Posts

12 AI tools that will elevate your SEO game

/0 Comments/in , /by

In the last few years, we have seen loads of exciting developments in AI. New tools are popping up left and right, helping with a wide range of tasks. AI is finding its place in every market, from writing to keyword research to fact-checking. The rise of this phenomenon is undeniable. Let’s explore a few AI tools that can support your SEO efforts.

We’ve listed 12 tools that can help you with your SEO in different ways. That said, it’s important to maintain a healthy balance between AI support and human input. AI can help us greatly, especially with getting started and saving time on easy tasks. Authenticity and trustworthiness still matter, both for your audience and SEO.

Don’t let AI take over entirely or erase your unique perspective.. Don’t underestimate your importance in this process and always stay critical of the output. Check the tone of voice and the facts, and rewrite anything that feels off. In the end, this human element will get you to the top of the search results.

1. ChatGPT (Plus)

Let’s start with a tool you’ve probably heard of: ChatGPT. This is a text-based AI model that interacts with you in a conversational way to answer any question you have. Or fulfill any content request you have. This means ChatGPT can assist with a broad range of tasks.

Another great feature is the ability to tweak your request as you go. So if you ask ChatGPT to write an introduction for a blog post on a specific topic and the answer it comes up with is too long, you can then ask it to shorten it and it will do so. If you’re not happy with the tone of voice, you can ask it to change that. Or if you don’t like it at all, you can ask ChatGPT to rewrite it altogether. You can also craft more specific prompts to get better results from the start. This allows you to keep tweaking the text until you’re satisfied with it.

Screenshot of AI tool ChatGPT
Screenshot of ChatGPT and the model options showing

 If you use ChatGPT plus, which is the paid version, you can also use the dropdown at the top left corner to select a model fitted to your needs. As you can see, these other models give you more options. But the free version of ChatGPT can still handle most basic content requests.

2. Yoast SEO & WooCommerce SEO

Yoast SEO comes with several AI features. The most recent one is Yoast AI Optimize, which helps you improve your content based on the feedback you get—inline, where you are working. Yoast AI Optimize highlights suggested changes for certain assessments in the Yoast SEO Analysis, allowing you to easily apply or dismiss them. This ensures that the final decision always remains in your hands.

Yoast AI Optimize gives you inline suggestions and a one-click solution to improve your content

The second AI feature generates SEO titles, meta descriptions, and social snippets for you. It looks at the content already there and gives you a few options with the click of a button. This saves you the hassle of doing it manually and provides you with relevant titles, meta descriptions, and social snippets to increase your click-through rates.

screenshot of AI tool Yoast SEO
Screenshot of the AI meta description generator in Yoast SEO Premium

The AI features are part of our paid plugin, Yoast SEO Premium. This comes with a yearly subscription plan, but an affordable one. We want to make our features available to as many people as possible.

Unlock AI features in Yoast SEO Premium

Get this feature and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!

Get Yoast SEO Premium Only $99 / year (ex VAT)

We’ve also added this feature to Yoast WooCommerce SEO a short while back. This helps you make your products stand out on the search result page and get those clicks to your website. So if you have an online shop and are looking to optimize your product pages, it’s worth taking a look at that product as well.

3. Jasper

Another tool you can use to produce content is Jasper. But it is more focused on producing marketing content like blog posts, social posts, email and website copy. Where ChatGPT targets a wider audience, Jasper focuses on people working in marketing and entrepreneurs who do their marketing themselves. Utilizing the AI tool works pretty similarly, where you put in a request and Jasper provides you with content specifically created for a newsletter or post (or something else).

It also allows you to upload a style guide or examples of your content so that it can learn your preferred tone of voice. In addition, you can also give it information about your company like the products or services you provide, your audience and even a campaign brief. Jasper uses all of this to understand the goal of the content you’re requesting and to create content that is on-brand and detailed. What’s cool about this tool is that it also comes in the form of a browser extension. Allowing you to use it while you’re working on your content in WordPress, Gmail and other places.

screenshot of AI tool Jasper used in Gmail
Screenshot of Jasper browser extension being used in Gmail

It’s good to know that Jasper works with a monthly (or yearly) subscription plan, so this is a paid tool. They have a few options you can check out and a free trial if you want to give it a try before subscribing.

4. Keyword Insights

A vital but time-consuming part of SEO is keyword research. That’s why one of the AI tools we’ve picked is focused on that specifically. You can use Keyword Insights to find new keyword ideas and cluster them. By filling in a keyword it gives you loads of related keywords and their search volumes. Keyword Insights also helps you categorize keywords by clustering them properly and it allows you to upload other files to get those keywords in there as well. It gives you a nice overview of all your keywords per cluster and all the relevant data to figure out which ones you want to work on. The tool actually uses an algorithm to quickly show you which keyword is the best choice at the moment.

screenshot of AI tool Keyword Insights
An overview of related keywords in Keyword Insights

After you’re done with that, you can actually use the writing assistant to get started with writing. What’s cool about this writing feature is that it gives you an overview of the top headings of other websites that rank high on that keyword. Or it can even generate an outline for you. Which can be great inspiration to get started with the structure of your text. It also helps you write the text by suggesting relevant content for the article you’re working on.

Keyword Insights is a paid tool, that has several pricing options depending on your needs. A few of those options also enable team sharing, which comes in handy when you have multiple people working on your SEO. It has loads of interesting features to do keyword research in an organized way. But a very important sidenote is that it can be tempting to let the tool also do all the writing for you. Which might result in content that is far from original and authentic and will not get you that top result in Google. As it will be mainly based on what’s already out there. So make sure to check out the keyword features, but be mindful of how you use the writing assistant.

5. Semrush SEO Writing Assistant

Another writing tool powered by AI is the SEO Writing Assistant you can find in Semrush. This tool analyzes your text in terms of SEO, readability, originality and tone of voice. It gives you suggestions based on this analysis and also comes with a few features to optimize your text, such as the Rephraser, Compose and Ask AI. What’s great about the Originality section is that this helps you create content that’s not like everyone else’s, something you risk when using AI in your content creation. This can help you figure out whether you need to change your angle and it also checks your content for plagiarism.

screenshot of AI tool Keyword Insights
The SEO Writing Assistant in Semrush

Another reason we’re mentioning this tool is because Semrush in general is a great tool for SEO. So having this option in there is a great addition to their set of tools. The SEO Writing Assistant is part of Semrush’s Content Marketing Platform, which is included with two of their three subscription plans. You can also sign up for a free trial to give it a whirl.

6. MarketMuse

When looking at AI tools that can help you elevate your SEO, MarketMuse is another one we want to mention. In short, MarketMuse is content planning and optimization software that comes with loads of SEO and automization features. The idea is that it puts everything you need in one place and automates content audits for you. Helping suggest what to work on next instead of guessing or speculating what does or doesn’t work.

screenshot of AI tool MarketMuse
The Topic Navigator section in MarketMuse

It can help you do keyword research, plan your content and write. All based on personalized data, as they analyze your website and also look at competitors in your field. Which can save you loads of time and help you make informed decisions. Without having to switch between different tools and documents or sheets. It’s all in one place. As most AI tools discussed so far, MarketMuse works with a monthly subscription plan and gives you a few options to choose from.

7. Originality.ai

The name might already be an indicator of what this AI tool can do for you. Originality.ai helps you fact-check your text and also checks it for plagiarism. Being trustworthy is an important factor in SEO right now, and will probably remain important, so you need to get your facts straight. And make sure you’re not accidentally committing plagiarism, a growing risk in today’s AI-heavy landscapes.. Funnily enough, it also comes with an AI Content Detector which is pretty good in detecting content written by AI. Even if it has been paraphrased.

screenshot of AI tool Originality.ai
The fact checker in Originality.ai

Originality.ai comes with a monthly subscription option and a pay-as-you-go option which gives you a bunch of credits to get started. Unfortunately, there is no free trial, but if you go to their website you can find loads of information (and some examples) of how the features work. There’s also a demo of their fact checker if you want to give that a try!

8. Grammarly

Grammarly is a tool that’s quite popular with the writers here at Yoast. It shows you when you’ve made an error when it comes to spelling and grammar, and works on different platforms and in different places. Which is very helpful when you write a lot of online text. Now that Grammarly also comes with the power of AI, it can do even more for anyone who writes online content.

Grammarly now comes with a generative text feature, which allows you to give it a prompt and get a draft right away. It also includes a rewrite feature to adjust the tone of your content. You can also teach it what your personal tone of voice is, so that it can give you specific suggestions that fit your communication style. Lastly, it can help you with brainstorming and outlines by giving suggestions based on your task at hand. It’s a neat little AI tool that you can use on the go.

screenshot of AI tool Grammarly
Screenshot of Grammarly functionality, showing some of its AI features

Grammarly has a free plan, which gives you access to their basic AI assistance and 100 AI prompts per month. They have a few paid monthly subscription plans if you need more and want access to more prompts and advanced features.

9. Gemini

Gemini is Google’s generative AI chatbot. It’s designed to handle a wide range of tasks including text generation, image analysis, coding, and data processing. Integrated into tools like Google Docs and Gmail, Gemini provides users with loads of options to improve their content on the spot. It also integrates with Google’s AI Studio for prototyping and testing.

Gemini is designed to serve both casual users and developers. Through the Gemini web app (formerly Bard), users can interact conversationally with the model, ask complex questions, or get help writing code and documents. This app also offers Gems, premade or custom prompts that can be saved for future use and help you with specific needs.

Screenshot AI tool Gemini by Google
The Gem manager in Gemini

Gemini offers a free and paid subscription. The free version of the Gemini web app gives users access to Gemini Flash, a fast and cost-efficient model suitable for everyday tasks. For more advanced capabilities, Google offers Google AI Pro, which provides access to Gemini Pro, integrations in Google apps, and a few other more specific features.

10. Perplexity

Perplexity AI is a free AI-powered search and answer tool. It presents direct answers backed by real-time web sources, making it especially useful for research, current events, and factual information. It uses a conversational interface similar to a chatbot, allowing users to ask follow-up questions and refine their search naturally. 

One of Perplexity’s standout features is its focus on citations and transparency. Each answer is accompanied by linked sources, allowing users to verify information or explore the topic further. This makes it a valuable tool for professionals, students, and writers who need trustworthy results quickly. The platform also includes features like “Research,” allowing deep research on any topic.

Screenshot of AI tool Perplexity
Example of answer provided by Perplexity, showing the sources at the top.

Perplexity offers a free option that provides access to fast and accurate answers using its standard models, along with web-sourced citations. For users who need more powerful tools, Perplexity offers different plans depending on your needs. Pro is aimed at individuals looking to use a more powerful and up-to-date version of the tool. Sonar API gives developers API access for any custom applications or automations they might want. Finally, Enterprise Pro is the choice recommended for organizations looking to use this tool within the team.

11. Claude

Claude is a conversational AI designed with a focus on safety and transparency. Named after Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, this model excels at tasks involving text comprehension, summarization, creative writing, and code generation. What sets Claude apart is its training method that aligns the model’s behavior with human values by using a set of ethical guidelines.

Users can interact with Claude through a chat-style interface. It also supports uploads of various file types (like PDFs or CSVs) for direct analysis, making it a powerful tool for research, document review, and data interpretation. Anthropic’s Claude includes three variants, Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus. Opus being the most advanced, particularly strong in reasoning and complex problem-solving tasks. Sonnet is also a great option for coding tasks.

AI tool Claude
Example of Claude being used to visualize data.

Claude comes with a free option and several paid options. The free version gives users access to Claude’s chat and allows them to generate code, create content and analyze text and images. When it comes to their paid plans, there are options for individuals looking to integrate Claude into their terminal or workspace. But also options for organizations or developers or businesses looking to get access to the API. I would recommend having a look at the options to see what would be a good fit for you.

12. NotebookLM

NotebookLM is an AI-powered note-taking and research tool developed by Google. It was designed to help users interact with their own documents using generative AI. It allows you to upload sources such as PDFs, Google Docs, YouTube-video’s or audio files, and then ask questions or generate summaries based on that content. Unlike other AI tools, NotebookLM uses the user’s uploaded material, which makes its responses more contextually accurate and personalized. 

One of the standout features of NotebookLM is its ability to create structured summaries, highlight key themes, and generate helpful outlines based on the uploaded sources. You can interact with the model by asking detailed questions, getting explanations of terms, or generating content like FAQs or briefing docs. This productivity tool blends note-taking, research, and brainstorming in one interface.

Screenshot of AI tool NotebookLM
The NotebookLM interface showing sources, the chat and other options.

As of now, Google offers NotebookLM for free. The tool is available to users in supported regions through their Google accounts and is still positioned as an experimental product.

Read more: Generative AI and SEO: Revolutionizing content creation »

The post 12 AI tools that will elevate your SEO game appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

7 Powerful AI Marketing Tools You Need (Tested)

/0 Comments/in /by

Seen your LinkedIn lately? AI marketing tools are everywhere.

And each one promises a bigger ROI than the last.

The truth? It’s not necessarily hype. AI tools actually deliver impressive returns.

In fact, you get a 3.7x return for every dollar you invest in generative AI.

GenAI Impacts Both Top and Bottom Lines

But ONLY if you pick the right tools.

So, to save you the guesswork, I tested seven popular AI marketing tools for various tasks. Including writing, video creation, and customer research.

Check out my in-depth reviews below for the full picture.

Short on time? View each tool’s highlights here:

What Are the Best AI Marketing Tools?

AI Tool Best for Pricing
ChatGPT All-purpose AI marketing assistant $20+/month
Semrush Full-stack marketing with AI integration $139.95+/month
Flick Social media marketing on a budget £14+/month
Canva Fast visual content creation $15+/month
Synthesia Video creation without filming $29+/month
AdCreative.ai Scaling high-performing ads $39+/month
HubSpot AI marketing automation $20/month/seat

1. ChatGPT

Best all-purpose AI marketing assistant

Price: $20+/month; limited free plan available

ChatGPT – Buyer Personas Overview

I can’t write about the best AI tools for marketing without starting with ChatGPT.

The large language model (LLM) isn’t just popular.

It actually gets more searches than “AI.”

Google Trends – ChatGPT & AI

What makes it so good?

It can handle just about any marketing task, customized to your industry.

From a quick Instagram caption for your DTC skin care company to a detailed content strategy with audience segmentation, ChatGPT does it all.

But here’s the not-so-secret secret: ChatGPT is only as good as your prompts.

Bad prompts = bad answers.

But learn how to communicate with ChatGPT effectively (aka prompt engineering), and it becomes the ideal AI tool for marketing teams.

Create Relevant First Drafts

ChatGPT helps you go from blank page to first draft on any topic, fast.

(For more, check out our guide: How to Use AI for Writing Exceptional Content.)

The tool can significantly speed up the content creation process, no matter the format.

This includes SEO blog posts, product descriptions, email campaigns, and more.

ChatGPT – Relevant first drafts

For example, I often use it to organize my ideas and draft marketing content more efficiently.

I typically provide it with custom inputs like:

  • A content brief and project guidelines
  • Data from tools like Semrush
  • Competitive intelligence
  • Initial research notes

By feeding this information up front, the output becomes more relevant to the project goals.

But this isn’t copy-paste content writing right out of the gate. Every output still needs a human pass.

You’ll also likely need to refine your prompt multiple times to get the highest quality results from ChatGPT.

Pro tip: For some projects, I use the AI-first method. I start with a prompt to spark momentum. Then, it becomes a back-and-forth process. I add my expertise, and it refines my thinking. I shape the direction, and it suggests new angles. I lay out an idea, and it points out any flaws. It’s less AI writer. More collaborative partner.

Accelerate Customer Research

ChatGPT is a powerful support tool for customer research.

Use it to:

  • Write better survey questions
  • Analyze sentiment
  • Extract actionable insights from raw feedback

For example, voice of customer (VoC) research used to be my biggest time-sink for conversion optimization projects.

I’d spend weeks organizing data and tagging themes.

Now, I run the same process with ChatGPT in a fraction of the time.

I attach dozens of customer reviews from Google, TrustPilot, and internal surveys. Then, ask it to identify sentiments and motivations.

It takes care of the grunt work and identifies patterns fast.

(So, I can focus on finding valuable insights, not just sorting through data.)

ChatGPT – Review sheet and prompt

This same process also gives me the exact language customers use to describe their challenges.

I then use that language to write copy that resonates and build experiences that address customer pain points.

ChatGPT – Review Insights

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Multi-purpose AI assistant that adapts to any marketing task

Customizable to your brand voice, tone, and messaging style

 Answers are only as good as your prompting skills

Prone to hallucinations. Need subject-matter expertise to avoid generic or inaccurate content.

2. Semrush

Best for full-stack marketing with deep AI visibility

Price: $139.95+/month; AI Toolkit and Enterprise AIO require separate plans

Organic Research – Backlinko – Topics

Semrush is quickly becoming one of the most versatile AI-powered marketing platforms out there. It’s no longer just an SEO tool.

Whether you’re building an SEO strategy, planning content, launching paid campaigns, researching competitors, or tracking how your brand shows up in AI-generated answers — Semrush has a solution for it.

And unlike many startups racing into the AI space, Semrush brings something most don’t: infrastructure. It’s backed by more than a decade of data, crawling power, and product development.

Here’s how you can use Semrush to get ahead in the AI-powered marketing landscape:

Track Your Brand in AI Search

The most powerful thing Semrush offers in the AI space is visibility. Specifically: How is your brand showing up in AI-generated answers across LLMs?

That’s where Enterprise AIO comes in.

Semrush Enterprise – AIO Overview

It tracks your brand across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews — measuring:

  • Brand, product, and concept mentions
  • Sentiment and quote-level context
  • Share of Voice compared to competitors
  • Citations and sources used in AI responses
  • Visibility trends by region, topic, or model

If you’re an enterprise or managing a well-known brand, this is the most advanced solution available.

See What AI Platforms Say About You

The Semrush AI Toolkit is built for SMBs, lean teams, and growing brands that want to understand how AI platforms talk about them — and where they can improve.

For $99/month per domain, you can:

  • Monitor your brand’s presence in ChatGPT, SearchGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and more
  • Track Share of Voice and sentiment over time
  • Discover high-intent queries and emerging topics
  • Get recommendations on where to improve content and messaging

It’s not “lite” — it’s focused. And for many teams, it’s exactly what they need to stay visible in the AI-driven search landscape.

Semrush AI Toolkit – Dashboard – AI Strategic Insights

It even provides recommendations based on AI query data and sentiment trends.

This means you can quickly jump on emerging topics in your industry.

Or address user concerns before they become a problem.

For example, when I entered the domain warbyparker.com (an eyeglass company), the AI Toolkit revealed that users repeatedly asked about unclear payment and financing options.

The tool also made a helpful recommendation to solve this problem:

Clearly communicate financing details on the website and in the checkout flow.

Semrush AI Toolkit – Backlinko – AI Strategic Opportunities

That’s the real value here: The Semrush AI Toolkit doesn’t just give you data.

It also surfaces patterns from user queries. So you can identify pain points and fix them before they can hurt conversions.

Keep Social Content on Brand

The Semrush Social Media Toolkit uses AI to help you create and organize a social strategy.

It lets you easily create weeks of on-brand content in minutes. And schedule it across major platforms so your posting stays consistent.

Here’s how it works:

The AI-powered tool finds trending topics your audience cares about. (And updates daily.)

Social Content AI – Backlinko

Select any topic, and the tool will auto-draft a post that aligns with your brand voice and campaign goals.

Customize it further with AI-generated hashtags, images, or scripted videos.

Finally, schedule and publish across Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and more, with the click of a button.

Bada bing bada boom!

Social Content AI – Backlinko – Generated results

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
AI integration throughout the entire platform, including SEO, PPC, and social

Tracks how your brand shows up in AI answers so you can stay ahead as search behavior evolves

 Some features (like the AI Toolkit and Enterprise AIO) cost extra beyond the base plan

May feel overwhelming at first for smaller teams or new users

 

3. Flick

Best for social media marketing on a budget

Price: $18+/month; 7-day free trial available

Flick – Welcome Page

Want to look like you have a full content team without paying for one?

Use Flick.

This AI tool builds your social media marketing strategy, writes engaging posts, and maintains your publishing calendar.

Set your content pillars once in the Brand Hub, and Iris (Flick’s AI tool) will handle the rest.

This includes:

  • Auto-generating post ideas that align with your strategy
  • Repurposing blog posts into ready-to-publish social content
  • Creating a publishing calendar for Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Facebook

It’s perfect for founders and marketers juggling 17 other priorities.

(Or anyone who knows they should be posting more but never has time to sit down to plan it all out.)

Create a Social Media Calendar

Most social tools just help you schedule posts.

But Flick also helps you figure out what to post.

Flick – Plan Content Calendar

Its AI assistant helps you create a social media calendar without hours of brainstorming.

For example, I used Flick to create a 30-day calendar in under five minutes.

Here’s how I did it:

First, I set up the Brand Hub with my content pillars.

  • Conversion copywriting
  • AI
  • Funnel optimization for SaaS and ecommerce

Then, I defined my brand voice and target audience.

Flick – Business Info

Next, I selected a time frame (I went with a full month).

And in under a minute, Iris generated a list of post ideas aligned with my content pillars.

Flick – Plan Content Calendar – Confirm Ideas

Its suggestions included:

  • Create a video showcasing five SaaS companies with standout value propositions
  • Share three AI prompts marketers can use to boost email subject line performance
  • Post before/after funnel results from a client that highlight how I increased signups

All I had to do was click “Add to scheduler,” and my content calendar was set.

Flick – Content Calendar

I now have a month of content ideas that I can easily turn into posts.

(Yep, Flick’s AI can write, too.)

Repurpose Long-Form Content

Got a blog post or YouTube video you worked hard on?

Flick’s “Repurpose” feature turns that content into social-ready posts.

The process is simple:

Click “Iris” > “Repurpose Blog Post.”

Iris – Repurpose long form content

Then, enter the URL.

This can be a blog post, YouTube video, or newsletter. And that’s all you have to do.

I tested this using my AI SEO tools article.

Within seconds, Iris analyzed it and came up with four social post ideas.

Iris – Social post ideas

I picked one.

And the AI generated a post that captured the article’s core message.

It was perfect for social.

AI generated a post

For each post, you can:

  • Adjust text length from one line to full caption
  • Refine hashtags for better reach
  • Attach media
  • Schedule posts

You also have the option to customize each post for different social media platforms.

Customize each post for different social media platforms

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Scheduler is integrated with AI features, so you can go from idea to post without switching tools

Built-in brand voice training means the AI can mimic your brand voice and tone in all your posts

 Limited to social content. Not ideal for broader marketing tasks

No analytics or cross-platform ad management like you’d find in tools like Semrush

4. Canva

Best for fast visual content generation

Price: $15/month; free plan available

Canva – Visme – Fast visual content generation

You probably already know Canva.

This graphic design tool lets you create anything from a tweet graphic to a full marketing campaign.

But now it’s added AI into the mix with its Magic Studio.

Provide a prompt, and the tool will design a graphic, write image text, and even generate code.

From first idea to final creative, Canva’s AI speeds up marketing design without leaving the platform.

Two things impressed me the most:

  • The learning curve was negligible. I didn’t need a tutorial to get started.
  • The AI Image generation tool created exactly what I had envisioned

Turn Ideas into Visual Assets

Canva’s AI can generate full visual assets, including presentations, social posts, infographics, and more.

Inside Magic Studio, you’ll find various options:

  • Design for me: Creates on-brand templates for things like social posts and presentations
  • Create an image: Generates images from text prompts
  • Draft a doc: Writes blog posts, emails, social posts, and more
  • Code for me: Creates code for interactive elements like website pages, quizzes, and more

Canva AI

I put this to the test by asking it to create a slide deck based on a Backlinko article.

My prompt included copy for each slide.

Canva AI design for me presentation prompt

So, how did Magic Studio do?

It generated four slide decks for me to choose from that were pretty good.

But it didn’t follow the exact copy from my prompt.

Canva – AI results

So, I had to tweak the text and update the images. (Which was super easy.)

While the AI image generator made generating visuals simple, I wouldn’t exactly call it “fast.”

It would’ve taken me at least an hour to build Canva slide decks from scratch.

But with Magic Studio, it took me about 15 minutes. Not bad.

Check out the final output below.

What do you think?

Canva – Magic Studio – Final output

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Designs match Canva’s modern, ready-to-use template quality

Offers multiple layout options per prompt so you can easily choose the best fit for your content

 AI doesn’t always follow detailed prompts closely

No dedicated format for visual assets like LinkedIn carousels

Needs a bit of refinement to get it just right

5. Synthesia

Best for video creation without filming

Price: $29+/month; free plan available (no downloads)

Synthesia – Workspace

Synthesia is one of the fastest ways to turn your ideas into presenter-style videos.

Use it to create:

  • Product demos
  • Staff training content
  • Explainer or onboarding videos
  • Global communications in different languages

With over 200+ AI avatars and support for over 140 languages and voices, it’s great for teams that need professional multilingual videos fast.

Even better?

You don’t even have to step in front of a camera.

Create Videos Without Filming

Synthesia lets you create a video from a file, URL, prompt, or script.

You start by entering your inputs into the AI Video Assistant.

For this test, I used this URL: https://www.semrush.com/kb/801-advertising-toolkit.

I wanted to create a promotional video for Semrush’s PPC Advertising Toolkit.

Synthesia’s AI assistant guided me through the process.

It prompted me to enter the URL and fill out key details: video length, audience, tone, objective, and speaker.

Synthesia – AI video assistant

Synthesia then generated a video outline.

From there, I could:

  • Add or delete chapters
  • Change the avatar and voice
  • Tweak the script for each scene
  • Add music, transitions, or new slides

Synthesia – Video Editor

I made a few changes that included swapping out my avatar from dozens of options.

(You can also record yourself to create a personal avatar.)

Synthesia – Avatars

Was the result flawless? Not quite.

The script needed a little polishing, and the AI avatar was… obviously AI.

But for an AI-generated video, with no filming, editing, or voiceover work, it was impressively functional.

 

Localize Videos

Synthesia’s AI recreates videos in over 140 languages and dialects.

Synthesia – Workspace – AI Dubbing

This means global brands and organizations can create localized video content without hiring voice actors or re-recording footage.

For my test, I uploaded one of my TikTok videos and asked Synthesia to generate a version in French.

Synthesia – AI Dubbing

The result? Uncannily good.

Hearing “myself” speak in French was impressive, surreal, and erm…hilarious.

But it worked. And it worked fast.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
More than 200 customizable AI avatars means you don’t have to appear on camera

Creates videos in 140 languages so you can quickly make versions for different markets

 Avatars feel a bit robotic, with limited emotional tone

Video limits are tight: the Pro plan ($29/month) gives you only 10 minutes of video per month. For additional video time, you’ll have to upgrade to the next tier.

6. AdCreative.ai

Best for scaling high-performing ads

Price: $39+/month; free plan available (up to 10 downloads)

AdCreative – Always stay ahead

Running paid ads? You need AdCreative.ai.

It builds complete ads (visuals + copy + CTAs) for every major platform in minutes. Including Meta, Google Ads, LinkedIn, and more.

The game-changer?

It’s trained on billions of high-performing ads, so every output is based on proven conversion patterns.

This means you’re not just getting random designs.

You’re getting pre-optimized ad creatives based on what’s already working in your niche.

Create Ads at Scale

Adcreative.ai keeps you on track when you’re working on multiple campaigns and drowning in last week’s ad copy rewrites.

Start by setting up a basic brand profile with your logo, colors, and short description.

Then, choose the type of asset you want to create: static, video, or text-based ads.

AdCreative – AI-Generated Asset Selection

I tested this tool using one of my Backlinko articles.

First, I had it scan the site so it could understand the brand.

AdCreative – Ad Package

It automatically pulled in Backlinko’s brand details.

Then, I entered the article URL so it could scan for relevant content.

After that, I customized the ad including:

  • Choosing LinkedIn as the ad platform
  • Picking an ad format
  • Uploading a background image (optional)

I clicked “Generate” and within seconds, I had a full batch of ad variants ready for use.

AdCreative – Generate batch of ad variants

Each ad came with a layout, copy, and a “Conversion Score” — AdCreative’s prediction on how well the ad will perform.

Pretty cool.

The results weren’t perfect — a few looked a little rough out of the gate.

But every element was editable in the Creative Studio, so with a few quick tweaks, they were publish-ready.

Side note: Notice a pattern here? AI marketing tools work best with detailed information and manual refinement. (For now, at least.)

AdCreative – Zoom in on ad variant

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Built-in “Conversion Score” helps you prioritize top-performing variants

The tool analyzes your brand assets and automatically learns your goals, ideal customer, and brand voice

 Some default designs feel generic or visually cluttered

Ad downloads are capped monthly, which adds up quickly when running high-volume campaigns

7. HubSpot

Best for AI marketing automation

Price: $20+/month/seat; free tier available (basic CRM)

HubSpot – Copilot

HubSpot integrates email, ads, content, automation, and customer tracking with your CRM.

Their AI (called Breeze) learns from your actual data, such as your:

  • CRM records
  • Campaign performance
  • Customer behavior

This means you get insights specific to your audience and your sales process.

Not generic AI advice based on everyone else’s data.

That makes it feel less like software and more like a teammate who gets your business.

Identify High-Intent Leads

HubSpot’s Breeze Intelligence identifies qualified leads from your website traffic.

It tracks how visitors interact with your site.

Like what they click, how long they stay, and which pages they’ve visited more than once.

Then it combines that behavior with public data sources (like reverse IP lookup) to identify which companies they likely work for.

HubSpot – High intent leads

For example, Breeze might find a visitor from a Fortune 500 company:

  • Checking out your pricing page (obvious buying signal)
  • Reading through case studies (evaluating your results)
  • Making repeated visits (consistent interest)

HubSpot – Find a visitor

That’s someone interested in your product. In other words, the kind of leads your sales team should be talking to.

You can also personalize your outreach to what these prospects have already viewed.

That’s huge.

Say the right thing at the right time to the right person, and you don’t have to do the hard sell.

The momentum’s already there. You just help it along.

Side note: Breeze typically identifies companies rather than specific individuals (unless visitors fill out forms or self-identify), making it particularly useful for B2B businesses.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Comprehensive AI integration throughout marketing, sales, and customer service

Provides deep customer behavior insights for more targeted marketing

 Full AI functionality (like Agents and Breeze Intelligence) is only available in paid accounts

Effectiveness is dependent on the quality of your existing data

3 AI Marketing Tool Runner-Ups

These AI tools for marketers didn’t make the top spots.

But they have standout features for specific marketing tasks that make them worth considering.

1. Hootsuite

Best for advanced social media analytics

Price: $149+ per user/per month

Hootsuite – Social media analytics

Hootsuite uses AI to streamline social media publishing on all your social channels.

Its OwlyWriter AI generates post ideas, repurposes top-performing content, and writes captions in your brand voice.

But what sets Hootsuite apart is its AI social listening model, Blue Silk AI.

Hootsuite – AI Social listening model

It scans millions of conversations, on and off social, to detect brand mentions and analyze audience sentiment in real time.

Then, it:

  • Suggests the best times to post based on engagement patterns
  • Identifies organic content worth boosting with paid ads
  • Surface trending topics in your niche

These AI features let your social team move faster and make data-driven decisions.

But it’s more complex than beginner tools like Flick.

It also comes with a higher price tag. (It starts at $149 per user/month compared to Flick’s $18/month.)

Still, if you’re managing multiple brands on all major platforms and need AI to help you plan and optimize at scale, Hootsuite is tough to beat.

2. Claude

Best LLM for content creation

Price: $17+ per month; free plan available

Claude – Start page

Claude is an LLM, much like ChatGPT.

But it runs on a different framework called Constitutional AI, designed to make it more helpful, honest, and human in its responses.

Claude – Stages

In my experience, Claude is great at picking up on nuance, understanding intent clearly, and handling tone with consistency.

Many marketing writers I’ve talked to love it for long-form content.

Why?

Because Claude keeps voice and structure consistent across thousands of words.

That makes it ideal for things like sales pages, reports, and anything that requires flow and cohesion.

Side note: Unlike ChatGPT, Anthropic doesn’t use your chats to train its AI models. So if you’re handling sensitive data — or just don’t want your conversations used as training material — Claude’s a great option.

3. Zapier

Best AI marketing tool for plug-and-play automation

Price: $29.99/month; free plan available

Zapier – Configure your prompt

Want powerful AI workflows without migrating to an all-in-one platform?

Zapier is the answer.

Unlike tools like Hubspot that require you to use their ecosystem, Zapier connects over 8,000 apps. Including Gmail, Mailchimp, Slack, and Salesforce.

This means you can create countless generative AI workflows that save you time.

Here’s an example:

  • A customer emails a question via Gmail
  • ChatGPT analyzes the message and drafts a personalized reply
  • This reply is sent and automatically logged in your CRM
  • A follow-up task is created in your project management tool
  • A summary is sent to Slack to keep your team in the loop

Set it up once in Zapier, and your entire workflow runs on autopilot.

Next Step: Get AI to Talk About Your Brand

AI marketing tools make creating assets faster and easier than ever before.

They also help you scale your business with less effort.

Your next step? Dominating Google’s AI Overviews.

Learn how to optimize your site for AI Overviews to improve (or regain) your organic visibility. Get ahead of the curve and turn AI search into your next growth engine.

The post 7 Powerful AI Marketing Tools You Need (Tested) appeared first on Backlinko.

Read more at Read More

The SEO KPIs That Actually Matter (And How to Track Them)

/0 Comments/in /by

Proving the value of your SEO efforts can seem like an uphill battle.

What’s the cheat code to getting buy-in from stakeholders?

Tracking the right SEO KPIs. Not just the default ones in your dashboards. But the right metrics.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to choose and monitor SEO KPIs that actually mean something. I’ll show you:

  • What makes an SEO metric a true KPI (and what doesn’t)
  • Which SEO KPIs matter most and why
  • Which emerging KPIs to track in the era of AI Overviews and LLM search
  • How to select KPIs based on your goals and maturity stage

What Are SEO KPIs? (And What They’re Not)

SEO KPIs are key performance indicators that tie your optimization efforts directly to business outcomes. They measure whether or not your SEO strategy is achieving its overall purpose.

On the other hand, SEO metrics are more broad. They include all the available data you could monitor in SEO tools and analytics platforms.

But here’s the thing:

Just because you can measure a bunch of different metrics doesn’t mean you should treat them all as KPIs.

SEO Metric SEO KPI
Organic traffic Demo signups from organic traffic
Bounce rate Engagement on the page based by page type
Backlinks Topical or brand authority growth

Why You Need to Measure the Right SEO KPIs

Measuring your SEO KPIs over time is how you prove your SEO work is moving the business in the right direction.

Tracking the right KPIs can help you:

  • Uncover blockers early: If conversions are dipping even though your traffic is increasing, you may have a content or UX issue.
  • Make better decisions: Knowing which actions moved the needle (and when) helps you repeat tactics that work and avoid the ones that don’t.
  • Discover much-needed pivots: Monitoring KPI-linked performance data makes it easier to adjust content, targeting, and resource investment.

SEO KPI Feedback Loop

Let’s take a look at the KPIs that most effectively show how SEO is moving the business forward.

SEO KPIs That Prove You’re Doing Your Job

Which KPIs you choose to measure should reflect where your business is going and what SEO is expected to deliver along the way.

So, not all of the KPIs below are your KPIs. They depend on your specific business model, SEO maturity, and desired outcomes.

With that in mind, we created a free SEO KPI planner to help you build your own custom SEO KPI system.

Backlinko – SEO KPIs Planner Worksheet

This worksheet is a brainstorming tool. It will help you connect your SEO actions to the KPIs you need to monitor to hit your business goals.

It’ll also help you avoid common mistakes like:

  • Overreporting vanity metrics (e.g., rankings without conversion context)
  • Ignoring conversions altogether
  • Treating all SEO metrics as your SEO KPIs
  • Failing to communicate SEO gains in terms the business cares about

Side note: Your KPIs might shift over time depending on whether you’re building brand awareness, driving conversions, or trying to improve user experience and engagement on the page. Use this planner to keep track of things as your business goals evolve.

Conversion and Revenue KPIs

You should track conversion or revenue-related KPIs no matter what stage of SEO investment you’re in.

Why?

Because these are the metrics most clearly tied to your larger goals of lead generation and revenue impact. In other words: goals that drive business growth.

KPI Definition Why It Matters How to Measure Example
Organic-assisted conversions Conversions where organic search appeared in the user’s journey, even if not the final touchpoint Shows SEO’s role in the full customer journey Attribution paths report in GA4 Tracking how often organic content influences purchases (even when social or paid channels get last-click credit)
Demo or trial signups Number of demos or trial signups attributed to organic search Indicator of lead generation from SEO Event tracking in GA4 with source segmentation Monitoring improvements in signups after implementing new content strategy
Form opt-ins Email signups and contact form submissions from organic traffic Measures mid-funnel conversions Event tracking in analytics; form analytics tools Comparing form completion rates across different landing pages
Revenue from organic traffic Earned revenue from organic search visitors Measures SEO ROI Ecommerce tracking in analytics; CRM integration for B2B Determining quarterly organic revenue to justify increased SEO investment

How to Track These KPIs

You’ll need to configure a tool like Google Analytics to track these types of SEO metrics based on your unique needs or goals.

For example, using the Attribution paths report to track organic-assisted conversions:

Attribution Paths Report

And the Key events feature to track conversions and signups:

GA – Traffic Acquisition – Key events

A Note on Tying SEO KPIs to Revenue

There’s some debate in the SEO community about KPIs that tie into business revenue.

I’ve had this discussion with marketing leaders many times:

Should you consider revenue-based SEO KPIs when determining if SEO efforts are successful?

Just take a quick afternoon stroll in the r/SEO subreddit, and you’ll encounter wildly different opinions regarding the tie between revenue and SEO performance.

Some will tell you that revenue-based KPIs are the only ones that matter:

Reddit – Revenue based KPIs

Others will tell you that all that matters is where you rank:

Reddit – Where you rank

They’ll argue that KPIs based on revenue impact are unfair because an SEO team doesn’t control sales team outcomes, brand messaging, product improvements, or conversion rate optimization (CRO).

But:

You’re performing SEO to help the business gain online visibility and drive growth. As long as your KPIs are linked to these broad goals, they’re worth tracking.

Visibility and Awareness KPIs

SEO KPIs related to visibility and awareness are worth tracking if you’re trying to grow a brand.

But we’d argue they’re now essential for all brands to track — no matter the growth stage.

Why?

Because AI Overviews and other AI tools have changed the game. It’s no longer just about ranking at the top of Google. Being included in AI responses is going to become an increasingly important factor in your SEO success.

For example, here’s the SERP for “what’s the best crm”:

Google SERP – What's the best CRM

Notice how the “top” result is an AI Overview that immediately tells the user a few examples of CRMs.

Salesforce and HubSpot would never rank top for such a competitive term on their own. Appearing in an AI Overview gives them a new way to instantly appear as the right choice for a user searching for this term.

How do you increase your chances of appearing in these responses?

By boosting your brand visibility (among other things).

The specifics of how you can do that are a topic for another article. For now, here are some important SEO KPIs you can use to gauge your overall brand visibility:

KPI Definition Why It Matters How to Measure Example
Organic impressions Number of times your website appears in search results viewed by users Indicates overall search visibility and potential reach Google Search Console impressions data Tracking impression growth in targeted categories following content expansion
Branded search Searches for your brand name and variations Indicates brand awareness Google Search Console; Semrush’s Domain Overview (useful for comparing to competitors) Measuring correlation of TV campaign on branded search volume
SERP feature ownership Visibility in featured snippets, knowledge panels, People Also Ask boxes etc. Indicates growing authority signals SERP feature tracking tools, like Semrush Position Tracking Monitoring featured snippet acquisition after implementing FAQ schema

How to Track These KPIs

You can use Google Search Console to monitor organic impressions:

GSC – Backlinko – Performance – Total impressions report

You can also use it to track branded search visibility:

GSC – Backlinko – Queries table

To monitor SERP feature ownership, you can use Semrush’s Position Tracking tool. It shows you which SERP features you appear in for your custom-tracked keywords.

Position Tracking – Backlinko – Domain ranks drop-down

Note: A free Semrush account lets you track up to 10 keywords. Or you can use this link to access a 14-day trial on a Semrush Pro subscription.

Who Should Use These KPIs?

Visibility and awareness KPIs usually include metrics that measure larger goals of brand visibility and authority building. While they’re worth tracking for all brands, they’re particularly important for:

  • Early-stage and growth-stage orgs that prioritize brand authority investment
  • A small business that just started investing in SEO and marketing
  • Established sites that have seen a noticeable decline in branded search

Engagement and Behavior KPIs

You’ll want to monitor engagement and behavior KPIs once you’re past the initial investment in SEO and into stages of SEO growth or maturity. You’re getting decent traffic, and now you want to optimize the site to better engage that traffic.

KPI Definition Why It Matters How to Measure Example
Click-through rate (CTR) Percentage of impressions that result in clicks to your site Indicates relevance of content to search intent Google Search Console CTR metrics Monitoring CTR improvements on pages with new title tags
Scroll depth / engaged sessions How far users scroll; sessions with on-page engagement Measure of content relevance and quality GA4 engaged sessions Measuring engagement for mid-funnel pages after content restructuring
Pages per session Average number of pages users view during a session Indicates content interest and sufficient site structure Analytics platforms (GA4 calls it “Views per session”) Analyzing the effectiveness of updated internal linking strategy
Average engagement time Time users spend actively engaging with content Indicates how well content engages and keeps users interested GA4 engagement time Determining which topics on the site hold user attention to guide content strategy
On-page “hot spots” Visual indicators of where users focus attention Reveals actual user behavior Heatmaps and click maps (using tools like Hotjar, VWO) Monitoring where and when users drop off

How to Track These KPIs

GA4 has a lot of built-in ways to monitor KPIs related to user behavior and engagement:

GA – Reports – Engagement – Overview

But you’ll need to use a specialized tool like Hotjar to monitor more granular page engagement:

Hotjar – Heatmaps

Who Should Use These KPIs?

Your team should measure engagement and behavior KPIs to monitor progress toward goals related to lead generation, revenue impact, and authority building.

Here are a few example scenarios where you’d want to measure these KPIs:

  • SEO teams that focus on driving up on-page engagement
  • Businesses that need to determine which content topics are resonating with their audience
  • Organizations that have built a content library but are noticing underperformance
  • Any team facing low conversion rates with no obvious cause

Authority and Ranking Power KPIs

If topical authority or share of voice drives your strategy, track these ranking-power KPIs:

KPI Definition Why It Matters How to Measure Example
Referring domains or backlinks Number of external websites linking to your site External signal of site authority Semrush Backlink Analysis and Backlink Audit Benchmarking authority backlinks earned from digital PR campaign
Ranking content percentage Portion of indexed content ranking in target positions Indicates content quality and optimization effectiveness SERP tracking tools with position filtering (like Semrush Position Tracking) Monitoring content library pages ranking in positions 1-3 for target topics
Share of voice in key topic clusters Visibility compared to competitors for core topic areas Shows topical authority and competitive position SERP visibility tools, like Position Tracking Measuring share-of-voice compared in core topics after content refresh
Average SERP ranking positions Average position of rankings across tracked keywords Overall indicator of search visibility Google Search Console; rank tracking tools with averaging capabilities Benchmarking growth in top SERP rankings over time for core keywords

How to Track These KPIs

You’ll generally need more specialized tools to track these KPIs. Semrush’s Backlink Analytics shows lots of metrics about your site’s authority.

These include total numbers and trends of backlinks and referring domains:

Backlink Analytics – Backlinko – Overview

Rank tracking tools like Semrush’s Position Tracking can help you work out the percentage of your key content that ranks in target positions. And you can even get at-a-glance data about your share of voice:

Position Tracking – Backlinko – Share of Voice

Finally, use Google Search Console to track your average ranking positions at the page or query level:

GSC – Backlinko – Queries – Average position

Who Should Use These KPIs?

Authority and ranking power KPIs are important for teams working toward brand visibility and authority building goals. Examples include:

  • Organizations that prioritize backlink and digital PR investment
  • Teams that are investing in growing their topical authority or increased topic ownership
  • Established sites that have organic visibility but want to outpace competitors

Emerging SEO KPIs for the AI Era

So much has changed in SEO since the introduction of AI and LLM-based chat and search functions.

And with all this change comes the need to adjust how we monitor SEO success for our stakeholders, teams, and clients.

If you want to show up at key AI-powered search moments, start tracking these new KPIs for AI mentions and visibility:

KPI Definition Why It Matters How to Measure Example
LLM mentions Frequency of brand/product mentions in AI response outputs Indicates visibility in the growing AI search ecosystem Manual testing; Semrush AI Toolkit Monitoring increased brand mentions via LLM models after implementing structured data
AIO visibility and inclusion rate Presence in Google’s AI Overviews Critical for visibility in AI-enhanced SERPs Manual tracking; Semrush Position Tracking Benchmarking growth in AIO optimizations for high-value queries
Topic authority Demonstrates the relevance of your domain to the topic of a selected seed keyword Indicates potential for ranking in key topic areas SEO tools with topical authority metrics, like Semrush; custom scoring Determining increased authority in specific targeted topics
LLM-driven traffic Visitors coming from AI search channels Measures impact of AI tools as a new traffic channel GA4 with source identification; UTM parameters Using GA4 and/or UTM tagging to monitor organic traffic from LLMs

How to Track These KPIs

Tracking AI mentions is still a bit tricky at the moment. You can see some referral traffic from sites like ChatGPT in your Google Analytics account:

GA – Traffic Acquisition – Session source / medium

But monitoring your brand’s inclusion in AI Overviews might be easier than you think.

Using Semrush’s Position Tracking tool, you can filter keywords by those for which you rank in the AI Overview:

Position Tracking – Ebay – Overview – SERP Features menu

How to Choose the Right SEO KPIs for Your Business

Now that you know what SEO KPIs you could track, you need to connect the dots between your business goals and the SEO metrics that matter most.

Use these four approaches (alone or combined) to zero in on the KPIs that matter most to your team.

Four Ways to Choose SEO KPIs

1. Align KPIs to Your Business Model

The way your business operates has a direct impact on which metrics signal success.

For example, a local HVAC service provider and a global SaaS company won’t measure SEO wins the same way.

Here are a few examples of how you might prioritize SEO KPIs based on different business models:

  • Small ecommerce site: Focus on revenue per organic visit, product page visibility in SERPs, and even top-of-the-funnel indicators like newsletter opt-ins or coupon searches.
  • Startup SaaS platform: Track branded search growth, demo or free trial signups from organic visits, and the performance of long-tail, solution-focused keywords.
  • Service-based businesses: Monitor metrics tied to future conversions, like free consultation forms, quote requests, and engagement indicators like page views per session.
  • Local businesses: Prioritize local visibility KPIs like Map Pack presence, Google reviews, and organic visits from users in your service regions.

Pro-tip: There is no one-size-fits-all SEO KPI list. Determine the goals that are important to your clients, stakeholders, marketing leadership, and adjoining teams, and then decide on the ones you’ll monitor over time.

2. Map Your Audience’s Search Journey

To fuel real growth, map out how your audience moves through their search-to-buy journey. Then, focus on the KPIs that matter most to monitoring the goals you want to achieve.

Where is your audience in the search journey

Think through the following questions:

  • Where does your audience search at different points of the journey? Are they using Google, TikTok, Instagram, ChatGPT?
  • How does your target audience search for your product or service? Are they typing in problem-based queries or searching by brand?
  • Are they using Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs) to make decisions, or do they largely ignore them?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can map out where your brand needs to be seen by your target audience.

Let’s say you have a complex product and your audience has a long sales journey, and they do a lot of research before they make their final decision via several channels.

Impressions across different search platforms, branded search increases, and on-page engagement would be better KPIs than immediate organic conversions or form opt-ins.

Alternatively, imagine your audience is high-intent, they don’t use LLMs as part of their search journey, and your site focuses on providing only bottom-of-funnel content. In this case, you’d want to focus on CTR and organic conversion metrics.

3. Define Strategic Business Outcomes

Your KPIs should reflect business outcomes you expect your strategy to influence.

I like to think of this in four major types of strategic SEO goals:

  1. Brand visibility
  2. Lead generation
  3. Revenue impact
  4. Authority building

SEO KPIs to Track by Goal

4. Match KPIs to Your Site’s SEO Maturity

You’ll also need to consider your KPIs based on your site’s SEO maturity stage.

If you’re in the early stage of SEO investment, you’ll want to zero in on:

  • Content production goals: Report on the number of new blog posts or landing pages published per month.
  • Keyword rankings: Track how many of your target keywords break into the top 20 search results.
  • Visibility growth: Monitor the overall increase in impressions and clicks.

But if you’re further along in your SEO strategy?

Shift your focus from visibility to impact and trust.

If you’re in the advanced stages of SEO investment, rather than just asking “What’s improving?” ask yourself things like:

  1. How many pages rank in the top 10 from our entire content library?For example, if only 10% of your pages rank on page 1, you’ll want to monitor the topic clusters where you’re weakest and set a KPI to improve those over time.
  2. Which pages or topics convert best and why?Let’s say you have a post that drives five demo signups per month, but another page in a different topic cluster drives zero. As you work to better optimize your pages, track demo signup growth by topic to gauge improvement.
  3. Where do we see the least engagement?For example, if you’re experiencing high impressions but low average time on page in one particular topic cluster, your content may be missing the mark. Set a goal to optimize those pages and ensure you’re tracking on-page engagement as a KPI to determine which actions move the needle.

Track the Right SEO KPIs to Get Real Results

Now that you know what KPIs to track (and which metrics to ignore), you’ll want to do the following:

  • Do a KPI audit: Are you tracking what really matters? Use the SEO KPIs planner to help you decide on the right ones for your business or client.
  • Set a review cadence: Monitor your KPIs weekly, monthly, or quarterly based on your goals.
  • Evolve as you grow: Your KPI mix should mature with your SEO strategy. You’ll measure different KPIs in year one of your SEO efforts vs. year three.

This will help you drive real SEO results. Results that grow your business and show your clients the impact of your SEO efforts.

Free resource: Remember to download our free SEO KPI planner to set yourself up for success.

The post The SEO KPIs That Actually Matter (And How to Track Them) appeared first on Backlinko.

Read more at Read More

HTML Link Code: How to Create Hyperlinks on Your Site

/0 Comments/in /by

HTML links (also called hyperlinks) are some of the most important functions of the internet. Google literally relies on them to find, crawl, index, and rank pages.

Links have a lot of power, both in terms of user experience and your site’s SEO.

So, understanding how to code HTML links properly is key if you want to create links that help (not hinder) your website’s performance.

The Components of an HTML Link

You create an HTML link using the anchor element: .

You then use attributes and values to change how the link functions.

Here’s what the complete HTML code for a clickable link looks like:

<a href="https://example.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Visit Example.com for more info.</a>

Let’s break that down:

  • The anchor tag (<a>) is the foundation of every link. It tells browsers “this is a clickable link.”
  • The href attribute defines where your link goes. This can be a web address, a file path, or even a specific section on the current page.
  • The target attribute controls how the link opens. The default is to open in the same window, but _blank makes it open in a new tab.
  • The rel attribute defines the relationship between the linking page and the linked page. It’s particularly important for SEO (more on that in the best practices section).
  • The anchor text is what users see and click. In the example above, it’s “Visit Example.com for more info.”
  • The closing tag (<a>) indicates where the link ends.

I’ll talk more about the role these elements play later in this guide. For now, let’s look at some of the most common ways to add HTML links.

How to Add Links with HTML Code

The basic method of adding links with HTML code involves placing the URL you want to link to within a link anchor tag. Just like the example above.

But here are a few of the most common use cases for adding links in HTML:

Text Links

Text links are the most common type of hyperlink you’ll create. You can use them to link to other pages on your site (internal links) or on other sites (external links).

Backlinko – SEO Strategy – Internal & External Link

Here’s the standard implementation:

<a href="https://example.com">Visit our website</a>

This creates a basic text link that users can click to navigate to the specified URL.

You can enhance text links with additional attributes for specific use cases. For example, here’s how you would set a link to open in a new tab:

<a href="https://example.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Visit Example.com</a>

If it’s an affiliate link, you might use something like this:

<a href="https://example.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer sponsored">Visit Example.com</a>

(More on these attributes later.)

Image Links to Make Images Clickable

Images can serve as powerful, eye-catching links that often attract more attention than plain text.

The basic structure for an HTML image link wraps an <img> tag inside an anchor tag:

<a href="https://example.com">
  <img src="logo.png" alt="Company Logo">
</a>

This transforms the entire image into a clickable link that navigates to the specified URL.

The “img src” attribute specifies the location of the image file. While the “alt” attribute specifies alternative text for the image.

Img src & alt attributes

For image links to be accessible and SEO-friendly, you should include descriptive alt text. Like this:

<a href="/product/camera"> 
  <img src="camera.jpg" alt="Canon EOS R6 Mark II Camera">
</a>

The alt text serves two critical purposes:

  • Screen readers will read it aloud for visually impaired users to understand the image’s content
  • It helps search engines understand the content of your image (which may help you rank in image search results)

You should only make your images clickable if they actually take the user somewhere useful. Like to the image’s source website.

It’s worth noting that for image links and a few of the other types below, you might implement them in different ways.

For example, here’s how we implement some image links here on Backlinko (using CSS classes):

Implemented image links using CSS classes

But here’s an image link on The Spruce:

The Spruce – Clickable image on the homepage

In this case, the image link is still contained within an <a> tag. But there are other elements (like <div>) and classes (like img-placeholder) as well.

How exactly you implement image links largely depends on your website setup. If you use WordPress, your theme and plugins will likely dictate how you code your image links.

Further reading: Image SEO: 15 Essential Optimization Tips

Email Links

Email links use a special protocol that launches the user’s default email client. They’re perfect for making it easier for users to reach you.

Use the mailto: protocol to create email links:

<a href="mailto:contact@example.com">Email Us</a>

When a user clicks this link, it opens their default email program with the recipient field already populated.

Allbirds – Help Email

You can enhance email links with additional parameters too. Like this:

<a href="mailto:sales@example.com?subject=Product%20Inquiry&body=I%27m%20interested%20in%20learning%20more">Email Sales Team</a>

This pre-fills the subject line with “Product Inquiry” and adds initial text to the email body that says “I’m interested in learning more.”

(Note that you need to encode spaces and special characters, like %20 for a space.)

Pro tip: Make it clear what will happen when a user clicks the link with descriptive anchor text. This way, they won’t be confused when their email client opens.

Phone Links

For phone numbers, use the tel: protocol:

<a href="tel:+15555555555">Call (555) 555-5555</a>

When a user taps this link on their mobile device, it opens the phone dialer with the number ready to call.

For international phone numbers, always include the country code with a plus sign:

<a href="tel:+442071234567">Call our London office: +44 20 7123 4567</a>

You can also use the “sms” value to open up a text message:

<a href="sms:+442071234567">Send us a text</a>

As with email links, be clear in your anchor text for phone and SMS links about what will happen when the user taps the link.

Jump Links (Anchor Links) for Internal Page Navigation

Jump links, also known as anchor links, help users navigate to specific sections within the same page. They’re especially useful for long-form content.

If your site uses a table of contents (like this site does), it works using jump links in this way.

Table of content in post

The basic structure requires two parts:

  1. An element with an id attribute that serves as the target
  2. A link that points to that id using a hash (#) symbol

For example, in our article on keyword mapping, which is a step-by-step list, we use jump links to make it easier for users to navigate.

First, we added “id” tags to the headings, like this:

<h3 id="add-keywords">3. Add the Keywords to Your Map</h3>

You don’t see this id attribute on the page, but it’s in the site’s code:

ID Tags added to the Headings

Then, in the second step of the list, which some users might not need to follow, we include a link to skip ahead to the third step (which has the id “add-keywords”).

The HTML link code looks like this:

<a href="#add-keywords">step 3</a>

And the link on the page looks like this:

Backlinko – Link to skip ahead

When a user clicks the link, the browser will instantly scroll to the element with the matching id (in this case, step 3). It’ll also update the URL in the address bar:

Updated URL in the address bar

Jump links are perfect for:

  • Tables of contents at the top of articles
  • “Back to top” links at the end of sections
  • FAQ pages where users want to jump to specific questions
  • Product pages with multiple information sections

Button Links for Calls to Action

HTML links over buttons combine the functionality of an <a> tag with the appearance of a button.

They’re perfect for calls to action that need to stand out and attract clicks.

The key difference between a button-style link and a regular link is that you’ll typically code HTML button links with CSS:

<a href="yourdomain.com/signup" class="button-link">Get Started</a>

This HTML looks like a standard text link, but with CSS, you can transform it:

.button-link {
  display: inline-block;
  padding: 10px 20px;
  background-color: #0066cc;
  color: white;
  text-decoration: none;
  border-radius: 4px;
  font-weight: bold;
  text-align: center;
}

.button-link:hover {
  background-color: #004080;
}

These styles create a rectangular button with:

  • Clear boundaries (background color and padding)
  • Rounded corners (border-radius)
  • Visual feedback on hover (background color change)

For mobile users, make sure your button-style links are large enough to easily tap:

@media (max-width: 768px) {
  .button-link {
    padding: 12px 24px;
    width: 100%; 
    margin-bottom: 10px;
  }
}

It’s worth noting that in a lot of cases, you won’t need to code button links yourself. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, for example, you might use button templates of some kind.

Or perhaps, your developer will use CSS classes to create buttons rather than using HTML link codes.

CSS classes to create buttons

Download Links

Download links let your users easily save files from your website to their devices.

The basic HTML for a download link uses the download attribute:

<a href="report.pdf" download>Download PDF Report</a>

For files that browsers typically display rather than download (like PDFs), the download attribute ensures they’re saved instead of opened.

Many browsers will download other file types by default, without the need for a separate download attribute. This is often true for things like Excel and Word documents.

Note: Sometimes your server configuration will dictate whether a file will open or download by default. If you’re not sure, speak to your developer.

Other Important HTML Link Code for SEO

There are a few HTML link attributes you should be aware of for your site’s SEO. These don’t create hyperlinks, but they do go inside an HTML link element in the <head> portion of your page’s code.

This element looks like <link> rather than <a>.

Canonical Tags

Canonical tags (technically attributes) tell search engines which version of a page is the “primary” one when you have similar or duplicate content across multiple URLs. They help prevent duplicate content issues that can hurt your SEO.

But it’s good practice to implement them on all of your pages.

Backlinko uses canonicals

You implement canonical tags using a <link> element in the <head> section of your HTML:

<head>
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/original-page">
</head>

This effectively tells search engines: “This page is a copy or variation of the page at the specified URL. Please attribute all ranking signals to that URL instead.”

Canonicalization can help when you have URL parameters for tracking, filtering, or sorting (e.g., ?source=email or ?sort=price).

URL Structure

Hreflang

The hreflang HTML link attribute helps search engines understand the language and regional targeting of your pages. This helps them understand which version of your page to display to users in search results.

As with canonical tags, you implement it using link elements in the <head> section of your HTML:

<head>
  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="https://example.com/en-us/page">
  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://example.com/es/page">
  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://example.com/fr/page">
  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/">
</head>

These link elements tell search engines:

  • This page is available in English (US), Spanish, and French
  • The default version (for users speaking other languages) is at the root URL

The hreflang attribute uses language codes (like “en” for English) and optional region codes (like “us” for the United States).

Hreflang structure

Hreflang tags are only an issue for sites with different language versions and an international presence. They can be tricky to get right, so for more detailed info, check out our dedicated guide to hreflang tags.

HTML Link Code Best Practices

Following these best practices will ensure your links are effective, secure, and accessible to all users. And it’ll help improve your SEO too.

Syntax

Here’s the correct syntax for an HTML link:

<a href="url">Anchor Text</a>

Here are a few syntax rules to remember:

  • Always include the opening <a> and closing </a> tags
  • Add the href attribute along with a value (your URL)
  • Enclose attribute values in quotation marks
  • Don’t use spaces between the attribute, equals sign, and value

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable text of your link. It’s the words users actually see and click on. It plays a crucial role in both user experience and SEO.

Good anchor text clearly tells users what to expect when they click a link. It also provided

Here’s an example of poor anchor text:

<a href="https://example.com/pricing">Click here</a>

And here’s an example of good, descriptive anchor text:

<a href="https://example.com/pricing">View our pricing plans</a>

The second example gives users (and search engines) clear information about where the link will take them.

When writing anchor text, follow these guidelines:

  • Make it descriptive and relevant to the destination
  • Keep it concise (typically 2-5 words)
  • Avoid generic phrases like “click here” or “read more”
  • Use keywords naturally, but don’t stuff them in

Title Attributes

There’s also a “title” attribute you can add to links. But you generally don’t need this if you use descriptive anchor text.

In fact, using it can reduce readability and accessibility if it just repeats the anchor text. Screen readers usually won’t read it out, and users hovering over the link will see a tooltip that may just block other content on the screen. Plus, it won’t display on mobile devices at all.

So, unless you can meaningfully add important information about the link, don’t use the title attribute. And instead just make your anchor text descriptive.

Aria Labels

ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) labels enhance accessibility by providing additional context for screen readers and other assistive technologies.

The aria-label attribute provides an accessible name for a link when the visible text isn’t descriptive enough, or for links over icons rather than text:

<a href="https://yourdomain.com/settings" aria-label="Go to settings">
  <svg><!-- settings icon --></svg>
</a>

In this example, a screen reader would announce “Go to settings” but the site would only visually display a settings icon.

Target

The target attribute determines how your link opens when a user clicks on it.

The default link behavior opens the link in the same tab (i.e., you go from the current page to the linked page).

The default value is “_self” but you don’t need to specify that.

If you want to open the link in a new tab, use the “_blank” target value:

<a href="https://example.com" target="_blank">Example</a>

You used to need to add rel=“noopener” to links with a blank target value for security reasons. But you no longer need to do this. (More on noopener below.)

Opening your link in a new tab is particularly useful when:

  • Linking to external websites
  • Providing reference material that users might want to check while staying on your page
  • Linking to downloads or resources that would disrupt the user’s current activity

Opinions vary on whether this is best for accessibility. Some believe this creates a disruptive user experience, especially on mobile and for those using assistive technologies (like screen readers).

For internal links that are part of the natural navigation flow, it’s usually best to stick with the default behavior (opening in the same tab).

Note: There used to be other target values (_parent and _top), but these are deprecated in HTML5.

Relationships (rel=)

The rel attribute defines the relationship between your current page and the page you’re linking to. It’s an important attribute that affects both security and SEO.

The default behavior is to not add any rel values. But here are a few of the most common ones:

Sponsored Links

You use the sponsored rel value when another brand has paid to have a link on your site.

For example, let’s say you have an affiliate link to a product you promote.

This is a form of paid or sponsored link, because you might earn money from purchases users make through that link. Google recommends you use the “sponsored” attribute for paid link placements:

<a href="https://example.com" rel="sponsored">Paid link</a>

Here’s an example of this on WireCutter, a popular product comparison website:

Wirecutter – Sponsored attribute for paid link

You would also use this attribute for links other companies have explicitly paid you to include on your site.

UGC Links

Use the user-generated content rel value on links in comments and forum posts. These are links you don’t necessarily control, and this tells Google that you don’t endorse them.

<a href="https://example.com" target="_blank" rel="ugc">External site you haven’t verified</a>

Reddit – UGC links

Nofollow Links

Use nofollow when none of the other rel values apply and you don’t want Google to associate your site with the one you’re linking to. Or when you don’t want Google to crawl the page you’re linking to.

<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">Link to a site you don’t endorse</a>

Let’s say you’re not the one creating the links on your site so you can’t verify them before they go live. Maybe you have a team of writers, or you’re accepting guest posts.

But you know the links are not sponsored or in user-generated content. In this case, you’d use nofollow.

What About “noopener” and “noreferrer”?

The “noopener” rel value tells your browser to go to the target link without giving the new location access to the page with the link.

If you’re using target=“_blank” then modern browsers will essentially treat it as if you have added noopener. But you can also use it on other links you don’t necessarily trust but aren’t using the _blank target value for. Like those you’re also adding nofollow to.

Using the “noreferrer” value hides the origin of any traffic sent through that link in the analytics of the site you’re linking to.

You can combine multiple rel values by separating them with spaces:

<a href="https://example.com" rel="noopener noreferrer sponsored">Affiliate link</a>

Absolute vs. Relative URLs

When creating an HTML link, you need to decide whether to use an absolute or relative URL in the href attribute. Each has specific use cases and advantages.

Absolute URLs include the complete web address, starting with the protocol:

<a href="https://example.com/products/item1">Product page</a>

Relative URLs are shorter and reference locations relative to the current page:

<a href="/products/item1">Product page</a>

Generally, I’d recommend you use absolute URLs in most cases.

Using relative URLs can speed up production if you’re working with lots of them. Plus, if you move pages or domains but keep the same URL structure, your internal URLs should all continue working without you having to change them all to the new domain.

But honestly, unless you’re planning a major website migration at the time you’re setting up your site (unlikely), you aren’t likely to foresee and then benefit from this relatively minor advantage.

You might want to use relative URLs when working with a staging site that’s on a different domain from the site you’re developing.

In this case, it can avoid you or your developers having to rewrite all the internal links when you push your site live.

How to Check Your Site’s HTML Links

You can manually check the code of an HTML link in your browser with the inspect tool. Just right-click over the link you want to check and select “Inspect” to open up the developer console:

Backlinko – HTML Link

This is handy for quickly verifying your attributes and rel values.

But what if you want to check your links at scale?

That’s where a tool like Semrush’s Site Audit comes in.

Just plug your domain in, let the audit run, and head to the “Issues” tab. Then type in “link” to highlight any issues with your site’s HTML links.

Site Audit – Backlinko – Issues – Link

Go through and fix any issues to improve your site’s SEO and user experience.

Note: A free Semrush lets you audit up to 100 URLs. Or you can use this link to access a 14-day trial on a Semrush Pro subscription.

The post HTML Link Code: How to Create Hyperlinks on Your Site appeared first on Backlinko.

Read more at Read More

Search Everywhere Optimization Guide (+ Free Checklist)

/0 Comments/in /by

Imagine you’re looking for after shave oil.

You type a few keywords into Amazon. A brand called Truly Beauty pops up. You’ve never heard of them.

Amazon – After shave oil – Truly – Results

So you go to YouTube to find the “best after shave oil”.

At the top of the results, someone has reviewed Truly Beauty’s product.

YouTube – Best after shave oil – Results

Okay, interesting…

Let’s stay on YouTube. Next, you type “truly beauty after shave oil” into the search.

YouTube – Truly Beauty after shave oil – Results

What the? The whole page has people reviewing Truly Beauty products!

Is this brand legitimate, or are all these ads in disguise?

Time to go to Reddit to get some unfiltered opinions.

You search for “after shave oil reviews reddit” and notice that once again, Truly Beauty shows up in the results.

Google SERP – After shave oil reviews Reddit

Sure enough, other people share your skepticism. But there’s some positive feedback too.

You decide to give them a try.

This kind of journey happens millions of times every day — across every industry, on every platform.

Side note: I run a men’s apparel brand, but I often research women’s beauty. It’s insanely competitive and usually way ahead in digital strategy.

If you’re in SEO, there’s a clear takeaway here:

You’re not just optimizing for Google anymore.

You need to show up across the entire decision-making journey. Wherever your audience searches, scrolls, or compares.

This is exactly what Truly Beauty figured out.

They didn’t just optimize for Google. They built visibility across the entire search ecosystem. Amazon for discovery. YouTube for social proof. Reddit for authentic reviews.

And it’s working amazingly well.

In this guide, I’ll break down how to optimize your brand for how people actually search today. With concrete examples. Including Truly Beauty’s strategy.

Free resource: To make things easier, I’ve created a checklist to track your progress

Let’s start with what’s really happening here.

The New Reality: Search Everywhere Optimization

What Truly Beauty did isn’t luck. It’s strategy.

They understood something most brands still miss:

Search has changed.

Today’s customers don’t follow a clean, Google-only path. They bounce from TikTok to YouTube, Reddit to Amazon, back to Google, then maybe ChatGPT for one last check.

Credit where it’s due: Rand Fishkin captured this evolution perfectly in his recent post.

Search Everywhere Optimization is about helping people find, evaluate, and trust your brand across every platform where discovery happens. That includes Google — but also YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Amazon, LinkedIn, and even AI tools like ChatGPT.

Every one of those platforms can shape a decision. Miss one? You risk losing the customer to someone who showed up where you didn’t.

How People Search in 2025

Your job isn’t just to rank on Google.

It’s to help people find, evaluate, and trust your brand everywhere they search.

Some call this omnichannel SEO, cross-platform optimization, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization).

The way I see it:

Search Everywhere Optimization.

Because the search journey now includes everything from YouTube Shorts to AI summaries.

And your job is to build visibility, credibility, and conversion power across it all.

It’s not just about being found.

It’s about being trusted. On every platform where decisions happen.

That’s what makes Search Everywhere Optimization different — it evolves SEO beyond a siloed tactic into a full-funnel growth strategy.

So, you’re not just optimizing pages anymore.

You’re shaping how people find, evaluate, and trust what you offer across every stage of the journey, on every platform they turn to for answers.

Done right, Search Everywhere Optimization helps you:

  • Show up on high-engagement platforms where decisions start
  • Create content that resonates in the right format and context
  • Build trust through experience — design, messaging, and credibility
  • Turn search moments into conversions, leads, or long-term users

That’s the shift:

From rankings to relevance. From clicks to action. From Google-only to everywhere that matters.

Two Core Areas of Search Everywhere Optimization

To make Search Everywhere Optimization work, you need to understand where your audience is discovering products.

And how much control you have over those moments.

That’s where this framework comes in.

We divide the modern search experience into two key areas:

  • Managed experiences — where you control the content and presentation
  • Influenced experiences — where others shape the narrative, but your brand still shows up

This distinction helps you prioritize efforts across platforms you own… and platforms where you earn visibility.

Managed Experiences

These are touchpoints you can directly control.

Your website is still your most important owned asset. But you also manage your social media profiles, product listings, app store pages, and more.

Pinterest – Truly Beauty

This is where things gets tactical. You’re shaping the journey with:

  • Engaging content
  • Clear messaging
  • Cohesive visuals
  • Optimized flows and CTAs

On your website, you can go even deeper — refining structure, page speed, copy, and trust signals.

The goal? Deliver a fast, credible, and conversion-ready experience every time someone finds you through search.

Earned and Influenced Experiences

Now, let’s talk about where you don’t control the narrative.

These are the moments shaped by others: customers, creators, communities, algorithms.

Earned and influenced experiences are touchpoints you don’t directly control.

But they still shape how people perceive and trust your brand.

This includes:

  • Customer reviews
  • Reddit threads
  • YouTube mentions
  • Third-party comparisons
  • AI-generated responses in tools like ChatGPT

Illuminate Labs – Blog Health – Truly Beauty review

You can’t control these spaces… but you can influence them.

Search Everywhere Optimization is about increasing your visibility, credibility, and perceived value in places you don’t own.

That might mean:

  • Engaging in relevant conversations
  • Encouraging customer reviews
  • Partnering with trusted voices
  • Publishing helpful content that others cite

Truly Beauty does this well. Their TikTok is a managed asset. The brand controls the content, caption, and messaging.

This isn’t about control. It’s more about visibility, relevance, and credibility in places people already go to decide.

Luckily, you can help shape perception through helpful content, real engagement, and clear value.

You can pay influencers to review and interact with your product, publish high-quality guest posts. So, you don’t have full control over them, but you can light the fire.

For example, Truly Beauty has a strong presence across owned and earned/influenced platforms.

This includes the brand’s official TikTok account, an owned experience.

The brand controls the content, caption, and messaging.

TikTok account – Truly Beauty – Mobile

But when someone searches for Truly on TikTok and sees unsponsored reviews? That’s an influenced experience.

TikTok – Truly Beauty – Search

Both matter. Because both shape how people perceive your brand.

Search Everywhere Optimization ensures you show up in both worlds (managed and influenced) so you’re part of the journey no matter where it happens.

How Search Everywhere Optimization Builds on Traditional SEO

Traditional SEO has mostly focused on one thing — ranking on search engines like Google.

That still matters.

But it’s no longer enough.

Search Everywhere Optimization expands your SEO strategy beyond Google to include every platform where people search, compare, and decide.

So instead of optimizing just for rankings…

You’re optimizing the entire discovery journey.

This shift doesn’t replace SEO. It levels it up.

Here’s how they work together:

Traditional
SEO		 Search Everywhere Optimization
Primary Goal Drive qualified traffic from Google and other search engines Help people find, evaluate, and take action across platforms
Tactics Focus on content, keywords, backlinks, and technical fixes Tailor messaging and format to each platform and stage of the journey
Performance Metrics Metrics include rankings, impressions, CTR, and conversions Metrics include engagement, watch time, scroll depth, reviews, and cross-platform performance

Think of it this way:

  • Traditional SEO gets you found on Google
  • Search Everywhere Optimization gets you chosen — everywhere

When you combine both, you create a strategy that moves with your audience.

Across platforms. Across formats. Across every step of their journey.

Step 1: Define Your Search Personas

Creating search personas lets you outline what your ideal audience wants and needs, and what drives their decisions.

This helps you design content and experiences based on real search behavior, rather than assumptions.

Creating search persona

Pro tip: Already have marketing personas? Add a “Search Behavior” section to show how your audience searches, discovers, and evaluates solutions online.

Start with Real People

Before you can build your personas, you need real-world insights.

Go straight to the source by asking existing customers questions like:

  • How they found you
  • What made them trust you
  • What they needed before taking action

Tools like Typeform let you create and distribute surveys.

Start with their ready-to-use consumer behavior templates to make the process fast and easy.

Typeform – Survey template

Loop in Sales and Support

No one knows buyer questions better than your frontline team.

Ask them:

  • What keywords or phrases do people use when they reach out?
  • Which platforms drive user discovery?
  • What’s unclear or confusing before people convert?

This input gives you practical insights you can’t get from keyword tools alone.

Layer in Data

Tools like Semrush’s Traffic & Market Toolkit let you analyze your target market’s demographics.

Here’s how it works:

Enter your domain and up to four competitors’ domains.

Click “Analyze.”

Traffic Analytics – Truly Beauty – Competitors

View the “Audience” report to get a breakdown of unique visitors to each domain by age and sex.

Traffic Analytics – Truly Beauty – Demographics – Audience

Then, scroll to the “Geo Distribution” report to see an overview of visits and unique visitors by country.

Traffic Analytics – Truly Beauty – Geo Distribution

Next, click “Audience Overlap” to learn about your audience’s online habits.

Traffic Analytics – Truly Beauty – Audience Overlap

Including their most-visited domains. This gives you insights into their preferences, pain points, and needs.

Traffic Analytics – Truly Beauty – Visited domains

Once you’ve gathered your data, organize everything into a clean visual persona.

Free tools like Semrush’s persona builder make this easy.

Semrush – Persona Wizard

Or just use a doc or spreadsheet — whatever helps you capture the key insights clearly.

By the end, you should know:

  • What your audience is trying to solve when they search
  • What blocks or gaps slow them down
  • What type of content or format resonates most

These insights give you a clear picture of who your searchers are and what matters to them.

Note: You can create multiple personas if your product serves more than one audience. For example, a beginner and a power user won’t search the same way or want the same content.

Step 2: Map the Full Search Journey

Map how each search persona moves from discovery to decision across platforms, questions, and content types.

We want to start by breaking the journey into three simple stages.

Quick note:

I’m showing these stages as a linear progression for simplicity. Real search journeys usually aren’t straightforward.

Users frequently jump between platforms and stages, circling back and moving forward unpredictably. This framework simply helps organize our understanding of the core phases searchers experience.

Journey 1

  • Discover: This is when someone first realizes a need or problem and starts looking for ideas, inspiration, or possible solutions
  • Compare: At this stage, they evaluate their options, which involves comparing features, reading reviews, or checking alternatives to decide what fits best
  • Act: This is when they’re ready to take action. Including making a purchase, signing up, booking a service, or taking the next step.

Expand this journey into more stages and variations as needed.

Like awareness, consideration, evaluation, or post-purchase.

Journey 2

For simplicity, we’ll stick with three core stages.

Then, for each stage, identify:

  • What they search for
  • Where they go to find answers
  • What content format they expect

Let’s say we’re mapping the search journey of a shopper discovering Truly Beauty.

A user might first come across this brand when searching for “best after shave oil” on TikTok.

TikTok – Best after shave oil – Truly

From there, they Google “after shave oil” and see Truly in the top results.

Google SERP – After shave oil reviews Reddit

Next, they visit the brand’s site to view product details, images, and pricing.

Truly Beauty products – Glazed Donut After Shave Oil

After that, they head to YouTube.

They search “truly after shave oil review” to find reviews from real people.

YouTube – Search – Truly after shave oil review

Finally, they visit Amazon, search for the product, and check reviews again before placing their order.

Amazon – Truly product – Customer reviews

This is a simplified version of your audience’s actual journey.

In reality, searchers might visit more platforms during the discovery and compare stages — spanning days or even weeks.

This is why it helps to map the complete journey.

Like this:

Complete Journey

Have more than one persona or product category? Create a separate map for each.

Many platforms offer free customer journey map templates, such as Canva and Miro.

Customer Journey Map – Web

Step 3: Identify Gaps and Prioritize Touchpoints

Here’s where you’ll identify what your brand is missing across the search journey and what to fix first.

Using your journey map from Step 2, go through each stage and ask:

  • Are we visible everywhere our audience searches?
  • Does our content actually help them move forward?

Let me walk you through an example.

I conducted a quick manual audit for Truly Beauty across multiple platforms.

On TikTok and Instagram, they consistently appear for branded searches like “Truly Beauty.”

And product-specific searches like “vanilla baby body oil.”

Instagram – Search – Vanilla baby body oil

Next, I examined user-generated forums to see if people discuss the brand organically.

On Reddit, I found some positive threads where users recommend Truly products.

Comment on Reddit – Truly Beauty

And some negative threads, too.

Overall, Truly Beauty could have a stronger presence in earned and influenced spaces.

Reddit – Posts – Truly Beauty

I then analyzed Truly’s product pages.

Their website features several conversion elements:

  • Social proof (ratings and reviews)
  • Clear pricing and purchase options
  • Subscription incentives
  • Trust badges

Truly Beauty products – Vanilla Baby Luxury Body Oil

Their Amazon listings maintain this strategy while adapting to the marketplace’s format.

This way, they create a consistent purchase experience regardless of where customers shop.

Amazon listings – Truly

You’ll want to adjust this process based on your specific industry, audience, and platforms.

The key is documenting all touchpoints where your audience searches.

Once you’ve audited all platforms, organize your findings in a simple spreadsheet.

Include a “Status” column to label your presence on each platform:

  • Optimized
  • Weak
  • Missing

Here’s an example to show how you might organize your audit insights.

Feel free to structure it however works best for you.

SXO – Backlinko Google Sheet

Bonus: We added the above audit template to our downloadable checklist to help you complete this step. Download it now, if you haven’t already.

Now, it’s time to decide which platforms need attention first:

In Truly Beauty’s case, they could strengthen their presence in earned spaces.

Responding to positive and negative feedback builds trust with potential customers.

This might mean recommending products where appropriate.

And addressing any user concerns and complaints.

Prioritize your own gaps based on:

  • Where users likely drop off or switch to competitors
  • High-intent moments like evaluation or decision stages
  • Platforms your audience already trusts and uses to make decisions

This focused approach ensures you tackle the most impactful improvements first.

Further reading: How to Run a Content Audit in 6 Easy Steps

Step 4: Build a Content Plan Aligned with Search Intent

A key part of any strategy is planning content for each search stage and platform.

Use your audit insights from Step 3 to build a content plan that satisfies user needs.

Improve Your Existing Content

Before creating new content, maximize what you already have.

Check Google Analytics or Google Search Console (GSC) for pages that are underperforming.

For example, in GSC, look for:

  • Posts with high impressions but low CTR
  • Pages that rank for relevant keywords, but not as high as they should

Google Search Console – Pages with high impressions & low CTR

Consider this Truly Beauty blog post as an example.

Truly Beauty – Blog post

It already targets commercial keywords, like “best moisturizer for mature skin.”

But it ranks on page 4, 5, and beyond.

This means it’s nearly invisible in search.

Organic Research – Truly Beauty – Organic Search Positions

So, how do you fix that?

Check what they include that you don’t, like additional examples, FAQs, or expert commentary.

Then, improve the content by:

  • Updating it with fresh info, product comparisons, or reviews
  • Adding structure that matches search intent (like “best of” lists, buyer’s guides, etc.)
  • Enhancing formatting for scannability — with subheadings, bullets, and visuals
  • Filling gaps with missing subtopics or angles competitors cover

For instance, Truly Beauty could improve this post by adding:

  • A side-by-side comparison with other moisturizers
  • Tips from skincare experts
  • More visuals (like product images, charts, or before/after shots)

These updates would help align the content with what searchers expect. And give it a better shot at ranking.

Further reading: Google E-E-A-T: How to Create People-First Content + Free Audit

Create New Content

Creating new content for every platform should be an ongoing part of your strategy.

For each platform, ask:

  • Is the user trying to learn, compare, or act?
  • What format do they expect — video, reviews, short posts, or product pages?
  • What would build trust or answer their next question?

Semrush’s Topic Research Tool helps you find new content ideas.

Open the tool and enter a topic. Like “best body scrub for glowing skin.”

Then, select your target location and click “Get content ideas.”

Topic Research – Best body scrub for glowing skin

Click on a relevant subtopic.

And go through the “Questions” column to see what users are actively searching for.

For example, Truly Beauty could turn common questions into helpful content that drives conversions.

Like “What are some good homemade body scrubs?” and “How do you make a homemade scrub?”

Topic Research – Best Body Scrub for Glowing Skin – Content Ideas

Analyzing competitor content can also help you come up with great topic ideas.

Look at top-performing content across platforms where your audience searches.

Pay special attention to:

  • Content themes
  • Hooks
  • Formats
  • Captions
  • Hashtags

For instance, Truly Beauty’s audience might search “best body scrubs for glowing skin” on TikTok.

The brand could explore top-performing videos around that phrase.

And analyze what makes them successful.

TikTok – Best Body Scrub for Glowing Skin

Then, they could use what they find to create videos that mirror those formats — while tailoring them to their product and audience.

(And you can, too.)

Repurpose Content

Don’t let great content live in one place.

The most efficient strategy turns one strong piece into many platform-specific assets.

Start with your highest-performing content.

Then, adapt it to match how your audience consumes information on different platforms.

Truly Beauty – Blog – Best foods for skin

For example, Truly Beauty could transform their “12 Best Foods for Your Skin” blog post into the following:

  • Email newsletter
  • Pinterest infographic
  • Facebook and Instagram carousels
  • TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts
  • Twitter/X or Bluesky thread

One idea → multiple formats → broader discovery.

This way, you can easily scale content across the entire search experience for every platform.

Long Form Content

Step 5: Optimize Owned Touchpoints

When someone lands on your site, they expect it to:

  • Load fast
  • Feel trustworthy
  • Make it easy to take the next step

In fact, search engines like Google look at user experience signals when ranking pages.

That’s why this step focuses on performance, structure, and clarity, so your site works for users and ranks highly.

Improve Site Performance

Slow-loading pages lead to higher bounce rates, missed conversions, and lower rankings.

Use PageSpeed Insights to analyze your site.

And view your Core Web Vitals scores, which are Google user experience metrics.

These metrics measure user responsiveness, visual stability, and the speed at which your main content loads.

For example, Truly Beauty’s website failed the Core Web Vitals assessment on both mobile and desktop.

PageSpeed Insights – Truly Beauty

The good news?

PageSpeed Insights also shows exactly what’s slowing your site down and how you can fix the issues.

So, Truly Beauty can improve site performance by taking steps like reducing JavaScript execution time and minimizing main-thread work.

PageSpeed Insights – Truly Beauty – Diagnostics

For a deeper look at your site’s speed and usability, use Semrush’s Site Audit tool.

Note: A free Semrush account allows you to crawl up to 100 URLs using Site Audit. Or you can use this link to access a 14-day trial on a Semrush Pro subscription.

Enter your domain and configure the tool to set up your first crawl.

Once your report is ready, you’ll see a “Site Performance” score in the “Overview” tab.

For instance, Truly Beauty has a site performance score of 95%.

Click “View details” for more information.

Site Audit – Truly Beauty –Overview – Site Performance

Here, you’ll see the average load speed of your site.

Truly Beauty has an average page load speed of 0.31 seconds, which is outstanding.

Site Audit – Truly Beauty – Site Performance

You’ll also learn if Site Audit detected any issues with your site, categorized by priority:

  • Errors: Highest priority
  • Warnings: Medium priority
  • Notices: Lowest priority

Click “Learn more” for details on how to fix each issue.

Site Audit – Truly Beauty – Site Performance Issues – Learn more

Once you’ve addressed the issues, re-run the audit.

You’ll likely see improved site speed and performance (if you’ve correctly fixed the issues).

These technical improvements will strengthen your search experience optimization efforts.

And improve the experience for your users.

Further reading: Technical SEO: The Ultimate Guide

Add Trust Elements

Trust elements give users the confidence to take action, whether that’s making a purchase, booking a demo, or signing up.

Add them anywhere users evaluate options or make decisions.

Including product pages, landing pages, checkout screens, pricing pages, and even comparison blog posts.

Trust elements include:

  • Star ratings or review counts
  • Customer testimonials
  • Author bios with credentials
  • Security badges or payment icons
  • User-generated content, like photos or quotes

For example, Truly Beauty shows a variety of trust elements on its product pages.

Like ratings, reviews, and customer-submitted photos.

Truly Beauty – Variety of trust elements

This creates a compelling social proof ecosystem that reduces purchase anxiety and enhances your brand perception.

Clean Up Structure and Layout

Messy layouts confuse users and slow them down.

In contrast, a clean and consistent structure makes your page easier to read, navigate, and act on.

Take a look at how formatting impacts readability on mobile:

Hard-to-skim vs. Easy-to-skim Paragraphs

Which one do you think is more readable?

Shorter paragraphs and clear spacing make content easier to scan and understand.

Here’s how to improve your site’s structure and layout:

  • Break up long paragraphs into shorter chunks
  • Use clear, descriptive headings to guide the flow
  • Keep visual design consistent: fonts, spacing, and colors
  • Make key elements like CTAs, pricing, or product features easy to spot

For example, this Truly Beauty blog post does some things well.

Including scannable headings, bullet lists, and plenty of white space.

Truly Beauty – Blog – Good practices

But they could increase the font size to make the content easier to read and skim.

Further reading: 9 Ecommerce Website Optimization Tactics [Expert Insights]

Step 6: Strengthen Your Presence Across Discovery Channels

Some of the most important search moments happen off your website.

In this step, you’ll focus on optimizing how you appear on social media sites, niche forums, and more.

Optimize Your Profiles

Your profile should instantly tell visitors who you are and why they matter to you.

So, review your bio, visuals, and links on every priority platform.

Each one should reflect your brand clearly and feel native to how people use that platform.

Truly Beauty’s Instagram bio is short and clear. But there’s room for improvement.

It doesn’t highlight what sets the brand apart, including a strong hook or call to action.

Instagram – Truly Beauty – Bio

They also don’t have pinned posts.

And their Highlight covers aren’t clear or consistent with their brand visuals.

Instagram – Truly Beauty – No pinned posts

Conversely, makeup brand Too Faced does a great job here.

Their Instagram bio is short but expressive:

Instagram – Too Faced – Bio

Their Instagram Highlights are organized by category — from new product drops to event looks.

Instagram – Too Faced – Highlights

They even include multiple links and a “Shop” button to drive action directly from the page.

Instagram – Too Faced – Shop button & links

On TikTok, Too Faced takes a different but equally strategic approach.

The brand uses playlists to categorize videos by product type.

TikTok – Too Faced – Playlists

And the pinned posts showcase high-performing videos with bold thumbnails and direct product demos.

Which is perfect for TikTok’s users, who prefer short, visual content before buying.

TikTok – Too Faced – Pinned videos

Engage with Followers

Getting questions or comments on your social media posts?

This is a great opportunity to engage with your audience and offer helpful information.

Truly Beauty engages with users in the comments.

And responds to feedback, answers questions, and shows appreciation for its customers.

Instagram – Truly Beauty – Comments engagement

This kind of interaction builds trust and shows followers there’s a real team behind the brand.

Collaborate with Trusted Voices

Want a fast way to build credibility?

Partner with the creators your audience already trusts.

Find the voices influencing those spaces — and team up.

Truly Beauty works with influencers to promote products.

Instagram – Truly Beauty – Influencers

But when it comes to creator partnerships, makeup brand Morphe takes this strategy to another level.

They regularly collaborate with beauty creators to launch products, demo looks, and drive buzz.

Like this influencer collab that got them over 2.4K likes and 60+ comments:

Instagram – Morphe Brushes – Influencer collab

Step 7: Monitor, Measure, and Optimize

You can’t optimize what you don’t track.

To improve your performance over time, you need visibility into how people discover and engage with your content, products, or services.

And what happens next.

Start by identifying which metrics you want to prioritize.

Here are some examples:

  • Google: Rankings, click-through rate (CTR), impressions
  • YouTube: Watch time, average view duration
  • TikTok: Engagement rate, profile clicks
  • Amazon: Conversion rate, product search visibility
  • Instagram: Post engagement rate, profile visits, bio link clicks
  • Reddit: Upvotes, comment volume, brand mentions
  • Your website: Goal conversion rate, bounce rate, scroll depth, time on page

Then, choose the right tools to track these metrics.

Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console provide essential data to track your SEO performance and user experience improvements.

For instance, on GA4, you can navigate to “Reports” > “Acquisition” > “Traffic Acquisition” to view your site’s traffic sources.

GA – Traffic Acquisition report

YouTube Studio, TikTok Insights, and Instagram Insights provide platform-specific data.

Like views, watch time, and subscribers.

YouTube Studio – Analytics

Use what you learn to improve weak content and fix UX issues.

You may also want to add specialized tools for social media and website performance.

Like heat mapping, session recording, and conversion analysis.

Clarity – Microsoft – Heatmaps

Ready to Improve Every Search Touchpoint?

The search journey in 2025 isn’t linear anymore. And your strategy shouldn’t be either.

The brands that win won’t be the ones with the most blog posts.

They’ll be the ones who show up with the right content, in the right format, on the right platform — at the moment it matters.

To make that happen, you need a strategy built for how people actually search.

Use our free checklist to turn what you’ve learned into a clear, actionable strategy.

Next up: Check out our definitive guide to on-page SEO, a crucial component of any effective SEO strategy.

The post Search Everywhere Optimization Guide (+ Free Checklist) appeared first on Backlinko.

Read more at Read More

Social Media Calendar Guide: Plan, Post, & Grow (Free Template)

/0 Comments/in /by

A social media calendar is a planning tool to organize your ideas, coordinate with your team, and manage a consistent posting schedule — all in one place.

With a solid calendar, you can:

  • Map out content ideas weeks or months in advance
  • Deliver messaging that resonates with your audience
  • Drive measurable results from your social efforts

In short: A social calendar replaces guesswork with an actionable roadmap.

But creating a calendar that actually works for your team? That’s where many marketers hit a wall.

I built this playbook to help you tackle this challenge and build a foolproof social media planning system.

Follow along with our free social media calendar template to create a customized setup that works for you.

Backlinko – Social Media Calendar Template – Sample

Where Most Teams Go Wrong with Social Media Content Calendars

When I worked as a one-person content team at a startup, I would spend countless hours every few months trying to make a practical social calendar.

All that trial and error helped me understand why most teams end up abandoning their calendars.

These are the four big reasons:

Overcomplicated Setup

Too many tabs. Complicated color-coding. Overwhelming categorization.

When you spend more time maintaining a spreadsheet than you do planning content, something’s wrong.

The best social calendars capture just what matters without drowning in excessive detail. This includes:

  • Post ideas
  • Publish dates
  • Approval statuses

Silvija Kemeraite, Social Media Manager at Omnisend, shares her take on how to overcome this challenge:

“Make a calendar that works for you and refine it as you go. There’s no point in creating a fancy calendar with hundreds of rows or columns that you don’t use or — even worse — use without a clear purpose.”

Siloed Planning

Siloed planning = Missed opportunities.

When you isolate social from your broader marketing plan, it creates a disconnect.

As a result, your marketing channels compete against each other. You end up driving attention to different messages.

You miss the chance to amplify your campaigns across different touchpoints.

Picture this:

Your latest email campaign spotlights the latest product launch. But your social accounts are only posting cat memes.

This dilutes the momentum.

A coordinated push across email marketing, social, blog posts, and other channels builds stronger visibility and reinforces your message multiple times for your audience.

The bottom line: Your brand’s social presence doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and neither should your calendar.

Structure vs. Spontaneity

Structuring your calendar too rigidly leaves no room for you to adapt to or join the conversations happening right now. This can lead to missed opportunities at best, and make your brand appear tone-deaf at worst.

On the other hand, calendars that constantly pivot to chase every trend can dilute your brand identity. They also become a nightmare to manage.

You need to walk the middle path and balance these two approaches.

Stick to relevant content pillars and leave room for timely opportunities.

Take this post by HubSpot as an example.

LinkedIn – HubSpot post

The social team capitalized on a trending event (the SNL50 Special Episode) to introduce its just-launched integration with Canva.

The viral post racked up 5800+ reactions with 238 comments and 160 reposts. It became one of their best-performing LinkedIn posts — all because they left room for spontaneity.

Unrealistic Production and Review Process

Creating a calendar with three weekly posts for five platforms sounds ambitious on paper.

The reality? You’re setting your team up for missed deadlines, subpar content, and lots of frustration.

Quality takes a backseat when you prioritize quantity.

But you can’t get too hung up on quality either.

Your timelines take a hit if every post goes through a lengthy, multi-step review process.

A sustainable calendar takes into account the entire production cycle and available resources, ideally with a quick review process.

How to Create a Social Media Calendar that Works

You’ve got plenty of ideas, but they’re all over the place. Some get posted, most get forgotten.

I’ve been there.

That’s why I curated these best practices on how to create a social media calendar that’s compatible with your bandwidth and timelines.

1. Create a Minimum Viable Calendar

A Minimum Viable Calendar (MVC) focuses only on the essential elements of a social media content calendar.

Think of it as the “lite version” of your actual calendar. It’s stripped away of unnecessary complexities to give you a quick head start and improve follow-through.

Building a Minimum Viable Calendar for Social Media

Unlike a standard calendar, an MVC builds momentum through achievable steps.

Rather than doing too much with an overly ambitious plan, this version helps you establish consistency through:

  • A simplified setup for a short period and 1-2 platforms
  • Faster implementation and publishing
  • Easier tracking and optimization

Let’s find out how you can create a minimum viable calendar to get your marketing efforts off the ground.

Define Your Goals and Target Audience

Start with two questions:

  • What business objectives will your social channels support?
  • Who exactly are you trying to reach and influence?

For example, if you have a cookware brand, your goal might be to build brand awareness and drive sales. And you want to reach chefs and cooking enthusiasts in your target region.

While listening to the Social Pros Podcast, I found an interesting insight by Katie Robbert, CEO of Trust Insights.

Katie emphasizes the importance of defining your ideal customer profiles (ICPs):

“Whether or not we realize this, as marketers, we think we’re creating content for our customers, but we make it about ourselves. We have that bias of what we think their pain points are. Instead, we should be putting the customer first, and saying: ‘Your pain points are ABC, and here’s how we can solve them.”

Identify Target Platforms

The next step is to find where your audience hangs out the most.

Instead of posting on every possible platform, select 1-2 key channels where your audience is the most active.

For example, your cookware brand can focus on TikTok and Instagram to stay top of mind for cooking enthusiasts.

Find your fit: Check out the most popular social media platforms to pick the best ones for your brand.

Outline Content Pillars

Finally, you want to establish 3-5 content pillars that align with:

  • Your audience’s interests
  • Your business goals

These pillars will guide your content brainstorming and creation efforts.

For example, your cookware brand might focus on pillars like recipes, maintenance, and home remedies.

This is also where you can experiment with different content formats to see what appeals the most to your audience.

Discover Ideal Posting Times

Use your minimum viable calendar to experiment with posting frequencies for a few weeks.

This will help you decide the best time to post on each platform when your audience is the most active.

You can also use Semrush Social to find the best time to post specifically for your brand.

The tool shows when your audience is the most active on each platform.

Social Analytics goes further to display activity by hours.

Here’s a look at the Instagram dashboard showing hourly engagement data for all days of the week:

Semrush Social – Hourly engagement data

With this data, you can schedule posts based on specific time slots when your audience engagement peaks on your chosen platforms.

Do It with Our Template

You’ve collected all the insights you need.

What’s next?

Our calendar template makes it easy to document everything from this step and keep it handy alongside your calendar.

Here’s a glimpse of how you can consolidate all the details in the template:

Backlinko – Social Media Calendar Template – Strategy

2. Use the One-Third Rule for Brainstorming Ideas

Are you struggling to create a consistent flow of ideas to fill your social calendar?

Try the one-third approach to plan content without compromising quality for quantity.

This practical approach divides content planning into three parts:

1/3 Repurposed Content

Repurpose different marketing assets to share your message across multiple touchpoints.

Here’s a simple workflow for content repurposing:

  • Consolidate your content: Create a spreadsheet or content bank to list every blog post, video, podcast, or content asset you’ve produced
  • Group content by themes: Organize this content into groups based on the topics they cover, so you can repurpose in batches
  • Pick your repurposing formats: Pick 2–3 formats (like carousels, quote cards, and 30‑second video clips) and build simple templates for each
  • Add slots for repurposing: Create space for repurposed posts in your social calendar and add which topic and post you want to recreate

Check out this quick framework for repurposing content assets:

Content Type Repurposing Strategy
Blog Posts Pull key insights and expert quotes as standalone graphics
Turn how-to sections into step-by-step carousel posts
Summarize “key takeaways” into a post or video
Videos/Webinars/Podcasts Create multiple 30–60 second clips as video highlights
Convert quotes from the transcript into graphics
Compile multiple clips from different videos
Case Studies/Whitepapers Develop problem/solution posts highlighting key insights
Share key insights in a carousel post

Here’s an example of content repurposing in action:

Semrush created a LinkedIn post and carousel rounding up key statistics from its research study on AI Overviews.

LinkedIn – Semrush post about SEO

It racked up 200 reactions and 56 reposts, and it includes a link to the study for those who want the deep-dive version.

Further reading: How to Promote Content on Social Media

1/3 User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) builds authentic social proof for your brand and saves production time.

You can leverage UGC to fill your social pipeline by:

  • Making it easy for users to share content with branded hashtags or other channels
  • Offering rewards and meaningful prizes to incentivize users for contributing UGC
  • Establishing a clear workflow to request usage rights from customers

Here’s how Wild One, a dog fashion brand, features user-generated content to show its product in action:

Instagram – WildOne – UGC

Besides content from real customers, UGC includes case studies, testimonials, and customer playbooks.

Check these stats: 24 Key User-Generated Content (UGC) Statistics for 2025

1/3 Original Content Creation

Original content is how you display your brand’s unique voice in crowded and noisy social feeds.

But coming up with original ideas can be exhausting, to say the least.

Here are a few places to start:

  • Behind-the-scenes looks into your team and process
  • Interactive content to engage your audience
  • Educational series, like weekly tips
  • Product and service showcases
  • Relatable memes

Kate Erwin’s advice will come in handy the next time you’re brainstorming fresh ideas.

She believes it’s important to listen to the conversations already happening on socials and share your take.

“You don’t want your point of view to come out of nowhere. Connect it to what your audience already cares about. Thankfully, people are already telling you what they care about all the time on social. They’re posting. They’re reacting. They’re commenting. They’re part of the conversation. It’s your job to join in.”

The takeaway? Original content doesn’t start with you; it starts with your audience

Actively listen to your audience and tune into their conversations with a perspective unique to your brand.

This is where Semrush’s Social Content AI tool can come in handy.

Just add your brand’s website and a description of the kind of content you want to create.

Social Content AI – Backlinko – Find Ideas

The tool will analyze your input and come up with a list of ideas for different content pillars.

It also shares the top news stories relevant to your input.

Social Content AI – Backlinko – News & Ideas

Remember that not every original idea will work out.

That’s why I created this quick scoring system to evaluate whether an idea is worth pursuing:

Factor 1 (Poor) 5 (Excellent) Score
Audience Alignment Doesn’t match audience interests Perfectly matches audience interests
Brand Consistency Contradicts brand voice/values Strongly reinforces brand identity
Engagement Potential Unlikely to generate reactions Highly likely to spark shares or discussions
Production Requires excessive resources Quick with available resources
Strategic Impact Doesn’t support business goals Directly advances primary goals
Total score
Average score

Rate each idea on a scale of 1 to 5, and calculate the average score for each idea.

Set a minimum threshold, such as an average of 4, for approving ideas.

Then, pick the most promising ones for production.

Find inspiration: 25 Creative Ways to Find New Content Ideas

Do It with Our Template

Our template gives you a dedicated space to add new ideas as and when inspiration strikes.

Plus, multiple team members can contribute ideas or make requests.

Use the ideas bank to collect all your ideas, score them, and pick the ideas that score above your minimum threshold.

3. Build a Content Production Pipeline

Creating great content consistently requires more than just good ideas.

You need a structured workflow to go from an idea to a published post without getting stuck.

A well-designed content production pipeline can:

  • Eliminate the chaos of last-minute scrambling
  • Help you meet timelines and post consistently

To build this production process, define clear handoffs for every stage — from ideation to publication.

Social Content Production Pipeline

Next, you need realistic timelines to make your process sustainable in the long run.

Many social calendars fail because they’re built on overly optimistic estimates.

They don’t account for everyone’s bandwidth and unexpected delays.

When planning these timelines, work backward from publication dates and build in buffer time at every stage.

As a best practice, give each stage an owner and set clear handoff guidelines for moving ideas from one stage to the next.

You also want to base your production time on:

  • Content type: You can move a simple social post from idea to published in 3–5 days. But a carousel post or video montage could take a few weeks.
  • Team size: Involve every contributor in the discussion to determine the time they need to do their best work. Then set time-based milestones accordingly.

Pro tip: Build buffer time into your production process. Add 10–20% extra time after each handoff to handle delays, last‑minute feedback, or unanticipated hiccups.

At the end of each month or quarter, look at what slipped and why to optimize your workflow.

Once your production process is ready, build a visual workflow to bring everyone on the same page.

Apply this workflow while implementing your minimum viable calendar. It’ll reveal issues and bottlenecks that can potentially derail your calendar.

Your workflow should clearly show:

  • Content production stages
  • Designated owner for each stage
  • Due dates for moving to the next stage
  • Any dependencies or prerequisites for a stage

You can build this workflow with many tools (more on that later).

Do It with Our Template

When I was trying to set up this workflow for my own B2B social media strategy, I experimented with a new tool every other week.

Asana, Notion, Trello, you name it.

The truth is:

There’s always a learning curve with these tools because they’re not purpose-built for social media marketing.

To save you all this time and effort, I designed our calendar template with two main sections:

  • Ideation: Add your core idea with a brief description. Assign the owner for each idea, then pick the platform(s) and format.
  • Execution: After the ideation stage, you want to define a publish date. Then, work backwards to assign deadlines for design and review.

Here’s a sample view of what this workflow looks like:

Backlinko – Social Media Calendar Template – Sample

4. Design a Quick-Response Workflow for Trendjacking

Even the most meticulously planned calendars need room for spontaneity.

Leaving space means you can use trendjacking (creating content around popular trends) to increase your visibility and engagement.

That’s why you have to create structure around spontaneity.

I spoke to Travis Tyler, Senior Social Media Manager at Motion, about building a social calendar.

His best advice? Give your calendar some flexibility.

“Sometimes your best social posts will be these random, ad hoc, last-minute, 11th-hour ideas that seem stupid or silly. And then they end up crushing!”

So, make sure you build in the flexibility to jump on trending opportunities.

For starters, block some time every week to proactively find social media trends.

Look for upcoming events or holidays, spy on your competitors’ feeds, and use social listening tools to spot emerging trends early.

You can also use Semrush’s Social Tracker to find your competitors’ top posts.

See what’s driving the highest engagement for these brands. Then (if it’s relevant to your own brand), see if you can come up with related ideas with your own spin on it.

Trending themes on top posts

Once you’ve identified some trending themes, you have to decide which trends are worth following.

Evaluate your ideas against these parameters to see how well the trend aligns with your brand:

  • Relevance check: Does this trend naturally connect to your products/services?
  • Audience alignment: Will your audience care about or engage with this trend?
  • Brand alignment: Does this trend align with your brand values and reputation?
  • Resources required: Can you create good content with the available resources and timeframe?

How to Evaluate Trends for Your Social Media Calendar

When you’ve locked in a trending idea, don’t get stuck in your standard review cycle and miss the moment.

Give someone in your team the authority to make rapid approvals for trending ideas.

5. Add Space for Feedback and Analysis

If your calendar doesn’t evolve based on performance insights, it’s just a rigid publishing schedule.

You need to designate time to analyze engagement data and modify your strategy based on these insights.

You can assess performance against different types of metrics:

  • Awareness: Impressions, reach, shares, and follower growth
  • Engagement: Likes, comments, shares, and saves
  • Conversion: Click-through rate, direct conversions, and social traffic

Establish clear benchmarks for “good” performance for each metric.

Then, monitor your performance with weekly analyses and monthly audits to see where you can improve.

This is where Semrush’s Social Analytics tool can make life easy for you.

You don’t have to scramble to collect data from multiple platforms.

Social Analytics gathers organic and paid data from Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram.

Here’s a preview of the Overview tab on Social Analytics. It gives you a glimpse of each channel’s key metrics, like followers, reach, profile views, post engagement, and more.

Social Analytics tool – Preview

To get started with Social Analytics, you need to connect your social media profiles to Social Poster.

This will automatically link your accounts and collate all performance data.

Social Analytics tool – Add accounts

Social Analytics creates unique dashboards for every platform.

  • Instagram: Data for audience, profile interactions, stories, and posts
  • Facebook: Metrics for page likes, engagement, and posts
  • LinkedIn: Data for audience, engagement, and posts
  • TikTok: Covers engagement and posts

Take a look at the TikTok dashboard to see the depth of insights available:

TikTok – Dashboard – Available insights

When to Review Your Calendar

You need a multi-layered approach for reviewing your social calendar.

Each round of review should serve a specific purpose:

  • Weekly: Focus on immediate feedback. Review the past week’s performance to adjust the posting times or caption styles for higher engagement.
  • Monthly: Evaluate patterns to find which content types consistently perform better than others
  • Quarterly: Take a closer look at your data to potentially restructure your calendar. Consider your business goals, performance, and other factors.

Social Media Performance Review Cycle

While your review process doesn’t need to follow this exact structure, you want to be clear on what you’re doing with the data.

Tools for Building a Social Calendar

The success of all these best practices depends on how comfortable you are with the calendar tool you use.

Let me share a few tools I’ve used to create and manage a social media content calendar.

Backlinko’s Template

I designed our free template to give you an easy and convenient way of maintaining a social planner.

Instead of struggling to pick one option from dozens of social media calendar tools, you get the familiarity of a spreadsheet.

Simply add a new row for each new idea, then assign dates, owners, and other attributes.

Now, everyone can see your planned content, and it’s easy to collaborate with others too.

Backlinko – Social Media Calendar Template – Sample

Semrush Social Poster

With Semrush’s Social Poster, you can schedule posts on a dynamic calendar for multiple platforms.

Choose a platform (or multiple), create a new post by adding the caption and media file(s), and schedule it for any date.

The best part?

You can schedule posts in bulk by uploading a simple CSV file with up to 100 premade posts.

Semrush – Social Poster – Dynamic Calendar

Besides social content planning, you can use the wider Semrush Social toolkit to track platform-specific engagement, keep tabs on your competitors, and even brainstorm new ideas.

Notion

Notion offers many customizable social calendar templates.

The tool combines project management with collaborative documentation. That means teams can ideate, create, edit, and finalize content on the same platform.

Since Notion is free for up to 10 users in a workspace, it’s a good option for lean teams.

Notion – Social Media Calendar

I’ll admit that, when compared to dedicated social media tools, I do miss the scheduling and analytics capabilities that Notion is lacking.

But I’ve found it to still be a great planning tool to organize your ideas and collaborate with a small team.

Buffer

Buffer is a dedicated social media management tool.

I find it super easy to create new posts in any format, then drag and drop them on any date.

As a result, your weekly/monthly calendar is ready in just a few minutes.

What sets Buffer apart is the ability to create custom categories and use color codes to organize your posts. Think content pillars, goals, formats, and more.

Buffer – Monthly calendar – Color codes

Create Winning Social Media Content

Planning content for socials can be chaotic.

Trends pop up by the minute, and every day can feel like a fresh start.

A social media planner is your compass for navigating this constantly changing space.

But your calendar isn’t going to get you far without great content ideas.

Get inspired by these 23 outstanding content marketing examples.

The post Social Media Calendar Guide: Plan, Post, & Grow (Free Template) appeared first on Backlinko.

Read more at Read More

The beginner’s guide to SEO reporting

/0 Comments/in , /by

When you work on your site’s SEO, reflecting on those efforts should be part of your ongoing strategy. Whether it’s for a client, your manager, or your team, creating an SEO report is the best way to do so. This helps you justify your efforts, keep track of performance and figure out what needs to be tackled next. And it’s not as hard as you would think. In this blog post, we’ll explain what SEO reporting is and take you through the process step by step.

Table of contents

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps drive more traffic to your site and improve your brand image. It should be part of anyone’s marketing strategy whose goal is to grow their (online) audience. Originally focused on performance in organic search, SEO now entails much more than that. It helps you build a strong brand name, become an authority in your field, and be visible on the platforms where your audience can be found. All this is to increase customer loyalty and grow your business.

What is SEO reporting exactly?

SEO reporting is best described as evaluating your online marketing efforts and presenting the outcomes in a report. This can be a report you create for yourself, your team, management, or a client. Often, a company has a specific template they use to do SEO reporting regularly (for example, every month). This can be in the form of a slide deck, online document, Excel sheet, or online dashboard. But it can also be any other reporting tool you feel comfortable with or your company uses for presentations.

In an SEO report, you will find metrics related to a website’s performance and other marketing activities related to SEO. This helps you track how your SEO strategy is performing and where tweaks are needed. That’s why an important part of any SEO report is the interpretation of metrics and conclusions that come out of that.

What to include in your SEO report

Whether you’re creating an SEO report for internal use, or for your client(s), it’s good to have a template. This allows you to compare recent findings with earlier ones, regardless of the frequency with which you’ll be reporting. Of course, you can make changes to this template along the way. But having a template saves you time and helps you recognize bigger issues and opportunities over time.

Naturally, it depends on your business goals what should be in your SEO report. The most important thing is that your SEO report reflects your (or your client’s) goals. This is to understand how your marketing efforts are contributing to reaching these goals and what actions need to be taken. But there are a few basics that most of us will want to include.

A general data overview

Start with an overview of the most important data for your business or website. This gives you an idea of how you’re doing right away. Especially when you’re reporting regularly, this overview will tell you or your client how the website (and online business) is performing. You can also choose to include data from the previous period (or the previous year) for comparison.

Website data to include:

  • The number of site visitors
  • Number of purchases (or other actions you want people to take)
  • A visualization of your traffic over the selected period 
  • Keyword rankings for a few important pages
  • A traffic overview by source or medium 
  • The type of visitors (new or returning)
example of a overview in an SEO report
Example of a general overview in an SEO report

Data on (content) performance

The general overview gives a quick insight into the current state of play, but to figure out how you got there, you must go into more detail. That’s why your report should include a closer look at content performance. Make sure to include data on your most important pages, such as product pages, popular blog posts, or other landing pages that attract a lot of people. 

Collect data such as page views, visitors, engagement, event count, revenue, and traffic sources. You don’t have to include everything, as this will be overwhelming and will probably cause people to lose interest. Look at the data of your most important pages, pick out the numbers that stand out (growth or decline) and add those to your report. It can be tempting to focus solely on the positive numbers but also include the negative ones to paint a realistic picture. This speaks to your credibility, makes it easier to spot issues before they get out of hand and helps the company in the long run.

Other elements to include here are an overview of new backlinks to the website, stats related to site health and the Core Web Vitals, and an overview of keyword rankings. But do remember that keyword rankings can change on a daily basis, and obsessing over individual drops in rankings isn’t going to help your overall SEO. Use these averages to get an idea of whether your overall rankings are dropping and what you can do to get your organic traffic back up again.

Activities previous period

When you have had a look at the data, it’s time to summarize what has gone out that month (or period of your choice). Use this section to highlight how many posts have gone out on social media, how the audience has interacted with those, what blog posts have been written or updated, and how your running ads are performing. But you can also include other online or offline marketing activities to show what has been done. 

Where possible, you can tie this in with any peaks in traffic or engagement. Or it can help you explain why some areas have gotten less attention than others. Either way, use this to make sense of the data and to highlight the hard work that has been put in by the team.

A summary with recommendations

Always end your SEO report with specific action points that come out of that month’s evaluation. It helps to start with a summary of the ‘highs and lows’ that were brought up in the report so far. For example, if you have noticed a noticeable drop in rankings, and therefore organic traffic, to one of your most important pages, it will make sense to focus on getting to the bottom of that in the coming weeks. And making improvements based on your findings. Or if a new type of social media post did very well, another action point could be to create a series of those and see if you can keep this success going. 

But this last part is also a moment of reflection on a bigger level. Are you still on track with the business goals, or any specific SEO goals you’ve set for yourself? And don’t forget to go through the action points you thought up in the previous SEO report. Were you able to get those done? Are a few of them still in progress? Or are there any blockers that you need help with? Make sure to end with an action plan for the upcoming month and a team (or client) that’s on board with everything discussed.

Creating an SEO report: step by step

Now that you know what to include, let’s talk about how to get started with your SEO reporting. Before you start pulling together the data, it’s important to set clear KPIs and create a setup that works for your company.

1. Set up your KPIs

The first step is to define KPIs, which stands for key performance indicators. These should be measurable goals, based on the marketing goals and/or business objectives within the company. To give a simple example, if one of the marketing goals is to grow traffic to your website, a corresponding KPI can be to increase your organic traffic by 10% that year. Other popular KPIs are conversion rate, overall rankings, click-through rates, bounce rate, page load time, and branded/non-branded traffic.

Make these KPIs realistic, especially when you’re setting expectations with a client, and reflect on the progress in your SEO reports to stay on track. I would suggest not focusing too much on maintaining certain rankings or data on specific pages. Rankings are heavily subjected to external factors and can change daily, and zooming in on one page too much can make you lose perspective. Of course, a drop in traffic for an important page is something to keep an eye on and can be a reason to make some adjustments. But keep the overall KPIs in mind and be aware of the bigger picture, while tweaking what’s needed without obsessing.

2. Set up the structure for your report

Choose a tool for your SEO reporting. This can be a presentation tool that your team often uses, an information-gathering tool such as Excel or an Analytics dashboard, or one that your client is familiar with. Just make sure that you can set it up yourself and make tweaks when needed. 

Add the sections that we’ve discussed above: a general overview, data on performance, marketing activities, and a summary with recommendations. I would suggest looking at your KPIs to figure out exactly what you want to show in the general overview and data on performance section. So, if your main KPI is growing your conversion rate, make sure that you add the data on this KPI to the general overview.

Test drive your new report by filling in this month’s data (or whatever period of time you choose). See the next step on how to tackle this. But this will help you figure out if the setup works for you in its current form. Always tweak when needed, whether that’s right now or a few months along the line. This report should work for you, you shouldn’t be jumping through hoops to get it to make sense. 

3. Gather and fill in the data

It’s time to start retrieving the data you need. There are a few tools you can use. For the general overview and data on performance, you can mainly rely on Google Analytics and Google Search Console. To get an easy overview of your marketing activities for that month, your own marketing calendar and the platforms that you posted on will give you the insights that are needed.

Data on website performance

For the general overview and data on performance, we are going to use Google Analytics and Search Console. Here you’ll find data such as visitor numbers, engagement, number of purchases (you will have to set this as an event), visualizations of your traffic, keyword rankings, traffic overview by source/medium, and type of visitors. Stats related to site health and your Core Web Vitals can also be found in Google Search Console. Lastly, if you want to get an overview of your backlinks, Semrush can provide you with that. 

A screenshot of the ‘performance on search results’ section in Google Search Console

While you’re putting those numbers into your report, remember to be mindful of how you present them. Don’t just throw everything in there and overwhelm (yourself and) others with raw data. Highlight important data and make visualizations of certain data to break up the wall of text. You can also just copy and paste a few graphs and add those in. Using a graph to show overall traffic or pie chart to show traffic by source/medium can already make a big difference.

Write down what speaks to you while filling in the data. What has been a success this month and what are areas that need more attention? And if you see something that you can’t explain right away (f.e. a drop in traffic, or a post that has an enormous amount of views), try to figure out what happened there so you can answer questions that people will inevitably ask about them.  

Data on marketing activities

If you keep a marketing calendar, this is a great way to reflect on what you’ve published in the last month. Use this to summarize how many blog posts, social media posts, videos, newsletters and other marketing-related activities you’ve worked on. This includes other activities such as attending events, workshops, appearances you’ve made, or perhaps even print media.

When it comes to blog posts you’ve published, you could highlight one that stands out and use data from Analytics and Search Console to explain how it’s performing so far. Or you could just add the numbers up and give an idea of the overall effect of this content. Keep in mind that content needs some time to get noticed by people, so don’t fret if it hasn’t done that much yet. 

Also, use this section to evaluate your social media posts and videos that you’ve uploaded to channels such as YouTube. I would recommend going to the platforms where you’ve posted content and using their analytics tools to see how well they’ve performed. This shows you what content works best and helps you draw conclusions from data from the source itself. 

For other marketing activities that have happened that month, it really depends on the activity how to mention it in your report. If it’s an offline event or workshop, try to get some feedback from (potential) customers on their experience. When it comes to print media, you could try and get some idea of the effect by how many people have contacted you after seeing it. Just make sure to think about these things beforehand, to get an idea of the effect of these activities.

4. Evaluate and take action

When you’ve added the relevant data and summarized your marketing efforts, it’s time to properly evaluate. Go through your report and write down any patterns, issues, successes and opportunities. Add these to your overall summary and compare these findings to the ones you found last month (or the months before that) to recognize bigger issues and successes. This will allow you to properly evaluate your findings and turn them into actionable recommendations and action points.

When you’ve completed your SEO report and know what actions come out of it, it’s a good idea to present it internally. Or to your client. This helps them understand what you (and the team) have been working on and will probably spark a discussion that helps you figure out what to pick up first. Finally, after sharing this report with the relevant people and agreeing on next steps, make sure to plan these so they don’t get lost. Make a realistic plan for yourself or the team and pick up the action points to set everything in motion. And plan in the next SEO report to keep this cycle going!

Conclusion

Any good SEO report, whether this is for yourself or a client, starts with clear KPIs. Make sure to get those done before you start evaluating your SEO efforts. This will allow you to set up a proper template for the report and figure out what data you need to look at. Use the right tools to get the data you need, but don’t get lost in trying to report on everything. Show the relevant data and present this to the relevant parties to get everyone on board. Use all of this to figure out what your next steps are and follow up on the action points to make sure you keep focusing on the right things. Happy SEO reporting!

Read more: How to track website traffic: how many people are visiting your site? »

The post The beginner’s guide to SEO reporting appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

How to track website traffic: how many people are visiting your site?

/0 Comments/in , /by

Just like most other website owners, you want your website to attract customers. But how can you see who visits your website? And how can you use this knowledge to increase website traffic over time? Luckily, there are loads of tools that can help you. Let’s get you started with the right one for your website without the need to become a data expert!

What is website traffic?

The term website traffic refers to the number of internet users visiting your website. Traffic can arrive from wide-ranging sources, such as directly typing in your website address, through other websites that link to your site, organic traffic (meaning they come to your site from the search results), paid traffic (people who click on your online ads), through your social media, and other channels. The total number of these users visiting your website combined is what we call website traffic.

How to check how many people enter a website

There are online tools that can help you make sense of your website traffic. These tools provide you with lots of different metrics, but we’ll go into the most important ones when it comes to website traffic.

Tools to track website visits

Numerous tools can help you track your website traffic. We’ll look at a few well-known tools that provide you with the insights you need.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the go-to tool for a lot of website owners when it comes to getting insights into their audience and website performance. What’s great about Analytics is that you can use it for free and it gives you loads of detailed insights. All the metrics mentioned above can be found in Analytics and give you the possibility to dive into visitor behavior and page performance. It allows you to mark key events, to track if people are performing the actions you want them to. 

The homepage gives an overview of data that Analytics deems relevant to you, based on your behavior in the tool. Some reports provide the metrics mentioned and much more, all focused on understanding your audience. Explorations allows you to create your own ‘reports’ to dive into one specific question you have or element you want a deeper understanding of. When you have Google Ads running, Analytics also provides insights into your ads and what actions to take there.

Screenshot Google Analytics 4
Screenshot of Google Analytics 4, found on Google’s blog

You will have to connect Analytics to your website, but luckily, there are tools out there that help you with that. Also, Google explains how to do this properly in their guide for beginners, which also gives you more information on this tool. One downside of Analytics, if you can call it that, is that all the information provided there can be overwhelming for some. They do expect you to find your way and figure out what data is relevant for your website. This makes it difficult to stay focused on the right things and not get lost in the woods.

Google Search Console

Another tool provided by Google, free of charge, is Google Search Console. Although there is some overlap with Analytics, this tool is focused more on showing your visibility in different parts of the Google ecosystem. Similar to Semrush, it’s very helpful when working on the performance of your pages and increasing website traffic. So if increasing organic traffic to your website is a big part of your marketing strategy, make sure to add this tool to your favorites. 

We have a beginner’s guide to Search Console, that goes into the details and explains how to set up an account. 

A screenshot of the ‘performance on search results’ section in Google Search Console

I wanted to mention this tool as it can help you boost your website traffic when used correctly. But if you’re mainly looking for a tool that provides you insights into your current website traffic, I would recommend investing your time in another tool first (f.e. Analytics). Search Console is great for figuring out what parts of your website you should work on, but if you want to take a step back and get familiar with your website stats first, then this might be for a later time.

Semrush

Semrush is another online tool that shows you how many people visit your site.e. This platform is used by a lot of people working on their website visibility. To give an idea, you can use Semrush to get data on your site’s performance, but it also allows you to do keyword research and compare yourself to competitors. 

Like Analytics, it provides a lot of information. But it does depend on your subscription on how extensively you can use this tool. There is a free version that may get you the data you need when starting out. It offers a site audit (of 100 pages), position tracking (for 10 keywords), personal recommendations, and traffic data such as visits, conversion, and bounce rate.

Semrush SEO dashboard
A screenshot of the ‘SEO Dashboard’ section in Semrush, from Semrush’s knowledge base

If you want to give Semrush a try, simply create a free account and fill in your website where the tool asks for your main domain. This will give you insights right away. You will notice that not all the data is available, and getting access to some more detailed stats will require an upgrade. But especially when you want to work on your SEO, Semrush gives you a lot of relevant information.

Metrics on website traffic

Every tool comes with different data, but there are a few relevant metrics that you will find in most of them. I’ll explain a few of them that will help you figure out who’s visiting your website and what they’re doing while on your pages.

Number of users

First of all, there’s the number of users. The number of total users tells you how many people have visited your website or a specific page in the selected period. In addition to the total number, you might also see the following metrics: active users, new users and/or returning users. 

Active users are the number of people who engaged with your page in that date range. Then there’s the difference between new users (the number of people who are first-time visitors of your site) and returning users (the number of people who have visited your site before).

Number of sessions

When a user opens your website, they start a new session. All the interactions that take place during the time they spend on your website are part of that one session. There’s no limit to how long a session can last, but it typically ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. If the user interacts with the website after that time or comes back at a later time, this will count as a different session.

Pageviews

When you encounter the metric pageviews, it tells you how many times a page is loaded or reloaded in a browser. Each time a user visits a page, it counts as one pageview—even if they refresh the page or navigate back to it multiple times. This metric helps measure how often your content is being viewed, regardless of how many unique users are visiting.

Source/medium

Source/medium tells you how users arrive at your website. The source is the specific origin of your traffic (e.g., Google, Facebook.com), while medium describes the general category of that source (e.g., organic, cpc, referral). Together, they give you insight into what channels are driving the most traffic and which ones could do better.

Engagement and events

Engagement rate is the percentage of sessions that were actively engaged, meaning users spent at least 10 seconds on the site, had a conversion event, or viewed two or more pages. It helps measure how meaningful or valuable a user’s interaction is. 

Events, on the other hand, track specific user actions—like clicks, downloads, video plays, or form submissions—providing detailed insight into how users interact with your content. Metrics related to engagement and events give you an idea of whether people are engaging with your pages and taking the actions you want them to take.

Other interesting metrics

Those metrics give you a lot of information about your website traffic, but of course, most tools offer you other interesting metrics as well. You could also look at the bounce rate, which tells you the percentage of users that leave after viewing just one page. The average session duration shows you how much time users spend on your site. Traffic by device gives an overview of how many of your users visit your website through desktop, mobile and/or tablet. Finally, top (performing) pages tells you which pages get the most visits.

Why you should know who visits your website

As I touched on in the previous paragraphs, data on your website traffic gives you insight into the behavior of your website visitors. Understanding who visits your website, and how they interact with it, helps you make more informed decisions about your website. It’s not just about counting clicks or visitors. It’s about uncovering trends, identifying growth opportunities, and optimizing the user experience to increase conversions, engagement, or other goals.

Are you visible on the right channels?

Knowing where your visitors come from, whether that’s organic search, social media, direct traffic, referrals, or paid ads, helps you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re investing heavily in social media campaigns but see little traffic from those platforms, that might mean it’s time to reevaluate your social strategy. On the other hand, high traffic from a specific channel might indicate a strong presence you can build on. This insight allows you to allocate your time and resources more strategically.

Pages that perform (or don’t)

Website data shows you how people are interacting with your pages, which tells you what your top-performing pages are and what pages need improving. Your top-performing pages might show high engagement, conversions, or time on site, indicating content that resonates with visitors. Pages that underperform can show you where users are dropping off or losing interest. This insight is invaluable for identifying what content needs updating, restructuring, or even retiring to improve your overall site performance.

Website performance over time

Tracking your traffic trends over days, weeks, or months allows you to assess the health of your online presence. Are you seeing growth? Seasonal spikes? Or sudden drops in traffic to your website? These patterns help you understand what’s working, what’s not, and how external factors might be affecting you. It also gives you a baseline to measure the success of any changes you’ve made to your website or other marketing activities.

Understanding your audience

Essentially, looking at the data that tells you who is visiting your website helps you get a deeper understanding of your audience and how your website is doing. This doesn’t mean you should be obsessing over these numbers daily, but having a monthly evaluation to go over everything helps you make informed decisions. Decisions that will improve your (online) presence and attract more people to your website.

Which tool is the best choice for you?

These tools are just the tip of the iceberg, but they are a great starting point when you want to keep track of your website visits over time. So, which one should you start using? If you’re looking for one tool that provides you with detailed insights into your website traffic (and therefore audience), I would recommend setting up Google Analytics first. It is the tool that’s focused on tracking website traffic and has the biggest variety of data.

To conclude

In this blog post, we discussed the importance of gaining insight into your website traffic. This can help you understand your audience and their behaviour and it helps you make improvements to your website. There are loads of tools out there, but the ones mentioned above are a great starting point. So make sure to choose one and get a grip on your website traffic!

Read more: How to measure the success of your content SEO strategy? »

The post How to track website traffic: how many people are visiting your site? appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

What is Site Kit by Google? A guide for WordPress users

/0 Comments/in , /by

Site Kit by Google is a free WordPress plugin that connects your site to important tools like Analytics, Search Console, and Ads. After installing, it’s easy to verify your accounts, after which you see data in your dashboard. That data is nice to have, but it has limits, especially if you need detailed reports.

Table of contents

What is Site Kit by Google and why use it?

Site Kit by Google is a fundamental analytics tool that helps you answer questions like:

  • How many people are visiting your site?
  • What page do they land on first?
  • Which keywords did they search to find you?
  • Are your ads earning clicks?

With Site Kit, Google puts the data right into WordPress, so you don’t need to go digging around different platforms to seek your data. The tool gets its data straight from each service, and shows the most important data in clear graphs, tables, and a flexible, customizable Key Metrics widget. 

Who is it for? (and when it’s not enough)

But Site Kit is not the analytics tool to rule them all in WordPress land. It covers the basics well, but it won’t work for everyone’s goals. What it does do is make it incredibly easy to set up and run various Google Analytics accounts. 

Site Kit by Google works well for:

  • WordPress users who want to track basic performance
  • People who prefer not to use extra plugins or code
  • Site owners who manage everything themselves

But it may feel limited if you:

  • Run ads at scale and need conversion-level insight
  • Use custom events or eCommerce tracking
  • Want to control every aspect of your website’s scripts and tags

It covers the basics well, but it’s not built for advanced setups.

What does it look like?

After installing and connecting Site Kit, you’ll find a new menu item in your WordPress dashboard. Clicking this will lead you to the dashboard where most of the statistics and settings live. You’ll also notice a new drop-down menu when you visit posts on your site. Thanks to this drop-down, you can quickly see statistics for this specific article without having to open Analytics.

Overview dashboard

The Dashboard gives you an overview of how your site is performing. Of course, depending on what services you connect your site to, you might see something like this:

  • Traffic and engagement insights from Google Analytics 
  • Clicks and impressions from search traffic provided by Search Console
  • An overview of the top-performing pages
  • Earnings from Ads or AdSense, if you run ads, that is
  • Site speed performance powered by PageSpeed Insights 
  • An overview of how different groups compare, for instance, new vs. returning visitors

Some sections also show trend indicators like arrows or percentage changes compared to the previous period. This will help you spot trends and act upon them. Click on any source to open a more detailed view in the corresponding Google tool.

Part of the Site Kit dashboard showing various stats and the Key Metrics widget at the top
Part of the Site Kit dashboard showing various stats and the Key Metrics widget at the top

Key Metrics widget

You can set up the Key Metrics section the way you want. Site Kit will ask you a couple of questions about your site’s goals and what you want to focus on. Then, it will suggest metrics to show at the top of the dashboard. You can choose which blocks you want to see, such as top converting traffic sources, new visitors, recent trending pages, and much more. 

Admin bar stats

After Site Kit is active, you’ll also see a small dropdown at the top of your WordPress admin bar when you’re viewing your site. Click it, and you’ll get a mini-report showing page-specific stats, including search impressions, clicks, and traffic over time.

Site Kit will help you quickly find out how your content is doing, straight from the WordPress admin bar
Site Kit will help you quickly find out how your content is doing, straight from the WordPress admin bar

What Google services can you connect?

Once installed, you can connect the following tools. Two of them — Search Console and Google Analytics 4 — are enabled during the initial setup. You can connect:

  • Google Analytics 4
  • Search Console
  • AdSense 
  • Reader Revenue Manager
  • Google Ads
  • Tag Manager

Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Site Kit will add your GA4 tag automatically, after which it shows data such as:

  • The number of visitors
  • Sources of sessions (organic search, direct, referral)
  • Average engagement rate
  • Session durations

The data shown is summarized, so if you want custom reports or event tracking, you need to open GA4. 

a new dashoard in site kit showing the difference in interaction between various visitor groups
Visitor grouping is the newest addition to Site Kit by Google

Google Search Console

After installing and connecting, you’ll get some key data from Search Console right inside your WordPress dashboard:

  • The queries people searched to find your site
  • Number of clicks and impressions
  • Unique visitors from search
  • Page-level performance in search

This kind of data is very helpful for content optimization purposes and to inform your SEO strategy. 

AdSense/Ads (monetization)

If you use Google’s systems to run ads, Site Kit can show data on ad impressions, top-earning pages, and estimated revenue from auto ads, for instance. Simply connect the services to see the data. Remember that it doesn’t replace the AdSense dashboards, but it does give you quick insights.

Reader Revenue Manager

Reader Revenue Manager is a Google tool for adding subscription and contribution options to your website. It’s designed for publishers and content creators who want to monetize their content through reader support, such as recurring memberships or one-time donations.

With Site Kit, you can connect Reader Revenue Manager to your WordPress site in just a few clicks. Once linked, it adds the necessary code to your site automatically, so you don’t need to add tags or install it manually. This feature is optional in Site Kit and is mostly used by publishers offering paywalled or premium content.

PageSpeed Insights

Site Kit runs a PageSpeed test directly inside WordPress. In the PageSpeed Insights section, you’ll see both lab data and field data. Lab data is based on simulated testing in a controlled environment and helps you identify performance issues during development. Field data, on the other hand, reflects how real users experience your site across different devices and network conditions. Together, they provide a balanced view of how your pages perform.

The report shows load performance scores, data on Core Web Vitals (like LCP and CLS). It also gives suggestions for improving speed. But it only tests your homepage and doesn’t include custom settings. For full reports, you can still visit PageSpeed Insights separately.

Tag Manager

You can link a Google Tag Manager container through Site Kit. This lets you manage third-party scripts (like Facebook Pixel or custom tracking tags) from one place. The plugin doesn’t give you a full interface for editing tags — you’ll do that inside the Tag Manager platform.

Managing Analytics in Site Kit by Google

For most site owners or managers, Analytics and Search Console are the most important Google tools. Site Kit makes it easy to set those two services up properly. Of course, you can also use existing accounts.

Enhanced measurement support

GA4 also has Enhanced Measurement, which tracks scrolls, outbound links, file downloads, and other actions automatically. If you activate these in your GA4 property, Site Kit can track them. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to choose which ones to turn on from inside WordPress; you need to go into your GA4 settings for that. 

Event tracking and tag insertion

Site Kit doesn’t support event setup or tracking reports inside the WordPress dashboard. If you need full control over events, you have to use GA4 directly or use Tag Manager to set up the custom events.

Limitations of Analytics in Site Kit

You’ll probably understand by now that Site Kit is not a replacement for GA4 — it’s a neat tool that gives quick insights and nothing more. You don’t get access to funnel reports, attribution models, or filters. You can’t edit events or see predictive metrics, and there’s no support for GA4 audiences or Google Analytics 360.

What’s Enhanced Conversion tracking?

With Enhanced Conversions, you can connect Google Ads clicks to leads or form submissions. This improves the reporting of these events when users are on different devices or block cookies. After setting this up, Site Kit will detect form submissions and pass the data to Google Ads.

Site Kit currently supports some of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins, such as Contact Form 7, WPForms, and Ninja Forms. However, if you use an unsupported custom form, Site Kit can’t automatically add enhanced conversions. 

Again, Site Kit has many limitations in this area. For instance, it doesn’t support purchase-based eCommerce conversions or offline conversions. It also doesn’t support pixel-level tracking, third-party forms, popups, and embedded forms. So, it’s specifically designed for simple lead form submissions. 

Key Metrics widget for quick performance insights

Key Metrics are a very valuable addition as they give quick insights into data of your choosing. They’re quick to understand but not very in-depth. For key strategy decisions, you’re going to need more data.

This widget pulls together important GA4 and Search Console data into a block on your dashboard. You can choose which metrics to show and reorder them. To change your selection, click the Change metrics button in the corner of the Key Metrics section. You can also rerun the question from the Site Kit admin settings.

Each metric includes a figure and a trend comparison from the previous period. For example, you may see engagement is “up 6%” compared to the last 28 days. Click any of them to open the full source report in GA4 or Search Console.

The widget has limitations. It doesn’t show custom events or real-time reporting, campaign attribution breakdowns, or GA4-specific collections like audiences or conversions. The widget and Site Kit, in general, are for broad insights, not advanced analytics. 

The Site Kit Key Metrics widget shows various data that you can tailor to your needs and goals
The Site Kit Key Metrics widget shows various data that you can tailor to your needs and goals

Is Site Kit by Google enough for your goals?

Site Kit is a good starting point for most WordPress users. It brings together valuable Google data without having to do much work. But whether it’s enough depends on whether you need to get from your analytics and tracking tools. 

SEO and content insights

Site Kit is not an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO. However, you can get data from Search Console that will help you understand how people find your website in the search results. With this, you’ll form an understanding of which content works well and how your site performs in the search results. 

However, as mentioned, it’s not an SEO plugin, so you need to install a tool like Yoast SEO to do much of the heavy lifting. Plugins like these help with most SEO tasks, like fixing technical issues, adding structured data, and improving your content. 

Monetization

If you’re running ads, Site Kit shows basic ad metrics like impressions, estimated earnings, and top-earning pages. It helps you monitor your ads without having to log into another app. 

It doesn’t support advanced ad setups, and you can’t manually place ads. It’s also not possible to optimize layouts based on behavior or run A/B tests to find the best ad format. If you’re working with multiple ad networks, you’ll need a tool that can do a lot more than Site Kit.

Marketing analytics

For reporting basics, Site Kit will do just fine. You can see trends in users, sessions, referral sources, and engagement time — all brought to you by Google Analytics 4. 

However, Site Kit doesn’t give access to campaign statistics, UTM tracking, or event-based funnels. It also doesn’t offer the option to set goals or segment traffic by behavior. For these kinds of insights, you need to dive straight into GA4 or use a more in-depth reporting tool. If you run marketing campaigns, track conversions, or use CRM tools, Site Kit won’t provide enough data. 

eCommerce and advanced use cases

For eCommerce, Site Kit won’t cut it. It doesn’t integrate with WooCommerce and doesn’t offer a revenue tracking option. It also doesn’t have access to carts, products, transactions, or customer behavior. There’s no way to measure things like average order value or conversion rates. 

For advanced eCommerce tracking, you need to set this up in GA4 directly or use other methods to access this data. Site Kit doesn’t support this at all. 

Should you use Site Kit by Google?

Site Kit is a good option if you want a free tool to view traffic, search, and performance statistics without having to set up a bunch of tools. It’s very easy to use and useful enough for small websites. 

If you’re running a huge publication or an online store, need to track custom campaigns, or manage a large number of ad accounts, Site Kit won’t cut it. That’s not to say it’s useless for those cases. One of its biggest draws is that it makes setting up GA4, Search Console, Ads, and Tag Manager accounts incredibly easy. It’s a great starting point to build your analytic toolkit upon.

The post What is Site Kit by Google? A guide for WordPress users appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

Canva User and Revenue Statistics

/0 Comments/in /by

Canva was initially released in August 2023 as a graphic design platform.

Within its first year since release, Canva hit a milestone of 600 thousand users.

Now, over 220 million users create designs in Canva and the company hit $3 billion in annualized revenue.

Canva Statistics (Top Picks)

  • Canva has 220 million active users worldwide.
  • Canva has 21 million paying users.
  • Canva hit $3 billion in annualized revenue.
  • Around 5000 employees work at Canva.

Canva Monthly Active Users

According to the company update shared in December 2024, Canva has over 220 million monthly active users. That’s up from 200 million active users in October 2024.

Canva Monthly Active Users

Canva grew its monthly active user base by 2.93x since December 2021.

Here’s a table with Canva’s monthly active user growth since January 2014:

Date Canva Monthly Active Users
January 2014 150 thousand
July 2014 600 thousand
2015 1.5 million
2016 3.6 million
2019 24 million
October 2020 40 million
September 2021 60 million
December 2021 75 million
October 2022 100 million
2023 135 million
January 2024 170 million
October 2024 200 million
December 2024 220 million

Source: Canva

Canva Paying Users

According to Canva co-founder and CEO, Canva has 21 million paid users as of September 2024, up from 16 million paying users reported in September 2023.

As of September 2024 Canva has 21 million paid users

To put in perspective, the total number of Canva users hit 190 million in September 2024. Paying subscribers account for 11.05% of all active users on the platform.

Source: Capital Brief

Canva Revenue

According to the latest report, Canva reached $3 billion in annualized revenue. That’s up from $2.4 billion as of July 2024.

Canva Revenue

Here’s a detailed breakdown of Canva revenue over time:

Date Canva Revenue
2020 $500 million
2021 $1 billion
2023 $2 billion
July 2024 $2.4 billion
2025 $3 billion

Sources: Fast Company, Capital Brief, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Business Insider

Canva Funding

Canva has raised a total of $562.6 million in disclosed funding, including its latest $200 million Series F funding in 2021.

Canva Funding

Here’s a table with details of Canva funding rounds since 2014:

Date, Funding Round Funding Amount
2014, Seed $6.6 million
2015, Series A $15 million
2016, Series B $15 million
2018, Series C $40 million
2019, Series D $70 million
2019, Series D $85 million
2020, Series D $60 million
2021, Series E $71 million
2021, Series F $200 million

Sources: Canva, Tracxn, TechCrunch

Canva Valuation

Canva’s most recent valuation stands at $26 billion, down from a $40 billion valuation following a funding round in 2021.

Canva’s most recent valuation stands at $26 billion

Source: Forbes, Canva

Number of Designs Created in Canva

According to the latest company data, users create an average of 38.5 million designs on Canva per day. The total number of designs created using Canva hit 30 billion in December 2024.

Users create an average of 38.5 million designs on Canva per day

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the number of designs created with Canva over time:

Date Number of Designs Created in Canva
February 2023 15 billion
December 2023 20 billion
December 2024 30 billion

Source: Canva

Canva Employees

According to recent data, the Canva team has around 5000 employees as of 2024, an increase from 4000 in 2023.

Canva Employees

Company headcount grew from 1000 in 2020 to 5000 in 2024.

Here’s a table with the number of employees at Canva over time since 2015:

Year Canva Employees
2015 50
2016 100
2019 500
2020 1000
2023 4000
2024 5000

Sources: Canva, The Sydney Morning Herald

The post Canva User and Revenue Statistics appeared first on Backlinko.

Read more at Read More