How to Optimize Your Ecommerce Store for AI Search (7 Steps)

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More of your customers are using AI to research products before they buy. Are you prepared?

To put this into perspective:

Last year, you might’ve searched “best bed sheets” on Google and scrolled through a few links or a Shopping ad.

Google SERP – Best bed sheets

This year, you’re asking ChatGPT:

“I sleep hot and have sensitive skin. Can you recommend some breathable bed sheets that won’t irritate me?”

Totally different input. Totally different rules for showing up.

AI Search still cares about the fundamentals — content, crawlability, internal links, and high-quality backlinks. But now, your visibility is influenced by more than just your website.

AI models reflect the full picture:

  • What people say about your brand
  • Where you’re mentioned
  • How your product is reviewed

It’s not just keyword targeting — it’s relevance engineering.

Shoutout to Mike King @ iPullRank for coining this term.

That’s where AI Search Optimization comes in.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

  • Make your product pages visible and understandable to LLMs
  • Structure your data with schema and product feeds
  • Submit your catalog to AI search platforms
  • Shift from keyword targeting to prompts and personas
  • Build an AI-friendly brand presence across the web
  • Track your visibility in a probabilistic, answer-first world

The future of ecommerce search isn’t about rankings. It’s about being part of the answer. This guide will show you how.

Step 1: Make Your PDPs Crawlable and Renderable

Before you do anything, start here: can bots actually see your product content?

When people started taking AI tools and chatbots seriously in 2022/23, some site owners turned to blocking their crawlers from accessing their site.

But if you block the crawler, it won’t be able to serve your pages in its responses.

Don’t Block AI Crawlers in Your Robots.txt File

Unless you actively took the step to block them, you shouldn’t need to do anything here. But it’s still worth verifying there are no lines in your robots.txt file like:

code icon
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Don’t Serve Important Content Using JavaScript

The other aspect of crawlability to consider is how you’re serving your content.

Because right now, bots from the likes of ChatGPT and Perplexity do not appear to process JavaScript (although Google’s Gemini can). If your content is being loaded dynamically, they’re likely missing it completely.

That includes:

  • Product descriptions
  • Pricing
  • Images
  • Schema markup

If it’s not in the raw HTML, LLMs like these can’t see it. And if they can’t see it, you won’t show up in AI-generated product recommendations.

To make sure you’re not causing crawling issues here, you first need to understand how your ecommerce platform handles JavaScript. Every platform is different:

  • Shopify: Generally fine, but watch out for third-party apps injecting schema or content via JS.
  • WooCommerce: Depends heavily on your theme. Many use plugins that load parts of the page with JS.
  • Custom stacks: If you’re using React, Vue, or similar frameworks, check whether product pages render server-side or after load.

Next, check your PDPs manually. You can do this by right-clicking and selecting “Inspect” in your browser.

Nike – Inspecting page

Then press Command+Shift+P on Mac, or Control+Shift+P on Windows/Linux.

In the Command Menu, start typing “javascript” and then select “Disable JavaScript”:

Inspect – Disable JavaScript

Reload the page, and you’ll see how it looks without JavaScript enabled — in other words, how LLMs like ChatGPT see the page:

Nike page without JavaScript enabled

In the Nike example above, the LLM would still see key info like the product title, description, and price.

But in the example below…

Nothing appears with JavaScript disabled

…it would see nothing.

You can see on the right that there’s still page code loading. But nothing is actually displayed to the user with JavaScript disabled. Meaning AI tools wouldn’t be able to pull any info from this page.

If you are using apps or components that rely on JavaScript to display key content, talk to your dev team about server-side rendering (SSR) or prerendering. The goal is to ensure all critical product info is delivered in the first HTML response.

Further reading: What Is JavaScript SEO? 6 Best Practices to Boost Rankings

Step 2: Add Structured Schema Markup

Once your product pages are crawlable, the next step is making them understandable.

Structured data — specifically Schema.org markup in JSON-LD format — helps systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google understand what your product is, how much it costs, whether it’s in stock, and more.

In the world of SEO, we’ve long used schema markup to improve how our pages appear in traditional search results.

Here’s an example of a traditional Google results enhanced with schema markup, appearing as a rich snippets:

Review rich snippet

But for LLM visibility, schema helps the AI tools understand key details about your products. Which makes it easier for them to pull in your products when they’re making recommendations for users.

How do we know this?

Because Microsoft has told us. The tech giant, a major investor in OpenAI (behind ChatGPT), said:

“[Structured data] makes it easier for search engines not only to index your content, but to surface it accurately and richly in search results, shopping experiences, and AI-driven assistants.”

(Interestingly, Microsoft/Bing recommends combining this with IndexNow — a service that automatically pings search engines when you update your content.)

Plus, using structured data just makes sense — it helps make it easier for complex machines to understand our content. Whether that’s a search engine or an LLM, providing more context is generally always going to be a good idea.

Here’s how to use structured data to improve your ecommerce store’s LLM visibility:

Focus on Product Pages First

While there’s value in marking up other templates (like category pages, blog posts, or FAQs), your product pages are where it counts most.

This is the data that LLMs and search engines will use to:

  • Associate your product with relevant categories and attributes
  • Match your offering to long-tail purchase prompts
  • Feed structured knowledge into their product and shopping systems

Here are the fields to include:

  • @type: Product
  • GTIN, SKU, MPN
  • Brand
  • Description
  • Offer block (price, currency, availability, URL)
  • Review/rating info if available

Use your schema to reflect reality, not just fill fields. But also add as much context as you can.

If your product is eco-friendly, US-made, sweatproof — encode it. The better your markup, the more context LLMs have to surface your product in nuanced prompts.

Validate Your Schema and Confirm It’s Visible

Check your schema is valid with tools like:

Nike Schema Validator Result

Make sure the schema is present in the raw HTML — not loaded with JavaScript.

Bonus: Extend to Reviews, FAQs, HowTo

Once your product markup is solid, consider adding:

  • Review and AggregateRating blocks
  • FAQPage markup for your PDPs or Help Center
  • HowTo schema for tutorial content or sharing post-purchase use cases

These all help build context around your product and can influence how LLMs present or recommend it.

Once you’ve marked up your product pages, the next step is scaling an effective structure across your entire catalog. That’s where a high-quality product feed comes in.

Step 3: Build a High-Quality Product Feed

Structured feeds have been essential for Google Shopping, Meta Advantage+, and TikTok Shop for a while.

And now, they’re becoming equally important for AI-powered discovery. Especially as platforms like Perplexity and OpenAI build out product recommendation systems.

Think of your feed as the dataset LLMs will eventually pull from when answering questions like this:

ChatGPT – Bed sheets – Verified reviews

Perplexity has launched a Merchant Program accepting feed uploads, called the Perplexity Merchant Program. This lets ecommerce sellers have even more control over how their products can appear in AI responses.

Plus, OpenAI is quietly testing ways to let store owners upload feeds to improve their AI responses for product recommendations.

These feeds will likely drive future AI shopping experiences across chat, search, and even voice interfaces.

So how do you set your product feeds up in an LLM-friendly way?

What to Include

To optimize your product feeds for AI, start with the essentials:

  • Product title
  • Description
  • Price
  • Availability
  • Product URL
  • GTIN or MPN + Brand
  • Image URL

Note: Tools like ChatGPT may still generate their own versions of some of these (like titles). But it’ll still typically use information from places like your product feeds to inform its responses.

After you’ve added the basics, layer in high-value fields like:

  • Category or taxonomy
  • Color, material, and size variants
  • Shipping cost and speed
  • Review count and star rating
  • Custom labels for campaigns or segmentation

Use the same language your customers use.

This means writing product information the way your customers actually talk and search, not how your internal teams or suppliers describe things. For example:

Instead of:

“Athletic footwear with moisture-wicking synthetic upper”

Write:

“Running shoes that keep your feet dry”

How do you find out how they talk?

Look at your customer reviews, support tickets, and search queries that already drive traffic to your store.

For example, they might search for “cozy sweater” not “knitted pullover.” This can inform your title and description choices.

How to Submit Product Feeds to LLMs

Here’s how to submit your product feeds for three of the biggest AI interfaces.

Perplexity:

In 2024, Perplexity launched their Merchant Program. This fuels the platform’s shopping experience for Pro users. Your products may appear in carousel-style answers and shopping-focused prompts, and shoppers can buy without leaving Perplexity.

You can find out more about the program and sign up here.

OpenAI (ChatGPT):

OpenAI is piloting product discovery via ChatGPT’s “Search + Product Discovery” initiative. They’re exploring using uploaded feeds to power future buying experiences inside ChatGP.

Fill out this interest form to apply.

Google Merchant Center (AI Mode and Gemini):

Google’s Merchant Center feeds power Shopping Ads, organic Shopping listings, and likely influence how Google’s AI systems interpret and surface your products in AI Mode and AI Overviews.

Step 4: Monitor LLM Crawlers

Once you’ve put all the steps in place to make your ecommerce store crawlable by LLMs, the next step is to make sure they’re actually accessing your content and product pages.

Here’s how to do that:

Set Up Bot Monitoring

Use server logs or your CDN (like Cloudflare, Fastly, or Akamai) to track requests from:

  • GPTBot: This user agent is used by OpenAI to crawl web content that may be used in training their generative AI foundation models.
  • OAI-SearchBot: Used by OpenAI to link to and surface websites in search results in ChatGPT’s search features.
  • PerplexityBot: Identifies Perplexity’s AI search crawler when it accesses websites.
  • Google uses various Googlebot user agents to crawl the web, depending on the type of content being crawled (e.g., desktop, mobile, images). You can find a detailed list of common Googlebot user agent strings and their purposes in resources from Google for Developers.

Cloudflare – AI audit – Samrhea

For each of these bots, track:

  • Which pages they’re crawling (PDPs, collection pages, sitemap, feed)
  • How often they come back
  • How crawl patterns evolve over time

This helps confirm they’re discovering your content and gives you a baseline to measure progress.

Step 5: Shift from Keyword Lists to Prompts and Personas

Keyword research is still important. But you also need to think about how your customers are likely to prompt AI tools when looking for products like yours.

LLMs answer questions, interpret context, and make recommendations based on how people naturally speak.

That means you need to rethink how you optimize for product discovery. Not by keywords alone, but by personas, use cases, and prompt formats.

Start With What You Know

Your best-performing SEO and paid search keywords are still the foundation. They tell you:

  • Which products and categories convert
  • How people describe their intent in short-form searches
  • Which attributes drive action (e.g., “cooling sheets,” “queen size,” “organic cotton”)

Use these to anchor your prompt strategy — but expand outward.

Think in Prompts, Not Just Queries

As people become more savvy with how AI tools work, more and more shoppers are going beyond just typing in “best bed sheets.” They’re asking:

Medium-length prompts:

  • “Best cooling sheets for hot sleepers”
  • “Softest bed sheets under $100”
  • “What kind of sheets stay on the bed all night?”

Longer, context-rich prompts:

  • “I’m a side sleeper who gets hot at night. What bed sheets will stay cool and not cling to my skin?”
  • “Looking for breathable, hypoallergenic sheets that work well in humid climates”
  • “I have sensitive skin and eczema. What’s a good sheet material that won’t irritate me?”

Your goal is to build context around your products that lines up with this kind of language and framing.

Note: You can’t predict exactly what your customers will ask, and there are infinite ways they can do it. But thinking about prompts — not just keywords — will put you in a good place to be able to optimize your ecommerce pages for LLMs.

Map Your Catalog to Prompt-Based Use Cases

Think in layers:

  • By need: cooling, breathable, wrinkle-resistant, organic
  • By persona: hot sleeper, allergy sufferer, luxury buyer, college student
  • By situation: new apartment, guest bedroom, summer refresh, wedding registry
  • By problem: sheets come loose, feel scratchy, trap heat, shrink in the wash

This is how you start to think of your items like answers and solutions, not just products.

Use These Prompts to Guide Content and Merchandising

Let this prompt structure inform your:

  • Product page copy and comparison points
  • Blog posts and videos
  • Social media posts
  • FAQs and Help Center content
  • Category names and filters
  • Product feed descriptions and attributes

LLMs can pull from all of it — so make sure you’re using the kind of language your real customers use everywhere.

Step 6: Seed Your Brand Across the Web

Even if your site is crawlable, your schema is perfect, and your feed is super optimized — LLMs still learn about your brand based on what people are saying about you elsewhere.

They’re trained on massive web-scale datasets, so third-party content — like reviews, Reddit mentions, YouTube transcripts, forums, blog posts — can carry as much (or more) weight than your owned channels.

If you want to show up in AI answers, your brand needs to already exist in the wider conversation.

Where You Want to Show Up

AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude all lean on third-party review sites and forums in their answers to brand and product-related queries.

ChatGPT – Bed sheets – Forum citations

These are the places you’ll want to show up in order to be included in those answers:

  • Review sites: Trustpilot, Amazon, Google Reviews, BBB, niche review sites
  • Reddit, Quora, & niche forums: Participate in threads and subtly seed your product category (without being spammy)
  • YouTube: Appear in titles, transcripts, and product comparisons — even if you’re not the creator (consider partnering with creators to do this)
  • Affiliate content: Get included in roundups, listicles, and side-by-side comparisons

Showing up in these places is half the battle. The other component is how you show up.

Ideally, you’ll want to be mentioned alongside competitors (“like Brooklinen but…”). And in the right, relevant context (“these are some of the best cooling sheets for eczema”).

A lot of this is going to be completely out of your control (especially on platforms like Reddit). But good marketing practices can make it more likely that people will naturally talk about your brand in the way you want them to.

This Is Just Good Marketing

Gaining LLM visibility is a byproduct of an effective multichannel marketing strategy.

If you’re running a strong content program, building brand awareness, and actively participating in your category — you’re already seeding relevance.

What’s new is the urgency: LLMs are already using these signals to decide which brands deserve to be recommended.

Related: See our LLM Seeding Playbook for tactics, templates, and outreach strategies.

Step 7: Track Your AI Search Visibility

In traditional SEO, visibility was deterministic: rank #1 for a keyword, get X% of clicks.

That model is breaking.

AI-powered discovery works differently. Your brand might appear in one version of a response, but not the next.

Whether your ecommerce store is included depends on how the user phrases their prompt, how much brand recognition you have, and how often you’re referenced across the web.

So, your measurement strategy needs to adapt.

What to Track

Start by building a prompt library — real questions your customers might ask:

  • Organize prompts by topic (e.g., cooling sheets, organic materials, luxury bedding)
  • Group them by persona (e.g., hot sleepers, allergy sufferers, budget-conscious buyers)
  • Then choose a tool to test visibility: like Semrush AI SEO Toolkit, Peec.AI, or Profound

Here’s how it looks in Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit:

Semrush AI Toolkit – Questions

For each prompt, ask:

  • Does your brand show up?
  • If not, who does?
  • What sources are the tools citing?
  • What kind of language are the tools using?

Over time, this gives you a clearer picture of how visible your brand is across different use cases.

LLM Optimization Is Still New, But It’s Gaining Traction Fast

AI-driven search is already reshaping how people discover products. The shift is subtle now, but it won’t stay that way for long.

What used to be a clear SEO vs. paid search strategy is now blending into a broader question:

When someone asks a smart machine what to buy… will it know you exist?

This guide gave you a playbook to start answering that question:

  • Clean up your technical foundation (crawlability, schema, product feeds)
  • Rethink your discovery strategy around prompts and personas
  • Show up across the web in ways that reinforce what makes your brand unique

It’s a lot. But the good news?

If you’ve already invested in great products, strong messaging, and a multi-channel strategy, you’re not starting from scratch.

Still need help nailing the fundamentals?

Check out these guides:

The post How to Optimize Your Ecommerce Store for AI Search (7 Steps) appeared first on Backlinko.

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5 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress (Tried & Tested)

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You don’t need an SEO plugin to help your website rank in Google.

In fact, you can do more harm than good if you don’t know what you’re doing with them.

But:

They can make optimizing your website a whole lot easier if you do use them correctly.

We’re talking:

  • Faster page speeds
  • Better optimized content
  • Fewer technical SEO issues

All without touching any code.

So how do you choose which plugin to use? Can you use more than one?

And the big one — should you use Yoast or Rank Math?

You’ll get the answers to these burning questions below.

But first, here’s the tl;dr on the best SEO plugins for WordPress:

Best for Pricing
Rank Math Beginners looking for an all-in-one solution Free version available; Pro plans start at $7.99/month, billed annually
Yoast SEO Anyone in need of guided SEO setup and writing support Free version available; Premium starts at $99/year
WP Rocket Improving site speed and Core Web Vitals $59/year for one site
The SEO Framework Handling essentials with minimalist features Free; paid versions for more sites from $7/month billed annually
Semrush SEO Writing Assistant Writing better SEO content Free; increased usage with a Semrush subscription

Note: We’ve stuck with plugins that can directly improve your SEO. You won’t see analytics plugins like Monster Insights or external keyword generators on this list. These are useful tools in their own right — but they’re not true SEO plugins.

1. Rank Math

Best all-in-one SEO plugin for new WordPress sites

Pricing: Free version available; Pro plans start at $7.99/month billed annually

Rank Math SEO – Dashboard

Rank Math has pretty much everything you need in an SEO plugin. If you’re new to SEO, it’ll handle all the important stuff for you, including:

  • Content optimization
  • Image SEO
  • Internal and external linking
  • Local SEO
  • Schema markup
  • Sitemaps
  • Redirects

And way more.

It’s actually the go-to recommendation from our own Head of SEO, Leigh McKenzie:

“Rank Math is my no. 1 choice across the board. For any site starting from scratch, I’d always recommend Rank Math first.”

Let’s go through some of the features behind his recommendation:

Manage Metadata and Social Previews

Starting with the basics, Rank Math lets you manage your page’s SEO title, meta description, and how it appears on social media — right within the post editor:

Rank Math SEO – TTT – Preview Snippet Editor

It also lets you preview what the post will look like when you share it on Facebook and X/Twitter:

Rank Math SEO – TTT – Preview Snippet Editor – Social

This gives you more control over how your content looks in SERPs and social feeds.

It’s a pretty rudimentary feature, and hardly one that separates it from the likes of Yoast below when taken in isolation.

But how your social content looks can have a big impact on the engagement your posts get — and how many people click through to read your content. So it’s a useful feature for those looking to share their content beyond their blog.

Get SEO Suggestions as You Write

Rank Math also gives you SEO guidance as you’re creating your content in the WordPress editor. Like having your own SEO assistant you can call on as you write.

Rank Math SEO – SEO Assistant

It’ll highlight things like missing focus keywords in your meta description, intro, and throughout your content.

But honestly? I never use this feature.

So why am I calling it out here?

Because when you’re just starting out creating SEO content, it’s actually super helpful for keeping you on track.

Sure, once you’re familiar with the basics of content optimization, you’ll do all of this naturally. But as a beginner, this gentle guidance can help you learn faster (and create better optimized content in the process).

Plus, you can click “Fix with AI” to generate a suggestion and save time on the small changes.

Rank Math SEO – Content AI – Snippet Editor

It’s not going to be perfect. But for a one-click, two-second job?

I’ll happily use this, because it speeds up optimization.

Plus, you can tweak or regenerate the output anyway, so it’s useful as a starting point.

Broken Links and Redirects

Rank Math flags broken links on your site using its built-in 404 Monitor.

Rank Math SEO – 404 Monitor

You can then set up a redirect right from the dashboard:

Rank Math SEO – Redirect from dashboard

This feature keeps your internal links working. It ensures you’re passing authority between your pages and that you’re offering a good user experience.

It also reduces plugin bloat as you don’t need a separate plugin to handle broken links.

The fact the free version of the plugin comes with built-in redirection capabilities is a massive win in my book.

I’ve personally leaned on this particular part of the plugin heavily multiple times.

Firstly, it’s great for just quickly setting up redirects when you change the URL of a post (it even does this automatically).

Rank Math SEO – SEO Notice

But you can also set it up to move entire categories of posts or pages through the filters.

Just choose “contains” and you’ll be able to move all your content from /old-path/page to /new-path/page without your users even noticing — and without any hassle on your end.

Rank Math SEO – Redirect contains

I don’t see enough people praising Rank Math for the redirect functionality. But honestly it’s a lifesaver.

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

Rank Math clearly has a lot of features, which is great. But it can also feel overwhelming at first. That’s just the nature of any “all-in-one” style plugin.

However, once you know where things are and what you need, it’s fairly easy to navigate.

Also, on the content improvement side of things, readability feedback is pretty limited. It checks basic things like paragraph length and image use. But it won’t help you improve sentence structure or tone.

Rank Math SEO – Title & Content readabillity

(If you need more focus on that, check out the fifth plugin on this list.)

But overall, these drawbacks are pretty minor. Rank Math is still our number one recommendation if you need an SEO plugin.

2. Yoast SEO

Best for beginners who want step-by-step SEO guidance inside WordPress

Pricing: Free version available; Premium starts at $99/year

Yoast SEO – Dashboard

Yoast SEO is probably the first plugin you came across when you started looking into WordPress SEO. And for good reason — it’s installed on 10+ million sites and has around 26K five-star reviews.

It’s been around for so long and has such a clear purpose that its WordPress plugin directory URL path is literally just “/wordpress-seo/”:

Wordpress Plugin Directory URL

It’s the second of the “big two” WordPress SEO plugins alongside RankMath, and it’s worth addressing why we put it second before we get into the details of the plugin itself.

In summary: We usually recommend Rank Math for a first-time WordPress site owner. It’s packed with features, and its free version has the edge over Yoast in a few areas. These include redirects, multiple focus keywords per post, and more extensive schema markup options.

But Yoast is pretty evenly matched in a lot of ways. Especially if you opt for the paid version.

In fact, this is the specific SEO plugin we use for Backlinko.

Yoast SEO – Ste features

My personal recommendation is to try them both (separately) and see which one works best for you.

Note: Don’t use them both at the same time, as running multiple all-in-one SEO plugins on the same site can lead to compatibility issues.

Okay, now let’s go through what I like most about the Yoast SEO plugin:

Optimize Search and Social Previews

Like Rank Math, Yoast helps you optimize how your content appears both in search results and on social media.

You can easily update your SEO title, meta description, and URL slug for every page or post:

Yoast SEO – Optimize your content

You also get a live preview of how your content will appear in Google search results and on socials.

It’s very similar to Rank Math in this respect. But I wanted to call it out here anyway as it’s some fairly fundamental functionality for a WordPress SEO plugin.

Get Real-Time SEO and Readability Feedback

Yoast analyzes your SEO as you write, using a simple green/orange/red traffic light system.

Green means you’re following best practices, while orange suggests there’s room for improvement. Red highlights critical issues you should prioritize.

Yoast SEO – SEO Analysis section

Each suggestion is actionable, helping you easily optimize your pages, even if you’re new to SEO.

Yoast also gives you a detailed breakdown of your content’s readability.

You’ll see checks for things like passive voice, sentence length, and consecutive sentence starters. In this respect, it does offer a bit more than Rank Math.

Yoast SEO – Readability Analysis section

My advice: Don’t chase all the green lights thinking it’ll help you rank. Content quality and value for the reader matter far more than hitting a certain percentage or score.

However, Yoast’s feedback does help you spot common issues and make your writing clearer for both users and search engines.

Like I said in the Rank Math section, I don’t personally use these features. But beginner me found himself looking to them quite a lot for basic guidance.

Manage XML Sitemaps

Yoast creates a dynamic XML sitemap for your site and updates it as you publish new content.

Here’s what it looks like for Backlinko:

Yoast – Sitemap

This is a basic but very useful feature (Rank Math does this too).

Just make sure to submit your sitemap URL to Google Search Console. This helps Google discover and index your content.

Further reading: Top 8 Sitemap Generator Tools in 2025 (Free & Premium)

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

Yoast’s SEO scoring system can feel rigid. For example, you might get flagged for not using your main keyword in the first sentence even if it doesn’t fit there naturally.

And I’ll often see site owners that are new to SEO sticking too closely to these guidelines and creating pretty mediocre content as a result.

But if you treat the feedback as guidance, not strict rules, Yoast can still be a helpful way to catch easy-to-miss issues.

Further reading: Learn more about the plugin with our full Yoast SEO guide.

A word on a few alternatives before I move on:

The all-in-one SEO plugin market is dominated by Yoast and Rank Math. But another big player we can’t forget to mention is aptly named All in One SEO (AISEO).

AISEO – Homepage

It does a lot of the same stuff as the other two, but they just do it better. It’s missing key free features like redirects, and it can get pricey if you want to use it on several sites.

Like I said earlier though, you should try these plugins out for yourself if you’re struggling to choose. The free options are more than enough in most cases, and they’ll give you a taste of what to expect should you want to commit to a paid option.

FYI: I don’t personally pay for any SEO plugins besides WP Rocket (more on that next). But we do use Yoast Premium on Backlinko and Rank Math Pro on Traffic Think Tank.

3. WP Rocket

Best for improving your website speed without needing a developer

Pricing: $59/year for one website, $119/year for three websites

WP Rocket – Dashboard

WP Rocket is probably my favorite of all the plugins on this list, even if it’s not technically the best overall. It’s a performance plugin designed to speed up WordPress websites. That’s all it aims to do, and boy does it succeed.

I run a somewhat well optimized site, and here’s how it looks in PageSpeed Insights without WP Rocket installed:

PageSpeed Insights – Web with no WP Rocket installed

After installing the plugin and turning on the most important features, here’s how it looks:

PageSpeed Insights – Web with installed WP Rocket

Let’s just pause on those numbers for a second:

  • 20 point increase in overall performance score
  • 2.1 second improvement in first contentful paint
  • 30 ms to 0 ms total blocking time
  • 2.8 second improvement in largest contentful paint

Again, it’s a decent baseline to begin with. But WP Rocket improves my site performance in ways I otherwise can’t manage on a site that’s quite heavy on the Elementor elements.

That’s an important point in itself: you 100% can make your site run fast without SEO plugins like WP Rocket.

But you will need to make sacrifices unless you’re an experienced developer (which I am not).

So if you also want to improve your site speed without digging into the code or harming your UX, here’s why you should consider WP Rocket:

Caching Made Simple

WP Rocket makes performance optimization easy. For example, I didn’t have to touch a single setting for the caching features to kick in, and you can clear your cache at the touch of a button:

WP Rocket – Cache option

This is a feature some WordPress hosts and other plugins offer (my own web host does, for example). But I like WP Rocket’s because it’s easy to do within a dashboard that also does so much more.

For a non-developer like me, this kind of out-of-the-box performance boost is extremely useful.

File Optimization

You can also dig into advanced settings to minify your CSS and JavaScript, optimize images and fonts, and connect to a CDN.

WP Rocket – File Optimization

These tweaks can cut load time, reduce file sizes, and can even improve Core Web Vitals. In other words, they can have a major impact on your site speed.

(And as someone with no coding experience, there’s no way I could do any of this without a plugin.)

Now for the second and only other feature on this list that I’ll describe with the phrase “life saver”:

It comes with one-click exclusions for popular tools like Google Analytics, AdSense, and Stripe, along with other WordPress plugins, like Elementor:

WP Rocket – Delay JavaScript execution

That means you’re less likely to break your tracking, ads, payment processing, or UX while optimizing. Which, believe me, is easy (and frustrating) to do.

And you don’t need to dig through documentation to figure out what to exclude.

You can also create custom exclusions, and these are handy if you do know what’s causing issues.

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

Some layout elements may break if you enable file optimization without adding exclusions. In my case, my Elementor post cards got distorted. But excluding the right files fixed it.

WP Rocket – Verify CSS files

(Finding the right files to exclude took me a lot of trial and error, but your mileage may vary.)

The settings can also feel pretty technical if you’re not a web developer. I had to Google a lot before knowing what to toggle.

However, WP Rocket’s help center docs were solid. And once everything was dialed in, my site’s performance improved significantly. (Again, see the screenshots at the start of this section.)

Free alternative: When I first started playing around with WordPress websites, I used Autoptimize for a lot of the things WP Rocket does.

WP Rocket – Autoptimize Settings

It’s not as extensive when you use the free version, but it’ll get you a meaningful chunk of the way there if site speed is a big concern for you.

Plus, I still run this on a few of my lower priority sites when I just want to tick the main performance boxes.

4. The SEO Framework

Best lightweight, minimalist SEO plugin

Pricing: Free; paid plans start at $7/month (paid yearly)

The SEO Framework – Settings

The SEO Framework is a free and lightweight plugin for WordPress that quietly handles the SEO essentials.

It’s no Rank Math or Yoast, but it will still do a lot of the most important things for you.

This plugin is popular among developers for a reason. It runs fast, doesn’t clutter your dashboard, and avoids the “all-in-one” bloat you get with other SEO plugins.

Here’s what you get with the SEO Framework plugin:

Get Instant SEO Feedback

One of the SEO Framework’s most helpful features is the plugin’s color-coded SEO bar. This gives you a quick visual of how well optimized your pages are.

The SEO Framework – Most helpful features

At first, the labels can look a bit cryptic.

But once you hover over them, they explain what’s working and what needs improvement.

For example, the plugin flagged my meta title as “far too short” and noted that it was automatically generated from the page title. (At least I assume that’s what the “TG” means.)

It explained that the title lacked information, which helped me understand I’d need to customize it to improve its SEO performance.

The SEO Framework – Title lack information

Honestly, I’d maybe like a little more specific detail here. It’s not clear what “more information” it means. But it does make it easy to do a high-level audit of your content optimization without opening each page.

If it flags your title or description, you can open the page editor and tweak the meta fields directly to optimize them:

The SEO Framework – SEO Description

The SEO Framework also shows each page’s indexing status. If a page is indexed, it appears in green. If there’s an indexing issue, it tells you exactly what’s wrong.

In my case, it showed that all my published pages were indexed correctly. And a few unpublished ones were flagged, as expected:

The SEO Framework – Invisible Page

Obviously it’s not going to be as in-depth as Google Search Console. But it’s a useful at-a-glance overview of your overall indexing status.

Automate SEO Title and Meta Description Generation

Once you find titles and meta descriptions to optimize, the SEO Framework automatically generates meta them based on your content.

The SEO Framework – Generated Title

But you can still tweak auto-generated meta elements to add more value as needed.

The SEO Framework – Tweak auto-generated meta elements

That’s it, that’s the feature.

It’s nothing fancy, and it’s not always perfect. But for a lightweight SEO plugin, this is a great timesaver.

You can also control how your page appears on social media. You can even add a custom image for Facebook or X:

The SEO Framework – Social

If you like this functionality of the likes of Yoast and Rank Math but don’t need all the extra features, the SEO Framework plugin could be all you need.

Simple Base Plugin with Room to Expand

The SEO Framework is intentionally minimal to be fast, lightweight, and free of unnecessary extras. That makes it a great choice if you’re looking for something that won’t slow your site down or overwhelm you with options.

And if you ever need additional features, like schema markup, third-party connections, or local SEO support, you can always install them as separate extensions.

The SEO Framework – Extensions

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

The SEO Framework is lightweight, which means it’s also feature-light. It has the basics, but it won’t cover everything for you.

To get a bit pickier, I noticed that when I try to edit an automatically generated SEO title or meta description, the entire field clears as soon as I click it.

That means I can’t just tweak a few words. I have to retype the whole thing from scratch. It would be a smoother experience if I could simply edit the existing text in place.

But the fact this is such a small and specific issue is testament to just how good the plugin is.

5. Semrush SEO Writing Assistant

Best for optimizing your content for search right inside the WordPress editor

Pricing: Free, but you can optimize more content with an active Semrush subscription

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant

Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant helps you optimize content as you write it inside the WordPress editor. It’s not an all-in-one solution, and is purely content-focused.

It works by pulling recommendations from your target keyword and analyzing your draft in real time for SEO, readability, tone of voice, and originality.

Let’s take a look at my favorite features of the plugin:

Optimize Your Readability

Semrush calls out exactly what you need to fix to improve your content’s readability, including:

  • Sentences that are hard to read
  • Suggestions to use active voice
  • Specific words to swap for simpler alternatives

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant – Optimize readability

This is super useful if you want to make your content easier to understand and more engaging.

Improve Your On-Page SEO

The plugin also provides clear on-page SEO recommendations based on your target keywords.

At the top of the panel, it shows whether you’ve used your main keywords effectively.

When I created the blog post in the example below, I entered two main keywords: “content marketing” and “content marketing for small businesses.”

Since I used both naturally throughout the article, Semrush marked them green:

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant – Marked main keywords

But below that, it suggests semantically related keywords based on content that’s already ranking well for these terms. As you include those terms, they turn green too:

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant – Recommended keywords

This is where the Semrush plugin goes a step further than the likes of Yoast. It leverages Semrush’s data to give you a helpful way to improve your topical depth based on what’s already ranking — which is a key part of building topical authority.

Why does this matter?

Because search engines like Google are good at recognizing when a piece of content truly covers the topic in depth — rather than just using the target keyword a bunch of times.

When you include related terms, you’re showing Google that your content is contextually relevant and comprehensive.

Analyze Your Tone of Voice

Wondering what your content actually sounds like from a reader’s perspective?

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant shows whether your writing comes across as casual, formal, or somewhere in between. And whether your tone stays consistent throughout the post.

For example, it labeled my draft as “Neutral” with 95% tone consistency:

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant – Readers perspective

That’s a helpful signal that the post flows well without jumping between writing styles.

That said, don’t let the score alone inform your edits. Instead, use it as a signal to evaluate your writing with fresh eyes and ask:

“Does this sound like me/my brand?”

It also pointed out a few phrases that sounded slightly off-brand. It then suggested alternatives to smooth them out:

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant – Suggested alternatives

They’re not always perfect suggestions, but it’s useful if you’re writing for a specific brand voice and want to keep it consistent across all your articles.

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is not a comprehensive SEO plugin. It focuses on optimizing content for search engines and doesn’t replace Yoast or Rank Math.

So, it’s best to use it in combination with other SEO plugins.

Note: Try this plugin along with more tools to improve your SEO with a 14-day trial on a Semrush Pro subscription.

Ready to Choose the Right SEO Plugin for Your Website?

The right SEO plugin can massively improve your WordPress website’s performance.

But it’s also important to set clear expectations.

These tools help you optimize. They don’t rank content for you.

To actually improve your visibility in search, you need to publish great content, improve your site’s performance, and cover the basics of SEO.

So, what should you do next?

Start with our complete SEO checklist to make sure your site is fully optimized for search.

The post 5 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress (Tried & Tested) appeared first on Backlinko.

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Branded GEO: How to Control What AI Says About Your Brand

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A few months back, one of my clients pinged me on Slack and said:

“We keep hearing on sales calls that ChatGPT says we don’t offer a feature we’ve had for years! How can we fix this?”

Sure enough, when prompted, ChatGPT confidently responded, “No, the platform does not have that feature, but this other competitor does!”.

For obvious reasons, this was worrying for the client.

Not only was ChatGPT spreading misinformation about their product, it was actively pitching an alternative solution.

The source of the misinformation: A single old blog post that hadn’t been updated in two years.

How many potential buyers decided not to book a sales call because of this?

How many had discovered a new competitor instead?

This issue signals a large shift in how bottom-of-funnel product research is done.

Before: Your website was the source of truth.

It was your “always on” salesperson. You kept your homepage and product pages fresh, and that was where buyers did their digging.

Now: Large language models (LLMs) are a product research assistant. A new touchpoint at a critical stage in the buying journey.

They’re the modern day gatekeepers, acting as the layer between you and your target audience, communicating on your behalf.

And their source of info? It’s often sources you’d forgotten even existed.

As marketers, it falls to us to make sure LLMs are communicating the right things in the right way about our products and services.

In this article, I’ll show you the 7-step playbook my team is developing to tackle this challenge — what we’re calling Branded Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

Free resource: For step 6, we’ve created a handy spreadsheet to help you ideate common questions. Download it here.

What is Branded GEO?

Branded GEO is the process of making sure conversational AIs and LLMs give accurate, helpful, and up-to-date answers about your brand. It focuses on branded prompts and queries.

This targets a highly valuable audience segment, including those who are:

  • In the market to buy a solution or service like yours
  • Already know you are a viable option and are exploring your offer

This segment is showing the highest intent — they’re asking questions about your product, and they’re using your brand name in their prompts.

Like branded SEO, branded GEO is easier to influence. It’s more actionable than trying to optimize for broad industry queries. For that reason, it’s a fantastic starting point if you want to explore GEO.

Note: Generative engine optimization is the broader practice of optimizing for AI-powered search systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews. Branded GEO is a specific subset focused on branded queries.

For the following exercise, I’ll use ChatGPT as the LLM and the B2B SaaS product, Airtable, as an example.

Airtable has recently undergone some serious positioning and product pivots, so it illustrates the new challenges of branded GEO.

Let’s start with a quick setup.

Step 1: Set Up Your LLM

Head to ChatGPT and turn on temporary mode. This avoids any personalization skewing your results.

ChatGPT – Temporary Chat

Also turn on the “search” feature — this ensures ChatGPT is accessing information after June 2024 when it was last trained.

This is currently the data we can influence.

Step 2: Enter Your First Branded Prompt

Next, prompt ChatGPT with a simple question: “What is [your brand name]?”.

Here are the results for Airtable:

ChatGPT – What is Airtable

Step 3: Analyze the Response

Pay attention to how ChatGPT describes your product and company.

Is it accurate? Is it how you would describe your company?

Or do things need to change?

With Airtable, we see what must be a frustrating situation playing out.

Airtable pivoted in June 2025, shifting away from their “super powerful spreadsheet” positioning and relaunching as an:

“AI-native app platform, where the magic of vibe coding meets enterprise reliability and the scalability of AI agents”.

That’s quite the change. And ChatGPT hasn’t caught up yet.

Here’s how Airtable positions themselves versus how ChatGPT does:

How Airtable describes themselves How ChatGPT describes Airtable
Website: “Next gen app building platform” “cloud-based, no-code platform”
Website: “Deploy thousands of agents inside your apps” “simplicity of a spreadsheet with the power of a relational database”
Homepage meta title: “AI App Building for Enterprise” “hybrid spreadsheet‑database”
LinkedIn page: “AI-Native App Platform” Common use cases: “Project management”

Luckily, most readers are unlikely to see such a drastic mismatch.

But at the current rate of technological innovation, almost all companies are undergoing continuous reinvention, and so you are likely to find outdated features and positioning.

Step 4: Find the Source of Misinformation

In this step, we start to tackle the misinformation by looking for its source.

We usually find that ChatGPT has sourced its information from:

  • An outdated article
  • A LinkedIn page that hasn’t been updated in three years
  • A landing page that reflects the “old you”
  • A hallucination due to completely missing information on that topic

As a quick example, I was recently living in Melbourne, and ChatGPT picked that up from a LinkedIn post and stated that my agency, Spicy Margarita, was founded in Melbourne. (We’re based in the UK).

Despite my travel plans, I wasn’t keen to be positioned as an Australian company, so I quickly removed that mention of Melbourne, and ChatGPT’s response adapted.

To address the misinformation you find, visit the sources used and look for a match between the language used by ChatGPT and the words on the page.

See that it says you cost $1,000? Find the source that says that and update it. Fixing the issue is often this simple (unless there is hallucination, which we address in the next step).

To operationalize this process, collate all the sources driving misinformation into a spreadsheet and note down:

  • Whether that source should be deleted or updated
  • Specific text that needs to be changed
  • Specific text that needs to be added — for example, if a feature is missing, you can spell it out in the sources

Backlinko – GEO Questions Worksheet

For our Airtable example, we can see that a highly trusted source (Wikipedia) is currently out of date.

ChatGPT – Wikipedia source

If we worked for Airtable, we’d start with the Wikipedia article. They should note this down and edit this page with their new positioning as soon as possible.

As a major, trusted source of internet knowledge, updating Wikipedia is likely to help influence LLMs, but it may not fix the positioning issue in one fell swoop.

Step 5: Publish, Update, or Delete Sources

For smaller brands with a relatively small web footprint, we find this task is more straightforward.

Take your latest positioning, messaging, and features, and make sure they are represented in key sources LLMs are referencing. Ideally, refresh every source that mentions your brand — from social media accounts to on-site and off-site web pages.

Brands with a larger web presence will find this task more challenging.

If, like Airtable, you have outdated articles written about you across 100s of websites you don’t control, outreach may need to be operationalized to update or take down those sources. If you have no luck with that, we’d suggest running a new campaign that seeds LLMs with lots of new sources that contain your up-to-date information.

Further reading: LLM Seeding: A New Strategy to Get Mentioned and Cited by LLMs

Given sources like Zapier and Airtable’s own starter guide (pictured below) still have their old positioning, there’s more work to do.

Airtable – Homepage

Here’s the branded GEO adjustment we would make for Wikipedia:

Airtable’s Wikipedia Before Airtable’s Wikipedia After
“Airtable is a spreadsheet-database hybrid, with the features of a database but applied to a spreadsheet. The fields in an Airtable table are similar to cells in a spreadsheet, but have types such as ‘checkbox’, ‘phone number’, and ‘drop-down list’, and can reference file attachments like images.” “As of June 2025, Airtable now operates as an AI-native app platform, enabling users to build, edit, and automate production-ready business apps through natural-language prompts via its AI assistant Omni and embedded Field Agents.”

You may also find that LLMs are hallucinating something entirely. This can’t be fixed by updating or removing a source. This often happens because they didn’t find an answer in any sources.

If LLMs are hallucinating an answer, you’ll want to try to influence the answer by creating a source that answers the question with the correct information.

Start building a content roadmap with new topics to cover, directly answering those key questions your target buyer has.

These can be hosted on your blog or help center, and serve dual purposes: for branded GEO and as helpful sales material.

Step 6: Expand Your Branded Question Prompts

So far, we’ve asked just one question about your brand.

But, prospective customers are likely asking many, many questions that you’ll want to monitor.

Unfortunately, exact data on those questions is still not available.

Prompts are unlike traditional keywords. They’re often longer and more personalized. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t optimize for the less long-tail prompts and hope that bleeds through.

We can make educated guesses at the topics LLM users are asking questions about using six methods:

1. Ask Your Inbound Leads

I ask every inbound lead who found me via ChatGPT what their prompts and journey were. One even pulled the conversation up and read the exact prompt back to me — it said “I want an SEO agency in the B2B space who is staying up-to-date with AI,” and our agency came up.

This kind of insight is gold dust.

It shows you how your audience prompts, what issues they face, and what content and GEO efforts of yours are already working.

A similar technique is to look in sales insights platforms like Gong for mentions of ChatGPT and to encourage your sales team to ask the question for you.

2. Start With Common Questions

Begin with general questions that people ask about brands. Then, tailor those questions to fit your specific situation.

We’ve made a spreadsheet template to help you find the questions people ask AI about your brand.

Backlinko – GEO Questions Worksheet – Source Tracking

3. Use a Keyword Research Tool

Head to your keyword research tool of choice and enter your brand name.

In Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, you can filter on “Questions” to pull a full list of the questions people are asking about your brand.

Keyword Magic Tool – Airtable – Questions

Find questions that someone considering your product might ask.

For example, these are a few I’d select for the Airtable before their pivot. Each question factors into the purchase decision.

 
Questions
is airtable free​
how much does airtable cost​
how much does airtable enterprise cost​
is airtable only for apple​
is airtable a crm​
does airtable have a desktop app​
can airtable send emails​
does airtable integrate with outlook​
can airtable be integrated into wordpress
can airtable be integrated with shopify​
does airtable have an api​

4. Use Google Autocomplete

Another helpful tool for finding audience questions is Google Autocomplete.

Google Search Suggest – Is Airtable b

You’ll find autocomplete is a part of normal Google Search. It anticipates and suggests search queries as you type, making predictions based on popular searches, your location, and your search history (so do this in incognito mode).

Enter these queries to see what people are asking:

  • Is [brand name]
  • How [brand name]
  • Does [brand name]
  • Where [brand name]
  • When [brand name]
  • What [brand name]

You can get more suggestions by adding each letter of the alphabet afterward, too. Like this:

Google Search Suggest – Is Airtable b

To speed things up, I recommend taking screenshots of each autocomplete and uploading them all to ChatGPT for extraction and grouping.

5. Use ChatGPT Autocomplete

If you’re lucky enough to be represented in ChatGPT autocomplete already (at the time of writing, only very large brands are), this is also a place to dig into.

ChatGPT – Search suggestion – Does Apple

6. Talk to Your Sales and Support Teams

When we do this exercise with clients, we run a Q&A session with both the sales team and customer support teams.

This first-party insight is invaluable for predicting the questions your target audience has.

Here are six top questions from our client questionnaire:

  • What common questions about your product do you get from prospects on sales calls?
  • What do prospects misunderstand or get wrong before speaking to you?
  • What common objections about your brand do you get from prospects?
  • Do prospects ever mention ChatGPT and what they found there?
  • What questions do people typically ask in your website chat about [brand name]?
  • What usually triggers prospects to book a call or sign up for [brand name] now?

Step 7: Repeat

Now you’ve gathered your questions, it’s time to see how LLMs answer them and fix up the answers.

To do this, repeat steps 1-5.

Tracking the Impact of Branded GEO Work

The impact of branded GEO is twofold:

  1. Relief: From knowing you’re being accurately represented by LLMs.
  2. Additional Conversions: From removing inaccuracies and misinformation, adequately filling content gaps in your lower sales funnel, and better informing buyers before they join sales calls.

To track the impact of this exercise, we recommend:

  1. Monitoring LLM output: Take your list of questions and compare the before and after. Monitor those regularly to confirm continued accuracy.
  2. Track conversion metrics: Compare key conversion rates (sign-ups, demo requests, sales) before and after your LLM content improvements. I suggest you add a “Where did you hear about us?” to your sales booking forms to closely monitor leads that started in LLMs.
  3. Sales team feedback: With the example in the introduction of this article, the sales team had been facing misinformation issues. If you’ve faced a similar issue, stay in close contact with them so get a pulse check on the impact.

The post Branded GEO: How to Control What AI Says About Your Brand appeared first on Backlinko.

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Google taps large language models to cut invalid ad traffic by 40%

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How Google works: Experiments, entities, and the AI layer beneath search

Google is deploying large language models (LLMs) from its Ad Traffic Quality team, Google Research, and DeepMind to better detect and block invalid traffic – ad activity from non-human or uninterested sources – across its platforms.

Why we care. Invalid traffic drains advertiser budgets, skews publisher revenue, and undermines trust in the digital ad ecosystem. Google’s upgraded defenses aim to identify problematic ad placements more precisely, reducing policy-violating behaviors before they impact campaigns. This would mean fewer wasted impressions, better targeting accuracy, and stronger protection for their budgets.

By the numbers. Google said there was a 40% reduction in invalid traffic tied to deceptive or disruptive ad serving practices. This is due to faster detection of risky placements, which is accomplished in real time by analyzing app/web content, ad placements, and user interactions.

Between the lines: Google already runs extensive automated and manual checks to ensure advertisers aren’t billed for invalid traffic. However, the LLM-powered approach could be a bigger leap in speed and accuracy and could make deceptive ad strategies far harder to profit from.

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Perplexity makes $34.5 billion bid to buy Google’s Chrome browser

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Google Perplexity Cash Offer

AI search startup Perplexity today made an unsolicited $34.5 billion all-cash offer to buy Google’s Chrome browser, nearly double its own $18 billion valuation.

  • Perplexity told The Wall Street Journal that multiple large venture capital funds have agreed to finance the deal.
  • Google hasn’t indicated any willingness to sell Chrome.

Driving the news. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is appealing a 2024 court ruling that it illegally monopolized search.

  • The bid comes as U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta considers whether to force Google to divest Chrome to restore competition in search.
  • Chrome has about 3.5 billion users and more than 60% global browser market share.
  • Perplexity said it would keep Chromium open source, invest $3 billion over two years, and maintain Google as Chrome’s default search engine (though users could change it).

Why we care. Chrome is one of the most powerful gateways to search. Chrome gives Google a massive data advantage, which helps shape everything from ad targeting to SERP features. A new owner could upend default search deals, disrupt traffic patterns, and rewrite the rules for how audiences are tracked, targeted, and monetized.

Yes, but. Analysts say the sale is unlikely. In the meantime, Perplexity will grab some attention and make some headlines.

The big picture. Perplexity recently launched a new browser, Comet. Perplexity believes browsers are strategic control points for the next era of agentic search and online advertising.

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Gender exclusions spotted in Google Performance Max campaigns

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PMax and the illusion of trust: ‘I’m Google – what could go wrong?’

Advertisers spotted a new beta feature in Google’s Performance Max (PMax) campaigns that allows gender-based audience exclusions – giving marketers more granular control over targeting. It was first announced, as part of the Google Ads API v 21, last week.

Why we care. The gender exclusion option could help brands tailor messaging, product feeds, and creative for different audiences, potentially improving ROAS and conversion rates.

How it could be used:

  • Separate campaigns for men’s and women’s products.
  • More relevant ad copy and creatives per audience.
  • Focused product feeds for higher shopping ad relevance.

Bottom line. If you have access to a Google Ads rep, now’s the time to ask to be added to this beta. Early movers could capture performance gains before rivals know the feature exists.

First seen. This update was first seen by Aleksejus Podpruginas, senior Google Ads campaigns specialist at Teleperformance.

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Stop paying the Google tax and lower your CPCs by Edna Chavira

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Search Engine Land live event-- Save your spot!
Search Engine Land live event-- Save your spot!

Many search marketers are unknowingly paying a “Google Tax”—overspending on branded keywords even when there’s no competition, due to a flaw in auction dynamics that causes them to bid against themselves.

In Stop Paying the Google Tax–Start Winning Paid Search, Jenn Paterson and John Beresford of BrandPilot AI will break down what they call the Uncontested Paid Search Problem and show you exactly how to detect and eliminate it. You’ll learn why uncontested keywords can still trigger inflated CPCs, how to spot when you’re paying too much for clicks you already own, and proven tactics to stop the waste and improve your paid search ROI.

You’ll take away:

  • Why uncontested keywords can still drive up CPCs
  • How to tell when you’re bidding against yourself
  • The true cost of the “Google Tax” on your brand campaigns
  • Strategies to cut waste and boost ROI

If you’re serious about paid search performance, it’s time to stop overpaying and make every click count. Save you spot here.

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LLM SEO Optimization Techniques: (including llms.txt)

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Table of Contents

  1. How to Make Your Content Visible in the Age of AI Search
  2. What Are LLMs and Why Should You Care?
  3. The New Way of Searching
  4. SEO vs. GEO vs. AEO vs. LLMO: Are We Just Rebranding SEO?
  5. Key LLM SEO Optimization Techniques
  6. Bonus Strategies for LLM Optimization
  7. The Role of llms.txt: Giving AI Search All the Right Signals
  8. LLM Optimization vs. Traditional SEO
  9. Common Mistakes to Avoid
  10. Tools and Resources to Get Started
  11. Conclusion

How to make your content visible in the age of AI search 

So, what exactly is LLM Optimization? Well, the answer to that question depends on who you ask. For example, if you ask a machine learning engineer, they’ll tell you it’s all about tweaking prompts and token limits to get better performance from a large language model. In fact, Iguazio actually defines LLM optimization as improving the way models respond, which means smarter, faster, and with more contextual recognition.    

If, on the other hand, you are a content strategist or SEO enthusiast, LLM optimization will mean something completely different to you and that is making sure that your content shows up in AI-generated search results. And, that needs to be true no matter whether you’re talking to ChatGPT, searching with Perplexity, or scanning Google’s new AI Mode for answers. Some call this ChatGPT SEO or Generative Engine Optimization. 

So, if you fall into the latter of those two groups, ie: the people who want their content and product pages to be seen and clicked, then this article is for you. And, if you’d like to read on, we’ll show you why LLM optimization in an AI-search landscape isn’t some sort of luxury option; it’s an absolute necessity. 

What are LLMs and why should you care? 

AI engineers train Large Language models on huge amounts of text and data to generate answers, summaries, code, and human-like language. They’ve read everything (not just the Classics) and that includes blogs, news articles and your website.   

The reason that’s important is that LLMs don’t crawl your website in real time like Search Engines do. What they do is read it, learn from it and when someone asks them a question, they try to recall what they saw and rephrase it into an answer. If your site shows up as the answer, “Great” but if not, you’ve got a visibility problem. 

The new way of searching 

Search is not just about Google anymore. Also, it’s not as if just one other thing has come to dominate which means we’re left with a rather messy mix of Perplexity answers, Chat GPT chats, Gemini summaries and voice assistants reading out answers while we try to do two tasks at once. 

In short, people aren’t just searching, they’re conversing and if your content can’t hold its own in this environment then you’re missing out on visibility, traffic, and the ability to build trust.  We’ll walk you through exactly how to fix that.   

Read more: How to optimize content for AI LLM comprehension using Yoast’s tools 

SEO vs. GEO vs. AEO vs. LLMO: Are we just rebranding SEO? 

If you’ve been wondering whether you now need four different strategies for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), and LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization), relax, it’s not as big a deal as you might think. You see, despite all the buzzwords, the core of optimization hasn’t changed much. 

All four terms point to the same central goal: making your content more findable, quotable, and credible in machine-generated output regardless of whether that comes from Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, or an answer box on Bing. 

So, should you overhaul your entire content strategy to ‘do LLMO’? 

Not really. At least, not yet. 

Most of what boosts your presence in LLMs is already what SEO professionals have been doing for years. Structured content, semantic clarity, topical authority, entity association, clean internal linking, it’s all classic SEO.  

Where they slightly diverge: 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  Relies on backlinks and site architecture to establish authority 
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization  Puts extra emphasis on unlinked brand mentions and semantic association 
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)  Focuses on being the single best, most concise, and sourceable response to a specific query 
LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization)  Leans into optimizing content not just for people or search crawlers but for LLMs reading in chunks, skipping JavaScript, and relying on embeddings and grounding datasets  

But the thing is: you don’t need four different playbooks. All you need is one solid SEO foundation. In fact, this point is backed up by Google’s Gary Illyes who confirmed that AI Search does not require specialized optimization, saying that “AI SEO” is not necessary and that standard SEO is all that is needed for both AI Overviews and AI Mode. 

  • Focus more on entity mentions, not just links 
  • Treat your core site pages (home, pricing, about) and PDFs as important LLM fuel.
  • Remember that AI crawlers don’t render JavaScript, so client-side content might be invisible   
  • Think about how LLMs process structure (chunking, context, citations), not just how humans skim it 

So, if you’ve already been investing in foundational SEO, you’re already doing most of what GEO, AEO, and LLMO ae all about. That’s why not every new acronym needs you to have a whole rethink on your efforts. Sometimes, it’s just like SEO. 

Key LLM SEO optimization techniques 

Now that we know LLMs aren’t crawling our site but are understanding it, we need to think a little differently about how we create and construct content and for more on this, you may find this article extremely insightful. This is not about cramming in keywords or trying to play the algorithm, it’s about clarity, structure and credibility because these are the things LLMs care about when deciding what to quote, summarize or ignore. Below are some techniques that will help your content stay visible now that people are using generative search.   

The bar has been raised on the quality of content  

LLMs love clarity. The more natural and specific your language is, the easier it is for them to understand and reuse your content. That means not using jargon, avoiding ambiguity and instead, focusing on writing like you’re explaining something to a colleague. 

To give an exact example: 

Don’t Say: 

“Our innovative tool revolutionizes the digital landscape for modern businesses.” 

Instead Say: 

“The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress helps businesses to improve their website’s visibility and appear inn search results 

Use Structure, Chunked Formatting

Chunked formatting means breaking your content into small pieces (chunks) of informatin that are easy to understand and remember. LLMs tend to prioritize the most easily digestible content construction – which means your headings, bullet points, and clearly defined sections must do a lot of heavy lifting. Not only does organizing your content like this help people to skim read, but it also helps machines understand what each section is about.  

Structuring your content like this will help: 

  • Write clear, descriptive H2s and 3s 
  • Use bullet points that can provide standalone value 
  • Include summaries and tables to give quick overviews 

Be Factual, Transparent, and Authoritative 

Just like Google, LLMs need to trust that your content is reliable before they start taking you seriously. This means you need to show your working out, quote sources, reveal authors, and follow the principles of E-E-A-T. Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust. 

Follow these E-E-A-T principles 

To do this: 

  • Include an author bio and credentials if possible (include a link to actual author bios and social profiles) 
  • Name your sources when you use claims or statistics 
  • Share real experiences if possible “As a small business owner…” 

The more real, relatable and trustworthy your content looks, the more AI will like it.  

Optimize for Summarization 

LLMs won’t quote your entire blog post; they’ll only use snippets. Your job is to make those snippets irresistible. Start with strong lead sentences so that each paragraph begins with a clear point followed by context. Also, it’s a good idea to front-load your content. Don’t save your best bits for the end.  

As a reminder: 

  • Start each section with what you want the key takeaway to be 
  • Keep paragraphs short and self-contained 
  • Create standalone summary paragraphs as these often get quoted in AI generated answers 

Use Schema 

Behind every great summary is a structured content model. That’s where Schema markup comes in and to help the AI understand your content, you need to speak in a certain way.   

Read more about schema markup 

To make things clear, use: 

  • Article for blog content 
  • FAQPage for questions and answers 
  • HowTo for instructions 
  • Author and Person for writer’s bio
  • WebPage for generic content 

Bonus strategies for LLM optimization

Once you’ve got the basics completed, like clear writing, structure and trust signals, there’s still more you can do to give your content the best shot at visibility. These bonus strategies focus on how to make your site even more AI-friendly by anticipating how LLMs interpret and reuse information. 

Use Explicit Context and Clear language 

Humans have an incredible ability to be able to ‘fill in the blanks’ and still ‘get the message’ even if the information they got was vague or unclear. One of the biggest differences between humans and LLMs? Humans can infer meaning from vague references. LLMs on the other hand… well, let’s just say that it doesn’t come naturally to them. 

In any case, the point is that if your article mentions “this tool” or “our product” without any context, an LLM might miss the connection entirely. The result? You’re left out of the answer, even if you’re the best source. 

So, to give your content the clarity it deserves: 

  • Use the full product or brand name, like “Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress,” not just “Yoast” 
  • Define technical or niche terms before using them 
  • Avoid vague language (“this page,” “the above section,” “click here”) 

You don’t need to be repetitive, but you do need to be explicit rather than implicit.  

Leverage FAQs and Conversational Formats 

LLMs love FAQs because they’re direct, predictable, and easy to quote. They closely match real user intent and provide high-value snippets that tools like Perplexity and Gemini can pull from without much guesswork. 

How to use the FAQ block in WordPress 

That said, there’s an important limitation to keep in mind if you’re using the Yoast SEO FAQ block in Gutenberg: 

You cannot use H2 or H3 heading tags inside the FAQ block. 
The block creates its own question-answer formatting using custom HTML, which is great for structured data (FAQ Page schema), but it doesn’t support native heading tags which limits your ability to optimize AI readability and skimmability. 

So, if your goal is to appear in AI-generated summaries or answer boxes, where headings like “What is LLM SEO?” make it easy for AI to quote your content, you might be better off using manual formatting. 

Here’s how to get the best of both worlds: 

  • STEP 1: Use H2 or H3 tags for each question (e.g., “What is llms.txt?”) and write a clear, short answer beneath it. This improves LLM visibility but doesn’t generate structured FAQ schema. 
  • Step 2: Use the Yoast FAQ block for schema support but know that it won’t give you a proper heading structure. 

 Ultimately, the more your FAQs resemble natural, searchable questions — and are structured in a way that both humans and AI can easily parse — the more likely they are to be featured in answers. 

Enhance Trust with Freshness Signals  

Just like search engines, some LLMs give preference to newer content, but remember that we need to talk to them in a certain way to get the best out of them. 

Older content can be overlooked. Worse, it can be quoted incorrectly if something has changed since you last hit publish. 

Make sure your pages include: 

  • A clear “last updated” timestamp (can we get a picture of what one would look like for clarification?) 
  • Regular reviews for accuracy 
  • Changelogs or update notes if applicable (especially for software or plugin content) 

It doesn’t have to be complicated, even a simple “Last updated: June 2025” can help both readers and AI systems trust that your content is current.  

How to keep content fresh 

Prioritize Author Visibility and Credibility 

Today, we’re entering a phase where who wrote your content is just as important as what it says. That means you need to highlight author visibility and put effort into signaling real-world experience. 

Here’s how: 

  • Include author bios in WordPress with credentials and links to their professional profiles 
  • Use Person schema to formally associate the content with a specific individual 
  • Weave in relevant experience (“As an SEO consultant who works with SaaS brands…”) 

Remember, LLMs are more likely to trust, quote, and amplify expert-authored content. 

Use Internal Linking Strategically 

Think of internal linking as your site’s nervous system. It helps both humans and LLMs understand what’s important, how topics relate, and where to go next. 

But internal linking isn’t just about SEO hygiene anymore — it’s also a way to establish topic authority and help LLMs build a map of your expertise. 

Do: 

  • Cluster related articles together (e.g., link from “LLM Optimization” to “Schema Markup for SEO”) 
  • Use descriptive anchor text like “read our full guide to Schema markup,” not just “click here” 
  • Ensure every piece of content supports a broader narrative 

Our internal linking feature is available for free with a Yoast SEO Premium plugin. 

The role of llms.txt. Giving AI search all the right signals 

Now let’s talk about one of the most recent developments in LLM visibility; a little file called llms.txt. 

Think of it as a sibling to robots.txt, but instead of guiding search engines, it tells AI tools how they’re allowed to interact with your content. Note: llms.txt is still an evolving standard, and support across AI tools may vary, but it’s a smart step toward asserting control 

With llms.txt, you can: 

  • Define how your content may be reused or summarized 
  • Set clear expectations around attribution, licensing 

It’s not just about protection, it’s about being proactive as AI usage accelerates. 

Even better: Yoast now offers llms.txt integration right inside the plugin, so you don’t need to mess around with code or server settings. If you want to future-proof your site’s visibility (and your IP), this is where you start. 

The llms.txt feature is available for both free and premium customers.   

LLM Optimization vs Traditional SEO: 

LLM Optimization and SEO are part of the same family, but they serve different functions and require slightly different thinking. 

Let’s compare: 

Traditional SEO  LLM Optimization 
Crawled and ranked by bots  Read, remembered, and reused by AIs 
Emphasizes keywords  Emphasizes context and clarity 
   
Optimizes for SERPs  Optimizes for AI-generated summaries and answers 

The takeaway? You can’t ignore either. One brings traffic; the other boosts brand visibility within AI responses. 

And considering that 42% of users now start their research with an LLM (not Google), you’ll want to be found in both places. 

Common Mistakes to Avoid 

Even well-meaning content creators fall into holes. So, take a look at the tips below to avoid any mishaps that could damage your LLM visibility: 

  • Writing like a robot or allowing a robot to write for you (ironically, not appreciated by robots) 
  • Leaving your content undated and unchanged for years 
  • Publishing posts without any author information or editorial standards 
  • Ignoring internal links or leaving orphaned pages 
  • Using vague headings or anchor text like “read more” or “this article” 

If your content looks generic, outdated, or anonymous, it won’t earn any trust. And, without trust, it won’t get quoted. 

 Tools and Resources to Get Started 

Search used to be about visibility within SERPs. But now, it’s also about being seen in summaries, answers, snippets, and chats. LLMs aren’t just shaping the future of search; they’re shaping how your brand is perceived to both humans and robots alike. 

To stand out: 

  • Write with clarity and context 
  • Structure for humans and machines 
  • Cite your expertise and show your authors 
  • Use tools like Yoast and llms.txt to signal your intent 

Future-proof your visibility with Yoast SEO. From llms.txt integration to schema support, Yoast gives you all the tools you need to speak AI’s language and dominate both generative answers and search engines. Get started with Yoast SEO Premium now and make it easy for AI to say something accurate, useful, and… ideally, about you. 

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Google Preferred Sources rolling out in US and India

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After several weeks of testing, Google is rolling out the Preferred Sources feature in the US and India. This feature lets searchers specify which sites they want to see in the Top Stories section of Google Search.

Google announced this feature is now graduating Search Labs beta, specifically in the US and India. Google added that it “is designed to give people more control over their Search experience, by enabling them to select the sites they want to see more of in Top Stories, whether that is a favorite blog and their local news outlet.”

How it works. This is currently only available in English in the U.S. and India.

Then you click the starred icon to the right of the Top Stories header in the search results. After you click the star icon, you will have the option to select your preferred sources, that is if a site is publishing fresh content.

Google will then start to show you more of the latest updates from your selected sites in Top Stories “when they have new articles or posts that are relevant to your search,” Google added

Google added. Google added that “people really value being able to select a range of sources — with over half of users choosing four or more.”

Labs users. If you’ve previously signed up in Labs, your selections will automatically apply and you’ll continue to see more of those sites within Top Stories. You can always change those selections at any time.

Publishers resource. Google also added more details on this in the publisher resource section.

Why we care. Top Stories can send nice traffic to publishers, so showing up as the preferred source can be a great way to see that traffic.

You may want to find an acceptable way to encourage your loyal visitors to select your site as a preferred source.

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How to drive traffic to my website

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Table of contents

Excited to launch your website, but how to drive traffic to your website? A beautifully designed site without visitors is like a shop with no customers — that’s why traffic matters. Wondering how to get visitors to your site? You’re in the right place. In this post, we’ll walk you through simple yet practical tips on how to drive traffic to a website and attract your first visitors, and even better, keep them coming back.

By the end of this guide, you’ll have a clear roadmap for improving your website’s visibility.

Why is driving traffic to your website important?

Well, you want people to discover your website and not just keep it to yourself within the design drafts; therefore, driving traffic is important.

Website traffic is the number of website visitors over a set time. It’s not just a vanity metric—it represents potential customers, greater visibility, and stronger brand awareness. If you’re just getting started, boosting your search visibility can feel overwhelming. However, by following these simple and practical tips, you’ll start to see your traffic grow exponentially.

Top 5 practical tips to boost website traffic

Here are the top 5 tips that will help you drive traffic to your website:

Understand your target audience

Before you dive into posting content on your website’s landing pages, it’s crucial to take a step back and ask yourself: Who am I trying to reach? Defining your target audience is the very first step if you’re serious about learning how to drive traffic to your website.

Creating content that resonates and drives engagement becomes much easier when you know your audience — their interests, challenges, and goals. Without audience clarity, even your best-written content might be a mismatch, targeting everyone but reaching no one.

Google Analytics is one of the best ways to perform audience research. It provides powerful insights into key metrics like:

  • What time of day does your audience visit your website
  • Which age groups are engaging with your content
  • Where your visitors are located

And much more!

Feeling lost when looking at analytics data? Don’t worry — you can check out this guide on Google Segments to help bring clarity to your dashboard.

Focus on SEO basics

Getting the SEO basics right is the easiest way to boost organic traffic to your website. It also makes it easier for search engines to understand the content on your website and index pages to make them accessible to searchers.

Here are some beginner-friendly SEO techniques for website traffic:

Add keywords naturally

Keywords play an essential role in boosting the searchability of your website. Think of keywords as phrases used by search engines like Google to match your content with what people are searching for. Do keyword research so your content matches what people are searching for. Once you’ve identified the relevant search phrases, sprinkle them contextually in important spots like headings, content, and alt texts.

Here’s a video for you:

Write clear and structured headings

It’s not just about writing content to incorporate keywords; presentation matters too if you want the readers to stay on your website. Therefore, it’s important to write content that is pleasant to the eyes and readable.

Organize your content with H1, H2, and H3 tags. Clear headings make your blog posts and landing pages easy to scan, improve readability, and help improve visibility on Google.

Add meta descriptions

Meta descriptions appear under your page title in search results. Although they don’t directly boost rankings, they encourage clicks, helping increase website visitors. Make them short, relevant, and inviting.

Use descriptive alt text for images

Alt text helps search engines “read” your images and makes your website more accessible. In fact, according to EU stats, a large portion of users with disabilities depend on well-structured web content to browse effectively.

Invest in seo tools to make it easier

Managing all these tasks can feel overwhelming at first. That’s why using beginner-friendly SEO tools can make a big difference. For example, the Yoast SEO plugin offers real-time suggestions for keyword usage, readability improvements, meta descriptions, and technical SEO essentials like XML sitemaps—all inside your WordPress dashboard. Some features, such as advanced keyword optimization and certain integrations, are available in Yoast SEO Premium.

A screenshot of the SEMrush related keyphrase overlay window with a highlight on the Volume and Trend columns

Plus, with Yoast’s built-in integration with Semrush, you can access high-performing keywords with just a few clicks, and that too without even leaving your editor.

Also, with Yoast’s newly launched Site Kit by Google insights integration, you can take your SEO management to the next level. Instead of switching between different tools to check your site’s analytics and search data, you’ll see key insights—like organic traffic, impressions, clicks, and bounce rates—directly in your Yoast Dashboard.

A smarter analysis in Yoast SEO Premium

Yoast SEO Premium has a smart content analysis that helps you take your content to the next level!

Get Yoast SEO Premium Only $118.80 / year (ex VAT)

Optimize for AI and LLMs

AI-driven search is transforming how people discover information. Search results are no longer just a list of blue links—they’re increasingly delivered as direct, conversational answers through platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. If your brand isn’t showing up in the answers your customers see, you’re missing a significant visibility opportunity.

Studies show consumers rely on AI-generated responses for nearly 40% of their searches.

To improve your chances of being featured in AI-generated answers, start with the basics: use relevant keywords, write clear and concise copy for your webpages, maintain a well-structured hierarchy with proper headings, and craft descriptive meta titles and descriptions.

Here’s the good news—Yoast has the tools to help you optimize your content for AI and LLM comprehension. The newly launched llms.txt feature guides AI models like ChatGPT to better understand your business.

With just one click, Yoast SEO generates an llms.txt file that enables AI bots to scan specific parts of your website in real-time, ensuring they accurately present your brand when answering user queries.

Create quality content that provides value

Content is king — but only if it’s high quality. Once you have identified your target audience and completed your keyword research, it’s time to start publishing content on your website. Remember, you’re not just publishing keywords — we share that you’re creating content that solves problems and answers real questions. Valuable content builds trust, boosts engagement, and naturally increases website visitors.

Need help checking your content’s quality? Try Yoast’s Real-time Content Analysis editor to assess readability and SEO performance as you type, on the go!

Leverage social media to share and increase the reach

63.9% of the world’s population uses social media, which is a huge number waiting to be tapped. Social media platforms are powerful and free tools that help you drive traffic to your website. Posting regularly on your social media helps boost brand exposure and serves as a traffic channel for your website.

But here’s the key — don’t just drop links and disappear. Add a personal touch: explain why your post is valuable, start a conversation, or ask a question. You can even repurpose your blog posts into bite-sized social media content to reach more people and channel your followers back to your website.

With its social previews feature, the Yoast SEO plugin takes your social sharing game up a notch. Instead of guessing how your post will look when shared, you can see an exact visual preview for Facebook and Twitter right inside your editor.

This means you can fine-tune your title, description, and image before hitting publish, ensuring your post looks click-worthy and on-brand wherever it’s shared.

Keep your site fast & mobile-friendly

Website speed and mobile-friendliness are crucial factors in attracting traffic and retaining it. If your website is slow or hard to use on mobile, visitors will leave before reading a word..

Do you know there are over 6.8 billion people who own a smartphone?

Page speed impacts user experience and SEO, and search engines like Google prioritize fast-loading websites. If your website is slow, it may experience higher bounce rates, because users want instant access to information.

To improve your website’s performance, check your site speed with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. Then, consider practices like optimizing your images, using lazy loading, and reducing JavaScript to improve site speed.

Mobile optimization takeaways:

Bonus tips for boosting traffic

The five core strategies above will set you on the right path—but why stop there? If you’re ready to go the extra mile in learning how to drive traffic to your website, try these bonus tactics:

Build an email list

Offering a valuable freebie (ebook, checklist, or discount) in exchange for emails remains one of the best strategies to drive traffic to a website. Once subscribers opt in, send them helpful newsletters that solve real problems rather than just promotions. Over time, this nurtures trust and encourages repeat visits.

Off-page SEO for link building

Off-page SEO—earning links from other reputable sites—signals authority to Google and helps you grow your search visibility. Guest posting on industry blogs, forming partnerships for co-authored articles, and outreach for natural backlinks are proven ways to drive quality traffic to your website.

Also Read: SEO Basics: What is link building?

Join online communities and forums

Active participation in Facebook groups, LinkedIn communities, Reddit threads, and Quora spaces related to your niche gives you direct access to potential visitors. First, add genuine value—answer questions, share insights—then naturally reference your blog posts when relevant. This free method to grow website traffic fosters credibility while driving organic clicks.

Local SEO

If you own a business with a physical address, local SEO is your savior.

Local SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your website to attract people searching the “nearby…” keyphrases. It is a technique that helps you get searchable both online and offline.

Here are some basic local SEO practices that you can follow:

Claim and optimize your Google Business Profile:

  • Include location-specific keywords, such as “family dentist Chicago,” in your page titles, headings, and meta descriptions.
  • Earn citations in local directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc.
  • Encourage customer reviews.

If you want to rank your website locally and on Google Maps, do check out Yoast Local SEO plugin for WordPress.

Ready to drive traffic to your website?

Driving traffic to your website is not about quick wins—it’s a marathon. With consistent efforts and offering value to your audience, you will see long-term benefits, and your website will top the SERPs.

Keep refining your on-page SEO and publishing content that truly resonates with your audience. By applying the tips mentioned in this guide, your website’s visibility will gradually boost.

For continued learning and more in-depth insights on SEO, Yoast Academy is your go-to resource for mastering the art of improving your online presence. From SEO training for beginners to performing robust keyword research, Yoast Academy offers all-around SEO training.

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