AI tools are everywhere — from chatbots that answer customer questions to language models that summarize everything from documentation to legal text. But if you’ve ever asked a model like ChatGPT to explain your site, your product, or your API, the results might not feel quite right. In fact, sometimes they’re way off. And no, that’s not your fault.
The disconnect between websites and LLMs
Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini are trained to understand a wide range of content. But when they try to interpret your website at runtime, that is, when someone is actively asking them a question, they run into a few core problems:
HTML is noisy. Navigation bars, cookie banners, modal popups, and analytics scripts clutter the page.
Context windows are limited. Most websites are too large for an LLM to process all at once.
Important details are spread across multiple pages or hidden in tables, code blocks, or comments.
Markdown docs may exist, but the model often can’t locate them, or even know they exist.
So, when you ask an AI tool to “explain what this company does” or “summarize this library API”, it often gets stuck. It either skips key context or grabs the wrong signals from cluttered markup.
It’s not bad intent; it’s a design limitation.
Why it’s not your SEO’s fault, either
You’ve probably invested time and effort into search engine optimization. Maybe your robots.txt and sitemap.xml are in place. You’ve got meta tags, structured data, and clean internal links. Good, but LLMs don’t always work like Google.
Traditional SEO helps your site get found. However, it doesn’t guarantee that AI tools will understand what a human user would. That’s where a new proposal comes in.
Meet llms.txt: A simple way to help AI understand your site
A growing number of developers and AI researchers are adopting a lightweight, human-readable standard called llms.txt.
What is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a plain Markdown file placed at the root of your site that provides language models with a summary of your project and direct links to clean, LLM-readable versions of important pages. It’s designed for inference-time use, helping AI tools quickly understand a site’s structure, purpose, and content without relying on cluttered HTML or metadata intended for search engines.
What it does:
Gives a short summary of your site or project
Links to clean, LLM-ready Markdown versions of key pages
Helps AI tools find exactly what matters, without parsing messy HTML
Is it widely supported? Not yet
Right now, no major LLM provider officially supports llms.txt. Tools like GPTBot (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), and Google’s AI crawlers don’t reference or follow it as part of their crawling behavior. Some companies like Anthropic publish llms.txt files themselves, but there’s no evidence that any crawler is actively using them in retrieval or training.
Still, it’s a low-effort, no-risk addition that helps prepare your site for a future where structured LLM access becomes more standardized. And LLM-facing tools, or even your own AI agents, can make use of it today.
Example use cases:
A dev library links to .md-formatted API docs and usage examples.
A university site highlights course descriptions and academic policies.
A personal blog offers a simplified timeline of key projects or topics.
You control the content and the structure. LLMs benefit from curated, LLM-aware context. And users asking questions about your site get better answers.
Using our Yoast SEO plugin?
If you’re already using our Yoast SEO (free or Premium) plugin, generating a llms.txt file is easy. Just enable the feature in your settings, and the plugin will automatically create and serve a complete llms.txt file for your site. You can view it anytime at yourdomain.com/llms.txt.
Get Yoast SEO Premium
Unlock powerful SEO insights with our Premium plugin, including advanced content features, AI optimization tools, and real-time data built for the next generation of search.
(https://everydayimtravelling.com/sitemap_index.xml) of this website.
# everydayimtravelling.com: Stories from our travels
## Posts
- [Test video](https://everydayimtravelling.com/test-video/)
- [A Journey Through Portugal’s Wine Country: A Suggested Wine Tour Route](https://everydayimtravelling.com/a-wine-tour-through-portugal/)
- [Travel essentials for backpackers FAQ](https://everydayimtravelling.com/travel-essentials-for-backpackers-faq/)
## Pages
- [Checkout](https://everydayimtravelling.com/checkout/)
- [Contact us](https://everydayimtravelling.com/contact-us/)
- [How we started this blog](https://everydayimtravelling.com/pagina-harry-potter/)
- [My account](https://everydayimtravelling.com/my-account/)
- [Cart](https://everydayimtravelling.com/cart/)
## Categories
- [Europe](https://everydayimtravelling.com/category/europe/)
- [Asia](https://everydayimtravelling.com/category/asia/)
- [South America](https://everydayimtravelling.com/category/south-america/)
- [Food](https://everydayimtravelling.com/category/food/)
- [Western Europe](https://everydayimtravelling.com/category/europe/west-europe/)
## Tags
- [Budget](https://everydayimtravelling.com/tag/budget/)
Yoast SEO has an llms.txt generator onboard; you can find it in the API settings
Helping AI help you
So, if AI is misinterpreting your website, producing erroneous summaries, or skipping critical content, there’s a reason, and it’s fixable.
It’s not always your copy. Not your design or your metadata. It’s just that these language tools need a little guidance. In the future, llms.txt could be the way to give it to them, and you do so on your terms.
Do you need help creating an llms.txt file or converting your existing content to Markdown for LLMs? Yoast SEO can automatically generate an llms.txt file for you.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-06-10 09:44:442025-06-10 09:44:44What AI gets wrong about your site, and why it’s not your fault: meet llms.txt
You type a few keywords into Amazon. A brand called Truly Beauty pops up. You’ve never heard of them.
So you go to YouTube to find the “best after shave oil”.
At the top of the results, someone has reviewed Truly Beauty’s product.
Okay, interesting…
Let’s stay on YouTube. Next, you type “truly beauty after shave oil” into the search.
What the? The whole page has people reviewing Truly Beauty products!
Is this brand legitimate, or are all these ads in disguise?
Time to go to Reddit to get some unfiltered opinions.
You search for “after shave oil reviews reddit” and notice that once again, Truly Beauty shows up in the results.
Sure enough, other people share your skepticism. But there’s some positive feedback too.
You decide to give them a try.
This kind of journey happens millions of times every day — across every industry, on every platform.
Side note: I run a men’s apparel brand, but I often research women’s beauty. It’s insanely competitive and usually way ahead in digital strategy.
If you’re in SEO, there’s a clear takeaway here:
You’re not just optimizing for Google anymore.
You need to show up across the entire decision-making journey. Wherever your audience searches, scrolls, or compares.
This is exactly what Truly Beauty figured out.
They didn’t just optimize for Google. They built visibility across the entire search ecosystem. Amazon for discovery. YouTube for social proof. Reddit for authentic reviews.
And it’s working amazingly well.
In this guide, I’ll break down how to optimize your brand for how people actually search today. With concrete examples. Including Truly Beauty’s strategy.
Free resource: To make things easier, I’ve created a checklist to track your progress
Let’s start with what’s really happening here.
The New Reality: Search Everywhere Optimization
What Truly Beauty did isn’t luck. It’s strategy.
They understood something most brands still miss:
Search has changed.
Today’s customers don’t follow a clean, Google-only path. They bounce from TikTok to YouTube, Reddit to Amazon, back to Google, then maybe ChatGPT for one last check.
Credit where it’s due: Rand Fishkin captured this evolution perfectly in his recent post.
Search Everywhere Optimization is about helping people find, evaluate, and trust your brand across every platform where discovery happens. That includes Google — but also YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Amazon, LinkedIn, and even AI tools like ChatGPT.
Every one of those platforms can shape a decision. Miss one? You risk losing the customer to someone who showed up where you didn’t.
Your job isn’t just to rank on Google.
It’s to help people find, evaluate, and trust your brand everywhere they search.
Some call this omnichannel SEO, cross-platform optimization, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization).
The way I see it:
Search Everywhere Optimization.
Because the search journey now includes everything from YouTube Shorts to AI summaries.
And your job is to build visibility, credibility, and conversion power across it all.
It’s not just about being found.
It’s about being trusted. On every platform where decisions happen.
That’s what makes Search Everywhere Optimization different — it evolves SEO beyond a siloed tactic into a full-funnel growth strategy.
So, you’re not just optimizing pages anymore.
You’re shaping how people find, evaluate, and trust what you offer across every stage of the journey, on every platform they turn to for answers.
Show up on high-engagement platforms where decisions start
Create content that resonates in the right format and context
Build trust through experience — design, messaging, and credibility
Turn search moments into conversions, leads, or long-term users
That’s the shift:
From rankings to relevance. From clicks to action. From Google-only to everywhere that matters.
Two Core Areas of Search Everywhere Optimization
To make Search Everywhere Optimization work, you need to understand where your audience is discovering products.
And how much control you have over those moments.
That’s where this framework comes in.
We divide the modern search experience into two key areas:
Managed experiences — where you control the content and presentation
Influenced experiences — where others shape the narrative, but your brand still shows up
This distinction helps you prioritize efforts across platforms you own… and platforms where you earn visibility.
Managed Experiences
These are touchpoints you can directly control.
Your website is still your most important owned asset. But you also manage your social media profiles, product listings, app store pages, and more.
This is where things gets tactical. You’re shaping the journey with:
Engaging content
Clear messaging
Cohesive visuals
Optimized flows and CTAs
On your website, you can go even deeper — refining structure, page speed, copy, and trust signals.
The goal? Deliver a fast, credible, and conversion-ready experience every time someone finds you through search.
Earned and Influenced Experiences
Now, let’s talk about where you don’t control the narrative.
These are the moments shaped by others: customers, creators, communities, algorithms.
Earned and influenced experiences are touchpoints you don’t directly control.
But they still shape how people perceive and trust your brand.
This includes:
Customer reviews
Reddit threads
YouTube mentions
Third-party comparisons
AI-generated responses in tools like ChatGPT
You can’t control these spaces… but you can influence them.
Search Everywhere Optimization is about increasing your visibility, credibility, and perceived value in places you don’t own.
That might mean:
Engaging in relevant conversations
Encouraging customer reviews
Partnering with trusted voices
Publishing helpful content that others cite
Truly Beauty does this well. Their TikTok is a managed asset. The brand controls the content, caption, and messaging.
This isn’t about control. It’s more about visibility, relevance, and credibility in places people already go to decide.
Luckily, you can help shape perception through helpful content, real engagement, and clear value.
You can pay influencers to review and interact with your product, publish high-quality guest posts. So, you don’t have full control over them, but you can light the fire.
For example, Truly Beauty has a strong presence across owned and earned/influenced platforms.
This includes the brand’s official TikTok account, an owned experience.
The brand controls the content, caption, and messaging.
But when someone searches for Truly on TikTok and sees unsponsored reviews? That’s an influenced experience.
Both matter. Because both shape how people perceive your brand.
Search Everywhere Optimization ensures you show up in both worlds (managed and influenced) so you’re part of the journey no matter where it happens.
How Search Everywhere Optimization Builds on Traditional SEO
Traditional SEO has mostly focused on one thing — ranking on search engines like Google.
That still matters.
But it’s no longer enough.
Search Everywhere Optimization expands your SEO strategy beyond Google to include every platform where people search, compare, and decide.
So instead of optimizing just for rankings…
You’re optimizing the entire discovery journey.
This shift doesn’t replace SEO. It levels it up.
Here’s how they work together:
Traditional
SEO
Search Everywhere Optimization
Primary Goal
Drive qualified traffic from Google and other search engines
Help people find, evaluate, and take action across platforms
Tactics
Focus on content, keywords, backlinks, and technical fixes
Tailor messaging and format to each platform and stage of the journey
Performance Metrics
Metrics include rankings, impressions, CTR, and conversions
Metrics include engagement, watch time, scroll depth, reviews, and cross-platform performance
Think of it this way:
Traditional SEO gets you found on Google
Search Everywhere Optimization gets you chosen — everywhere
When you combine both, you create a strategy that moves with your audience.
Across platforms. Across formats. Across every step of their journey.
Step 1: Define Your Search Personas
Creating search personas lets you outline what your ideal audience wants and needs, and what drives their decisions.
This helps you design content and experiences based on real search behavior, rather than assumptions.
Pro tip: Already have marketing personas? Add a “Search Behavior” section to show how your audience searches, discovers, and evaluates solutions online.
Start with Real People
Before you can build your personas, you need real-world insights.
Go straight to the source by asking existing customers questions like:
How they found you
What made them trust you
What they needed before taking action
Tools like Typeform let you create and distribute surveys.
Start with their ready-to-use consumer behavior templates to make the process fast and easy.
Loop in Sales and Support
No one knows buyer questions better than your frontline team.
Ask them:
What keywords or phrases do people use when they reach out?
Which platforms drive user discovery?
What’s unclear or confusing before people convert?
This input gives you practical insights you can’t get from keyword tools alone.
Layer in Data
Tools like Semrush’s Traffic & Market Toolkit let you analyze your target market’s demographics.
Here’s how it works:
Enter your domain and up to four competitors’ domains.
Click “Analyze.”
View the “Audience” report to get a breakdown of unique visitors to each domain by age and sex.
Then, scroll to the “Geo Distribution” report to see an overview of visits and unique visitors by country.
Next, click “Audience Overlap” to learn about your audience’s online habits.
Including their most-visited domains. This gives you insights into their preferences, pain points, and needs.
Once you’ve gathered your data, organize everything into a clean visual persona.
Or just use a doc or spreadsheet — whatever helps you capture the key insights clearly.
By the end, you should know:
What your audience is trying to solve when they search
What blocks or gaps slow them down
What type of content or format resonates most
These insights give you a clear picture of who your searchers are and what matters to them.
Note: You can create multiple personas if your product serves more than one audience. For example, a beginner and a power user won’t search the same way or want the same content.
Step 2: Map the Full Search Journey
Map how each search persona moves from discovery to decision across platforms, questions, and content types.
We want to start by breaking the journey into three simple stages.
Quick note:
I’m showing these stages as a linear progression for simplicity. Real search journeys usually aren’t straightforward.
Users frequently jump between platforms and stages, circling back and moving forward unpredictably. This framework simply helps organize our understanding of the core phases searchers experience.
Discover: This is when someone first realizes a need or problem and starts looking for ideas, inspiration, or possible solutions
Compare: At this stage, they evaluate their options, which involves comparing features, reading reviews, or checking alternatives to decide what fits best
Act: This is when they’re ready to take action. Including making a purchase, signing up, booking a service, or taking the next step.
Expand this journey into more stages and variations as needed.
Like awareness, consideration, evaluation, or post-purchase.
For simplicity, we’ll stick with three core stages.
Then, for each stage, identify:
What they search for
Where they go to find answers
What content format they expect
Let’s say we’re mapping the search journey of a shopper discovering Truly Beauty.
A user might first come across this brand when searching for “best after shave oil” on TikTok.
From there, they Google “after shave oil” and see Truly in the top results.
Next, they visit the brand’s site to view product details, images, and pricing.
After that, they head to YouTube.
They search “truly after shave oil review” to find reviews from real people.
Finally, they visit Amazon, search for the product, and check reviews again before placing their order.
This is a simplified version of your audience’s actual journey.
In reality, searchers might visit more platforms during the discovery and compare stages — spanning days or even weeks.
This is why it helps to map the complete journey.
Like this:
Have more than one persona or product category? Create a separate map for each.
Many platforms offer free customer journey map templates, such as Canva and Miro.
Step 3: Identify Gaps and Prioritize Touchpoints
Here’s where you’ll identify what your brand is missing across the search journey and what to fix first.
Using your journey map from Step 2, go through each stage and ask:
Are we visible everywhere our audience searches?
Does our content actually help them move forward?
Let me walk you through an example.
I conducted a quick manual audit for Truly Beauty across multiple platforms.
On TikTok and Instagram, they consistently appear for branded searches like “Truly Beauty.”
And product-specific searches like “vanilla baby body oil.”
Next, I examined user-generated forums to see if people discuss the brand organically.
On Reddit, I found some positive threads where users recommend Truly products.
And some negative threads, too.
Overall, Truly Beauty could have a stronger presence in earned and influenced spaces.
Ever feel frustrated having to jump between different apps just to check your site’s SEO performance? We’ve simplified things for you. Yoast now seamlessly integrates insights from Site Kit by Google (Google Analytics and Search Console) right into your Yoast Dashboard, giving you one clear view to manage your website’s SEO effectively.
Here’s why you’ll love this:
Connect once, get instant clarity: Easily link your Yoast Dashboard and Site Kit by Google just once, avoiding multiple logins and complex workflows.
Instantly see where to focus your efforts: Efficiently recognize your best opportunities to boost visibility and rankings, allowing you to prioritize SEO tasks effectively.
Stay effortlessly informed: The Yoast Dashboard integration with Site Kit by Google connects your analytics and search data seamlessly in one place, so you can quickly see important metrics like organic traffic, impressions, clicks, and bounce rates without switching tabs.
How to connect your Site Kit by Google to the Yoast SEO Dashboard
Update your Yoast plugin to the latest version.
Go to your Yoast Dashboard in WordPress.
Follow the steps in the Site Kit installation widget.
Start reviewing insights directly in your Yoast Dashboard.
Connect Site Kit by Google to your Yoast Dashboard today and simplify your SEO workflow!
Disclaimer!
Please note that we’re rolling out this new feature in phases. This means that you might not see the Site Kit integration in your Yoast Dashboard yet. Eventually, this integration will be available to everyone, so stay tuned!
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We’re excited to announce that Yoast AI Optimize is now also available when using the Classic Editor in WordPress!
You’ve finished your copy, great! But those pesky Yoast SEO Analysis lights aren’t all green and you have to make manual changes. That’s where Yoast AI Optimize comes in. With Yoast SEO Premium, you can now get AI-powered suggestions right inside your Classic Editor to help fine-tune your content.
What is Yoast AI Optimize?
Yoast AI Optimize brings smart, targeted SEO support into your writing flow. It gives AI-powered suggestions for specific assessments in the Yoast SEO analysis, such as length, structure, and keyphrase distribution. You’ll see exactly where improvements can be made and get quick, editable suggestions to help you fix them. You can quickly apply or dismiss them; the final decision always remains yours.
Benefits:
Get real-time AI suggestions that help improve SEO and readability
Edit suggestions to match your style and tone of voice
Apply or dismiss suggestions easily without breaking your writing flow
Use it in both the Classic and Block editors with Yoast SEO Premium
Supports optimization for:
Keyphrase in introduction
Keyphrase distribution
Keyphrase density
Sentence length
Paragraph length
Whether you’re using the Classic Editor or sticking with the Block Editor, Yoast AI Optimize helps you improve your SEO score faster, without losing the personal touch.
If you’re curious to know how we built this feature, check out our developer blog post with all the behind the scenes.
Ready to optimize smarter? Update to Yoast SEO Premium to try AI Optimize in the Classic Editor today!
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A social media calendar is a planning tool to organize your ideas, coordinate with your team, and manage a consistent posting schedule — all in one place.
With a solid calendar, you can:
Map out content ideas weeks or months in advance
Deliver messaging that resonates with your audience
Drive measurable results from your social efforts
In short: A social calendar replaces guesswork with an actionable roadmap.
But creating a calendar that actually works for your team? That’s where many marketers hit a wall.
I built this playbook to help you tackle this challenge and build a foolproof social media planning system.
Where Most Teams Go Wrong with Social Media Content Calendars
When I worked as a one-person content team at a startup, I would spend countless hours every few months trying to make a practical social calendar.
All that trial and error helped me understand why most teams end up abandoning their calendars.
These are the four big reasons:
Overcomplicated Setup
Too many tabs. Complicated color-coding. Overwhelming categorization.
When you spend more time maintaining a spreadsheet than you do planning content, something’s wrong.
The best social calendars capture just what matters without drowning in excessive detail. This includes:
Post ideas
Publish dates
Approval statuses
Silvija Kemeraite, Social Media Manager at Omnisend, shares her take on how to overcome this challenge:
“Make a calendar that works for you and refine it as you go. There’s no point in creating a fancy calendar with hundreds of rows or columns that you don’t use or — even worse — use without a clear purpose.”
Siloed Planning
Siloed planning = Missed opportunities.
When you isolate social from your broader marketing plan, it creates a disconnect.
As a result, your marketing channels compete against each other. You end up driving attention to different messages.
You miss the chance to amplify your campaigns across different touchpoints.
Picture this:
Your latest email campaign spotlights the latest product launch. But your social accounts are only posting cat memes.
This dilutes the momentum.
A coordinated push across email marketing, social, blog posts, and other channels builds stronger visibility and reinforces your message multiple times for your audience.
The bottom line: Your brand’s social presence doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and neither should your calendar.
Structure vs. Spontaneity
Structuring your calendar too rigidly leaves no room for you to adapt to or join the conversations happening right now. This can lead to missed opportunities at best, and make your brand appear tone-deaf at worst.
On the other hand, calendars that constantly pivot to chase every trend can dilute your brand identity. They also become a nightmare to manage.
You need to walk the middle path and balance these two approaches.
Stick to relevant content pillars and leave room for timely opportunities.
The social team capitalized on a trending event (the SNL50 Special Episode) to introduce its just-launched integration with Canva.
The viral post racked up 5800+ reactions with 238 comments and 160 reposts. It became one of their best-performing LinkedIn posts — all because they left room for spontaneity.
Unrealistic Production and Review Process
Creating a calendar with three weekly posts for five platforms sounds ambitious on paper.
The reality? You’re setting your team up for missed deadlines, subpar content, and lots of frustration.
Quality takes a backseat when you prioritize quantity.
But you can’t get too hung up on quality either.
Your timelines take a hit if every post goes through a lengthy, multi-step review process.
A sustainable calendar takes into account the entire production cycle and available resources, ideally with a quick review process.
How to Create a Social Media Calendar that Works
You’ve got plenty of ideas, but they’re all over the place. Some get posted, most get forgotten.
I’ve been there.
That’s why I curated these best practices on how to create a social media calendar that’s compatible with your bandwidth and timelines.
1. Create a Minimum Viable Calendar
A Minimum Viable Calendar (MVC) focuses only on the essential elements of a social media content calendar.
Think of it as the “lite version” of your actual calendar. It’s stripped away of unnecessary complexities to give you a quick head start and improve follow-through.
Unlike a standard calendar, an MVC builds momentum through achievable steps.
Rather than doing too much with an overly ambitious plan, this version helps you establish consistency through:
A simplified setup for a short period and 1-2 platforms
Faster implementation and publishing
Easier tracking and optimization
Let’s find out how you can create a minimum viable calendar to get your marketing efforts off the ground.
Define Your Goals and Target Audience
Start with two questions:
What business objectives will your social channels support?
Who exactly are you trying to reach and influence?
For example, if you have a cookware brand, your goal might be to build brand awareness and drive sales. And you want to reach chefs and cooking enthusiasts in your target region.
While listening to the Social Pros Podcast, I found an interesting insight by Katie Robbert, CEO of Trust Insights.
Katie emphasizes the importance of defining your ideal customer profiles (ICPs):
“Whether or not we realize this, as marketers, we think we’re creating content for our customers, but we make it about ourselves. We have that bias of what we think their pain points are. Instead, we should be putting the customer first, and saying: ‘Your pain points are ABC, and here’s how we can solve them.”
Identify Target Platforms
The next step is to find where your audience hangs out the most.
Instead of posting on every possible platform, select 1-2 key channels where your audience is the most active.
For example, your cookware brand can focus on TikTok and Instagram to stay top of mind for cooking enthusiasts.
Original content is how you display your brand’s unique voice in crowded and noisy social feeds.
But coming up with original ideas can be exhausting, to say the least.
Here are a few places to start:
Behind-the-scenes looks into your team and process
Interactive content to engage your audience
Educational series, like weekly tips
Product and service showcases
Relatable memes
Kate Erwin’s advice will come in handy the next time you’re brainstorming fresh ideas.
She believes it’s important to listen to the conversations already happening on socials and share your take.
“You don’t want your point of view to come out of nowhere. Connect it to what your audience already cares about. Thankfully, people are already telling you what they care about all the time on social. They’re posting. They’re reacting. They’re commenting. They’re part of the conversation. It’s your job to join in.”
The takeaway? Original content doesn’t start with you; it starts with your audience
Actively listen to your audience and tune into their conversations with a perspective unique to your brand.
Our template gives you a dedicated space to add new ideas as and when inspiration strikes.
Plus, multiple team members can contribute ideas or make requests.
Use the ideas bank to collect all your ideas, score them, and pick the ideas that score above your minimum threshold.
3. Build a Content Production Pipeline
Creating great content consistently requires more than just good ideas.
You need a structured workflow to go from an idea to a published post without getting stuck.
A well-designed content production pipeline can:
Eliminate the chaos of last-minute scrambling
Help you meet timelines and post consistently
To build this production process, define clear handoffs for every stage — from ideation to publication.
Next, you need realistic timelines to make your process sustainable in the long run.
Many social calendars fail because they’re built on overly optimistic estimates.
They don’t account for everyone’s bandwidth and unexpected delays.
When planning these timelines, work backward from publication dates and build in buffer time at every stage.
As a best practice, give each stage an owner and set clear handoff guidelines for moving ideas from one stage to the next.
You also want to base your production time on:
Content type: You can move a simple social post from idea to published in 3–5 days. But a carousel post or video montage could take a few weeks.
Team size: Involve every contributor in the discussion to determine the time they need to do their best work. Then set time-based milestones accordingly.
Pro tip: Build buffer time into your production process. Add 10–20% extra time after each handoff to handle delays, last‑minute feedback, or unanticipated hiccups.
At the end of each month or quarter, look at what slipped and why to optimize your workflow.
Once your production process is ready, build a visual workflow to bring everyone on the same page.
Apply this workflow while implementing your minimum viable calendar. It’ll reveal issues and bottlenecks that can potentially derail your calendar.
Your workflow should clearly show:
Content production stages
Designated owner for each stage
Due dates for moving to the next stage
Any dependencies or prerequisites for a stage
You can build this workflow with many tools (more on that later).
Do It with Our Template
When I was trying to set up this workflow for my own B2B social media strategy, I experimented with a new tool every other week.
Asana, Notion, Trello, you name it.
The truth is:
There’s always a learning curve with these tools because they’re not purpose-built for social media marketing.
To save you all this time and effort, I designed our calendar template with two main sections:
Ideation: Add your core idea with a brief description. Assign the owner for each idea, then pick the platform(s) and format.
Execution: After the ideation stage, you want to define a publish date. Then, work backwards to assign deadlines for design and review.
Here’s a sample view of what this workflow looks like:
4. Design a Quick-Response Workflow for Trendjacking
Even the most meticulously planned calendars need room for spontaneity.
Leaving space means you can use trendjacking (creating content around popular trends) to increase your visibility and engagement.
That’s why you have to create structure around spontaneity.
I spoke to Travis Tyler, Senior Social Media Manager at Motion, about building a social calendar.
His best advice? Give your calendar some flexibility.
“Sometimes your best social posts will be these random, ad hoc, last-minute, 11th-hour ideas that seem stupid or silly. And then they end up crushing!”
So, make sure you build in the flexibility to jump on trending opportunities.
For starters, block some time every week to proactively find social media trends.
Look for upcoming events or holidays, spy on your competitors’ feeds, and use social listening tools to spot emerging trends early.
See what’s driving the highest engagement for these brands. Then (if it’s relevant to your own brand), see if you can come up with related ideas with your own spin on it.
Once you’ve identified some trending themes, you have to decide which trends are worth following.
Evaluate your ideas against these parameters to see how well the trend aligns with your brand:
Relevance check: Does this trend naturally connect to your products/services?
Audience alignment: Will your audience care about or engage with this trend?
Brand alignment: Does this trend align with your brand values and reputation?
Resources required: Can you create good content with the available resources and timeframe?
When you’ve locked in a trending idea, don’t get stuck in your standard review cycle and miss the moment.
Give someone in your team the authority to make rapid approvals for trending ideas.
5. Add Space for Feedback and Analysis
If your calendar doesn’t evolve based on performance insights, it’s just a rigid publishing schedule.
You need to designate time to analyze engagement data and modify your strategy based on these insights.
You can assess performance against different types of metrics:
Awareness: Impressions, reach, shares, and follower growth
Engagement: Likes, comments, shares, and saves
Conversion: Click-through rate, direct conversions, and social traffic
Establish clear benchmarks for “good” performance for each metric.
Then, monitor your performance with weekly analyses and monthly audits to see where you can improve.
You don’t have to scramble to collect data from multiple platforms.
Social Analytics gathers organic and paid data from Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram.
Here’s a preview of the Overview tab on Social Analytics. It gives you a glimpse of each channel’s key metrics, like followers, reach, profile views, post engagement, and more.
To get started with Social Analytics, you need to connect your social media profiles to Social Poster.
This will automatically link your accounts and collate all performance data.
Social Analytics creates unique dashboards for every platform.
Instagram: Data for audience, profile interactions, stories, and posts
Facebook: Metrics for page likes, engagement, and posts
LinkedIn: Data for audience, engagement, and posts
TikTok: Covers engagement and posts
Take a look at the TikTok dashboard to see the depth of insights available:
When to Review Your Calendar
You need a multi-layered approach for reviewing your social calendar.
Each round of review should serve a specific purpose:
Weekly: Focus on immediate feedback. Review the past week’s performance to adjust the posting times or caption styles for higher engagement.
Monthly: Evaluate patterns to find which content types consistently perform better than others
Quarterly: Take a closer look at your data to potentially restructure your calendar. Consider your business goals, performance, and other factors.
While your review process doesn’t need to follow this exact structure, you want to be clear on what you’re doing with the data.
Tools for Building a Social Calendar
The success of all these best practices depends on how comfortable you are with the calendar tool you use.
Let me share a few tools I’ve used to create and manage a social media content calendar.
Backlinko’s Template
I designed our free template to give you an easy and convenient way of maintaining a social planner.
Instead of struggling to pick one option from dozens of social media calendar tools, you get the familiarity of a spreadsheet.
Simply add a new row for each new idea, then assign dates, owners, and other attributes.
Now, everyone can see your planned content, and it’s easy to collaborate with others too.
Semrush Social Poster
With Semrush’s Social Poster, you can schedule posts on a dynamic calendar for multiple platforms.
Choose a platform (or multiple), create a new post by adding the caption and media file(s), and schedule it for any date.
The best part?
You can schedule posts in bulk by uploading a simple CSV file with up to 100 premade posts.
Besides social content planning, you can use the wider Semrush Social toolkit to track platform-specific engagement, keep tabs on your competitors, and even brainstorm new ideas.
Notion
Notion offers many customizable social calendar templates.
The tool combines project management with collaborative documentation. That means teams can ideate, create, edit, and finalize content on the same platform.
Since Notion is free for up to 10 users in a workspace, it’s a good option for lean teams.
I’ll admit that, when compared to dedicated social media tools, I do miss the scheduling and analytics capabilities that Notion is lacking.
But I’ve found it to still be a great planning tool to organize your ideas and collaborate with a small team.
Buffer
Buffer is a dedicated social media management tool.
I find it super easy to create new posts in any format, then drag and drop them on any date.
As a result, your weekly/monthly calendar is ready in just a few minutes.
What sets Buffer apart is the ability to create custom categories and use color codes to organize your posts. Think content pillars, goals, formats, and more.
Create Winning Social Media Content
Planning content for socials can be chaotic.
Trends pop up by the minute, and every day can feel like a fresh start.
A social media planner is your compass for navigating this constantly changing space.
But your calendar isn’t going to get you far without great content ideas.
When you work on your site’s SEO, reflecting on those efforts should be part of your ongoing strategy. Whether it’s for a client, your manager, or your team, creating an SEO report is the best way to do so. This helps you justify your efforts, keep track of performance and figure out what needs to be tackled next. And it’s not as hard as you would think. In this blog post, we’ll explain what SEO reporting is and take you through the process step by step.
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps drive more traffic to your site and improve your brand image. It should be part of anyone’s marketing strategy whose goal is to grow their (online) audience. Originally focused on performance in organic search, SEO now entails much more than that. It helps you build a strong brand name, become an authority in your field, and be visible on the platforms where your audience can be found. All this is to increase customer loyalty and grow your business.
What is SEO reporting exactly?
SEO reporting is best described as evaluating your online marketing efforts and presenting the outcomes in a report. This can be a report you create for yourself, your team, management, or a client. Often, a company has a specific template they use to do SEO reporting regularly (for example, every month). This can be in the form of a slide deck, online document, Excel sheet, or online dashboard. But it can also be any other reporting tool you feel comfortable with or your company uses for presentations.
In an SEO report, you will find metrics related to a website’s performance and other marketing activities related to SEO. This helps you track how your SEO strategy is performing and where tweaks are needed. That’s why an important part of any SEO report is the interpretation of metrics and conclusions that come out of that.
What to include in your SEO report
Whether you’re creating an SEO report for internal use, or for your client(s), it’s good to have a template. This allows you to compare recent findings with earlier ones, regardless of the frequency with which you’ll be reporting. Of course, you can make changes to this template along the way. But having a template saves you time and helps you recognize bigger issues and opportunities over time.
Naturally, it depends on your business goals what should be in your SEO report. The most important thing is that your SEO report reflects your (or your client’s) goals. This is to understand how your marketing efforts are contributing to reaching these goals and what actions need to be taken. But there are a few basics that most of us will want to include.
A general data overview
Start with an overview of the most important data for your business or website. This gives you an idea of how you’re doing right away. Especially when you’re reporting regularly, this overview will tell you or your client how the website (and online business) is performing. You can also choose to include data from the previous period (or the previous year) for comparison.
Website data to include:
The number of site visitors
Number of purchases (or other actions you want people to take)
A visualization of your traffic over the selected period
Keyword rankings for a few important pages
A traffic overview by source or medium
The type of visitors (new or returning)
Example of a general overview in an SEO report
Data on (content) performance
The general overview gives a quick insight into the current state of play, but to figure out how you got there, you must go into more detail. That’s why your report should include a closer look at content performance. Make sure to include data on your most important pages, such as product pages, popular blog posts, or other landing pages that attract a lot of people.
Collect data such as page views, visitors, engagement, event count, revenue, and traffic sources. You don’t have to include everything, as this will be overwhelming and will probably cause people to lose interest. Look at the data of your most important pages, pick out the numbers that stand out (growth or decline) and add those to your report. It can be tempting to focus solely on the positive numbers but also include the negative ones to paint a realistic picture. This speaks to your credibility, makes it easier to spot issues before they get out of hand and helps the company in the long run.
Other elements to include here are an overview of new backlinks to the website, stats related to site health and the Core Web Vitals, and an overview of keyword rankings. But do remember that keyword rankings can change on a daily basis, and obsessing over individual drops in rankings isn’t going to help your overall SEO. Use these averages to get an idea of whether your overall rankings are dropping and what you can do to get your organic traffic back up again.
Activities previous period
When you have had a look at the data, it’s time to summarize what has gone out that month (or period of your choice). Use this section to highlight how many posts have gone out on social media, how the audience has interacted with those, what blog posts have been written or updated, and how your running ads are performing. But you can also include other online or offline marketing activities to show what has been done.
Where possible, you can tie this in with any peaks in traffic or engagement. Or it can help you explain why some areas have gotten less attention than others. Either way, use this to make sense of the data and to highlight the hard work that has been put in by the team.
A summary with recommendations
Always end your SEO report with specific action points that come out of that month’s evaluation. It helps to start with a summary of the ‘highs and lows’ that were brought up in the report so far. For example, if you have noticed a noticeable drop in rankings, and therefore organic traffic, to one of your most important pages, it will make sense to focus on getting to the bottom of that in the coming weeks. And making improvements based on your findings. Or if a new type of social media post did very well, another action point could be to create a series of those and see if you can keep this success going.
But this last part is also a moment of reflection on a bigger level. Are you still on track with the business goals, or any specific SEO goals you’ve set for yourself? And don’t forget to go through the action points you thought up in the previous SEO report. Were you able to get those done? Are a few of them still in progress? Or are there any blockers that you need help with? Make sure to end with an action plan for the upcoming month and a team (or client) that’s on board with everything discussed.
Creating an SEO report: step by step
Now that you know what to include, let’s talk about how to get started with your SEO reporting. Before you start pulling together the data, it’s important to set clear KPIs and create a setup that works for your company.
1. Set up your KPIs
The first step is to define KPIs, which stands for key performance indicators. These should be measurable goals, based on the marketing goals and/or business objectives within the company. To give a simple example, if one of the marketing goals is to grow traffic to your website, a corresponding KPI can be to increase your organic traffic by 10% that year. Other popular KPIs are conversion rate, overall rankings, click-through rates, bounce rate, page load time, and branded/non-branded traffic.
Make these KPIs realistic, especially when you’re setting expectations with a client, and reflect on the progress in your SEO reports to stay on track. I would suggest not focusing too much on maintaining certain rankings or data on specific pages. Rankings are heavily subjected to external factors and can change daily, and zooming in on one page too much can make you lose perspective. Of course, a drop in traffic for an important page is something to keep an eye on and can be a reason to make some adjustments. But keep the overall KPIs in mind and be aware of the bigger picture, while tweaking what’s needed without obsessing.
2. Set up the structure for your report
Choose a tool for your SEO reporting. This can be a presentation tool that your team often uses, an information-gathering tool such as Excel or an Analytics dashboard, or one that your client is familiar with. Just make sure that you can set it up yourself and make tweaks when needed.
Add the sections that we’ve discussed above: a general overview, data on performance, marketing activities, and a summary with recommendations. I would suggest looking at your KPIs to figure out exactly what you want to show in the general overview and data on performance section. So, if your main KPI is growing your conversion rate, make sure that you add the data on this KPI to the general overview.
Test drive your new report by filling in this month’s data (or whatever period of time you choose). See the next step on how to tackle this. But this will help you figure out if the setup works for you in its current form. Always tweak when needed, whether that’s right now or a few months along the line. This report should work for you, you shouldn’t be jumping through hoops to get it to make sense.
3. Gather and fill in the data
It’s time to start retrieving the data you need. There are a few tools you can use. For the general overview and data on performance, you can mainly rely on Google Analytics and Google Search Console. To get an easy overview of your marketing activities for that month, your own marketing calendar and the platforms that you posted on will give you the insights that are needed.
Data on website performance
For the general overview and data on performance, we are going to use Google Analytics and Search Console. Here you’ll find data such as visitor numbers, engagement, number of purchases (you will have to set this as an event), visualizations of your traffic, keyword rankings, traffic overview by source/medium, and type of visitors. Stats related to site health and your Core Web Vitals can also be found in Google Search Console. Lastly, if you want to get an overview of your backlinks, Semrush can provide you with that.
A screenshot of the ‘performance on search results’ section in Google Search Console
While you’re putting those numbers into your report, remember to be mindful of how you present them. Don’t just throw everything in there and overwhelm (yourself and) others with raw data. Highlight important data and make visualizations of certain data to break up the wall of text. You can also just copy and paste a few graphs and add those in. Using a graph to show overall traffic or pie chart to show traffic by source/medium can already make a big difference.
Write down what speaks to you while filling in the data. What has been a success this month and what are areas that need more attention? And if you see something that you can’t explain right away (f.e. a drop in traffic, or a post that has an enormous amount of views), try to figure out what happened there so you can answer questions that people will inevitably ask about them.
Data on marketing activities
If you keep a marketing calendar, this is a great way to reflect on what you’ve published in the last month. Use this to summarize how many blog posts, social media posts, videos, newsletters and other marketing-related activities you’ve worked on. This includes other activities such as attending events, workshops, appearances you’ve made, or perhaps even print media.
When it comes to blog posts you’ve published, you could highlight one that stands out and use data from Analytics and Search Console to explain how it’s performing so far. Or you could just add the numbers up and give an idea of the overall effect of this content. Keep in mind that content needs some time to get noticed by people, so don’t fret if it hasn’t done that much yet.
Also, use this section to evaluate your social media posts and videos that you’ve uploaded to channels such as YouTube. I would recommend going to the platforms where you’ve posted content and using their analytics tools to see how well they’ve performed. This shows you what content works best and helps you draw conclusions from data from the source itself.
For other marketing activities that have happened that month, it really depends on the activity how to mention it in your report. If it’s an offline event or workshop, try to get some feedback from (potential) customers on their experience. When it comes to print media, you could try and get some idea of the effect by how many people have contacted you after seeing it. Just make sure to think about these things beforehand, to get an idea of the effect of these activities.
4. Evaluate and take action
When you’ve added the relevant data and summarized your marketing efforts, it’s time to properly evaluate. Go through your report and write down any patterns, issues, successes and opportunities. Add these to your overall summary and compare these findings to the ones you found last month (or the months before that) to recognize bigger issues and successes. This will allow you to properly evaluate your findings and turn them into actionable recommendations and action points.
When you’ve completed your SEO report and know what actions come out of it, it’s a good idea to present it internally. Or to your client. This helps them understand what you (and the team) have been working on and will probably spark a discussion that helps you figure out what to pick up first. Finally, after sharing this report with the relevant people and agreeing on next steps, make sure to plan these so they don’t get lost. Make a realistic plan for yourself or the team and pick up the action points to set everything in motion. And plan in the next SEO report to keep this cycle going!
Conclusion
Any good SEO report, whether this is for yourself or a client, starts with clear KPIs. Make sure to get those done before you start evaluating your SEO efforts. This will allow you to set up a proper template for the report and figure out what data you need to look at. Use the right tools to get the data you need, but don’t get lost in trying to report on everything. Show the relevant data and present this to the relevant parties to get everyone on board. Use all of this to figure out what your next steps are and follow up on the action points to make sure you keep focusing on the right things. Happy SEO reporting!
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-05-28 13:04:542025-05-28 13:04:54The beginner’s guide to SEO reporting
Modern SEO is all about data. Rankings can change overnight, user behavior as well, and search engines increasingly use AI to power the search results. To be able to respond, your decisions should be dictated by real, measurable insights. This article offers a practical way to turn SEO data into actionable insights.
The search landscape is more complex than ever, so you need all the help you can get. By analyzing data, SEOs and business owners can learn and understand what works and what doesn’t. Metrics from tools like Google Analytics and Search Console provide glimpses of how visitors behave, keyword usage, and page performance. Using data to make decisions takes the guesswork out of the SEO work.
Good data gives you a clear picture of user engagement. For instance, tracking engagement time, engagement rates, and click-through rates will reveal whether content meets audience needs. These are crucial data insights that uncover gaps that might hinder performance. Data-driven insights help you understand what to focus on and what to prioritize.
Data doesn’t just identify issues, but also opportunities. Trends in keyword performance or a shift in traffic sources can lead to new content ideas or a new market to target. This is data-driven marketing, as you are making decisions based on evidence instead of hunches. These insights will lead to strategies focused on real user behaviors, which should lead to better results.
The goal isn’t to find interesting stats — it’s to find what you can do next. In SEO and AI-driven search, the data that matters is the data that leads to action: fix this page, shift that content, change how you’re showing up. If your insights don’t lead to decisions, they’re just noise.
Carolyn Shelby – Principal SEO at Yoast
A Yoast example
Let’s take a simple example from Yoast. We noticed one of our articles (What is SEO?) was gradually losing traffic and slipping in the rankings for key terms. The content hadn’t been updated for a while, so we took a closer look. We analyzed the search results and compared our article with those from competitors. We looked at intent, structures, relevance, and freshness. It was easy to see that our article lacked depth and context in key areas.
We wrote a good brief for the article and detailed the work needed. Then, we rewrote sections, updated examples, improved internal linking, and made it generally easier to read. We also added new custom graphics and on-topic expert quotes from our in-house Principal SEO, Alex Moss.
After republishing, the article quickly regained visibility. Plus, it climbed back towards the top of the search results, which brought in extra traffic. This was a clear reminder for us; when data shows a drop, improving the quality of the content backed by a good analysis can still win.
And an example of going from data to actionable insights to results
Turning data into insights
You need a process to quickly and systematically turn raw data into valuable insights. Eventually, you’ll get these insights once you ask the right SEO questions, gather the data, analyze it, and plan accordingly.
Start with your goals, then ask: what’s holding us back? Actionable insights live in the gap between where you are and where you’re trying to go. That gap is different for every site and that’s what makes good analysis so powerful.
Carolyn Shelby – Principal SEO at Yoast
Step 1: What do you want to know?
Start by writing down the SEO questions you want answered. Do you want to improve performance, get more organic traffic, or better engagement? Analyze a traffic drop? For instance, an online store owner might want to understand why certain product pages don’t convert as well as expected. Thinking these things through before you start digging into the data makes it easier to focus on the metrics that matter.
Step 2: Gather the relevant data
Collect the data you need using tools like Google Analytics, Semrush, Wincher, Ahrefs, or other platforms that can power your data-driven SEO strategy. If you’d like to investigate a product page with subpar performance, you’ll look at page views, click-through rates, average engagement times, and engagement rates in GA4. Data like this should give you an idea to find and address the issues.
Step 3: Analyze and spot trends
Dive into the data and try to spot patterns and trends. For example, an educational site might notice that articles on a particular topic get a lot of traffic but low engagement. Digging deeper might find that the titles of the articles attract visitors, but for some reason, the content doesn’t keep them interested. Trends like these help turn that data into insights that you can act upon. You can also use things like segmentation to find differences between groups of people from specific regions, who could engage wildly differently with your content.
Step 4: Turn findings into actions
Once you’ve pinpointed the issues, it’s time to decide what you want to do. For instance, if you’ve found that an article has a low engagement rate because of the time it takes to load the page, you could fix the images and scripts on the page. Or, if you find that some keywords get traffic, but no conversions, you might need to improve the CTA on the page. Or it might be a search intent mismatch to fix. This is the thing that turns the insights from data into actionable insights.
This is a nicely structured way of getting the insights needed to inform your data-driven SEO strategy. You can use every piece of information you find to improve your work as you go. This will not only help you understand the data but also make it easier to make the improvements needed to reach your SEO and business goals.
An example: Addressing brand performance in LLMs
For this example, think of a tech publisher named Digital Mosaic. It’s a reputable source for in-depth news from the tech industry. Recently, their marketing team noticed something off. Users interacting with AI search engines and large language models (LLMs) like Google Gemini or ChatGPT rarely saw mentions of the Digital Mosaic brand. In other words, even when asked for the latest tech insights, the AI-driven sources and answers often omitted Digital Mosaic in favor of other options.
After finding the issue, the team started analyzing data from various analytics platforms, brand mention trackers, and user surveys. They found their SEO and content work was pretty good, but the content was not properly optimized to help LLMs surface it. The data showed that their content lacked the language and brand signals needed to help LLMs understand the brand’s authority.
When they found this, the teams got to work to improve how LLMs perceive their content:
Improving brand signals
The content team added clearer brand signals to their content, and each post received better metadata and structured data. The goal was to clearly tie the brand to the content to help LLMs recognize the sources.
Changes in content
Next, the team restructured certain articles to include branded segments, such as “Digital Mosaic Exclusive Analysis” or “Today’s Tech Insights by Digital Mosaic”. This makes the brand more visible to users and gives LLMs a chance to associate the content with the brand, coming from a trusted source.
Investing in partnerships and collaboration
The publisher set up a series of collaborations with well-known tech influencers and other outlets. They made co-branded content and were mentioned in many podcasts and webinars. This helped improve the brand’s presence in online conversations. LLMs love to look for what’s available on third-party sites about brands while generating responses.
Rinse and repeat
The team reviewed the changes’ performance to see if the LLMs would improve brand mentions. They used AI tools, like AI brand monitoring tools, to monitor and simulate the LLM outputs to see if the work was effective. Based on their findings, they would fine-tune their work and continue to improve performance.
Within a few months, the results were encouraging. LLMs were increasingly showing content from and mentioning Digital Mosaic, and the brand’s footprint in LLMs was steadily improving. This did not just help visibility and increase the brand’s authority in the industry, but also led to a new source of traffic from AI search interfaces.
This fictional example shows how a publisher can use data insights to overcome a very specific challenge. Mixing traditional SEO solutions with new technologies helped Digital Mosaic turn data into actionable insights. Not only did it help the brand’s visibility right now, but it also prepared it for the AI-powered future.
You need the right tools to turn data into actionable insights. This will be a mix of the tools we all know and love, and more specific ones to understand user behavior and site performance.
We all start with Google Analytics 4 and Search Console. GA4 tracks many metrics, including user engagement, event counts, and traffic sources. Properly set up, it gives you a good overview of how users use your site. Search Console shows how your site performs in the SERPs, including keyword rankings, indexing status, and crawl errors.
Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush provide information about backlinks, rankings, and search trends. These search marketing tools also have many features for competitive analysis and keyword research. You’ll get a big database of historical data, so you can spot and interpret trends over time. This data helps you with your data-driven marketing on all fronts.
Looker Studio is a great tool to tie various data sources together and build dashboards
Advanced techniques and technologies
The are so many options to dive ever-deeper into your data to find the insights you need. Beyond the basics, you can use:
Segmentation: It could help to break up your data into specific audience segments. For instance, you could look at visitor behavior based on demographics, location, or the type of device they use. Segmenting data helps you understand why certain groups behave differently. For instance, if mobile users show lower engagement than desktop users, there might be something wrong with your mobile site.
Trend analysis: Don’t just focus on looking at data for a specific day. It’s often better to look at metrics over different time periods. Look at the monthly or quarterly performance. This gives you an idea of the long-term impact of changes.
Build dashboards to visualize data: Make a dashboard with data from various sources. Use tools like Looker Studio to combine Google data with SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs. This will give you reports that will show all key data at a glance. A dashboard makes it easier to understand data and communicate it with other team members or management.
Big data: Big data is becoming increasingly important for data-driven SEO. Huge data sets can provide insights that smaller sets can overlook. They allow you to examine user behavior, search trends, and site performance at scale. With machine learning and automation, you can use big data to get better and faster results to inform your SEO strategy.
Iterative optimization and reporting
SEO is an ongoing process, and you’ll have to adjust course regularly. Don’t treat your site’s performance as a snapshot, but as something dynamic that evolves over time. Regularly looking at your data keeps you on top of things, from changes in user behavior to emerging search trends.
Make it a routine
Schedule when you review data. This might be daily checks for urgent work or weekly to track short-term changes. For long-term trends, do monthly or quarterly deep dives. Route analysis helps you spot patterns that might not be so obvious at first glance.
Test and experiment
With an iterative optimization approach, you test what works. For example, you could A/B test different page layouts, CTA buttons, or various meta titles. You might also try different content formats to see what gets more engagement. These tests will get you the data and insights needed to make the most of your SEO work.
Feedback loop
A true feedback loop helps validate your improvements. After turning data into actionable insights, implement the changes in your content or technical SEO work. Keep updating your data to see if you need to refine your strategy. If a new tactic works, adopt it as a standard practice. But if it doesn’t work as intended, find out why and try a variation of it. Measuring trial and error and adopting your tactics makes you flexible and responsive.
Internet marketing tools like Wincher give key data points about your content’s performance
Towards a data-driven SEO strategy
Using the knowledge you gain from turning data into actionable insights can greatly improve your SEO performance. Be sure to structure the data-gathering process: ask the right questions, collect the right data, analyze the trends, and create a system that turns those insights into action.
What you change on your site isn’t even that important; it might be updating metadata, improving content, or diving into technical SEO aspects. If only what you do is the correct answer to the questions you wanted to have answered.
Every insight can lead to big improvements in rankings and user engagement. Use this data-driven marketing approach to make the right decisions that will keep your SEO strategy effective in the future.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-05-23 09:05:042025-05-23 09:05:04Turning data into actionable insights: a data-driven SEO strategy
Just like most other website owners, you want your website to attract customers. But how can you see who visits your website? And how can you use this knowledge to increase website traffic over time? Luckily, there are loads of tools that can help you. Let’s get you started with the right one for your website without the need to become a data expert!
What is website traffic?
The term website traffic refers to the number of internet users visiting your website. Traffic can arrive from wide-ranging sources, such as directly typing in your website address, through other websites that link to your site, organic traffic (meaning they come to your site from the search results), paid traffic (people who click on your online ads), through your social media, and other channels. The total number of these users visiting your website combined is what we call website traffic.
How to check how many people enter a website
There are online tools that can help you make sense of your website traffic. These tools provide you with lots of different metrics, but we’ll go into the most important ones when it comes to website traffic.
Tools to track website visits
Numerous tools can help you track your website traffic. We’ll look at a few well-known tools that provide you with the insights you need.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the go-to tool for a lot of website owners when it comes to getting insights into their audience and website performance. What’s great about Analytics is that you can use it for free and it gives you loads of detailed insights. All the metrics mentioned above can be found in Analytics and give you the possibility to dive into visitor behavior and page performance. It allows you to mark key events, to track if people are performing the actions you want them to.
The homepage gives an overview of data that Analytics deems relevant to you, based on your behavior in the tool. Some reports provide the metrics mentioned and much more, all focused on understanding your audience. Explorations allows you to create your own ‘reports’ to dive into one specific question you have or element you want a deeper understanding of. When you have Google Ads running, Analytics also provides insights into your ads and what actions to take there.
Screenshot of Google Analytics 4, found on Google’s blog
You will have to connect Analytics to your website, but luckily, there are tools out there that help you with that. Also, Google explains how to do this properly in their guide for beginners, which also gives you more information on this tool. One downside of Analytics, if you can call it that, is that all the information provided there can be overwhelming for some. They do expect you to find your way and figure out what data is relevant for your website. This makes it difficult to stay focused on the right things and not get lost in the woods.
Google Search Console
Another tool provided by Google, free of charge, is Google Search Console. Although there is some overlap with Analytics, this tool is focused more on showing your visibility in different parts of the Google ecosystem. Similar to Semrush, it’s very helpful when working on the performance of your pages and increasing website traffic. So if increasing organic traffic to your website is a big part of your marketing strategy, make sure to add this tool to your favorites.
A screenshot of the ‘performance on search results’ section in Google Search Console
I wanted to mention this tool as it can help you boost your website traffic when used correctly. But if you’re mainly looking for a tool that provides you insights into your current website traffic, I would recommend investing your time in another tool first (f.e. Analytics). Search Console is great for figuring out what parts of your website you should work on, but if you want to take a step back and get familiar with your website stats first, then this might be for a later time.
Semrush
Semrush is another online tool that shows you how many people visit your site.e. This platform is used by a lot of people working on their website visibility. To give an idea, you can use Semrush to get data on your site’s performance, but it also allows you to do keyword research and compare yourself to competitors.
Like Analytics, it provides a lot of information. But it does depend on your subscription on how extensively you can use this tool. There is a free version that may get you the data you need when starting out. It offers a site audit (of 100 pages), position tracking (for 10 keywords), personal recommendations, and traffic data such as visits, conversion, and bounce rate.
If you want to give Semrush a try, simply create a free account and fill in your website where the tool asks for your main domain. This will give you insights right away. You will notice that not all the data is available, and getting access to some more detailed stats will require an upgrade. But especially when you want to work on your SEO, Semrush gives you a lot of relevant information.
Metrics on website traffic
Every tool comes with different data, but there are a few relevant metrics that you will find in most of them. I’ll explain a few of them that will help you figure out who’s visiting your website and what they’re doing while on your pages.
Number of users
First of all, there’s the number of users. The number of total users tells you how many people have visited your website or a specific page in the selected period. In addition to the total number, you might also see the following metrics: active users, new users and/or returning users.
Active users are the number of people who engaged with your page in that date range. Then there’s the difference between new users (the number of people who are first-time visitors of your site) and returning users (the number of people who have visited your site before).
Number of sessions
When a user opens your website, they start a new session. All the interactions that take place during the time they spend on your website are part of that one session. There’s no limit to how long a session can last, but it typically ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. If the user interacts with the website after that time or comes back at a later time, this will count as a different session.
Pageviews
When you encounter the metric pageviews, it tells you how many times a page is loaded or reloaded in a browser. Each time a user visits a page, it counts as one pageview—even if they refresh the page or navigate back to it multiple times. This metric helps measure how often your content is being viewed, regardless of how many unique users are visiting.
Source/medium
Source/medium tells you how users arrive at your website. The source is the specific origin of your traffic (e.g., Google, Facebook.com), while medium describes the general category of that source (e.g., organic, cpc, referral). Together, they give you insight into what channels are driving the most traffic and which ones could do better.
Engagement and events
Engagement rate is the percentage of sessions that were actively engaged, meaning users spent at least 10 seconds on the site, had a conversion event, or viewed two or more pages. It helps measure how meaningful or valuable a user’s interaction is.
Events, on the other hand, track specific user actions—like clicks, downloads, video plays, or form submissions—providing detailed insight into how users interact with your content. Metrics related to engagement and events give you an idea of whether people are engaging with your pages and taking the actions you want them to take.
Other interesting metrics
Those metrics give you a lot of information about your website traffic, but of course, most tools offer you other interesting metrics as well. You could also look at the bounce rate, which tells you the percentage of users that leave after viewing just one page. The average session duration shows you how much time users spend on your site. Traffic by device gives an overview of how many of your users visit your website through desktop, mobile and/or tablet. Finally, top (performing) pages tells you which pages get the most visits.
Why you should know who visits your website
As I touched on in the previous paragraphs, data on your website traffic gives you insight into the behavior of your website visitors. Understanding who visits your website, and how they interact with it, helps you make more informed decisions about your website. It’s not just about counting clicks or visitors. It’s about uncovering trends, identifying growth opportunities, and optimizing the user experience to increase conversions, engagement, or other goals.
Are you visible on the right channels?
Knowing where your visitors come from, whether that’s organic search, social media, direct traffic, referrals, or paid ads, helps you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re investing heavily in social media campaigns but see little traffic from those platforms, that might mean it’s time to reevaluate your social strategy. On the other hand, high traffic from a specific channel might indicate a strong presence you can build on. This insight allows you to allocate your time and resources more strategically.
Pages that perform (or don’t)
Website data shows you how people are interacting with your pages, which tells you what your top-performing pages are and what pages need improving. Your top-performing pages might show high engagement, conversions, or time on site, indicating content that resonates with visitors. Pages that underperform can show you where users are dropping off or losing interest. This insight is invaluable for identifying what content needs updating, restructuring, or even retiring to improve your overall site performance.
Website performance over time
Tracking your traffic trends over days, weeks, or months allows you to assess the health of your online presence. Are you seeing growth? Seasonal spikes? Or sudden drops in traffic to your website? These patterns help you understand what’s working, what’s not, and how external factors might be affecting you. It also gives you a baseline to measure the success of any changes you’ve made to your website or other marketing activities.
Understanding your audience
Essentially, looking at the data that tells you who is visiting your website helps you get a deeper understanding of your audience and how your website is doing. This doesn’t mean you should be obsessing over these numbers daily, but having a monthly evaluation to go over everything helps you make informed decisions. Decisions that will improve your (online) presence and attract more people to your website.
Which tool is the best choice for you?
These tools are just the tip of the iceberg, but they are a great starting point when you want to keep track of your website visits over time. So, which one should you start using? If you’re looking for one tool that provides you with detailed insights into your website traffic (and therefore audience), I would recommend setting up Google Analytics first. It is the tool that’s focused on tracking website traffic and has the biggest variety of data.
To conclude
In this blog post, we discussed the importance of gaining insight into your website traffic. This can help you understand your audience and their behaviour and it helps you make improvements to your website. There are loads of tools out there, but the ones mentioned above are a great starting point. So make sure to choose one and get a grip on your website traffic!
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-05-22 14:12:232025-05-22 14:12:23How to track website traffic: how many people are visiting your site?
Site Kit by Google is a free WordPress plugin that connects your site to important tools like Analytics, Search Console, and Ads. After installing, it’s easy to verify your accounts, after which you see data in your dashboard. That data is nice to have, but it has limits, especially if you need detailed reports.
Site Kit by Google is a fundamental analytics tool that helps you answer questions like:
How many people are visiting your site?
What page do they land on first?
Which keywords did they search to find you?
Are your ads earning clicks?
With Site Kit, Google puts the data right into WordPress, so you don’t need to go digging around different platforms to seek your data. The tool gets its data straight from each service, and shows the most important data in clear graphs, tables, and a flexible, customizable Key Metrics widget.
Who is it for? (and when it’s not enough)
But Site Kit is not the analytics tool to rule them all in WordPress land. It covers the basics well, but it won’t work for everyone’s goals. What it does do is make it incredibly easy to set up and run various Google Analytics accounts.
Site Kit by Google works well for:
WordPress users who want to track basic performance
People who prefer not to use extra plugins or code
Site owners who manage everything themselves
But it may feel limited if you:
Run ads at scale and need conversion-level insight
Use custom events or eCommerce tracking
Want to control every aspect of your website’s scripts and tags
It covers the basics well, but it’s not built for advanced setups.
What does it look like?
After installing and connecting Site Kit, you’ll find a new menu item in your WordPress dashboard. Clicking this will lead you to the dashboard where most of the statistics and settings live. You’ll also notice a new drop-down menu when you visit posts on your site. Thanks to this drop-down, you can quickly see statistics for this specific article without having to open Analytics.
Overview dashboard
The Dashboard gives you an overview of how your site is performing. Of course, depending on what services you connect your site to, you might see something like this:
Traffic and engagement insights from Google Analytics
Clicks and impressions from search traffic provided by Search Console
An overview of the top-performing pages
Earnings from Ads or AdSense, if you run ads, that is
Site speed performance powered by PageSpeed Insights
An overview of how different groups compare, for instance, new vs. returning visitors
Some sections also show trend indicators like arrows or percentage changes compared to the previous period. This will help you spot trends and act upon them. Click on any source to open a more detailed view in the corresponding Google tool.
Part of the Site Kit dashboard showing various stats and the Key Metrics widget at the top
Key Metrics widget
You can set up the Key Metrics section the way you want. Site Kit will ask you a couple of questions about your site’s goals and what you want to focus on. Then, it will suggest metrics to show at the top of the dashboard. You can choose which blocks you want to see, such as top converting traffic sources, new visitors, recent trending pages, and much more.
Admin bar stats
After Site Kit is active, you’ll also see a small dropdown at the top of your WordPress admin bar when you’re viewing your site. Click it, and you’ll get a mini-report showing page-specific stats, including search impressions, clicks, and traffic over time.
Site Kit will help you quickly find out how your content is doing, straight from the WordPress admin bar
What Google services can you connect?
Once installed, you can connect the following tools. Two of them — Search Console and Google Analytics 4 — are enabled during the initial setup. You can connect:
Google Analytics 4
Search Console
AdSense
Reader Revenue Manager
Google Ads
Tag Manager
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Site Kit will add your GA4 tag automatically, after which it shows data such as:
The number of visitors
Sources of sessions (organic search, direct, referral)
Average engagement rate
Session durations
The data shown is summarized, so if you want custom reports or event tracking, you need to open GA4.
Visitor grouping is the newest addition to Site Kit by Google
Google Search Console
After installing and connecting, you’ll get some key data from Search Console right inside your WordPress dashboard:
The queries people searched to find your site
Number of clicks and impressions
Unique visitors from search
Page-level performance in search
This kind of data is very helpful for content optimization purposes and to inform your SEO strategy.
AdSense/Ads (monetization)
If you use Google’s systems to run ads, Site Kit can show data on ad impressions, top-earning pages, and estimated revenue from auto ads, for instance. Simply connect the services to see the data. Remember that it doesn’t replace the AdSense dashboards, but it does give you quick insights.
Reader Revenue Manager
Reader Revenue Manager is a Google tool for adding subscription and contribution options to your website. It’s designed for publishers and content creators who want to monetize their content through reader support, such as recurring memberships or one-time donations.
With Site Kit, you can connect Reader Revenue Manager to your WordPress site in just a few clicks. Once linked, it adds the necessary code to your site automatically, so you don’t need to add tags or install it manually. This feature is optional in Site Kit and is mostly used by publishers offering paywalled or premium content.
PageSpeed Insights
Site Kit runs a PageSpeed test directly inside WordPress. In the PageSpeed Insights section, you’ll see both lab data and field data. Lab data is based on simulated testing in a controlled environment and helps you identify performance issues during development. Field data, on the other hand, reflects how real users experience your site across different devices and network conditions. Together, they provide a balanced view of how your pages perform.
The report shows load performance scores, data on Core Web Vitals (like LCP and CLS). It also gives suggestions for improving speed. But it only tests your homepage and doesn’t include custom settings. For full reports, you can still visit PageSpeed Insights separately.
Tag Manager
You can link a Google Tag Manager container through Site Kit. This lets you manage third-party scripts (like Facebook Pixel or custom tracking tags) from one place. The plugin doesn’t give you a full interface for editing tags — you’ll do that inside the Tag Manager platform.
Managing Analytics in Site Kit by Google
For most site owners or managers, Analytics and Search Console are the most important Google tools. Site Kit makes it easy to set those two services up properly. Of course, you can also use existing accounts.
Enhanced measurement support
GA4 also has Enhanced Measurement, which tracks scrolls, outbound links, file downloads, and other actions automatically. If you activate these in your GA4 property, Site Kit can track them. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to choose which ones to turn on from inside WordPress; you need to go into your GA4 settings for that.
Event tracking and tag insertion
Site Kit doesn’t support event setup or tracking reports inside the WordPress dashboard. If you need full control over events, you have to use GA4 directly or use Tag Manager to set up the custom events.
Limitations of Analytics in Site Kit
You’ll probably understand by now that Site Kit is not a replacement for GA4 — it’s a neat tool that gives quick insights and nothing more. You don’t get access to funnel reports, attribution models, or filters. You can’t edit events or see predictive metrics, and there’s no support for GA4 audiences or Google Analytics 360.
What’s Enhanced Conversion tracking?
With Enhanced Conversions, you can connect Google Ads clicks to leads or form submissions. This improves the reporting of these events when users are on different devices or block cookies. After setting this up, Site Kit will detect form submissions and pass the data to Google Ads.
Site Kit currently supports some of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins, such as Contact Form 7, WPForms, and Ninja Forms. However, if you use an unsupported custom form, Site Kit can’t automatically add enhanced conversions.
Again, Site Kit has many limitations in this area. For instance, it doesn’t support purchase-based eCommerce conversions or offline conversions. It also doesn’t support pixel-level tracking, third-party forms, popups, and embedded forms. So, it’s specifically designed for simple lead form submissions.
Key Metrics widget for quick performance insights
Key Metrics are a very valuable addition as they give quick insights into data of your choosing. They’re quick to understand but not very in-depth. For key strategy decisions, you’re going to need more data.
This widget pulls together important GA4 and Search Console data into a block on your dashboard. You can choose which metrics to show and reorder them. To change your selection, click the Change metrics button in the corner of the Key Metrics section. You can also rerun the question from the Site Kit admin settings.
Each metric includes a figure and a trend comparison from the previous period. For example, you may see engagement is “up 6%” compared to the last 28 days. Click any of them to open the full source report in GA4 or Search Console.
The widget has limitations. It doesn’t show custom events or real-time reporting, campaign attribution breakdowns, or GA4-specific collections like audiences or conversions. The widget and Site Kit, in general, are for broad insights, not advanced analytics.
The Site Kit Key Metrics widget shows various data that you can tailor to your needs and goals
Is Site Kit by Google enough for your goals?
Site Kit is a good starting point for most WordPress users. It brings together valuable Google data without having to do much work. But whether it’s enough depends on whether you need to get from your analytics and tracking tools.
SEO and content insights
Site Kit is not an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO. However, you can get data from Search Console that will help you understand how people find your website in the search results. With this, you’ll form an understanding of which content works well and how your site performs in the search results.
However, as mentioned, it’s not an SEO plugin, so you need to install a tool like Yoast SEO to do much of the heavy lifting. Plugins like these help with most SEO tasks, like fixing technical issues, adding structured data, and improving your content.
Monetization
If you’re running ads, Site Kit shows basic ad metrics like impressions, estimated earnings, and top-earning pages. It helps you monitor your ads without having to log into another app.
It doesn’t support advanced ad setups, and you can’t manually place ads. It’s also not possible to optimize layouts based on behavior or run A/B tests to find the best ad format. If you’re working with multiple ad networks, you’ll need a tool that can do a lot more than Site Kit.
Marketing analytics
For reporting basics, Site Kit will do just fine. You can see trends in users, sessions, referral sources, and engagement time — all brought to you by Google Analytics 4.
However, Site Kit doesn’t give access to campaign statistics, UTM tracking, or event-based funnels. It also doesn’t offer the option to set goals or segment traffic by behavior. For these kinds of insights, you need to dive straight into GA4 or use a more in-depth reporting tool. If you run marketing campaigns, track conversions, or use CRM tools, Site Kit won’t provide enough data.
eCommerce and advanced use cases
For eCommerce, Site Kit won’t cut it. It doesn’t integrate with WooCommerce and doesn’t offer a revenue tracking option. It also doesn’t have access to carts, products, transactions, or customer behavior. There’s no way to measure things like average order value or conversion rates.
For advanced eCommerce tracking, you need to set this up in GA4 directly or use other methods to access this data. Site Kit doesn’t support this at all.
Should you use Site Kit by Google?
Site Kit is a good option if you want a free tool to view traffic, search, and performance statistics without having to set up a bunch of tools. It’s very easy to use and useful enough for small websites.
If you’re running a huge publication or an online store, need to track custom campaigns, or manage a large number of ad accounts, Site Kit won’t cut it. That’s not to say it’s useless for those cases. One of its biggest draws is that it makes setting up GA4, Search Console, Ads, and Tag Manager accounts incredibly easy. It’s a great starting point to build your analytic toolkit upon.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-05-15 07:00:282025-05-15 07:00:28What is Site Kit by Google? A guide for WordPress users
“It’s often the primary piece of information people use to decide which result to click, so it’s important to use high-quality title text on your web pages.”
Our research backs that up.
We analyzed 11.8 million Google search results and found that most first-page results include some or most of their target keyword in the title tag.
In other words, a clear title tag that uses the keyword is your ticket to the first page.
But simply ranking isn’t enough.
Even if your page shows up in the search results, it won’t matter unless people actually choose to visit it.
That’s why your title tag also needs to be human-friendly. It’s your one chance to win the click.
That’s more than 10x fewer clicks and a massive difference in traffic.
So, a strong title tag doesn’t just help your page show up in search results.
It also encourages more people to click on your link, which can help your page move even higher in the rankings.
Side note: Our CTR study was conducted in 2019. With the introduction of AI Overviews and other SERP changes, click patterns have evolved. However, the core principle remains: higher positions still attract significantly more clicks than lower ones. For the latest on how search is changing, see Semrush’s 2025 AI Overviews Study.
There’s one more reason title tags in SEO are so important:
If you get the title wrong, Google might just rewrite it.
Likely to get rewritten. Also just annoying for readers.
Better:
“Email Marketing Guide for Beginners (2025 Edition)”
Front-loaded keyword, used once, in a natural way.
Want to try it out yourself?
Here’s an AI prompt you can use to incorporate these rules when writing your title tag:
You are a digital marketing specialist focusing on SEO and content strategy.
Your task is to craft a title tag that is clear, clickable, and offers context to enhance search engine ranking and user engagement.
Approach this step-by-step:
1. Determine the primary topic or keyword of the page to ensure the title is clear and relevant.
2. Use power words or emotional triggers to enhance the clickability and engagement of the title.
3. Naturally integrate the primary keyword to provide context, avoiding keyword stuffing.
Adhere to these guidelines:
1. Keep the title concise and between 50–60 characters.
2. Avoid vague or generic language that fails to clearly convey the page’s content.
3. Balance keyword usage with readability and natural language.
Keyword is: [INSERT YOUR KEYWORD HERE]
For example, for the keyword “marketing strategy,” ChatGPT gave me:
Marketing Strategy Guide: Build a Plan That Gets Results
Proven Marketing Strategy Tips to Grow Your Business
How to Create a Marketing Strategy That Works
Effective Marketing Strategy Examples + How to Use Them
Marketing Strategy Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Approach
Not bad for a few seconds of work, right?
Optimize Your Title Tags for Search Engines
You need titles that both Google and humans love.
These optimization tips help search engines understand and rank your content higher.
1. Match Your Title to What People Are Searching for
Before you write your title tag, look at what’s already showing up in Google for your keyword.
This helps you understand what searchers want and what kind of content Google is rewarding.
Here’s how to do it:
Google Your Keyword
Type your keyword into Google and look at the top 5–10 results.
Look for Patterns
Are most of the results lists?
That usually means people are exploring or comparing their options. Try a title like “Top 10…” or “Best Tools for…”
Do they include the current year?
People want the latest updates. Add the year to your title to show it’s fresh.
Are the pages explaining a concept?
People are looking for information or education. A title like “What Is X? [+ Examples]” works well.
Do you see a lot of tutorials?
People want a walkthrough. Go with a how-to title like “How to Do X Step-by-Step”.
When your title matches what people are looking for, they’re more likely to click. And Google is more likely to show your page.
2. Keep It Short
If you go too long, you risk Google rewriting it.
If you go too short, you miss an opportunity to engage your readers.
When we analyzed 4 million search results, we found that titles between 40-60 characters have the best click-through rate.
Titles in this range get 8.9% more clicks on average.
So, that’s a good starting point. But here’s what really matters:
Google truncates title tags based on pixels (the actual width of the letters), not characters.
Around 580–600 pixels is the max width before your title gets cut off.
And on mobile, titles often get truncated even earlier.
So while ~40–60 characters works most of the time, it’s not guaranteed.
Want to check your title before hitting publish?
Use a free tool like the Mangools SERP Simulator. Just make sure to switch it to mobile view first.
Readers (usually) read from left to right, so the keywords will stand out to them
One exception here:
For listicles, it’s often better to lead with the number.
Think “5 Powerful AI Tools for Content Creation” rather than “Content Creation Tools: 5 Powerful Options.”
It gives readers a clear idea of what to expect.
4. Give Each Page a Unique Title Tag
Google doesn’t like duplicate or boilerplate titles:
“Titling every page on a commerce site “Cheap products for sale”, for example, makes it impossible for users to distinguish between two pages.
Long text in the <title> element that varies by only a single piece of information (“boilerplate” titles) is also bad.”
So if you duplicate your SEO title tags (or just change a single word), you’re more likely to have them rewritten.
Instead, take a moment to craft a unique title tag for every page.
One that accurately reflects the content and intent of that specific URL.
Pro tip: Skip your brand name in most title tags. It often shows up anyway and can count as duplicate content. If you include it, add it at the end with a dash, colon, or pipe.
5. Match the Title to the Content
Simple, but important.
Your title has to accurately reflect what’s on the page.
Google might rewrite your title if it doesn’t match your content.
More importantly, you’ll annoy your readers, and they’ll bounce right off the page.
Also, remember to be specific, not vague.
Generic titles like “Home” or “Services” don’t help readers know what they’ll see if they click.
6. Vary Your Title and H1 Tags
If your title and H1 are identical, you’re missing an opportunity to hit additional keywords.
Plus, you’ll typically want to use the title tag to say what the page is about, and the H1 to get more detailed or conversational.
For example:
vs.
The title tag is contextual and clickable. It includes a number, a benefit, and a clear topic.
The H1 tag is more conversational and reader-friendly. It’s aimed at people who already know what’s on the page.
You can also include multiple variations of your keywords (e.g., “email marketing tips,” “email campaigns,” “email marketing”) without repeating yourself.
Once the audit is complete, go to the “Issues” tab and type “title tag” into the search box.
The tool will show you a list of issues related to title tags — like duplicates, titles that are too long, or ones that match the H1 exactly.
Click on the issue to see the list of affected pages.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
You can also use Screaming Frog to spot title tag issues.
Download the free version of the app (available for Windows, Mac, or Linux). Then, follow the installation steps.
Open the tool, type your homepage URL into the search bar at the top, and click “Start.”
Screaming Frog will begin crawling your site. This can take a minute or two.
Once the crawl is done, click “Page Titles” to see a full list of your website’s title tags.
Use the filter dropdown or look at the “Issues” column to find problems.
Watch the Right Metrics
Here are the numbers to keep track of:
CTR: If you update a title and your CTR jumps, it’s probably working. You can check this in your Pages report in Google Search Console.
Impressions without clicks
This means you’re showing up in search results, but nobody’s clicking. Go back to the 3Cs. Is it clear, clickable, and contextual?
Ranking changes
If a page drops in search rankings after a title change, maybe Google doesn’t like the new version.
Or, maybe you’ve missed the user intent this time round.
Try this: Want to see if your new title works better? Pick one underperforming page, change the title tag, and track the CTR in Google Search Console over the next few weeks.
If clicks go up (and rankings stay steady), the new title is probably stronger.
Steal These Winning Title Tag Formulas
Writing title tags from scratch every time? No, thank you.
Below are three proven formulas that we use at Backlinko to craft headlines that stand out.
List or Number Formula
Formula: X [Unique Adjective] [Topic]
Why it works: Lists provide clarity and set expectations but need unique adjectives to grab attention.
The Keyword-Colon Formula
Formula: [Content Topic]: [Actionable promise]
Why it works: Directly addresses the topic and hooks the reader with an actionable promise.
The Keyword-Question Formula
Formula: [Keyword Question]? [Promise]
Rationale: Answers the reader’s question head-on and draws them in with a clear benefit.
Need More Ideas?
We analyzed 150+ real title tags from top-ranking SEO content and combined that with AI-trained insights from thousands more.
The result?
Over 50 proven, plug-and-play formulas you can use to boost clicks and match search intent — no guesswork required.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-05-14 15:55:292025-05-14 15:55:29Title Tags: How to Write Them (+ Steal Our Formulas)
