For years, remarketing hinged on clicks: someone had to visit your site, trigger a pixel, and leave behind a trail you could follow with ads.
But what if you could build your remarketing audience before they ever click?
That is the core promise of impression-based remarketing – a Microsoft Advertising-exclusive capability that lets advertisers build audiences (or exclusions) simply from users seeing their ads.
No click. No form fill. Just an impression.
In a world of privacy shifts, AI-driven search, and fractured attention spans, this approach may not just be a nice-to-have – it could be the future.
(Disclosure: I work as Microsoft’s product liaison, and the perspectives shared here reflect my role inside Microsoft Advertising.)
What is impression-based remarketing?
Impression-based remarketing is Microsoft Advertising’s super-powered audience targeting method.
Instead of waiting for a user to take an action such as visiting your site, it lets you track and segment audiences based solely on ad visibility.
Here is how it works in plain terms:
If your ad is displayed on Bing search results, native placements, Copilot, or other Microsoft inventory, the person who saw it can be added to a remarketing list.
That list can then be used for targeting, exclusions, or bid adjustments across eligible campaigns.
Key operational details:
You can define up to 20 sources (campaigns or ad groups that feed your remarketing lists).
The audience membership window can be 1-30 days (seven days is often the sweet spot for balancing awareness and consumer sentiment).
Any campaign type can be a source, but not all can be a target. For example, Premium streaming can feed lists but cannot be targeted directly.
Emerging surfaces like Copilot impressions are eligible as both sources and targets, though granular reporting is not yet fully available. To clarify, only Showroom ads (currently in closed beta) can specifically target Copilot placements.
If you use autobidding, Microsoft’s system will factor in your bid adjustments, meaning a +20% bid really will raise CPC or CPM.
In short, it is the ability to remarket to people who have only seen your ad, which opens up a broader, top-of-funnel opportunity while respecting the growing limitations on tracking.
Think of impression-based remarketing in two phases:
Functional setup: The technical nuts and bolts.
Strategic execution: Deciding which campaigns feed the lists, which campaigns target them, and what creative to use.
Functional setup
Build your audience lists
Identify the campaigns or ad groups that will act as sources.
These are the ads whose impressions will populate your lists.
Create associations
Associate your sources with the target campaigns where you will use the audiences for targeting, exclusions, or bid adjustments.
At least one audience ad must be in your associations to make all campaign types eligible to target.
Decide on membership duration
Seven days is often ideal to balance recency with volume, but your industry’s buying cycle may warrant shorter or longer windows.
Layer on bid strategies
Keep in mind that bid adjustments impact CPC or CPM directly under auto-bidding.
Strategic execution
This is where impression-based remarketing can go from “neat” to “needle-moving.”
Empathize with the customer journey
A first-time viewer is not ready for the same message as a warm lead.
The most common mistake in Impression-based remarketing is running the same creative to people regardless of where they are in the funnel.
For example:
Cold audience (first exposure): Focus on brand awareness and curiosity hooks.
Warm audience (saw an ad, maybe interacted with other brand assets): Lean into unique value propositions and proof points.
Hot audience (familiar, showing intent signals): Shift toward urgency, offers, or clear conversion CTAs.
Tailor messaging to decision-makers vs. influencers
Not all buyers are the same. In B2B, especially, the person seeing your ad may not be the one signing the check.
Decision-maker personas respond to concrete ROI, cost, terms, and support benefits.
Influencer personas, those who need to convince the buyer, often respond better to emotional appeals, user stories, or tips on how to get leadership buy-in.
Use micro-steps in the buyer’s journey
Since the trigger is just an impression, do not assume you can skip stages.
Instead of expecting someone to leap from “saw ad” to “buy,” map out micro-conversions:
Move from awareness to engagement (click, video view).
From engagement to consideration (content download, add to cart).
From consideration to decision (purchase, sign-up).
Sometimes this means setting ad groups, not just campaigns, as your sources and targets to allow for precise audience control.
Budget with conversion thresholds in mind
If your targeting is too narrow, you might never gather enough impressions to reach performance significance.
Budgets should align with the audience sizes needed to meet your conversion goals.
The shift to impression-based remarketing is not just about Microsoft offering a new targeting lever.
It’s about survival in a rapidly changing ecosystem.
1. Privacy is rewriting the rules
With cookie deprecation, consent restrictions, and stricter data privacy laws, the reliable, click-based remarketing audiences of the past are disappearing.
An impression, recorded server-side, does not rely on a user’s browser for tracking, making it a more resilient signal.
2. AI-powered search changes user behavior
As conversational AI like Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and other assistants take center stage, the traditional search journey (“type query → click site → take action”) is being replaced.
In many cases, users will get answers without ever clicking a link.
This means advertisers must reach and influence people before they click, or even without them clicking at all.
The old metrics, such as CTR, do not tell the whole story when much of the journey happens off-site.
The future winners will be brands that:
Create memorable touchpoints.
Build positive sentiment before a user enters the buying stage.
Stay top-of-mind when the moment of need arises.
Impression-based remarketing allows you to intentionally re-engage based on visibility alone, which aligns perfectly with these goals.
4. Redeeming undervalued placements
Historically, advertisers have excluded certain placements, such as mobile games or sites with high ad density, because they seemed “low quality” in a click-through world.
Those same environments can be very effective for brand imprinting.
The user might not click in the moment, but repeated impressions in familiar contexts can drive recall later.
Impression-based remarketing allows you to capitalize on these “slow burn” touches without overvaluing accidental clicks.
Takeaways for advertisers
If you are planning campaigns for the holiday season or for the AI-driven world we are already stepping into, here is the checklist to make impression-based remarketing work for you:
Set it up now
Build your sources and associations.
Keep the target list broad, but be selective with your sources.
Map the journey
Identify what someone needs to see first, second, and third.
Create dedicated creative for each stage.
Respect personas
Decision-makers and influencers need different messaging.
Avoid “one size fits all” creative blasts.
Budget for volume and thresholds
Without enough impressions, your targeting power fades.
Ensure campaigns have enough spend to feed the machine.
Think beyond clicks
Use impression-based lists to drive brand familiarity, not just immediate conversions.
Measure impact with recall and sentiment studies where possible.
Impression-based remarketing: From feature to future
Impression-based remarketing is not just another targeting option.
It is a structural shift in how advertisers can build relationships with their audiences.
In a clickless, AI-mediated future, it lets you control the who and when of your targeting, even if the how of user interaction changes completely.
Microsoft might have positioned it as a feature, but for savvy advertisers, it is a competitive moat.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Microsoft-Ads-impression-based-remarketing-How-to-use-it-E28093-functionally-and-strategically-Xs9Rj2.png?fit=849%2C617&ssl=1617849http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-08-25 12:00:002025-08-25 12:00:00The future of remarketing? Microsoft bets on impressions, not clicks
Trusted contributors get invited back and land bigger features faster.
-Send thank-yous
-Offer value beyond the pitch
-Track warm journalist relationships in a simple CRM
For instance, let’s say you’re a B2B SaaS marketer trying to rank a key feature page.
Look for HARO or Qwoted queries where the topic aligns with the problem your product solves.
If you can offer a helpful, relevant perspective — one that happens to mention your company or approach — that’s a win. Even if the link doesn’t show up right away.
The bottom line?
When you know what wins you’re aiming for, you’re far more likely to hit them.
Greg Heilers, co-founder of Jolly SEO, puts it simply:
“Depending on your criteria, writing skill, and site/figurehead optimization, you can achieve a win as frequently as 1 in every 3 pitches.”
Step 2: Establish Realistic Expectations (This Will Save Your Sanity)
Most people give up on journalist outreach too soon.
Not because the tactic doesn’t work — but because their expectations are wildly off.
They expect quick wins, a high response rate, and instant SEO impact.
The reality is slower, less glamorous, and a lot more sustainable if you approach it with the right mindset.
Typical Success Rates (and What to Expect Over Time)
Even top-tier media outreach experts don’t land every pitch.
For beginners, a 3–5% response rate is normal. As you gain experience, that can climb to 8–12%, and with refined systems and strong positioning, 15–20% is achievable.
That means you might need to send 10–30 pitches just to earn one mention.
This isn’t failure — it’s the math behind consistent results.
So, what does that actually look like over time?
Month 1: You’re learning the workflow. Scanning opportunities, testing your messaging, and getting familiar with the process. Landing even one or two mentions is a meaningful start.
Month 3: You start to see patterns. Which types of queries are worth your time. Which angles tend to get picked up. You might even get quoted by the same journalist twice.
Month 6: You have momentum. Pitches get easier. You might even start getting inbound requests from writers who’ve seen your previous contributions.
The payoff builds slowly — but it compounds.
Beyond the byline: Search is evolving fast. Journalist quotes are now surfacing in tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. If you’re featured in a top-tier article, there’s a real chance your name, company, or insight will show up in AI-generated answers.
Why Most Pitches Fail (And It’s Not Your Fault)
The biggest myth in journalist outreach is that great writing is enough.
Spoiler: It’s not.
Journalists get dozens — sometimes hundreds — of pitches for a single request.
Many already have sources in mind.
Others are on tight deadlines and go with the first relevant response they see. If your pitch arrives an hour late, it might not get opened at all.
This doesn’t mean your pitch was bad. It means timing and fit beat polish more often than not.
Step 3: Set Up Your Inbox and Tracking
The fastest way to burn out in journalist outreach?
Drowning in irrelevant pitches, deadlines you’ll never meet, and inbox chaos.
Here’s the good news: A few quick workflows can save you hours a week and help you stay consistent over time.
Make Your Emails Credible at a Glance
Journalists scan dozens of emails a day, and first impressions matter.
A polished inbox setup instantly signals trust and professionalism.
Include:
Branded email address: Avoid generic Gmail accounts when possible. Use a domain-linked email to show legitimacy.
Uploaded headshot: Many platforms now require it
Branded signature: Add your name, title, company, LinkedIn, and a link to your website. Make it easy for journalists to verify who you are.
You don’t need a huge platform. You just need to look like someone worth quoting.
Build a Simple Filtering System
Start by organizing your inbox to reduce the cognitive load.
Create folders or labels by platform (e.g., “HARO Outreach”), and add filters to automatically route incoming queries.
Then, block off 15-minute review windows, no more than three times a day.
You don’t need to monitor your inbox all day — just be consistent.
Use the “5-second scan” rule: if it’s not clearly relevant within a few seconds, archive and move on.
Use Fast, Practical Qualification Criteria
Not every opportunity is worth your time — and trying to pitch everything will tank your efficiency.
For each request, ask:
Is this in my area of expertise? If not, don’t force a fit. Weak relevance leads to ignored pitches.
Do I meet the specific requirements? Many queries ask for certain job titles or credentials. Skip it if you’re not eligible.
Is the deadline realistic? If you can’t hit the cutoff, don’t let it clog your pipeline.
Is the publication worth your time? Not every outlet will align with your goals. Use your win criteria (from Step 1) to filter.
For instance, if you’re a freelance content strategist, a request asking for insights from “Fortune 500 CEOs” is a clear pass.
Save your effort for a request that matches your actual experience.
Step 4: Choose Your Platforms Strategically
Not all journalist outreach platforms are created equal.
Some are great for quick wins. Others shine when you’re targeting high-authority publications or niche audiences.
The key isn’t choosing the platform with the most opportunities — it’s choosing the one that aligns with your actual goals.
That means considering more than just volume.
You’ll want to look at average link quality, pitch-to-publication turnaround, cost, and whether the requests match your expertise.
Note: We’re gathering updated data on additional platforms like Qwoted and will expand this comparison in future updates.
Platform
Best For
Avg DR
Cost
Turnaround
Featured
Easy wins, building confidence
70
Free/Paid
23 days
Help a B2B Writer
B2B content, SaaS brands
73
Free
44 days
ProfNet
Premium publications
79
Paid
39 days
HARO
Broad topics
76
Free/Paid
37 days
Source of Sources
Niche expertise
81
Free
35 days
Don’t feel like you need to master every platform out of the gate.
Start with one or two that align with your goals, get really good at using them, and expand once your workflow is dialed in.
How to Choose the Right Platform (Fast)
Not sure where to start? Think of this as your cheat sheet for getting started.
Just getting your reps in? Start with Featured — it’s simple, fast, and great for building confidence early.
Need high-authority links that actually move rankings? Go with Qwoted — it consistently surfaces high domain rating (DR) opportunities from recognizable media outlets.
Want placements in premium, name-brand publications? Choose ProfNet — fewer opportunities, but often higher caliber if you have the budget.
Targeting marketers, founders, or SaaS buyers?Help a B2B Writer delivers curated, niche-relevant requests in your exact lane.
Need a high volume of relevant opportunities to work with?Source of Sources gives you a steady stream of niche pitches — just be ready to filter.
Looking for general-topic visibility at scale?HARO still delivers breadth and quantity — just expect to dig for quality.
Looking for country-specific platforms?
Many regions have their own journalist request tools worth exploring. For example, SourceBottle is widely used in Australia, and ResponseSource is popular among PR pros and journalists in the U.K.
Just try a quick Google search like “journalist request platform [your country].”
You’ll usually uncover a few local options — no massive directory needed.
Step 5: Write Pitches That Win (Without Taking Forever)
The best pitches don’t win because they’re long or clever.
They win because they’re skimmable, useful, and immediately quotable.
Your job isn’t to impress the journalist — it’s to make their job easier.
Establish Credibility in 8 Words or Less
Start with a strong subject line. Greg emphasizes combining relevance with instant credibility.
Use this structure:
Subject line formula: [Your credentials] + [specific value] + [topic]
Examples:
SaaS CEO’s Take on Fixing Churn
SEO Consultant’s Local Link Playbook
Copywriter’s Formula for High-Converting Headlines
Then, build your pitch. It should look something like this:
Hi [first name],
I’m [name], [title] at [company]. [One-line credibility builder].
Pro tip: AI tools can help you brainstorm angles — but the final quotes should sound human, specific, and ready to publish. Use AI for speed, not substitution.
Make Your Quotes Instantly Usable
Journalists aren’t grading your writing.
They’re looking for clean, usable quotes they can drop straight into a draft.
As Greg puts it:
“Journalists want quotes they can immediately copy and paste into their articles, no changes needed.”
Here’s how to make that happen:
Pro tip: For the full checklist — and why each step matters — use the Pitch Checklist tab in our journalist outreach toolkit.
Not all pitches are created equal.
Here’s what gets picked up — and what gets ignored.
❌ Bloated, vague, and completely unusable:
✅Clear, specific, and quote-ready:
Pitch Faster Without Losing Quality
Greg recommends prewriting as much as possible so you’re never starting your press outreach from scratch.
Have 3–4 versions of your bio ready to go, tailored for different beats (e.g., SaaS, marketing, AI).
Build a few quote templates for your most common talking points. And give yourself a hard limit: Aim to finish each pitch in 10 minutes or less.
The more reps you get, the easier this becomes.
Don’t forget your first line does heavy lifting. It shows up in inbox previews and often determines whether your pitch even gets opened. Make it count.
Caveat: Structure helps, but sameness kills. AI tools and mass pitching have flooded inboxes with lookalike answers. Don’t just fill in a template — say something only you would say. That’s what gets quoted.
Yes, You’re Qualified. Here’s Why.
One of the biggest blockers in journalist outreach? Thinking you’re not “qualified” to respond.
But here’s the truth: You don’t need a blue checkmark or a book deal to be helpful.
If you can help readers understand something better or offer a useful perspective, you’re already ahead.
Credibility doesn’t mean status. It means relevance.
That could be your job title, your years of experience, a client result, or just a smart way of framing the problem.
When in doubt, try this five-part framework to surface story ideas from your own work:
The situation: What were you working on?
The challenge: What made it tricky?
Your approach: What did you try or test?
The result: What changed? What worked?
The insight: What do you wish you’d known earlier?
The bottom line?
If you’ve solved what they’re writing about, you belong in their inbox.
Step 6: Master the Follow-Up (Without Being Annoying)
It’s tempting to send a pitch and move on.
But following up is one of the easiest ways to multiply the value of your efforts.
It’s low-effort, high-return, and totally underused.
The key is to keep it respectful, useful, and brief. Here’s how to do it without sounding pushy.
Turn Mentions Into Links
Let’s say you’ve been quoted but not linked.
Here’s a simple, polite ask that turns visibility into real SEO value:
Hi [Name],
Thanks so much for including me in the [article title]!
If it’s possible to link my company name to [URL], that would be amazing—but I totally understand either way. Appreciate your great work on this piece.
Best, [Name]
Turn Replies Into Relationships
The journalists who quote you today could become recurring collaborators — if you give them a reason to remember you.
Hi [Name],
Loved your recent piece on [topic]. Your point about [specific insight] really resonated.
I’m always happy to contribute insights on [your expertise areas] if you’re working on related stories.
Best, [Name]
Done right, a follow-up turns one good pitch into long-term visibility, stronger links, and a journalist who might actually remember your name.
Step 7: Find Hidden Wins (Most People Miss These)
You might already be getting results — and not even know it.
“People message me and say, ‘I’ve sent dozens of pitches, but I can’t get any wins. What am I doing wrong?’
My first question is always: ‘Have you tried looking for them yet?’”
The good news?
You don’t need expensive tools or a manual content audit. A few smart searches and a weekly routine are all it takes.
Use Google Search Operators
Advanced search syntax lets you find live mentions with precision. Run these searches weekly to uncover wins:
“Your Name” + “Your Brand Name”
“CEO of [Brand]” site:targetpublication.com
“[Your unique quote]” site:[domain]
Use quotes to force exact matches and ”site:” to limit the search to specific outlets.
Set Up Google Alerts
Track new mentions passively by creating alerts for:
Your name + company
Your job title (e.g., “CMO of Backlinko”)
Distinctive quotes or phrasing you tend to use
This won’t catch everything, but it will help surface a steady stream of new wins.
Manual Checking Schedule
Most people stop after they hit “send.”
But Greg estimates you’ll never be told about 90% of your wins.
So if you don’t go looking, you’ll never even know they happened.
Build a simple check-in routine:
Weekly: Run your branded Google searches
Monthly: Review recent articles from journalists you’ve pitched
Quarterly: Use SEO tools (like Ahrefs or Semrush) to spot backlinks or citations
Pro tip: Use the Win Finder (in the toolkit) to uncover hidden mentions.
Step 8: Build Your Journalist Network
Every pitch is more than a one-time shot at a link — it’s the start of a potential relationship.
If a journalist quotes you once, there’s a good chance they’ll want insights from you again.
But only if you make it easy, relevant, and respectful to stay in touch.
Track Relationships Like You Track Links
Use a simple CRM (even a spreadsheet works) to track journalist contacts the same way you’d track sales prospects:
Name + outlet
Contact info + beat
History (quoted, linked, mentioned)
Relationship stage (cold, warm, repeat, advocate)
Last contact date + next follow-up
If you’ve contributed to multiple stories or gotten links from the same writer, mark them as high-priority for future outreach. These are your warmest leads.
Build Trust Without Pitching
You don’t need a quote request to stay visible.
In fact, the best relationship-building moments often happen when you’re not asking for anything.
Promote their articles on social with a thoughtful comment — not just a tag. If you come across a story angle or source that fits their beat, send it their way.
If they mentioned a topic they’re covering next month, follow up. Even better: introduce them to another trusted source in your network.
These small, useful gestures build familiarity over time.
That’s how you become more than a random inbox name. You move from pitching to being pitched.
Pro tip: Use our Outreach CRM Tracker (in the toolkit) to start tracking pitches and wins instantly.
Step 9: Measure and Prove ROI
If you’re investing time, you need to show what it’s worth — to your team, your stakeholders, or your clients.
That means going beyond raw link counts and telling the full story of impact.
Track What Matters
Link counts are a starting point, but they’re not the whole picture.
Look at which platforms consistently deliver wins, how many hours go into each link, and which journalists become repeat collaborators.
Track your mentions, even when there’s no link.
Watch for traffic spikes after a story goes live, and pay attention to whether rankings improve on pages earning coverage.
For example, if a single article mention leads to a 12% lift in branded search and earns a backlink to your pricing page, that’s clear momentum.
When you combine reach, effort, and outcome, you start to see the full return.
Use a Simple ROI Framework
When you need to quantify results for stakeholders, use this basic formula to translate time and effort into value:
Link Value = (Average link cost in your industry) × (number of links)
Time Investment = (Hours spent) × (Your hourly rate)
ROI = (Total link value – Time investment) / Time investment × 100
For example:
You earned five links in a month — all from DR 70+ publications.
Let’s say the average market cost for that caliber of link is $800, and you assign a DR adjustment factor of 1 (used to reflect link quality; 1.0 = solid, relevant fit):
Link value: $800 (avg. link cost) x 5 links = $4,000
Time investment: 12 hours × $100/hr = $1,200
ROI: ($4,000 – $1,200) / $1,200 × 100 = 233%
Now compare that to sponsored content, digital PR retainers, or even PPC — and suddenly, this starts looking like a serious channel.
Build a Stakeholder-Ready Report
The final piece is packaging your results in a way that stakeholders understand and care about.
Keep it simple, visual, and focused on outcomes:
A summary of links earned by domain authority range
Growth in brand mentions across media and social
Traffic lift or ranking movement tied to earned placements
Estimated link value compared to paid alternatives
A standout example or case study from that month
When stakeholders can see the momentum — not just the metrics — they’re far more likely to stay bought in.
Start Earning Links That Actually Matter
You’ve got everything you need to get started. Now, it’s time to make your move.
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Advertisers can now see exactly where their Search, Shopping, and App campaign ads are running across the Search Partner Network (SPN), with full site-level impression data.
How it works:
Reports list all SPN sites where your ads appeared.
Impression data is broken down at the site level.
Works like existing placement reports in Performance Max.
Why we care. Transparency has long been a sticking point with SPN. This update gives advertisers the visibility they’ve been asking for – and the ability to make smarter, brand-safe decisions.
The big picture. This change empowers advertisers to:
Audit brand suitability more effectively.
Optimize spend by analyzing which sites drive value.
Gain tighter control over campaign performance.
First seen.This update was first noted by Anthony Higman, founder and CEO of ADSQUIRE. He is still skeptical of Search Partner Networks despite it being an answer to a request advertisers have made for years:
“Still Most Likely Wont Be Participating In The Search Partner Network But This Is Unprecedented And What ALL Advertisers Have Been Requesting For Decades Now!!!”
Bottom line. Advertisers finally have the transparency and control needed to run on SPN confidently and optimize placements for better results.
Google announced it will shut down the Content API for Shopping on Aug. 18, 2026, officially making the Merchant API the new standard for managing Merchant Center accounts.
Why we care. For over a decade, advertisers and retailers have relied on the Content API to push product data into Google Shopping. The new Merchant API promises a simpler, more powerful way to control how products appear across both organic and ad surfaces – but it means developers and PPC teams need to start planning migrations now.
Details:
The Merchant API has been available in beta since May 2024, but is now generally available.
Google describes it as a “simplified interface” for scaling product feeds and gaining programmatic access to data, insights, and unique capabilities.
It will serve as the primary tool for product data management, spanning both paid and organic listings.
What’s next. The Content API remains available until August 2026, but Google urges advertisers to migrate sooner.
Help docs are live to guide developers through the transition.
Expect growing forum chatter as advertisers share migration challenges and best practices.
Bottom line. If your ecommerce business relies on the Content API, the clock is ticking. Moving to the Merchant API isn’t optional, and early adopters may gain a smoother path to scaling feeds and campaigns.
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After Amazon pulled its ads from Google Shopping on July 23, clicks became cheaper, and volumes rose, but the value of that traffic dropped. That’s according to a new study from Optmyzr, which analyzed 6,137 advertiser accounts.
By the numbers (all categories combined):
Clicks: +7.8%
CPC: -8.3%
Conversion Value: -5.5%
ROAS: -4.4%
Why we care. Less competition doesn’t automatically help advertisers, and more traffic doesn’t always mean better business. Amazon-trained shoppers still expected rock-bottom prices, fast shipping, and seamless buying. When competitors couldn’t deliver, conversion value fell.
Category winners and losers. Electronics was the clear winner. Retailers like Best Buy and Apple matched Amazon’s offer, driving +81% conversions and +7% ROAS. In other categories:
Home & Garden, Sporting Goods, Tools, Apparel: Fell into the volume trap – more clicks, but lower value and weaker ROAS.
Health & Beauty: Traffic converted, but at a lower per-sale value.
Apparel & Accessories: The largest category by volume, but saw a -9.5% drop in conversion value.
Between the lines. Amazon wasn’t just another bidder – it was shaping shopper expectations across categories. When Amazon left, those expectations didn’t reset, the study suggests.
Bottom line. For PPC advertisers, cheaper clicks aren’t a win if they don’t turn into profitable customers. Without Amazon-level pricing and convenience, many brands risk falling into the volume trap.
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Is the number of clicks on your top-ranking content starting to slip? It’s time to find out where your traffic has gone and how to get it back.
AI Overviews are reshaping SERPs as we know them. Google now answers user queries directly in the SERP, and traditional blue links are getting pushed further down the page. You might still be ranking, but your visibility is shrinking.
This doesn’t mean SEO is dead. It just means the playbook has changed. To stay competitive, you need to understand how AI Overview optimization works and start building content designed to earn those coveted AI citations.
Key Takeaways
AI Overviews are rerouting traffic, not killing it. Your rankings may hold, but clicks drop because Google satisfies user intent directly in the SERP.
Answer-first content wins. Structuring pages with concise answers, logical headings, and clear formatting increases your chances of being cited in AI Overviews.
Authority signals matter more than backlinks. Brand mentions, topical trust, and consistent visibility across multiple platforms influence AI citations.
Owning your audience is your safety net. Diversifying channels and building first-party data ensures long-term visibility, even as search behavior evolves.
Why You’re Ranking But Still Losing Traffic
If your content still ranks in the top 10 SERP positions but traffic is slipping, there’s a good chance AI overviews are the culprit. Google’s AI-generated summaries dominate the top of the page, pushing organic listings below the fold. Users get the answer they want without ever clicking. In fact, almost 60% of Google searches end without users even making a single click.
You can see from this screenshot that when your search results load, there’s no organic results in site. In fact, in this instance, AI overviews even push sponsored results below the fold. This is the new reality of zero-click searches. Impressions might look steady, but clicks drop because users can satisfy their intent without leaving Google.
The solution is to stop thinking only in terms of traffic volume. Start focusing on visible influence: appearing in AI Overviews and being recognized as an authority, even when users don’t click.
AI Overviews And How They Are Turning The Funnel Upside-Down
Traditional search funnels start with discovery, move to consideration, and end in conversion. AI Overviews flip that script.
Users can start—and sometimes finish—their journey right on Google. With features like AI-generated summaries and featured snippets, the need to click through is lower than ever. Voice search and even short-form video integrations accelerate this shift, creating an environment where Google does the explaining for you.
For marketers, this means clicks are no longer the whole story. Your content has to deliver more than just clicks. It needs to capture attention inside the SERP and give users a reason to engage when they do click through. Strong on-page structure, engaging CTAs, and retention strategies like scroll-depth optimization now matter just as much as ranking. This is the essence of Search Everywhere optimization, which focuses on meeting users wherever they’re consuming content, not just on your site.
How To Optimize For AI Overviews
If you want your content featured in AI Overviews, you need to create pages that are easy for Google to summarize and trust. Here’s how to give Google what it wants:
Lead with an answer-first layout: Open your page with a concise, 2–3 sentence answer to the core query. This immediately gives AI a clear takeaway, increasing the odds of being cited in an overview. Expand into supporting details afterward with a logical flow.
Use structured formatting: Break your content into clean H2s and short paragraphs so Google can scan and interpret it quickly. Bulleted and numbered lists help AI extract step-by-step processes or summaries.
Add schema and FAQs: Implement FAQ and How-To schema to highlight your key answers for AI. Include a short FAQ section at the end of your article to increase your odds of citation for question-based queries.
Target long-tail, conversational keywords: AI Overviews thrive on natural, question-based searches. Integrate these phrases into headings and early sentences to align with how users talk to search engines and voice assistants.
Publish fresh, authoritative content: Share unique insights, proprietary data, or first-hand expertise to meet E-E-A-T signals—experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. AI favors credible, original content over generic summaries.
Support with media: Embed YouTube videos, charts, or screenshots to improve engagement and reinforce authority. Use descriptive alt text so search engines can understand and reference your visuals.
Combining structure, authority, and clarity makes it easy for AI to pull your content and keep your brand visible in the new SERP landscape.
YouTube and Video: Your Shortcut to Visibility
Video content—especially on YouTube—is one of the fastest ways to gain visibility in AI Overviews. Google and Gemini favor YouTube because it’s part of their ecosystem, and AI models naturally pull from sources they already trust.
Short, keyword-focused videos can surface in AI-generated results even if your text content isn’t cited. A 60–90 second explainer video that directly answers the search query gives AI a clean snippet to work with while also boosting your chances of appearing in video carousels.
The charts below show just how effective video is. They show the categories of YouTube videos that have shown up in AI overviews and how fast the trend of videos showing up in AI overviews has grown over time.
Create concise, educational videos tied to core keywords.
Embed them on relevant blog posts or landing pages to reinforce topical authority.
Add captions or transcripts so AI models can understand and summarize your video content.
Video can reclaim lost search visibility while building multi-surface authority across AI-driven and traditional search.
Off-Page Signals Matter More Than Backlinks
In the age of AI Overviews, Google and AI models are looking beyond traditional backlinks. They increasingly value off-page signals like brand mentions and expert quotes in reputable sources.
AI models evaluate whether your brand is recognized and trusted across the web. A mention in an industry publication, a quote in a news article, or a stat cited in a whitepaper can be as impactful as a link for AI visibility.
To strengthen your off-page signals:
Pursue public relations (PR) opportunities in industry-relevant media and blogs.
Share original data or research that journalists and peers want to reference.
Encourage brand discussions on platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, and Quora, which AI crawlers frequently mine. Internally, we’ve seen tremendous growth for our client, TurboTax, by helping them launch a branded Reddit campaign—including discussions and engagement.
The goal is to create a trustworthy footprint online. When AI sees your brand cited in multiple credible sources, you’re far more likely to be included in its summaries, even without a traditional backlink.
Build Topical Trust Across the Web
AI Overviews reward brands that show consistent authority on a topic, not just one-off content. Google and AI models look for a pattern: Are you producing relevant, high-quality content across multiple platforms that reinforces your expertise?
To build topical trust:
Publish blog posts, guides, and FAQs that cover your key themes in depth.
Share insights across social media and YouTube, giving AI more signals that your brand is active and authoritative.
Leverage user-generated content (UGC), like community discussions, testimonials, and real-world examples, to demonstrate authenticity.
Ensure your content aligns with E-E-A-T across every channel.
Maintaining a consistent and credible presence wherever your audience searches makes it easy for AI to recognize your brand as a reliable source. That recognition is what creates a trustworthy brand footprint that AI can work with.
You Need to Diversify Your Channels Now
Relying solely on Google for traffic is riskier than ever. The shrinking SERP visibility caused by AI overviews and zero-click searches means that even top-ranking content might not deliver the same ROI it once did.
To protect your brand, you need to diversify your traffic sources:
Combine SEO and paid search to maintain visibility and retarget your most valuable branded keywords.
Invest in social media, email, and YouTube to capture attention outside of Google.
Build a strategy that prioritizes owning your audience instead of depending on any single platform.
Diversifying channels doesn’t just protect your current visibility. It’s a great way to grow your online brand. A strong multi-channel approach captures leads you might otherwise miss, making you less vulnerable to Google’s constant evolution. Ultimately, the brands that thrive in the AI era are the ones that meet their audience everywhere, not just in search results.
When AI Overviews dominate search, the brands that win are the ones creating proprietary insights that can’t be found anywhere else. AI models favor content that provides original data because it signals authority and adds value beyond generic summaries. Internal research is your secret weapon.
Instead of relying solely on public stats, collect your own:
Run audience surveys to uncover trends or opinions in your niche.
Conduct polls or quizzes to generate quick, shareable insights that can be repurposed into blogs and social posts.
Analyze internal data like customer behavior, conversion trends, or product usage to produce unique reports.
Turn these findings into case studies and data-driven articles. Proprietary insights make your brand more likely to appear in AI Overviews and attract backlinks and press coverage, compounding your authority across the web.
FAQs
How do I optimize for AI Overviews?
Start with an answer-first structure: give a concise response in the first 2–3 sentences, then expand with supporting details. Use a clear structure with H2s and bulleted lists so Google can easily scan and summarize your content. Implement FAQ or how-to schema, and include a dedicated FAQ section to match AI’s preferred Q&A format. Fresh, authoritative content supported by brand mentions and backlinks will boost your chances of being cited.
How are AI Overviews changing the SERPs?
AI Overviews now dominate the top of Google results, pushing organic listings further down the page. This creates more zero-click searches, where users get answers without visiting your site. Even if your rankings haven’t changed, your visibility and clicks may decline. Making AI-friendly formatting and multi-channel strategies more important than ever.
Conclusion
There’s no need to panic. AI Overviews aren’t erasing traffic, they’re simply rerouting it. Your pages may still rank, but when Google’s summaries dominate the top of the SERP, visibility doesn’t always translate into clicks. The old playbook of relying on impressions and top rankings isn’t enough anymore.
To win in this era of search, your SEO strategy has to include AI overview optimization. Content needs to be structured for AI-first discovery, with clear answers and logical formatting that gains LLMs’ trust. Now, success is about building influence. When your brand appears in AI Overviews and consistently reinforces topical expertise, you maintain visibility even when users don’t land on your site.
The final step is ownership. Diversifying channels and leveraging Search Everywhere optimization gives your brand resilience, while first-party data ensures you can nurture and convert your audience on your own terms. If done right, AI can be your biggest opportunity, not just a threat.
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TikTok is capping hashtags at five per post, a shift some users have recently noticed through in-app notifications.
Details. TikTok hasn’t formally announced the update. A Reddit user said a TikTok notification explained the change is aimed at:
Reducing hashtag clutter,
Discouraging spammy usage,
Improving discovery relevance.
TikTok is the latest social platform to sideline hashtags:
X dropped hashtags from ads.
Meta’s Threads limits posts to one topic tag, while Instagram is testing a five-hashtag cap.
LinkedIn has de-emphasized them.
Why we care. Hashtags have long been used to boost reach, but platforms are dialing them back as algorithms rely more on engagement signals – and as spammy, irrelevant tags clutter feeds. This could improve relevance and reduce spammy competition, but it also raises the stakes for picking the right hashtags to ensure campaigns still surface in discovery.
The big picture. For creators, the change means quality over quantity. Picking the most relevant hashtags matters more than piling on extras. TikTok’s Trends dashboard can help surface the tags most likely to drive discovery.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/tiktok_hashtags-GzFiUk.webp?fit=320%2C692&ssl=1692320http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-08-18 18:52:522025-08-18 18:52:52TikTok limits posts to five hashtags
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.
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:
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.
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.
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”:
Reload the page, and you’ll see how it looks without JavaScript enabled — in other words, how LLMs like ChatGPT see the page:
In the Nike example above, the LLM would still see key info like the product title, description, and price.
But in the example below…
…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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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
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.
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
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-08-18 14:02:292025-08-18 14:02:29How to Optimize Your Ecommerce Store for AI Search (7 Steps)
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 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:
It also lets you preview what the post will look like when you share it on Facebook and X/Twitter:
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.
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.
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.
You can then set up a redirect right from the 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).
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.
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.
(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 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/”:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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).
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 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:
After installing the plugin and turning on the most important features, here’s how it looks:
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:
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.
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:
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.
(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.
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 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.
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.
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 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:
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.
But you can still tweak auto-generated meta elements to add more value as needed.
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:
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.
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’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
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-08-14 14:41:192025-08-14 14:41:195 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress (Tried & Tested)
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.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/1754914556403-Uv1A5C.jpg?fit=800%2C339&ssl=1339800http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-08-12 17:30:302025-08-12 17:30:30Gender exclusions spotted in Google Performance Max campaigns
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