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.)
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.)
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!
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
Want to look like you have a full content team without paying for one?
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 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
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.)
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.
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.
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)
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.
I tested this tool using one of my Backlinko articles.
First, I had it scan the site so it could understand the brand.
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.
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.)
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 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.
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)
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 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.
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.
But it runs on a different framework called Constitutional AI, designed to make it more helpful, honest, and human in its responses.
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
Want powerful AI workflows without migrating to an all-in-one platform?
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.
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Here, you’ll find even more related topics to turn into content for your audience.
Such as “what is the definition of gaming” and “what does it mean when someone is gaming.”
Now, let’s see how this works on a social media search engine.
Pinterest
Pinterest autocomplete works great for almost any niche.
Plus, it often surfaces different ideas than Google or other platforms.
Type a topic in the search bar, and Pinterest will show you related searches.
For example, a search for “gaming” brings up ideas like:
Gaming setup
Gaming wallpapers
Gaming room ideas
Pinterest might even suggest some popular related accounts in its autocomplete feature.
File this information away for later. It can be helpful for identifying guest blogging opportunities, expert quote contributions, and influencer collaborations.
2. Keyword Research Tools
Keyword research tools can be a great source of related content.
But don’t confuse related content with related keywords.
They’re connected but different:
Related keywords are terms that are closely related to your main keyword (like “gaming headset” and “best gaming headset”)
Related content covers adjacent topics your audience cares about (like “ergonomic chairs” or “gaming glasses”) that expand your site’s topical and overall authority
(Including ones you’re not actively targeting with content.)
Here’s how to find these queries:
Open Google Search Console and follow this path:
“Performance” > “Search Results.”
Ensure “Queries” is selected on the menu and look through the results.
Focus on these specific types of queries:
Terms that get impressions and clicks, but you haven’t targeted before. These reveal related audience interests.
Searches with low monthly impressions. These often represent emerging topics or highly specific needs that can grow over time.
Question-based queries. Look for any new questions showing up in your data that you could answer with dedicated content.
This is a smart approach for a couple of reasons.
For one, you might discover related topics your audience is already searching for.
Like “game releases” and “indie games.”
But it can also reveal valuable business opportunities.
For example, if people search “gamertag generator,” you could create a free tool to capture that traffic. (And then convert them with a lead magnet.)
This turns a simple related query into a revenue stream.
6. Competitor Analysis
Your competitors have already done the hard work of testing what related content performs in your niche.
Why not learn from their successes?
While you can look through your competitors’ sites manually, Semrush’s Organic Research tool automates the process.
Here’s how to use it.
Add the URL of one of your competitors and click “Search.”
Toggle to “Topics” on the menu. This will show you your competitors’ highest-performing topics.
Take a look at the list and see what related topics you can target on your own site.
For example, you might discover that “gaming news” and “game release calendars” are major traffic drivers for competing gaming sites.
If they’re a direct competitor, it’s likely these topics would work well for you, too.
The goal isn’t to copy what competitors are doing.
It’s to understand what topics resonate with your shared audience. And find related content gaps you can fill with your unique perspective and expertise.
7. Forums and Niche Communities
Want to know what your audience really cares about? Go right to the source.
They’re already discussing their biggest challenges, interests, and questions in online communities.
You just need to know where to look.
Start by identifying where your audience gathers online:
Reddit: Subreddits for your niche and related topics
Facebook groups: Industry-specific groups and interest communities
Discord servers: Real-time conversations in niche communities
Industry forums: Established forums in your space
Public Slack communities: Professional groups and interest-based channels
Look for active communities where people have legit discussions about problems and interests.
Avoid forums that are overly promotional or full of link spam.
Once you’ve found the right communities, don’t just pop in once. Become a regular observer.
Spend time understanding the community dynamics and recurring themes.
As you go through posts, pay attention to:
Topics that generate the most engagement
Questions that appear repeatedly
Pain points mentioned in multiple threads
Controversies that spark discussion
For a gaming site, you might monitor communities like:
Reddit’s r/gaming for general gaming discussions
Reddit’s r/buildapc for hardware-related conversations
Discord servers for real-time discussions about trending games and player preferences
For example, if you notice multiple threads about the same topic, you’ve found a perfect related content opportunity.
You need to build out a new arm of your website. Do you use a subdomain or a subdirectory?
It’s an often painful decision that can impact your SEO performance and how people interact with your brand.
Despite many SEOs showing bias toward one approach or the other, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.
But I’m about to help you make the best decision for your specific situation.
In this guide, you’ll get:
A simple decision-making LLM prompt to get a recommendation tailored to your business
An overview of how subdomains and subdirectories work (and why it matters) with real-world examples
Advice from SEO experts to help you make the smartest call for your site
Let’s get into it — starting with a subdirectory vs. subdomain comparison and what each one means for your site.
Useful resource: Check out our decision-making LLM prompt that uses AI-powered insights to help you decide between subdomains vs. subdirectories for your site.
What Is a Subdomain?
A subdomain is an extension of your main domain.
Added as a prefix to your website URL, a subdomain becomes a separate property within your domain.
So, if your main domain is example.com, a subdomain for your blog would be blog.example.com.
For example, Velasca, an apparel brand, uses subdomains for different markets:
eu.velasca.com for Europe
row.velasca.com for the rest of the world
uk.velasca.com for the United Kingdom
Subdomains offer a lot of flexibility, but they also come with trade-offs.
This is especially true when it comes to SEO and technical setup.
Here’s a quick look at the main pros and cons:
Subdomain Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Allows distinct branding/design for different sections
Provides clearer separation for content types and use cases
Can improve server performance by distributing content across different servers
Takes longer to gain SEO authority (treated like separate sites)
Requires additional SSL certificates and DNS management
More complex to implement and maintain than subdirectories
What Is a Subdirectory?
A subdirectory is a subfolder within your main website that categorizes different pages on your site into folders within the main domain.
A subdirectory for your blog would be example.com/blog.
For example, Backlinko uses subdirectories to organize different resources on its website:
Subdirectories are a popular choice for SEO-focused sites because they consolidate authority under one domain.
But they’re not always the right fit, depending on your needs.
Subdirectory Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Easier to maintain within the existing domain structure
Faster SEO results due to inherited domain authority
Clearer performance tracking under one property
Can create overly complex URL structures when deeply nested
Limited flexibility for different design/branding needs across sections
How Subdirectories and Subdomains Affect SEO
Subdomains and subdirectories can lead to major differences in how your site performs in search.
In this section, I’ll explain how these structures can help or harm your SEO efforts.
Link Equity and Website Authority
A big difference between these two URL structures is how they accumulate and distribute authority.
In a subdirectory, everything exists under one roof.
When a page earns a backlink, the link equity flows directly into your main domain.
In short: All the pages share the same website authority, building a stronger foundation for your website.
Subdomains work differently.
They don’t automatically pass ranking power to each other.
Why?
Because each subdomain is treated as a separate entity.
This means you have to build link equity for each subdomain individually, which can take a long time.
For example, Jakub Rudnik, managing director of SEO at GrowthX AI, saw firsthand how long it takes for Google to trust a new subdomain — even for a high-authority site.
At G2.com, we moved all of our blog content to a new learn.g2.com subdomain. It took months for Google to build trust in that subdomain despite it being on a DR 88 website that was already generating 750k+ traffic each month.
After the first 3-4 months, fresh backlinks, and a ton of new content sending Google signals, we picked up traction quickly. But the delay was significant. In my experience, that would not have been the same timeline if we had moved to a new subfolder.
Ranking Potential
For many SEOs and business owners, the decision boils down to which URL structure delivers better rankings.
Subdirectories have the advantage when it comes to search visibility.
But subdomains can still succeed with the right investment.
Leigh McKenzie, head of organic growth at Backlinko, says:
Subdirectories tend to rank faster because they inherit domain authority more directly. Subdomains can perform just as well over time. But they’re often treated by Google like a separate site, meaning they need to build authority from scratch. If speed to impact matters, subdirectories usually win.
Search Performance Analytics
Using subdomains means you have to set up separate properties in Google Search Console (GSC).
The result: Siloed data.
That said, this makes sense if you want to collect separate insights for each subdomain.
For instance, let’s say you have localized subdomains targeting different countries.
Separate analytics will help you understand market-specific performance and areas of improvement.
With subfolders, all your data lives in one property.
So, you have a 360-degree view of your website and can generate consolidated reports.
International SEO Considerations
For international SEO, the choice between subdomains and subdirectories carries more weight.
Subdomains are better for brands that need separate sites for different languages or markets.
This allows for more customization and flexibility.
Edward Bate, seasoned SEO consultant, offers a word of advice here:
While your website might perform really well in one market, simply creating another subdomain or subfolder for another market doesn’t guarantee ranking success. You’ll need locally relevant backlinks, brand awareness, and search demand in that market to secure better rankings.
Subdomains vs. Subdirectories: 5 Critical Factors to Consider
The choice between subdirectories and subdomains isn’t limited to SEO performance.
It impacts your entire business.
Assess these critical factors to make an informed decision.
Pro tip: As you go through these factors, fill out our decision-making LLM prompt. When you’re finished, drop the prompt in the AI assistant of your choice to get a recommendation tailored to your business.
1. Business Objectives
Your URL structure should align with your business setup and long-term growth plans.
When creating or updating your website, ask yourself:
Is this your core offering or a separate initiative?
Do you want this product/service to have its own identity in the future?
How closely should this offering or service be aligned with your main brand?
The choice ultimately comes down to how you want to position your brand.
Want to build content for your core business offering? Go with a subdirectory.
On the other hand, a subdomain is the better choice for creating distinct, separate content.
(While still associating it with your parent brand.)
2. Technical Setup
Your technical resources (CMS, server configuration, and SEO tools) also play into this decision.
Choose a structure that’s the most compatible with your technical stack.
The ideal structure should also support your long-term scalability needs.
Subdirectories work well when your CMS can efficiently handle multiple subfolders and pages within the primary domain
Subdomains are a good choice when you want technical flexibility for different sections of your business
You can operate each property as technically separate entities with different CMSs, servers, and more.
The team responsible for building and maintaining your URL structure (internal or external) has a big role to play.
So, your setup should help them manage the website without any disruptions and errors.
Have a single team managing all the content? Subdirectories give you a better setup to centralize content management and maintain uniformity.
In contrast, subdomains are ideal if you work with many departments or external agencies, each with their own workflows.
Pro tip: When working with external vendors, subdomains make it easier to sandbox their work without affecting your main site’s performance or CMS structure.
5. Scalability
Your URL structure should accommodate future growth plans.
Including:
Content volume
Website traffic
Functionality
Evolving business needs
Forecast your expected growth over the next two to three years.
Then, make a decision.
Go for subdirectories if your plan is to expand your setup and scale content within your existing business model.
Consider subdomains if you want to launch different offerings in the future.
And need more flexibility to scale each product/service.
With these decision factors in mind, let’s look at a few reasons when you should choose one structure over the other.
Common Reasons to Use Subdomains
Learning toward subdomains?
Here are a few use cases when they make the most sense.
International Websites
Global brands need localized content customized to different languages, cultures, and more.
The brand uses localized subdomains to deliver customized user experiences.
For example, its website copy is translated into German, Arabic, English, and other languages.
The brand also follows a targeted SEO strategy for each subdomain, focusing on buyer needs and behavior in each market.
Below you can see the variations in keywords for MyProtein’s U.S. and Australian subdomains.
Each subdomain acts like its own site.
This lets MyProtein optimize each domain for different languages and search habits without diluting its core brand.
Branded Properties
Many brands offer a suite of products, services, content, and more.
In a best-case scenario, different teams will manage each subdomain. This makes it easier to build authority and boost organic traffic for each property.
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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.
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.
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:
And the Key events feature to track conversions and signups:
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:
Others will tell you that all that matters is 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”:
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:
You can also use it to track branded search visibility:
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.
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:
But you’ll need to use a specialized tool like Hotjar to monitor more granular page engagement:
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:
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:
Finally, use Google Search Console to track your average ranking positions at the page or query level:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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:
Brand visibility
Lead generation
Revenue impact
Authority building
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:
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.
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.
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.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-06-23 14:42:202025-06-23 14:42:20The SEO KPIs That Actually Matter (And How to Track Them)
The meta description summarizes a page’s content and presents it to users in the search results. It’s one of the first things people will likely see when searching for something, so optimizing it is crucial for SEO. It’s your chance to persuade users to click on your result! This post will show you the characteristics of a good meta description and how Yoast SEO can help you get it right.
The meta description is an HTML tag you can set for a post or page of your website. In it, you can use roughly 155 characters to describe what your page is about. If you’re lucky, Google will show it beneath your page’s title in the search results. It allows you to convince search engine users that your page will offer what they are looking for.
In Google’s search results, this is where it can be displayed:
A meta description from yoast.com as seen in the search results
And this is what it looks like in the HTML code of the page:
<meta name="description" content="Your site structure is vital for users and SEO. Our complete guide will guide you through all the steps to create a sound site structure." />
Why set a meta description?
The purpose of a meta description is simple: it needs to get someone searching with a search term on Google to click your link. In other words, meta descriptions are there to generate click-throughs from search engines.
Search engines say there is no direct SEO benefit from the meta description – they don’t use it in their ranking algorithm. But there is an indirect benefit: Google uses click-through rate (CTR) to determine whether you’re a good result. If more people click on your result, Google considers you to be a good result and will, based on your position, move you up the rankings. This is why optimizing your meta description is important, as is optimizing your titles.
Here’s a list of elements you need to write a good meta description:
Keep it up to 155 characters
Use an active voice and make it actionable
Include a call to action
Use your focus keyphrase
Show specifications when needed
Make sure it matches the content of the page
Make it unique
Let’s go over them in detail!
1. Keep it up to 155 characters
The right length doesn’t exist; it depends on the message you want to convey. You should take enough space to convey the message, but keep it short and snappy. However, if you check the search results in Google, you’ll mostly see snippets of 120 to 156 characters, like in the example below. Google says you can make your meta descriptions as long as you want, but there is a limit to what we can see in the SERPs — and that’s around 155 characters; anything longer will get truncated.
This search result from a Yoast SEO user shows a succinct meta description in Google
Unfortunately, you can’t fully control what Google displays in the search results. Sometimes, it shows the meta description, and sometimes, it just grabs some sentences of your copy or generates something itself. Either way, your best bet is to keep it short. That way, if Google does decide to show the description you’ve written, it won’t be cut short.
2. Use active voice and make it actionable
If you see the meta description as an invitation to visit your page, you have to think about your user and their (possible) motivation to visit your page. Ensure your description isn’t dull, difficult, or too cryptic. People need to know what they can expect to find on your page.
The example in the image below is the description you should strive to write. It’s active, speaks to you, and addresses you directly. You know what you’ll get if you click on the link!
Make people want to click your search result
3. Include a call-to-action
“Hello, we have a new product, and you want it. Find out more!” This overlaps with what we said about the active voice, but we wanted to emphasize it again. The meta description is your sales text. In this case, the “product” you are trying to sell is the linked page. Invitations like Learn more, Get it now, Try for free come in handy, and we use them too.
Get people to click on your link
4. Use your focus keyword
If the search keyword matches a part of the text in the meta description, Google will be more inclined to use it and highlight it in the search results. This will make the link to your site even more inviting. Google sometimes even highlights synonyms. In the example below, both the Academy Awards and Oscars are highlighted. Getting your results emphasized like that makes them stand out even more.
A listing for the Academy Awards on Google
5. Show specifications, where possible
If you have a product in your Shopify or WooCommerce store aimed at the tech-savvy, it can be a good idea to focus on the technical specs. For example, you can include the manufacturer, SKU, price, etc. If the visitor specifically seeks that product, you won’t have to convince them. Can the watch help us stay fit? Sign us up; that’s all we need to know. Note that to optimize your result in this manner, you should work on getting rich snippets.
Make it spark
6. Make sure it matches the content of the page
This is an important one. Google will find out if you use meta descriptions to trick visitors into clicking on your results. They might even penalize you if you do it. But besides that, misleading descriptions will also increase your bounce rate. Which will also lower people’s trust in your company. It’s a bad idea for that reason alone. That is why you want the meta description to match the content on the page.
7. Make it unique
Adding the date to the snippet preview
People often ask questions about the date shown in the Google preview of our Yoast SEO plugin. We’ve added this because search engines may display a date with your snippet. So it’s important to factor it in when you decide on the right length of your meta description. Unfortunately, there’s no way to directly control whether this date is shown or not, but you can try to manage the dates they use in the search results.
If your meta description is the same as those for other pages, the user experience in Google will be hampered. Although your page titles might vary, all pages will appear the same because all the descriptions are identical. Instead of creating duplicate meta descriptions, you’d better leave them blank. Google will pick a snippet from the page containing the keyword used in the query. That being said, writing a unique meta description for every page you want to rank is always the best practice.
How Yoast SEO helps you write meta descriptions
Adding a meta description is easy if you’re on WordPress or Shopify and using Yoast SEO. Firstly, you can write it in the Search appearance preview section of Yoast SEO. But Yoast SEO also gives you feedback on it in the SEO analysis. The plugin checks the meta description length and whether you’ve used your focus keyphrase. So, let’s see how the plugin helps you and what you can do with it.
Using AI to generate meta descriptions in Yoast SEO Premium
Yoast SEO Premium has our Yoast AI Generate features, which include AI-powered meta description generation. This meta description generator brings the power of generative AI to your fingertips, producing engaging and SEO-optimized meta descriptions with just one click. Using advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques, it generates creative and appealing meta descriptions, captivating your audience while meeting search engine standards.
Creating meta descriptions with a little help from generative AI in Yoast SEO Premium
This feature simplifies your meta description optimization process and fully complies with best SEO practices. It enhances user experience, amplifies your website’s visibility, and effortlessly directs high-quality, organic traffic to your site. With this outstanding AI generator, effortlessly elevate your SEO performance and generate outstanding meta descriptions that set you apart.
You can edit your meta description in Yoast SEO
You can edit your meta description in Yoast SEO for Shopify
What does the keyphrase in meta description assessment in Yoast SEO do?
This check is all about using the keyphrase in the meta description. A focus keyphrase is the search term you want a page to rank for. When people use that term, you want them to find your page. You base your keyphrase on keyword research. After your research, you should end up with a combination of words that most of your audience will likely search for. We’ve already discussed that when you use your keyphrase in the meta description, Google will likely highlight it. That makes it easier for people to see they’ve found what they are looking for.
Yoast SEO checks if and how often you use the words from your focus keyphrase in the meta description text. In addition, if you use Yoast SEO Premium, it also considers the synonyms you enter. If you overdo it, the plugin advises you to limit the use of your focus keyphrase.
What a green bullet looks like in Yoast SEO
What a green bullet looks like in Yoast SEO for Shopify
How to get a green traffic light for the keyphrase in meta description
You’ll get a red traffic light if you don’t mention the keyphrase in the meta description. So, make sure to write one. But don’t stuff your meta description with your keyphrase because that will also get you a red traffic light. And make sure to mention all the words from your keyphrase near each other. Search engines are pretty smart nowadays, but you must clarify what your page is about.
Yoast SEO Premium plugin considers the synonyms you’ve added when it performs its analysis. This allows you to write more naturally, resulting in a more pleasant text. Moreover, it’s easier to score a green traffic light this way. Use it to your advantage!
Unlock all features in Yoast SEO Premium
Save time on your SEO and get access to all of our SEO courses.
What does the meta description length assessment do?
This meta description length assessment measures whether your description is too short (less than 120 characters) or too long (more than 156 characters). You’ll get a green traffic light when your meta description has the right length. If it’s too long or too short, you’ll get an orange traffic light in the SEO analysis of Yoast SEO (or red if you’ve marked your article as cornerstone content).
What the check looks like in the Yoast SEO sidebar
A green bullet in the Yoast SEO for Shopify app
How to write a concise meta description
A good meta description convinces people that your page offers the best result for their query. But, to be the best result, you must know what people seek. What is their search intent? Are they looking for an answer to a question? If they are, try to give them the most complete answer. Are they looking for a product? Write down what makes your product stand out and why they would best buy it in your store. Be concise and convincing!
You get real-time feedback on the meta description length in the Search appearance section in the Yoast SEO sidebar or meta box. Click “Search appearance” in the Yoast SEO sidebar to write a meta description. This will open the snippet editor, and you’ll see input fields for editing the SEO title, the slug, and the meta description. When you start typing in the meta description input field, the snippet preview at the top of the Search appearance editor will immediately show your new text. Underneath the input field, there is a bar. It’s orange when you start typing and will become green when you’ve added enough information. When you add too much text, it will turn orange again.
The bar will change color when your go over the limit
Checking the Google preview in Yoast SEO for Shopify
Writing or editing your meta description in the Yoast SEO meta box underneath your post editor is also possible. Go to the SEO tab in the meta box (if it’s not on this tab by default), and you can start typing in the field under Meta description immediately.
What to do if you need meta descriptions for a lot of pages?
After reading this, do you need to change all your meta descriptions? But are you not sure how to fit that into your schedule? Google has the answer:
“If you don’t have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content; at the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.“
If you prefer to write a unique description for each page and have much to get through, you can use the Bulk editor tool in Yoast SEO for WordPress. Head to the Tools page, click ‘Bulk editor’, then select the ‘Description’ tab. You’ll be able to see any meta descriptions already set for your pages, and you can quickly add new ones without opening each page individually. However, with this tool, you won’t get warnings if your description is too short/long, or if the focus keyword is missing.
Preventing snippets with Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO provides an easy way to control search result snippets using the nosnippet meta tag feature. This setting lets you prevent Google from displaying any snippet for particular pages, giving you control over what appears in search results. It’s especially useful when you want to prioritize privacy or ensure that content is not shown without its full context. With the nosnippet tag, you have another way to manage snippet creation and to align everything with your content strategy.
Yoast SEO lets you easily add the nosnippets robots tag in the Advanced settings
Meta descriptions for social sharing
Do you have Yoast SEO? Check the Social media appearance in the Yoast SEO sidebar or social tab in the Yoast SEO meta box below your post or page. You can add a separate description for your social media channels there. In Yoast SEO Premium, you even have social previews that show you what your post or page will look like when shared on social media.
Conclusion to meta descriptions
Meta descriptions are a crucial yet often underestimated component of SEO — even if these are not fully in your control. It serves as a brief advertisement for your content in search results, influencing click-through rates and user engagement. Crafting clear, compelling, and keyword-rich meta descriptions can significantly enhance your online visibility. In return, it could attract more targeted traffic to your website. While they may not directly impact rankings, their role in driving clicks and conversions is undeniable.
A well-crafted meta description is not just about SEO; it’s about creating a better user experience by providing searchers with a clear, concise preview of what to expect on your page. Of course, Google might think it knows better than you, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put your best foot forward!
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During the initial rollout, we discovered a technical issue where unintended classes were being added to content for some users. While these added classes are harmless and do not impact the functionality or appearance of your content, they should not have been added, that’s on us.
We take this seriously, and to maintain the quality you expect, we’ve been actively working on a solution. We’re pleased to share that a fix has now been released, and the issue has been resolved. For users already affected, we are automatically cleaning up the unintended classes as part of the fix, no action is needed on your part.
As part of our commitment to delivering reliable and thoughtful features, we have also temporarily disabled the AI Optimize feature for the Classic Editor. This will give us time to reconsider our approach and develop an improved solution. We’ll keep you updated and reintroduce the feature as soon as we’re confident in its performance.
Please update your Yoast SEO plugins to the latest version where available. Should you have any concerns, feel free to contact our support team.
Thank you for your understanding and continued support.
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Imagine if your website could rank for every single keyword related to your niche.
That’s the promise of programmatic SEO.
It’s how Tripadvisor creates “Things to Do in” pages for countless locations across the globe…
…and ranks for almost 100K keywords featuring the words “things to do in”:
But the reality is more nuanced. It’s not a magic trick that’ll instantly drive traffic.
And we’ve seen programmatic plays go wrong countless times (more on that below).
The real differentiator nowadays isn’t the ability to create thousands of pages. It’s whether those pages actually deserve to rank.
In this guide, I’ll show you when programmatic SEO works, when it doesn’t, and how you can build your own winning programmatic SEO strategy.
What Is Programmatic SEO?
Programmatic SEO, also referred to as pSEO, is the systematic creation of content at scale using templates and data to target thousands (sometimes millions) of related search queries. The goal is to drive traffic and revenue through these automatically generated pages.
Put another way:
You create landing pages at scale to rank in lots of search results.
In traditional content marketing, you create individual articles targeting specific keywords. With programmatic SEO, you automate page creation based on patterns in search behavior.
Each page uses the same template structure, layout, and core elements. The only things that change are the keywords you’re targeting.
You use automation to spin up hundreds or thousands of variations. Each one targets different long-tail keywords with relatively low competition.
The goal is to drive traffic, build authority, and generate revenue for your business — at a volume you couldn’t replicate manually.
4 Successful Programmatic SEO Examples
Use the programmatic SEO examples below to get inspired and understand how to spot patterns that make good candidates for programmatic campaigns.
Note: Some of these sites have millions of pages, and they often run across multiple different types of programmatic SEO efforts. As a result, the number of pages and traffic figures are estimates. But they should still give you a good idea of what is possible when pSEO works well.
1. Wise
Wise is a global financial platform that helps users send, spend, and receive money internationally.
You’ll see Wise as a common example of programmatic SEO in action, generally for their currency converter pages. But most discussions on the topic don’t properly convey the true scale of Wise’s pSEO play.
The total number of currency converter pages across Wise’s domain (including across different global subfolders like /gb/ and /us/) is a whopping 8.5 million.
Not tens of thousands. Millions of pages. That all look like this:
How do I know there are that many?
Because Wise’s main sitemap index contains 170 individual sitemaps for the currency converter pages alone (it starts at “sitemap-0”):
And each of those contains 50K individual URLs (except the last one, which has just under 47K):
All of which are indexable and canonicalized:
That includes the variants for specific currency amounts.
That’s right, Wise has created a bunch of pages for various currencies that are prefilled with common amounts of currency to convert. Like “2,000 Maldivian rufiyaas to New Zealand dollars.”
And they rank:
In fact, Wise ranks for tens of thousands of related keywords, including 36.5K that include the word “convert”:
Wise’s currency conversion pages demonstrate the difference between valuable programmatic content and thin content.
Each page (like USD to EUR) includes real-time rates, interactive calculators, historical charts, bank comparisons, and transactional capabilities. Not just basic templated text with a CTA.
Their pages solve real user problems rather than merely existing to capture keywords.
But that’s not the only way Wise uses programmatic SEO. They also use it for:
SWIFT codes for businesses (1.25 million pages):
Stock tickers (280K+ pages):
And they also have:
Currency exchange pages (~8K)
Account pages (~1K)
“Send money” pages (~16K)
IBAN pages (~10K)
Comparison pages (~38K)
Routing number pages (~45K)
Various landing pages (~6K)
Overall, the Wise website has more than 10 million pages. Combined, they drive 100+ million visits every month.
This isn’t necessarily the most relatable example. It would require extensive resources to pull off this kind of automated page creation.
But it does show the sheer scalability and ranking power of programmatic SEO.
Why this works: Wise has massive amounts of proprietary data about currencies and other financial information. Each page also caters to a very specific user need that is globally relevant.
2. Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor uses programmatic SEO for its location pages.
Search for “things to do in [city]” and you’ll see how they’ve dominated this pattern.
For example, here’s the result for “things to do in Paris”:
And this is the result for “things to do in New York”:
Each page follows the same structure. But each one is populated with location-specific attractions, reviews, and booking options unique to that destination.
These pages collectively drive millions of organic traffic to Tripadvisor.
Bonus note: This is just counting the URLs on Tripadvisor’s .com domain. There are similar pages on its global domains too, like .co.uk.
Why does this work so well?
Because Tripadvisor is able to meet the pain points of users all over the world. Travellers are always looking for things to do in different locations.
And Tripadvisor can cater to this need with its vast array of data on landmarks, sights, and activities. Plus, they have proprietary user data (like reviews) that helps make every programmatically generated page unique and useful.
Why this works: Tripadvisor has an Authority Score of 100. Add to that the fact that its pages cover the global travel market and contain heaps of UGC (like reviews) and you have the ideal candidate for pSEO.
3. Zillow
Zillow uses programmatic SEO to generate thousands of hyper-local pages for every city, neighborhood, and property type to capture long-tail real estate search traffic.
The site transforms raw data (like home value estimates, price trend visualizations, school information, and walkability scores) into context-rich resources that both rank well and help users make important decisions.
And they have A LOT of listings.
I trawled through their sitemaps and found various groups of pages:
Home values by location (173K pages)
Miscellaneous listings (9K pages)
School districts (146K pages)
For sale by agent (1.6M pages)
For sale by owner (26K pages)
New construction (160K pages)
Pending (1.5K pages)
Recently sold (7.5M pages)
For rent (1.2M pages)
Then there are other sitemaps covering buildings, apartments, off-market, other, and “for sale” suggesting tens of millions of pages.
But one sitemap index for off market homes contained 4999 sitemaps, each with seemingly around 23K URLs. This would suggest there are more than 100 million URLs in this category.
Either there is some overlap on the pages (which would be impossible to manually check for) or Zillow lists pretty much every single home in the US on its site.
Regardless, Zillow has millions of pages. And these rely on programmatic SEO.
The result?
243 million organic visits every month.
Why this works: Zillow has massive authority (Authority Score of 97). When you combine that with masses of proprietary data and a nationwide market, you have a brilliant use case for programmatic SEO.
4. Zapier
Zapier is an automation platform that connects different web apps and creates workflows based on these connections.
They generate detailed integration pages for every possible app combination to capture search intent around software integrations. With 590K+ pages, Zapier’s programmatic efforts are impressive.
The /apps/ subfolder that contains these integration pages drives more than 610K organic visits every month:
Each integration page (like “Connect Calendly to Slack”) offers specific use cases via templates…
…along with lists of supported triggers and actions:
Why this works: Zapier’s entire tool works around integrating different tools. So they have proprietary data they can lean on (the lists of templates and triggers) that nobody else can replicate. But the key part is that every one of these pages serves a very specific intent in a detailed way.
When pSEO Makes Sense (And When It Doesn’t)
Not every business can or should use programmatic SEO.
So before you spend resources building a system that cranks out thousands of pages, let’s be brutally honest about when this approach actually works.
Marketplace sites, aggregators, and directories are the perfect candidates for pSEO. Think Zillow (property listings), Tripadvisor (travel destinations), or Zapier (software integrations).
Why do these programmatic SEO sites work so well?
Because each piece of content changes enough to justify its own page. Plus, users genuinely need that specific information or functionality.
Key takeaway: If your data or functionality doesn’t meaningfully change between variations, strongly reconsider whether you should use programmatic SEO.
Simply changing “[City] plumbers” to target 500 locations while offering identical generic text isn’t programmatic SEO — it’s spam.
The Dangers of Programmatic SEO
Programmatic SEO can look a lot like spam if you just create a bunch of thin content.
But even if it doesn’t look like spam, if users have a different intent or there are better sources out there, you’ll struggle to rank.
We’ve seen programmatic efforts have negative consequences with the likes of G2 and ZoomInfo.
ZoomInfo’s databases of companies and people still drive significant traffic:
But nowhere near as much as they used to:
The same goes for G2.
The product review and comparison site used to drive almost 12 million monthly visits back in 2021. But now it gets less than 1 million:
Both sites saw major drops in traffic on at least two occasions:
Between May-August of 2021, coinciding with several major Google updates (including for spam specifically)
In October 2023, again coinciding with major Google updates, and again with one for spam specifically
There are other factors at play too, like the prevalence of AI Overviews in search results, Reddit’s SERP dominance, and more authoritative competition.
But these are two examples of programmatic SEO working very well — until it doesn’t.
How to Know if Programmatic SEO Is Right for You
Before you invest in programmatic SEO, ask yourself the following questions:
Do you have lots of proprietary data, user-generated content, or structured information at your disposal?
Does your site already have rankings and authority?
Will your hypothetical pages each provide real value individually?
Would you be proud to show each individual page to any user?
You should be able to answer “yes” to all of these questions. If not, rethink whether programmatic SEO is worth your investment.
How to Build Your Programmatic SEO Strategy in 5 Steps
Step 1: Find Scalable Keywords
The foundation of programmatic SEO isn’t finding high-volume keywords. It’s about identifying patterns that you can target systematically.
What Good Programmatic SEO Keywords Look Like
You’re looking for search queries that follow consistent formats but change one or two variables.
Like these examples:
[product] vs [competitor]
best restaurants in [city]
convert [currency] to [currency]
[language] to [language] translation
average salary for [profession]
cheap flights from [location] to [location]
The key is evaluating whether the underlying search intent stays consistent across variations.
For example, let’s take a closer look at Wise’s currency converter pages:
Someone searching “USD to EUR” wants the same core information as someone searching “GBP to JPY.” They just want to convert different currencies.
But these pages aren’t just glorified calculators. They also feature historic conversion charts:
Tables of the highs, lows, averages, and changes:
And a comparison of Wise’s own rates versus competitors:
This is why they dominate these searches: they’re solving the specific problem searchers have with each currency pair. It’s the same intent but with different variables — the right mix for programmatic SEO.
How to Find Your Own pSEO Keywords
Good programmatic SEO keywords consist of two key parts:
Head term: The consistent part that appears in all variations (e.g., “Resume templates”)
Modifier: The variable element that changes with each page (e.g., job titles like “product managers” or “systems engineers”)
Professional modifiers: “for [profession]”, “[skill] for [industry]”, “[tool] for [job]”
Format modifiers: “[topic] template”, “[topic] calculator”, “[topic] checklist”
Question modifiers: “how to [verb] [topic]”, “can [subject] [verb]”, “why does [topic] [verb]”
Statistical modifiers: “average [metric] for [category]”, “[topic] statistics [year]”
Pro tip: Use the asterisk (*) search operator in Google to find even more variations (like “seo tools for *”).
Set the Keyword Difficulty to “(KD) < 30” and use the “Include” filter to narrow down to specific patterns (e.g., include “for” to find “seo tools for [industry]”).
Finally, sort by volume to prioritize higher-traffic opportunities.
Next, check the SERPs for several variations of your pattern and to confirm similar content types appear across variations.
This is an important step. Let’s say you were planning to programmatically create pages that list the top SEO tools for different business types.
Your plan was to create pages that contained a simple list with basic facts and stats about each tool, along with some features and pricing info. You have a database with all this information, and you plug in an AI tool’s API to help create unique content for each page.
But then you check the SERP for some common terms and realize that Google seems to be rewarding more detailed lists.
Lists that feature:
In-depth tool info
Expert takes and opinions
Screenshots that show the writer has used the tool
Do you think your programmatic content will rank alongside these guides?
Probably not.
That’s why checking the SERP and evaluating the search intent is so important.
But once you do have a list of ideal keywords to target, you can export it and group by modifier types (locations, products, features). This organized data will feed directly into your template planning.
Step 2: Collect and Structure Data
Every successful programmatic SEO project thrives because of its data.
Without unique, valuable information, you’re just going to create thin pages Google will eventually demote.
You have three main options for data acquisition:
Proprietary data: Information you own or generate that competitors can’t access is the gold standard. Think Zapier’s integration data or Tripadvisor’s reviews. If you have proprietary data, your programmatic SEO has built-in defensibility.
Public data with added value: You can transform, combine, or present data from public sources in uniquely valuable ways (like from government databases or APIs). Because anyone else can access this data, how you present it is absolutely key.
Scraped data: This is the riskiest option. If you go this route, focus on adding significant value through analysis, visualization, or aggregation. Remember: scraping should be a starting point, not your end product.
If you’re struggling to find data, here are some free datasets for programmatic SEO across different niches (including stocks, salary data, social media, books, and more).
Just remember that anyone can find these data sets. So it’s best to use them for inspiration rather than hinging your pSEO campaign on them.
Step 3: Create Quality Content Templates
Templates are the engine of programmatic SEO. But they’re also where most projects go wrong. It’s easy to generate 100,000 pages. It’s hard to make them genuinely useful.
Start by manually creating 3-5 examples of your target pages. These are your test runs. Use them to validate that your data, structure, and content actually helps users.
Once you’re happy, build your template with the following:
500–1,000+ words of helpful content: Use headings, bullet points, and other visual breaks to improve clarity
Conditional content logic: Use if/then rules to tailor each page’s copy, examples, recommendations, or CTAs to match the specific data or topic
Rich elements like HTML tables, charts, or maps: Visualize your data to make your page interactive and genuinely informative
Internal links: Guide users to related pages, deeper resources, or next steps
Step 4: Technical Setup (Based on Skill Level)
You don’t need to be a developer to launch a programmatic SEO site. But you will need to choose your approach based on your technical comfort and scale requirements.
Here are a few examples of what your setup might look like depending on your skill level:
Level
Pages
Tools
Example Workflow
Best For
Beginner / No-code
1-100 pages
Google Sheets
WordPress or Webflow
WP All Import or similar plugins
Export keyword data to spreadsheet
Write templates using variables
Use formulas/find+replace to populate content
Bulk import via plugin
Non-technical users launching small projects
Intermediate
100-1,000 pages
Airtable / Notion
Webflow CMS
Zapier / Make
Jekyll, Hugo (SSGs with data files)
Build structured data in Airtable
Connect to Webflow CMS via Make
Auto-generate new pages when data is added
Marketers comfortable with no-code automation tools
Advanced
1,000+ pages
Custom apps
Next.js or similar
CMS APIs
Databases with caching
CI/CD pipelines
Develop custom app (e.g., with Node.js)
Fetch data from database (e.g., PostgreSQL)
Generate and deploy pages with frameworks like Next.js via Vercel
Developers or teams with engineering resources
Pro tip: Roll out your programmatic SEO efforts in stages. Don’t push 100K URLs live overnight.
Step 5: Monitor and Improve Your SEO
Like any SEO strategy, programmatic SEO is an ongoing effort. Because you might have hundreds or thousands of pages to manage, staying on top of performance and technical issues is key.
Here are some important things to track, and the best tool(s) to use:
Indexation rate: What percentage of your pages are in Google’s index? (Google Search Console)
Crawl stats: How frequently is Google visiting your pages? (Google Search Console)
Traffic distribution: Are certain variations performing better than others? (Google Analytics)
Conversion patterns: Which page types drive valuable actions? (Google Analytics)
Page-level metrics: What do your loading speeds, bounce rates, and time on page metrics look like? (PageSpeed Insights, Google Analytics)
Cannibalization issues: Are your programmatic pages competing with each other? (Google Search Console, Semrush Position Tracking)
Is Programmatic SEO Really the Way to Go?
It’s hopefully clear by now that programmatic SEO can yield some pretty impressive results.
But it should also be clear that it’s not the right choice for everyone.
Unless you have:
Existing authority
Plenty of resources
Unique data
It’s probably not the right approach for your website (at least not yet).
For now, I recommend focusing on growing your site with quality, not quantity. For more on this, check out our guide to creating high-quality SEO content.
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But suddenly…more people are searching for your brand. What’s going on?
Welcome to the invisible influence of LLMs, where your visibility goes up even when traffic goes down.
New research from Semrush reveals a seismic shift happening right now: LLM traffic will completely overtake traditional Google search by 2027.
There’s A LOT to think through here.
The good news?
If you’re already doing quality SEO, you’re 70% of the way there. The next step is to ensure your expertise is recognized by AI systems.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
Why Google rankings are no longer your best growth signal
What LLM visibility actually means
How to track and influence this new layer of search that’s driving brand discovery
Let’s start with what your current analytics are struggling to see.
Your Brand Is Blowing Up in LLMs (You Just Can’t See It)
LLMs are quietly becoming the biggest brand discovery platform on the internet.
Users ask AI about your industry, see your brand mentioned, and then visit you directly later.
The problem is you can’t see this influence in Google Analytics.
What Your Analytics Miss
Almost 90% of ChatGPT’s citations come from search results ranking in positions 21+ — not the top 5 rankings you’re fighting for.
While you optimize for position #1, ChatGPT mines pages 3, 5, and 10 for answers. And users trust those recommendations.
This data focuses on ChatGPT, but similar patterns appear across LLMs.
Gemini also favors long-tail sources, and Perplexity shows comparable citation behaviors across the ecosystem.
Looking forward: Google’s massive reach through AI Overviews and the AI Mode rollout positions them as the long-term leader, even as ChatGPT dominates current conversations.
How Discovery Has Changed
Discovery is fundamentally changing:
Old way: Google → Click → Explore → Decide
New way: Ask AI → See mention → Visit directly later
And different generations use LLMs differently.
College students treat ChatGPT as an “operating system.”
Users in their 20s-30s use it as a “life advisor.”
Older users see it as a Google replacement.
Still, each interaction creates invisible brand impressions.
When someone discovers you through an LLM and visits later, it appears as:
Direct traffic (typed your URL)
Branded search (Googled your name)
Untagged referral (bookmarked and returned)
There’s zero attribution to the LLM mention.
So you have to get creative.
4 Signs Your LLM Visibility Is Growing
Your analytics might be telling a story of decline, while your brand influence is actually exploding.
This exact pattern is happening to Backlinko.
Our clicks dropped 15% while impressions surged 54% over the past three months.
More people are seeing our content in search results, but fewer are clicking through.
They’re likely discovering us through AI responses, then searching for us directly later.
Here are four signs that LLM visibility might be driving invisible growth for your brand:
Declining organic traffic + stable branded searches: People are discovering you elsewhere first, then searching for your brand directly.
Sales calls mentioning “found you through AI”: Direct evidence of LLM-driven discovery that never shows up in analytics.
Direct traffic holding steady despite fewer Google clicks: Users are bypassing search entirely after AI discovery.
Competitors gaining share with weaker traditional SEO: They’re likely winning LLM visibility while you focus on rankings. (More on what that looks like later.)
How LLMs Find and Cite Content
Historically, SEO has been fairly straightforward. For the most part, it’s predictable cause and effect.
Optimize for keyword X, build Y backlinks, get position Z.
LLM visibility operates differently. It’s probabilistic and contextual.
This emerging discipline is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). It’s the practice of optimizing for AI-powered search systems.
While this guide focuses on measuring LLM visibility specifically, it’s part of the broader GEO strategy.
With that said, think of GEO as an extension of SEO rather than replacing it, as many of the skills overlap.
The fundamental difference:
SEO: Deterministic rankings drive traffic
GEO: Probabilistic mentions build influence
Why Rankings Don’t Predict LLM Citations
Different LLMs prioritize different authority signals, creating multiple opportunities for visibility.
For example, when you search “best SEO blogs in 2025,” Google’s AI Overview cites established brands.
It mentions Backlinko alongside Search Engine Land, Semrush, and other recognized industry leaders.
Open the top three cited posts in the AIO, and they all mention the same blogs.
Ask ChatGPT the same question (logged out in a private browser), you get a similar list.
But here’s where it gets interesting.
When I asked ChatGPT the same question, logged in, I got a completely different answer.
Instead of citing the usual suspects, it focuses on finding diverse, current perspectives across different platforms. It recommends everything from premium newsletters to X/Twitter accounts worth following.
All based on the context of my chat history.
So, Google AI values co-citation patterns, but ChatGPT rewards fresh perspectives and contextual coverage.
This is why your 2023 comparison post might never appear in AI Overviews, but could become ChatGPT’s go-to citation for explaining complex topics.
What LLMs Actually Prioritize
Early testing suggests that query fan-out and semantic chunk matching are big drivers of LLM behaviour.
LLMs often create several related sub-queries from your original question, especially for complex topics. They pull the best matches from the web.
LLMs focus on identifying the most relevant content chunks, rather than the highest-ranking pages.
The result?
While strong Google rankings often correlate with LLM citations, the relationship isn’t perfectly linear.
Content ranking lower in traditional search can still get cited by AI systems when it provides the most relevant, specific answer to what users are asking.
To win this transition, continue building comprehensive topical authority. It’s the same principle that has driven SEO success, but now even more critical for LLM visibility.
Prompt: “How do I build high-quality backlinks to my website?”
ChatGPT Response:Building quality backlinks requires strategic outreach and valuable content creation. The Skyscraper Technique, popularized by Brian Dean from Backlinko, involves finding top-performing content in your niche, creating something better, then reaching out to sites that linked to the original. Other effective methods include guest posting on relevant blogs…
What happens next: The user doesn’t click anywhere. They continue asking about outreach templates and timeline expectations, then later search “Backlinko Skyscraper Technique” or navigate directly to backlinko.com.
The invisibility factor: Branding just influenced a purchase decision, but you’ll never see it in referral traffic.
LLMs present information with or without links. Both drive discovery.
Here’s an example of a Perplexity response with a link:
Trends show that citations without links often feel more trustworthy because users don’t sense they’re being “sold to.”
Note: In these examples, we’re referring to RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). It’s where the model often conducts additional web searches (query fan-out, etc.) for complex queries.
Why Your Analytics Are Blind to LLM Growth (And How to Fix It)
Your current measurement tools can’t see the biggest growth opportunity in search, but there are ways to track what actually matters.
What Your Dashboard Misses
When someone discovers you through an LLM and visits later, it appears as:
Direct traffic (typed your URL or clicked a link that didn’t pass referrer data)
Branded search (Googled your name)
Unknown or untagged referral (bookmarked and returned)
It’s worth repeating, there’s often zero attribution to the LLM mention.
Why Traditional Metrics Fail
Google Analytics and Google Search Console were designed for a click-based world.
Old customer journey: See result → Click → Convert (trackable)
New customer journey: See AI mention → Research brand → Visit directly later (invisible)
It’s a measurement paradox. Your most effective discovery channel is completely hidden.
Quick rant:
Google isn’t adding access to traffic data for AI Mode or AI Overviews.
I believe it’s because it’ll reveal just how little traffic both are actually driving to external websites.
Maybe the tide will turn, and eventually, they’ll add the data to their tools. Time will tell.
How to Track Your LLM Visibility
It’s worth acknowledging that LLM visibility tools are new and evolving.
I’ve been using Semrush’s AI Toolkit as it provides insights into how your brand compares to competitors in LLMs.
For Backlinko, I added four competitors, and here’s what the report looks like for ChatGPT visibility.
Semrush leads with a 33% market share, followed by Ahrefs at 25%. Unfortunately, we’re sitting at 5%.
Caveat: we’re not a product company, and we have much smaller brand demand than Semrush and Ahrefs.
This matters because LLM visibility may correlate with brand awareness and search volume. Brands with more online discussion and search demand typically have more content and mentions for LLMs to discover and cite.
Yes, how often you’re being mentioned in LLMs is crucial. But how you get mentioned matters just as much.
Back to the Semrush AI Toolkit, Brand & Marketing dashboard shows shifts in sentiment among LLMs.
Backlinko consistently has a high favorable sentiment share.
The Strategic Opportunities section shows where the gaps are and helps you prioritize the execution by timeframe.
So, instead of fighting for the same top rankings, you can build authority in overlooked niches where LLMs need better sources.
Track these metrics monthly:
Visibility score changes across different LLM models
Branded search correlation in Google Search Console
Market share shifts vs competitors
Semrush’s Enterprise AIO offers even more powerful ways to monitor brand visibility in LLMs.
Pro tip: When you see visibility increases, correlate them with branded search spikes in GSC to estimate real business impact.
The Measurement Mindset Shift
Traditional SEO measurement focuses on traffic and tracked conversions.
LLM visibility measurement focuses on influence created.
Instead of asking “How many clicks did we get?” ask “How much authority did we build?”
The businesses that adopt this measurement philosophy first will have a massive advantage in AI-driven search.
Building Authority That AI Actually Recognizes
Here’s the good news:
Building authority for LLM visibility isn’t about throwing out everything you know about SEO.
What makes content trustworthy for people — like clear structure, real expertise, and thorough coverage — also helps AI systems see it as authoritative.
But there are some nuances worth understanding.
Why SEO Authority Still Matters (Mostly)
Again, your existing SEO work isn’t wasted.
LLMs mine the same content ecosystem as search engines, but they have different priorities.
We’re at a critical inflection point where everyone is moving fast and low-quality content is becoming rampant.
Google search used to be messy. I mean, it’s not perfect now, but it’s vastly better than pre-2010.
For LLMs to succeed long-term, they need to maintain and develop ways to promote real authority and trustworthy sources, not just those who cheaply game the system.
The overlap between traditional SEO authority and LLM visibility is significant:
Content depth and expertise matter to both systems
Clear information architecture helps both humans and AI navigate your content
Consistent topic coverage builds authority across platforms
Original insights and data get cited by both search engines and LLMs
Where things diverge is in the details. And those details create opportunities.
Expertise Depth Over Keyword Coverage
You’ve probably heard SEO advice that creates a false choice between keyword optimization and content quality.
But if you’ve been following sound SEO principles, you already know that keywords are simply demand signals.
They’re data points that help you understand what your audience wants to learn and prioritize your content efforts.
LLMs have made this quality-first approach non-negotiable.
The citation analysis shows that AI systems consistently favor sources that demonstrate genuine expertise. Content that covers edge cases, recognises complexity, and shares insights from real experience.
Surface-level content aggregation used to rank well just by optimizing keywords. Now, it gets fewer mentions in AI responses.
This isn’t because LLMs dislike keywords. It’s because they’re better at recognizing and rewarding authentic expertise.
This means sharing process details, insightful nuances, and clear methods that both people and AI see as trustworthy.
Include the details that only practitioners would know.
Acknowledge when approaches don’t work and explain why.
Be clear and precise in your explanations. This helps both humans and AI systems understand your expertise accurately.
LLMs have simply made the stakes higher for thin content while rewarding the approach that quality-focused practitioners have always advocated.
The Strategic Citation Playbook
If you’ve been building quality backlinks, you’re already 70% of the way to LLM citation success.
The research reveals that citation-worthy content follows similar principles to link-worthy content, with a few critical differences in how citations actually work.
How to Get Cited Alongside Competitors
The research shows a clear pattern among top-cited brands. They consistently appear alongside other authorities in expert clusters.
When industry publications discuss “best practices for X,” they cite multiple experts.
Your goal is to be part of that conversation.
Practical focus:
Guest post on publications that already cite your competitors
Participate in expert roundups where your insights add genuine value
Comment thoughtfully on high-authority industry content with detailed expertise
Citations vs. Links: What’s Different
LLM citation patterns mirror what quality-focused SEOs have always known: authoritative sources carry more weight than weak ones.
But there are key differences from traditional link building.
Citations don’t require links: A thoughtful Reddit comment or YouTube video description can carry citation weight without clickable links back to your site.
Content depth beats ranking position: LLMs evaluate expertise independently of SERP rankings. Your detailed comparison post ranking on page 6 can become your most-cited asset.
To win LLM visibility, strategically place your expertise where AI systems recognize genuine authority.
Why Your Small Brand Can Compete in LLMs
The LLM visibility shift creates the biggest opportunity for smaller brands since the early days of SEO.
While established competitors fight for the same top rankings, you can build authority in the spaces they’re ignoring.
Remember: Almost 90% of ChatGPT citations come from long-tail results.
Your niche expertise on “B2B SaaS customer onboarding analytics” has the same citation potential as a Fortune 500 company’s homepage about “business software.”
Speed Beats Scale
Big brands move slowly. Committee approvals, legal reviews, and corporate messaging requirements create lag time.
You can capitalize on emerging trends, respond to breaking news in your industry, and share real-time insights that LLMs value for currency and relevance.
When a new platform launches or regulations change, you can publish authoritative analysis within hours while competitors are still scheduling meetings.
The Community Multiplier Effect
Your engaged audience amplifies LLM visibility in ways traditional SEO can’t measure.
When customers share your insights in Slack channels, Discord servers, or LinkedIn comments, they’re creating citation pathways that LLMs discover and value.
A single detailed Reddit comment from a satisfied customer can carry more LLM authority than a generic press release.
Start Small, Win Big
Pick one sub-topic where you have genuine expertise. Become THE authoritative voice on that specific area.
Instead of competing for “project management software,” own “project management for creative agencies with remote teams.”
Target long-tail prompts where competition is lighter and your specific experience matters most.
Track your progress with tools like Semrush’s AI Toolkit and Enterprise AIO to see your authority build across conversations that matter to your business.
Lastly, be wary of anyone definitively selling you GEO, AI Search Optimization, or whatever term they’re using.
We’re in a fluid and developing environment, but the fundamentals remain key.
Focus on building a brand and think about how to create the right content that will stand up over time.
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AI tools are everywhere — from chatbots that answer customer questions to language models that summarize everything from documentation to legal text. But if you’ve ever asked a model like ChatGPT to explain your site, your product, or your API, the results might not feel quite right. In fact, sometimes they’re way off. And no, that’s not your fault.
The disconnect between websites and LLMs
Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini are trained to understand a wide range of content. But when they try to interpret your website at runtime, that is, when someone is actively asking them a question, they run into a few core problems:
HTML is noisy. Navigation bars, cookie banners, modal popups, and analytics scripts clutter the page.
Context windows are limited. Most websites are too large for an LLM to process all at once.
Important details are spread across multiple pages or hidden in tables, code blocks, or comments.
Markdown docs may exist, but the model often can’t locate them, or even know they exist.
So, when you ask an AI tool to “explain what this company does” or “summarize this library API”, it often gets stuck. It either skips key context or grabs the wrong signals from cluttered markup.
It’s not bad intent; it’s a design limitation.
Why it’s not your SEO’s fault, either
You’ve probably invested time and effort into search engine optimization. Maybe your robots.txt and sitemap.xml are in place. You’ve got meta tags, structured data, and clean internal links. Good, but LLMs don’t always work like Google.
Traditional SEO helps your site get found. However, it doesn’t guarantee that AI tools will understand what a human user would. That’s where a new proposal comes in.
Meet llms.txt: A simple way to help AI understand your site
A growing number of developers and AI researchers are adopting a lightweight, human-readable standard called llms.txt.
What is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a plain Markdown file placed at the root of your site that provides language models with a summary of your project and direct links to clean, LLM-readable versions of important pages. It’s designed for inference-time use, helping AI tools quickly understand a site’s structure, purpose, and content without relying on cluttered HTML or metadata intended for search engines.
What it does:
Gives a short summary of your site or project
Links to clean, LLM-ready Markdown versions of key pages
Helps AI tools find exactly what matters, without parsing messy HTML
Is it widely supported? Not yet
Right now, no major LLM provider officially supports llms.txt. Tools like GPTBot (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), and Google’s AI crawlers don’t reference or follow it as part of their crawling behavior. Some companies like Anthropic publish llms.txt files themselves, but there’s no evidence that any crawler is actively using them in retrieval or training.
Still, it’s a low-effort, no-risk addition that helps prepare your site for a future where structured LLM access becomes more standardized. And LLM-facing tools, or even your own AI agents, can make use of it today.
Example use cases:
A dev library links to .md-formatted API docs and usage examples.
A university site highlights course descriptions and academic policies.
A personal blog offers a simplified timeline of key projects or topics.
You control the content and the structure. LLMs benefit from curated, LLM-aware context. And users asking questions about your site get better answers.
Using our Yoast SEO plugin?
If you’re already using our Yoast SEO (free or Premium) plugin, generating a llms.txt file is easy. Just enable the feature in your settings, and the plugin will automatically create and serve a complete llms.txt file for your site. You can view it anytime at yourdomain.com/llms.txt.
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(https://everydayimtravelling.com/sitemap_index.xml) of this website.
# everydayimtravelling.com: Stories from our travels
## Posts
- [Test video](https://everydayimtravelling.com/test-video/)
- [A Journey Through Portugal’s Wine Country: A Suggested Wine Tour Route](https://everydayimtravelling.com/a-wine-tour-through-portugal/)
- [Travel essentials for backpackers FAQ](https://everydayimtravelling.com/travel-essentials-for-backpackers-faq/)
## Pages
- [Checkout](https://everydayimtravelling.com/checkout/)
- [Contact us](https://everydayimtravelling.com/contact-us/)
- [How we started this blog](https://everydayimtravelling.com/pagina-harry-potter/)
- [My account](https://everydayimtravelling.com/my-account/)
- [Cart](https://everydayimtravelling.com/cart/)
## Categories
- [Europe](https://everydayimtravelling.com/category/europe/)
- [Asia](https://everydayimtravelling.com/category/asia/)
- [South America](https://everydayimtravelling.com/category/south-america/)
- [Food](https://everydayimtravelling.com/category/food/)
- [Western Europe](https://everydayimtravelling.com/category/europe/west-europe/)
## Tags
- [Budget](https://everydayimtravelling.com/tag/budget/)
Yoast SEO has an llms.txt generator onboard; you can find it in the API settings
Helping AI help you
So, if AI is misinterpreting your website, producing erroneous summaries, or skipping critical content, there’s a reason, and it’s fixable.
It’s not always your copy. Not your design or your metadata. It’s just that these language tools need a little guidance. In the future, llms.txt could be the way to give it to them, and you do so on your terms.
Do you need help creating an llms.txt file or converting your existing content to Markdown for LLMs? Yoast SEO can automatically generate an llms.txt file for you.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-06-10 09:44:442025-06-10 09:44:44What AI gets wrong about your site, and why it’s not your fault: meet llms.txt
Increased usage of AI is changing how people discover businesses and services online. While your website may be optimized for traditional search engines, large language models (LLMs) process your website’s information differently. Our new feature, llms.txt offers to bridge the gap. Yoast SEO generates a file that highlights the most important, up-to-date content on your website as an invitation for LLMs to get the right picture. It’s automatic, requires no technical setup, and is ready in one click.
Helping AI understand your website
Unlike search engines that regularly crawl and index websites, LLMs like ChatGPT and Google Gemini work differently. They don’t store website content for future use. Instead, they gather information in real time when responding to user queries.
This means LLMs often only access a small portion of a website while looking for answers. This is especially true for large websites such as news platforms or ecommerce stores. This can lead to incomplete or even inaccurate AI-generated responses. Not ideal if you’re aiming to improve your visibility in LLM-generated answers as part of your marketing strategy.
The llms.txt file gives LLMs a suggested, pre-prepared slice of your website, highlighting your most important and up-to-date content.
Think of it like a helpful guide at the entrance of a large department store. Imagine you’re walking in looking for socks. Someone greets you and hands you a store map that highlights where the socks are, along with other key departments like shoes, checkout, and customer service. You don’t have to use the map, you can wander around on your own, but it makes it much easier to quickly find what you’re looking for.
In the same way, this file helps LLMs quickly identify the most relevant and useful parts of your website. While the models can still explore other areas, giving them clear guidance increases the chances that they’ll surface the right information in their responses.
How is it different from robots.txt?
robots.txt
Tells bots what not to access
Focuses on permission
Used for search engine indexing and crawling
Supported by traditional search engines
llms.txt
Suggests what AI should read
Focuses on guidance and clarity
Helps AI answer user questions more accurately
Designed for large language models like ChatGPT
How does Yoast SEO llms.txt work?
When you turn the feature on, it automatically generates an llms.txt file for your website, using a mix of relevant website data. It draws from:
Your most recently updated content
Technical SEO elements like your sitemap for context
Descriptions you’ve added about your website
This offers large language models a website summary to understand what your website is about and what content is most important.
Managing your llms.txt file
The plugin automatically creates and maintains the llms.txt file for you, refreshing every week. You can preview the file to ensure it accurately reflects your brand and prioritizes the right content before implementation.
Want full control or prefer to manage it yourself? Learn how to manually add an llms.txt file to your website by visiting our developer documentation.
At Yoast, our mission is SEO for everyone
Setting up an llms.txt file manually may only be accessible to a technical few. By automating the process, we make it easier for all website owners to benefit from this new technology, without needing to dive into code.
At Yoast, we believe that everyone should have a say in how their content is seen and used. Especially as AI plays a bigger role in how people discover information online. That’s why we’ve introduced this feature as opt-in, so you can decide if and when it makes sense for your website. We’ve seen early signs that this is something more website owners are starting to think about.
Just as robots.txt tries to help search engines understand what to index, llms.txt suggests which parts of your website large language models should pay attention to.If you’d like to see what an llms.txt file looks like in practice, you can view the live version on yoast.com.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-06-10 08:21:532025-06-10 08:21:53New: Future proof your website for tomorrow’s visitors with Yoast SEO llms.txt
