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Hydration and SEO: How it works and why it matters

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Hydration and SEO- How it works and why it matters

If your site runs on a framework like Next.js or Nuxt, hydration shapes how your pages become interactive, but it’s rarely explained in terms that matter to SEOs.

It’s more approachable than it sounds. Here’s what hydration is, how it works, where it affects SEO (and where it doesn’t), and how different frameworks handle it.

What is hydration?

Hydration is the process of JavaScript running in your browser “taking over” the static HTML built on the server, turning it into a page you can actually interact with.

Here’s the process:

  • The server builds complete, fully formed HTML and sends it to your browser. You see the content right away, but it isn’t interactive. The buttons don’t work yet, and nothing responds to clicks.
  • Hydration happens when the page’s framework (Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, and others) finishes loading. It walks over the existing HTML, attaches event listeners, and reconnects the visible markup with the logic that makes it work.
  • After hydration, the page behaves like a normal interactive app.

Server-rendered HTML paints quickly, which is great for first impressions and often for Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). As the timeline below shows, traditional hydration means the page isn’t actually usable until hydration finishes.

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Hydration adds interactivity, not content

Hydration doesn’t add content to the page. The text, images, and layout already arrived from the server. It only adds behavior, wiring up the existing HTML so it can respond to you. Put simply, before hydration you can read the page, and after hydration you can use it.

You can see this side by side below. The only difference between the two pages is whether the button responds.

Don’t confuse hydration with the rendering pattern, which determines where and when the page is built. Server-side rendering (SSR), static site generation (SSG), and client-side rendering (CSR) each decide how much of the page arrives as finished HTML versus how much JavaScript builds later in the browser.

Because hydration runs on server-rendered (SSR) and static (SSG) pages, the content is already present in the initial HTML. Google can index that content from the initial HTML instead of relying on the render step, which is more reliable than a client-rendered blank shell.

When hydration becomes an SEO problem

Most of the time, hydration isn’t directly an SEO issue. It only becomes one when something breaks, usually a mismatch. This is when the server’s HTML and what the framework builds in the browser don’t agree.

A mismatch typically comes from one of a few sources:

  • Content rendered from a browser-only API that the server can’t access, like localStorage.
  • A value that changes between the server and client, such as new Date().
  • A third-party script or browser extension that alters the DOM before the framework hydrates it.
  • Invalid HTML that the browser rewrites in the background, producing a structure the framework didn’t expect.

In these cases, hydration can’t reconcile the two versions, so the framework throws out the mismatched part and re-renders it. The exact process depends on the framework.

Here, a <time> value from new Date() renders differently on the server and in the browser, forcing a re-render.

That creates problems on three fronts. The re-render makes the page feel sluggish (INP) and shifts the layout (CLS). It can also leave the page outright broken because event listeners may fail to attach, causing buttons and forms to stop working.

In severe cases, because Google may read the raw server HTML before rendering the JavaScript, it can index the version that’s about to be discarded, storing content visitors never actually see.

Developers can resolve these issues by fixing the underlying causes of the mismatches. For example, they can use valid HTML so the browser doesn’t rewrite it behind the scenes.

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How to spot hydration problems on a live site

Hydration errors aren’t as explicit on a live site as they are during development. Start by checking the browser’s Developer Tools console for hydration or JavaScript warnings, then use these additional checks:

  • Watch the page load for content that shifts, flickers, or stays unresponsive.
  • Run important templates through Google Search Console’s URL Inspection tool to see how the page is rendered.
  • Crawl in JavaScript-rendering mode (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb) to compare rendered output against raw HTML at scale.

How frameworks handle hydration

Modern frameworks take different approaches to hydration, including ways to reduce or skip it, to balance performance, interactivity, and JavaScript execution.

The most common approaches are:

  • Full hydration: The whole page hydrates in one go. It sounds simple, but it ships the most JavaScript and puts the most work on the main thread.
  • Partial hydration: Only the interactive bits (“islands”) hydrate. The static parts stay as plain HTML and never get touched. Astro’s islands architecture is built around this.
  • Progressive hydration: The page hydrates in pieces, either as sections scroll into view or on a schedule, instead of all at once. Angular’s incremental hydration works this way.

Two newer approaches sidestep hydration:

  • React Server Components: Some components render entirely on the server and ship zero JavaScript, so there’s nothing to hydrate on the client.
  • Resumability: It skips hydration completely. The page picks up exactly where the server left off, with no components re-running on load. Qwik does this. It’s also the newest of these approaches and the least battle-tested.

Here’s how they compare:

Technique What hydrates JavaScript shipped Example
Full hydration The entire page Most Next.js (Pages Router)
Partial hydration (islands) Only interactive components Less Astro
Progressive hydration The page, in pieces over time Same total, spread out Angular
React Server Components Nothing (for server-only parts) Less Next.js (App Router)
Resumability Nothing, hydration is skipped Least Qwik

What this means for your site

Most of the time, hydration isn’t an SEO problem. It only becomes one when the server’s HTML and the browser’s rendered version disagree.

Newer frameworks leave less room for that to happen because each generation ships less JavaScript and does less work in the browser. Still, the mismatches that do surface matter, especially when search engines index a version of the page your visitors never see.

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Used or cited: The two ways brands appear in AI search

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Used or cited: The two ways brands appear in AI search

Ranking within Google’s traditional search results provides diminishing returns. Ads, AI Overviews, and other search engine results page (SERP) features push organic links further down the page.

As the search landscape changes, how should brands adapt to ensure they’re represented in AI-powered responses?

The more you know about how AI engines use your brand’s information and when they cite it, the better you can use AI search to your advantage. With that knowledge, you can move beyond whether AI models know your brand and start developing your own AI visibility strategy.

Collapse of the click economy

It’s important for most brands to understand AI search and begin developing an AI SEO strategy as quickly as possible. While a full transformation from organic to AI search appears to be years away, AI SEO may eventually replace traditional SEO.

Google is already leaning heavily on AI search. As CEO Sundar Pichai said in an April article from The Verge: 

  • “Search had a strong quarter with AI experiences driving usage, queries at an all-time high, and 19% revenue growth.”

At the same time, users are adapting to AI search features. When users encounter an AI-powered summary in search results, they click a blue link just 8% of the time, a Pew Research study found. When they don’t encounter AI summaries, they click blue links 15% of the time.

Although AI search traffic is still limited, it tends to have a higher conversion rate than organic search traffic. AI traffic had a conversion rate of 11.4%, compared to 5.3% for organic search traffic, per a Similarweb study.

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Brand presence within AI engines: Usage vs. citation

Brands can exist in AI systems in two distinct ways: usage and citation.

AI engines ingest information about your brand and use it when responding to search queries. This is somewhat similar to how Google traditionally indexes pages before ranking and serving them in search results.

When AI engines use your content, they may also mention your brand as an unlinked citation. This can drive discovery and may prompt users to search for and engage with your brand.

Citation occurs when an AI engine directly references your brand as a source of information. This may be a link to your web page, a link to your social profile, or a clickable phone link that lets users call you.

Within OpenAI, usage and citation rely on separate technical levers. As OpenAI’s documentation explains, there are four distinct user agents, with OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot deployed separately. Other AI systems have similar controls and measures that point to the same distinction.

Why citations are only part of the AI visibility equation

AI engines often answer questions directly without necessarily citing web sources. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Before AI Overviews, Google tried something similar with featured snippets.

ChatGPT retrieves almost the exact same number of cited (~16.57) and uncited (~16.58) URLs to generate an average response, according to an Ahrefs study. Yet Reddit accounts for more than two-thirds (67.8%) of uncited URLs. As a result, comparing cited and uncited URLs is really a comparison between search results and Reddit API output.

This demonstrates that many AI systems are biased in the uncited information they provide to users. Certain platforms and websites are better than others at helping brands appear in AI answers. Brands that try to force themselves into AI models without understanding where those models source most of their information will be at a distinct disadvantage.

How to improve AI usage and citation for your brand

Start by tracking your brand’s status and progress over time. Run a representative selection of prompts through an AI visibility platform and examine the citation sources. Where do they land, and what does that tell you?

There are many emerging AI citation tracking platforms to choose from. Established platforms like Semrush and Ahrefs have also integrated AI tracking features.

Scale your tracking and research efforts as much as possible. This can be difficult because AI prompt tracking often relies on API calls and is more expensive than traditional search ranking tracking.

As long as your sample is broadly representative, most tracking platforms will pull multiple responses and calculate some type of average. Although the volume of data is smaller, it’s usually quite rich.

Don’t forget to read AI and data vendor studies. They’re valuable sources of information because they show where AI engines pull information from.

Continual monitoring and adaptation are key. Over time, you can place your brand within the sources AI engines rely on most heavily.

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Should you bother with traditional search rankings?

Yes, you should continue to pursue traditional search rankings, but not for the reasons you might think. The connection between organic ranking positions and performance has become much more nebulous.

However, Ahrefs research suggests a correlation between AI citations and Google ranking positions, at least for Google AI Overviews. A July 2025 study found that 76.1% of pages cited in AI Overviews ranked in Google’s top 10 organic search results. For AI Overviews, which may become a dominant force in AI search over the coming years, traditional rankings still seem to matter.

How AI Overview citations rank in the SERPs

AI engines rarely cite generic content that restates what other sources already say, an April study from Semrush found. Content that earns citations adds unique value.

This aligns with Google’s helpful content guidance, which encourages brands to publish original information. Producing content with a unique, trusted, and statistically grounded perspective can also help improve Google rankings.

Since many tactics for earning higher organic rankings can also earn AI citations, there’s no reason to abandon traditional SEO techniques and content strategies.

The growth of AI visibility and the fate of traditional SEO

Both usage and citation require continual tracking and analysis. To increase the likelihood that AI engines use your brand’s knowledge and content, get your brand into the sources each AI model relies on. To earn citations, stay crawlable, rank organically, and say something original.

Classic SEO still earns its keep because the techniques that win organic rankings often earn AI citations as well. Yet the returns are diminishing, and AI SEO may one day replace traditional SEO altogether. That’s still a long way off, so for now, keep ranking, start tracking, and pursue both.

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How to get the most from Microsoft Advertising campaigns

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How to get more from Microsoft Advertising than a campaign import

If you’re struggling to scale performance with Microsoft Advertising, you may be treating it as a place to replicate a strategy developed elsewhere.

Import can get you live fast. Performance comes from adding human judgment, Microsoft-specific structure, foundational measurement, controls tailored to your business needs, and a broad range of creative assets that help AI understand your products or services.

The strongest accounts share a common approach: Import is a starting point, visual creatives unlock more demand and better performance, and AI performs best when you give it the right structure, creative, measurement, and guardrails.

Here’s how to use Microsoft-specific mechanics to improve performance while avoiding common pitfalls.

Note: I’m a Microsoft employee, and this article was written as objectively as possible. I’ve also included hidden gems sourced from the community that highlight favorite features where relevant.

1. Start with import, but don’t stop there

Import is useful because it removes friction. It can bring over structure, assets, and settings from Google, Meta, or Pinterest so you can launch faster. The mistake is assuming a successful import means your Microsoft Advertising strategy is finished.

Imported campaigns preserve yesterday’s assumptions. Microsoft Advertising still requires decisions about budget, bidding, audiences, creative, measurement, reporting, and AI-powered opportunities.

Decide whether sync helps or holds you back

One of the most important import decisions is whether future changes from the source platform should continue syncing to Microsoft Advertising. If your goal is to mirror another platform, automatic sync may reduce overhead. If your goal is to build a Microsoft-specific strategy, automatic sync can quietly erase the optimizations you make after launch.

To access the full list of import settings, go to Manual import > Advanced settings. Review which settings should stay, which should change, and which Microsoft-specific opportunities weren’t part of the original structure.

Review budgets, bids, currency, and Microsoft-only options

Imported budgets may not reflect the opportunity or efficiency available, especially if you consolidate campaigns with ad-group-level controls. 

Imported bids may preserve assumptions from another platform instead of giving Microsoft Advertising room to optimize for its own auction dynamics, audiences, and conversion data.

Review Microsoft-specific settings after import

Import also can’t choose Microsoft-specific opportunities for you. Review these settings after launch:

  • LinkedIn profile targeting: Bid up or down, observe, and use LinkedIn profile data as a Performance Max audience signal. Microsoft supports Company, Industry, Job Function, and Seniority.
  • Ad-group-level scheduling and location targeting: Override campaign-level schedules and location targets at the ad group level. You have access to the same settings, including whether ads serve in the user’s time zone or the account’s time zone.
  • Impression-based remarketing: Target, exclude, or adjust bids based on someone seeing your ad. As long as there’s at least one Audience ads campaign or ad group in the source seed lists (up to 20), any campaign can target any other campaign (for example, search can target search). Impression-based remarketing doesn’t require an existing email list or pixel, and members can remain on the list for up to 30 days after a single impression.
  • Multimedia ads: Visual-heavy ads that occupy a unique position on the SERP and are eligible to serve in Copilot. They have their own auction and can appear on the same SERP as your text ad without competing against it. You can bid more aggressively for Multimedia ads and create them in standard search campaigns by selecting that ad type instead of responsive search ads (RSAs).
  • Cross-account portfolio bidding: If you need to launch a new account for the same brand, you can allow it to benefit from the conversion data of an existing account.
  • Microsoft Clarity: A free behavioral analytics tool that helps you understand how people and AI engage with your site. It can reveal whether landing pages create friction, are easy for people and AI to understand, and which grounding queries (the searches AI performs in the background) your site naturally appears for and whether they align with your target search terms.
  • Creative and editorial considerations: Microsoft has stricter advertising policies than many other platforms, but it also offers some unique capabilities, such as allowing exclamation points in headlines and disclaimers of up to 500 characters that don’t take up ad space. Note: If you enable disclaimers, your ads will only serve when the disclaimers can appear alongside them.

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2. Build the signal foundation before optimizing

Account-level settings may seem overly technical. In practice, they determine whether AI receives clean signals or learns from bad data. Settings like business attributes also let you communicate why customers should choose your business.

Verify conversion tracking and attribution before changing bids

The best bidding strategy can’t compensate for incomplete conversion data. Microsoft Advertising provides account-level settings that help ensure conversion and attribution data flow correctly, including:

  • Microsoft Click ID (MSCLID): Helps connect ad clicks to conversion activity.
  • View-through conversions: Help you correctly attribute the role of visual creatives in the path to conversion.
  • Simplified conversion setup: Enables intelligent conversion action creation.

Without verified tracking, it’s easy to blame bidding, keywords, audiences, or creative when the real problem is incomplete or inconsistent conversion data.

If your organization relies heavily on UTM parameters, validate how auto-tagging and manual tagging interact. The goal is clean reporting, not duplicated parameters or attribution confusion caused by mislabeling.

Treat creative inputs as signals

When enabled, Microsoft Advertising can use images from your landing pages to create more compelling, relevant ad experiences that better match a potential customer’s intent and context. If you have strong, well-maintained landing pages, this can improve creative asset coverage without having to manually build every image variation for every campaign type.

AI-optimized creative works best when your site already contains brand-safe, relevant, high-quality imagery. If your pages contain images you wouldn’t want appearing in ads, or if the imagery is sparse, text-heavy, or doesn’t represent the offer well, upload the assets you want the system to use. Auto-retrieved images reduce creative friction. They don’t replace creative strategy.

Use account-level negatives carefully

Account-level negatives help eliminate unwanted traffic patterns across your account. Microsoft supports phrase and exact match negatives. If you want to eliminate a root problem, a phrase match negative is likely the better option. For a specific search term, an exact match negative may work better. Neither negative match type accounts for close variants.

Use account-level negatives only for terms you’re confident shouldn’t serve anywhere in the account. Keep nuanced exclusions at the campaign or ad group level.

3. Use structure and controls to help AI perform

Microsoft Advertising gives you useful controls, but the goal isn’t to micromanage every lever. Give AI cleaner inputs, stronger guardrails, and fewer structural problems to solve. Use human judgment to guide the system.

Concentrate signals instead of fragmenting them

Ad-group-level location and ad schedule settings can reduce the need to create duplicate campaigns or split budgets across multiple accounts.

I’ve seen advertisers create separate campaigns solely to accommodate different geographies or schedules. In many cases, those settings can be managed at the ad group level, resulting in a simpler structure and more concentrated conversion volume.

That consolidation matters because automated bidding generally performs best with stronger, more consistent signals. A practical benchmark is to aim for at least 30 conversions in 30 days, where possible. That level of steady signal gives automated bidding a better chance of making stable decisions than a fragmented structure with thin conversion volume.

Use scheduling, location, and disclaimers as guardrails

Location targeting deserves review. Microsoft Advertising supports geographic targets, radius targeting, and exclusions, but city-, county-, metro-, or DMA-level strategies may be more practical than forcing ZIP codes.

If Microsoft doesn’t support a specific location target, it defaults to the next-highest level (for example, ZIP code to city or city to DMA). If you need narrow targeting, consider using exclusions.

Avoid unnecessary learning volatility

Large bid or budget changes can create performance volatility as the system adjusts. As a general rule, keeping bid or budget changes below 15% over a 14-day period can help reduce avoidable learning volatility. Larger changes may still be necessary, but make them intentionally rather than accidentally resetting the system’s learning rhythm.

Seasonality adjustments help when you expect a temporary conversion rate change because of a sale, event, promotion, or other short-term spike. Data exclusions help when conversion tracking breaks or reports misleading data you don’t want automated bidding to learn from. These tools aren’t bidding hacks. They protect automation from learning the wrong lesson.

Use conversion value rules whenever possible

The best way to communicate with the bidding algorithm is through conversion value rules grounded in accurate conversion tracking. They let you create if/then statements for devices, audiences, and locations to add a monetary amount to or multiply your conversion value.

Microsoft supports bid adjustments across audiences, devices, demographics, locations, and time. Multiple adjustments can compound. If a user qualifies for several categories at once, your bid may become more aggressive than intended.

Before adding another layer, ask whether you truly want to spend more to reach that audience, in that location, on that device, during that time. If you want the algorithm to understand value, meaningful conversion values and conversion value rules are usually stronger signals. If values aren’t reliable, CPA-oriented bidding with carefully chosen adjustments can still work.

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4. Use audiences, inventory, and creative to shape demand

Microsoft’s differentiated audiences, inventory, and creative formats can help you generate and shape new demand rather than only capture existing demand.

Use LinkedIn profile targeting intentionally

LinkedIn profile targeting remains one of the most unique audience capabilities in Microsoft Advertising. You can apply bid adjustments based on company, industry, job function, and seniority. 

Multiple targets within the same LinkedIn profile category act as “or” statements, while targeting across categories narrows the signal. A company target plus a seniority target is more restrictive than choosing two companies, which is useful when intentional and expensive when accidental because bid adjustments compound.

For B2B advertisers, this can be especially useful, but it isn’t limited to enterprise brands. Any business selling to specific professional audiences can use these signals to prioritize valuable traffic.

For example, if a brand is trying to reach someone traveling for work with local experiences or travel gear, it might bid up on someone with a “Business development” job function in an industry with a conference taking place in the next two to three weeks.

Build audiences from exposure, not just site visits

Traditional remarketing relies on someone visiting your website. Impression-based remarketing introduces another option: building audiences based on people who’ve been exposed to your advertising. 

A prospect may not click the first time they encounter your brand, particularly in formats such as Audience ads, Premium Streaming, or Multimedia ads. Impression-based remarketing lets you continue that conversation later rather than treating the initial exposure as a failed interaction. An impression can be the starting point for an audience strategy.

Reevaluate search partners and exclusions

Many advertisers disable search partners because they assume they behave like display network expansions on other platforms. Search partner inventory is still search inventory, and Microsoft provides publisher visibility, so you can evaluate it rather than reject it based on assumptions. 

Recent Microsoft studies have shown a 45% improvement in conversion rates and a 20% reduction in low-quality impressions tied specifically to Search Partner inventory, independent of advertiser optimization.

If specific publishers aren’t performing, use the available controls. You can manage unlimited exclusion lists at the MCC account level, and each list can exclude up to 2,500 URLs. If you need to protect a campaign’s ability to target a placement, such as when running Performance Max and Audience ads simultaneously, exclude domains surgically rather than cutting off useful inventory.

Use Multimedia ads to expand your SERP presence and build impression-based remarketing lists

Multimedia ads participate in their own auction and can appear in prominent visual placements on the search results page. A traditional search ad and a Multimedia Ad can both appear for the same brand, increasing your presence on the results page. 

Multimedia ads can be enabled at the campaign level, with ad-group-level decisions that help direct budget toward or away from the format.

They also matter because they can amplify your visual presence, serve as ads in Copilot, and qualify for impression-based remarketing. Their value isn’t limited to direct-click performance. They can connect search visibility, visual storytelling, and remarketing strategy.

Use Audience ads to expand reach

Audience ads (display, native, and video) can be a controlled way to expand reach, support full-funnel strategy, and build remarketing inputs that inform other parts of the account.

Audience ads support audience strategies, placement preferences, content category controls, and creative preview before launch. For organizations that require legal, brand, product, or executive approval, preview capability can simplify the review process.

Use creative and editorial details to reduce friction

Microsoft Advertising has editorial policies you should understand rather than assuming every platform evaluates ads the same way. Claims such as “best,” “number one,” or other superiority language need clear landing page support. 

Microsoft Advertising also allows some emphasis you might not expect, such as one exclamation point in headlines, but that flexibility doesn’t remove the need for substantiated claims and clean final URLs.

Editorial issues often get misdiagnosed as platform friction. In many cases, the issue is a specific asset rather than the entire ad, but final URL problems are more fundamental and can prevent an ad from serving.

Extensions and visual assets can also help brands communicate more value before users reach the landing page, especially in competitive categories where plain text may not provide enough differentiation.

5. Treat PMax, AI Max, and Copilot as AI opportunities with guardrails

Microsoft’s approach to AI is most useful when viewed as an augmentation rather than a replacement. Human-centered AI should enable thoughtful scale while preserving advertiser consent, transparency, and trust.

Know what Performance Max is designed to enable

Performance Max can be powerful, but it requires a different mindset from traditional campaign structures. Asset groups aren’t ad groups. There’s no asset-group-level equivalent to ad-group negatives, and you can’t force one asset group to take priority over another.

Performance Max is designed for AI-driven allocation. If strict control is your priority, traditional Search, Shopping, and Audience campaigns may provide clearer governance. The best way to influence Performance Max is through:

  • Strong audience signals: Include impression-based remarketing and LinkedIn profile targeting, which are unique to Microsoft.
  • Relevant creative: Copilot can pull creative from your landing page and adapt existing creative with tonal shifts, rewrites, or formatting improvements.
  • Thoughtful search themes: Including the same search themes as your exact match keywords makes it harder for Performance Max because exact match keywords take priority in the auction.
  • Meaningful conversion tracking: Ensure you have accurate conversion tracking and conversion values because Performance Max needs conversions to perform effectively.
  • Landing pages that clearly communicate the offer: Your landing page is a critical part of the matching and creative logic. If you don’t use clear language, the algorithm may struggle to identify which queries are a good match. It also makes it harder for people to do business with you.

If you run the same search theme as an exact match keyword, there’s a strong chance the exact match keyword will serve instead of the Performance Max campaign. Use search themes as testing grounds rather than duplicating exact match keywords.

Performance Max website URL reporting provides URL-level visibility into spend, clicks, impressions, and conversions. This gives you more to work with than impression-only reporting and can make automated campaign testing easier to justify.

Separate campaigns when budget separation matters

If budget separation matters, create distinct campaigns rather than forcing multiple business objectives into a single Performance Max campaign. Microsoft’s campaign capacity of 300 Performance Max campaigns, compared with Google’s 100, can be useful when meaningful budget priorities require separation.

For example, if you have two equally important products with drastically different tROAS goals, you wouldn’t want them to share budgets because there’s no way to specify which asset group or product should take priority. They’re better served in separate campaigns with distinct budgets and tROAS goals aligned to their margins.

The rule is simple: If related assets and audiences can share a budget, consolidate Performance Max campaigns to strengthen conversion volume. If budget separation matters, build that control at the campaign level instead of trying to force it through asset groups.

Evaluate AI Max and Copilot for new opportunities

AI Max now addresses many of the use cases that once made Dynamic Search ads valuable. If your goal is to let Microsoft AI better match queries, creative, and landing pages, AI Max may be the better place to focus your testing.

That doesn’t mean you should abandon existing high-performing campaigns. It means you should be intentional about whether you’re investing in legacy dynamic functionality or AI-powered capabilities built on Microsoft’s latest technology.

Ads can appear in relevant Copilot experiences when Microsoft determines there’s clear commercial intent and the ad may help the user. Ads have served in Copilot since 2024. The goal isn’t to force ads into AI answers. It’s to preserve a useful experience for the user.

Copilot isn’t a separate campaign type you manually opt into. Performance Max, AI Max, exact, phrase, and broad match search campaigns, Multimedia ads, and Shopping ads are all eligible to serve in Copilot. Performance Max and AI Max have the easiest time serving in Copilot because they can adapt to AI-driven experiences.

Use generative AI as a creative workflow and diagnostic tool

Copilot can help you brainstorm, rewrite, refine, and adapt creative across workflows, including Performance Max, responsive search ads, Multimedia ads, Audience ads, and other campaign types where you need to adjust tone, rewrite copy, or develop stronger variations. Copilot doesn’t replace the marketer. It reduces friction between strategy and iteration.

Ad Studio can generate new creative assets and make adjustments such as background modifications, seasonal refinements, location-specific tailoring, and additional aspect ratios. Its best use isn’t replacing the brand team. It’s accelerating iteration once the overall creative strategy is established.

AI-generated assets can also help diagnose how clearly your site communicates. If the outputs accurately represent your business, your site is likely sending clearer signals. If they consistently miss the mark, your landing pages, messaging, or content structure may be confusing both AI systems and people. The Performance Max campaign generator can serve as a useful diagnostic shortcut for the same reason. 

6. Use reporting and Clarity to diagnose before blaming the auction

No amount of AI, bidding nuance, or audience strategy can compensate for poor measurement. Microsoft Advertising provides extensive reporting visibility, and you should use it before making media-only decisions.

Use transparent reporting to make better decisions

Microsoft provides visibility into every search term that generates a click as part of its transparency approach. That visibility can reveal whether a query is:

  • Genuinely wasteful: There’s no business case for targeting that search.
  • An AI-driven match: It may seem questionable until you examine the customer journey with behavioral analytics.
  • A landing page issue masquerading as a traffic problem: Before adding a negative keyword, evaluate post-click behavior to determine whether the landing page or conversion tracking is the real issue.

Use Microsoft Clarity before you make campaign changes

Microsoft Clarity answers an important question: What happens after the click? It can show whether users engage with the page, get confused, abandon forms, encounter technical issues, or complete actions that aren’t being tracked correctly.

Clarity should be part of your diagnostic process before making campaign changes.

  • If people arrive and get stuck, the issue may be the landing page experience.
  • If they complete the desired action but conversions don’t appear in Microsoft Advertising, the issue may be tracking.
  • If they arrive and immediately disengage, the issue may be creative alignment, traffic quality, or the offer itself.

Clarity can also help you understand how AI systems interact with your content, including the grounding queries that led AI systems to cite your domain and recommendations for improving citation opportunities.

If AI systems cite your domain as relevant, that can validate your content strategy. If they don’t, or if the queries reveal mismatches, that may point to gaps in how your content communicates its value.

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Apply Microsoft-specific optimizations

You can import existing campaign structures and assets while also taking advantage of Microsoft-specific capabilities. AI can play a central role, serve as an occasional assist, or be used selectively, though scaling becomes more difficult without some level of AI adoption.

Testing Microsoft Advertising doesn’t require a large investment, but it does require getting the fundamentals right, including conversion tracking, bid-to-budget ratios, and creative that reflects the channel’s visual nature.

When you get those fundamentals right, Microsoft Advertising offers search term transparency, GDPR-compliant impression-based audiences, and opportunities to reach people across the surfaces where they work, live, and play. 

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Google Search Console gains reporting on social and video platforms

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Google Search Console has released what it calls platform properties, which is a way to see how well your social and video content is performing within Google Search. Google will let you see the performance of your content on Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube performs on Google Search.

More details. Google wrote, “Now, you can easily track which search terms lead people to your Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube content on Search, and see exactly how your audience is interacting with your posts.” You can see this information within Google Search Console’s performance report, insights report and achievement sections.

  • Performance report: View your total clicks, impressions, and additional metrics. Filter and sort this data to see which specific posts and queries are driving the most traffic. If you prefer to analyze your performance using another tool you can export the data.
  • Insights report: View a high-level overview of your recent traffic trends, your top-performing posts, and how people discover your account on Google.
  • Achievements: Track your growth and celebrate milestones, such as reaching a new threshold for total clicks from Google Search in the last 28 days.

This is similar to the social channels details we had in the Search Console insights reports.

Here is a screenshot of my X account performance report:

Here is a screenshot from Google’s blog post of the insights report:

How to set it up. You will need to verify your platform property within your Google Search Console account, here is how to do that:

  • Open Search Console
  • Go to the Search Console verification page, or open the property selector dropdown anywhere in Search Console and click “Add property.”
  • Select one of the four available platforms: Instagram, Tiktok, X, YouTube.
  • Follow the onscreen verification steps to securely authorize the connection.

Slow rollout. Google said platform properties will roll out gradually over the coming weeks, so there is a chance you won’t see this yet. To learn more about platform properties and how to set them up, see Google’shelp center documentation. We actually saw Google publish this help document a few weeks ago, but then it was quickly removed.

Search profiles. This is different from the new search profiles feature, which actually has its own analytics.

Why we care. Previously, Google has not given us a real way to see how our content performs on domains/properties we do not own. But now, we are going to have access to see how our content performs of domains/properties we do not have developer access to. This is pretty cool and I am excited to see what we can learn from this.

Be the brand AI recommends.

See where your brand appears in AI search, where competitors are winning, and what it takes to become the answer AI recommends.

See your AI visibility

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Got an old website? Update it and refresh your SEO

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Has your website seen better days, and are you looking to restore it to its former glory? Look no further. We will help you get your site up to today’s standards and make that splash online. We cover all the key areas you need to consider. Feel free to skip the steps that are already up to date, but be honest with yourself about what work still needs to be done. Your website only gets a millisecond to make a first impression, so let’s make the most of it. Now it’s time to peek under the hood, brush off the dust on those pages, and refresh your content.

Table of contents

Key takeaways

  • Consider making big changes to your old website first, such as updating the domain or CMS.
  • Check and update your CMS, plugins, and data privacy setup to meet modern standards.
  • Refresh your content and keyword research to ensure relevance and improve SEO performance.
  • Evaluate technical aspects like mobile-friendliness, core web vitals, and accessibility for better user experience.
  • Use the Yoast SEO plugin to streamline the process of updating your old website and maintain its performance.

Check your site’s set-up

Want to make any big changes? Do that first

Before we delve into the depths of your old website, it’s worth considering any major changes you want to make. Maybe you’ve always wanted to change your domain name or your URL structure, but it was too much work when everything was up and running. Or perhaps you could benefit from switching to a different CMS or hosting provider. If you do want to make sitewide changes, you’ll be far better off planning this from the start.

Old or new domain?

You will have registered your domain when your website was still live, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still available now. Check whether your old domain is still yours or available. If it’s not, you’ll need to choose another one. This can give you a chance to start over fresh with a whole new website.

When you’re looking to get a new domain, consider how you want to build your website. You can hire someone to custom-build a website for you. But if you want to save on costs, website builders like Wix and WordPress let you create a website without coding. Although both allow you to create websites yourself, we recommend WordPress if you want the option to grow and alter your website beyond what the available templates offer.

There are also AI builders to consider when creating a new website. For example, Bluehost’s AI Website Builder generates your website by giving a prompt and answering a few follow-up questions. A quick way to get back online, with hosting, a domain, and even human support included if needed.

Bear in mind that changing your domain name comes with several drawbacks:

  • If your website was popular in the past, you will probably have built up some domain authority. Meaning that people know your brand name and can have (positive) associations with it. So when you change your domain name, you’ll lose any domain authority you’ve gained previously.
  • Your old URLs will no longer work, and you’ll need to plan to migrate your content to your new domain. This can be a lot of work, so don’t underestimate it!

Are your CMS and plugins up to date?

The next thing you’ll want to check is whether your CMS is up to date. Depending on how old your site is, that could mean all kinds of things. As new possibilities arise in web development, a good CMS will adopt these and implement them for you (mostly) automatically. So it’s well worth updating your CMS as a first step! Make sure to back up your site and test the changes first, though.

The impact of out-of-date plugins really depends on which plugins you have installed. But whichever plugins you use, you should check these too. The same goes for themes; they can stop working if they’re too old or no longer supported. Online, the older your technology is, the more vulnerable it is to hacking, so make sure to update what you plan to use and remove unnecessary plugins.

Tip: If you’re using WordPress, go to the Site Health section, located under Tools > Site Health in the backend. This will give an overview of what needs to be done to get your website healthy again.

Check your robots.txt / indexing settings

Noindexing a page means you block search engines from indexing it and showing it in their search results. Some people prefer to noindex their site while they make big changes to it, to avoid leaving users with a bad impression. But you shouldn’t really play around with this unless you know what you’re doing. I would also not recommend doing this if you still get a decent amount of traffic to your site.

To noindex your site, you’ll need to update your robots.txt file. If you’re a Yoast SEO user, you can manage your indexing in your configuration settings without ever touching your robots.txt file. An easier way to update your site behind the scenes is by using the LightStart plugin.

Check your data privacy set up

If your site has been around for a few years, there’s a good chance your data privacy setup doesn’t meet modern standards. For instance, if your site uses cookies to track user behavior, it’s now a legal requirement to ask users for permission in most regions worldwide. Similarly, if you have user data stored on your site, you absolutely need to ensure it’s stored securely and used in a legally compliant way. If that data is old user data, the safest option is probably just to delete it all.

Check your content

Refresh your keyword research

When it comes to updating the content on your old website, refreshing your keyword research is a good place to start. The words people use in their search queries change over time, so the longer your content has been out of action, the more likely it is that you need to do this. When checking your keywords, you should see whether you’re still using the most suitable ones for your site and audience, and whether you can still compete for those rankings.

Also, you should take AI search into account when researching how to update your content. AI search is now an undeniable part of people’s online search behavior, whether it’s Google presenting users with an AI overview or people using AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini. So make sure to optimize for AI search as part of your SEO efforts.

Does your content need updating?

It’s important to update your old posts and pages to keep them fresh and relevant. Old content can face various issues:

  • Is the quality still good enough? Is there room to improve the content by applying the E-E-A-T principles?
  • Is your information still accurate and up to date? Are there new insights that you could add to the content?
  • Do the external and internal links still work? Do the meta description or SEO title need updating?

Take a look at each page, and be critical. What could be improved? Do you really need to keep each page? Will you need to rewrite the whole thing, or will some small adjustments be enough? It could take a while to get through all of your content. Make sure to start with your most important pages first.

Check your internal linking and site structure

Making sure your content is high-quality and well-optimized is only half the story. It needs to be findable too. By linking related pages, you make your content easier for your users to find. And on top of that, if you make sure your most important pages get the most internal links, it helps Google get a better idea of your site structure. As a result, those central pages (which we call cornerstone content) are likely to rank higher in search results!

Check the technical SEO

Mobile-friendly is essential

Most people are using their phones or other mobile devices to access the internet. As a result, Google switched to mobile-first indexing years ago. This means that if your site doesn’t work well on mobile, this can impact your overall visibility in search. Responsive site design and proper mobile usability testing are more of a requirement now than a nice extra. Make sure everything works, and that it looks good on all kinds of screen sizes. Don’t treat the desktop version of your website as the default.

Core Web Vitals and page experience

Back in the days of dial-up internet, you always had to wait patiently for pages to load. But that’s a thing of the past; pages that load quickly are a basic expectation nowadays. Loading quickly isn’t the only consideration, because your pages need to actually work well once they’ve loaded. Google has a ranking factor to measure things like this. So you need to make sure you’re meeting expectations for aspects such as:

  • Loading performance (how fast does stuff appear on the screen?)
  • Responsiveness (how fast does the page react to user input?)
  • Visual stability (does stuff move around on the screen while loading?)

The details behind these factors are quite technical, but it’s worth delving into these Core Web Vitals to make sure your technical SEO isn’t holding you back.

Check your media usage

Another thing that changes over time is the best practice for using images and videos on your site. Nowadays, most users expect high-quality images that load quickly, too. Make sure to optimize and properly tag them before mindlessly adding them to your page. When it comes to video, these can increase your visibility on platforms such as YouTube and social media. They also tell search agents that the content on your page is rich and valuable, so make sure to get going with a proper video strategy for your site and other platforms.

Accessibility

For most websites, accessibility is an afterthought. Which is a big shame, as this also means you’re missing out on a whole group of potential customers. Don’t just consider how you experience a website; also accommodate the needs of different types of visitors. Accessibility means making small adjustments and additions that let everyone enjoy your content. You don’t need to redesign everything; there are simple improvements you can make, such as adding alt text to your images.

Structured data

If you want to have the best-looking search results in Google, you’ll need to start adding structured data to your site. Structured data is a way of telling Google about the context or purpose of different types of content. You can label your news items as news, for example, and Google can identify that and add your content to its News section. Or you could label your products using structured data and have a chance of getting listed in Google’s Shopping results. Structured data helps AI search engines and chatbots better understand your site. There are loads of ways structured data can boost your content, so give it a try!

Start publishing and sharing

Check your robots.txt / indexing settings (again)

Give your indexing a final check and make sure the pages you want Google to index are crawlable. You can start by checking your robots.txt or your indexing settings. Google Search Console can be a great help at this point. Submit your sitemap. This will let Google know your site is ready for indexing again, and help it understand what’s changed. Search Console will flag any crawl errors, so you can easily check whether everything is set up correctly.

Start (re)publishing and sharing content

And now for the final step in updating your old site: start publishing content again! Publishing content regularly and sharing it on social media will help you to build awareness of your site. Plus, you might gain some new fans and followers! If your social media pages are outdated, give them a refresh to let people know your site is back and ready to welcome them!

Update your site’s SEO with Yoast

As you can see, there’s a lot to check when updating SEO and refreshing your old website. Once you’ve restored your site to its former glory, make sure you maintain it and your SEO. Otherwise, in a few years, you might be doing this all over again. Luckily, our Yoast SEO plugin can help you update and maintain your old site, too!

Refresh your website with Yoast SEO Premium

Get Yoast SEO Premium and get feedback on your content, access to our SEO training and helpful tools to clean up your site!

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

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How to Analyze Your Backlinks With the Ubersuggest Backlink Checker

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Key Takeaways

  • More than two-thirds of SEOs (67.5 percent) say backlinks have a big impact on search rankings, and 59 percent expect that influence to grow.
  • The Neil Patel Backlink Checker now lives inside Ubersuggest, so your backlink analysis and the rest of your SEO research happen on one platform.
  • The Backlinks Overview report gives you a site’s domain authority, total backlinks, referring domains, and performance over time at a glance.
  • Backlink Opportunity lets you compare your profile against up to five competitors and identify specific sites worth pursuing for your own outreach.
  • Pair backlink data with the Traffic Overview and Top Pages reports to see which of your URLs earn the most links, then create more content in that direction.

How important are backlinks to your online business? 

According to research from uSERP, 67.5 percent of the SEOs interviewed believe they have a ‘big impact’ on their search engine rankings.

Pie chart showing that 67.5 percent of SEOs believe backlinks have a “big impact” on search engine rankings

Source: https://userp.io/link-building/state-of-backlinks-for-seo/

An overwhelming majority (85 percent) believe backlinks have a major influence on their brand authority, while 47.5 percent say building backlinks is every bit as important as content strategy. Additionally, 59 percent say they expect backlinks to have a greater impact in the future.

Plenty of other surveys demonstrate the importance of backlinks, which leads me to a question: Given how pivotal backlinks are to your online success, how do you view them, and how do you track your site’s performance?

Fortunately, the Neil Patel Backlink Checker is now part of Ubersuggest. It’s a top-notch backlink tool that helps you understand how to generate quality backlinks and analyze your site’s performance. It all lives within the platform you’re already using to conduct the rest of your SEO research.

Let’s walk through how the tool works and the best ways to use it for your business goals.

How Ubersuggest’s Backlinks Tool Works

When you first log in to Ubersuggest, look at the left-hand menu. You’ll see all features organized by category. Scroll down to the Link Building section, and click Backlink Overview.

Screenshot of Ubersuggest’s Backlinks Overview page

Enter the domain whose backlinks you want to analyze, and then choose the type of report you want. There are two types of reports you can pull up:

  1. URL: This report pulls backlink information only for that specific URL.
  2. Domain: This report pulls all backlink information for that domain, including any subdomains. This option typically gives you the highest backlink count.

Hit Search, and Ubersuggest will get to work.

Once the search completes, you’ll see a backlinks report that shows you the Domain Authority and backlink profile at a glance. You’ll even be able to see the domain’s backlink performance over time. 

Ubersuggest’s backlink profile for neilpatel.com, showing a ranking of “Amazing” across the board for domain authority, referring domains, and backlinks

This report quickly gives you a high-level overview of a site’s backlink performance. Here, you’ll see the number of backlinks you have, and you can analyze their Domain Authority.

As you scroll down, you’ll see a list of individual backlinks. This list shows the linking site’s Domain Authority and Spam Score, helping you instantly filter between good and bad links and spot broken backlink strategies.

You’ll even see the anchor text the linking site has used to link your content. This is a good way to gauge whether links are just random and spammy or actually provide searchers with helpful guidance.

A list of individual backlinks for neilpatel.com, displaying the linking sites’ domain authority, spam score, and page authority. You can also see the anchor text used for the backlink, as well as when it was first and last seen.

Backlinks Overview alone provides a lot of data, but the Neil Patel Backlink Checker can do more. Dig into its link analysis capabilities, and you’ll see how deeper data and granular metrics enable more complex strategies.  

Link Analysis From Your Backlinks Report In Ubersuggest

The list section of our backlinks report is where we can work from to do our more in-depth analysis. By default, our list of URLs shows one link per domain to make the report more useful. That way, if someone links to you 100 times, you’ll see the best link from that site.

If you want to see all 100 links coming from the same site, unclick the “one link per domain” button under the Advanced Filters tab.

If the URL or domain you just pulled up has a lot of backlinks, you’ll see thousands and thousands of links and can comb over each one during your analysis.

Here’s a deeper look at the data you’re provided for each link:

  1. Source Page Title & URL: What is the title of the page linking to the URL/domain you looked up?
  2. Target Page: This is where the link is pointing to. If you look up a URL, it will point to that specific URL. If you look up a domain, you can see where its link is pointing to on that domain.
  3. Domain Authority: How authoritative is the linking site? The higher the number, the better.
  4. Page Authority: How authoritative is the linking page? The higher the number, the better.
  5. Spam Score: A Moz score that shows whether a link is spammy. The higher the percentage, the more likely the link is spam.
  6. Anchor Text: Does the link contain any keywords? You can easily see this through the anchor text column.
  7. First Seen: When did we first find this link?
  8. Last Seen: When did we last crawl and find this link?
Ubersuggest table displaying backlink data for various web pages, including columns for source page URL, domain authority, page authority, spam score, anchor text, and first and last seen dates

When you are looking for specific link opportunities, especially when doing competitor analysis in Ubersuggest, you may want to use the advanced filters to find the best link opportunities.

Screenshot displaying the Neil Patel Backlink Checker’s advanced filters within Ubersuggest. 

Here’s how the advanced filters work:

  • Search Box: In the box, you can type in any keyword or phrase, and it will pull any URLs, titles, or anchor text that contain any of those words. That way, you can find what you are looking for faster.
  • Zone: If you want to only include or exclude links with certain domain extensions, such as .net, .com, .com.br, .co.uk, etc., you can do so with zone filtering.
  • Referring Domain: If you want to include or exclude links coming from a specific domain, this is the filtering option you can use.
  • Anchor: If you want to find links by a specific anchor text, or exclude links with a specific anchor text, you can do so with this filtering option.
  • New/Lost Toggle: Filter links by whether they were newly gained or recently lost.
  • Link Type Toggle: Filter results to include all links, follow links, or nofollow links.

Finally, if you want to slice and dice the data in more advanced ways, you can always click the Export to CSV button and play around with the data if you’re a spreadsheet wizard.

Finding Backlink Opportunities With Ubersuggest

Once you take a look at your backlink profile in Ubersuggest, you can navigate to Backlink Opportunity on the left-hand menu to start shaping your strategy.

On this page, you enter your target domain and run a comparison report against up to five of your competitors. 

Screenshot of Ubersuggest’s Backlink Opportunities page showing how you can compare your domain’s backlink profile against up to five competitors.

As with the Overview report, you can toggle your search type between Domain and URL. The URL option searches for the exact URL and compares it against the exact URL of a particular competitor page. This helps take a closer look at a page’s performance against a competitor for the same keyword or topic. 

Once you hit Search, you get a list of backlinks ranked highest to lowest by domain authority. You’ll also see the referring domain and which of your competitors they’re linking to.

Screenshot of Ubersuggest’s Backlink Opportunities report, organized by referring domain.

You have the choice of viewing this report by Referring Domain or Backlink. Switching to the Backlink view gives you more granular insight into each link. It also reveals each backlink’s Page Authority score, helping you evaluate link quality and prioritize outreach to strong pages within strong domains.

Screenshot of Ubersuggest’s Backlink Opportunities report, organized by referring domain.

Strategize Smarter by Analyzing Traffic

Under the Traffic Overview heading, you get organic keywords and monthly organic traffic, domain authority, and backlinks, including nofollow links.

Screenshot of the Traffic Overview report from Ubersuggest for neilpatel.com.

Ubersuggest also has a Top Pages by Traffic feature.

If you aren’t familiar with the Top Pages report, it shows the most popular pages for any domain.

A list of the top-performing pages by traffic for neilpatel.com.

You’ll notice that you can see how many visitors go to each URL, and if you click on View All under Est. Visits, you’ll see a list of keywords that are driving traffic to that URL.

If you click View All under backlinks, you will see all the URLs linking to that page.

A list of all the domains backlinking to neilpatel.com’s website traffic checker page.

Using this feature, you can see which types of pages link to your content. You can also see the anchor text they’re using and visit the page to get an idea of the topics being discussed around your brand.

That’ll give you an idea of which sites to target for backlinks. You can even use this data for general information on which business verticals find your content useful (in case you need to “backdoor” competitive search terms or topics).

FAQs

How many backlinks does my website have?

The exact number depends on your domain’s age, content, and outreach. Run your URL through Ubersuggest to see the number of backlinks and key backlink profile performance metrics in seconds.

How do I find backlinks to my website?

Use Ubersuggest or Google Search Console. Both pull your full backlink profile, including the anchor text and authority score, so you can see which links carry real weight.

How do I check the backlinks of my competitors?

Drop a competitor’s URL into Ubersuggest’s backlinks report. You’ll get a list of every site linking to them, which doubles as a target list for your own outreach.

How do I disavow backlinks?

If you find spammy or bad links pointing to your site, submit them to Google via the Disavow Tool. Use it sparingly, though, as removing legitimate links can tank your rankings.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed the full tour of the Neil Patel Backlink Checker. Now, Ubersuggest users can access it as one of the platform’s many features, making it so much easier to do all your backlink and other SEO research in one place. 

You can look up as many domains and URLs as you want, whether you’re checking in on your site’s performance or tracking competitors with Ubersuggest.

Head over to Ubersuggest and start typing in domains and URLs. I put a lot of time, energy, and money into building this tool, so I hope you enjoy it and use it to see some real results in your business.

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The June 2026 SEO Update by Yoast recap

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Each month, we host the SEO update by Yoast covering the latest in search and AI. In this edition, Carolyn Shelby and Alex Moss discussed Google’s evolving stance on AI-driven search, publisher controls in the UK, and how to navigate visibility in an era where traditional SEO tactics are being reconsidered.

Watch the full recap on YouTube to dive deeper into these topics, hear some examples, and hear the answer to audience questions.

Remembering Bruce Clay

In this month’s SEO Update, we honor Bruce Clay, who recently passed away. He was a pioneer in SEO whose work shaped the industry. His mentorship and leadership left a lasting impact on professionals worldwide.

Google warns against manipulating brand mentions for AI

Google issued a clear warning: stop manipulating brand mentions to game AI systems. This includes tactics such as paying for unrelated brand citations, think dog food brands mentioned on sports betting sites, to artificially inflate perceived authority.

Why it matters: 

Google’s message is simple: if your brand mentions are irrelevant or forced, they won’t help your authority. Worse, they might backfire as AI systems get better at detecting manipulation. Focus on earning genuine mentions from relevant sources instead.

Actionable takeaway: 

  • Avoid paid or spammy brand mentions. 
  • Build authority through contextually relevant citations. 
  • If your mentions feel unnatural, they probably are. 

UK forces Google to give publishers control over AI use

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) struck a deal with Google, requiring the company to let publishers block their content from being used in AI features, without hurting their standard search rankings.

Why it matters: 

Publishers can now opt out of AI training data, but there’s a catch. If you block Google’s AI from using your content, you might lose citations in AI overviews, even if you rank well in traditional search. Users will instead see synthesized answers from other sources.

Actionable takeaway: 

  • If your content is truly unique and proprietary, blocking AI access might make sense, but only if you have a monetization strategy beyond search traffic. 
  • For most sites, allowing AI access is better for visibility. Ensure your content is structured and crawlable so AI systems can cite you accurately.
  • If you block AI access, provide a teaser, like Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature, to encourage clicks. 

New AI visibility insights in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

Both Google and Bing rolled out new reporting features to help you understand how your content appears in AI-driven search. 

Google Search Console grounding queries

Google now shows grounding queries, the specific searches where your content was cited by AI. This helps you see which topics are driving AI visibility.

Why it matters: 

Grounding queries indicate that AI systems are using your content to generate answers. If you’re not seeing citations, your content might not be structured or visible enough for AI to reference.

Actionable takeaway: 

  • Check Search Console weekly for grounding queries. 
  • Focus on visible, structured content, so avoid hiding key info in accordions or tabs.
  • Use this data to refine your content strategy, so double down on what’s working or fix what’s not.

Bing Webmaster Tools: AI performance reports

Bing’s new reports include intents, topics, citation share, and performance comparisons for AI-driven search. This gives you a clearer picture of how your content performs in Bing’s AI experiences, like Copilot.

Why it matters: 

Bing’s AI integrations, such as Copilot in Windows, reach millions of business users. Ignoring Bing means missing out on a growing segment of AI-driven traffic.

Actionable takeaway: 

  • Set up Bing Webmaster Tools if you haven’t already.
  • Compare Bing’s data with Google’s to spot gaps or opportunities. 
  • Use LLMs like ChatGPT or Claude to analyze exports from both tools for deeper insights.

Google’s new publisher profiles and business data integrations

Google introduced publisher profiles and enhanced business data integrations, giving creators and businesses more control over how their content appears in search.

Why it matters: 

These tools help you fill out your knowledge graph, which improves visibility across Google’s ecosystem, including Gemini. Think of it as Google+ for publishers, but with a focus on entity authority rather than social networking.

Actionable takeaway: 

  • Create or update your publisher profile in Google Search Console.
  • Ensure your Google Business Profile is complete and accurate.
  • Use structured data to connect entities such as authors, brands, and products to your content.

Google updates SEO guidance: Don’t blindly trust AI or SEO tools

Google’s latest guidance warns against blindly following AI-generated SEO advice or third-party tool recommendations. The example? An AI suggested changing “consultant” to “advisor” for a site, only for the site to start competing with financial advisors instead of its actual audience.

Why it matters: 

AI and SEO tools can misinterpret context. Always verify recommendations before implementing them.

Actionable takeaway: 

  • Trust but verify, so use AI and tools for ideas, but apply critical thinking. 
  • Check multiple sources, so compare Google’s data with Bing’s, or use tools like Semrush/Ahrefs for cross-referencing.
  • Prioritize human judgment, because if a recommendation feels off, it probably is.

Schema.org usage stats reveal underutilized opportunities

Schema.org released data showing that 95% of websites use only 12 of the 958 available schema types. Meanwhile, fewer than 1,000 sites use 485+ schema types.

Why it matters: 

Schema helps search engines understand your content, but most sites aren’t leveraging its full potential. Using more schema types can improve visibility in AI-driven search and rich results.

Actionable takeaway: 

  • Audit your current schema usage to identify any missed opportunities.
  • Explore less common schema types, like FAQPage, HowTo, or Event to stand out.
  • Use Yoast SEO’s schema blocks to simplify implementation.

German court rules Google liable for false AI overview claims

A German court ruled that Google can be sued for false claims made in AI overviews. This sets a precedent for holding AI systems accountable for inaccurate information.

Why it matters: 

If Google’s AI cites false or harmful information about your business, you now have legal recourse in Germany. However, prevention is better than litigation.

Actionable takeaway: 

  • Monitor AI overviews for inaccuracies about your brand.
  • Publish accurate, crawlable content to counteract misinformation.
  • If you find false claims, correct them at the source, such as on Reddit or in forums, and report them to Google.

Google’s open knowledge format: A new way to structure content

Google introduced the Open Knowledge Format (OKF), a way to catalog site content in markdown for AI consumption. This is part of Google’s push for structured, AI-friendly content.

Why it matters: 

While Google’s search team advises against duplicate markdown versions of pages, the engineering team is building tools like OKF. This suggests structured content will play a bigger role in AI-driven search.

Actionable takeaway: 

  • Wait and watch, as OKF is new, and adoption isn’t urgent yet.
  • Focus on structured content, like schema, clear headings, visible text.
  • Avoid gating critical information behind interactive elements, such as accordions and tabs.

Yoast news: Performance upgrades and new features

We rolled out performance improvements in versions 27.8 and 27.9, of Yoast SEO, including:

  • Faster admin pages and post editor for large sites.
  • Speed boosts for SEO analysis. For instance, a sitemap query on a 2M-page site dropped from 300 seconds to 25 milliseconds.
  • Yoast Duplicate Post plugin upgrades, including improved Rewrite and Republish functionality for easier content repurposing.

Sign up for the next SEO Update by Yoast

The next SEO Update by Yoast is on August 25, 2026, at 4:00 PM CET (10:00 AM EST). Sign up to join live!

The post The June 2026 SEO Update by Yoast recap appeared first on Yoast.

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The new SEO stack: What replaces your old toolset

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New SEO stack old toolset

Generative AI and automation are bringing excitement to some SEO professionals and anxiety to others. With 87% of Americans reading AI summaries, you’re falling behind if you’re not adapting your toolset to this trend.

Moving from rigid enterprise tools to agile, AI-driven ones positions you as a forward-thinking authority with clients or your employer.

This how-to will help you guide clients, employers, or your team through that shift.

Here’s what an old SEO stack looks like

SEO practices remain relevant because the company’s generative AI features are rooted in:

  • Core search ranking systems.
  • Quality systems.

Here’s a traditional “SEO stack”:

Rank trackers

Tracking keywords used to be every campaign’s heartbeat. Add target keywords, monitor SERP positions, and higher rankings would drive more search traffic. But rankings have fragmented over the last few years.

SEOs are now tracking:

  • AI Overviews
  • Local packs
  • Shopping carousels
  • And so much more.

A third-place local pack ranking might drive two or three times more traffic than a number one AI Overview ranking.

Keyword tools

What are people searching for? With a crystal ball, you could optimize for specific queries and target certain groups. Keyword research lets you write content that matches those queries and user intent.

You’ll choose keywords based on:

  • Difficulty
  • Search volume
  • Intent
  • Other factors

Dozens of options help you find keywords for campaigns, and some competitors had more access to keyword data than others.

Lagging search volume data may have hurt your campaign, but it still showed past performance.

For example, you might target a keyword with 10,000 monthly visits. But just because it reached that volume last month doesn’t mean it will perform the same this month. Volume could double or fall to a tenth of last month’s level.

The problem in today’s search environment is that a keyword with tens of thousands of clicks in 2022 may now appear in an AI Overview. Zero-click searches may steal your traffic, making some once high-click queries irrelevant or not worth the same investment.

Even if search volume hasn’t dropped, the opportunity has.

Site audit tools

Crawlers still crawl your site and interpret its content. Getting a complete picture of how these crawlers see your website has always been crucial to SEO.

Audit tools help you identify:

  • Broken links
  • Redirect issues
  • Missing metadata
  • Slow pages
  • Thin content
  • Other issues on your site

But don’t put these audit tools on the shelf just yet. You’ll still need them to know whether your site is technically healthy. Crawl audits don’t guarantee that your content will surface.

Factors such as brand mentions are crucial signals for inclusion in LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

Unfortunately, many site audit tools in your old stack lack mention-tracking functionality.

So while you may still rely on your old stack, it’s time to add new tools that cover these signals and change how you operate as an SEO professional.

Here’s what a new SEO stack looks like

IIf you’re still optimizing only for Google, it’s time to shift gears. Between the first and second half of 2025, LLM referral traffic grew by 80%. Conversion rates reached 18%, but LLM referrals still accounted for 2% or less of total traffic, according to the dataset.

Now is the time to shift to a new stack that helps you leverage growing LLM referrals.

Add the following to your SEO tech stack to stay ahead of the competition:

LLMs

You want your site to show up in LLMs, but these same tools can help power your SEO strategy. For example, you might use:

  • ChatGPT: Connect ChatGPT with Google Search Console to automate your SEO analysis, as I show you how to do in arecent article here.
  • Claude: Use Claude to write your copy, refine metadata and conduct a full content audit.
  • Gemini: Hop on Gemini to help generate schema markup, compare competitor sites with your own, or find issues with your site.

LLMs can help with everything from data analysis to competitor research.

Use the LLM you’re most comfortable with for these tasks, but keep human oversight in place. Use these tools to improve performance, not replace the human element.

Large datasets that once took hours, days, or weeks to review now take minutes with these tools. Keep learning LLMs and how to integrate them into your workflow.

APIs

Old dashboards with CSV exports into Excel were once standard. You logged into Google Search Console (GSC) and exported data. While it may sound too technical, LLMs can now help you connect to APIs for:

  • Google Search Console
  • Google Analytics

LLMs can help you authenticate requests and parse JSON. With this skill, you can open up a workflow

Lightweight scripts

Python scripts are now available to any SEO with some skill and Claude Code, or similar options in ChatGPT or Gemini. You can easily create scripts that:

  • Pull your top pages from GSC
  • Compare titles to character limits
  • Flag 30-day changes
  • Create a CSV output for you

Rather than waiting for vendor tools to add a feature that removes a performance bottleneck, create a script that does the same thing.

A hundred-line script can handle much of the work you used to do by hand, without a new license or SaaS upsell. If you hand the script to someone else, they can see the exact logic behind it.

Notebooks / local workflows

Your SEO team has data in many places:

  • Shared folders
  • Google Sheets
  • Notion docs

You might have a three-year content audit tracker in Google Sheets. A spreadsheet with monthly CSV dumps from your favorite tools leaves you with files you must manually open and decipher.

Notebooks and local workflows change how data fragmentation slows your team down.

Instead, Notebooks interpret these files and turn them into action. For example, a script may pull data, an API surfaces the signal, and LLMs make sense of the data and put the output into your Notebook.

Notebooks also offer the benefit of:

  • Consistent data formats
  • Shared access to data
  • Documented logic

SEO teams need to be agile and scalable to grow with the new era of search optimization and generative AI. Rather than starting over every time they need to pull data, teams can use local workflows for data consistency.

Creating hybrid workflows to mix old and new SEO stacks

Is your old SEO stack obsolete? No. Are these new tools the only ones you need? No. Hybrid workflows and search engine optimization stacks offer the best of both worlds.

Tool + custom script + AI layer

You’ll need to experiment to create a hybrid workflow that works best for your clients, projects, and teams. One hypothetical workflow that combines the old and new stack for well-rounded SEO includes:

  • Crawling the site with an audit tool, such as Screaming Frog
  • Running a Python script that dissects the file and joins it with GSC data
  • Scripts that flag pages where you have a lot of impressions but low clicks
  • Sending flagged pages to an LLM to evaluate titles against search intent
  • Putting LLM output into a Notebook or spreadsheet for editors to review
  • Turning approvals into change logs

Tasks like these used to take weeks, so teams put them on the back burner. At the enterprise level, teams quickly felt overwhelmed by this much data. But when you combine old and new SEO stacks, you can complete larger projects in a fraction of the time.

Replacing your current SEO stack with one that’s more agile and built for today’s massive datasets will make you an invaluable asset to any SEO team.

Read more at Read More

Why broad targeting makes creative your best qualifier

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Broad targeting creative qualifier

Across Google Ads, Meta, and TikTok, platforms are pushing you toward broader, AI-driven targeting. Performance Max, Advantage+ campaigns, and TikTok’s automated audience expansion give algorithms more room to find converters while reducing your control over who sees an ad.

This is fundamentally changing how campaigns are qualified.

As targeting broadens, creative has become one of the most important signals for both users and algorithms. Identifying the right audience is moving out of audience settings and into the message itself.

Broad targeting is making creative your best qualifier.

The shift from audience qualification to creative qualification

For years, performance marketers treated targeting as the primary lever for improving lead quality:

  • Need prospective graduate students? Layer education interests, demographics, and remarketing audiences.
  • Need patients seeking specialized care? Build audiences around health-related behaviors and intent signals.
  • Need insurance shoppers? Narrow targeting by age, life stage, and consumer interests.

These approaches aren’t disappearing, but their influence is shrinking. Platforms increasingly ask you to provide broad audience inputs, strong conversion signals, and compelling creative, then let machine learning determine who’s most likely to convert.

Meta’s Advantage+ ecosystem, Google’s Performance Max campaigns, and TikTok’s recommendation engine all operate on this principle.

The challenge is that algorithms still need signals.

Conversion data remains the strongest signal, but creative is becoming more important in helping platforms understand who should engage with an ad. Every headline, image, video, and call to action provides context about the intended audience and desired action.

Creative is no longer just a persuasion tool.

It’s now a targeting signal.

Why broad targeting requires more intentional creative

Many advertisers still create ads as if targeting will qualify the audience.

Messaging often stays broad because you assume audience settings will narrow who sees the ad. But when platforms expand beyond tightly defined segments, vague creative can attract engagement from people unlikely to become qualified leads.

The consequences are familiar:

  • Lower lead quality.
  • Increased cost per qualified lead.
  • Less efficient optimization.
  • Noisier conversion data.

Instead, you need creative that clearly communicates who the offer is for—and just as importantly, who it isn’t for.

The goal isn’t simply more clicks or video views.

The goal is engagement from the right people.

When creative clearly identifies the audience, users can self-select. Qualified prospects lean in. Unqualified prospects move on. Both outcomes improve campaign performance and give machine learning systems cleaner signals.

Higher education: When creative becomes the targeting layer

Higher education marketers are already seeing this shift.

Historically, campaigns relied heavily on demographic filters, education interests, degree status, and segmented audience lists to reach prospective students.

Today, many strong-performing campaigns use broad lookalike audiences, Advantage+ audiences, or broad prospecting structures designed to maximize audience size and algorithmic learning.

But broader audiences create a challenge.

If a university is promoting an online Master of Science in Data Analytics program, it doesn’t need just any prospective student. It needs prospective students who meet specific admission and career criteria.

  • Perhaps they already hold a bachelor’s degree.
  • Perhaps they have professional experience.
  • Perhaps they want to move into leadership or pivot into a more technical career path.

Rather than relying only on targeting settings to communicate those distinctions, build them directly into the creative.

Consider the difference between these two headlines:

Generic:

  • “Advance your career with a Data Analytics degree.”

Qualifying:

  • “Built for bachelor’s degree holders ready to advance into leadership – earn your online M.S. in Data Analytics.”

The second example immediately signals who the program is for. Undergraduate prospects are less likely to engage, while qualified graduate prospects are more likely to click, convert, and reinforce positive optimization signals.

The creative itself becomes the qualification mechanism.

Google Performance Max: Creative guides the algorithm

Google Performance Max may be the clearest example of this industry-wide shift.

Despite the name, audience signals are not strict targeting controls. They’re starting points that help Google’s systems learn. Ultimately, Google determines where and to whom ads are shown across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps.

Because advertisers have less direct control over audience selection, creative assets become increasingly important in helping Google’s systems understand who should respond.

Imagine a healthcare provider promoting orthopedic services.

A generic headline might read:

  • “Expert Care for Your Health Needs.”

While technically accurate, it offers little context regarding the intended audience.

A more effective alternative might be:

  • “Persistent Knee Pain? Meet with Our Orthopedic Specialists.”

The second headline identifies a specific need, a specific audience, and a specific solution. Users immediately understand whether the message applies to them, and Google’s systems receive stronger engagement signals from people actively experiencing that problem.

The same principle applies across insurance, legal services, financial services, and education.

When Performance Max creative clearly identifies the audience and their need state, advertisers help Google’s machine learning systems learn faster and optimize toward more qualified outcomes.

TikTok: The first three seconds matter more than ever

TikTok has always relied heavily on content signals to determine who sees a video.

As the platform continues investing in automation and audience expansion, creative becomes even more critical.

The opening seconds of a video often determine not only whether a user continues watching but also how TikTok categorizes and distributes the content.

For lead generation campaigns, qualification should begin immediately.

A graduate program might open with:

  • “Already have a bachelor’s degree and looking for your next career move?”

An insurance provider might start with:

  • “Shopping for Medicare coverage this year?”

A law firm specializing in workplace injury cases could lead with:

  • “Were you injured on the job within the last 12 months?”

These openings accomplish two objectives simultaneously.

First, they quickly tell viewers whether the content is relevant to them.

Second, they provide TikTok’s algorithm with stronger behavioral signals about who engages with the video. Qualified prospects are more likely to continue watching and take action. Unqualified viewers are more likely to scroll past.

That self-selection process improves audience learning over time.

Creative is now a performance lever

One of the biggest mistakes you can make today is treating creative as something that happens after strategy and targeting are finalized.

In increasingly automated advertising environments, creative is strategy.

The message, visuals, hooks, and calls to action no longer serve only a branding or conversion role. They help platforms determine who should see the ad in the first place.

That means creative and media teams must work together more closely than ever.

When building campaigns, marketers should ask:

  • Does this creative clearly identify who the offer is for?
  • Does it communicate relevant qualifications or prerequisites?
  • Would an unqualified prospect immediately recognize that the message isn’t intended for them?
  • Are we helping both users and algorithms understand our ideal audience?

If the answer is no, the campaign may be relying too heavily on targeting to solve a problem that creative is now better positioned to address.

The future of qualification is creative

As Google, Meta, and TikTok keep expanding AI-driven targeting, you’ll likely have even less control over audience selection than you do today.

Qualification doesn’t disappear—it shifts into the creative itself.

What once happened primarily through audience settings is increasingly happening through messaging, visuals, and creative strategy.

You must embrace that shift to thrive in this environment. That means:

  • Writing headlines that identify the intended audience.
  • Creating videos that establish audience fit in the first few seconds.
  • Building qualifications, prerequisites, and intent signals directly into the message.

Every ad speaks to two audiences at once: the user and the algorithm.

Platforms are handling more targeting than ever, but they still need direction.

Increasingly, that direction comes from creative. In a world of broad targeting, creative isn’t just the message — it’s the qualifier.

Read more at Read More

What Is an SEO Consultant & What Services Do They Offer?

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Key Takeaways

  • SEO consultants handle audits, keyword research, on-page fixes, link building, and AI visibility across platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews. 
  • Hire one when your traffic stalls, your rankings drop after a Google update, your in-house team is stretched, or you’re ready to scale. 
  • Look for proven case studies, several years of experience, data-driven reporting, and a clear grasp of AI search. 
  • Consultants cost less and work one-on-one. Agencies cost more but deliver faster with a full team behind your account. 
  • In-house teams know your business best. Consultants bring deeper SEO expertise and faster results.

Need a little help improving your rankings? An SEO consultant could be the answer.

Chances are you already know the basics of SEO, but getting your desired results can be tough with everything else on your plate, especially with the changes AI is throwing into the mix.

That’s where SEO consulting services come in. These experts provide a range of services to boost your traditional and AI SEO results.

SEO consultant is a multifaceted role that requires a range of skills. They wear many hats, and for businesses struggling to rank, they can be a perfect fit.

By the end of this post, you’ll know all about what an SEO consultant is and what they do.

What Does an SEO Consultant Do?

The primary role is to provide a range of SEO consulting services to clients to help them achieve better rankings. They implement various strategies and best practices, including:

  • SEO audits. An SEO audit is an in-depth analysis of a website’s ability to rank in search engines. It looks at your site’s content, technical SEO, backlinks, and competitor performance, among other factors. An SEO audit also highlights ways a site can improve its SEO and provides a strategy for achieving those improvements.
  • Keyword research. Keyword research means finding relevant keywords that a website should aim to rank for. If a business hasn’t done any SEO before, it may not target any keywords. Even if they have worked with an SEO specialist in the past, it may not be targeting the best keywords.
  • On-page SEO. On-page SEO means optimizing the site’s content and HTML elements of individual pages to meet Google’s best practices. This can include refining page content, optimizing title tags and metadata, structuring headers, and improving internal linking.
  • Technical SEO. Technical SEO focuses on the behind-the-scenes elements that help search engines crawl, index, and understand a website. This can include improving site speed, strengthening site security, fixing crawl errors, optimizing site architecture, and ensuring mobile-friendliness.
  • Link building. The more and better quality links a website has, the easier it is to rank for high-competition keywords. If a site’s authority is low, an SEO consultant may create one or more link-building campaigns to improve the site’s backlink profile.
  • AI or generative engine optimization (GEO). While traditional SEO still makes a significant impact, SEO consultants also need to understand GEO. That means knowing how long-tail, question-based keywords affect visibility within AI elements of traditional search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google’s AI Overviews. It also means knowing how to earn citations across major AI platforms like ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. 

In addition to these services, SEO consultants also typically provide monthly reporting services to clients. The report covers current rankings, the consultant’s work completed, and recommendations for actions they can take to improve results.

SEO Consulting Types

Countless factors affect your Google ranking, so before you begin, clarify exactly what you need help with.

An easy way to find that out is to ask, “Which part of my business brings the most sales?”

Got the answer? Good. From there, you can match your situation to one of these common SEO consulting service specializations:

  • Local SEO consultants help businesses rank in map packs and location-based searches. They’re a good fit if you have a brick-and-mortar store or serve a specific geographic area.
  • Ecommerce SEO consultants specialize in product page optimization, category structure, and the technical challenges that come with a large product catalog.
  • Content-focused SEO consultants specialize in topical authority, editorial strategy, and ranking through high-quality, in-depth content. They’re a strong fit for publishers and brands competing on expertise.
  • Technical SEO consultants dig into crawlability, site speed, schema, and infrastructure. They’re most useful when your content is solid but the site itself is holding rankings back.
  • Enterprise SEO consultants work with large sites that have complex architectures and significant existing traffic to protect.

Signs You Need an SEO Consultant

It’s usually pretty obvious when you need an SEO consultant. If your website isn’t generating leads or conversions from organic traffic and search engines and AI platforms are an important part of your marketing strategy, then working with an SEO consultant is a good idea.

Here are some other signs it’s time to consult a professional:

Your Website Traffic is Flatlining

Search engine traffic is the most basic indicator of whether an SEO strategy is working. If your traffic isn’t increasing (or decreasing) over time, you need to work with an SEO consultant or replace your existing one.

Search traffic won’t be important to some businesses, but that’s rare. Even if you don’t think search traffic is essential for your business, it probably is.

Although AIO and large language model optimization (LLMO) are changing where search happens, Google still accounts for almost 90 percent of the global search market. What’s also shifting is how these searchers interact with Google’s results.

With AI Overviews, customers are getting the information they need directly in the SERPs without clicking through to websites. That affects traffic numbers, but it doesn’t mean searchers are abandoning Google. Writing off traditional search means writing off a massive audience.

A line graph showing how Google dominates the search engine market share compared to other platforms like Bing, Yahoo!, and DuckDuckGo

Source: https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share

You’re Struggling After a Google Update

Have your rankings tanked after a Google core update? You may have been hit by a Google penalty for falling out of step with its best practices. These penalties are notoriously difficult to overcome without the help of a search professional, and there’s a risk you could do even more damage if you try to fix the problem yourself.

Your rankings can also decline without a formal penalty. You may not be breaking any Google rules outright, but ignoring SEO best practices can still drag down your rankings. Working with a consultant with in-depth industry knowledge can help you avoid unintended SEO consequences and penalties.

Google may notify you directly through the manual action report in Search Console. Users receive these reports when a human reviewer has determined that their site violates one or more of Google’s spam policies. Expand the notification, and you’ll see a message like this:

A screenshot of Google documentation explaining which pages of a website are being referenced by a Manual Action Report

Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175?hl=en

More often, though, post-update drops are algorithmic. 

A good SEO consultant’s knowledge and guidance can be indispensable no matter the cause or scenario. They can help you navigate Google’s entire list of penalties and provide the most complete, efficient fixes available. 

Your In-House Team Needs Support

Some businesses try to build their own in-house SEO team or hire a marketing manager with experience across several areas of digital marketing. 

Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work out. An SEO consultant often brings more experience, and the engagement can cost less than a full-time hire. 

For example, Ahrefs puts the average SEO consultant engagement at about $3,250 per month, which is typically far below the total cost of salary and benefits for a full-time SEO role. That said, the cost can vary significantly depending on the type of SEO consultant and the level of service.

Even effective in-house teams can benefit from hiring an SEO consultant. You may even have some SEO experts on your in-house team. While they may have the knowledge, there’s no guarantee you’ll have time to implement strategies to improve your rankings. A consultant can also help you with unique strategies and spotting unforeseen challenges as you scale. 

SEO is an important marketing channel, but small teams can’t do it all. If you’re busy dealing with customers, suppliers, and shareholders, outsourcing the work to an SEO consultant is smart.

You Want to Grow Operations

Whatever business you’re in, there comes a time to level up.

You could market your business in several ways, like social media, newsletters, and sharing case studies. But it’s SEO that grows your online visibility and helps searchers find you.

While you could implement a strategy yourself, an SEO specialist has the knowledge you need to drive online discoverability. 

This is especially true given how search is evolving. We live in a “search everywhere” environment now. The customer journey is rapidly moving away from the traditional straight-down funnel approach, and businesses increasingly need to be visible everywhere.

What does that mean for you? You need to work with a professional who can not only get you ranking well in SERPs like Google but also understands how AI prompts and platforms play into your visibility. 

Sold on the idea of hiring an SEO consultant? Read on for some tips on how to find one.

Finding Your Next SEO Consultant

Finding an SEO consultant isn’t hard, but finding a good one is. First, let’s look at some of the most common ways to find an SEO consultant:

  • Ask your network. Speaking to people you know and trust is one of the best ways to find an SEO consultant. If a fellow business owner or manager knows of a great SEO consultant, they’re usually happy to recommend them. As a bonus, you’ll know they can deliver.
  • Run a Google search. Unsurprisingly, Google is a great place to find an SEO consultant. If a consultant is ranking well on Google, there’s a good chance they know what they’re doing. However, this shouldn’t be the only factor you use in your decision. Just because they rank high on Google doesn’t mean they can do the same for your business.
Sponsored Google search results for “SEO consultant”
  • Use online directories. Several online directories collect reviews about SEO specialists. Clutch is a great place to start, but take these reviews with a pinch of salt. Just because a consultant is topping the rankings doesn’t mean they are the best for you. Like Google, they are a great way to get a shortlist of suitable candidates rather than pinpoint one.
Screenshot of Clutch’s user reviews for the top 60 SEO consultants

Source: https://clutch.co/seo-firms/consultants

  • Look through SEO blogs. Popular SEO blogs like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, and The Moz Blog can be a great source of potential SEO consultants. They don’t just host journalists’ opinions; SEO strategists also routinely write how-tos and thought pieces on these sites.
Screenshot showing the search bar from The Moz Blog’s homepage
  • Post on job boards. Job boards like Upwork, AngelList, and Dynamite Jobs are great places to post ads. The beauty of this method is that SEO consultants will come to you, meaning all you have to do is interview them. Moreover, many of these job boards vet applicants before they can even apply.
Screenshot of Upwork search results for SEO Experts

Source: https://www.upwork.com/hire/seo-experts/

Traits of a Good SEO Consultant

Want to know what a great SEO strategist is?

Several traits set great SEO consultants apart from the rest. I recommend you look for the following attributes when interviewing potential candidates.

  • Several years of experience. You don’t want a rookie SEO as your consultant. The more experience an SEO consultant has in the industry, the better. They’ll have worked on more sites, better understand what’s effective, and have more case studies to back up their success.
  • Proven resuts. Any SEO consultant worth their salt will have many case studies to support their work. They can show exactly what they did to improve a previous client’s rankings and the impact they had. They should also be happy to put you in contact with previous clients. Here are some examples from my agency, NP Digital:
A screenshot listing Neil Patel Digital’s clients
  • A long-term vision. You want an SEO consultant who’s in it for the long haul, not someone who is going to leave you for a new client after a couple of months; choose a consultant who explains the long-term benefits of SEO to your business and has a roadmap of how you can achieve them.
  • Sees the bigger picture. SEO is just one part of a holistic marketing strategy, and a good SEO consultant will appreciate that. They should help you fold your SEO strategy into other marketing initiatives and be willing to work with other team members and departments in your company to improve your broader marketing goals.
  • A data-driven business model. The consultant you work with should be focused on data. They should be providing regular reporting on how strategies are working, as well as ways to improve those that aren’t, grounded in factual numbers. 
  • Understands AI visibility. A good SEO consultant needs to understand AI visibility in today’s market. They should have knowledge of prompting and which strategies work well on these platforms, both on- and off-page. 
  • Certifications. Just remember that certifications aren’t everything; practical experience is equally important in SEO.

SEO Consultants vs. SEO Agencies

So far, we’ve talked about SEO consultants in broad strokes. However, there’s a meaningful distinction worth drawing before you start looking for one. Both consultants and agencies often offer consulting services, but they operate very differently.

Many SEO consultants consist of an independent professional or a small team. They work directly with you, usually wearing multiple hats while focusing on strategy and high-leverage execution. 

An SEO agency is a larger organization, sometimes with dozens or hundreds of employees, structured to execute at scale across many clients simultaneously.

Both can get you results. The right choice depends on what you actually need.

SEO Consultants May Require Your Help. SEO Agencies Won’t.

If you choose to work with an SEO consultant, you might be looking for a personal, one-to-one service. What you might not realize is that they will likely need your help to improve your rankings, too.

SEO consultants often have specific niches and work independently, so they may not have the resources to provide comprehensive services. That means they could ask your team to write additional content, change your website, or perform other SEO-related tasks.

That’s very different from an SEO agency that often can perform every SEO task in-house.

Agencies Cost More, but You Get More for Your Money

Agencies will usually charge more for their time than SEO consultants. That’s because they have staff to pay and overheads to cover, whereas SEO consultants typically work from home. For smaller businesses, that may mean an SEO consultant is the way to go.

Other businesses may want to pay more for a top-tier SEO agency because they know they’ll get more bang for their buck. That’s because an agency gives you access to dozens of experts rather than just one. 

Having more people working on your project also means you get work delivered more quickly. There’s a good chance you’ll see results faster, too.

At the end of the day, if you choose a good SEO consultant or SEO agency, you’ll still be receiving excellent advice. Most consultants and agencies are dedicated to their craft, attend the right conferences, and test cutting-edge tactics. 

You may get access to a few more experts when you work with an SEO agency, but that doesn’t make an SEO consultant any less professional.

SEO Consultants vs. In-House Teams

For many companies, deciding whether to go with an in-house team or work with external SEO consultants is a challenge. As you’d expect, there are pros and cons to both options.

Factor SEO Consultant In-House Team
SEO expertise Brings established knowledge from day one Needs time to build skills and stay current
Business knowledge Learns your company from the outside Knows your customers, products, and market
Speed to results Skips the learning curve Requires training before output ramps up
Resources Access to agency tools and a wider team Limited to what you can hire or buy
Communication Works through scheduled touchpoints Allows quick, informal updates and meetings
Control & flexibility You guide the strategy at arm’s length You manage the work directly, day to day
Focus Frees your staff for core business tasks Keeps SEO tied to broader operations
Best fit for Small teams or businesses scaling fast Companies with the budget to build long-term

The most obvious benefit of working with an SEO consulting service is avoiding the steep learning curve of search engine optimization.

If you run a small business and know it will take time before your staff can get up to speed with SEO complexities, you can save yourself time (and headaches) by outsourcing. Agency staff can lean on their expertise and resources to stand up effective strategies right away.

You could also use an agency to focus on growing your business. While your team focuses on the day-to-day tasks, SEO consulting experts can create a strategy that delivers results.

Doing SEO in-house has its advantages, too.

The most obvious benefit of going in-house is that the staff knows the business better than an outside consultant. They know the customers, the market, and what appeals to them.

You may also find it easier to collaborate and communicate when you keep your SEO in-house. Team meetings, sharing updates, and changing course when needed can all be a lot easier.

Then, of course, there’s the greater control and flexibility. After all, you’re working on your own terms.

The Top 3 Options for SEO Consulting

Detailed below are three of the top SEO companies for consulting.


<h3>1. NP Digital for the Best Blog and Website SEO Consulting</h3>

Screenshot of NP Digital’s landing page

I can’t write an article about SEO consulting without mentioning the award-winning NP Digital agency.

It recently won the AdAge Performance Marketing Agency of the Year award. Pretty awesome, right?

NP Digital has also received recognition for the impressive ROI it delivers to clients, its paid search, and its ability to boost your visibility across platforms, including AI or GEO search results.

I could go on, but I don’t like to boast.

Since the start, NP Digital has offered a proven system to get your readers coming back for more content while also converting a high percentage of them.

Book a call with NP Digital today if you’re looking to outgrow your competitors and work with a well-established SEO consulting firm that brings consistent results.

<h3>2. Louder.Online for Dedicated Sales Funnel SEO Consulting</h3>

Screenshot of Louder.Online’s homepage, displaying some of the marquis brands they’ve worked with.

Source: https://louder.online/

Are you more into sales funnels?

Do you want to optimize your sales pages for SEO while maintaining high conversion rates?

Then you should speak with an SEO consulting company that specializes in delivering consistent, trackable results for your sales funnels.

In our experience, Louder.Online has been an atomic weapon.

Its SEO consulting experts have years of experience, and more importantly, they get results.

If you’re looking to optimize your sales pages, you should check out what Louder.Online has to offer.

Coalition Technologies for Ecommerce SEO Consulting

Screenshot of Coalition Technologies homepage

Source: https://coalitiontechnologies.com/ecommerce-seo

If your focus is ecommerce SEO, consider Coalition Technologies. With more than 530 ecommerce projects translating into over 20 million ecommerce transactions, Coalition Technologies has the track record to back its standing as a top-tier SEO consultant.

It offers services like web design, paid advertising, traditional SEO, and AI SEO. Its niche services include social media and forum marketing, platforms essential for converting online sales today. 

Coalition boasts more than 500 SEO case studies. These success stories come from clients in a broad range of industries, from fashion to legal. 

FAQs

What is SEO consulting?

SEO consulting is an advisory service where an expert audits your online presence and builds a strategy to improve your search and AI visibility. Some consultants also handle implementation.

What does an SEO consultant do?

An SEO consultant researches keywords and competitor content. Using what they find, they will recommend strategies to fix on-page and off-page SEO issues. They’ll also provide regular metrics and reporting. Some will even manage execution alongside your team.

How do you find a good SEO consultant?

Look for case studies, client reviews, and industry experience. Ask for references and confirm that they follow white-hat practices.

What should you ask SEO consultants?

Ask about their process, reporting cadence, past results, and pricing. Find out which tools they use and how they’re handling the new AI search environment.

How do you hire an SEO consultant?

Shortlist your top candidates, request proposals, and compare pricing against scope. Sign a contract outlining deliverables, timelines, and reporting requirements before work begins.

Conclusion

SEO consultants can deliver incredible results to small businesses, helping them improve every facet of SEO. A good SEO consultant offers a wide range of services and has the proof and industry knowledge to back up their promises.

You’ll want to make sure you choose a consultant that uses hard data as their guiding light and knows how to navigate modern search. Google is still critical, but the use of AI is rapidly changing how SERPs function and how users behave.

You’ll also need to decide whether an SEO consultant or agency is the best fit for your goals. For some businesses, working with an SEO agency is a better choice. If you have the budget, an SEO agency will help you get more done in less time, supercharging your results in the process.

Whether you’re hiring an SEO consultant or an SEO agency, you can look in many of the same places and search for similar traits. Or you can ask my agency for help.

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