, describing what users can find on your page) for each new page you publish. We’ll let you know if these are too long or if your keyword is missing. If you want to, you can also set defaults for all your pages.

the search appearance section in Yoast SEO showing how an article would look in the SERPs
The search appearance section of Yoast SEO shows how your content will look in the SERPs

You might have seen search results that contain extra parts beyond the usual headline-and-description format before. The example below contains recipes with extra information like reviews, cooking time, ingredients, and images, for instance. And that’s just one example. Extra information can be added for all kinds of results, including products!

A structured data-powered search result in Google for recipes

The way to get results like this is by using Schema structured data. We won’t lie: it’s complex, technical stuff. Luckily for you, you won’t need to know a thing about the tech wizardry behind it. Just having Yoast SEO installed means you’ll automatically have structured data output for your pages. All you need to do is select a few options to make sure it suits your needs.

Manage social outputs

Now, social media isn’t strictly a part of SEO. But when you make great content, you often want to share that content on your social feeds, too. That’s why Yoast SEO also comes with Facebook and X previews that you can adjust to make sure your content is always looking great, whoever is sharing it. You can set a specific title, description and OpenGraph image for each post. Again, if you prefer to set one standard structure for all posts, there’s an option to do that.

Technical SEO for your website

We’ve taken a look at what Yoast SEO can do for your posts and pages. But what can it do for your site overall? If technical SEO isn’t your strong suit, much of the following may not make sense to you. But don’t worry! Yoast SEO exists to make sure you don’t have to know all of these things.

Set up your site for SEO

The plugin settings are very sensible by default, and our first-time configuration also guides you through the steps to get your technical SEO settings right. Behind the scenes, our hidden features will also gear you up with an XML sitemap, a robots.txt file, site-level Schema structured data, and more.

The free version of Yoast SEO automatically generates XML sitemaps for your website, making it easier for search engines like Google to find and index your content. These sitemaps update on their own whenever you add or remove pages, so you don’t have to do any manual work. In addition, Yoast SEO gives you easy access to your site’s robots.txt file. From the plugin, you can view or edit this file to control which parts of your site search engines are allowed to crawl. Both features help search engines discover your content while giving you more control over your site’s visibility.

Thanks to Yoast SEO, you can now quickly and without additional cost add an llms.txt file to your site to guide AI systems toward your most valuable content. This simple text file helps AI tools identify and prioritize key pages efficiently, ensuring they focus on what matters most to your site.

Manage your content

As you write more and more content for your site, you’ll be looking for easy ways to manage it! The Yoast SEO plugin comes with a few features to help you manage your content well and avoid common SEO issues. For instance, when you make changes like deleting a page or changing a URL, if you don’t know what you’re doing, then things can get messy. And if you make a lot of similar pages, that can be a problem too, as Google doesn’t know which one it should direct users towards. To help you deal with SEO issues like these, Yoast SEO comes with two unmissable tools: canonical URL tags and the Redirects tool.

Canonical URLs

Canonical URLs are really helpful if you have a lot of similar content, such as a webshop with multiple variants of the same product, each having its own page. To make life easy for you, Yoast SEO automatically adds canonical tags to all content marked for indexing. All of the canonical tags will be taken care of in the background; in most cases, you won’t need to change a thing. If you do need to adjust your canonical URL tags, it’s easy to do so.

Managing redirects

Redirects are essential if you’re moving or removing content. The fact is, users will probably still find their way to the old URL, but the content they’re expecting won’t be there. That’s not only disappointing and frustrating for users, but it can also make it harder for Google to find and index your content, too. While advanced redirect management is part of Yoast SEO Premium, you can still handle basic changes using WordPress settings or other free plugins.

Managing redirects is easy with Yoast SEO Premium

Build your site structure and internal links

If you want findable content that really ranks, you need to take care of your site structure and internal linking. The Yoast SEO plugin comes with a few tools to help you manage how your content links together: there’s a text link counter, which will tell you how many incoming and outgoing internal links there are on a page, as well as an internal linking suggestions tool in Yoast SEO Premium (in the editor view), which can help you add more if necessary. These features help you build a strong site structure and make sure your important content is easy for visitors and search engines to find.

Even more technical features of Yoast SEO

By simply installing the plugin and following the steps in our configuration workout, you’re already fixing a lot of important technical SEO things for your site! We do these steps for you, so you don’t have to know about every little technical detail.

If you really want to know everything Yoast SEO can do for you, then take a look at the complete list of features. Additionally, if you are (a bit more) familiar with technical SEO, you might enjoy reading more about Yoast SEO’s hidden features that secretly level up your SEO!

Read on: Things we don’t do in Yoast SEO and why »

Learn SEO by doing SEO with Yoast

Still need to learn about SEO? One of the biggest benefits of using the Yoast plugins is that they make it really easy to get started and learn as you go along! We’ll give you pointers to help you get everything right, as well as links to read more about how SEO works and how to do it.

If you want to keep learning about SEO, we also offer free training courses and resources in our Yoast SEO Academy and on our SEO blog. You can start with these basics to understand how SEO works and get more out of your website as you go.

A quick recap

In this article, we’ve shown you what Yoast SEO can do for your site. Our plugin helps you improve your content SEO by helping you set a keyphrase and telling you exactly how you can optimize your content to rank with this keyphrase. The plugin also helps you improve the readability of your content by providing feedback that you can easily incorporate into your own writing style. And last but not least, the Yoast plugin improves your technical SEO by taking care of a lot of technical things in the background.

Everything above is available in Yoast SEO’s free plugin, making it a great starting point for most WordPress users. If you ever want more advanced tools, you can always explore Yoast SEO Premium and its extra features.

Okay, I’m convinced. Show me to that Yoast SEO plugin!

The post What does Yoast SEO do? appeared first on Yoast.

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Broken Link Building Strategies

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Do you ever feel like you’re doing all the right things for SEO, but not seeing the organic traffic you deserve?

There’s a strategy out there you may not have considered. It flies under the radar but can still land you high-authority backlinks without creating brand new content: broken link building.

There are thousands of broken backlinks out there that point to dead pages. It’s wasted link equity waiting for someone to claim it. Why shouldn’t that be you?

In this guide, I’ll show you exactly where and how to find broken links, pitch your content as a replacement, and boost your rankings and domain authority with content you’ve already written or made. It’s a low-effort, high-upside link strategy worth your time.

Key Takeaways

  • Broken link building turns dead links into SEO wins. By replacing broken backlinks with your own content, you help site owners improve user experience while earning high-authority links for yourself.
  • Links go bad all the time. Pages get deleted, site structures change, URLs are mistyped, and entire domains shut down. Each of those creates an opportunity for you to step in with a better resource.
  • The best opportunities come from competitors and resource pages. Tools like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, Semrush, and Screaming Frog make it easy to spot broken backlinks you can target.
  • Quality matters more than volume. Focus on authoritative, relevant domains and create content that matches or improves on the original resource. That’s what makes webmasters willing to update their links.
  • Outreach is the make-or-break step. Keep your communication short, helpful, and human. Finding the right contact and offering real value is what turns a cold email into a lasting relationship.

What Is Broken Link Building and Why Is It Useful?

Broken link building is finding dead links on other sites and suggesting your content as a replacement. It’s one of the smartest ways to build high-quality backlinks without creating content from scratch. You can reap the benefits by earning a link because you’re helping site owners fix their user experience issues.

Links can go bad for a variety of reasons. Maybe the original page was deleted, or a website changed its site structure. Sometimes, the URL might be wrong, or the domain ceases to exist completely. Whatever the cause, a broken link equals a poor user experience (and lost SEO value).

That’s where you come in.

Fixing these links by offering relevant, helpful content improves the referring site’s authority and boosts your rankings and traffic. It’s a win-win opportunity and a solid addition to any internal linking or domain authority growth strategy.

But how do you find these broken links, anyway? And what should you do to contact site owners about this problem?

How To Find Broken Links

There are two sides to finding a broken backlink opportunity:

  1. Broken links on your site.
  2. Broken links on other sites you can replace.

Before you look elsewhere, it’s worth checking your site for broken inbound or outbound backlinks. Tools like Ubersuggest, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and Semrush can scan for 404 errors across your site’s pages. Look for:

  • Inbound links pointed to deleted pages
  • Outbound links that lead to dead URLs
Ubersuggest's site audit feature.

Ubersuggest’s Site Audit feature checks every link on your site. If one shows a 404 error, it will appear in the report.

Fixing existing 404 errors on your site is great, but the real link building begins when you look at other people’s broken backlinks.

Enter a competitor’s URL into tools like Ahrefs’s Site Explorer, filter by “404 not found,” and look at pages with links pointing to them. If you have relevant content (or can quickly create it), pitch it as a replacement.

Ahrefs' Site Explorer

This works especially well on resource pages, like blog posts or directories full of helpful tools, guides, or statistics. If they’re linking to a dead page, it’s a great opportunity to slide in with a recommended replacement. And while not every broken link will be worth your time, high-authority domains or pages with multiple backlinks can lead to serious SEO upside.

Broken Link Building Best Practices

Review Link Prospects

Not every broken link is worth chasing. You want links from high-authority, relevant domains; the kinds of pages that still get traffic and offer clear value to your niche. Before you do anything else, assess the referring page. Does it make sense for your content to be there, and does it align with your expertise? Use tools to get a snapshot of the page’s authority and backlink profile. If the referring domain is weak or spammy, move on.

Understand why the original content earned the link. Maybe it had a compelling statistic or offered a unique resource. Knowing what made it link-worthy helps you create something that meets the same need or improves on it. A good match makes your replacement more natural and incentivizes the site owner to update it.

Wikipedia Dead Link Technique

Wikipedia is a top-ranking site because it’s a great source of info about almost any topic, but it’s a goldmine for broken link building (if you do it ethically, focusing on where you can provide value versus spamming your links). Some pages can suffer from link rot, where pages lose citations because the links are dead. This is your opening, but you have to be careful about how you pitch it.

Articles with dead internal links in Wikipedia.

Use a simple search like site:wikipedia.org [your topic] “dead link” to find relevant articles. Scroll down to references and look for those marked as inactive. Check the original content using the Wayback Machine to see what it covered. If you have something that covers the same topic (although more updated or in-depth), you might try to submit it as a replacement.

A site search on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia links are nofollow, so they can’t pass SEO authority directly. But the value comes from visibility and second-tier links. When other sites reference Wikipedia, they may follow your citation. But don’t just rush in and start dropping links. Credibility is important, and you can build it by making non-promotional edits. Quality counts, and it’s better to play the long game.

Using Guest Content to Replace Broken Links

Sometimes it’s tough to convince site owners to link directly to your site. Guest content can help. Instead of asking them to link to your blog, create an article (a guest post) on a respected third-party site that covers the same topic as the dead resource. Once it’s live, you can suggest that article as the replacement.

Let’s say you find dozens of links pointing to a now-defunct “Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing.” Instead of pitching your own blog post, you can write a fresh guide for a trusted publisher like Entrepreneur or HubSpot. When you reach out to webmasters still linking to the broken page, you point them to your new article as a reliable alternative. But because it’s already on an existing third-party site, it feels better to them.

This approach works because it’s often less promotional and it gives the site master a credible replacement. At the same time, you benefit from the visibility and authority of the site hosting your guest content.

Using Expired Domains To Find Opportunities

When a site goes offline or a domain expires, links pointing to it don’t disappear. They break. That’s where opportunity lives. Find expired domains in your niche that once hosted valuable content and pitch your own work as a replacement. Use a tool like ExpiredDomains.net to search for specific keywords and filter for those with strong backlink profiles. Analyze which pages had the most links using the tools listed above. If they still exist but point to dead content, you now have a target list.

Information about expired domains.

Reach out to sites still linking and offer your content as a replacement, especially if you have statistics. It’s a great fit when the original resource was widely referenced or lived on a highly trusted site. Just make sure your content delivers comparable or better value, because no one wants to swap in a low-effort piece for something readers once relied on.

Create Replacement Content

Sometimes link opportunities exist, but your content doesn’t. Start by reviewing a broken page using the Wayback Machine. What was the topic, and what made it valuable? Seek signs that it offered original data or research that earned its authority or trust in its time.

Once you know what it delivered, consider how to improve it. Your goal isn’t to copy, but to provide updated details or a more modern take. Even improving the UX can help replace the original.

The best replacement content emphasizes clarity and usefulness, such as comprehensive guides or data-driven posts accompanied by visual resources. Things that help solve problems are great, too. When you’re ready to reach out, you’ll have a pitch-ready link that genuinely benefits the site owner and their audience.

Refining Your Broken Link Building Outreach

Outreach is where most broken link building efforts fall apart. You’ve done the research and found strong opportunities. But if your email reads like spam, you’re done.

Take time to identify the right person to contact. Use LinkedIn, the site’s “About” page, or email tools to find the editor, webmaster, or content manager. Don’t just send it to a generic inbox. Keep your message short and direct. Don’t bury the ask under fluff. Let them know you came across the article, noticed a broken link, and thought your content might be a good replacement.

Tone matters. Avoid sounding like a sales pitch. Be helpful, polite, and clear about what you’re offering. Mention the original content’s value and explain why your piece fits just as well (or better, if applicable).

If you don’t get a reply, wait a few days and send a short follow-up. No pressure, just a reminder. Most importantly, keep things human. The goal isn’t a backlink by itself, but a relationship that can pay off in the long term.

FAQs

How do you do broken link building?

Broken link building starts with finding links that point to dead pages. Once you have a list, you contact the site owners and suggest your content as a replacement. The key is making sure your content matches the intent of the original resource, whether that’s a guide, a statistic, or a tool. Done well, it helps the site fix a bad user experience while earning you a backlink.

How do I find broken links for link building?

Broken link building boosts SEO by fixing broken links, improving The simplest way is to use SEO tools. Platforms like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, Semrush, or Screaming Frog can scan websites for 404 pages. You can run your own site to identify lost opportunities or analyze competitor domains to uncover broken backlinks that you could replace. Resource pages are another great place to look, since they often include multiple links; over time, some will go bad.

What is broken link building in SEO?

Broken link building is an off-page SEO strategy where you recover or earn backlinks by replacing dead links with your own content. Search engines reward sites that earn quality backlinks, so turning broken links into live ones helps improve authority, trust, and rankings. It’s a win for both sides: the site owner fixes a broken resource, and you gain a link that strengthens your SEO.

Conclusion

Broken link building fixes errors on other sites, but the bigger picture is that it turns missed opportunities into lasting SEO gains, especially in a world of search everywhere optimization. When you find broken backlinks and create or repurpose valuable content to replace them, you can earn links that improve your rankings and credibility.

But the real power is that it scales. When you reclaim lost links on your site or uncover gaps in competitor content, each replacement adds authority to your brand. Combine it with smart digital PR strategies and thoughtful internal linking, and you can see compounding results over time.

Like any SEO strategy, it takes patience. But when done well, broken link building can become one of the most effective (and sustainable) ways to grow your SEO footprint.

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Instacart brings retail media targeting to TikTok Ads Manager

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Instacart today became the first retail media network to integrate directly with TikTok Ads Manager. This will allow CPG advertisers to use Instacart’s first-party retail data to target audiences, measure conversions, and drive shoppable experiences – all without leaving TikTok’s platform.

The integration marks a major step in the convergence of retail media and social commerce. By embedding Instacart’s targeting and closed-loop measurement capabilities into TikTok, brands can connect with high-intent consumers at the exact moment of inspiration and track their impact through purchase.

Why we care. For CPG advertisers, this partnership removes a friction point – tying social engagement directly to grocery purchases. It enables smarter audience targeting, more personalized creative, and real-time performance insights within TikTok’s ecosystem, where over 180 million monthly U.S. users can discover products.

The details. Advertisers can now:

  • Target high-intent shoppers using Instacart audience segments.
  • Power shoppable TikTok ads with grocery selection data from Instacart.
  • Measure campaign performance daily through Instacart’s closed-loop conversion data.

The bottom line. By fusing TikTok’s discovery engine with Instacart’s retail data, advertisers can now bridge the gap between inspiration and purchase – turning TikTok engagement into measurable sales with unprecedented precision.

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Microsoft taps Amazon DSP as preferred partner

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Microsoft

Microsoft is officially winding down its DSP, Microsoft Invest, and naming Amazon DSP as its preferred transition partner – a move that deepens ties between the two tech giants and reshapes Microsoft’s advertising strategy.

Starting Feb. 28, 2026, Microsoft will sunset Microsoft Invest as it shifts focus to its core advertising products: Microsoft Advertising Platform, Monetize, and Curate. The company says the partnership with Amazon DSP will ensure advertisers experience a smooth transition and continue achieving performance goals.

Why we care. Microsoft’s move to sunset its DSP and align with Amazon DSP means advertisers who use Microsoft Invest, will need to migrate campaigns, data, and workflows – but in return, they’ll gain access to Amazon’s powerful audience insights, premium inventory, and stronger performance capabilities across both Amazon and Microsoft ecosystems.

The details. Microsoft Monetize will also join Amazon Ads’ Certified Supply Exchange program, enabling Amazon DSP advertisers to access premium Microsoft inventory and curated deals that combine Amazon shopping insights with Monetize’s supply. Publishers using Microsoft Monetize gain expanded access to high-quality demand and improved monetization efficiency.

What they’re saying. Microsoft emphasized its commitment to supporting customers through the transition, calling Amazon DSP a “natural fit” for advertisers seeking scale, performance, and transparency.

Bottom line. As Microsoft pivots toward conversational and AI-driven advertising, this collaboration offers advertisers a seamless bridge between the two platforms.

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ChatGPT becomes a platform for apps – and maybe marketing

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ChatGPT marketing

OpenAI is turning ChatGPT into more than a chatbot. The company’s latest update lets users access third-party apps (e.g., Spotify, Canva, Zillow, Expedia) directly inside conversations.

Why we care. This shift could make ChatGPT a high-intent marketing channel, reaching 800 million users where they’re already engaging – in chat.

How it works. Users can call apps by name (“Figma, turn this sketch into a diagram”) or ChatGPT can suggest them automatically based on context – like surfacing Booking.com when discussing travel.

  • Apps act like actions, not separate tools, within ChatGPT’s conversational flow.
  • OpenAI calls this a step toward a “conversational operating system” – one interface where users access software and services.

What they’re saying. Nick Turley, ChatGPT’s product lead, described the goal:

  • “If we can evolve ChatGPT the right way… maybe you’ll be spending a lot of time in ChatGPT. But it won’t feel like you’re in a chatbot.”

The marketing angle. This platform play could turn ChatGPT into a valuable discovery and conversion engine for brands. Some potential upsides for marketers:

  • Massive reach: 800 million users. Apps appear at the moment of intent.
  • Contextual discovery: Brands show up naturally as users describe needs — not through search.
  • Interactive experiences: The Apps SDK supports visuals and dynamic UIs. Zillow can show listings with maps; Canva can design in chat.

What’s next. More brand integrations are coming – including Target, Uber, Peloton, and Instacart. Developers can start building now; OpenAI plans an app store and publishing reviews later this year. Apps meeting high design and functionality standards will get higher visibility.

  • OpenAI also hinted at “agentic commerce” – one-click transactions powered by AI. It already tested in-chat Etsy shopping for U.S. users and is hiring for ad tech and attribution tools.

The big picture. This evolution opens new paths to brand interaction, contextual engagement and possibly commerce – all within a single, AI-mediated interface. This gives marketers a chance to meet consumers where they act, not just where they search.

OpenAI’s announcement. Introducing apps in ChatGPT and the new Apps SDK

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The Flesch reading ease score: Why & how to use it

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If you have ever run your writing through a readability checker like Yoast SEO, you have probably come across the Flesch reading score. This metric was developed more than 70 years ago and is still one of the most widely used ways to measure how easy your text is to read. But what does it actually mean, and how does it affect your writing for the web?

In this guide, we will explain how the Flesch reading score works, why it became so prominent in publishing and SEO, and how you can use it effectively today. We will also show you where it fits into the Yoast SEO plugin and why we have introduced new readability checks alongside it.

Table of contents

Reminder: We made changes to our readability analysis in Yoast SEO 19.3. We replaced the Flesch Reading Ease Score with the word complexity and sentence length assessments. You can find the Flesch reading ease score in the Insight tab, but we won’t use this assessment in our readability analysis anymore.

What is the Flesch reading score?

The Flesch reading score, also called the Flesch reading ease test, was created by Rudolf Flesch in the 1940s. His goal was simple: to give writers a quick way of checking whether their text was easy to understand. The formula combines three basic elements: sentence length, word length, and syllable count. When these figures are combined into the formula, which I’ll explain in just a moment, they generate a score between 0 and 100.

The highest scores are reserved for the easiest text. For example, a score in the 90s suggests that a typical 11-year-old child should be able to read it without any difficulty. A score of around 60 is closer to plain English that a high school student would be expected to understand. Scores under 30 are considered very difficult and are only really found in academic or legal writing.

Here’s a quick overview of the ranges and what they mean:

Score range Readability level Who can understand it
90–100 Very easy An average 11-year-old student
80–89 Easy Middle school students
70–79 Fairly easy Teenagers aged 13–15
60–69 Standard High school students
50–59 Fairly difficult College students
30–49 Difficult University graduates
0–29 Very confusing Specialists, academics, or experts

Just for fun: this article itself scores around 63 on the Flesch reading score, which puts it in the “standard” range.

How the Flesch reading score is calculated

The formula behind the score looks intimidating, but don’t worry, it is surprisingly straightforward. In fact, it’s only based on two things. The total number of words divided by the total number of sentences, which gives us the ASL or Average Sentence Length, and the total number of syllables divided by the total number of words to get the ASW or Average Syllables per Word. Once we have these figures, we enter them into this formula:

206.835 – (1.015 × ASL) – (84.6 × ASW)

This will give us a score between 0 and 100. The longer your sentences and the more complex your words, the lower your score will be.

Let’s take a quick example by looking at this short text below:

“The cat sat on the mat. The dog barked.”

This has very short words and sentences, so it would score in the 90s, which means it is very easy to read.

Now compare it with:

“The domesticated feline reclined languidly upon the woven floor covering, while the canine produced a resonant vocalization.”

This is essentially the same meaning, but longer words and clauses drop the score dramatically, likely into the 30s.

This example shows why the Flesch reading score works well as a proxy for readability. It rewards writing that is concise and simple with a high score and wags a finger at writing that is dense and complex, ultimately giving it a low score.

Why the Flesch reading score became important

The Flesch reading score spread beyond classrooms into business and publishing because it answered a universal question: Is my writing easy to understand?

By the 1970s, the U.S. Navy was using it to ensure that training manuals were clear for recruits. Later, several U.S. states made it part of their official requirements for insurance documents and consumer contracts. Healthcare organizations also began using it to ensure that patient information was accessible.

When personal computers became common, Microsoft Word added the Flesch reading ease test to its spelling and grammar tools. Suddenly, anyone writing a school essay or business report could get instant feedback on readability. That mainstreamed the score and kept it relevant well into the digital age.

In the world of web writing, readability became even more critical. Online readers scan rather than study text. Research shows they decide within seconds whether a page is worth their time or not. That makes clarity a competitive advantage. Tools that included the Flesch reading score gave web writers a way to benchmark themselves and improve user experience.

The Flesch reading score in Yoast SEO

When Yoast introduced readability checks to the plugin, the Flesch reading score was one of the first tools we built in. We popularized the use of tools to score your content. It gave writers using WordPress an instant way to measure whether their content was accessible to a broad audience. You can still find the Flesch reading ease score inside the plugin today, in the insights tab.

This has helped thousands of users discover that shorter sentences and simpler words often improve how people engage with their content. While the score does not guarantee better rankings, it does contribute to a positive reading experience, which in turn can influence user behavior and SEO outcomes.

The Insights tab contains a lot of information, including your Flesch reading ease score

Why Yoast moved beyond Flesch

The Flesch reading ease score is a useful tool, but it has its limitations. For one, it only looks at sentence and word length, ignoring context, tone, and audience. A medical blog, for example, might score poorly even if it’s perfectly suited to its readers.

There’s another issue: the Flesch score combines two factors, sentence length and word length, into one number. If your score is low, you won’t know which part needs fixing. That’s why we added separate checks for sentence length and word complexity. Word complexity doesn’t just measure length; it also takes into account a few other elements, like how common a word is. Based on all these factors, it assesses the difficulty of your vocabulary, giving you clearer feedback.

This way, you can still use the Flesch score as a quick guide, but with sharper insights to refine your writing.

Should you still care about the Flesch reading score?

The Flesch reading score remains a valuable guide for writers who want to make their content more approachable. If your text scores very low, it may be worth shortening sentences or replacing long words with simpler alternatives. But you do not need to obsess over getting a perfect score.

Readability is about more than numbers. Think about your audience, their expectations, and the purpose of your content. Combine the Flesch reading score with other readability signals to create a text that is clear, engaging, and optimized for both humans and search engines.

How to use the Flesch reading ease score to improve your writing

We’ve come to the essential question. How can you use the Flesch score to improve your writing? Well, you write for an audience and know your audience the best. Before writing or editing, consider what kind of texts fit your readers. Do you sell clothes or organize photography workshops? Or do you write for a mom blog or make step-by-step DIYs? Your content should be relatively easy to read in all these cases since you are targeting a broad audience.

However, remember that you do not have to chase a high Flesch reading score at all costs. For example, you may write about complex, specialist topics for a specific, more knowledgeable audience. Or, perhaps you are an academic blogging about your research? It makes sense if the Flesch test produces a lower score in those cases.

Still, whatever your situation is, your text always benefits from concise language. So, if you want to benefit from the feedback the Flesch reading ease score gives you, focus on two things:

1. Shorten your sentences

Too many long sentences make your text difficult to read, while short sentences keep the subject clear. When the sentences in your text are short, you allow your readers to absorb the information in your text. As a result, they don’t need to use all their attention to decipher what you want to say. That is why we advise you to break down long sentences; your text will be much easier to read. 

And please, don’t think that by using short sentences, you will oversimplify your text. Let’s compare two short texts to show you what we mean. First, we have this sentence:

My favorite place to visit during weekends is my grandparents’ house near the lake, where we love to fish and swim, and we often take the boat out on the lake.

Did you find this sentence easy to read? Wasn’t it too lengthy, confusing, and difficult to process? Breaking it into two or more sentences can make it much clearer:

My favorite place to visit during weekends is my grandparents’ house. It’s near the lake, where we love to fish and swim. We also often take the boat out on the lake.

These few short sentences are much easier to read. Yet, you give the same information as in the long sentence, so there is no oversimplifying. Using short sentences keeps the subject clear and lets your readers absorb the information you’re presenting.

Shorten your sentences with Yoast SEO

The Yoast SEO Readability analysis helps identify long sentences with its sentence length assessment. You can also use Yoast AI Optimize for sentence length for quick, automated improvements.

2. Limit your use of difficult words

Words with four or more syllables are considered difficult to read, so try to avoid them where possible. Or try not to use them too much. For example, try words like small instead of minuscule, about instead of approximately, and use instead of utilize. We have the word complexity assessment in Yoast SEO Premium to help you with that.

If you want to reach a broad audience, you should also try to avoid using jargon. If you’re a medical expert, you’re probably familiar with terms like analgesic, intravenous, and oophorectomy. However, keep in mind that most people aren’t. When you can’t find a better alternative, make sure to explain it for users who might not know the word.

Conclusion

The Flesch reading score has been around for decades, and it is not going anywhere. It still offers a quick way to test whether your writing is easy to follow, and it continues to play a role in Yoast SEO. At the same time, readability isn’t just about scores. Readability is about meeting your goals. By breaking down the Flesch reading ease score into clearer checks (like sentence length and word complexity), you get actionable feedback to refine your writing. That way, your content stays readable and effective.

So next time you write a blog post, take a look at your Flesch reading score. Use it as a guide, not a rule. The result will be content that your readers and search engines will thank you for.

TLDR

  • You should care about your score, but do not chase perfection. Balance readability with your audience’s needs
  • The Flesch Reading Score measures how easy a text is to read, using sentence length and word length
  • Scores range from 0 to 100: higher is easier. For example, 90–100 is very easy, 60–69 is standard, and 0–29 is very confusing
  • It became popular in education, government, and publishing before being integrated into tools like Microsoft Word and SEO platforms
  • In Yoast SEO, the Flesch reading score still exists in the Insights tab, but we now also use word complexity to provide more accurate feedback

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Omnichannel Marketing: Definition, Tips, & Strategy

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Omnichannel marketing is a way to make your brand feel the same everywhere: website, email, ads, social, SMS, app, and in-store. People can start on their phone, switch to a laptop, and buy later without friction. 

Why is this important? 

Your customer doesn’t think in channels. They see one brand. If your ads, emails, site, app, and store don’t match, money slips through the cracks. Omnichannel marketing closes those gaps and moves more people to buy.

But how many more people are buying from omnichannel campaigns versus single-channel campaigns? 

A lot, actually.  

An Omnisend study found the purchase rate of omnichannel marketing campaigns to be 287% higher than single-channel campaigns. 

Creating a seamless experience for your customers means better brand perception and higher revenue. It’s a real win-win.  

This guide walks you through omnichannel marketing strategy benefits, best practices, and examples. By the end of it, you’ll understand what goes into creating an omnichannel campaign that drives results. 

Key Takeaways

  • Omnichannel marketing creates a seamless customer experience across every touchpoint, including website, email, ads, SMS, social, app, and in-store.
  • Brands using an omnichannel strategy saw purchase rates 287 percent higher than single-channel campaigns in one study.
  • Unlike multichannel marketing, omnichannel connects your data and messaging across platforms so everything works together, not in silos.
  • Benefits include better customer experiences, stronger brand recognition, more personalization, higher loyalty, and increased revenue.
  • To get started, map your customer journey, centralize data, integrate your channels, and follow clear brand guidelines for a consistent feel.

What Is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is a marketing strategy that seamlessly integrates all of a business’s marketing channels to create a cohesive shopping experience for each customer. 

As customers move through the sales funnel, an omnichannel strategy ensures all touchpoints seamlessly speak to each other so that no matter where a potential customer makes contact with your business, it feels like the same channel.

Here’s how it looks in practice.

A customer might check out a product on a brand’s website. They decide they’re not yet ready to make a purchase, but then they’re met with ads for that product across different social media channels. They can easily click through and buy the product, even though it’s not the same channel they initially used to shop.

This is what omnichannel looks like on a small scale. At enterprise scale, the same idea gets bigger. Your teams share a single customer profile, so service reps, store staff, and ads all see the same context. POS and ecommerce pull from the same inventory. Loyalty rewards apply online and in-store. Buy online, pick up in store just works. 

That’s an omnichannel marketing strategy: connect data and creative across channels so customers move forward, and your revenue does too.

Omnichannel Marketing vs. Multichannel Marketing

Before we dive deeper into what omnichannel looks like, let’s talk about how it differs from a similar tactic called multichannel marketing. Both obviously occur across different channels. But they work slightly differently.

Omnichannel marketing uses multiple channels, but it ensures that all channels are integrated seamlessly, creating a connected experience. Meanwhile, multichannel marketing just occurs across different channels, treating them more as separate entities than trying to build an interconnected ecosystem.

A graphic comparing multichannel and omnichannel.

Source

Multichannel is useful for quick reach and simple campaigns. Think one-off promos, early tests, short cycles, or when tools and data are basic.

Omnichannel is best for cross-device shoppers, syncing online and in-store experiences, and longer, more complex customer journeys.

Bottom line: start with multichannel, then shift to an omnichannel marketing strategy when you’re ready to connect data and deliver one continuous experience.

Why Omnichannel Marketing Is Important

Your buyers don’t stick to one platform. They search on Google, watch a review on YouTube, see a Reel, ask ChatGPT for a product comparison, click an email, price-check on Amazon, and walk into a store. If you only optimize for organic search, you miss the moments that push customers to act.

Omnichannel marketing lets you show up at key points in the customer journey and connects those touchpoints so the experience feels cohesive. Your ad matches the email. The site matches the app. The cart follows the customer across devices. Service and store teams see the same history. That consistency builds trust and cuts friction, which leads to more sales.

An omnichannel marketing strategy also spreads risk. If one channel slows down, you still have paid social, SMS, marketplaces, and retail working together. 

It improves measurement, too. Shared data tells you which mix drives first purchases, repeat orders, and higher order values.

People discover, compare, and buy across many platforms. Brands that coordinate messages and data across those platforms win more often. If you’re serious about growth in today’s digital world, build an omnichannel marketing strategy so your brand is clear, consistent, and present at every step.

Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing has a number of benefits. These advantages can provide your business with better results and happier customers.

Think of omnichannel marketing as the glue that holds your entire shopping experience together.

Improved Customer Experience

Omnichannel marketing focuses on creating an interconnected experience no matter where your customers are interacting with your business. Because of this, it creates a seamless customer experience that’s vastly better than if the different channels couldn’t speak to each other.

Here’s what that means for customers: progress carries over (carts, wish lists, support tickets), and context follows them from device to device. If they ask a question on chat, your email workflow resurfaces it. If they browse a size in the app, your site remembers. 

Abandon cart emails are great examples of omnichannel marketing in action. A customer visits your website and adds an item to their cart. They leave your site without completing the purchase. That action is sent to and triggers an ‘Abandon cart’ workflow in your email marketing platform. 

They receive an automated email with the item in their cart and some encouraging words and/or a discount to get them to complete the purchase. 

An abandoned cart email example.

Source

An omnichannel marketing strategy reduces repeats, dead ends, and mixed messages so buyers feel understood and move forward faster.

Better Brand Awareness

Creating a consistent experience across platforms (including in-store) makes it easier for customers to recognize your brand. Plus, as more people have positive omnichannel experiences with your brand, they’re more likely to share it with their friends and family, boosting word-of-mouth referrals and awareness.

Consistency is a key component of a strong brand strategy. When people see the same appearance, messaging, and offers across channels, recall and trust in your brand grows. Pair that with targeted campaigns across search, social, and marketplaces, and your brand shows up more often for relevant terms with the same look and promise.

Personalization

When your marketing channels speak to each other, you’re presented with even more opportunities for gathering customer data that can be used to personalize experiences across all channels, and not just the ones they’ve used before. This personalization is just another way to improve the overall experience with your business, making it easier for customers to work with you.

Use customer actions, like product views, cart adds, and website searches to customize messaging. Recommend items that fit past behavior, pause promos after a purchase, and nudge at the right time (not just more often). Keep consent and preferences front and center. 

Done well, omnichannel personalization feels like help, not hype.

Customer Loyalty

As customers discover how easy it is to work with your business, they’re more likely to stick around and continue to buy from you again and again. Why bother finding a competitor if your business has created such a seamless shopping experience?

Loyalty grows when every interaction feels smooth and familiar. Connect rewards across store and online, recognize returning customers, and close the loop on issues fast. 

A members-only deal from Adidas.

Use lifecycle triggers, like welcome, re-engagement, and win-back, to stay relevant without spamming. The easier you make repeat buying, the less tempted people are to price-shop elsewhere.

Competitive Advantage

Just like we mentioned, there’s no need for customers to shop around and test out your competitors if you’ve provided such a great shopping experience. Omnichannel marketing gives you a major competitive advantage, fueling more of your target audience to head straight to you rather than others in your industry.

Most teams still run channels in silos. You’ll move faster because your data, inventory, and messaging are already in sync. Creative can be reused, offers are consistent, and measurement is clearer. That speed compounds into lower costs and better customer outcomes, an edge that’s hard to copy without a true omnichannel strategy.

Higher Revenue and Conversion Rates

Naturally, if people are sharing their positive experiences, sticking around longer, and ultimately having a great relationship with your brand, you’re going to reap those benefits in the form of higher revenue and conversion rates. Which is the ultimate goal, right?

More relevance and less friction mean more adds to cart, more checkouts, and bigger orders. Omnichannel marketing also improves attribution, so you can double down on the mix that actually drives purchases and repeat business. 

Over time, the flywheel kicks in: Better data leads to sharper targeting, which leads to stronger retention, which leads to higher revenue.

Best Practices for an Effective Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Your goal is simple: build an omnichannel marketing strategy that feels consistent everywhere and moves people forward. Start with what customers do today, not what you wish they did. Then connect the channels and tools you already use, fill the gaps, and measure what actually changes behavior.

Follow along with these steps to learn more about creating an effective omnichannel marketing strategy that will boost your customer satisfaction.

Collect & Analyze Customer Data

Start by centralizing truth. Pull website analytics, email metrics, ad performance, POS data, support logs, and audience sentiment into one view so you can spot insights like:

  • The channels your customers prefer to use when interacting with businesses
  • Which devices your customers spend the most time on
  • The types of messaging that seem to resonate most with them
  • How your customers feel about your current shopping experience

Then, pick an attribution model that fits your business. Each model is tailored to different types of customer journeys and campaign goals. 

For example, position-based tracking is better for businesses with longer sales cycles, like B2B and lead gen. And data-based attribution is great for omnichannel e–commerce strategies, marketplaces, subscription apps, and retailers with steady traffic.

Check out the graphic below for a full breakdown of attribution models you can use to measure the success of your omnichannel marketing efforts. 

A graphic showing types of attribution models.

Map Out the Customer Journey

Your next step is to map out your current customer journey. Outline each step that a Your next step is to map out your current customer journey. Outline each step that a customer would have to take from first discovering your business all the way to becoming a repeat customer. 

As Matthew Santos, SVP of Products and Strategy at NP Accel, explains, “Customer journey mapping involves visualizing a customer’s various touchpoints with your brand, from initial awareness to purchase and beyond. By understanding these touchpoints, you can identify which channels are most important at different stages of the journey.”

To create your map:

  • Identify your customers: Identify your customers’ names, addresses, and other demographic information. Look in your CRM or use a current buyer persona.
  • Understand their pain points: What drives your customers to make a purchase? What challenges do they want to solve?
  • Find out where they hang out: What platforms do your customers use during the purchase process?
  • Track the conversion path: How do most of your customers convert? Their path is unlikely to be straight. They might visit your website, view your Instagram reels, and then purchase in-person, in your store. Aim to define the most common paths.

In the end, your customer journey map might look something like this:

Customer journey map

Source

Choose & Integrate Your Channels

Now it’s time to identify and integrate your different sales and marketing channels, which could include:

  • Social media
  • SMS marketing
  • Email marketing
  • Your website and online store
  • A physical store
  • A mobile app

Make sure to include all channels that you’re currently using to reach your target audience plus any channels you’ve discovered your customers prefer. 

For example, you might not have previously incorporated SMS messaging into your overarching marketing strategy, but your customer data analysis showed you that your target audience prefers that method of communication.

Once you’ve selected the different channels you’ll use to communicate, market, and sell to your customers, it’s time to get them to work together. 

To properly integrate your marketing avenues and create a successful omnichannel strategy, you’ll need the right technology. Some tools to consider include:

  • CRM: A CRM can help you store customer information so that it’s accessible across channels. It can also help you segment out your audience to create even more tailored and personalized experiences. Omnisend is a great option for building out specific segmentations.
Omnichannel segments feature information.

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  • Marketing Automation Software: To build an effective omnichannel marketing strategy, you need marketing automation tools to engage more on social media, send scheduled emails, or move users through the conversion process. Many tools you already use, like email marketing, CRMs, and social media management, have built-in automation features. You can also use a tool like Zapier to build custom triggers.
Marketing automation workflow in Zaps.

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  • Social Media Management Tools: This type of tool can make it easy to communicate with your audience across various platforms. Get access to a social inbox that puts all conversations across all platforms in one single messaging dashboard. Use auto-replies or canned responses that ensure communication is consistent across the board. Hootsuite and Sprout Social are both great options to consider for your social media management.
The SproutSocial interface.

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Customer Data Platforms (CDPs): A CDP pulls data from all your touchpoints—site, app, ads, email, POS—into a single customer profile. That unified view makes it easier to segment audiences, personalize campaigns, and keep experiences consistent across channels. Tools like Segment or mParticle help you clean, connect, and activate data without needing a dev team for every change.

The Data Cloud marketplace.

Source

Create & Follow Brand Guidelines

Once you’ve set up the right tools and integrated all your channels, it’s time to make sure your teams are all on the same page. If your customer support team is using different messaging than your social media team, your overall strategy is going to feel disjointed.

By creating documented brand guidelines that cover how your customer-facing teams should be communicating with customers and talking about your products, you can ensure your channels feel connected.

Your brand guidelines should include things like:

  • Guidance for brand visuals, like logos, imagery, colors, and graphics
  • How to handle customer support issues or questions to create positive and consistent experiences
  • Tone and voice guidelines with “do’s and don’t’s” examples
  • Copy guidance with channel-specific examples (e.g. email subject lines vs. educational blog content)
  • Legal guidelines on what you can and cannot discuss, if applicable

Share your brand guidelines with your entire team and make sure everyone is familiar with them. Give constructive feedback when you see people straying. 

Brand consistency is the glue that holds an omnichannel marketing strategy together.

Test & Measure Your Efforts

After sharing your brand guidelines across your company and implementing your omnichannel approach, it’s time to test everything out. Run through each of your marketing channels the way you might if you were a new customer to make sure the experience feels seamless from discovery to purchase.

Then, think about how you’ll measure success. 

In omnichannel marketing, you need to consider metrics that touch every part of the funnel. For example: 

  • Discovery: Impressions, educational blog traffic, mentions in the media
  • Consideration: Engagement on social media, product views, visits to company pages
  • Conversion: Orders, checkout rate, CPA
  • Loyalty: Repeat rate, time between orders, customer reviews

Use clean UTM rules, consistent naming, and dashboards that show both channel and journey views. Review the data weekly for anomalies, monthly for trends, and quarterly for bigger bets.

3 Examples of Omnichannel Marketing

Let’s look at a few examples of omnichannel marketing in practice so you can get an idea of what this could look like for your own business.

1. Sephora

Sephora offers an amazing omnichannel experience for its customers. First-time customers are able to sign up for a Sephora account using their phone number, and then keep track of all purchases there.

Customers can figure out what they’ve purchased before and when, which makes it easier for them to restock on the products they love. It also makes it easier for the marketing team to tailor messaging and special offers to each customer’s unique shopping preferences.

Sephora shopping cart

Sephora accounts also track customer rewards points, as well as when their birthday month is. Whether they make a purchase online or in the store, Sephora sends the customer a little sample-size product as a birthday gift.

This omnichannel strategy makes shopping with Sephora feel easy and personal, no matter where someone is making a purchase.

2. Starbucks

The Starbucks app makes for an amazing omnichannel experience that the coffee brand’s customers love. Not only can customers order through the app then pick up in a nearby store, they can also reload gift cards, pay in-store, earn and redeem rewards, and more.

Starbucks Summer Berry drink page

The app also makes it extremely easy to find stores near you and personalizes its offerings based on the local weather. Starbucks is already a wildly popular coffee chain, but their omnichannel marketing strategy helps boost sales even more.

3. Target

Target is another great example of what omnichannel should look like. Again, customers can create an account and easily track past purchases so they can reorder products again and again with ease.

Target also has its own rewards program called Target Circle that allows users to rack up rewards they can put towards future purchases.

Target rewards program page

But one of the best things about Target’s omnichannel strategy is that customers can check online if a product is in stock at stores near them. And it’s wildly accurate, even during huge sales events like Black Friday. 

The Future of Omnichannel

Omnichannel isn’t standing still. AI, automation, and privacy changes are reshaping how brands connect with customers. Search engines and social platforms now answer questions directly, sometimes before a click. In fact, nearly 60% of searches result in zero clicks. 

So how does this apply to an omnichannel marketing strategy?

For marketers, it means two things. 

First, you’ll need stronger first-party data—think email lists, purchase history, loyalty programs—to fuel your targeting as third-party cookies fade. Second, you’ll need systems that can use that data in real time, adjusting offers and content across every channel without manual work.

Expect channels themselves to keep expanding. Voice assistants, connected TV, chat apps, and even in-car systems are becoming part of the customer journey. The brands that win will be the ones that stay consistent across all of them.

The future of omnichannel marketing is smarter, faster, and more connected. Get your data house in order now so you can adapt as AI and new platforms evolve.

FAQs

What is omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is the practice of connecting all your marketing and sales channels so customers get one seamless experience. Instead of each channel running in isolation, they work together. For example, a shopper might browse on mobile, add to cart on desktop, and finish in-store, with their data and offers synced across all steps. This consistency builds trust, reduces friction, and increases conversions by making every touchpoint feel like part of the same journey. 

What is the difference between multichannel and omnichannel marketing?

Multichannel means using multiple platforms, but each runs separately. Omnichannel connects those platforms so the experience is unified, not siloed. 

How to implement omnichannel marketing?

Start by collecting customer data, mapping the journey, and picking channels your audience uses most. Then integrate tools like CRM, automation, and analytics to sync messaging and measure results.  

Create Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy Today

Your customers want an omnichannel experience, so it’s your job to give it to them. Figure out how to make your channels work together so your customers get a personalized, consistent, and seamless experience every time they shop with your business. 

Sounds like a lot, but if you follow the steps above, you can start to build a more cohesive journey for your customers. And if you’re looking for additional help, an omnichannel marketing agency like NP Digital can bring your strategy to life. 

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Topical Authority: What Is It, & How Does It Work?

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You’ve probably heard the term “topical authority” thrown around a lot in SEO circles lately. And for good reason.

If Google recognizes your site as a trusted source on a subject, your chances of ranking higher increase. It’s not just in organic search, but now in AI-powered answers too.

So what is topical authority? How does it work? And why should you care?

It’s simple. When you consistently create high-quality content around a specific topic, you prove to both users and search engines that you know your stuff. You’re not just tossing out a few blog posts. You’re building trust.

If you want to become the authority in your space, I’ll show you how. In this article, we’ll break down what topical authority means, why it matters, and the exact strategies you can use to build it.

Ready to increase your authority? Then let’s begin.

Key Takeaways

  • Topical authority is a signal to Google (and AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity) that your site is the trusted source on a subject.
  • You build topical authority by covering a topic in-depth, not just with one article but across a network of related content.
  • More topical authority means better rankings, stronger visibility in AI-powered answers, and more qualified traffic.
  • Internal links, backlinks, and consistent brand voice all play a role in reinforcing your authority in search.
  • There’s no single score for topical authority, but tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Ubersuggest can help you track keyword coverage and content gaps.
  • Adding subject matter expert (SME) insights and publishing under real authors can boost your trustworthiness and increase your chances of LLM citation.

The Basics of Topical Authority

Topical authority tells search engines and AI tools whether your site is a credible expert on a subject. This goes beyond publishing one article to creating a library of content that covers every angle.

The more accurate, relevant, and well-organized your content is, the more trust you build. That trust leads to higher rankings, stronger visibility, and more traffic.

Let’s take this site as an example. Because I’ve built topical authority on SEO and digital marketing, my new content on related subjects often ranks faster and performs better than sites with less focus in this area.

You’re also more likely to get cited by AI tools that draw on expert sources. Take a look at the ChatGPT answer below, which cites a variety of different sites to answer a digital marketing question: 

“LLM example showing cited source in AI-generated result — a sign of topical authority.”

The History of Topical Authority

Google didn’t always care about how deep your content was. In the early days, ranking was mostly about keywords and backlinks. Then came Hummingbird in 2013, and that changed everything.

Hummingbird marked the shift from keyword matching to semantic search. Google started understanding meaning, not just strings of words. That shift laid the foundation for what we now call topical authority.

Since then, updates like RankBrain, BERT, and the Helpful Content System have continued pushing in the same direction. Google now evaluates how well you cover a subject, not just how often you mention it. You can see how these shifts connect with other critical Google ranking factors.

And with AI Overviews and tools like ChatGPT pulling content from trusted sources, topical authority isn’t just about search rankings, but being the kind of content AI is most likely to reference.

The bar keeps rising. If your content doesn’t go deep, connect across topics, and come from real expertise, you’ll lose visibility both in organic results and AI-driven answers.

Why Topical Authority is Important For SEO

Topical authority in SEO isn’t optional anymore. If Google doesn’t see your site as a trusted expert on a subject, your rankings will stall.

When you build topical authority the right way, you earn better rankings, attract more links, and increase your chances of being cited by AI tools that rely on trusted sources.

Achieving topical authority is great for your SEO, but it can also help you achieve broader marketing goals. Here’s what it can do for your website.

More Organic Traffic

One of the best things about having topical authority is that it ensures more potential customers head to your website instead of your competitors. That’s because better topical authority means higher Google rankings and higher rankings mean more traffic.

When your site covers a topic in full, including related subtopics and common user questions, you rank for more long-tail keywords and
increase your chances of winning more SERP features. This also improves your chances of being cited in AI Overviews, which pull from trusted content to answer queries directly. 

While AI keeps more users on the SERPs, the ones that do click through to your website are more intentional, engaged, and ultimately higher quality. 

More Backlinks To Your Website

That visibility creates a feedback loop. The more backlinks you earn, the more authority you build.

It also signals to search engines and AI systems that your content is trustworthy, which boosts your chances of being featured in search results and AI Overviews.

Instead of chasing links, you start attracting them naturally just by owning the topic.

Increased Brand Reputation

Consumers trust experts. And if your website appears at the top of every search result related to a particular topic, you’re naturally going to be considered an expert.

Ranking at the top gives people a reason to trust your brand before they even click.
You become the name people associate with credible advice, helpful insights, and solutions that actually work.

Over time, this trust turns into customer loyalty, word-of-mouth referrals, and bigger opportunities for your business.

Supporting E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust — and it’s one of the ways Google evaluates content quality.

You can’t fake these signals. You earn them by consistently publishing content that reflects deep knowledge, solves real problems, and shows first-hand understanding of your topic.

That’s exactly what topical authority is built on. When your site covers a subject from every angle, connects related ideas, and links to reputable sources, you’re hitting the same benchmarks Google looks for with E-E-A-T.

Signs A Website Has Topical Authority

It’s not always obvious whether a website has strong topical authority. There’s no single score or tool that can tell you outright.

But there are clear signs Google and AI models look for, patterns that show you know your topic inside and out.

Let’s break down what they are.

A Strong, Authoritative Domain

Websites with strong topical authority usually have strong domain authority too. That’s because backlinks fuel both.
The more high-quality links you earn, the more your domain gains trust in the eyes of Google, and that trust helps your content rank.

Metrics like Moz’s Domain Authority and Ahrefs’ Domain Rating are two reliable metrics you can use to track this. They aren’t perfect, but they give a useful snapshot of how authoritative your site looks from the outside.

A good example is MayoClinic.org. It ranks consistently for health-related terms because its content is accurate, comprehensive, and backed by years of trust signals like backlinks and citations.

The Mayo Clinic website.

When your site earns that kind of authority, your topical coverage becomes harder to compete with.

Robust Internal Link Profile

A strong internal link profile suggests that a website has a lot of pages about a similar topic. After all, you’d only link to another page on your website if it is related to the topic you’re currently writing about.

Internal linking also helps distribute authority across your site, making it easier for your pillar content to rank. Building a structure of relevant, topic-aligned pages linked together is one of the core tactics in effective internal linking.

One site that nails this is Healthline. Articles on conditions, symptoms, and treatments all connect cleanly through relevant anchor text. That structure helps readers and search engines navigate the topic more easily, and it boosts the site’s topical authority.

Blogs on Healthline's website.

Number of Ranking Keywords

Generally speaking, the more keywords a website ranks for, the more topical authority the website will have. Each ranking keyword is another signal that Google trusts your content to answer a specific query.

It’s easy to see how many keywords a website is ranking for using Ubersuggest. Just run a Site Audit on your own or your competitor’s website, and organic keywords is one of the headline figures you see.

Site audit of neilpatel.com from Ubersuggest.

You can click on the tab to get a complete rundown of all the keywords that the site ranks for.

A keyword overview of neilpatel.com from Ubersuggest.

LLM Citations

Large language models like ChatGPT and Perplexity pull answers from high-authority websites and getting cited by them is a growing sign of topical authority.

These tools are designed to favor high-quality, well-structured content. That means the more consistent, well-organized, and trusted your content is, the more likely it is to be referenced in AI-generated responses.

Sites that rank well in search and demonstrate strong E-E-A-T signals tend to show up in these results. So do sites that use clean HTML structure, clear headings, and publish under real authors.

Citations in AI tools reflect what Google and LLMs are both looking for: consistent, trustworthy expertise.

Best Practices To Build Your Topical Authority

You don’t become a topical authority by accident. It takes a focused strategy, consistent publishing, and a deep understanding of what your audience actually cares about.

The good news? There are proven ways to get there, and they work across industries, niches, and business models.

Here’s how to start building real authority in your space.

Create an Awesome Content Strategy

A solid content strategy is the foundation of topical authority, but it needs to go beyond just publishing regularly. You need to identify content gaps, map out supporting subtopics, and prioritize the questions your audience is already searching for.

Start by auditing your existing content to see where you’re weak, then use tools like Ubersuggest or Ahrefs to find the topics your competitors are covering and you’re not.

Each piece you publish should serve a clear purpose: build depth, target a keyword cluster, or reinforce your site’s expertise.

Over time, that structure signals to search engines and AI models that your site isn’t just participating in the conversation, it’s establishing leadership and authority within it.

Build Topic Clusters

When selecting topics to write content about, focus specifically on a couple of key topics, and use them as pillars for your website, creating content clusters.

Make sure you create the very best piece of content about these core topics, then start branching out into other related topics, most of which will have a smaller search volume than your key topics.

When you write about these smaller, related topics, make sure you are linking back to the bigger topics and between all of the other smaller topics that are related to your key topic.

It will look something like the diagram below from HubSpot.

A topic cluster on HubSpot.

This structure helps search engines recognize your site as an expert on the subject, improving crawlability and reinforcing your topical authority.

Understand User Intent

Google ranks content that aligns with what users are really trying to accomplish, not just what they type.

Most content marketers will implement a plan surrounding user intent to improve their topical authority. It is no secret that Google’s search engine algorithm has become extremely good at understanding user intent.

If a user searches for information on a subject via a given fact or specific keywords, Google’s algorithm tries to establish the intent behind that particular search and deliver the most relevant result.

That means your content strategy must take into account the intent of the user searching for that keyword. If it’s informational, write a how-to article. If it’s transactional, consider targeting an e-commerce page. This varies based on your platform of choice, as the chart below shows:

NP Digital research showing how people search on ChatGPT vs Google.

You can go even further by reverse-engineering the search results. For instance, run a Google search yourself for a target keyword and see what kind of articles come up.

Below I’ve run a search for the term “Keyword research.” As you can see, the results are a mixture of how-to articles and tools.

SERP overview of keyword research.

This tells me that I can either market my keyword research tool, Ubersuggest, or create a how-to guide that includes my keyword tool and others like it. This satisfies the user intent and what Google thinks the user intent is.

That’s why I created a full breakdown of keyword research strategies, because the content format matches what users actually want.

Build High-Quality Links

One final strategy you should use to improve your website’s topical authority is to build high-quality backlinks with other authoritative websites.

The key is to get links from websites that have strong domain ratings and that are relevant to your industry. For example, if you have an SEO tool, getting a link from my blog would be a great link.

But it’s not just about volume, quality matters. The best backlinks come from sites with topical relevance, natural anchor text, and contextual placement within content.

Strategies like guest blogging, HARO outreach, and contextual mentions can all support high-quality backlink building when used the right way.

Strong links help boost your rankings and strengthen the authority signals search engines and AI tools rely on.

Define Your Brand Voice

A consistent brand voice makes your content more recognizable, trustworthy, and easier to connect across related topics.

If your tone, structure, and perspective shift from post to post, it’s harder for users and search engines may struggle to recognize your expertise. 

That consistency becomes especially important when you’re building out topic clusters. Each piece should sound like it comes from the same point of view, even if multiple people contribute.

Clarity, tone, and editorial consistency are part of what makes your content feel authoritative, not just to readers, but to algorithms evaluating how well you cover a subject.

Add SME (Subject Matter Expert) Insight<h3>

One of the fastest ways to build topical authority is to bring real subject matter experts into your content. That could mean using named authors, pulling in expert quotes, or publishing under people who have actual experience in the field.

I love doing this on this blog. You hear a lot from me, but I like having other experts from my agency chime in when it comes to topics they have specific expertise on.

Example of SME insight on one of Neil Patel's blogs.

Users want to hear from people who’ve actually done the work. Adding expert input isn’t just for show, it’s what separates credible content from filler.

Topical Authority Metrics

While there’s no single topical authority score, these metrics show you’re building credibility:

  • Number of ranking keywords: Shows how well your site covers a topic at scale
  • Keyword depth: Measures how many related long-tail queries you rank for in a cluster
  • Content-to-topic ratio: Indicates whether your site goes deep or just scratches the surface
  • Internal linking coverage: Signals whether you’re connecting related ideas effectively
  • Growth in backlinks to topic-related pages: Suggests rising authority within that subject
  • LLM citations (like ChatGPT) offer indirect proof that your content is seen as trustworthy

Once you know what to look for, you can use tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs to track keyword clusters, compare topic coverage against competitors, and audit internal link paths.

Semrush topic coverage.

Ubersuggest lets you monitor keyword growth over time, check traffic by page, and spot gaps in your content strategy.

Ubersuggest's keyword tracking capabilities.

And while no tool will hand you a “topical authority” badge, tracking the right metrics will show whether you’re moving in the right direction, and where to focus next.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is topical authority?

Topical authority is how search engines evaluate your site’s credibility on a specific subject. The more high-quality, in-depth content you create around a topic, and the better you organize, link, and structure it, the more likely Google is to trust your site to rank for related searches.
It’s not about one post. It’s about building a library of connected, expert-level content that proves you know the space.

How do I build topical authority?

You build topical authority by going deep, not wide. Start with a few core topics, publish content that covers every angle, and connect everything with a strong internal structure.
You also need to align with user intent, bring in subject matter expertise, and keep your content updated. That shows search engines and readers that you’re committed to covering the topic thoroughly.

Do backlinks play a role in establishing topical authority?

Yes. Backlinks matter. When trusted sites link to your content, it signals to Google that others see you as credible. But it’s not just about quantity. Relevance, context, and anchor text all affect how much a backlink supports your authority.

Conclusion

Topical authority is one of the most valuable assets in modern SEO. It helps you rank, earn trust, and get cited by AI tools looking for expert sources.

You won’t build it overnight, but if you commit to going deep on the topics that matter to your business, the results compound. Solid on-page SEO and forward-looking strategies like LLM seeding help position your content where it matters most.

If your content consistently delivers real value, Google will notice. Your audience will too.

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Vibe Marketing: Hype, Reality, and Real Case Studies

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AI has infinitely sped up the hype cycle in marketing.

So when the term “vibe marketing” came onto the scene, you may have rolled your eyes for a moment before you said, “I have to try this.”

In basic terms, vibe marketing means using AI to run entire marketing workflows. Usually, this involves a combination of:

  • Vibe coding: No-code AI tools where you type what you want (e.g., “Build me a landing page”), and the tool spins it up
  • AI agents: Always-on assistants that handle background tasks, like checking your inbox for leads or updating your CRM

Vibe Marketing – Coding & AI Agents

And whether or not they consider themselves “vibe marketers,” many teams are already doing this.

In a survey of marketing teams doing $100m+ in revenue, GrowthLoop found that more than a third of those teams use AI to optimize campaigns or predict customer behavior.

And those embedding AI into their processes report more effective strategies.

Marketing teams use AI

So, is vibe marketing the next wave of marketing methodology? Or just more AI hype?

In this guide, we’re diving into real-world case studies that show how marketers are using AI in their daily workflows.

Plus, we’ll test the hype against reality based on my own experiments and the perspective of industry experts.

Vibe Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

With vibe marketing, things like campaigns, segmentation, and competitor analysis can happen in the background. So you can focus more on creative work and strategy.

Here’s how it stacks up against traditional marketing:

Task Traditional Marketing Vibe Marketing
Campaign creation Weeks of strategy, briefs, handoffs, and approvals Concepts, landing pages, and emails drafted in hours
Audience segmentation Manual data exports and persona-building AI builds real-time dynamic segments
Competitive analysis Manual research on competitor websites, social feeds, reports Automated data scraping and AI summaries
Performance reporting Hours compiling data into slides Real-time dashboards + plain-English insights

This all sounds incredible, and it’s all technically possible for marketing teams today.

But here’s the catch: AI workflows are still clunky and experimental.

Hootsuite reports that while 83% of marketers say their AI budgets have increased, 4 in 10 companies waste at least
10% of their AI budget on tools that didn’t deliver.

Company

Bottom line: Don’t expect AI workflows to run your marketing overnight. Sometimes building them takes longer than doing the task manually (I learned that firsthand — more on that later).

So, what does vibe marketing look like when it does work?

6 Examples of Vibe Marketing in the Wild

Vibe marketing can seem like a vague concept.

But when we talk about using AI to automate social listening workflows, follow up with inbound leads, or run competitive analysis, all of a sudden this ambiguous concept takes on real-world meaning.

We’ll see six examples of brands using vibe marketing in their daily workflows.

Plus, how you can copy these ideas into your own strategy.

1. Build Enterprise-Level Campaigns Without Reliance on Technical Teams

The biggest slowdown in most campaigns isn’t the marketing work itself. It’s the wait for other teams to deliver what you need.

At the job site, Indeed, those delays stretched to an average of 3.5 months per campaign.

Even simple requests — like defining an audience segment — meant analysts had to pull data from their warehouse. Then, engineers had to reformat it before marketing could use it.

With vibe marketing, the team broke that bottleneck.

They used the AI platform GrowthLoop to turn raw customer data into ready-to-use segments.

GrowthLoop – Audience Discovery

Now, their team can type a plain-English prompt (e.g. “nurses in the U.S. who searched jobs in the last 30 days but haven’t applied”) and instantly generate that segment.

Launch times dropped from months to weeks — an 8x speed boost.

Instead of waiting a whole quarter to get in front of job seekers, the team can now react to hiring needs in almost real time.

Try It Yourself:

If you’re on an enterprise team already using a data warehouse tool, GrowthLoop’s makes it easy to type a goal, generate audiences, and send them directly into campaigns.

GrowthLoop – Audience Studio

On the other hand, let’s say you keep customer data in a CRM or spreadsheet — names, emails, recent purchases.

With a tool like Clay, you can import those leads and use the built-in AI to enrich them with more data.

Then, you can create campaigns that automatically go out based on that enrichment.

For example, when a company has received funding in the last three months, they can be automatically added to a campaign.

Clay – Run settings

In seconds, you’ve got a list ready to target.

What makes this powerful isn’t just faster data access.

It’s the AI layer that turns raw information into something marketing can actually act on, without waiting on anyone else.

2. Automate Social Listening Workflows

Getting a lot of mentions on social media is great — until it isn’t. Some social media managers can spend hours every day sifting through comments and posts that tag the brand.

More than just being a tedious task, this is completely unsustainable.

Which is exactly what Webflow’s two-person social team realized.

Between Reddit, X, YouTube, and forums, they faced 500+ daily mentions. But only a handful actually needed a human reply.

Finding those few was like looking for needles in a haystack.

So, they built an AI workflow to do the sorting for them.

AI workflow sorting

The system scans every mention, tags it by sentiment and urgency, and pushes the important ones straight into Slack.

High priority post

Out of 500+ daily posts, the team now sees just 10–15 that matter most — and responds within the hour.

Further reading: 6 Best Social Media Management Tools (Tried & Tested)

Try It Yourself:

Pick one high-volume channel — maybe Reddit, X, or even a busy community forum.

Use a tool like Gumloop or Apify to pull in mentions of your brand. Then, run them through an AI categorizer to flag sentiment and urgency.

AI Categorizer

Start small, check the tags for accuracy, and only then scale to other platforms.

Note: To take this workflow a step further, add a tool like ManyChat or Yuma.ai to generate automated responses to posts and DMs. Entrepreneur Candace Junée did this and saw a 118% increase in leads while saving 15 hours per month answering Instagram DMs.

Automated responses

3. Create On-Brand Content Assets

Ever tried to turn a 40-page technical document into a blog post or campaign copy?

The content is there, but shaping it into something clear — and in your brand’s voice and style — takes time.

At Pilot Company, with multiple sub-brands and channels to manage, that challenge multiplied.

Writers spent hours summarizing technical docs into usable briefs. Designers waited for copy that matched the right tone before prototypes could move forward.

And inconsistencies crept in across brands.

So, the team used Jasper to help build consistency in style and tone.

They used the tool’s summarizer to condense long technical documents into actionable outlines, and the brand-voice model to keep messaging aligned across sub-brands.

Jasper – Brand Voice

Designers could even pull realistic placeholder text without waiting on writers.

The result: Each team member saved 3–5 hours a week, freeing them up for strategy and storytelling instead of slogging through documents.

Try It Yourself:

With a tool like Jasper, you can add specific instructions about your brand voice, audience, and even include source material to show what great content looks like for your brand.

Then, you can use it to create copy and content for entire campaigns.

Jasper – Product Launch Campaign

You can also use tools like Notion AI, Claude, or ChatGPT to turn long documentation into campaign content.

Start by inputting your brand voice, style, target audience, and any other details that might be useful. Then, upload documentation and ask the AI to turn it into specific pieces of content.

ChatGPT – Turn long documentation into campaign content

Test the tools to find your favorite. Make sure to give specific instructions on what kind of output you’re looking for.

Use AI to generate briefs, draft first passes, or speed up design prototypes — and reserve human time for the creative polish.

Useful resource: How to Use AI for Writing Exceptional Content

4. Follow Up with Inbound Leads

On paper, 500+ inbound marketing leads a day looks like a dream for a small agency.

But for Tiddle, a six-person influencer agency, it was a nightmare.

They were buried in the flood of messages, with only a few that were worth pursuing. Sorting through the noise ate up 6–8 hours a day — time that should’ve gone into client campaigns and outreach.

Instead of hiring more staff, they brought in AI.

Using Lindy, every inbound email was screened automatically.

Low-quality offers were politely declined, while promising ones were flagged and routed to the right person.

If terms weren’t a fit, the AI could even suggest counteroffers.

Email triage body

The team went from slogging through hundreds of emails to focusing only on the 10–15 real opportunities that mattered.

That shift freed up 40–60 hours per week.

As Tiddle’s CEO, Mike Hahn, says, “Every deal we’ve closed in the last few months came from Lindy surfacing the right conversations.”

Try It Yourself:

Pick one channel where inbound volume is overwhelming (email, DMs, LinkedIn).

Define the “must-haves” for a qualified lead (budget, offer type, brand fit), then use a tool like Lindy or Clay to screen and tag incoming requests.

You can even set up conditional logic so the tool can change how it responds based on specific conditions.

Conditions – Initial

Note: Small companies aren’t the only ones making use of AI for inbound leads. Ariel Kelmen, president and CMO of Salesforce, recently said that they use AI agents to handle interactive follow-ups with leads. And those agents manage the first 80% of the conversation.

5. Build Hyper-Personalization for Your Ideal Customer Profiles

“Hi [first name]…” personalization doesn’t cut it anymore. But manually tailoring every message to your ideal customer profiles (ICPs) is impossible to scale.

Oren Greenberg, a solo marketing consultant, faced this problem.

And since there was no system that fit his ideals of hyperpersonalization, Oren built his own.

He coded a workflow in Replit that filtered a 50,000-company dataset, excluded existing contacts, and generated outreach tailored to each company’s stage and challenges.

YouTube – Hyper personalization

The result: outreach so specific it only makes sense for the intended recipient.

YouTube – Cold email outbound

Pro tip: Hyper-personalization works only if you deeply understand your ICP — AI can’t do that thinking for you. But once you know who you’re selling to, it can scale bespoke messaging in ways you couldn’t manually.

Try It Yourself

If you’re a highly technical person with the skills and know-how to recreate something like this in a vibe-coding tool, then by all means have at it.

For the rest of us, using a tool like Clay is a fast path to get 80% of the way there.

Start by defining your ICP.

Then use Clay to pull in business data, filter it against your ICP criteria, and enrich it with extra context.

Clay – Claygent Templates

With that data in place, you can add an AI-powered column that drafts personalized outreach for each prospect.

Run a pilot batch of 50–100 and iterate until the system feels like true one-to-one messaging.

6. Run Competitive Analysis

New marketing roles often start with 30-60 days of slow discovery.

Who are the real competitors? What do customers actually care about? What language do they use?

Semrush’s former VP of Brand Marketing Olga Andrienko found a way to shortcut that process.

Before Day 1 at a new job, she suggests running an AI-powered competitive analysis.

Pull your site and the top competitors’ pages, transcribe the most-viewed YouTube reviews, and mine Reddit and forums for repeated complaints.

Then, feed that into an AI summarizer to surface frequent feature praise or criticism and real customer phrasing. Tools like Google Opal or Gemini help cross-link those insights into a positioning map.

Way to shortcut process

The payoff: You walk in Day 1 with a prioritized punch list.

Try It Yourself:

Whether you’re stepping into a new role, launching a campaign, or scoping out a new market, the same workflow applies.

First, pick your brand and three competitors. With a scraper tool like Apify, get your website copy and grab a handful of top YouTube reviews and forum threads.

Then, feed those into a tool like Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT to summarize and analyze the data.

Extract the top five pains and language customers use, and sketch a one-page positioning map you can bring to meetings.

That way, you start your campaign with clarity — not uncertainty.

Further reading: Why Competitor Analysis Matters

My Disastrous Vibe Marketing Experiment (What I Learned the Hard Way So You Don’t Have To)

Giving you examples is great, but I wanted to put all this to the test and see if I could build a usable AI workflow for myself. (Spoiler: It did not go well.)

Goal: Save time replying to LinkedIn comments without losing my voice.

Constraints: Something I could test immediately, for free, and that would actually be useful.

Method: Build a workflow that scrapes comments, learns my style, and drafts replies I could approve before posting.

Time spent: 4+ hours

1st Attempt

First, I created an account in PhantomBuster, a tool that automates actions on social platforms like LinkedIn.

Then, I connected my LinkedIn account and set up the “LinkedIn Post Commenter and Liker Scraper” tool.

PhantomBuster – LinkedIn Post Commenter and Liker Scraper

I asked it to retrieve only comments from my LinkedIn posts from recent days, which it did successfully.

PhantomBuster – Recent LinkedIn comments – Filtered

Next, I created a new “Scenario” in Make, a no-code automation and AI agent tool, and added PhantomBuster as the start of that workflow.

Make & PhantomBuster automation

Then, I built a Make AI Agent that would draw from my previous posts to learn my voice..

Make – AI agent

I added that Make AI Agent into the workflow, giving it instructions to analyze the comments scraped by PhantomBuster and produce a reply.

And finally, I added Google Docs as the final output. The idea was to create a document where I could see both the original comment and the AI-generated reply.

Make – Google Docs added

The whole workflow ran successfully, which I took as a win and closed up shop for the night.

But when I opened my laptop the next day to check all the wonderful replies my new AI buddy had written for me, all I found was this lovely Google Doc:

Google Doc – LinkedIn comment replies

Still undeterred, I decided to try something different.

2nd Attempt

Along the same lines, I wanted to build an automated AI workflow that would scrape content from LinkedIn that I’m interested in. Then, write comments in my voice and style using my existing content as a foundation.

I used a similar workflow: PhantomBuster to scrape the content, Make AI Agents to analyze and write comments, and getting the final output in a Google Sheet.

Make – Google Sheets

Unfortunately, that gave me the exact same result (only this time in spreadsheet format, woohoo!):

Google Sheets – LinkedIn Comments

What especially irked me was that the automations themselves were running successfully. But I still had no output.

So after more than four hours of work (and a lot of back-and-forth with ChatGPT), I finally gave up.

Could I have figured out this AI workflow eventually? Yes, I have no doubt.

But at that point, how much time would I be saving?

Does a little time saved on writing comments justify spending hours building an AI workflow (and what should’ve been a relatively simple one, at that)?

Here’s what I learned from this experiment:

  • If you’ve been secretly feeling a little skeptical about vibe marketing, you were right
  • The folks building vibe-coded apps and AI workflows in five minutes have years of practice. The rest of us can’t expect the same speed.
  • The tools that are currently available for vibe coding and AI automations aren’t ready yet for the average user to just jump in and build
  • If someone with a background in tech (me) struggled so much with a simple workflow, imagine the challenge of something more complex

And while it’s true that others are seeing success with vibe marketing (like the examples that we saw above), there are also clear downsides.

It’s Not All a Bed of Roses: The Caveats of Vibe Marketing

Vibe marketing is like any new marketing buzzword: We all love to join in the hype, even if we don’t quite get it.

The problem is, the hype can obscure reality.

After running my own experiments, I also talked with other experts in the field. What emerged was a clear pattern — vibe marketing is powerful, but the gaps between promise and practice are real.

It’s Harder Than It Looks

The idea that you can tinker around with AI for five minutes and produce a usable workflow just isn’t feasible for the majority of us.

And yet, that’s the promise we’re seeing over and over again:

Google SERP – 5 minute AI automation

This all sounds great, but we’re marketers: We know better.

Simple automations? Sure.

But robust, real-world systems usually need engineering support or serious AI chops.

Without that, you risk fragile prototypes that break the first time they’re stress-tested.

Oren Greenberg, the AI marketing consultant we talked about earlier, told me:

“The level of hype is out of this world. Vibe coding is cool, and there are a few people who’ve built a nice small business out of it. But it’s mostly the vendors who are minting cash.”

Here’s the point: Don’t get swept up in the hype. Check the source.

The Infrastructure Is Messy

AI workflows look slick in a demo. But in practice, you have to plug into your marketing stack.

And that’s where things get complicated.

For example, you might build the perfect AI agent to score inbound leads, only to realize that your CRM can’t accept the data the way you need.

As Austin Hay, Co-Founder of Clarity and MarTech teacher at Reforge, noted in a recent interview:

“Everyone’s excited about unstructured data, but unstructured data is useless when it needs to play nice with structured systems.”

For traditional marketing teams, this means your AI workflows may not play well with your company’s established martech systems.

And if your tech’s API documentation is outdated (or worse, nonexistent), it will be nearly impossible to vibe code your way to integrations between existing tools.

AI Can’t Invent Outside its Datasets

Another misconception around vibe marketing is that you can throw any messy, undefined problem at an AI agent and it will figure it out.

The reality is less glamorous.

AI thrives on patterns it’s seen before. Point it at a well-scoped, repeatable task, and it shines.

But ask it to invent outside of its training data — or solve a fuzzy, novel problem — and you’ll end up with loops, errors, and wasted hours.

Speed Only Works When You Know Where You’re Going

AI can help you move fast. But if you don’t know what metrics matter and where you want your workflows to lead, faster will just mean getting lost sooner.

Marketers who succeed with vibe coding are the ones who define the finish line first. AI then becomes a vehicle to reach those goals faster, not a substitute for setting them.

Kevin White, Head of Marketing at Scrunch AI, put it this way in a recent interview:

“AI multiplies the abilities of people who already know their craft. Treat it as a force multiplier for your expertise rather than a substitute for it.”

Vibe Marketing Tools Free Up Time…But for What?

As more marketers build AI workflows and vibe code their way to productivity, a philosophical question arises: why?

AI workflows and automations free up time (when they work). But, what are we freeing up time for?

By eliminating the busywork, we’ve saved only the most demanding tasks for ourselves. And while creating and strategizing may be what we enjoy most, it’s impossible for most people to do that kind of mentally-taxing work for eight hours straight.

Eric Doty, the one-man content team at Dock, explained it like this:

LinkedIn – Eric Doty – Automated work

The questions to ask: Are we automating the right things? Are we automating for the right reasons? And how are we using the time saved?

How to Know if Vibe Marketing Is Right for You and Your Business

You may be a marketer in a traditional team with limited resources and a lot of big ideas to execute on.

Or, you might be a solo marketer looking to reduce busy work.

Either way, you’re probably looking at AI as a solution to increase productivity. Even if you worry it’ll steal the humanity from your campaigns.

Still on the fence?

Here are six questions you can ask yourself. Answer honestly, and you’ll have a better view of whether now is the right time to start vibe marketing:

Question If Yes… If No…
Do I have repetitive, well-documented tasks I do weekly? Automation can free you up for strategy and creativity. Not much to gain from automation yet.
Am I clear on what “better” looks like for my role/business? You can scale the right things. Risk scaling noise — get specific first.
Do I have at least a small dataset (calls, reviews, CRM notes)? AI can pull real insights from your data. Start gathering data before building workflows.
Would freeing up 5–10 hours/week change my impact? Probably worth experimenting with. Savings may not move the needle yet.
Do I have time/patience to refine AI outputs? You’ll get compounding returns over time. Vibe marketing may feel like a distraction.
Do I have brand guardrails for AI outputs? Safer to create external-facing content. Build your identity/messaging first.

The goal here isn’t to pass/fail. It’s to spot whether now is the right time to lean into automation. And whether you’ll get a meaningful return.

As Lauren Wiener of Boston Consulting Group said:

“In conversations with CMOs, it’s clear that GenAI has become a core part of how modern marketing teams operate. What separates the winners is a commitment not just to scaling the technology, but to empowering the people who use it. Those CMOs investing in tools and talent are the ones rewriting the playbook.”

Ready to Try Your Own Vibe Marketing Experiment?

Vibe marketing isn’t snake oil. But it’s not a silver bullet, either.

The hype can make it feel like anyone can vibe code and automate their way to a marketing edge. But the reality is far more nuanced.

The marketers getting real value from vibe marketing are the ones with strong fundamentals, clear goals, and often a layer of engineering support behind them.

For the rest of us, the takeaway is simple:

Vibe marketing is worth experimenting with, but it won’t replace strategy, judgment, or hard-won expertise.

Ready to explore more specific AI tools? Check out our guide to AI marketing platforms.

The post Vibe Marketing: Hype, Reality, and Real Case Studies appeared first on Backlinko.

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How to Use SEO to Build Your Brand

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Most marketers treat SEO like a traffic tool. They get the clicks, but the brand still doesn’t stick.

Here’s what I see happening: Marketers chase clicks but forget about recognition. You get the visit, but not the return customer.

That’s a problem. If people can’t remember you, they won’t come back. If Google doesn’t see signals of your brand’s authority, you’ll lose visibility in search.

AI search is shifting how people find answers. Instead of 10 blue links, people now see answers. And those answers often include brands Google already trusts.

This makes brand SEO a must. You need to show up and stand out.

I’ve been tracking this shift for months: 1 out of every 3 search queries on Google is branded. That means you’re already behind if you’re not building brand recognition.

Bar chart showing that 33.49% of Google search queries are branded and 66.51% are non-branded, highlighting the importance of brand building in SEO.

In this post, you’ll learn how to build a brand that ranks, earns clicks, and sticks in people’s minds. No gimmicks. Just smart, brand-first SEO.

Key Takeaways

  • Brand SEO helps you rank for branded searches and builds trust with users and Google.
  • Strong branding increases click-through rates (CTR), backlinks, and visibility in AI-driven results.
  • Brand mentions across trusted sites, combined with consistent content and E-E-A-T signals, reinforce your authority in search. Owning your branded search engine results page (SERP) is just as important as ranking for non-branded keywords.
  • AI summaries and featured answers pull from trustworthy brands. If your content feels human and credible, you’ll be in the mix.

What Is Brand SEO (and Why It Matters More Now)?

Brand SEO builds your reputation in search results. You want to control how you appear, not leave it to chance.

In newer AI features like AI Overviews (AIOs), I’m seeing trusted brands surface more often. If you’re not showing credibility, you’re not showing up.

Brand SEO closes that gap. It tells search engines and users who you are, why you matter, and why they should click.

Google search results for "Canva," showing the brand’s official website with sitelinks on the left and a knowledge panel on the right featuring company details like founders, headquarters, revenue, and subsidiaries.

You still need the foundations: SEO basics like page speed, keyword optimization, and mobile responsiveness.

But technical SEO alone won’t build your brand’s reputation. You also need signals like brand mentions, consistent content, and trust indicators, especially those tied to E-E-A-T.

Key brand SEO signals include:

  • Branded keyword visibility (e.g., company name, product names, founder name)
  • Brand mentions on credible sites, even without links
  • High-quality content that aligns with your brand values
  • Clear authorship and real-world experience across pages

Brand SEO works across platforms. Google is no longer everyone’s go-to. Many now use TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, ChatGPT, and other platforms to search and discover brands.

That shift is why I call it search everywhere optimization. Your brand needs to be visible wherever your audience is searching.

How Branding Impacts SEO (and Vice Versa)

Google doesn’t just rank websites. It favors recognizable and trusted brands.

If your name is recognizable and trusted, people are more likely to click. If they stick around and engage, Google sees that as a signal you’re worth ranking higher.

Here’s something most people miss: Good branding actually improves your technical SEO metrics. It improves click-through rates. It builds trust. It earns backlinks and mentions without you having to ask.

And it works both ways. Showing up at the top of search results makes your brand look more credible, even to people who’ve never heard of you before.

Bar chart comparing average and top-performing sites, showing top performers get 9.74% of their search traffic from brand terms versus just 2.44% for average sites.

This creates a growth loop. If your brand shows authority and credibility, you have a better shot at getting pulled into AI-generated summaries, carousels, and featured snippets.

Bar chart showing top factors influencing ChatGPT recommendations, with relevancy (.91), brand mentions (.87), and reviews (.61) as leading factors.

Your brand strategy and SEO plan can‘t sit in separate silos. They have to work together.

Even unlinked brand mentions count as credibility signals. If someone references your business in a blog or Reddit thread, Google sees that as a sign your brand is real.

Strong brands get ranked. Ranked content strengthens the brand. That’s the loop. You want to be in it.

Strategies to Improve Your Brand SEO

A lot of brands don’t think about how they appear in search until there’s a problem. But by then, you’re already lagging.

People are going to find you in search anyway. Brand SEO decides whether they trust what they see or bounce.

The strategies below are designed to boost visibility and build credibility, helping your brand stand out where it matters most: directly in the search results.

1. Optimize for Branded Search Queries

When someone Googles your brand, what do they see? Your homepage? A competitor ad? A half-filled profile on a review site?

Not actively managing your branded search presence means giving up control of your first impression.

Go search your brand name right now.

You should see your site, social profiles, top content, third-party reviews, and, ideally, Google’s Knowledge Panel. If anything looks off, you’ve got work to do.

Google search results page for “NP Digital,” showing the company’s official website with sitelinks on the left and a knowledge panel on the right listing founders Neil Patel and Mike Kamo.

From there, tighten the basics.

Claim and optimize your listings on review platforms and business directories. Add schema markup to your site. Build out your brand’s presence on YouTube, LinkedIn, and other authoritative channels.

Don’t forget your core pages, either. 

Use your home and About pages to clearly state who you are, what you do, and why people should trust you. These pages often show up first in branded searches.

These searchers already know your name. Now your job is to make sure you look like the obvious choice.

2. Build E-E-A-T with Your Brand

Google rewards brands that demonstrate real experience and clear expertise. Those are the exact qualities E-E-A-T is built to measure.

So, how do you show that in search?

Start by putting a face to your brand. Make it visible in search. How? 

  • Add real authorship to your content. 
  • Use bios with credentials. 
  • Publish original data. 
  • Share customer stories that prove you’ve done the work.

Your About page matters, too. It tells both users and search engines why you’re credible.
That includes your track record, leadership team, certifications, and partnerships. These are all signals that support your SEO.

You can also strengthen E-E-A-T through off-site brand mentions. Even unlinked references from trusted sources help Google connect your brand to your niche.

If your brand is missing from expert conversations, you’re not getting full credit in search.

3. Generate Brand Mentions (Without Needing Links)

Google tracks brand mentions across the web, even when they aren’t linked. That includes product roundups, reviews, Reddit threads, and press coverage.

Google search results page for “reddit best white noise machine,” showing top results from Reddit threads in r/homeowners and r/BuyItForLife with product recommendations and user discussions.

These mentions act as trust signals. They show Google that your brand exists, has a reputation, and is relevant in your space.

Start by identifying the sites, creators, or communities that already talk about your niche. Then pitch them stories, data, tools, or quotes that tie back to your brand. You don’t need a backlink to make the mention count.

You can also earn mentions through original research, expert commentary, or sponsoring newsletters and industry events.

Track your results with a tool like Brandwatch, Mention, or Google Alerts. When you see new mentions, screenshot them. Use them in pitches. Mention them in your About page. They build credibility fast.

4. Use Content to Reinforce Brand Values

Your brand strategy isn’t what you say about yourself. It’s what people remember after reading, watching, or hearing from you.

Every piece of content sends a signal. Blog posts, product pages, even your FAQs: Each shapes how people see your brand and how search engines define it.

If your blog is friendly but your homepage sounds like legal copy, that disconnect hurts both trust and SEO. You want a consistent voice, message, and point of view across all channels.

That’s how you build long-term recognition. And it’s also how Google learns what your brand actually stands for.

The fix starts with content that reflects your values. Are you positioning yourself as an educator? A disrupter? A resource for beginners? That should come through clearly in your headlines, body copy, and calls to action. 

Take a look at NerdWallet’s homepage and recent blog.

NerdWallet homepage with green banner reading “The Nerds can find your next financial product in minutes,” featuring tabs for insurance, credit cards, mortgages, loans, and a section to enter a ZIP code for auto insurance quotes.
NerdWallet article discussing the job market, featuring commentary on “job hugging,” Bureau of Labor Statistics data on job openings and hires, and a section titled “The job struggle is real.”

NerdWallet leans hard into being a trusted guide. On the homepage, it’s all about making finance simple and approachable: “The Nerds can find your next financial product in minutes.” 

In the article, it’s about being relatable and human, explaining a tough job market with plain language, real data (and even a touch of humor).

Brand stories aren’t marketing fluff. They’re how you show what your business does, who it helps, and why it matters.

Common Mistakes That Hurt Brand SEO

Brand SEO breaks down when your signals don’t align. These aren’t technical SEO errors. They’re brand gaps. Good news, though: They’re fixable.

Here’s what weakens your visibility and trust in search:

1. Mixed or Inconsistent Messaging

I see this constantly: brands that sound corporate on their homepage, casual on social, and educational in their blog. Pick a voice and stick with it.

People notice. Google picks up on those mixed signals too. You lose credibility if your voice, offer, or positioning shifts depending on the platform.

2. Neglected Branded SERPs

If you’re not ranking for your own name or product terms, someone else will fill that gap.

Check your branded queries regularly. Do your homepage, social profiles, and About page show up? Do review sites outrank you?
Own your real estate by optimizing those pages and building out what’s missing. 

3. No Authorship or Trust Signals

Google wants to know who’s behind the content.

If your blog posts have no author bios or credentials, they look like filler. Add real names, real expertise, and clear reasons to trust the advice. These are key SEO trust signals. 

Here’s an example featuring NP Digital’s VP of SEO, Nikki Lam, who contributes thought leadership expertise to this blog:

Profile page of Nikki Lam, VP of SEO at NP Digital, featuring her photo on the right and a detailed bio on the left highlighting her work with major global brands, leadership of SEO strategy, and contributions to industry publications and events.

Author pages like this help reinforce transparency and authority, making your content harder to dismiss.

4. Lack of Off-Site Brand Presence

If your brand never shows up outside your own website, it creates a credibility gap for both search engines and users.

This usually happens when all your energy goes into content on your blog, but no one else is referencing your brand. That might be because you haven’t done outreach, you’re not sharing anything unique, or you’re not part of the conversations happening in your industry.

The fix doesn’t have to be overwhelming. 

Start small. You might share original insights or research on LinkedIn or pitch a quote to a roundup post. Or you could jump into relevant Reddit threads or sponsor a niche newsletter or event.

The goal is to get your brand name mentioned on trustworthy third-party sites, even if there’s no backlink.

FAQs

How do I improve brand awareness with SEO?

Start by creating helpful content that solves problems for your audience. Focus on long-tail keywords tied to your niche. From there, own your branded SERPs by optimizing your homepage, About page, and key product or service pages. And don’t stop with your own site: Build authority by earning mentions on trusted third-party sites, even without links.

How important is branding for SEO?

It’s bigger than most people realize. Google favors content from trusted, recognizable sources. A strong brand improves click-through rates, time on page, and off-site signals like mentions and reviews. All feed into your organic performance.

What is a brand mention for SEO?

A brand mention is any time your business is referenced online, even if there’s no hyperlink. This could be in a product roundup, blog post, news article, forum thread, or podcast transcript. Google can interpret these mentions as signals of authority and relevance. 

Conclusion

SEO has evolved beyond traffic generation. It’s how your brand earns visibility, trust, and authority across search and AI-driven platforms.

If you’re not showing up as the trusted choice in branded queries, featured snippets, AI overviews, or other AI-generated answers, someone else will.

Brand SEO helps you fix that. It gives you control over how your business appears, what people say about it, and whether Google sees you as credible.

Doing this well goes beyond technical fixes. It’s about your content strategy, review signals, authorship, off-site presence, and everything in between. It’s not optional if you want to grow.

You don’t build a brand by hoping people recognize your logo. You build it by showing up everywhere they look and giving them a reason to trust you.

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