With customers now discovering content across traditional search engines, LLMs, social media, and beyond, the need for an integrated, omnichannel strategy is more important than ever.
Relying on isolated channel strategies no longer works.
Customers engage with brands across multiple touchpoints before making decisions, and they expect seamless, personalized experiences.
An effective omnichannel approach aligns all marketing efforts – ensuring consistency, maximizing visibility, and driving meaningful interactions.
As omnichannel marketing continues to evolve, integrating SEO across all channels is essential for sustained growth.
This article explores why a unified strategy is critical and how SEO can work across channels to enhance the customer journey and drive results.
Why an omnichannel approach to SEO is critical in 2025
Here are seven trends that make an omnichannel approach vital to business success and growth.
1. The shift away from third-party cookies
The decline of third-party cookies has made it harder for brands to track users across the buyer journey.
An omnichannel approach to data collection and centralization helps mitigate these challenges and lays the foundation for an effective strategy.
2. Growth of LLMs and AI-powered search
The growth of alternate avenues for audiences to find information adds to the complexity of the buyer’s journey.
This presents additional attribution challenges.
3. Zero-click searches and decreasing top-funnel traffic
Due to the rise in zero-click searches,traffic to websites from top-of-the-funnel information-seeking terms is declining.
4. Importance of SEO
Despite the growth in zero-click searches, SEO remains the primary source of traffic for most businesses and the channel with the highest long-term ROI.
AI Overviews and AI-generated results mainly pull information from the top organic results.
5. Search is multi-modal
This means written content is not the only content you need to optimize.
Personalization is key to customer engagement. Up to 71% of consumers expect it, while 76% find generic content frustrating, per a McKinsey study.
Businesses that prioritize personalized marketing can see up to a 40% increase in revenue.
An omnichannel approach ensures marketers focus on customer intent rather than marketing channels.
7. Unified customer experience with agent economy
The growth of artificial intelligence has resulted in the emergence of an agent economy, where AI agents are beginning to revolutionize marketing and digital experiences.
They can easily connect dots across multiple channels to deliver a unified customer experience.
Tackling the visibility dilemma in customer journeys
With all the changes in the industry, consumer behavior, and technological advancements, we need to answer important questions that marketers are confused about.
How can you learn about audience intent even when they do not visit the site after a search?
How do you gather data on your audience’s behavior after they leave your site if they do not convert during their first visit?
How can you develop effective SEO, paid, zero-click, and content strategies with limited visibility into the customer journey and insights into customer intent and personas?
How can you provide personalized experiences without third-party data, limited traffic, and visibility into your customers’ journeys?
This is where an omnichannel approach can help businesses enhance visibility, drive meaningful interactions, and create a seamless path to conversion.
Building blocks of an omnichannel strategy
A true omnichannel strategy is no longer limited to traditional marketing channels like SEO, paid, email, social media, etc.
Today, it is about delivering a unified experience at every stage in the customer journey at every touchpoint.
It includes effectively using channel-agnostic strategies and tactics, such as personalization, AI agents, conversion optimization, A-B testing, and co-optimization.
Here are five building blocks for creating an omnichannel strategy that truly engages your audiences consistently across touchpoints in an AI-powered world.
Reliable data
Ensure you have the necessary infrastructure to gather and segment customer data accurately.
Having a digital asset manager that lets you centralize, optimize, and distribute all your digital assets across marketing channels is key to ensuring consistency and reducing duplication.
Search-friendly infrastructure and content management system are crucial for effectively crawling and indexing your content, and delivering an engaging, personalized experience to your visitors.
9 steps to integrating SEO into an omnichannel customer journey
You can start developing your omnichannel strategy while closing any gaps you have identified in the building blocks.
Step 1: Audience and intent mapping
Start with your audience and intent. Identifying target audience personas and their intent is the first step in audience mapping. It is important to review:
Content performance: Evaluate performance of page types or templates to understand gaps in content strategy (e.g., category pages vs. product details pages vs. location pages vs. blog content).
Search engagement insights: Search console data can help identify high-intent terms with low click-through rates. This information can inform zero-click and CTR optimization strategies.
Channel overlaps: Identifying how visitors overlap across channels is key to crafting an integrated and unified experience. For example, paid and organic channels must work together to saturate the full funnel and maximize ROI from both channels.
Conversion optimization: Content with high engagement can provide insights into visitor intent. This can help define A-B tests, UI/UX enhancements, and personalization strategies.
Step 2: Define clear strategic goals
The next step is to have clear and smart goals that you want your omnichannel strategy to achieve:
Set specific, measurable business objectives (revenue growth, customer retention, growing market share, etc.)
Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for channel-specific and overall performance. For example, if the goal is to improve visibility, the primary KPIs should be around impressions, clicks and rich results visibility. Traffic or conversions can be secondary KPIs but should not be the primary success criteria.
Create baseline metrics to measure improvement against current performance.
Develop a measurement framework that accounts for cross-channel attribution challenges.
Step 3: Map the customer journey across all touchpoints
Traditional funnel is changing rapidly.
Brands should be ready to respond to customers across all touchpoints fast and with quality.
Develop a comprehensive understanding of how customers interact with your brand:
Create detailed personas representing your target audience segments.
Identify patterns in cross-channel journeys using path analysis in analytics and create common use cases.
Aggregate and centralize data across customer touchpoints (website analytics, CRM, sales data, app usage, etc.)
Segment customers based on behavioral patterns rather than just demographics.
Quantify the value/attribution as a combination of different journey paths and touchpoints.
Measure channel preference and effectiveness across different customer segments.
Step 4: Omnichannel audit
Based on your goals and journey maps, evaluate your current channel gaps and capabilities:
SEO audit: Analyze search visibility metrics, technical health scores, and overall SEO performance.
Content audit: Measure content performance data, topical and entity coverage, competitive gaps, engagement rates, conversion impact, and cross-channel content effectiveness.
Local presence assessment: Evaluate local search visibility metrics and location-specific engagement.
Experience audit: Analyze drop-off points and measure cross-channel friction.
Data and technology assessment: Evaluate data collection and measurement framework to optimize your data infrastructure.
Full-funnel audit: Learn from your visitors. Past visitor data can provide meaningful insights into audience segments, what visitors engage with, and where they drop off in the conversion funnel. This can help identify opportunities for co-optimization, A-B tests and delivering personalized experiences across channels.
Step 5: Develop your integrated channel strategy
Here, focus on aligning your channels to ensure they work together seamlessly and support your overall business goals.
Prioritize channels according to attribution data and customer value metrics.
Leverage machine learning and predictive analytics to forecast the impact of each channel.
Use predictive analytics to determine the optimal channel mix.
Set channel-specific targets that ladder up to overall business objectives.
Create frameworks for continuously testing and validating channel effectiveness.
Define how channels will complement and support each other across the customer journey.
Step 6: Content orchestration strategy
While a content strategy focuses on what content is needed, a content orchestration strategy also encompasses distribution frameworks that enhance audience interaction with your content.
Friction analysis
Analyze how your audience engages with your content to identify friction points. This process helps you identify, rectify, and optimize:
Inconsistencies.
Intent misalignments.
Delivery mechanisms (text, images, video, etc.).
Content intelligence
Assess the performance of your existing content across various channels and identify competitive gaps and opportunities based on audience personas and business goals.
Here are a few steps to evaluate content gaps and refine your strategy:
Identify underperforming content for optimization.
Spot gaps in content that need to be addressed across channels and stages of the customer journey.
Recognize cross-linking opportunities to create content hubs.
Prioritize new content to close competitive gaps and achieve business goals.
Cross-channel content strategy
After identifying friction points and content gaps, develop a tailored content strategy for each channel, prioritizing based on business goals:
Broader informational content to enhance awareness during the discovery stage of the customer journey (e.g., social media, blog content).
Comparison content for the consideration stage (e.g., product pages).
Landing pages focused on specific buying-intent terms during the conversion stage.
Content optimization
Optimizing content extends beyond targeting the right keywords. Your content optimization strategy should include:
Closing topical gaps in content that create friction.
Developing an entity optimization strategy to maximize content discoverability.
Implementing a click-through rate (CTR) strategy to enhance traffic from discovered content.
Optimizing visual content.
Establishing an engagement and conversion optimization strategy that includes personalization, calls to action optimization, A/B testing, messaging strategies, UI/UX optimization, and conversion rate optimization (CRO).
To give your content the best chance of being crawled, indexed, understood, and featured in search results for the right terms, focus on the following:
Fix technical SEO issues related to crawling, indexing, and user experience.
Ensure mobile optimization across all digital properties.
Deploy nested schema markup to enhance search visibility.
Improve page speed for all web properties and optimize Core Web Vitals.
Prioritize web accessibility by following ADA and WCAG guidelines to enhance user experience and search visibility.
Step 8: Engagement and conversion optimization
Utilize unified customer data to enhance user engagement and drive conversions:
Deliver personalized content at scale for each audience segment in real time. Personalization strategies can be based on various factors such as marketing channel or campaign, visitor location, search intent, and past behavior.
Identify and deploy AI agents that assist audiences in quickly finding information, engaging in meaningful interactions, and making real-time decisions.
Develop remarketing strategies informed by visitor behavior.
Implement A/B testing across channels, ensuring consistent test and control groups.
Measure performance across channels and optimize based on business goals and success KPIs.
Step 9: Continuously test, measure, learn, and optimize
Refine your strategy through ongoing testing and data-driven adjustments to improve performance across all channels.
Monitor performance metrics across all channels. Establish BI dashboards that connect and integrate data across channels.
Implement attribution models that effectively account for complex customer journeys.
Regularly test new channel integrations and enhancements to the customer journey.
Gather feedback from customers regarding their cross-channel experiences.
Refine your strategy based on evolving search engine algorithms and changing customer behavior.
SEO’s role in delivering a unified, cross-channel experience
Integrating SEO into the omnichannel customer journey isn’t simply for improving search presence.
Ultimately, it’s about creating discoverable, unified, and personalized experiences that guide customers naturally toward conversion.
By implementing this nine-step framework, you can:
Break down departmental silos.
Align cross-functional teams around customer needs.
Build truly seamless engagement models that drive sustainable growth.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/why-omnichannel-approach-to-seo-xkXmmH.jpeg?fit=1920%2C410&ssl=14101920http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-07 12:00:002025-04-07 12:00:00Integrating SEO into omnichannel marketing for seamless engagement
There is so much you can do to optimize your online store, whether for users or Google. To help you cover all your bases, we’ve written this ecommerce SEO checklist. It doesn’t cover absolutely everything, but if you at least start by optimizing all the aspects in this post, you will definitely be doing a great job!
The first part of our ecommerce checklist is all about changes you can make site-wide to make sure your online shop is up to scratch. Some of these tips will help with your ecommerce SEO, but — more importantly — they will give users a better experience when they visit your site.
1. Use consistent branding
The first thing you should be aware of is that you should always use consistent branding. Ensure your brand or logo is visible on your homepage and page title. This will build trust and help promote and build your business, helping trigger recognition offline and in search engine result pages.
2. Add social buttons and newsletter sign-up
Newsletters and social media are the easiest ways to get return visits from your customers. Be sure to draw attention to your social profiles and newsletter signups throughout your website. Add your social profiles to your footer at least (use icons, links, and social widgets), but if you have space left in your header, that would also be a great spot for them. Promote your newsletter in your sidebar and use scroll-triggered boxes to draw attention to it. A nice giveaway always helps motivate people to subscribe.
3. Take care of site navigation essentials
Make sure users can navigate to your most important pages from your site menu. It should always be easy to reach shopping pages and the shopping cart, as well as customer service information and FAQs covering essential information like shipping costs and payment options. If users can’t find these pages, they’ll find it difficult to shop on your site.
4. Use SSL and security seals
Here’s one vital thing about creating trust: If your site has an SSL certificate, it will have that nice green padlock in your visitors’ browser address bar, and you’ll let them know they are shopping in a safe environment. These things will help customers confidently insert their home address, credit card details, or other personal information you ask them to provide. You could also add security seals. Find more tips like this in our trust article.
5. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
Don’t forget mobile users! Making purchases via mobile is a popular option for many shoppers. So be ready for them and don’t miss out on those transactions. Read our ultimate guide to mobile SEO to get started.
6. Get things up to speed
When we say speed, we mean the performance of your site. People have short attention spans, and we’ve all got used to faster internet everywhere. However, many places worldwide have to make do with less-than-perfect mobile connections and a small data allowance. Don’t take your situation as gospel. Also, Google tends to rank websites faster, which is another reason to make sure your website is as fast as possible.
7. Add an ‘About us’ page if you don’t have one
People like to know about the company they’re buying from. Who is behind it? What’s their story? What motivates them? If we share the same values and beliefs, people are likelier to return to that shop and buy more products. Adding an about us page, and perhaps a team photo will help build a connection between your company and your customers. If you want some inspiration, Patagonia and Dopper are nice examples.
Buy Yoast SEO Premium now!
Unlock powerful features and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!
While you don’t necessarily need to optimize the homepage of your ecommerce site for SEO, you shouldn’t just ignore it completely, either. There are a couple of things you can do to make sure any visitors landing there will continue to shop and make a purchase:
8. Show featured products
You also need to reserve a prominent spot on your homepage for featured products or something similar, usually your core products or the items you currently have on sale. This will provide an immediate trigger for visitors and a good way to let them know whether or not they have come to the right online shop.
9. Include a compelling call to action
Your homepage needs a compelling call to action. This may change if you want to promote particular products or run seasonal promotions like a Black Friday sale. But whatever your CTA is, you need to make sure it’s always easily visible and meets your visitors’ needs and expectations.
Product search and categories
Having a great site is one thing, but if visitors can’t find the products they want to buy, it won’t be much of use to anyone. That’s why the following section of our ecommerce checklist is all about making your products easy for customers to find when searching on your site.
10. Add a search option
Every online store with more than 20 products should have a search option. Make sure you put the search option in a visible spot, as this will probably be the navigation of choice for your visitors. Besides optimizing your search option, be sure to give the search result pages some TLC. More on that later.
11. Use product categories
How you set up your categories and make these accessible to visitors matters – a lot. Categories help visitors get to different groups of products as quickly as possible, especially those who aren’t sure which specific products to buy. Amazon has a large list of categories (or departments), but makes the kind of products a category contains as clear as possible. That has much to do with naming these categories and logically using subcategories. Put yourself in the place of your visitors and go over your shop’s categories. Do they make sense? Are these the terms a visitor would use? If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track.
12. Add introductory content on category pages
Besides being clear about the name of your category, be sure to add a nice introduction to your category pages as well. This introduction is like the glue that holds the collection of products on that page together. This is really helpful in determining the subject of the page, especially for search engines. This also helps the category pages function in a similar way to cornerstone content.
13. Add thumbnail images for your products
In most cases, product images say more than a thousand words. This is especially true for those pages that simply don’t have space for a thousand words about a single product, such as your category or internal search result pages. Adding a stunning thumbnail image of that dress or painting will encourage more clicks to that page. Good thumbnail images make it easier for visitors to choose from a wide variety of products in category or search result pages.
14. Include calls to action in overviews
Besides having killer product thumbnails, your overview pages also need a call to action for each product, which means the visitor can add that product to their cart right from the category or search result page. Although it isn’t always possible for every product, you should do this wherever you can. There are online shops that allow you to choose the color and size of jeans, for example, without having to go to the product page. Choose the option you like, click add to cart, and proceed to checkout, all from the overview page.
Product pages
You’ve probably already put much effort into crafting your product pages. But are you sure nothing is missing, and nothing can be improved? This section of our ecommerce SEO checklist will help you ensure your product pages look the best they can.
15. Add great product images
Be sure to add great product images to your product pages. They should be zoomable and give multiple views of the product. Remember that even the filename and alt text of the product image matter for SEO. There’s a lot more on this in our detailed article on product images.
16. Write a fantastic product description
Optimizing your category pages is often much easier than optimizing all your product pages. If you’re selling bolts, screws and nails, adding an awesome and unique product description to each page is a lot of work. If you need your product page to rank as well, be sure to invest some time and effort in optimizing your product descriptions for the product name and/or SKU. Our Yoast SEO plugin will be useful if you have a WordPress site or a Shopify store.
17. Be clear about pricing
We can’t emphasize this enough: be clear about your prices. Adding surprise costs like shipping or taxes later in the checkout process will backfire, and shoppers may abandon their purchase. Be clear about these additional costs (if any) right from the start. You could even leverage this by offering free shipping on orders of more than a certain value, say $20 or $50. Surprise costs are a major turn-off, and they are illegal in the EU.
18. Show product reviews
Creating trust is a good thing for all online shops. Genuine product reviews help a great deal with this. One thing we would recommend for websites that include user reviews from third parties is to copy a couple of those reviews to your own website. Including third-party reviews in, for example, a widget, would be a great solution. Add these near your call to action for the best results.
19. Promote related products
When you’ve got their interest, leverage it. If someone buys an iPhone from your site, chances are they’ll need a cover and might even want a pair of those expensive wireless ear pods. But they might feel a bit less expensive when a customer has just paid full price for a new iPhone! Adding a related products section or an ‘other customers also bought’ section to your product page will trigger upsells, allow for bundles, and much more. We highly recommend adding these.
20. Add a call to action on your product page
Your visitor needs to click the Add to Cart button on your product page to start the purchase. Don’t hide that button! The number of shops that accidentally disguise the Add to Cart button is lower than it used to be, but we’d still like you to look at that button and make sure it stands out. This is especially true when you have a secondary call to action like ‘Add to wish list’. Making sure that the Add to Cart button stands out the most and is the largest and first major button on your product page is essential.
21. Show stock availability
These days, the availability of a product drives sales. With online shops everywhere, people want to buy things at a shop that will deliver the products they want tomorrow or even the same day. If you tell users a product is in stock, people are likelier to buy it. But this isn’t just about competition; it’s about managing expectations. If your website shows something isn’t in stock, people can still decide to buy at your shop and know they’ll have to wait a bit. If people buy at your shop and won’t get the product for three weeks because it’s out of stock, they’d likely have bought it elsewhere. Not making availability clear also badly affects your brand, by the way.
Shopping cart and checkout
It can be easy to overlook the details of your shopping cart and checkout process. However, these parts of your site are vital to the customer journey. In this section of our ecommerce checklist, we encourage you to take some time to ensure everything is working seamlessly.
22. Make the shopping cart easy to find
Regardless of how noble your intentions are, in most cases, your main goal is to make as much money as possible, and that money is made through your shopping cart. For this reason, your shopping cart should always be available and visible – don’t make people look for it. We recommend adding the number of products in the cart to the cart icon. It will help people remember if they have already added products to the cart.
A recognizable shopping cart icon that shows how many products are in the cart.
23. Show the payment options early on
Like in number 16 of this ecommerce SEO checklist, this one is about preventing surprises. It’s frustrating to get to the end of the checkout process only to find that your preferred payment option isn’t available. And again, if your ecommerce shop is in the EU, it is now a legal requirement to display your accepted payment methods to customers before they get to the checkout.
24. No account needed
Always allow customers to buy without forcing them to create an account. We think that making customers create an account is bad practice. It’s only valid if creating an account gives customers perks like easy license renewal, managing recurring payments, etc. These are tasks customers probably would want to do in a secure environment, so they wouldn’t mind setting up an account, but when they’re shopping for clothes, having an account only makes sense for convenience reasons (not having to fill in address details next time and so on), and therefore it should be optional.
25. Set longer cookie expiration times
Perhaps ‘cookie expiration times’ are too narrow for what we’re trying to say. Our article on shopping cart abandonment will tell you a lot about how people use your shopping cart. Read that entire article, and you’ll discover why using longer cookie expiration times for your cart is better.
26. Use discount codes wisely
Discount codes and vouchers can be a great way to increase sales. But before you put a field to add a discount code on your checkout pages, consider whether you want to do this carefully. Once users see the option to add a code, they will want a discount code. And often, that means they’ll stop mid-transaction and search for one! So, if you want to offer discount codes, it’s a good idea to make it easy for users to find a discount (even if it’s to remove the delivery costs from their order). If you’re not planning to offer discount codes soon, leaving the discount code field off your checkout pages is probably better. Otherwise, it might increase your cart abandonment rates.
Search and social appearance
All right, by now, your online shop should be ready to go. One thing left to do for our ecommerce SEO checklist: make sure your site looks its best wherever it appears. That could be in the Google search results or social media, so be ready to make a good impression!
27. Optimize your SEO titles and Meta descriptions
With ecommerce sites, more so than all other websites, SEO titles and meta descriptions serve a very important purpose. Where Google is probably able to come up with a proper and keyword-related invitation to your website for information pages, the chances are your product page doesn’t have enough product information, or it contains details about your customer service or warranty that Google might use instead. Add a product-focused meta description to your product pages to encourage Google not to show the wrong text in search results! Use Yoast SEO Premium’s AI tools to speed up the creation process.
28. Add structured data to your pages
We recommend adding structured data to your product pages for technical SEO reasons. Schema markup will help search engines and Google Shopping understand your page’s contents better, and it might even help your page stand out in the search results!
Add at least schema.org/Product and schema.org/Offer, and see if you can extend this to even more detailed schemas. Adding structured data markup is more technical than optimizing your product description, so if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, please ask your web developer for help. You can also use our WooCommerce SEO plugin or Shopify SEO app, making it much easier!
Besides structured data, be sure to add OpenGraph and X Cards. Again, Yoast SEO can help you add images to your page to be displayed on social media. With Yoast SEO Premium, you can even preview those! These ensure that when people share your content or products, they will be displayed as attractively as possible. This and more are explained in our article about product page SEO.
Adding structured data to your pages with minimal effort? Check.
Extra features for WooCommerce with our dedicated WooCommerce plugin? Check.
And for your Shopify store? Check.
Try Yoast SEO for WordPress (available in free and Premium versions) on your site today. If you’re using WooCommerce, add on our WooCommerce plugin for the ultimate ecommerce optimization. Alternatively, if you’re working with Shopify, try our Yoast SEO for Shopify app instead.
Lastly, boost your ecommerce SEO expertise with our ecommerce training at Yoast SEO Academy! You can follow a trial lesson for free or unlock the full course when you buy Yoast SEO Premium, Yoast WooCommerce SEO, or Yoast SEO for Shopify. Still want more? Check out our ultimate guide to ecommerce usability.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-03 08:00:322025-04-03 08:00:32Ecommerce SEO checklist: 30 tips for a better online store
But many sites would benefit from looking one level up – to indexing.
Why?
Because your content can’t compete until it’s indexed.
Whether the selection system is ranking or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), your content won’t matter unless it’s indexed.
The same goes for where it appears – traditional SERPs, AI-generated SERPs, Discover, Shopping, News, Gemini, ChatGPT, or whatever AI agents come next.
Without indexing, there’s no visibility, no clicks, and no impact.
And indexing issues are, unfortunately, very common.
Based on my experience working with hundreds of enterprise-level sites, an average of 9% of valuable deep content pages (products, articles, listings, etc.) fail to get indexed by Google and Bing.
So, how do you ensure your deep content gets indexed?
Follow these nine proven steps to accelerate the process and maximize your site’s visibility.
Step 1: Audit your content for indexing issues
In Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, submit a separate sitemap for each page type:
One for products.
One for articles.
One for videos.
And so on.
After submitting a sitemap, it may take a few days to appear in the Pages interface.
Use this interface to filter and analyze how much of your content has been excluded from indexing and, more importantly, the specific reasons why.
All indexing issues fall into three main categories:
Poor SEO directives
These issues stem from technical missteps, such as:
Step 6: Strengthen internal linking to boost indexing signals
The primary way most indexers discover content is through links.
URLs with stronger link signals are prioritized higher in the crawl queue and carry more indexing power.
While external links are valuable, internal linking is the real game-changer for indexing large sites with thousands of deep content pages.
Your related content blocks, pagination, breadcrumbs, and especially the links displayed on your homepage are prime optimization points for Googlebot and Bingbot.
When it comes to the homepage, you can’t link every deep content page – but you don’t need to.
Focus on those that are not yet indexed. Here’s how:
When a new URL is published, check it against the log files.
If the response is “URL is unknown to Google,” “Crawled, not indexed,” or “Discovered, not indexed,” add the URL to a dedicated feed that populates a section on your homepage.
Re-check the URL periodically. Once indexed, remove it from the homepage feed to maintain relevance and focus on other non-indexed content.
This effectively creates a real-time RSS feed of non-indexed content linked from the homepage, leveraging its authority to accelerate indexing.
Step 7: Block non-SEO relevant URLs from crawlers
Audit your log files regularly and block high-crawl, no-value URL paths using a robots.txt disallow.
Pages such as faceted navigation, search result pages, tracking parameters, and other irrelevant content can:
Distract crawlers.
Create duplicate content.
Split ranking signals.
Ultimately downgrade the indexer’s view of your site quality.
However, a robots.txt disallow alone is not enough.
If these pages have internal links, traffic, or other ranking signals, indexers may still index them.
To prevent this:
In addition to disallowing the route in robots.txt, apply rel=”nofollow” to all possible links pointing to these pages.
Ensure this is done not only on-site but also in transactional emails and other communication channels to prevent indexers from ever discovering the URL.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Percentage-of-page-types-not-indexed-by-Google-and-Bing-xIo5bB.png?fit=1200%2C458&ssl=14581200http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-01 13:00:002025-04-01 13:00:00Indexing and SEO: 9 steps to get your content indexed by Google and Bing
Automatically sets your bids to get as many clicks as possible within your budget.
Useful for top-of-funnel campaigns where the goal is to drive traffic to a site.
Example: “This campaign is designed to drive as much traffic to our new blog post as possible.”
Enhanced CPC (ECPC)
A semi-automated bidding strategy that adjusts your manual bids to try and get more conversions.
Google Ads adjusts your manual bid up or down based on the likelihood of a conversion.
Example: “We are using manual bidding but want to use Google’s signals to increase conversions where possible.”
Viewable CPM (YouTube)
Focuses on maximizing viewable impressions of your display or skippable in-stream video ads.
Ideal for brand awareness campaigns where the goal is to get your message seen by as many people as possible.
Example: “We want to ensure our brand message is visibly displayed to our target audience on YouTube.”
Cost Per View (YouTube)
Optimizes bids to get the most video views or interactions within your budget.
Best for campaigns focused on driving engagement with your video content.
Example: “We are running a video campaign on YouTube and want to maximize the number of views we receive.”
It’s crucial to understand that while setting a Target CPA or ROAS provides strategic direction, achieving those exact targets isn’t guaranteed.
I’ve had situations where a media planner pushed for an immediate switch to a specific CPA goal.
They wanted the target set at four times and wouldn’t budge or try to understand why the campaign was set at two times.
A common misconception is that simply setting a desired metric will automatically yield the desired results.
In practice, achieving optimal performance often requires a nuanced approach.
This may involve:
Gradual bid adjustments.
A willingness to accept temporary fluctuations in ROAS for broader account health.
A comprehensive evaluation of multiple factors, including budget, historical campaign performance, and keyword strategy.
It’s essential to understand that Smart Bidding strategies, while powerful, require strategic oversight and a holistic understanding of account dynamics.
Success should be measured within the context of overarching account objectives, not solely focusing on individual campaign metrics.
Understanding manual, automated and smart bidding in Google Ads
Manual bidding allows you to control bid adjustments completely, making it ideal for certain industries, such as legal or home services, where fluctuating competition requires ongoing oversight. However, it requires more time and effort.
It’s like driving a car where you control every gear shift and pedal movement.
Automated bidding simplifies bid management by using algorithms to adjust bids.
While automated bidding can save time, its generic approach doesn’t account for nuanced conversion goals.
Think of this as engaging cruise control. You tell the car (Google Ads) your general desired speed (goal), and it adjusts the engine (bids) to maintain that pace.
Smart Bidding, however, takes automated bidding further by using real-time signals and advanced machine learning to predict the likelihood of conversions and their value, tailoring bids to individual auctions.
It’s especially effective for campaigns with clear conversion goals and sufficient historical data.
This is like having a self-driving car with an incredibly sophisticated navigation system.
It’s important to know that while all Smart Bidding is automated, not all automated bidding qualifies as Smart Bidding.
Automated bidding covers a wider range of strategies, some of which are more basic and don’t rely on real-time signals or advanced machine learning.
In essence:
Manual: You control every bid.
Automated: Google’s algorithms handle bid adjustments based on your chosen strategy.
Smart: Google’s machine learning optimizes bids in real-time for conversions and conversion value.
There are significant advantages to using Smart Bidding.
Improved efficiency: Saves time by automating bid adjustments.
Auction-time optimization: Factors in user intent, device, location, and other data points to optimize bids for each auction.
Goal alignment: Customizes bids to match your campaign objectives, whether it’s maximizing volume or focusing on high-value actions.
While Smart Bidding offers significant advantages, missteps in implementation can lead to underwhelming results.
Here’s how to avoid common pitfalls and optimize your campaign performance.
Data dependency
Smart Bidding algorithms rely on robust historical data to make accurate predictions.
Campaigns with fewer than 30 conversions in the last 30 days may struggle to optimize effectively.
Start with manual bidding or Maximize Clicks to build a data foundation before switching to Smart Bidding. Boris Beceric, a Google Ads consultant and coach, said:
“I guess most try Smart Bidding too early – without enough conversion volume. What usually helps: consolidate campaigns so you get more data flowing through a single campaign. Portfolio bidding – kinda the same, but consolidation takes place at the bid strategy level.
“Micro conversions – try to add in the micro conversion that had the most volume and is closest to the ‘real’ conversion. Bonus: Reverse engineer CVR and conv value from micro to macro conversion and adjust tCPA accordingly.”
Goal misalignment
Using the wrong bidding strategy can hinder performance.
For example, applying Target ROAS to a new campaign with limited data can set unrealistic expectations and reduce reach.
Align bidding strategies with your goals.
When prioritizing profitability, use Maximize Conversions for volume and Target ROAS or Target CPA. Harrison Hepp, owner of Industrious Marketing, said:
“I had a client who was hybrid ecommerce and lead gen (they sold products, but high-priced deals were lead gen), and they insisted on tracking purchases and leads in every campaign. We constantly battled major fluctuations in the campaigns as they’d swing back and forth between getting purchases or leads and trying to optimize to both.
“It also made bid strategy selection really hard, as conversion value bidding would deprioritize leads (no value was tracked), but CPA bidding wasn’t efficient for purchases because of differences in product prices. It really showed how aligning your goals and bid strategy is critical for steady performance. It also underlined how the right bidding strategy can prioritize success in campaigns.”
Monitoring is non-negotiable
Despite its automation, Smart Bidding is not a “set it and forget it” tool.
Failing to monitor campaigns can lead to wasted ad spend and missed optimization opportunities.
Regularly review performance metrics, adjust campaign parameters, and stay proactive in managing Smart Bidding strategies.
“Custom columns/Segment views: We want to measure efficiency, so things like conv value/conv, search impression share, etc.” said Ameet Khabra, owner of Hop Skip Media.
Even with the most advanced AI behind Smart Bidding, performance optimization requires vigilance.
Regularly review the following metrics to ensure your strategy is working as intended:
CPA: Is your Target CPA being met?
ROAS: Are the conversions driving sufficient revenue?
Conversion rates: Are conversions coming from the right audience segments? Or are you paying for competitors to download your white papers and marking that down as a lead?
Search term reports: Are irrelevant keywords consuming a significant portion of your budget? Unprofitable keywords can be why a campaign is not meeting goals.
Conversion tracking accuracy: If conversion tracking is improperly implemented, Smart Bidding will optimize based on inaccurate data, reducing effectiveness.
Double-check your conversion tracking setup. Assign accurate values to conversions to reflect their true business impact. Khabra said:
“My favorite saying lately is ‘garbage in, garbage out,’ and that is definitely a large component of conversion tracking. Ensuring that we’ve identified the correct conversions that move the needle is half the battle. Implementing the tracking and double-checking that it is correct – collecting conversions – is the second half.”
Budgetary awareness
Strategies like Maximize Conversions and Maximize Clicks will attempt to spend your entire daily budget.
If your budget is set too high, this can lead to overspending.
Start with smaller daily budgets and gradually increase them while monitoring performance.
Realistic targets
Setting overly aggressive Target CPA or Target ROAS goals can limit your campaign’s reach, as the algorithm will avoid auctions it deems unprofitable.
Begin with realistic targets slightly higher or lower than your current average. Allow time for the algorithm to learn before refining the target.
Best practices for Smart Bidding in Google Ads
To ensure optimal performance, follow these best practices for implementing Smart Bidding in your Google Ads campaigns.
1. Feed accurate data
Ensure your conversion tracking is set up correctly.
Assign meaningful values to conversions – whether it’s a purchase, lead form submission, or newsletter signup.
2. Leverage seasonality adjustments
Use seasonality adjustments in Google Ads to guide Smart Bidding algorithms for short-term changes (e.g., holiday sales or promotions).
This prevents excessive or insufficient bids during periods of fluctuating demand.
3. Start with conservative budgets
Begin with smaller budgets and avoid aggressive bid caps that may limit auction participation. Allow the algorithm to learn and adapt gradually.
4. Prioritize business value over conversion volume
Align your bidding tactics with broader business goals. Instead of focusing solely on conversion volume, consider how each conversion contributes to revenue or lifetime customer value.
5. Test and adapt
Use Google Ads experiments to test different strategies.
For example, compare Target CPA with Target ROAS to identify which delivers better results for your campaigns.
Google Ads Experiments let you directly compare bid strategies in real-world scenarios.
Duplicate your campaign, allocate a split percentage to a new strategy (like comparing Target CPA vs. Target ROAS), and see concrete results with statistical significance.
Final thoughts
Smart Bidding isn’t just about knowing which technical settings to adjust.
It’s about understanding how to make Google’s automated tools align with your business goals.
The digital landscape evolves quickly, so it’s essential to stay adaptable, continuously monitor performance, and make adjustments as needed.
Nail the strategy, stay proactive, and you’ll set yourself up for long-term success.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Understanding-manual-automated-and-smart-bidding-in-Google-Ads-QKjaTQ.jpeg?fit=1472%2C832&ssl=18321472http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-01 12:00:002025-04-01 12:00:00Your guide to Google Ads Smart Bidding
With the rise of AI-powered features, search engines are not just directing users to information but delivering answers directly.
This shift is redefining how people interact with the web, raising questions about the future of SEO, content discovery, and digital marketing.
Here’s what’s coming next.
From ChatGPT to Grok 3: The breakneck pace of AI advancements
The world has seen rapid and significant advances in AI technology and large language models (LLMs) within two years.
Looking back just three years ago, Google’s Gemini and Meta’s LLAMA did not exist, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT was later released in late November 2022.
Fast-forward to January 2025, the public was introduced to DeepSeek R1. This open-source large language reasoning model astounded the AI community with its speed, efficiency, and affordability, especially compared to OpenAI’s o1 GPT model.
A few weeks later, Elon Musk’s company xAI launched Grok 3, which impressed users by topping a key AI leaderboard with its complexity and fewer guardrails (see: unhinged mode).
More recently, Anthropic released Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code, an LLM that excels at code creation and debugging to a degree that has made many software engineers a bit uneasy.
These LLMs are just the beginning of AI’s rapid progress, with more breakthroughs on the way.
Google’s AI Mode: A glimpse of the future
AI isn’t just bringing new products – it’s transforming existing ones, too.
Engage with web search in a chat-like manner through multimodal understanding.
Refine long-tail queries in a back-and-forth manner.
AI Mode, powered by Gemini 2.0, enhances research using a “query fan-out” technique to gather real-time data from multiple sources and generate detailed, in-depth summaries.
This may make SEOs uncomfortable, as it potentially reduces clicks to publisher sites and further promotes a zero-click ecosystem.
With Google integrating Gemini 2.0 into its suite of products and its dominance of 89% of the search industry, its AI innovations demand close attention.
These technologies will likely be added to search, and AI Mode offers a preview of what’s ahead.
Two terms for the future of search: Agentic and deep research
We’ll likely hear two terms used more often in the AI and search space:
Deep research models can browse the web and focus on conducting intensive, in-depth research to provide users with informative summaries on complex topics.
Unlike previous LLMs, which use a single-step information retrieval system through RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), deep research and agentic models can:
Conduct multi-step research through a series of actions, pulling information from multiple sources to provide comprehensive summaries to the user.
Take proactive actions, such as executing tasks and complex instructions.
Google’s Project Mariner and OpenAI’s Operator already showcase these capabilities by allowing users to perform tasks within their browsers while understanding multi-modal elements such as text, images, and forms.
Suppose you want to plan a trip to Tokyo and know the best season to go, the weather, and where to stay.
Typically, this type of research takes a few days or weeks, and you gather information from various sources, such as travel websites or YouTube videos.
A deep research model can do the heavy lifting by searching the web, gathering information, and summarizing relevant content, which saves you time.
It can also “read, listen, and watch” various sources to provide a thorough answer.
An agentic model could also book your hotels and flights, navigating checkout flows to complete the purchase.
AI is moving in this direction as companies like Google work toward AGI (artificial general intelligence) – machines that can reason across diverse tasks like humans.
Deep research and agentic models are key milestones in building practical AI solutions for everyday use.
As AI search capabilities advance, users will likely rely even more on AI tools for quick answers rather than clicking through to websites or articles.
AI Mode and future search innovations could accelerate this shift by prioritizing fast, AI-generated summaries over traditional browsing.
As zero-click searches become the norm, you must rethink how you measure value and engagement.
Traditional KPIs may no longer accurately reflect user behavior, so focusing on brand visibility and awareness will be more critical than ever.
Increased personalization
LLMs and AI systems are revolutionizing search by personalizing responses with unmatched speed and scale, surpassing traditional algorithms.
Leveraging Google’s vast user data, AI can train on existing information and refine queries in real-time to deliver more tailored results.
As these systems continuously learn, they will become even better at recognizing, remembering, and adapting to individual user preferences.
As AI-driven search becomes more personalized, it’s worth considering whether hyper-niche content is the key to reaching your audience.
Multimodal search
Google’s AI-powered multimodal capabilities are already embedded in many of its products, including Project Astra, an AI assistant unveiled at Google I/O 2024.
During a live demonstration, Astra used multiple tools – such as Google Lens – to identify objects in real time and respond to voice queries.
Distinguished between similar names (“Bob” vs. “Rob”).
Even created a story about the figures.
While some of these advanced features haven’t been integrated into Google Search yet, multimodal search through Google Lens and voice search is already shaping how users submit queries.
As Google develops these capabilities, you should anticipate what’s next, look beyond text-based queries, and optimize for image, video, and audio search.
Commercial queries can still draw users to websites
AI-generated results have reduced clicks for informational queries, but commercial and transactional searches still offer opportunities for website traffic.
During the decision-making process, potential buyers research extensively – comparing products, reading reviews, and exploring multiple channels before making a purchase.
While it’s unclear how AI-generated search will impact this journey, think about how AI can streamline multi-touchpoint decision-making while still driving users to your website.
When users move closer to making a purchase, user-generated content – like reviews – will still play a crucial role in conversions.
Content quality still rules
Despite AI’s growing role in search, one thing remains constant: high-quality content is essential.
Whether users rely on traditional search engines or LLMs, visibility will still depend on the strength of the content itself.
Since both Google Search and LLMs use RAG to pull from vast datasets, ensuring these systems have access to accurate, high-quality information is critical.
Content demonstrating E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) will continue to rank higher in AI-driven search results.
Your brand will also play a bigger role in search visibility, making it essential to create valuable, well-optimized content across multiple formats.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-next-wave-of-search-AI-Mode-deep-research-and-beyond-800x491-xNi10d.png?fit=800%2C491&ssl=1491800http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-03-31 13:00:002025-03-31 13:00:00The next wave of search: AI Mode, deep research and beyond
AI models like ChatGPT reflect societal biases that exist in their training data. Here’s a simple way to see this in action:
Ask it to draw a nurse. You’ll likely get a woman.
Now, ask it to draw a CEO. You’ll probably see a man.
Here’s what I got:
This gender bias isn’t just limited to images. ChatGPT can perpetuate stereotypes and biases around:
Gender roles and professions
Cultural perspectives
Socioeconomic assumptions
Historical narratives
Geographic representation
For example, when asked about “traditional family values” or “successful business practices,” ChatGPT might default to Western, male-dominated perspectives without acknowledging other viewpoints.
What does this mean for you?
Always cross-reference important facts from multiple sources
Be aware that ChatGPT’s responses may reflect societal biases
Ask follow-up questions to get different perspectives
Use ChatGPT as a starting point, not the final authority
Consider whose viewpoints might be missing from its responses
Remember: ChatGPT is an incredibly powerful tool, but it’s trained on human-created data—which means it inherits human biases. So, use it wisely by staying critical and conscious of these limitations.
How to Use ChatGPT: Step-by-Step Beginners Guide
If you’re new to ChatGPT, getting started is easy.
You’ll be using it like a pro in just a few steps.
Step 1: Choose the Right ChatGPT Account Type
There are three ways to access ChatGPT, depending on what you need.
Guest Access
You can try ChatGPT right away with “Guest Access.” No need to sign up.
Turn memory on, and ChatGPT will learn from your past conversations.
You won’t have to repeat yourself every time you start a new chat.
Over time, it’ll remember details and give you more relevant responses.
Turn memory off and every session starts fresh.
This is great if you prefer more privacy.
Or don’t want past conversations influencing future replies.
You can also erase stored memories.
Click “Manage memories” in the “Personalization” window.
And you’ll see a new window where you can erase all memories or delete specific ones.
Personalizing ChatGPT: Make It Work Your Way
ChatGPT doesn’t have to sound the same for everyone.
You can easily customize it.
Just go to “Profile” (at the top right) > “Customize ChatGPT.”
Then, enter basic details like your name and profession.
Next, customize ChatGPT’s personality.
You can specify:
Tone: Friendly, casual, professional?
Response length: Brief and direct or in-depth?
Persona: Strategist, a teacher, or something else?
For example, if you want it to write in Backlinko style, you could type:
Write in the Backlinko writing style. Be direct and cut the fluff. Every sentence should be actionable. Do not use long complicated words when a simpler, shorter word exists.
If you’re not sure what to write, you can ask ChatGPT.
Here’s one way you can do that using your brand’s messaging document.
Upload the brand guide to ChatGPT and write:
Attached is [YOUR BRAND’S] content guideline. In under 1,500 characters, summarize [YOUR BRAND’S] voice, tone, and personality.
Advanced tip: I’ve noticed that ChatGPT doesn’t always stick to the personality I want. If you see that, too, do this:
First, give it this instruction.
“You have different personas. When I write [keyword], use that persona.”
Then, define the persona:
For example, for Backlinko, I write:
“[backlinko]: Be direct. Write clearly. Use short, punchy sentences with a confident tone. Make it easy to skim and focus on real, tested advice. Skip the jargon and write using the active voice. Keep the language simple (6th-grade level).”
Now, whenever I want ChatGPT to respond in Backlinko’s style, I start the chat with [backlinko].
The great thing about this?
You can add multiple personas for different tasks. And then you just add [keyword] to call that persona into the chat.
Some of my favorites include:
[80/20]: Focus only on the 20% of knowledge or actions that drive 80% of results. Prioritize key takeaways.
[teacher]: Break concepts into step-by-step explanations with real-world examples, analogies, and case studies.
The final section in customization is “What should ChatGPT know about you?”
Here, you personalize ChatGPT to your life and work.
What should you add?
Think about how you’ll be using it, then add relevant instructions.
For example, if you’re vegetarian with some dietary restrictions and you often use it for meal planning, you can write:
My family is vegetarian. One of our children has a peanut allergy, and the other doesn’t eat onions. Always make sure that the meals you create follow these restrictions.
Here’s another example if you use ChatGPT for work.
Say you have an ecommerce store.
You could add:
I sell handcrafted plant baskets made from sustainable materials. I have customers all over the world who are eco-conscious. I write in a warm but expert tone. I’m knowledgeable but never preachy. I have a small marketing budget. I do mostly organic content and paid ads.
Control Your Privacy
By default, OpenAI may use your conversations to improve the model.
If you’d rather keep chats private, you can turn this off.
Go to “Profile” > “Settings” > “Data Controls” and toggle “Improve the model for everyone.”
Once you do this, it won’t use your conversations for training.
And that’s it.
Your AI is now customized for you.
Go test ChatGPT with a few questions.
And see how well it adjusts based on your customizations.
Still not customized the way you want it?
Go back to settings and keep refining.
Step 3: Learn to Write Better Prompts
If you want high-quality answers from ChatGPT, you need to write better prompts.
Bland or generic answers usually mean a prompting problem.
Why?
Because when you give ChatGPT a vague question, it has to fill in the gaps.
And from what I’ve seen, it plays it safe by giving you the most generic explanations.
You don’t want that.
So how do you fix it?
Let’s get Google to help.
In its prompting guide, Google states that a good, detailed prompt includes four elements:
Task: What you want ChatGPT to do (explain, analyze, compare)
Context: Relevant background info (who, what, where, why)
Persona: The role ChatGPT should take (expert, teacher, consultant)
Format: How the response should be structured (step-by-step, bullet points, examples)
Adding just task + context makes a big difference.
Use all four, and you get much better answers.
Let me show you the difference in answer quality between a basic and an optimized prompt.
A basic prompt:
Give me unique marketing tips for a tour guide.
What do you get?
A generic list that can work for any tour guide anywhere in the world:
Now, add task + specific context:
Since ChatGPT has specific details to work with, the answer is more relevant.
We’re not done yet.
How about using all four elements using this prompt?
Act as a tourism marketing expert with 20 years of experience. I’ve just started a tour company in Málaga, Spain. The competition is fierce, so I need to stand out. Your task: identify three unique viral marketing strategies. The output should be a numbered list with one real-world example for each.
That level of detail gives you a more hyper-specific answer:
Step 4: Get Better Results With Frameworks
Frameworks help ChatGPT focus its thinking so its response becomes clearer and more organized.
So, instead of saying, “Give me an SEO strategy,” or “Give me content ideas,” specify a framework.
For example, in the Málaga tour guide prompt above, try using the STP framework (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning).
You might say:
Act as a tourism marketing expert with 20 years of experience. Use the STP framework (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) to develop a unique marketing strategy for a tour guide in Málaga, Spain. Identify a specific segment of travelers, explain the best way to target them, and position the tour guide’s services for maximum appeal.
Much. Better. Answer.
But what if you don’t know any frameworks?
No problem.
Just ask ChatGPT.
All you have to do is choose the best one.
Step 5: Refine ChatGPT’s Responses with Follow-Ups
ChatGPT’s first answer isn’t always the best, especially for complex topics.
How do you improve it?
Keep asking questions.
Here’s what I mean.
Imagine you’re a social media manager launching a smart water bottle that reminds users to drink.
Your first prompt might be:
Give me a list of interactive social media campaign ideas. Context: We’re launching a new product: a smart water bottle that reminds users to drink. You’re a social media strategist with 10 years of experience.
ChatGPT gives you a list:
It’s a good start.
But it’s not enough to have a clear launch strategy.
So, you dig deeper.
If the reply is too generic, ask for more details.
If the answer is too theoretical, ask for clear, actionable steps.
Or you can focus on one thing in the list.
Keep refining your questions until you have everything you need.
By doing this, ChatGPT becomes more of a collaborative partner.
And you get a final output that’s a blend of AI and your knowledge and topical expertise.
Why not add everything in one big prompt?
You could.
But it’s not always the best approach.
Yes, some prompts are simple enough that they don’t need iterative refining.
But for complex ideas, refining step by step gives you more control over the output.
Personal insight: When conversations with ChatGPT get longer, it can go into a rabbit hole and lose track of the original task. When this happens, I bring it back with a prompt like:
“Go back to the original task. Do you remember it?”
If the response shows that it has forgotten some details from the original prompt, remind it explicitly:
“We were working on [ORIGINAL TASK]. Pick up from where we left off.”
This helps bring the conversation back to the task you set out to do.
Fun Ways to Use ChatGPT for Life and Work
One of the most powerful things about ChatGPT?
It can take on different roles.
It can be your personal assistant, researcher, strategist, problem-solver, and more.
ChatGPT as 24-7 Personal Assistant
ChatGPT can be your assistant for work and daily life.
Need help with life planning, SEO, or optimizing your habits?
Done.
For example, you can use it to review legal documents.
Upload a PDF, like a client agreement, and ask it to explain the legal jargon. Or point out unfair clauses.
It’s great for mundane tasks, too. Like cleaning up video transcripts.
Paste (or upload) the transcript.
And ask ChatGPT to organize it better.
Saves you so much time.
Personal insight: I recently used ChatGPT to help me organize my Obsidian vault (Obsidian is a personal knowledge management tool.)
I wanted a clean, scalable folder structure that matched my use case.
So, off to ChatGPT I went and wrote this prompt:
Create a folder structure for Obsidian that helps organize personal insights, research, and notes. The folder structure should make finding and linking notes easy while keeping things simple and scalable. Strictly limit to five main folders. Make sure it’s organized so it’s easy to expand over time. Your output should be in a clear, hierarchical bullet format.
This response gave me a solid starting point to structure my folders.
It also saved me time by giving me a clear framework to customize instead of figuring it all out from scratch.
ChatGPT as Your Analyst
ChatGPT is also great for processing and analyzing data.
A few things it can do:
Clean up raw data
Identify patterns
Extract insights
Side note: Data analysis works best with the paid plan. The free version may not always deliver the same level of detail.
Here’s a great example of how you can use its data analysis capabilities for digital marketing.
Let’s say you run an online store.
You want to analyze your competitor’s Google Shopping Ads using the Product Listing Ads (PLAs) data you got from Semrush.
Do this:
Upload the data to ChatGPT and use this prompt:
Analyze this Product Listing Ad (PLA) data for BestBuy.com from Semrush. Give me the top five takeaways that will help me. Show your work.
Just like that, ChatGPT will identify patterns and trends from the Semrush data:
Expert tip: Want to double-check the analysis? Add “Show your work” to your prompt. This tells ChatGPT to explain its thought process so you can verify and refine the answer.
ChatGPT as a Thought Partner
ChatGPT is great for learning and skill development.
For example, you can use it as a conversation partner when learning a new language.
You can also use ChatGPT to stress-test your thinking.
It can challenge your assumptions and poke holes in your reasoning.
I even use it to analyze my content outlines for writing projects.
Fun fact: Being nice to ChatGPT can lead to better responses. Research shows that using polite, supportive prompts leads to better answers.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-03-31 11:43:412025-03-31 11:43:41How to Use ChatGPT to Get 10X Better Answers
Writing quality content should be a key aspect of every SEO strategy. But when is your content considered good or high-quality? And does quality mean the same for your users as for Google? In this article, we’ll discuss creating content and how you can make sure it hits the mark. It will require some creative writing skills. But don’t worry, you don’t have to become the next big author! By focusing on the right things, you can create high-ranking quality content that your users will happily read.
What is quality content?
That is the million-dollar question. Knowing how to write good content helps you get more visitors, higher conversions, and lower bounce rates. But who determines the quality of your content? The easy answer: your users. However, this also makes creating the right content more difficult. Because every user is different and has a different search intent. They have, however, one thing in common: every user knows what they want.
Although your users eventually determine the quality of your content, you can take a few steps to ensure you end up with well-thought-out, readable, and attractive content. In other words, content that’s eligible to be considered high-quality by your users and search engines. Luckily, a lot of the aspects that users will appreciate about your content are the same as the aspects search engines look for in quality content.
How search engines determine quality content
Search engines want to present their users with the exact content they seek. Content that is helpful, reliable and people-first and aligns with their current search intent. To help you create good content, Google has an acronym that you can consult: E-E-A-T.
Search engines decide on what is content quality by assessing a number of things – relevance, clarity and helpfulness, credibility and uniqueness. This all ties into the importance of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) in any strategy around brand or topical authority.
Alex Moss – Principal SEO at Yoast
The acronym E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. In their ongoing search for the best content, Google has added this acronym to their search quality raters guidelines. They use this to assess and judge the quality of online content. Although it’s especially important for so-called YMYL websites (“Your Money Your Life” – sites that are related to well-being, health, finances or safety), these guidelines apply to all content out there.
Why is quality content important?
Quality content is the foundation of a strong brand, helping you establish authority and expertise in your industry. Well-crafted content speaks directly to the needs of your audience, providing valuable insights that position your brand as a reliable source. Whether it’s through blog posts, social media, or in-depth guides, delivering high-quality content builds long-term relationships with customers, fosters engagement, and strengthens brand credibility.
Beyond its impact on branding, quality content plays a crucial role in SEO. As mentioned above, search engines prioritize helpful, well-structured, and informative content that truly benefits users. By focusing on producing valuable content that answers queries effectively, you can achieve higher rankings in the search results. This leads to increased visibility, organic traffic, and better engagement, which will help you grow your website sustainably. To scale content creation effectively, check out this guide on scaling content. Additionally, if you mainly write content for your clients’ website, make sure to check out our article on writing valuable content that your clients will love.
7 steps to start creating high-quality content
To ensure the quality of your content, there are 7 steps that you can follow. Let’s go into them in more detail.
1. Write for your readers, not yourself
If you have an ecommerce site, you want readers to know about the products or services you offer. If you’re a blogger, you want readers to get to know you and the topics that interest you. However, it’s also important to consider what your users want to read about. What interests do they have? What events or news do they follow that you can relate to your business? And what ‘problems’ are they trying to fix that have led them to your site?
The first step in creating high-quality content is ensuring it contains the information your audience is looking for. To find out what your users are looking for, you have to conduct proper keyword research. This will help you determine what subjects to write about and what words your audience uses. Keyword research also helps your rankings, as more visitors and lower bounce rates tell Google that your page is a good result to show in their search results.
2. Think about search intent and your goal
Search intent is the reason why someone conducts a specific search. It’s the term used to describe their purpose. For example, do they have a question they need answered? Or do they want to buy something online? Someone’s search intent makes a difference in how they consider the quality of your content. If it fits their need at that moment, then they will stay on your page longer. But if they need an answer to a question and the page they land on only tries to sell them products, they’ll be gone before you know it.
Match goals to different search intents
It’s important to consider search intent while creating content for a specific page. That’s why we advise you to match your goals to users’ different search intents. Is one of your goals to increase newsletter subscriptions? Then, you should add that subscription button to pages where users with an informational intent land. Does a visitor have a transactional intent (meaning: they want to buy something)? Make sure they land on a product or category page dedicated to the product they are looking for.
Of course, experience tells us it’s not always that black and white. Still, it’s good to consider your users’ search intent. It helps you determine the focus of your content and what call-to-actions you want to add. A great way to get started is by adopting a content design mindset. This mindset helps you produce user-centered content based on real needs. Also, we recommend looking at the search results for some input to create great content.
3. Make your content readable and engaging
Do you want to get your message across? And do you want people to read your entire blog post or page? Then, make your content easy to read. This means that you should:
Think about the structure of your text and the words you use. Too much text without any headings or paragraphs, also known as a wall of text, tends to scare people off. Use headings and whitespace to give your readers some air while reading.
Try to limit the use of difficult words and be cautious of the length of your sentences. Both can make your content harder to understand, which will slow down and frustrate your reader.
Variation in your text will make it engaging. Use synonyms and alternate longer sentences with shorter ones to mix it up.
Another important thing to focus on: Have fun! And be conversational in your writing. This helps you write high-quality content that is different from your competitors’ and helps users get to know you and your brand.
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness can all be used to improve your content. So how can you make sure to include these in your writing? We’ll go through them one by one and give you some pointers.
Share your experience
Although the acronym started as E-A-T, they added another E shortly after. This newly added E stands for experience. They prefer content that showcases knowledge or skills gained through first-hand experience. This can be gained through personal involvement or observations related to the topic at hand. To give an example, someone who has worked as an optician for many years will be experienced in the topic of eyesight. Or someone who has a prescription themselves will also have experience on the topic.
The second E in E-E-A-T stands for expertise. Although it makes sense that this would be an important factor in determining the quality of content, it is trickier to evaluate. So what Google does is find out what it can about the author itself. What is their reputation when it comes to the topic at hand? What is their background? And what other (reliable) sources are they referring to? When it comes to this criterion, it will pay off to be clear about your expertise and where it comes from online.
Related to expertise, the next letter stands for authoritativeness. An authority can be defined as a person or organization having power or control in a particular area. When you’re an authority on a topic, you often have the proper knowledge on it. That’s why official websites often have a higher chance of being perceived as the authority on a topic. But also aspects like qualifications and being associated with well-known organizations count towards this. If this one is tricky for you, don’t worry. It’s just one of the aspects Google looks for when determining quality. If this one doesn’t fit your blog or business, just focus more on the other letters in the acronym.
The last one probably doesn’t come as a surprise, as this is something we all look for when browsing online. The trustworthiness of the content before you. Whether it’s for a product you want to buy or information that you’re looking for, trust plays a big role in how serious you take online content. If it doesn’t feel right, a user will hesitate in the best case and leave your website in the worst. Google’s guidelines are quite clear on how they determine the trustworthiness of a website: “An unsatisfying amount of any of the following is a reason to give a page a low-quality rating: customer service information, contact information, information about who is responsible for the website or information about who created the content.” So make sure to be clear on these and look for other opportunities to show your trustworthiness.
Another key element of writing high-quality content is ensuring it’s up-to-date and relevant. This means you have to update your content occasionally to ensure people can find the right information. But why is this so important? It shows your users that you’re on top of recent developments and can always provide them with accurate information. In other words, it builds trust and keeps your audience returning to your site.
Keeping your website and blog posts updated is also important for SEO, as this shows Google that your site is ‘alive’ and relevant. So, make sure you schedule a time to update your content regularly.
The five steps we’ve discussed so far will help you write content that is easy to read and user-centered. Now, we’d like to highlight an equally important step: working on your site structure. It’s important because it will help users and search engines find your content.
Site structure refers to the way you organize your site’s content. When you structure your site well, search engines can index your URLs better. It helps Google determine the importance of your pages and which ones are related to each other. A good site structure allows users to find their way around your site more easily. It will help them find quality content in the search results and on your website. That’s why there’s much to gain from perfecting your site structure.
7. Use Yoast SEO to perfect your content
The last tip I want to share is the content analysis in our very own Yoast SEO plugin. This feature gives you real-time feedback on your content while you’re editing your page in the backend. It monitors whether you use your chosen keyword often enough and in the right places, it looks at text length and gives you feedback on readability. For example, it tells you when you use the passive voice too much, whether you’re using enough subheadings, gives you feedback on word complexity and the use of transition words. All of this and more is available in the free version to help you improve the readability and quality of your content.
The content analysis in Yoast SEO Premium goes a bit further and also does the following:
Allows you to optimize your text for related keyphrases and synonyms
Recognizes different forms of your keyphrase, so you can focus on writing naturally
Recognizes singular and plural, and also tenses of verbs
Gives access to our AI features, like Yoast AI Optimize, suggesting changes in your content
Gives you access to all the Yoast SEO academy courses, including our SEO copywriting training!
Buy Yoast SEO Premium now!
Unlock powerful features and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!
Good, high-quality content will positively affect your SEO in the long run. So, before publishing post after post (or page after page), make sure to keep the following in mind. Make sure to write for your readers, make your content readable, match search intent with your goals, be trustworthy, keep your content up to date, and work on your site structure.
The result? Good content that your readers will appreciate. This will positively affect your number of visitors, conversions and eventual revenue. If you want to learn more tips and tricks, make sure to read our guide to SEO copywriting!
Shopify has become the leading online shopping platform in just a few years. It has become an anti-Amazon, helping small and large retailers worldwide run successful online stores with minimal effort. Although the ecommerce platform makes everything easy, there’s a lot you can do to improve the SEO of your online shop. In this ultimate guide, we’ll help you get on the right track by giving you many tips and tricks. In addition, we’ll tell you the best SEO app, and we have a Shopify SEO checklist for you!
While Shopify helps you set up everything correctly from the start, there are some things to consider when considering SEO. As with all content management systems, you must optimize your store to ensure it performs well for customers and search engines.
With Shopify SEO, you’re building a technically sound store that is tuned to what potential customers are looking for. You will use SEO in such a way that you build a much better solution than what your competitors are doing. You use research to find out what customers need, and you use the power of high-quality content to draw people in.
The Shopify SEO tips also have to do with what you do to market your store in other places — both online and offline. At Yoast, we practice holistic SEO and advise you to do the same — it’s the only way to get sustainable results.
Yoast SEO for Shopify
Want to outclass your competitors and boost your Shopify store’s organic traffic? Yoast SEO for Shopify has everything you need, from creating top-notch content to making your products eligible for rich results in Google. Our 24/7 support team and valuable SEO courses will ensure you stay ahead of the curve.
Shopify ensures you set up your store quickly and that customers and search engines can reach it. It already has some basic SEO features, and you can use SEO apps such as Yoast SEO for Shopify for many of the other tasks. Of course, this being a closed platform, your control over SEO is limited to what the developers allow.
For instance, you have to use the built-in URL structure and a system to manage your products in so-called collections, but these can be suboptimal and might cause duplicate content issues. In the rest of this guide, we will go through the SEO basics you need to cover and how Shopify and Yoast SEO can help you.
It’s an excellent platform to host your online shop, but there’s a lot you can do to make it perform even better. SEO can help you get your store noticed on Google and other platforms while making it more attractive to potential customers. In this guide to Shopify SEO, we’ll give you loads of tips — and a checklist — to make your ecommerce site successful.
1. Define who you are and what you stand for
To kick things off, we need you to think about who you are. Why does your business exist, and why do you need people to visit your store and buy your products? What makes you stand out from the competition? If everyone sells the same products, what would be your number one reason for people to come to you?
Define a mission for your store. A mission is an effective way of explaining what you have in your head. It provides a line that you can connect to your values and principles. You can use your mission as input for your online store’s SEO and marketing strategy. We have a post explaining exactly what you need to do to define a good mission and what to do with it.
Branding and storytelling are essential — so is having a mission!
2. Conduct keyword research for your store
SEO for your Shopify store must start with keyword research. Keyword research for online stores produces a list of terms you want your products, services, or store to be found. It will also give you insights into your audience, which words they use, which solutions they prefer, and how they behave. If you do it well, you can instantly fill in your SEO strategy for your site.
Various tools out there can help you get those insights quickly. You could use Google Trends, Answer the Public, or more professional tools like Ahrefs and Semrush — Yoast SEO for Shopify even integrates with Semrush. You can even use generative AI tools like OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini to inspire you.
Do thorough research and find out which terms are used most often. Find out what people usually search for and which phrases have search volume that you might aim for. Remember that trying to aim for the most popular head terms only might not make the most sense — try to aim for more long-tail keywords that still attract traffic.
It would help if you also looked at the different search intents around your products or services. No one goes from not needing something to buying it in the next second. The buyer journey has a number of steps, and you need to provide content for those steps.
3. Look at what the competition is doing
When doing keyword research, you must also see what your competition is doing. There are a ton of competitors operating in every niche you can imagine. Whenever you are looking at entering a market — or growing your piece of the pie — you must look at the competition. Who are they? What do they stand for? What’s their offering? Their prices? Service? How do they talk about the product? Who are they targeting, and by which terms do they do that?
Looking at your competitors gives you an idea of who to beat. You might find a weakness in their store or a strategy you might use. Or, you can find something that inspires you to work from. Please look at their content; are they writing thoroughly and with expertise about the product? Is that something you can improve on?
Shopify SEO tips in a handy checklist
This is a pretty epic Shopify SEO article, and we can imagine it is hard to keep track of all the great tips. Luckily, we put all the main tips in a handy little Shopify SEO checklist. Download the pdf and get started on the SEO of your store!
4. Write unique and high-quality product descriptions
Together with product photography, product descriptions are the life and blood of your online store. With good product descriptions, customers can get a good feel for a product without having it in hand. The problem is many online shops count on the descriptions manufacturers supply to stores. You can probably guess what that means: the same descriptions litter the web, causing duplicate content issues.
Writing your product descriptions can help you establish trust with the consumer. Having your content in your own words makes you more unique and lets you stand out from the crowd. Do keyword research for the products to determine which terms your consumers use. Use those terms in your descriptions and craft a compelling piece of content from that. Incorporate the details from the manufacturer, like SKU and product titles, but don’t rely on their descriptions.
Helping you improve your product descriptions is one of the standout features of Yoast SEO for Shopify. The app gives you suggestions while writing your descriptions and tips to help you improve both readability and SEO.
Taylor Stitch gives you everything you need to know about a product on one screen
Just as your product descriptions should be excellent, your titles and meta descriptions should also be epic. Title and meta descriptions are essential aspects that you can focus on to improve Shopify’s SEO. Use your keywords tactically and write something enticing those consumers want to click.
Shopify automatically generates titles and meta descriptions based on a straightforward template. You can edit your products’ titles, meta descriptions, blog posts, pages, collections, and general site settings.
Go to a specific page and open the search engine listing preview. Add a title and meta description for the search results pages here. These differ from the regular titles and descriptions, as these are specifically meant for the search results. You might have a specific title visible on your store and choose something else to show on the search results pages.
Quickly edit the information that will show up on the search results pages
You can edit these in Shopify, but Yoast SEO makes this process much more manageable. This SEO app comes with the incredible power of variables — and generative AI. Using variables, you can automatically generate part of the title and the meta description based on your settings. Of course, it’s always better to write both yourself, but this allows you to automate some parts, which can be helpful when you have many products. The same goes for AI in Yoast SEO!
6. Create SEO-friendly URLs in Shopify
SEO-friendly URLs are easy to read, relatively short, and consistent. Unfortunately, the CMS is inflexible, and there is little wiggle room to improve your URL structure. If you sell ugly Christmas sweaters, your Shopify collection URL looks like this:
The only thing you can change in this setup is the last part. Many people feel that there should be a way to have Shopify give more control over the rest.
7. Fix your site structure with internal linking and proper navigation
One of the most impactful tips to improve your Shopify SEO is fine-tuning your site structure and navigation. The more logical your site is, the better and easier customers and search engines like Google can navigate it and find what they need.
Your site structure should follow a logical path, and your collection system should make sense. Please keep it simple. You can see collections as categories, so use the collections to keep customers from having trouble understanding your site. It’s also nice if they don’t have to wade through a million products to find what they need. Make sure to give the collection overview pages the love they need. At the least, give these a proper description.
Internal links are essential
Internal linking helps you give the most critical pages proper weight. By linking to your product pages from various parts of your online shop, you signal to search engines that these are important. With proper anchor texts, you can identify the destination and tell search engines in words what to expect from that link. All of this helps search engines understand your site.
For your navigation, keep it as straightforward as possible. Use recognizable terms and destinations; your menu should describe where a click would lead. Contact us says a lot more than Touch base, right?
Your most important pages should appear in your navigation. While the age-old three-click rule for navigating to all the pages on your site was debunked quite a while ago, there’s still a lot to be said for keeping everything within reach. Your most important pages should be accessible without digging for them.
8. Make products findable with an XML sitemap
XML sitemaps are like maps detailing all the routes to the different parts of your website. Search engines use sitemaps to discover new and updated content. This also applies to your online shop. Shopify will automatically generate an XML sitemap based on your site structure. Your XML sitemap will include product pages, collections, blog posts, and pages.
You can find your sitemap at the following URL, with example.com being your domain, of course:
https://example.com/sitemap.xml
There’s a set limit for XML sitemaps of 50.000 URLs. As many sites have more than that, they will generate sub-sitemaps with fewer URLs. The Shopify sitemap, for instance, can contain up to 5.000 URLs, after which the platform breaks these up into smaller parts. This also has the added benefit of speeding up the loading times of these sitemaps.
To a certain extent, Yoast SEO for Shopify lets you control what appears in your XML sitemap. For instance, you can add a noindex to determine that a specific page or post won’t appear in the search results. You can also decide whether archive pages should or should not appear in the XML sitemaps. For the most part, though, your out-of-the-box settings will be good enough. But if you want to tailor your crawling, you can.
Yoast SEO for Shopify helps you determine what does and doesn’t appear on Google
9. Streamline the number of Shopify apps you use
While trying out every Shopify app under the sun is exciting, keep yourself in check. Many apps are bulky and heavy on JavaScript. Adding many apps will add much extra code to your store, as everything must be constantly loaded. One of the most crucial performance improvements you can make is to keep the number of apps low. Think about what you need for your store, pick the best apps that do that job, and remove the rest.
10. Optimize images for SEO
Images are an essential asset for every online store. Customers can only get a good feel for the product with great photos. But you need to offer all those images in the best way. Optimizing your images is one of the best and quickest tips to improve your Shopify SEO.
The importance of good product images
Good product images make it clear what a product is all about. It helps consumers view products from all angles without having the product in their hands. Product images need to be good, as they are one of the main drivers of conversion. Good photos also can catch the eye of the shopper. Great photos stand out in visual search engines like Google Images, Instagram, or Pinterest.
Optimize the file sizes
One of the essential tips to improve the SEO of your Shopify store is optimizing your images. It’s also something everyone can do — whether you are a seasoned ecommerce SEO expert or just starting. Optimizing your images, compressing them, and giving them proper names helps!
Lazy loading images
Another effective way to improve the loading times of your images is by lazy loading them. With lazy loading, the images will only load once they appear on the screen. Of course, you should always load all your images, as you want the images at the top of your browser window to always be visible. For the rest, lazy loading is a good choice.
Preventing CLS
While at it, check if your theme enforces width and height attributes on img tags. This helps avoid cumulative layout shift (CLS), one of Google’s metrics to determine your Core Web Vitals scores. CLS happens when elements move around during loading because image boundaries haven’t been defined. This causes jerkiness, and that’s a sign that your user experience is lacking for Google. You can try this by running your online store through Google’s page quality checks at web.dev/measure. You can also learn why and how to optimize your site for CLS on that site.
Many sites still have visual elements that can use a proper width and height specification to prevent CLS
Add alt text and good file names
Alt text is crucial for both SEO and web accessibility, and there are essential tips to follow when writing them for your product images. Firstly, it’s vital to be descriptive in the alt tag and clearly and concisely describe the product’s features, manufacturer, and model number.
You can add an alt text in Shopify’s media editor
File names also help Google understand your image. Suppose your file name is DSC37612.jpg, which says nothing about what the image contains. Add something useful. For example, if you sell iPhones and the photo shows a close-up of the back camera of an iPhone 15, you can give the file a name like this: iphone_15_back_camera_closeup.jpg. You see this, and you know right away what the image contains. Try to add relevant keywords as well if it makes sense.
11. Add a blog to your Shopify store
You can create a blog on Shopify quite easily. Compared to WordPress, it has a basic blogging engine that functions appropriately, and you can get started without much effort. Blogging on your ecommerce store can be an excellent way to enhance your SEO strategy as you try to reach an audience via search engines. It’s a beautiful way to offer customers more insights into your products and company.
Starting a blog on Shopify is very easy. Open your online store and navigate to blog posts in the sidebar. You can add a blog post from here by clicking the green button. By default, the blog is called News, but you can change that to anything you want. You could also run several blogs side-by-side. If you need help setting up your blog, we have a more detailed post about adding a blog to your store. Check it out!
If you have Yoast SEO for Shopify installed, there’s another way to improve your blog posts. Click Apps > Yoast SEO, and you’ll see an overview of all your products, collections, pages, and blog posts ready for you to optimize. Open the post you choose to edit, and you’ll get the full Yoast SEO readability analysis and SEO analysis. You can manage everything, from crawling directives for search engines to defining the proper article structured data.
Optimizing your store with Yoast SEO for Shopify it get noticed by Google
Is blogging good for my Shopify store?
Blogging can be a good asset for your Shopify SEO strategy. For many fledgling stores, growth mainly comes from paid ads. Focusing on content marketing through a blog allows you to expand your reach and form a connection with your customers. But, as with everything, it depends on how you use it. Don’t go at it randomly; you need to strategize.
First, you have to determine the goal of your blog. Do you want to reach new customers, build your brand, form a bond with your current customers, or do something else? What type of content would you want to share — or, instead, what content resonates with your customers? Think about how the user might find you — in other words, map out the user journey. And don’t forget about keyword research! Use those insights to build a content strategy for your Shopify store.
When you have a strategy, you can build the blog content on your store. Use cornerstone content as a basis and add articles supporting that main content, so you can fully describe your topic from all angles — and connect everything by proper internal linking. Be sure to write high-quality, unique content that comes across as trustworthy and authoritative.
Yoast SEO for Shopify
Get more organic traffic by creating the best product and blog content. Make your products eligible for rich results in Google. Plus, you’ll get access to our top-notch SEO courses and fantastic support team (24/7). Check out the Yoast SEO for Shopify product page, or get the app now!
Your theme is an essential part of your online shop. Your chosen theme influences many things — from branding to user experience to conversions. Everything depends on how awesome your Shopify theme is. Luckily, there’s ample choice in the Theme Store, and many of these should function perfectly fine for your store.
Let’s go over a couple of things you should look out for when choosing a theme:
Determine what you want and need: Will you run a store with a single product or a theme that can handle thousands or more? The theme store has a handy selection of themes for stores with large and small catalogs. What type of design do you need? What options do you need?
Figure out your budget: Themes in the Shopify theme store run from free to a one-time payment of a couple hundred dollars. Check what you are willing to spend. Free works for some, but then you hardly get support from the developer. Paid themes often come with more options and tend to be better built.
Check the themes in the marketplace: Quite a few themes are available. Shopify has even structured these into several collections, such as catalog size or the type of industry, such as clothing or electronics. You can filter on different properties, like features you need for the product pages or what’s available on a shop’s homepage. Now, almost 200 themes are available in the Theme Store.
Read the reviews: You are probably not the first to pick a theme, so it’s a good idea to read the reviews of people who worked with it.
Check the support the developer offers: Every theme comes with documentation and support, but the level and quality of support differ from developer to developer. Read the documentation and check around. Don’t be afraid to ask your questions.
Ensure the Shopify theme is lean and mean: Many themes want everything and appeal to every store owner. But that means that there’s bound to be stuff built in that you don’t need. Keep in mind that all those features come at a price. Try to find a theme that has low overhead and loads lightning fast.
You can try the demos and check out other stores that run the theme: The theme store offers demos for all the themes, and you’ll need to check these out. Also, Shopify provides examples of stores that run the specific theme you are looking at. It’s a good idea to closely examine those online stores and run them through their paces. For instance, run a performance test on web.dev/Measure and see how they do. You’d be surprised at the results.
Check mobile-friendliness: As consumers increasingly use their mobile devices to shop, your online shop must function correctly. Again, the theme store allows you to see a mobile view of the theme.
Test the user experience: The theme store also gives you a good idea of how users might experience the store. Click around, see the various layouts, and check how images load, how the animations work, the structure of the menu, and how it all feels. You can also try out the theme on your store to get an even better sense of how the theme feels and performs.
Pay extra attention to the shopping cart: Does it feel like it wants customers to move through the process as quickly as possible? Or are there elements that take away focus? Are there other distractions? Is there room to expand the basic cart with upsells/cross-sells, promotions, and the like? Test your cart to see if you can reduce shopping cart abandonment rates.
An example of a Shopify theme in the Theme Store
For total control, build your own Shopify theme
Having your own theme built might not be something you start with, but it offers many opportunities to take your store to the next level. With a self-built theme, you are in control, and you get to define what it looks like, what it needs, and how it functions. You can make it as lean or as complex as possible.
Building your theme is a good idea if you reach the limits of what’s possible with a pre-built theme. Only so much customization is possible in an existing theme — both in a technical and design sense. You have much more control over the conversion optimization options if you do it yourself.
Building your theme is quite complex, and you must consider what you want and need. It would help if you planned to ensure you avoid issues later. Of course, it’s possible to go into the nitty-gritty yourself, but there are also agencies out there that can help you get this done. The developer section of Shopify has ample documentation to help you learn more about building and adapting store themes.
8 technical SEO optimizations for Shopify
Much of what you should focus on for Shopify SEO in your day-to-day activities is content-focused. You are working on your product descriptions and content marketing, and you won’t be rebuilding your theme every day. Still, there are several things you can do to improve your Shopify store in a technical SEO sense. Let’s go over a couple of highlights.
1. Optimize for speed
As a managed platform, Shopify works hard to provide users with a speedy experience. Shopify focuses heavily on speed to help customers quickly improve those all-important loading times. Fast converts!
If your store loads slowly, customers will leave it and try a competitor. Luckily, the CMS prioritizes performance. For instance, it has an automatic content delivery network (CDN) for hosting your content on servers near your customers. In addition, it has a performance report that gives you insights into how well your store is performing regarding loading speed. For this, Shopify uses Lighthouse to get real-world results on your store’s performance.
While it provides a good platform by default, there are other things you can do to speed up your online store. For one, you should pick a highly optimized, lightweight theme — or get one built based on your specifications. Ensure that you properly optimize images on your site and take care not to use too many photos. Discard those sliders — nobody uses these anyway — and don’t install tens of apps you hardly use.
Regularly running a Lighthouse test gives you great insights into the performance of your Shopify store
2. Prevent duplicate content
We’re talking about duplicate content when a product or content appears on multiple URLs. This is not ideal, as Google might need clarification about the main one. Therefore, duplicate content can hinder your search performance.
Thanks to Shopify’s preference for collections, a specific product you add to a collection will be visible on two different URLs:
Not ideal! Luckily, the second one is canonicalized to the first one, but this causes a headache. Recent themes, like the Dawn Shopify theme, have improved and now automatically output the correct URL.
3. Working with product variants
Shopify works well with product variants like sizes or colors. You have plenty of options to make different combinations of whatever you like. The thing with variants is that it’s hard to get them to show in Google properly. You might not need that depending on your needs, but if you want the different variants of products to be indexed, you might be better off turning your variants into individual products.
Of course, you must provide sufficiently different product descriptions for each to appear individually in Google.
4. Faceted navigation or product filters
Shopify has only a handful of filtering options for your online store—no Amazon-style mega menu for you! Luckily, there are ways to add more filters to your navigation. There are two options: add your custom filters if you use an Online Store 2.0 compatible theme or add an app to manage them.
The first option is relatively straightforward but might be limited, while the second option opens up a world of possibilities. Product filter apps give you more control over how you want to categorize and visualize the faceted navigation. They also come with intelligent options that make it easier to load filters based on loads of variables dynamically.
Whatever you pick, ensure that the parameters generated by the faceted navigation don’t end up in the search results pages — block them in the robots.txt liquid file with a disallow rule.
5. Editing robots.txt to determine what ends up in search engines
The e-commerce platform hired top-notch SEO people to help expand and improve its capabilities. One of the things that came out of that team pretty quickly was the new ability to edit the robots.txt file. Having complete control over robots.txt gives you more ways to control what Google can and can’t do in your store. This takes away one of the most significant issues SEOs have with Shopify.
The robot.txt file is one of the crucial tools that you can use to optimize your online store or your website. It gives a way to tell Google how you want them to crawl the site. Ideally, you use this to prevent search engines from crawling less critical pages or sections of your site. For huge ecommerce sites, this is very important.
You can find your robots.txt file at https://example.com/robots.txt. Here’s what a standard robots.txt of Shopify looks like:
Shopify automatically disallows crawling for several parts of the store. It does this well; most users don’t have to touch this file. However, adding rules to ensure that more advanced features don’t generate duplicate content in the search results for more complex or expansive sites might make sense.
You can edit the robots.txt liquid file by visiting your Online Store admin page. Go to the theme section and select Actions > Edit code. Find the template section and click Add new template. Click the dropdown and select robots.txt from the bottom. Click Create Template, and you can start editing.
6. Structured data for your products
Structured data is essential in this day and age. This data is coded in a specific vocabulary — Schema.org — that search engines read to better understand your website. Structured data describes every part of your website to Google, so it knows all about your authors, articles, types of pages, businesses, and how they connect. Of course, there’s also Schema structured data for products.
With product structured data, you can describe your product to search engines. You’ll tell them about the product’s name, description, images, SKUs, prices, reviews, etc. Search engines like Google might give your product listings rich results in return for this valuable information. A rich result is a highlighted search with price information, availability, and even star reviews. Getting this is essential for online shops.
An example of a rich snippet for a product in Google
Luckily, most themes and Shopify itself output some product structured data. If you need a more complex setup without coding, you can use one of the structured data apps in the App Store. But there’s also another possibility: Yoast SEO for Shopify.
Yoast SEO for Shopify outputs structured data automatically
On WordPress, Yoast SEO has one of the best implementations of structured data out there. We built a complete graph that describes and connects every nook and cranny of your site. Google loves this! We bring that to Shopify in our Yoast SEO app so we can help you tell Google all about your products and their details.
You must follow some steps to get Yoast SEO to output Schema. A lot of structured data is added automatically, like Product information on product pages, but we need your input on other details. First, go to Apps and open the Yoast SEO for Shopify app. Go to the settings and click the Schema tab in the sidebar. Click Site Representation and fill in your store name, upload a logo, and fill in the social profiles. Now, your site is ready to rock.
Schema structured data for your articles and pages
Yoast SEO does a lot more with Schema structured data. For instance, we tell Google about your business — the name, logo, and social handles. The SEO app is flexible, so you can determine which parts of the Schema structured data you want to turn on or off should you ever want to integrate with another service.
Yoast SEO for Shopify has an additional structured data option to set yourself up for posts and pages. You can now describe the pages in detail. For instance, you can tell Google that your contact page is exactly that using a simple selection in the app. After that, Yoast SEO will add ContactPage Schema structured data to your contact page — ready for Google to enjoy.
This also goes for articles. Yoast SEO adds Article structured data to every article by default, but you can easily change this. There are news articles, reports, scholarly articles, and more options. By defining this, you give search engines more details on what they can find on the page, and they have to guess less.
7. Manage your redirects
Redirects are incredibly important and helpful when working on your site structure. With a proper redirect, you can send a customer from one URL to another URL without them noticing it. This is useful when you remove pages or products and don’t want people to stumble on dead links.
Shopify has a redirect feature built in. For one, it automatically adds a redirect when you change the slug of an existing post. If you need to do large-scale work on your site, you can upload CSV files with your redirects. You can also use the URL redirect feature in the admin settings navigation section. It’s a straightforward redirect feature with just two fields: one for the old URL you want to redirect and one for the new URL you want the old one to point to.
You can manage redirects via a simple URL redirect feature
8. Add your store to Google Search Console
With Analytics, Google Search Console is an essential tool for insights into your store’s performance in search. It gives you an idea of how your site does in a technical sense — crawlable, fast, and with valid structured data — and in a visibility sense. How do people see your pages and products, and how do they interact with them? Adding your store to Search Console is a must.
A quick rundown
Adding your Shopify store isn’t complicated:
Open Search Console and log in,
Add a new property
Choose either way if you’ve bought your URL from a third party
Choose the URL way for your examplestore.myshopify.com or examplestore.com URLs you got from Shopify (this is the only way that works)
Temporarily turn off the password protection (if needed)
Enter your domain name (including https://)
Copy the HTML file
Open your site theme settings
Click Actions > Edit code
Find the theme.liquid file and paste in the HTML tag below the head tag
Save and wait for Google to verify your site
Yoast SEO for Shopify makes adding the verification code to your ecommerce store easy. You no longer have to touch any code to do that! Open the Yoast SEO app, go to the settings, and click on Webmaster tools in the sidebar. Find the webmaster tool you want to verify — Google, Baidu, Bing, or something else — and paste the verification code you received into it. Click Save, and you are good to go. Check the head of your site to see if the code is correctly added
What are the biggest SEO issues with Shopify?
Shopify is one of the best ecommerce platforms out there. It does most things reasonably well, and with some finetuning and care, it’s a solid platform to build your online store.
Most SEO issues arise from its handling of different products and their variants. Products on the ecommerce platform can live in multiple places/URLs in your online store, and that can confuse search engines. Luckily, the CMS adds canonical URLs to signal to search engines that the one in the /products/ section is canonical. Unfortunately, you cannot do much about this, but be aware of the limitations.
Another area people could improve is Shopify’s rigid URL structure. It uses a system based on subfolders, making for unnecessary long URLs. For instance, you can find the contact page on a regular site on example.com/contact/, but on a store, that’s always example.com/pages/contact. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do about this.
Shopify is listening to its community and has begun to roll out several improvements that make it even more attractive as an ecommerce platform. Let’s hope they keep their focus and help you get the best results with your store. In the meantime, SEO apps like Yoast SEO for Shopify and the tips and checklists in ultimate guides like the one you are reading now help alleviate the various issues.
What is the best SEO app for Shopify?
Shopify is extendable, and you can choose from a broad selection of apps that help you improve your store. Some apps help ship your products, design your store, and offer customer services. Too many to choose from! Of course, there are also some SEO apps to take note of.
Some apps help you optimize images, others help with Schema structured data, and there are all-in-one SEO suites. The best one? We’re biased, but we think Yoast SEO stands out from the competition.
Yoast SEO for Shopify: Your SEO expert
WordPress fans have enjoyed using Yoast SEO for more than a decade — it’s the most popular SEO plugin for a reason! Yoast SEO is for SEO experts by SEO experts. But we didn’t make it for experts only. We’ve made SEO accessible so everyone working with WordPress can use Yoast SEO and get a fair chance in the search results. Over 13 million websites trust Yoast SEO, and our WordPress SEO app has over 25,000 five-star reviews on wordpress.org. Now, Yoast SEO is also available for Shopify. We’re ready to help shop owners get more out of their stores.
Yoast SEO for Shopify helps store owners improve their site technically and comes with an advanced SEO and readability analysis. The app will suggest improvements to your product page descriptions, helping you create the best ones.
These analyses also work on your Shopify blog. Content marketing plays a massive role in getting your store noticed on Google. The Yoast SEO app helps you write high-quality, readable content that resonates with potential customers.
Yoast SEO for Shopify helps you write awesome product descriptions that serve both customers and search engines
The best structured data for your Shopify store
To enhance your Shopify store’s organic traffic, it’s crucial to capitalize on the benefits of rich results, which increase search visibility and edge out competitors. Yoast SEO provides rich structured data/Schema.org output in JSON-LD format, supporting various types such as Product, Organization, WebSite, WebPage, BreadcrumbList, Article, and Offer. Yoast SEO also ties all its structured data together in a single graph, which helps search engines understand your store.
Additionally, Yoast SEO has integrated with the popular review apps Judge.me, Loox, Ali review, and Opinew, to generate the necessary AggregateRating schema to show your reviews in Google. Furthermore, the Yoast SEO breadcrumb block can conveniently be added to Shopify themes v2.0 to increase your store’s structured data and help boost its organic traffic.
Product variant schema
Product variant schema allows you to organize items like size, color, or material under one parent product to improve how Google displays them in search. Using properties like brand for the manufacturer, color, materialsize, and unique identifiers like sku, you can define each variant clearly. Adding this structured data helps search engines understand and showcase your product variations more effectively. Our Shopify SEO app makes it easy to implement this schema, ensuring your variants are optimized and compliant with Google’s guidelines.
Yoast SEO for Shopify outputs a lot of structured data for product variants
Of course, that’s only part of what the SEO app does. Be sure to check out the product page for Yoast SEO for Shopify or the Shopify SEO app store listing to find out more. In addition to the app, our SEO content gives you all the knowledge, tips, and tricks you need to make the most out of your SEO.
The Yoast SEO for Shopify training improves your skills!
In this guide, we gave an overview of what you can do to improve the SEO of your store. Of course, there’s more to the CMS — and to ecommerce itself. Luckily, we can help you on both fronts. Our SEO solutions come with training courses, and Shopify is no different. You’ll find an ecommerce SEO online course and training explicitly showing how to properly set up Yoast SEO for Shopify. Be sure to check out Yoast SEO Academy. Please try the ecommerce and Shopify training and bring your online store to the next level.
Conclusion on Shopify SEO
Shopify is a popular platform for hosting your online store. Rightly so, because it is easy to use and performs well out of the box. Of course, there are many things you can do to improve your store’s performance by focusing on Shopify SEO. This ultimate guide to Shopify SEO gives you an excellent place to start.
Tracking brand mentions across social media and news platforms
Starts at $49 per month; 14-day free trial available
1. Brand24
Best for spotting sudden spikes in mentions and identifying key influencers
Pricing: Starts at $199 per month; 14-day free trial available
Brand24 is an AI-powered media monitoring tool. It lets you track online mentions, analyze sentiment, and spot early signs of PR crises.
This tool stands out by tracking more than social media and news platforms. It also monitors podcasts and influencers, giving you a complete view of your brand.
Here’s what I love about Brand24:
Spot Sudden Spikes in Mentions to Immediately Act on Them
Brand24 uses AI to detect unexpected spikes or drops in brand mentions. It’s marked with an exclamation mark in your dashboard so you don’t miss it:
This is important because online conversations can change fast.
A spike in mentions may mean a PR crisis. A negative review might be going viral, or a complaint is spreading fast.
On the flip side, it could signal an opportunity to capitalize on. Like a post about your brand going viral in a positive way, or an influencer giving you a shoutout.
But how do you know whether the spike is positive or negative?
Brand24 uses AI to analyze the sentiment behind each mention. It checks if the spike is caused by positive buzz, negative feedback, or neutral chatter. This way, you can take the right action fast.
For example, Barbie had a significant spike in mentions in 2024 due to the Golden Globes event:
Brand24 tells you why the spike happened and shows you where it’s coming from. In the screenshot above, you can see it flagged Barbie’s spike due to the Golden Globes event.
It highlights key details like:
Why the spike occurred (Golden Globes event)
Which platforms drove the mentions (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube)
What type of sentiment was detected (positive admiration and awards)
The summary may not explicitly say “positive” or “negative.”
However, you can infer sentiment from the language used (“high admiration,” “winning awards”) and cross-referencing with the Sentiment tab at the top.
Track Podcast Mentions of Your Brand
Brand24 scans thousands of podcasts and alerts you whenever someone mentions your brand in a podcast title or description.
This way, you don’t miss critical conversations happening in the audio space.
You can view podcast mentions in the general Mentions tab. Or filter them by source:
People talk about brands on podcasts all the time. Whether it’s a CEO interview, product review, or deep-dive industry discussion.
But since podcasts aren’t text-based, these mentions are easy to miss.
Podcast tracking helps you:
See when influencers talk about your brand
Respond to negative mentions fast
Use positive mentions in your marketing
Identify Key Brand Influencers
Brand24 helps you find the most influential people talking about your brand. You can rank them based on number of mentions, reach, audience size, and impact:
Here’s why each filter matters and how you can use them:
Mentions: See how often someone talks about your brand. High mentions mean they’re actively discussing you, whether positive or negative. Use this to engage or address concerns quickly.
Reach: Shows how many people might see their posts. Use this to prioritize working with influencers with high reach to spread your message.
Influence score (impact): Shows how persuasive or credible the person is. This helps you spot trustworthy advocates or negative influencers before misinformation spreads.
Make Reports in One Click
Create reports to share insights with your team or clients.
Brand24 supports various formats like email, PDF, and Excel.
You can also create infographics:
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Track podcast mentions
Doesn’t scan podcast transcripts; only tracks mentions in episode titles and descriptions
Identify potential PR crisis early on
The dashboard isn’t visual, so it may look overwhelming for beginners
2. Reviewflowz
Best for collecting reviews on autopilot
Pricing: Starts at $15 per month; 14-day free trial available
Reviewflowz is a powerful review management platform. It helps you collect, keep an eye on, and show customer reviews.
Here’s what I liked about Reviewflowz the most:
Launch Targeted Review Request Campaigns
Reviewflows automates review collection in two ways:
Email campaigns: Send automated review requests after purchase, with customizable templates and follow-up scheduling
Magic links: Generate unique URLs that take customers directly to your review form—perfect for adding to receipts or sharing via SMS
Best part?
When you set up an email campaign within Reviewflowz, you can choose when to request reviews:
Always request reviews from your email list to get as much feedback as possible
Only request reviews when a star rating drops under a certain threshold (lets you improve your reputation when your review score starts to drop)
Quickly Reply to Your Customer Reviews
Link your channels (like Slack, email, and Microsoft Teams) to get instant alerts for new reviews:
These notifications let you be in the loop and address critical reviews in time.
Once connected:
Slack: New reviews are sent directly to a public Slack channel in your workspace
Email: Reviews land in your inbox
Microsoft Teams: Reviews show up in a designated Teams channel
Zapier and Webhooks: You can set up automations to trigger custom workflows
You’ll see all reviews in real time. From there, you can decide which ones need immediate attention—whether it’s a low rating, critical feedback, or a chance to thank a happy customer.
Plus, you can use AI to create and send automated replies to happy reviewers that are always within your brand’s tone.
Show Best Reviews on Your Website
Display your best reviews automatically with Reviewflowz’s customizable, mobile-friendly widgets.
Each widget automatically updates with new reviews and lets you filter by rating to showcase your strongest feedback.
Choose from:
Masonry: A stack of reviews, which turns into a list on mobile
Slider: An interactive slider that shows up to three reviews horizontally and one on mobile
Then select the review sources, the number of reviews to display, and which reviews to show based on star ratings:
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Email campaigns to gather more reviews with ease
Doesn’t track social media mentions
Customizable review widgets to showcase your feedback
AI-powered review responses
3. myPresences
Best for managing brand presence on different platforms and engaging with reviews
Pricing: Starts at $15 per month; 14-day free trial available
myPresences is an all-in-one online presence and reputation management platform.
It helps you appear in business directories, track customer reviews and engage with them.
Plus, you can display feedback on your website.
Here’s what I like about myPresences:
List Your Business Where It Matters Most
Listing your business on every platform takes a lot of time. It’s also prone to mistakes.
And when you update a phone number, move, or change a website URL, fixing it everywhere can take weeks.
myPresences makes it easy to list your business details on more than 2,000 directories.
You enter your business details once. Then, this tool pushes your business info on your chosen platforms.
But why does this matter? Is getting listed on Google not enough?
Not really.
Customers may use many different platforms to find your business, such as local directories and industry platforms.
Or they may check your website on a review site before they buy from you.
If you rely only on Google, you might miss out on potential customers who search elsewhere.
For example:
If your business is local, you’ll need to be on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google Business Profile (GBP)
If you manage a SaaS brand, being on review sites like G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot is crucial since some consumers go here before making a purchase
If you provide medical, legal, or real estate services, niche directories matter (Healthgrades, Avvo, or Zillow)
Check and Respond to Reviews Across Platforms
myPresences centralizes reviews from all major review sites. This helps you check and respond efficiently.
You can see a quick overview of your star rating distribution across all platforms in a pie chart:
Additionally, you can automate your responses with AI:
This lets you quickly respond to common reviews while keeping a consistent tone.
Showcase Customer Reviews on Your Website
myPresences allows you to show your best reviews on your website.
You can use customizable widgets for this:
Popup: Individual reviews appear as a small floating box on each page. They don’t take up much space and can appear sitewide.
List: A simple, single-column format. It’s ideal if you want them stacked clearly in one spot.
Grid: A three-column layout for showcasing many reviews at once. It’s great when you want to highlight volume and variety.
Carousel: A dynamic slider that rotates the reviews for an interactive experience. Perfect if you want to save space and make the page engaging.
You can avoid the task of copying and pasting reviews on your site. myPresences pulls in reviews automatically and updates them in real time.
This gives you fresh and authentic social proof.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Add your business details on directories that matter in your industry
Listing your details on business directories costs extra, up to $5 each. This can increase your expenses.
Manage all reviews in one place
4. Semrush Local
Best for managing local business reviews in one place and keeping listings accurate
Pricing: $50 per month + the plan you choose ($139.95/mo for Pro)
Best for tracking your brand mentions across social media and news platforms
Pricing: Starts at $49 per month; 14-day free trial available
Mention is a social media listening tool that monitors your online presence and analyzes brand mentions.
Let’s take a look at Mention’s key features:
Track Your Brand Mentions Across Channels
Mention tracks more than one billion sources. It checks for real-time brand mentions on social media, news sites, blogs, and forums.
All these are in one dashboard. You can expand each mention and see the preview of the post that includes your business name. And even know the sentiment behind the mention:
Mention also provides a link to each source. This takes you straight to the original post so you can join the conversation directly on the source site.
Create Real-Time, Visual Reports
Mention lets you make reports based on what matters most to you. This helps you analyze your brand’s online presence better.
You can either choose from predefined templates for quick insights:
Or customize reports by selecting the exact data you want to track:
In both cases, reports are real-time and visual.
Mention also creates automatic highlights. Like sudden mention spikes:
This lets you see key trends at a glance, so you don’t have to sift through long reports.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Covers a wide range of sources
Only supports text, podcasts are not included
Prompt notifications about your brand mentions
FAQs
How Do I Manage My Online Reputation?
Managing your online reputation involves:
Monitoring brand mentions across social media, news, and review sites
Responding to customer feedback
Encouraging happy customers to leave reviews
Addressing negative content with strategic responses
Keeping business listings accurate across all platforms
How Long Does It Take to See Results from Reputation Management Tools?
Reputation management tools provide insights immediately. However, improving your reputation by collecting more positive reviews, content, and SEO can take weeks or months, depending on your strategy.
Can Reputation Management Tools Remove Negative Reviews?
No, reputation management tools can’t remove negative reviews. They help you improve sentiment over time, and report false reviews if necessary.
What Metrics Should I Track to Measure Reputation Improvement?
Track the following metrics to improve your reputation:
Review ratings: Changes in star ratings across platforms
Brand sentiment: Positive vs. negative mentions over time
Mentions and reach: How often people discuss your brand online
Crisis alerts: Any sudden spikes in negative mentions
Ready to Choose Your Online Reputation Management Tool?
The best ORM tool for you depends on what you need most:
Want to track brand mentions? Brand24 and Mention help you stay on top of conversations.
Need help collecting reviews? Reviewflowz lets you automate review campaigns.
Need to manage your business details on business directories? For a local business, use Semrush Local. For a SaaS brand or professional services business, go with myPresences.
After choosing the best tool for your needs, expect the following:
First month: Set alerts, connect accounts, and test automation
Second month: Track trends and respond to reviews
Third month: Improve your strategy and let automation handle more tasks
Pro tip: Even the best tools need active engagement. Check in often. Respond to feedback quickly. This keeps your online reputation strong.
Want to discover more tools to help with your marketing processes? Check out our article on 33 digital marketing tools that suit various business needs and budgets.
If you publish writing, you’d be crazy not to use artificial intelligence.
It’s like telling a carpenter not to use a drill. You can build a deck without one. But why would you?
Writers have always embraced new tools to improve their craft.
The challenge with AI, or any technology, is that we want the easy way out.
We hope the tech will magically automate everything. And for mediocre content, AI is the perfect solution.
But creating exceptional content is HARD. No matter what tool you use.
For example, I used AI extensively to write this article.
Yet, it still took me 40+ hours to produce.
Why?
AI has made me realize how much I can improve my content. And you can, too.
I asked our content team about how they use AI in their writing and editing.
Our senior writers Yongi Barnard, Kate Starr, Shreelekha Singh, and senior editors Chris Hanna and Chris Shirlow shared their workflows and insights, which I’ll feature throughout this article.
These talented folks help Backlinko generate almost 800,000 sessions per month.
Below are seven timeless writing practices supported by AI.
Let’s start with planning your writing project.
1. Use AI to Define Your Audience
Without a deep understanding of your audience, even brilliant insights can fall flat.
AI makes reader research way easier.
You can analyze thousands of real conversations in minutes. No need to spend weeks on interviews or surveys.
A Faster Way to Do Audience Research
Using this article as an example, I wanted to understand how people felt about using AI for writing.
The best place for unfiltered thoughts? Reddit.
So, I Googled “reddit using ai to write good content” and found dozens of threads.
I gathered a handful of community discussions and exported them as PDFs.
I’m researching for a piece about using AI to write good content. I’ve attached five relevant Reddit threads. Please analyze these conversations and create a table of:
Desires: What do people want to achieve?
Pain points: What problems or challenges do they face?
Objections: What concerns or resistance do they express?
For each theme, please include a relevant supporting quote from the discussions.
The result was eye-opening.
The analysis revealed patterns I hadn’t considered.
It also included quotes that captured the audience’s raw emotions and language.
This helped me ground my writing in real experiences.
You don’t have to follow my exact process. For instance, Kate Starr, our senior writer, uses various sources for audience research:
“I often feed different data sources to AI. This includes Google’s People Also Ask sections and client conversation transcripts. The key is finding real conversations where your target audience expresses their challenges.
I recently took a consulting call transcript and created a detailed customer persona. This helped shape our entire content strategy”.
The key is to use AI to:
Process large amounts of audience data quickly
Identify patterns you might miss manually
Connect insights to real human experiences through quotes
Tip: Create a folder of interesting community discussions. When you find an engaging thread, save it immediately. You never know when that insight will be useful for future content.
2. Use AI to Find Your Unique Angle
It’s easy to get inspired by popular content in your field and remix those ideas.
That’s exactly what AI does by default, too.
A better approach?
Find perspectives that other content and most LLMs overlook. This makes your writing fresh and engaging.
Here’s how to do it in three simple steps.
Step 1: Gather Your Source Material
Find the top 3-5 posts for your topic.
You can do this for social media posts, articles, and emails (if you have access).
For instance, I found three posts on AI writing and copied them to a Google Doc before exporting the text file.
Step 2: Get AI to Summarize the Data and Suggest Ideas
Take your source materials from Step 1 and ask AI to create a comprehensive analysis.
Here’s a prompt:
I’ve shared several articles about [TOPIC]. Please analyze them and create a detailed breakdown with these categories:
Common Patterns:
List 3-4 approaches that appear frequently
Include specific examples from the articles
Note any patterns in structure or presentation
Assumptions Made:
List 3-4 assumptions these articles make without questioning them
Point out any gaps in evidence or logic
Identify claims that could use more support
Missing Views:
List 3-4 important perspectives that aren’t being discussed
Note any audience needs that aren’t fully addressed
Highlight opportunities for deeper coverage
Notable Elements:
List any unique or particularly effective approaches
Point out strong evidence or examples
Identify innovative structure or presentation
Here’s the output for using AI in writing:
Category
Details
Common Patterns
Tool comparisons focusing on features over strategy
Basic “input/output” workflow examples
Generic productivity benefits without specifics
Heavy focus on prompt engineering
Assumptions Made
More AI usage automatically means better content
Readers already understand AI fundamentals
One-size-fits-all approaches will work
Ethical concerns can be handled with simple disclaimers
Missing Views
Quality control processes and measurements
Strategic frameworks for tool selection
Real examples of human-AI collaboration
Cost-benefit analysis for different approaches
Notable Elements
One article included detailed workflow diagrams
Another featured mini case studies of failures
Several had good ethical guidelines
One included original research on AI output quality
After analyzing, ask the AI for new ideas based on the opportunities it found.
Here’s what Claude came back with for this article:
Step 3 – Analyze and Refine Your Angle
Sometimes, the angles are usable with the first output.
But often, it’s a dance between you and the robot to find something compelling.
Here’s how this process shaped this article:
While plenty of tool comparisons and basic workflows existed, few posts offered strategic frameworks for using AI effectively.
As I dug deeper, I noticed something more fundamental.
Everyone was focused on making writing easier. Tools, prompts, shortcuts.
But they were missing the tough reality:
Creating top-notch content is difficult. With AI or not.
That became my angle: How to use AI thoughtfully while embracing the necessary work of writing great content.
Pro tip: Your first insight often leads to an even better angle. Don’t be afraid to evolve your thinking beyond what the initial analysis shows.
3. Use AI to Create An Outline
Nearly every exceptional piece of content starts with a detailed plan. But many writers skip this step.
You risk wasting hours writing in circles or missing the brief entirely.
That’s why our team never writes a draft without a thorough outline.
With AI, creating that outline just got a lot easier.
Strengthen Your Draft Outline Through Collaboration
It’s tempting to ask AI to create your entire outline (losing your unique perspective). Or ignore AI completely (missing valuable insights).
A better approach?
Treat AI as a thoughtful discussion partner.
Our senior editor, Chris Shirlow, emphasizes using AI strategically during outlining:
“I use my own competitor analysis to create outlines first. Then, I’ll use AI to spot potential gaps. For example, when outlining an email marketing guide, AI might suggest adding a section on automation that I hadn’t considered”.
The key is to start with your own research. This ensures the foundation reflects real expertise. Then, use AI to refine and expand your thinking.
With this article, for example, I started with some loose structural notes:
Demand
Audience
Angle
Structure
Research
Writing
Visuals
Enhancements
Editing
Then, I prompted Claude with some attached reference material.
Hey Claude, I’m writing an article about using how to use AI to write better content. I’ve prepared my brief and a very loose outline. I’ve also attached an article that inspired the idea.
What are your initial impressions of my approach?
Claude’s analysis (I’ve summarized the output):
Strong Points
AI positioning: Framed as a tool (like a carpenter’s drill) rather than a replacement
Timeless focus: Principles over specific AI tools/prompts for longer relevance
Credibility: Using concrete case studies and personal examples
Areas for Development
Structure: Consider combining overlapping principles (e.g., “Audience” and “Research”)
Implementation: Add more specific examples of AI enhancing each practice
Meta-narrative: Strengthen how we’re using AI to write this very article
Balance: Include section on AI limitations for completeness
From the AI’s first output, we started our collaboration.
Claude helped me name each element “practices” instead of “tips.
We challenged each other on the substructure of each practice.
Then it suggested H2s—many of which I didn’t like.
Through a LONG chat and many pauses of me returning to my document, we landed on an outline.
Here’s how the structure evolved through discussion:
Version 1
Version 2
Version 3
Version 4
Version 5
Demand
Deep Research: Moving Beyond Surface-Leval Facts
Talk to Your Customers First
Define Your Audience
Use AI to Define Your Audience
Audience
Audience Understanding: Creating Content That Deeply Resonates
Build Your Audience Map
Find Your Unique Angle
Use AI to Find Your Unique Angle
Angle
Strategic Positioning: Finding Your Unique Angle
Develop Your Unique Angle
Create a Clear Outline
Use AI to Create an Outline
Structure
Narrative Architecture: Building Clear, Compelling Flow
Structure Your Content Flow
Research Your Topic
Use AI to Research Your Topic
Research
Evidence & Examples: Making Ideas Concrete
Show, Don’t Just Tell
Writing Engaging Content
Use AI to Write Engaging Content
Writing
Voice & Style: Crafting a Distinctive Presence
Find Your Brand Voice
Add Valuable Supporting Elements
Use AI to Add Valuable Supporting Elements
Enhancements
Enhancement Elements: Amplifying Impact
Add Powerful Enhancements
Edit for Impact
Use AI to Edit Your Draft
Editing
Refinement & Optimization: Polishing for Performance
Polish Your Final Product
This iterative process helped me:
Make headings more action-oriented
Create a consistent pattern (“Use AI to…”), which also helps for search engine optimization
Let’s look at how AI can help you turn this outline into content through research.
4. Use AI to Research Your Topic
Research has always been the foundation of excellent writing.
Pre-internet, research meant hours in libraries digging through catalogs, journals, and textbooks.
Then, digital changed everything. But it created a new problem:
Information overload.
Now you have instant access to millions of sources.
Blog posts. Academic papers. Community discussions. Expert interviews. Analytics data.
But do you have time to process it all?
That’s where AI shines.
It can scan thousands of sources in seconds, helping you catch insights you might miss.
Let’s explore how to use it effectively.
Using AI for Primary Research
When you do interviews, gather raw data, or run surveys, you create unique content that’s hard to copy.
The trick is to use AI throughout the research process—not just for analysis.
Planning Better Research Questions
The quality of your research depends on asking the right questions.
For example, when writing this article, I initially planned to use only my own AI experiences as examples. But something felt missing.
So, I started a discussion with Claude:
Me: I’m finding limitations in my thinking. I could add more perspectives by surveying our editorial team about how they use AI.
AI: This could significantly strengthen the article. Multiple writers demonstrating how they tackle AI challenges would make your points more powerful than theory alone.
Consider:
What specific insights you need
The most efficient way to gather them
How to make participation easy
With Claude’s validation, I developed survey questions through an iterative process.
If you want to try this approach, here’s a template to get started:
Before we design specific questions, please evaluate this research approach:
Target: [describe who you’ll survey/interview]
Goal: [what you need to learn]
Method: [how you plan to gather data]
Timeline: [your constraints]
Identify any:
Potential issues
Missing opportunities
Ways to improve efficiency
Then, the research questions:
Help me create [survey/interview] questions about topic.
Consider:
Audience: [describe participants]
Time constraints: [expected time commitment]
Key objectives: [list 2-3 main goals]
Required output: [what you need to create]
Structure questions to be:
Focused yet open-ended
Easy to answer quickly
Specific about examples needed
Finally, test your questions:
Here are my draft questions. Please analyze them for:
Clarity and potential confusion
Leading or biased language
Gaps in coverage
Logical flow
Example:
After several rounds with AI, my original idea of “let’s survey the team” changed to:
A focused survey using conditional logic
Clear examples of what I needed
A friendly, collaborative introduction
Specific prompts for AI usage
The result? Rich insights from the team that enhanced this article.
Getting More from Expert Interviews
Want to fully engage with your interview subjects while capturing all the details? AI can help.
Start by recording your conversations (with permission, of course). Have a real dialogue. Follow interesting threads. Then, let AI help you extract every valuable insight.
Here are some simple prompts:
Prepare your interview.
Please help me prepare for an expert interview about topic.
Review this background material and suggest:
Key discussion areas to cover
Follow-up questions for each area
Potential examples to request
Data points to validate
Process the recording.
I’ve shared a transcript of my expert interview about topic. Please:
Create a structured summary of key points
Extract specific examples and case studies
Identify unique insights or perspectives
Pull compelling quotes
Note areas needing clarification or follow-up
Validate insights.
Here are my key takeaways from the interview. Please:
Check if conclusions are supported by the transcript
Identify any assumptions I’m making
Suggest additional context needed
Note alternative interpretations
Making Sense of Raw Data
The challenge of research isn’t gathering data—it’s finding the story in it.
When our editorial team finished the AI usage survey, I faced this exact situation.
I wanted to process the responses quickly, but also to capture every valuable insight.
Here’s how AI helped me analyze the responses:
Get a high-level overview.
I’ve shared our team’s survey responses about AI usage. Please:
Identify common patterns across responses
Note unique or unexpected approaches
Highlight particularly detailed examples
Suggest potential themes to explore
Drill down to the specifics.
For the [specific practice], please analyze:
Different approaches team members use
Most successful use cases
Common challenges or limitations
Specific tools or prompts mentioned
Notable workflow differences
Extract supporting material.
From these responses about topic, please:
Find compelling quotes that illustrate key points
Identify concrete examples with clear outcomes
Note any interesting AI prompts shared
Suggest potential visuals or diagrams
This analysis revealed that our team uses AI differently for each practice. Some excel at research, others at editing.
For instance, everyone stressed the need to use AI carefully. And not fully depend on it.
Pro tip: Before using AI to analyze data, clearly define what “valuable insights” means for your project. This helps AI focus on what matters most.
Using AI for Secondary Research
Secondary research meant spending hours reading papers, reports, and discussions.
Not anymore.
AI reshapes how we process existing content.
Let’s look at some use cases.
Extracting Audio and Video Content for Gems
Some of the best insights are buried in hour-long podcasts and conference talks.
Founders share behind-the-scenes stories. Experts reveal their frameworks. And industry veterans discuss trends they haven’t written about yet.
But watching hours of video isn’t always practical.
AI can save time here.
Here’s how I used AI to extract powerful insights from founder interviews for my ecommerce growth strategies article:
First, I found a podcast where Who Is Elijah’s founders shared their journey to $20M in revenue.
Then, I used Rev AI to transcribe the full interview.
Instead of reading through 19,000 words of transcript, I had Claude analyze the conversation with this prompt:
I’m writing about ecommerce growth strategies. Please analyze this founder interview and:
Identify key decisions that drove growth
Extract specific metrics and results
Find unique insights about their process
Pull compelling quotes to support each point
The analysis revealed a fascinating story about operational efficiency:
They cut their team from 44 to 21 people
Shifted from full-time specialists to agency partnerships
Rebuilt their systems from scratch
Turned unprofitable (-60%) campaigns into winners
This single podcast gave me both a compelling case study and practical lessons readers could apply.
Synthesizing Complex Documents
Academic papers and industry reports contain valuable data. But they’re often dense, jargony, and hard to apply practically.
Shreelekha Singh, our senior writer, uses detailed context to get better research results from AI.
“When writing about AI in healthcare, I always share my article’s specific objectives and approach with Perplexity.
I’ll outline that I need evidence-based analysis focused on measurable outcomes. Not just predictions.
This detailed context helps AI find more relevant research papers and case studies.”
Another example:
When writing an article about information gain, I needed to wrap my head around Google’s patent application.
But it’s written in technical language that would make your eyes glaze over.
Instead of getting overwhelmed, I used AI to help me interpret this complex material.
I uploaded the patent application to Claude and asked about information gain signals.
Claude helped identify and explain relevant metrics like “UserActionSignals” and “ClickSatisfaction” in plain language.
I quickly learned Google’s process for evaluating and testing new information.
The same approach works for:
Academic papers and studies
Technical documentation
Industry reports
Legal documents
Research data
The takeaway?
Think of AI as your study partner. One that can read a 100-page document in seconds and explain the key points in plain English.
5. Use AI to Write Engaging Content
LLMs generate pretty good output with minimal prompting.
But producing engaging writing in your authentic voice? That’s where AI can be rather underwhelming.
I’ve been trying to write with AI since 2021, and I’m convinced the models have a default writing style.
AI LOVES writing in contrasting pairs: “Not this. But that.”
It also enjoys phrases like “transform,” “game-changing,” “leverage,” and “optimize.” (Not that there’s anything wrong with these words.)
And if AI could write your entire project in a list, it would.
If you’re often dissatisfied with the output, let me show you how to get better results.
Create Excellent Reference Materials
The more specific context you can give AI, the better the output matches your style.
This means defining your writing style clearly.
How?
Create detailed guidelines, including:
Reader personas
Target grade level
Headline formulas
Tonality
Examples
Opening hooks
In addition to your guidelines, make it your mission to create the perfect article or chapter to use as a writing sample.
Once you have your guidelines and examples, you’ll be more satisfied with the AI output.
For example, I’ve created a dedicated project in Claude for Backlinko. It has over 20k words of reference materials.
Every time I start a new conversation, Claude has this context readily available.
There’s no need to explain our style requirements over and over.
Tip: If your AI tool doesn’t have a project feature, you can save your resources in a folder on your computer. Then, you can use them in your chats.
Build Progressive Context
Your conversation with AI should evolve as your content develops.
Take this article section as an example. I started a dedicated chat on “Using AI for Writing.” I shared:
The outline
The article draft so far
Team survey responses
My goals for this section
When I write the next section about supporting elements, I’ll start a new chat. But I’ll include this completed section as reference material.
This progressive approach helps AI maintain consistency while adapting to each section’s unique needs.
Shreelekha uses a similar method.
“I create different projects for different aspects of my writing. This helps me maintain focus and ensures AI has exactly the context needed for each task”.
Depending on your LLM, this sectional approach will help manage your daily credits as long chats burn through your usage.
Pro tip: Write the first 10% of your project from scratch. This will set the tone for your piece and give AI a clear direction for better outputs.
Embrace Messy Collaboration with AI
The best AI writing output happens through conversation.
Share your half-formed ideas. Question its suggestions. Challenge it to think deeper.
For instance, when writing this section, I asked AI to expand on my outline. But I didn’t just accept the first response.
Instead of settling for general advice about “prompting for a specific tone,” I asked for concrete examples of how AI’s default writing differs from Backlinko’s style.
This led to identifying specific phrases and patterns.
For instance, here’s how my opening hook evolved through AI collaboration:
You might go sentence for sentence, idea for idea, until you strike gold.
It can be tedious, but it’s better than doing it alone.
Find Perfect Examples (When You Need Them)
LLMs excel at suggesting relevant examples and case studies to strengthen your writing.
Shreelekha uses AI to brainstorm examples when she’s stuck:
“I describe the concept I’m trying to illustrate and the type of example I need. AI often suggests angles I hadn’t considered, which I can then research further.
Here’s my go-to prompt template:
“I’m explaining [concept]. I need an example that shows [specific aspect]. Ideally from [industry/type of company]. The example should demonstrate [desired outcome].”
For instance, while writing about data visualization, I needed examples of companies using charts effectively in their content. I gave AI these parameters, and it suggested looking at HubSpot’s State of Marketing report—which perfectly illustrated my point about making complex data accessible.
But don’t just take AI’s suggestions at face value. Use them as starting points for deeper investigation. When AI suggests an example, I:
Verify the details independently
Look for additional context
Consider alternative examples
Evaluate if it truly serves my argument
Chris Shirlow emphasizes this balanced approach:
“The key is to start with your own ideas and research. Then use AI to expand those concepts and find fresh angles. Never let AI drive the direction of your content.”
6. Use AI to Create Content Assets
Content assets like checklists, calculators, and infographics turn your writing into practical tools for readers.
The right asset can clarify complex concepts, aid learning, or guide important decisions.
Creating these resources once required designers and developers.
AI makes it possible to create without these skills.
Create Visual Assets
Many readers don’t consume every word you write.
They scan. They skim. They look for visual anchors to guide them through your ideas.
A study by MIT found that the human brain can process images in as little as 13 milliseconds. That’s up to 600 times faster than text.
But creating professional graphics used to mean:
Learning design software
Understanding design principles
Spending hours on each visual
Hiring expensive designers
Not anymore.
AI can help you create compelling visuals in seconds.
For example, in our 4 P’s of Marketing article, our senior writer, Yongi Barnard, used a graphic to explain why personalization matters.
The visual tells a compelling story at a glance.
To recreate this, gather your data.
Then, give AI parameters:
Please help me design a graphic showing these three personalization statistics:
80% of consumers are more likely to purchase if brands offer personalized experiences
48.2% of marketers say personalization improves click-through rates the most
66% of customers expect companies to understand their personal needs
Use:
A clean, minimal design
Progress circles to represent percentages
Dark background with light text for contrast
Short, clear descriptions under each statistic
Space for source attribution
Then, you just need to refine the finishing touches (colors, spacing, etc.).
Pro tip: Don’t just think about data visualization. Use AI to create:
Process diagrams
Comparison charts
Timeline graphics
Concept illustrations
Feature breakdowns
Our senior editor, Chris Hanna, puts it well:
“The best writers think like producers now. They ask themselves: how can I make this concept visual? How can I show instead of tell?
AI makes that possible without becoming a design expert”.
Create Smart Checklists
Converting processes into checklists makes your content more actionable.
But creating an effective checklist isn’t as simple as writing bullet points. You need to:
Break down complex processes
Put steps in the optimal order
Include validation checks
Add resource links
Consider different user scenarios
This is where AI can help.
The key is to prompt AI after you’ve written your draft.
This way, the LLM will have full context for your content and can create more detailed, relevant checklists.
For example, our senior editor, Shannon Willoby, made a 12-month checklist to help with her article on starting a blog.
She prompted AI to create the checklist based on her article content. Pretty simple but effective.
Here’s a template to get started:
I’ve written an article about topic. Please create a comprehensive checklist that:
Breaks down each major step
Includes key decision points
Notes important resources needed
Flags common pitfalls to avoid
Suggests ways to validate progress
Build Interactive Tools
Interactive tools like calculators, analyzers, and decision trees turn your knowledge into useful solutions. Readers can use these tools right away.
There are many opportunities, regardless of your industry:
Say you write about productivity. You could create a workload capacity analyzer that helps readers balance their projects.
If you’re a wellness writer, you might develop a habit-stacking planner to help people create healthy routines.
Or, if you’re a gardening expert, you could create a seasonal planting calculator.
For my ecommerce growth strategies article, I used AI to build an interactive profitability calculator.
Instead of explaining formulas, readers can explore different scenarios to understand how variables like cost of goods sold (COGS), shipping, and marketing expenses impact their bottom line.
The best part?
You can bring these AI-designed tools to life using no-code platforms like Calculator Studio. Here’s how:
Identify calculation needs in your content
Ask AI to help structure the logic and formulas
Design the user interface (AI can mock this up)
Build it in your no-code tool of choice
For instance, when building the profitability calculator, I prompted AI with:
I need a calculator that helps ecommerce owners estimate profitability. It should:
Include key metrics like COGS, shipping, and marketing costs
Calculate gross and net margins
Show breakeven analysis
Start simple.
A basic calculator that solves one specific problem well is better than a complex tool that confuses users.
7. Use AI to Edit Your Draft
Editing is the difference between good content and exceptional content.
But getting quality edits can be expensive and slow. You either:
Pay editors by the hour
Lose billable time as a freelancer
Wait through lengthy review cycles
Miss issues when editing your own work
AI changes this dynamic.
You can get quick, unbiased feedback and try different versions before your editor reviews a draft.
Let me show you how to do this effectively.
Get Strategic Input First
It’s tempting to jump right into line editing—fixing grammar and polishing sentences.
But start with the big picture.
Here’s how Chris Hanna uses AI for strategic editing:
“I feed the draft, outline, and brief to Claude. Then I ask: What’s missing? Where could we strengthen the argument? Which sections need more evidence?”
AI can help by:
Comparing your piece against successful examples
Identifying patterns and gaps
Suggesting structural improvements
This approach saves revision time. Why polish paragraphs you might cut or rewrite anyway?
Create Quick Quality Checks
Once you have your structure solid, create systematic quality checks.
You want to verify your content hits key engagement metrics.
At Backlinko, we track three readability metrics:
Single-Sentence Paragraph Percentage: The ratio of paragraphs with just one sentence.
Visual Break Density: Number of visual elements per 1,000 words. Higher density means better scannability.
Grade Level: We target Grade 7 or below for accessibility.
AI can calculate these instantly and suggest specific fixes. Here’s how:
Share your metrics targets with AI
Paste in a section of your content
Ask for both analysis and specific fixes
Beyond metrics, use AI to check for:
Redundant ideas and phrases
Passive voice overuse
Transition effectiveness
Brand voice consistency
Technical accuracy
Test Critical Elements
Some parts of your content matter more than others.
Your headline determines whether people click.
Your introduction decides if they stay.
Your calls-to-action influence if they convert.
These elements deserve extra attention.
Using headlines as an example, I note 3-5 potential titles.
I Google the topic I’m writing about and screenshot the search results.
I upload the screenshot to Claude. Then, I ask how my title ideas compare to the top articles.
Claude will make suggestions based on our title guidance, best practices, and differentiators.
Yongi uses a similar process for introductions:
“I write three different openings and ask AI which one creates the strongest hook. Then we discuss why—looking at elements like curiosity, relevance, and emotional pull”.
You can also test:
Section transitions
Examples
Proof point placement
Technical explanations
Closing arguments
Balance AI and Human Editing
AI accelerates the editing process, but human judgment remains essential.
Here’s how to make this work:
Start with AI for broad analysis and quick fixes
Apply your judgment to AI’s suggestions
Test variations of important elements
Verify technical accuracy independently
Maintain your unique voice and perspective
Chris Shirlow supports this balance:
“AI helps us identify potential issues faster. But we still need human expertise to decide what changes actually serve our readers.”
Start Writing Smarter, Not Harder
Pick one project you need to write this week.
Apply just one of these practices—maybe getting AI’s help with audience research or outlining.
That’s all you need to do to start seeing results.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-03-26 17:11:162025-03-26 17:11:16How to Use AI for Writing Exceptional Content (7 Best Practices)
