Google Search Console has released what it calls platform properties, which is a way to see how well your social and video content is performing within Google Search. Google will let you see the performance of your content on Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube performs on Google Search.
More details. Google wrote, “Now, you can easily track which search terms lead people to your Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube content on Search, and see exactly how your audience is interacting with your posts.” You can see this information within Google Search Console’s performance report, insights report and achievement sections.
Performance report: View your total clicks, impressions, and additional metrics. Filter and sort this data to see which specific posts and queries are driving the most traffic. If you prefer to analyze your performance using another tool you can export the data.
Insights report: View a high-level overview of your recent traffic trends, your top-performing posts, and how people discover your account on Google.
Achievements: Track your growth and celebrate milestones, such as reaching a new threshold for total clicks from Google Search in the last 28 days.
This is similar to the social channels details we had in the Search Console insights reports.
Here is a screenshot of my X account performance report:
Here is a screenshot from Google’s blog post of the insights report:
How to set it up. You will need to verify your platform property within your Google Search Console account, here is how to do that:
Open Search Console
Go to the Search Console verification page, or open the property selector dropdown anywhere in Search Console and click “Add property.”
Select one of the four available platforms: Instagram, Tiktok, X, YouTube.
Follow the onscreen verification steps to securely authorize the connection.
Slow rollout. Google said platform properties will roll out gradually over the coming weeks, so there is a chance you won’t see this yet. To learn more about platform properties and how to set them up, see Google’shelp center documentation. We actually saw Google publish this help document a few weeks ago, but then it was quickly removed.
Why we care. Previously, Google has not given us a real way to see how our content performs on domains/properties we do not own. But now, we are going to have access to see how our content performs of domains/properties we do not have developer access to. This is pretty cool and I am excited to see what we can learn from this.
Be the brand AI recommends.
See where your brand appears in AI search, where competitors are winning, and what it takes to become the answer AI recommends.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/gsc-social-profile-1-RB4jI4.webp?fit=714%2C438&ssl=1438714Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-07-07 13:00:002026-07-07 13:00:00Google Search Console gains reporting on social and video platforms
AI visibility and AI profitability are not the same thing. Most teams are growing one without building the other.
The four most common failure modes are optimizing for mentions over conversions, measuring AI visibility like rankings, chasing tactics without a revenue connection, and running AEO/GEO in a silo.
AI-referred visitors convert at 8.3 times the rate of traditional traffic, close 62 percent faster, and generate 7 times more revenue per visitor. Those numbers only hold if your conversion architecture is built to receive them.
The highest-performing campaigns share four traits: retrieval-ready content, strong authority signals, multi-channel distribution, and conversion systems designed for low-click environments.
You can start building toward profitability in 90 days without a full overhaul, but the phases have to run in order.
You might be showing up in ChatGPT answers. Getting cited in Google’s AI Overviews. Watching your brand mentions climb across the web.
And still not seeing it move the revenue needle.
That’s the problem a lot of marketing teams are grappling with right now. AI visibility is growing. Profitability isn’t keeping pace. After analyzing more than 100 AEO and GEO campaigns at NP Digital, I can tell you the issue isn’t the strategy itself. Most teams are simply optimizing for the wrong outcomes.
If you already know what AEO and GEO are and you’re ready to actually make money from them, this post is for you. I’m going to break down exactly where the profitability gap comes from, what the winning campaigns have in common, and how to build toward revenue, not just visibility.
Why Most AEO/GEO Efforts Don’t Make Money
Getting cited is not the same as getting paid. That distinction sounds obvious, but most AEO/GEO programs are structured around the former and hope the latter follows automatically. It doesn’t.
After auditing campaigns across industries, NP Digital identified four failure modes that consistently prevent AI visibility from converting into revenue.
Optimizing for mentions and citations. Mentions don’t pay the bills; conversions do. If your entire AEO/GEO program is oriented around getting named in AI responses, you’re measuring a proxy, not an outcome. A citation that doesn’t connect to a conversion path is brand awareness you can’t prove.
Measuring AI visibility like rankings. Citation volume tells you nothing about pipeline. Teams that treat AI mention counts the same way they used to track keyword rankings end up with
dashboards full of activity metrics and no way to show leadership what any of it is worth.
Chasing AI-specific tactics in isolation. Schema updates, prompt engineering, entity optimization do matter, but tactics without distribution don’t compound. Teams that bolt on AEO/GEO tactics without building content and authority infrastructure underneath them tend to see short-term citation spikes that fade quickly.
Running AEO/GEO separately from revenue goals. This is the biggest one. Visibility disconnected from business outcomes is overhead. The teams getting budget approved for AI search have tied it to pipeline, not impressions.
NP Digital data tells the story clearly. AI visibility index climbed to 133 across tracked brands, while the profitability outcomes index reached 174. The gap between those two numbers is the opportunity this post addresses.
The Profitability Gap: What Changes When Buyers Use AI
Buyers who find you through AI tools are not the same as buyers who find you through traditional search. They arrive differently, they behave differently, and they convert differently.
The traditional funnel started with discovery through search, a click-through to compare options, an early-stage arrival that needed nurturing, and multiple touchpoints before a decision. The AI-influenced funnel runs differently. Research happens inside AI tools. Buyers validate brands before they ever click. They arrive later, already informed, and convert faster when trust exists.
That shift is an advantage, but only if your conversion architecture is built to receive it.
NP Digital data across 40-plus B2B and B2C campaigns makes the opportunity concrete. AI-referred visitors convert at 5.97 percent. Traditional traffic converts at 0.72 percent. Time to conversion drops from eight days to three. Revenue per visitor rises from $2.56 to $18.04.
The volume is still small. AI traffic accounts for about 0.58 percent of total traffic but drives 5.09 percent of sales. Lifetime value is also stronger at $325, up from $271 for Google-referred traffic.
The math works. But capturing those numbers requires a funnel built for visitors who arrive intent-driven rather than still in the research phase.
What the Profitable Campaigns Have in Common
Across the campaigns NP Digital analyzed, the ones generating real pipeline from AI search shared four traits. These traits reinforce each other, which is why building them together matters.
Content Built for Retrieval
The content types that drive both AI citations and conversions are high-intent formats that answer specific questions buyers ask when they’re close to a decision. Not top-of-funnel awareness pieces.
Comparison pages and alternatives content convert AI-referred traffic at 6.8 percent, the highest of any page type NP Digital tracked. First-party research and original data earn citations because they can’t be replicated elsewhere; they become reference points AI engines return to repeatedly. Bottom-funnel educational content and FAQ frameworks round out the top performers.
Format is as important as topic. Lists and listicles account for 48 percent of AI citations in NP Digital’s research. Step-by-step guides come in at 17 percent. AI engines pull from content structured for easy parsing. Content not formatted for retrieval tends not to get retrieved.
Strong Authority Signals
NP Digital scored six trust signals across ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, and Perplexity on a one-to-five scale. Third-party citations scored between 4.5 and 4.8, the single most consistent signal across every platform. Expert authorship scored between 4.0 and 4.6.
AI engines reward signals that are difficult to manufacture: named, credentialed authors; external sources citing your content; consistent brand presence across multiple platforms. Publishing on your own site still matters, but earning coverage and mentions outside it is what drives citations.
Multi-Channel Distribution
NP Digital tracked 75 brands across AI platforms and found a direct correlation between monthly publishing channels and AI visibility score. AI engines validate authority through repetition and consistency. Presence across YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, and PR channels signals to AI tools that your brand is real and relevant, not just self-published.
Conversion Architecture for Low-Click Environments
AI-referred visitors arrive pre-qualified. They’ve already done the research, compared options, and formed an opinion. A landing page designed for someone at the top of the funnel is the wrong tool for a visitor who’s already at the bottom.
The brands capturing revenue from this traffic have built accordingly: fast pages, strong trust indicators placed prominently, simplified calls to action, bottom-funnel calculators and tools, and conversational paths that confirm a decision rather than explain a product category.
How to Measure AEO/GEO for Revenue, Not Just Visibility
The metrics most teams track are measuring the wrong thing. Rankings, raw traffic, click-through rate, AI mention counts, these are visibility metrics. They tell you whether people are seeing your brand. They don’t tell you whether it’s generating revenue.
The teams getting AEO/GEO budgets renewed are the ones connecting citations to pipeline. That requires a different measurement stack.
Stop tracking: raw rankings, organic traffic volume as a primary metric, click-through rate, AI mention counts, raw citation tracking, vanity impressions.
Start tracking: influenced conversions, brand search lift, assisted pipeline, returning visitor quality, and conversion rate by intent source.
NP Digital’s outcomes-first measurement framework organizes this into three tiers. At the foundation: visibility and influence signals, including brand search volume, share of voice, community engagement, and earned media. In the middle: demand signals, including multi-touch attribution, AI-driven lead scoring, behavioral intent, and consumption depth. At the top: business outcomes, including revenue, CAC:LTV ratio, retention, expansion, and advocacy.
Build reporting from the bottom up. Track from the top down. The goal is a dashboard leadership reads as a business document, not a marketing activity report.
NP Digital research shows how much KPI priorities have shifted. Leadership priority for rankings dropped from 88 to 63 between 2024 and 2026. Pipeline contribution rose from 23 to 70. Revenue growth held steady at 96 to 98. Your measurement framework needs to reflect where leadership attention already sits.
A practical starting point: for every vanity metric on your current dashboard, add one outcome metric alongside it. That shift is often enough to change the budget conversation.
The 90-Day Plan to Turn AEO/GEO Into Revenue
You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. You do need to run the phases in order. Each phase builds on the one before it, and skipping ahead consistently produces weaker results.
Days 1 to 30: Audit and Fix the Foundation
Start by auditing your current AI visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Search your brand name and core topics. Note where you appear, where competitors appear instead, and where no one appears. Those gaps are your priority list.
From there, identify high-intent content gaps where competitors are getting cited and you aren’t. Improve structured formatting across your highest-traffic pages with clear headers, FAQ sections, and concise direct answers. Strengthen author and entity signals. Clean up trust indicators including reviews, third-party citations, and brand consistency across platforms. Apply schema and retrieval-friendly formatting throughout.
One consistent finding across NP Digital’s audits: brand authority, PR and mentions, and community visibility are almost always the lowest-scored areas. Start there before investing more in content production.
Days 31 to 60: Create and Distribute for Profitability
Create the content types that drive both citations and conversions: comparison pages, original research and proprietary data, buyer guides, and FAQ expansions. These formats earn citations and convert the traffic those citations send.
Distribute across LinkedIn, YouTube, PR placements, expert commentary opportunities, and community channels like Reddit. The goal is consistent presence across multiple ecosystems. AI engines validate authority through repetition across platforms, not just depth on your own site.
Days 61 to 90: Optimize Conversion and Measurement
With the foundation fixed and the content layer built, optimize for what happens when AI-referred visitors arrive.
Improve bottom-funnel UX for high-intent visitors. Add calculators, tools, and simplified calls to action. Optimize assisted conversion flows. On the measurement side, track influenced pipeline from AI-assisted traffic, compare conversion quality across platforms, and build an executive dashboard tied to revenue rather than visibility metrics.
The window to establish AI search presence is real and won’t stay open indefinitely. The brands building this infrastructure now are accumulating authority signals that compound over time and become increasingly difficult for competitors to overcome.
FAQs
How do you connect AEO/GEO to revenue?
The connection runs through your measurement framework and your conversion architecture. On the measurement side, track influenced conversions, assisted pipeline, and brand search lift rather than citation counts. On the conversion side, build landing pages and CTAs designed for visitors who arrive already informed. AI-referred visitors are pre-qualified and need a fast path to a decision, not an introduction to your product category.
What metrics should you track for AEO/GEO profitability?
Move away from rankings, raw traffic, and citation volume as primary KPIs. The metrics that connect to profit are influenced conversions, brand search lift, assisted pipeline, returning visitor quality, and conversion rate by intent source. Build toward a three-tier measurement stack: visibility and influence at the foundation, demand signals in the middle, and business outcomes at the top.
What content converts best from AI-referred traffic?
Comparison pages and alternatives content convert AI-referred traffic at 6.8 percent, the highest of any page type in NP Digital’s research. First-party research, bottom-funnel educational content, and FAQ frameworks also perform well. Format matters as much as topic. Lists and listicles account for 48 percent of AI citations because they’re structured for easy extraction.
Conclusion
The winners in AI search don’t just focus on earning the most citations but make sure they can turn citations into pipeline.
That requires connecting visibility to conversion architecture, measuring outcomes rather than activity, and building the content and authority signals that AI engines reward consistently over time. None of those things happen by accident.
The brands doing this work now are building compounding advantages. Authority signals accumulate. Citation patterns stabilize. Conversion infrastructure improves with data. Starting later means starting behind.
If you want support building an AEO/GEO strategy tied to revenue rather than just visibility, NP Digital’s team works through exactly this kind of profitability infrastructure with clients.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-07-06 16:00:002026-07-06 16:00:00How To Make AEO and GEO Profitable
Has your website seen better days, and are you looking to restore it to its former glory? Look no further. We will help you get your site up to today’s standards and make that splash online. We cover all the key areas you need to consider. Feel free to skip the steps that are already up to date, but be honest with yourself about what work still needs to be done. Your website only gets a millisecond to make a first impression, so let’s make the most of it. Now it’s time to peek under the hood, brush off the dust on those pages, and refresh your content.
Consider making big changes to your old website first, such as updating the domain or CMS.
Check and update your CMS, plugins, and data privacy setup to meet modern standards.
Refresh your content and keyword research to ensure relevance and improve SEO performance.
Evaluate technical aspects like mobile-friendliness, core web vitals, and accessibility for better user experience.
Use the Yoast SEO plugin to streamline the process of updating your old website and maintain its performance.
Check your site’s set-up
Want to make any big changes? Do that first
Before we delve into the depths of your old website, it’s worth considering any major changes you want to make. Maybe you’ve always wanted to change your domain name or your URL structure, but it was too much work when everything was up and running. Or perhaps you could benefit from switching to a different CMS or hosting provider. If you do want to make sitewide changes, you’ll be far better off planning this from the start.
Old or new domain?
You will have registered your domain when your website was still live, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still available now. Check whether your old domain is still yours or available. If it’s not, you’ll need to choose another one. This can give you a chance to start over fresh with a whole new website.
When you’re looking to get a new domain, consider how you want to build your website. You can hire someone to custom-build a website for you. But if you want to save on costs, website builders like Wix and WordPress let you create a website without coding. Although both allow you to create websites yourself, we recommend WordPress if you want the option to grow and alter your website beyond what the available templates offer.
There are also AI builders to consider when creating a new website. For example, Bluehost’s AI Website Builder generates your website by giving a prompt and answering a few follow-up questions. A quick way to get back online, with hosting, a domain, and even human support included if needed.
If your website was popular in the past, you will probably have built up some domain authority. Meaning that people know your brand name and can have (positive) associations with it. So when you change your domain name, you’ll lose any domain authority you’ve gained previously.
Your old URLs will no longer work, and you’ll need to plan to migrate your content to your new domain. This can be a lot of work, so don’t underestimate it!
Are your CMS and plugins up to date?
The next thing you’ll want to check is whether your CMS is up to date. Depending on how old your site is, that could mean all kinds of things. As new possibilities arise in web development, a good CMS will adopt these and implement them for you (mostly) automatically. So it’s well worth updating your CMS as a first step! Make sure to back up your site and test the changes first, though.
The impact of out-of-date plugins really depends on which plugins you have installed. But whichever plugins you use, you should check these too. The same goes for themes; they can stop working if they’re too old or no longer supported. Online, the older your technology is, the more vulnerable it is to hacking, so make sure to update what you plan to use and remove unnecessary plugins.
Tip: If you’re using WordPress, go to the Site Health section, located under Tools > Site Health in the backend. This will give an overview of what needs to be done to get your website healthy again.
Check your robots.txt / indexing settings
Noindexing a page means you block search engines from indexing it and showing it in their search results. Some people prefer to noindex their site while they make big changes to it, to avoid leaving users with a bad impression. But you shouldn’t really play around with this unless you know what you’re doing. I would also not recommend doing this if you still get a decent amount of traffic to your site.
To noindex your site, you’ll need to update your robots.txt file. If you’re a Yoast SEO user, you can manage your indexing in yourconfigurationsettings without ever touching your robots.txt file. An easier way to update your site behind the scenes is by using the LightStart plugin.
Check your data privacy set up
If your site has been around for a few years, there’s a good chance your data privacy setup doesn’t meet modern standards. For instance, if your site uses cookies to track user behavior, it’s now a legal requirement to ask users for permission in most regions worldwide. Similarly, if you have user data stored on your site, you absolutely need to ensure it’s stored securely and used in a legally compliant way. If that data is old user data, the safest option is probably just to delete it all.
Check your content
Refresh your keyword research
When it comes to updating the content on your old website, refreshing your keyword research is a good place to start. The words people use in their search queries change over time, so the longer your content has been out of action, the more likely it is that you need to do this. When checking your keywords, you should see whether you’re still using the most suitable ones for your site and audience, and whether you can still compete for those rankings.
Also, you should take AI search into account when researching how to update your content. AI search is now an undeniable part of people’s online search behavior, whether it’s Google presenting users with an AI overview or people using AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini. So make sure to optimize for AI search as part of your SEO efforts.
Is the quality still good enough? Is there room to improve the content by applying the E-E-A-T principles?
Is your information still accurate and up to date? Are there new insights that you could add to the content?
Do the external and internal links still work? Do the meta description or SEO title need updating?
Take a look at each page, and be critical. What could be improved? Do you really need to keep each page? Will you need to rewrite the whole thing, or will some small adjustments be enough? It could take a while to get through all of your content. Make sure to start with your most important pages first.
Check your internal linking and site structure
Making sure your content is high-quality and well-optimized is only half the story. It needs to be findable too. By linking related pages, you make your content easier for your users to find. And on top of that, if you make sure your most important pages get the most internal links, it helps Google get a better idea of your site structure. As a result, those central pages (which we call cornerstone content) are likely to rank higher in search results!
Check the technical SEO
Mobile-friendly is essential
Most people are using their phones or other mobile devices to access the internet. As a result, Google switched to mobile-first indexing years ago. This means that if your site doesn’t work well on mobile, this can impact your overall visibility in search. Responsive site design and proper mobile usability testing are more of a requirement now than a nice extra. Make sure everything works, and that it looks good on all kinds of screen sizes. Don’t treat the desktop version of your website as the default.
Core Web Vitals and page experience
Back in the days of dial-up internet, you always had to wait patiently for pages to load. But that’s a thing of the past; pages that load quickly are a basic expectation nowadays. Loading quickly isn’t the only consideration, because your pages need to actually work well once they’ve loaded. Google has a ranking factor to measure things like this. So you need to make sure you’re meeting expectations for aspects such as:
Loading performance (how fast does stuff appear on the screen?)
Responsiveness (how fast does the page react to user input?)
Visual stability (does stuff move around on the screen while loading?)
The details behind these factors are quite technical, but it’s worth delving into these Core Web Vitals to make sure your technical SEO isn’t holding you back.
Check your media usage
Another thing that changes over time is the best practice for using images and videos on your site. Nowadays, most users expect high-quality images that load quickly, too. Make sure to optimize and properly tag them before mindlessly adding them to your page. When it comes to video, these can increase your visibility on platforms such as YouTube and social media. They also tell search agents that the content on your page is rich and valuable, so make sure to get going with a proper video strategy for your site and other platforms.
Accessibility
For most websites, accessibility is an afterthought. Which is a big shame, as this also means you’re missing out on a whole group of potential customers. Don’t just consider how you experience a website; also accommodate the needs of different types of visitors. Accessibility means making small adjustments and additions that let everyone enjoy your content. You don’t need to redesign everything; there are simple improvements you can make, such as adding alt text to your images.
Structured data
If you want to have the best-looking search results in Google, you’ll need to start adding structured data to your site. Structured data is a way of telling Google about the context or purpose of different types of content. You can label your news items as news, for example, and Google can identify that and add your content to its News section. Or you could label your products using structured data and have a chance of getting listed in Google’s Shopping results. Structured data helps AI search engines and chatbots better understand your site. There are loads of ways structured data can boost your content, so give it a try!
Start publishing and sharing
Check your robots.txt / indexing settings (again)
Give your indexing a final check and make sure the pages you want Google to index are crawlable. You can start by checking your robots.txt or your indexing settings. Google Search Console can be a great help at this point. Submit your sitemap. This will let Google know your site is ready for indexing again, and help it understand what’s changed. Search Console will flag any crawl errors, so you can easily check whether everything is set up correctly.
Start (re)publishing and sharing content
And now for the final step in updating your old site: start publishing content again! Publishing content regularly and sharing it on social media will help you to build awareness of your site. Plus, you might gain some new fans and followers! If your social media pages are outdated, give them a refresh to let people know your site is back and ready to welcome them!
Update your site’s SEO with Yoast
As you can see, there’s a lot to check when updating SEO and refreshing your old website. Once you’ve restored your site to its former glory, make sure you maintain it and your SEO. Otherwise, in a few years, you might be doing this all over again. Luckily, our Yoast SEO plugin can help you update and maintain your old site, too!
Refresh your website with Yoast SEO Premium
Get Yoast SEO Premium and get feedback on your content, access to our SEO training and helpful tools to clean up your site!
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-07-06 12:46:522026-07-06 12:46:52Got an old website? Update it and refresh your SEO
Each month, we host the SEO update by Yoast covering the latest in search and AI. In this edition, Carolyn Shelby and Alex Moss discussed Google’s evolving stance on AI-driven search, publisher controls in the UK, and how to navigate visibility in an era where traditional SEO tactics are being reconsidered.
Watch the full recap on YouTube to dive deeper into these topics, hear some examples, and hear the answer to audience questions.
Remembering Bruce Clay
In this month’s SEO Update, we honor Bruce Clay, who recently passed away. He was a pioneer in SEO whose work shaped the industry. His mentorship and leadership left a lasting impact on professionals worldwide.
Google warns against manipulating brand mentions for AI
Google issued a clear warning: stop manipulating brand mentions to game AI systems. This includes tactics such as paying for unrelated brand citations, think dog food brands mentioned on sports betting sites, to artificially inflate perceived authority.
Why it matters:
Google’s message is simple: if your brand mentions are irrelevant or forced, they won’t help your authority. Worse, they might backfire as AI systems get better at detecting manipulation. Focus on earning genuine mentions from relevant sources instead.
Actionable takeaway:
Avoid paid or spammy brand mentions.
Build authority through contextually relevant citations.
If your mentions feel unnatural, they probably are.
UK forces Google to give publishers control over AI use
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) struck a deal with Google, requiring the company to let publishers block their content from being used in AI features, without hurting their standard search rankings.
Why it matters:
Publishers can now opt out of AI training data, but there’s a catch. If you block Google’s AI from using your content, you might lose citations in AI overviews, even if you rank well in traditional search. Users will instead see synthesized answers from other sources.
Actionable takeaway:
If your content is truly unique and proprietary, blocking AI access might make sense, but only if you have a monetization strategy beyond search traffic.
For most sites, allowing AI access is better for visibility. Ensure your content is structured and crawlable so AI systems can cite you accurately.
If you block AI access, provide a teaser, like Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature, to encourage clicks.
New AI visibility insights in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
Both Google and Bing rolled out new reporting features to help you understand how your content appears in AI-driven search.
Google Search Console grounding queries
Google now shows grounding queries, the specific searches where your content was cited by AI. This helps you see which topics are driving AI visibility.
Why it matters:
Grounding queries indicate that AI systems are using your content to generate answers. If you’re not seeing citations, your content might not be structured or visible enough for AI to reference.
Actionable takeaway:
Check Search Console weekly for grounding queries.
Focus on visible, structured content, so avoid hiding key info in accordions or tabs.
Use this data to refine your content strategy, so double down on what’s working or fix what’s not.
Bing Webmaster Tools: AI performance reports
Bing’s new reports include intents, topics, citation share, and performance comparisons for AI-driven search. This gives you a clearer picture of how your content performs in Bing’s AI experiences, like Copilot.
Why it matters:
Bing’s AI integrations, such as Copilot in Windows, reach millions of business users. Ignoring Bing means missing out on a growing segment of AI-driven traffic.
Actionable takeaway:
Set up Bing Webmaster Tools if you haven’t already.
Compare Bing’s data with Google’s to spot gaps or opportunities.
Use LLMs like ChatGPT or Claude to analyze exports from both tools for deeper insights.
Google’s new publisher profiles and business data integrations
Google introduced publisher profiles and enhanced business data integrations, giving creators and businesses more control over how their content appears in search.
Why it matters:
These tools help you fill out your knowledge graph, which improves visibility across Google’s ecosystem, including Gemini. Think of it as Google+ for publishers, but with a focus on entity authority rather than social networking.
Actionable takeaway:
Create or update your publisher profile in Google Search Console.
Ensure your Google Business Profile is complete and accurate.
Use structured data to connect entities such as authors, brands, and products to your content.
Google updates SEO guidance: Don’t blindly trust AI or SEO tools
Google’s latest guidance warns against blindly following AI-generated SEO advice or third-party tool recommendations. The example? An AI suggested changing “consultant” to “advisor” for a site, only for the site to start competing with financial advisors instead of its actual audience.
Why it matters:
AI and SEO tools can misinterpret context. Always verify recommendations before implementing them.
Actionable takeaway:
Trust but verify, so use AI and tools for ideas, but apply critical thinking.
Check multiple sources, so compare Google’s data with Bing’s, or use tools like Semrush/Ahrefs for cross-referencing.
Prioritize human judgment, because if a recommendation feels off, it probably is.
Schema.org released data showing that 95% of websites use only 12 of the 958 available schema types. Meanwhile, fewer than 1,000 sites use 485+ schema types.
Why it matters:
Schema helps search engines understand your content, but most sites aren’t leveraging its full potential. Using more schema types can improve visibility in AI-driven search and rich results.
Actionable takeaway:
Audit your current schema usage to identify any missed opportunities.
Explore less common schema types, like FAQPage, HowTo, or Event to stand out.
Use Yoast SEO’s schema blocks to simplify implementation.
German court rules Google liable for false AI overview claims
If Google’s AI cites false or harmful information about your business, you now have legal recourse in Germany. However, prevention is better than litigation.
Actionable takeaway:
Monitor AI overviews for inaccuracies about your brand.
Publish accurate, crawlable content to counteract misinformation.
If you find false claims, correct them at the source, such as on Reddit or in forums, and report them to Google.
Google’s open knowledge format: A new way to structure content
Google introduced the Open Knowledge Format (OKF), a way to catalog site content in markdown for AI consumption. This is part of Google’s push for structured, AI-friendly content.
Why it matters:
While Google’s search team advises against duplicate markdown versions of pages, the engineering team is building tools like OKF. This suggests structured content will play a bigger role in AI-driven search.
Actionable takeaway:
Wait and watch, as OKF is new, and adoption isn’t urgent yet.
Focus on structured content, like schema, clear headings, visible text.
Avoid gating critical information behind interactive elements, such as accordions and tabs.
Yoast news: Performance upgrades and new features
We rolled out performance improvements in versions 27.8 and 27.9, of Yoast SEO, including:
Faster admin pages and post editor for large sites.
Speed boosts for SEO analysis. For instance, a sitemap query on a 2M-page site dropped from 300 seconds to 25 milliseconds.
Yoast Duplicate Post plugin upgrades, including improved Rewrite and Republish functionality for easier content repurposing.
Sign up for the next SEO Update by Yoast
The next SEO Update by Yoast is on August 25, 2026, at 4:00 PM CET (10:00 AM EST). Sign up to join live!
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-07-01 15:02:352026-07-01 15:02:35The June 2026 SEO Update by Yoast recap
Google has released an update to the recipe results within AI Mode to make them more publisher-friendly. Google added the creator name, recipe ratings and number of ingredients to these AI Mode results for some recipes.
What is new. Robby Stein from Google said there are now “prominent links at the top of responses with useful details and images – like the creator name, recipe ratings and number of ingredients.” He added that this should make it “even easier to discover and visit recipe pages with AI Mode.”
What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of the treatment:
Previously. Robby Stein, back in March, also announced changes to the recipe results in AI Mode. Then he said, “We’ve heard feedback on recipe results in AI Mode, and we’re making updates to better connect people with recipe creators on the web.”
These changes are to help reduce the AI recipe slop that we see for a lot of these queries.
Why we care. Recipe bloggers, well, content creators in general, have not been happy with how traffic from Google’s AI experiences did not send as much traffic as the traditional search results. Here we see Google trying to make changes to encourage more searchers to click from those AI experiences to the bloggers website.
If Google can add more clickable link units to the AI experiences in search, that can help improve the publisher-Google relationship.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/google-ai-mode-recipe-update-scaled-ivt0zc.jpg?fit=2048%2C1189&ssl=111892048Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-06-30 17:02:472026-06-30 17:02:47Google makes recipes in AI Mode more publisher friendly
Google is expanding measurement capabilities for YouTube brand campaigns, giving advertisers better visibility into how video ads drive engagement, brand interest, and downstream business outcomes.
What’s new:
Shorts Ad Actions for Video View Campaigns: Advertisers running Video View Campaigns that are opted into YouTube Shorts will now automatically benefit from Shorts Ad Actions in budget optimization. Google is also adding new reporting columns to measure these interactions.
Attributed Branded Searches: Now available globally in Google Ads, this new reporting metric measures branded Google searches that occur after users see or view a YouTube ad, helping advertisers quantify how awareness campaigns influence purchase intent.
Why we care. It can be hard for marketers to connect upper-funnel YouTube campaigns with measurable business outcomes. These updates provide stronger signals that link brand advertising to engagement and search intent, making it easier to justify brand investment and optimise campaigns.
By the numbers:
According to Google, YouTube Shorts ads that generated more than 10 seconds of watch time and a like delivered:
15% higher brand consideration
20% higher brand favourability, according to Google.
Google also says that every additional branded search generated is associated with an average $31 increase in sales.
Between the lines. Google continues to blur the distinction between brand and performance marketing by introducing metrics that connect awareness campaigns with downstream actions. Attributed Branded Searches, in particular, gives advertisers another way to demonstrate that YouTube campaigns can influence high-intent behaviour before a conversion takes place.
The bottom line. Google’s latest measurement updates help advertisers better prove the value of YouTube brand campaigns by linking video engagement and branded search activity to business outcomes—offering stronger evidence that upper-funnel advertising can drive measurable results.
Generative AI and automation are bringing excitement to some SEO professionals and anxiety to others. With 87% of Americans reading AI summaries, you’re falling behind if you’re not adapting your toolset to this trend.
Moving from rigid enterprise tools to agile, AI-driven ones positions you as a forward-thinking authority with clients or your employer.
This how-to will help you guide clients, employers, or your team through that shift.
Here’s what an old SEO stack looks like
SEO practices remain relevant because the company’s generative AI features are rooted in:
Core search ranking systems.
Quality systems.
Here’s a traditional “SEO stack”:
Rank trackers
Tracking keywords used to be every campaign’s heartbeat. Add target keywords, monitor SERP positions, and higher rankings would drive more search traffic. But rankings have fragmented over the last few years.
SEOs are now tracking:
AI Overviews
Local packs
Shopping carousels
And so much more.
A third-place local pack ranking might drive two or three times more traffic than a number one AI Overview ranking.
Keyword tools
What are people searching for? With a crystal ball, you could optimize for specific queries and target certain groups. Keyword research lets you write content that matches those queries and user intent.
You’ll choose keywords based on:
Difficulty
Search volume
Intent
Other factors
Dozens of options help you find keywords for campaigns, and some competitors had more access to keyword data than others.
Lagging search volume data may have hurt your campaign, but it still showed past performance.
For example, you might target a keyword with 10,000 monthly visits. But just because it reached that volume last month doesn’t mean it will perform the same this month. Volume could double or fall to a tenth of last month’s level.
The problem in today’s search environment is that a keyword with tens of thousands of clicks in 2022 may now appear in an AI Overview. Zero-click searches may steal your traffic, making some once high-click queries irrelevant or not worth the same investment.
Even if search volume hasn’t dropped, the opportunity has.
Site audit tools
Crawlers still crawl your site and interpret its content. Getting a complete picture of how these crawlers see your website has always been crucial to SEO.
Audit tools help you identify:
Broken links
Redirect issues
Missing metadata
Slow pages
Thin content
Other issues on your site
But don’t put these audit tools on the shelf just yet. You’ll still need them to know whether your site is technically healthy. Crawl audits don’t guarantee that your content will surface.
Factors such as brand mentions are crucial signals for inclusion in LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Unfortunately, many site audit tools in your old stack lack mention-tracking functionality.
So while you may still rely on your old stack, it’s time to add new tools that cover these signals and change how you operate as an SEO professional.
Here’s what a new SEO stack looks like
IIf you’re still optimizing only for Google, it’s time to shift gears. Between the first and second half of 2025, LLM referral traffic grew by 80%. Conversion rates reached 18%, but LLM referrals still accounted for 2% or less of total traffic, according to the dataset.
Now is the time to shift to a new stack that helps you leverage growing LLM referrals.
Add the following to your SEO tech stack to stay ahead of the competition:
LLMs
You want your site to show up in LLMs, but these same tools can help power your SEO strategy. For example, you might use:
ChatGPT: Connect ChatGPT with Google Search Console to automate your SEO analysis, as I show you how to do in arecent article here.
Claude: Use Claude to write your copy, refine metadata and conduct a full content audit.
Gemini: Hop on Gemini to help generate schema markup, compare competitor sites with your own, or find issues with your site.
LLMs can help with everything from data analysis to competitor research.
Use the LLM you’re most comfortable with for these tasks, but keep human oversight in place. Use these tools to improve performance, not replace the human element.
Large datasets that once took hours, days, or weeks to review now take minutes with these tools. Keep learning LLMs and how to integrate them into your workflow.
APIs
Old dashboards with CSV exports into Excel were once standard. You logged into Google Search Console (GSC) and exported data. While it may sound too technical, LLMs can now help you connect to APIs for:
Google Search Console
Google Analytics
LLMs can help you authenticate requests and parse JSON. With this skill, you can open up a workflow
Lightweight scripts
Python scripts are now available to any SEO with some skill and Claude Code, or similar options in ChatGPT or Gemini. You can easily create scripts that:
Pull your top pages from GSC
Compare titles to character limits
Flag 30-day changes
Create a CSV output for you
Rather than waiting for vendor tools to add a feature that removes a performance bottleneck, create a script that does the same thing.
A hundred-line script can handle much of the work you used to do by hand, without a new license or SaaS upsell. If you hand the script to someone else, they can see the exact logic behind it.
Notebooks / local workflows
Your SEO team has data in many places:
Shared folders
Google Sheets
Notion docs
You might have a three-year content audit tracker in Google Sheets. A spreadsheet with monthly CSV dumps from your favorite tools leaves you with files you must manually open and decipher.
Notebooks and local workflows change how data fragmentation slows your team down.
Instead, Notebooks interpret these files and turn them into action. For example, a script may pull data, an API surfaces the signal, and LLMs make sense of the data and put the output into your Notebook.
Notebooks also offer the benefit of:
Consistent data formats
Shared access to data
Documented logic
SEO teams need to be agile and scalable to grow with the new era of search optimization and generative AI. Rather than starting over every time they need to pull data, teams can use local workflows for data consistency.
Creating hybrid workflows to mix old and new SEO stacks
Is your old SEO stack obsolete? No. Are these new tools the only ones you need? No. Hybrid workflows and search engine optimization stacks offer the best of both worlds.
Tool + custom script + AI layer
You’ll need to experiment to create a hybrid workflow that works best for your clients, projects, and teams. One hypothetical workflow that combines the old and new stack for well-rounded SEO includes:
Crawling the site with an audit tool, such as Screaming Frog
Running a Python script that dissects the file and joins it with GSC data
Scripts that flag pages where you have a lot of impressions but low clicks
Sending flagged pages to an LLM to evaluate titles against search intent
Putting LLM output into a Notebook or spreadsheet for editors to review
Turning approvals into change logs
Tasks like these used to take weeks, so teams put them on the back burner. At the enterprise level, teams quickly felt overwhelmed by this much data. But when you combine old and new SEO stacks, you can complete larger projects in a fraction of the time.
Replacing your current SEO stack with one that’s more agile and built for today’s massive datasets will make you an invaluable asset to any SEO team.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/new-seo-stack-old-toolset-AXADtX.webp?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=110801920Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-06-30 14:00:002026-06-30 14:00:00The new SEO stack: What replaces your old toolset
Earlier this year, I argued that the core fundamentals of international SEO still matter. Hreflang, localization, technical excellence, and market-specific content remain essential to successful international search because search engines and LLMs still need to discover, understand, and connect content with the right audiences.
The environment those fundamentals operate in has changed.
For decades, multinational organizations could treat markets as largely independent digital ecosystems. Content created in one market typically stayed there, and governance focused on managing websites, content, and technical implementations across regions.
Today, those boundaries are becoming less distinct.
AI systems translate content, synthesize information from multiple sources, and increasingly act as intermediaries between organizations and customers. Information once largely contained within a single market can now influence visibility, recommendations, and customer experiences across regions.
As market boundaries blur, the governance challenge expands. International SEO is no longer just about managing websites across countries. It increasingly requires organizations to manage the knowledge, expertise, and information that search engines and AI systems use to represent them globally.
Why the governance model must change
Historically, many website and localization decisions prioritized operational efficiency. Headquarters developed content, technology platforms, and standards for global distribution, while local markets adapted them for their audiences.
The model worked because scale often outweighed localization limits. Consistency improved, costs fell, and organizations could deploy content and technology across dozens of markets far more efficiently than independent local efforts allowed.
The challenge is that AI systems are changing what gets rewarded.
Scale and standardization still matter, but search engines and AI systems increasingly look for signals of expertise, relevance, and geographic specificity. Content reflecting local regulations, market conditions, customer expectations, and industry practices often provides context that translation alone can’t replicate.
At the same time, AI systems amplify inconsistency. Contradictory product information, conflicting entity definitions, inaccurate regulatory guidance, and fragmented technical implementations can create confusion across search engines, answer engines, and AI-powered experiences.
Organizations can no longer optimize only for efficiency or localization. They need governance models that preserve global consistency while enabling local markets to contribute the expertise and context that increasingly drive visibility and trust.
Hreflang solved routing, not understanding
In my previous hreflang article, I argued that even in the age of AI, hreflang remains an important part of international search strategy. That remains true.
What it doesn’t do is determine which market perspective to prioritize when synthesizing information from multiple sources, or which content shows the strongest expertise when AI systems generate answers.
As search shifts from retrieval to synthesis, organizations must think beyond routing users to the correct page and start governing the knowledge that powers those answers.
What should be centralized?
The simplest rule is this: activities that create enterprise risk when implemented inconsistently should generally be governed centrally.
Technical SEO standards are a clear example. Search engines and AI systems don’t evaluate websites one market at a time. They evaluate the broader ecosystem of signals the organization provides. CMS governance, structured data standards, entity definitions, AI crawler policies, measurement frameworks, and technical infrastructure all benefit from consistency.
Many international organizations have faced this challenge before.
Years ago, before hreflang existed, many global companies used IP detection to route users to the market website they considered most appropriate. The problem was that Google primarily crawled from U.S.-based IP addresses. When Google tried to access French or Japanese content, it was often redirected to the U.S. site instead.
Individual markets couldn’t solve this because the routing rules affected every market at once. The solution required global governance with local input.
AI crawler management presents a very similar challenge today.
Organizations must decide not only which AI systems can access content, but also whether those systems can reach the market-specific information they’re intended to understand. For companies still relying on geographic routing, market gateways, or IP detection, the governance challenge is familiar even if the technology is new.
The platforms have changed, but the governance lesson remains the same. Some decisions are too interconnected to manage independently.
What should be localized?
If technical infrastructure benefits from consistency, content benefits from expertise.
For years, multinational organizations followed a straightforward model: create content in the primary market, then translate, adapt, and distribute it globally. This approach delivered major efficiencies, helping organizations scale content production, maintain brand consistency, and support dozens of markets with shared resources and common technology platforms.
Traditional search engines could rely on signals like hreflang and country targeting to understand regional relevance. AI systems increasingly evaluate the content itself. When multiple markets publish highly similar versions of the same information, language models may treat them as variations of one source rather than distinct expressions of expertise.
To stand on its own, content increasingly needs market-specific signals such as local regulations, terminology, customer expectations, industry practices, and other forms of geographic specificity.
This is why content ownership, audience research, local authority-building, regulatory content, and market expertise should generally stay close to the market. The goal is not localization for its own sake. The goal is to ensure expertise comes from the people closest to the customer and that the content reflects the realities of the market it serves.
The most successful multinational organizations will continue to use global content frameworks, shared resources, and common technology platforms because their efficiencies remain valuable. The challenge is preserving those efficiencies while giving local markets enough space to contribute expertise that is visible, differentiated, and meaningful.
For years, organizations balanced scale against localization. Increasingly, they balance scale against representation. The markets that stay visible in AI-driven search experiences will often be those that contribute enough unique expertise to stand on their own rather than echo the dominant market version.
What requires shared ownership?
Governance ultimately comes down to accountability. Whether responsibility sits with a Chief Digital Officer, CMO, enterprise search team, or AI governance group matters less than clear ownership. As search becomes more intertwined with marketing, technology, product, legal, and AI initiatives, organizations need clear decision rights, escalation paths, and accountability.
The companies that succeed won’t necessarily have the largest SEO teams or the most sophisticated AI tools. They’ll be the ones with clear ownership for how knowledge is created, governed, validated, and represented across markets.
A practical rule for determining ownership
The distinction comes down to risk and expertise.
Responsibilities that create enterprise-wide consequences when implemented inconsistently generally belong closer to headquarters, while activities that depend on local customer knowledge, regulations, language, or market conditions are usually best managed in-market.
Many of the most important decisions require both and are best handled through shared governance.
The 10 governance decisions every global SEO team should review
The specific structure will vary by organization, but most multinational companies should evaluate ownership of these areas.
Typically centralized
1. Technical SEO standards
To ensure consistency in crawling, indexing, structured data, and technical implementation across markets.
2. CMS and infrastructure governance
To prevent fragmentation while maintaining a common technology foundation.
3. Entity definitions and taxonomies
To ensure products, services, brands, and organizational relationships are represented consistently across markets.
4. AI crawler and bot governance
To establish consistent policies for crawler access, monitoring, verification, geographic routing, and exception management. Governance should typically reside at headquarters, while markets retain the ability to request business-specific exceptions.
5. Measurement and reporting frameworks
To ensure markets are evaluated using comparable definitions and success metrics.
Typically localized
6. Market-specific content
To reflect local customer needs, regulations, terminology, market conditions, and the geographic signals that increasingly help AI systems recognize local relevance. Local teams should own creation and validation, while leveraging global content frameworks where appropriate.
7. Audience and search behavior research
To capture differences in language, intent, customer expectations, and emerging market trends.
8. Local authority building
To establish market-specific expertise, trust, partnerships, citations, and visibility.
Typically shared
9. Product and knowledge management
To combine global consistency with local validation, market expertise, and regulatory requirements. Headquarters should define the framework while markets validate that products, services, and policies accurately reflect local realities.
10. AI visibility and representation
To monitor how products, services, and brands are represented across AI systems while ensuring local accuracy and global consistency. Headquarters should establish monitoring and escalation processes, while local teams validate market-specific accuracy and identify emerging issues.
The new global SEO mandate.
The objective isn’t to centralize or localize everything. It’s to place ownership where decisions can be managed most effectively, and the organization can balance consistency with expertise.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/global-seo-data-hub-mIphBG.png?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=110801920Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-06-30 12:00:002026-06-30 12:00:00Why AI search is forcing global SEO teams to rethink ownership
SEO consultants handle audits, keyword research, on-page fixes, link building, and AI visibility across platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews.
Hire one when your traffic stalls, your rankings drop after a Google update, your in-house team is stretched, or you’re ready to scale.
Look for proven case studies, several years of experience, data-driven reporting, and a clear grasp of AI search.
Consultants cost less and work one-on-one. Agencies cost more but deliver faster with a full team behind your account.
In-house teams know your business best. Consultants bring deeper SEO expertise and faster results.
Need a little help improving your rankings? An SEO consultant could be the answer.
Chances are you already know the basics of SEO, but getting your desired results can be tough with everything else on your plate, especially with the changes AI is throwing into the mix.
That’s where SEO consulting services come in. These experts provide a range of services to boost your traditional and AI SEO results.
SEO consultant is a multifaceted role that requires a range of skills. They wear many hats, and for businesses struggling to rank, they can be a perfect fit.
By the end of this post, you’ll know all about what an SEO consultant is and what they do.
What Does an SEO Consultant Do?
The primary role is to provide a range of SEO consulting services to clients to help them achieve better rankings. They implement various strategies and best practices, including:
SEO audits.An SEO audit is an in-depth analysis of a website’s ability to rank in search engines. It looks at your site’s content, technical SEO, backlinks, and competitor performance, among other factors. An SEO audit also highlights ways a site can improve its SEO and provides a strategy for achieving those improvements.
Keyword research.Keyword research means finding relevant keywords that a website should aim to rank for. If a business hasn’t done any SEO before, it may not target any keywords. Even if they have worked with an SEO specialist in the past, it may not be targeting the best keywords.
On-page SEO.On-page SEO means optimizing the site’s content and HTML elements of individual pages to meet Google’s best practices. This can include refining page content, optimizing title tags and metadata, structuring headers, and improving internal linking.
Technical SEO. Technical SEO focuses on the behind-the-scenes elements that help search engines crawl, index, and understand a website. This can include improving site speed, strengthening site security, fixing crawl errors, optimizing site architecture, and ensuring mobile-friendliness.
Link building. The more and better quality links a website has, the easier it is to rank for high-competition keywords. If a site’s authority is low, an SEO consultant may create one or more link-building campaigns to improve the site’s backlink profile.
AI or generative engine optimization (GEO). While traditional SEO still makes a significant impact, SEO consultants also need to understand GEO. That means knowing how long-tail, question-based keywords affect visibility within AI elements of traditional search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google’s AI Overviews. It also means knowing how to earn citations across major AI platforms like ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
In addition to these services, SEO consultants also typically provide monthly reporting services to clients. The report covers current rankings, the consultant’s work completed, and recommendations for actions they can take to improve results.
SEO Consulting Types
Countless factors affect your Google ranking, so before you begin, clarify exactly what you need help with.
An easy way to find that out is to ask, “Which part of my business brings the most sales?”
Got the answer? Good. From there, you can match your situation to one of these common SEO consulting service specializations:
Local SEO consultants help businesses rank in map packs and location-based searches. They’re a good fit if you have a brick-and-mortar store or serve a specific geographic area.
Ecommerce SEO consultants specialize in product page optimization, category structure, and the technical challenges that come with a large product catalog.
Content-focused SEO consultants specialize in topical authority, editorial strategy, and ranking through high-quality, in-depth content. They’re a strong fit for publishers and brands competing on expertise.
Technical SEO consultants dig into crawlability, site speed, schema, and infrastructure. They’re most useful when your content is solid but the site itself is holding rankings back.
Enterprise SEO consultants work with large sites that have complex architectures and significant existing traffic to protect.
Signs You Need an SEO Consultant
It’s usually pretty obvious when you need an SEO consultant. If your website isn’t generating leads or conversions from organic traffic and search engines and AI platforms are an important part of your marketing strategy, then working with an SEO consultant is a good idea.
Here are some other signs it’s time to consult a professional:
Your Website Traffic is Flatlining
Search engine traffic is the most basic indicator of whether an SEO strategy is working. If your traffic isn’t increasing (or decreasing) over time, you need to work with an SEO consultant or replace your existing one.
Search traffic won’t be important to some businesses, but that’s rare. Even if you don’t think search traffic is essential for your business, it probably is.
Although AIO and large language model optimization (LLMO) are changing where search happens, Google still accounts for almost 90 percent of the global search market. What’s also shifting is how these searchers interact with Google’s results.
With AI Overviews, customers are getting the information they need directly in the SERPs without clicking through to websites. That affects traffic numbers, but it doesn’t mean searchers are abandoning Google. Writing off traditional search means writing off a massive audience.
Have your rankings tanked after a Google core update? You may have been hit by a Google penalty for falling out of step with its best practices. These penalties are notoriously difficult to overcome without the help of a search professional, and there’s a risk you could do even more damage if you try to fix the problem yourself.
Your rankings can also decline without a formal penalty. You may not be breaking any Google rules outright, but ignoring SEO best practices can still drag down your rankings. Working with a consultant with in-depth industry knowledge can help you avoid unintended SEO consequences and penalties.
Google may notify you directly through the manual action report in Search Console. Users receive these reports when a human reviewer has determined that their site violates one or more of Google’s spam policies. Expand the notification, and you’ll see a message like this:
More often, though, post-update drops are algorithmic.
A good SEO consultant’s knowledge and guidance can be indispensable no matter the cause or scenario. They can help you navigate Google’s entire list of penalties and provide the most complete, efficient fixes available.
Your In-House Team Needs Support
Some businesses try to build their own in-house SEO team or hire a marketing manager with experience across several areas of digital marketing.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work out. An SEO consultant often brings more experience, and the engagement can cost less than a full-time hire.
For example, Ahrefs puts the average SEO consultant engagement at about $3,250 per month, which is typically far below the total cost of salary and benefits for a full-time SEO role. That said, the cost can vary significantly depending on the type of SEO consultant and the level of service.
Even effective in-house teams can benefit from hiring an SEO consultant. You may even have some SEO experts on your in-house team. While they may have the knowledge, there’s no guarantee you’ll have time to implement strategies to improve your rankings. A consultant can also help you with unique strategies and spotting unforeseen challenges as you scale.
SEO is an important marketing channel, but small teams can’t do it all. If you’re busy dealing with customers, suppliers, and shareholders, outsourcing the work to an SEO consultant is smart.
You Want to Grow Operations
Whatever business you’re in, there comes a time to level up.
You could market your business in several ways, like social media, newsletters, and sharing case studies. But it’s SEO that grows your online visibility and helps searchers find you.
While you could implement a strategy yourself, an SEO specialist has the knowledge you need to drive online discoverability.
This is especially true given how search is evolving. We live in a “search everywhere” environment now. The customer journey is rapidly moving away from the traditional straight-down funnel approach, and businesses increasingly need to be visible everywhere.
What does that mean for you? You need to work with a professional who can not only get you ranking well in SERPs like Google but also understands how AI prompts and platforms play into your visibility.
Sold on the idea of hiring an SEO consultant? Read on for some tips on how to find one.
Finding Your Next SEO Consultant
Finding an SEO consultant isn’t hard, but finding a good one is. First, let’s look at some of the most common ways to find an SEO consultant:
Ask your network. Speaking to people you know and trust is one of the best ways to find an SEO consultant. If a fellow business owner or manager knows of a great SEO consultant, they’re usually happy to recommend them. As a bonus, you’ll know they can deliver.
Run a Google search. Unsurprisingly, Google is a great place to find an SEO consultant. If a consultant is ranking well on Google, there’s a good chance they know what they’re doing. However, this shouldn’t be the only factor you use in your decision. Just because they rank high on Google doesn’t mean they can do the same for your business.
Use online directories. Several online directories collect reviews about SEO specialists. Clutch is a great place to start, but take these reviews with a pinch of salt. Just because a consultant is topping the rankings doesn’t mean they are the best for you. Like Google, they are a great way to get a shortlist of suitable candidates rather than pinpoint one.
Look through SEO blogs. Popular SEO blogs like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, and The Moz Blog can be a great source of potential SEO consultants. They don’t just host journalists’ opinions; SEO strategists also routinely write how-tos and thought pieces on these sites.
Post on job boards. Job boards like Upwork, AngelList, and Dynamite Jobs are great places to post ads. The beauty of this method is that SEO consultants will come to you, meaning all you have to do is interview them. Moreover, many of these job boards vet applicants before they can even apply.
Several traits set great SEO consultants apart from the rest. I recommend you look for the following attributes when interviewing potential candidates.
Several years of experience. You don’t want a rookie SEO as your consultant. The more experience an SEO consultant has in the industry, the better. They’ll have worked on more sites, better understand what’s effective, and have more case studies to back up their success.
Proven resuts. Any SEO consultant worth their salt will have many case studies to support their work. They can show exactly what they did to improve a previous client’s rankings and the impact they had. They should also be happy to put you in contact with previous clients. Here are some examples from my agency, NP Digital:
A long-term vision. You want an SEO consultant who’s in it for the long haul, not someone who is going to leave you for a new client after a couple of months; choose a consultant who explains the long-term benefits of SEO to your business and has a roadmap of how you can achieve them.
Sees the bigger picture. SEO is just one part of a holistic marketing strategy, and a good SEO consultant will appreciate that. They should help you fold your SEO strategy into other marketing initiatives and be willing to work with other team members and departments in your company to improve your broader marketing goals.
A data-driven business model. The consultant you work with should be focused on data. They should be providing regular reporting on how strategies are working, as well as ways to improve those that aren’t, grounded in factual numbers.
Understands AI visibility. A good SEO consultant needs to understand AI visibility in today’s market. They should have knowledge of prompting and which strategies work well on these platforms, both on- and off-page.
Certifications. Just remember that certifications aren’t everything; practical experience is equally important in SEO.
SEO Consultants vs. SEO Agencies
So far, we’ve talked about SEO consultants in broad strokes. However, there’s a meaningful distinction worth drawing before you start looking for one. Both consultants and agencies often offer consulting services, but they operate very differently.
Many SEO consultants consist of an independent professional or a small team. They work directly with you, usually wearing multiple hats while focusing on strategy and high-leverage execution.
An SEO agency is a larger organization, sometimes with dozens or hundreds of employees, structured to execute at scale across many clients simultaneously.
Both can get you results. The right choice depends on what you actually need.
SEO Consultants May Require Your Help. SEO Agencies Won’t.
If you choose to work with an SEO consultant, you might be looking for a personal, one-to-one service. What you might not realize is that they will likely need your help to improve your rankings, too.
SEO consultants often have specific niches and work independently, so they may not have the resources to provide comprehensive services. That means they could ask your team to write additional content, change your website, or perform other SEO-related tasks.
That’s very different from an SEO agency that often can perform every SEO task in-house.
Agencies Cost More, but You Get More for Your Money
Agencies will usually charge more for their time than SEO consultants. That’s because they have staff to pay and overheads to cover, whereas SEO consultants typically work from home. For smaller businesses, that may mean an SEO consultant is the way to go.
Other businesses may want to pay more for a top-tier SEO agency because they know they’ll get more bang for their buck. That’s because an agency gives you access to dozens of experts rather than just one.
Having more people working on your project also means you get work delivered more quickly. There’s a good chance you’ll see results faster, too.
At the end of the day, if you choose a good SEO consultant or SEO agency, you’ll still be receiving excellent advice. Most consultants and agencies are dedicated to their craft, attend the right conferences, and test cutting-edge tactics.
You may get access to a few more experts when you work with an SEO agency, but that doesn’t make an SEO consultant any less professional.
SEO Consultants vs. In-House Teams
For many companies, deciding whether to go with an in-house team or work with external SEO consultants is a challenge. As you’d expect, there are pros and cons to both options.
Factor
SEO Consultant
In-House Team
SEO expertise
Brings established knowledge from day one
Needs time to build skills and stay current
Business knowledge
Learns your company from the outside
Knows your customers, products, and market
Speed to results
Skips the learning curve
Requires training before output ramps up
Resources
Access to agency tools and a wider team
Limited to what you can hire or buy
Communication
Works through scheduled touchpoints
Allows quick, informal updates and meetings
Control & flexibility
You guide the strategy at arm’s length
You manage the work directly, day to day
Focus
Frees your staff for core business tasks
Keeps SEO tied to broader operations
Best fit for
Small teams or businesses scaling fast
Companies with the budget to build long-term
The most obvious benefit of working with an SEO consulting service is avoiding the steep learning curve of search engine optimization.
If you run a small business and know it will take time before your staff can get up to speed with SEO complexities, you can save yourself time (and headaches) by outsourcing. Agency staff can lean on their expertise and resources to stand up effective strategies right away.
You could also use an agency to focus on growing your business. While your team focuses on the day-to-day tasks, SEO consulting experts can create a strategy that delivers results.
Doing SEO in-house has its advantages, too.
The most obvious benefit of going in-house is that the staff knows the business better than an outside consultant. They know the customers, the market, and what appeals to them.
You may also find it easier to collaborate and communicate when you keep your SEO in-house. Team meetings, sharing updates, and changing course when needed can all be a lot easier.
Then, of course, there’s the greater control and flexibility. After all, you’re working on your own terms.
<h3>1. NP Digital for the Best Blog and Website SEO Consulting</h3>
I can’t write an article about SEO consulting without mentioning the award-winning NP Digital agency.
It recently won the AdAge Performance Marketing Agency of the Year award. Pretty awesome, right?
NP Digital has also received recognition for the impressive ROI it delivers to clients, its paid search, and its ability to boost your visibility across platforms, including AI or GEO search results.
I could go on, but I don’t like to boast.
Since the start, NP Digital has offered a proven system to get your readers coming back for more content while also converting a high percentage of them.
Book a call with NP Digital today if you’re looking to outgrow your competitors and work with a well-established SEO consulting firm that brings consistent results.
<h3>2. Louder.Online for Dedicated Sales Funnel SEO Consulting</h3>
If your focus is ecommerce SEO, consider Coalition Technologies. With more than 530 ecommerce projects translating into over 20 million ecommerce transactions, Coalition Technologies has the track record to back its standing as a top-tier SEO consultant.
It offers services like web design, paid advertising, traditional SEO, and AI SEO. Its niche services include social media and forum marketing, platforms essential for converting online sales today.
Coalition boasts more than 500 SEO case studies. These success stories come from clients in a broad range of industries, from fashion to legal.
FAQs
What is SEO consulting?
SEO consulting is an advisory service where an expert audits your online presence and builds a strategy to improve your search and AI visibility. Some consultants also handle implementation.
What does an SEO consultant do?
An SEO consultant researches keywords and competitor content. Using what they find, they will recommend strategies to fix on-page and off-page SEO issues. They’ll also provide regular metrics and reporting. Some will even manage execution alongside your team.
How do you find a good SEO consultant?
Look for case studies, client reviews, and industry experience. Ask for references and confirm that they follow white-hat practices.
What should you ask SEO consultants?
Ask about their process, reporting cadence, past results, and pricing. Find out which tools they use and how they’re handling the new AI search environment.
How do you hire an SEO consultant?
Shortlist your top candidates, request proposals, and compare pricing against scope. Sign a contract outlining deliverables, timelines, and reporting requirements before work begins.
Conclusion
SEO consultants can deliver incredible results to small businesses, helping them improve every facet of SEO. A good SEO consultant offers a wide range of services and has the proof and industry knowledge to back up their promises.
You’ll want to make sure you choose a consultant that uses hard data as their guiding light and knows how to navigate modern search. Google is still critical, but the use of AI is rapidly changing how SERPs function and how users behave.
You’ll also need to decide whether an SEO consultant or agency is the best fit for your goals. For some businesses, working with an SEO agency is a better choice. If you have the budget, an SEO agency will help you get more done in less time, supercharging your results in the process.
Whether you’re hiring an SEO consultant or an SEO agency, you can look in many of the same places and search for similar traits. Or you can ask my agency for help.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00Dubado Solutionshttp://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.pngDubado Solutions2026-06-29 19:00:002026-06-29 19:00:00What Is an SEO Consultant & What Services Do They Offer?
Six months ago, there was a core update that would’ve tanked your website. But it didn’t.
It didn’t because your team fixed your canonicals, redirection issues, duplication issues, and JavaScript rendering eight months earlier. It was the kind of drudge work a technical engineer or developer got stuck with because the ticket was last on their list.
And you don’t have any proof of it, not really. Other than the experience that comes from years in SEO and recognizing that your site had all the hallmarks of sites hit by the update.
It could’ve cut your traffic in half. It didn’t.
There’s no parallel internet timeline where you didn’t do the work, so there’s no way to confirm it. There’s no record.
This is why technical SEO ROI resists proof. It’s an inference problem with no control group, and we keep pretending it’s a reporting problem we can tool our way out of.
The internet doesn’t stop
We are in two open systems when we work in digital, at least: the internet and the market. Three, if you count the maturity and expectations of internet users. Four, if you count our own website infrastructure. More than that, really, but we don’t have time to list them all.
The long and short of it is this: the sea we swim in is always shifting, moving, growing, and shrinking. There’s no way to pin down a single, solid “before” state, and there’s no clean way to project all of those influences into “what would’ve happened if I didn’t do anything?” We try to do it with things like Bayesian forecasting, but that’s still an educated guess.
Technical work might have an immediate impact on visibility today. Make the same change six months later, and it might not. That could solely be because Google decided to shift its crawl budget or change how it reads websites.
Cause and effect come unstuck in time. Google recrawls and reindexes on its own schedule, so any effect lands far from the change and is washed out across a recrawl cycle, defeating the before-and-after pairing every clean test needs.
Just like SEO as a whole, there’s a lot we can’t control. Trying to track all of the changes across the web that might influence our website would result in many gray hairs and sleepless nights.
Technical SEO adds another layer because we rarely ship in isolation. It’s never just “here’s this single change to the website.” It’s “here are about 30 fixes from five different teams going out on a Thursday, so if things collapse, we have people on Friday who can triage.” (Please don’t ship on Fridays.)
Much of the technical work is also done to keep our heads above water: managing technical debt, or doing the work needed to stay on top of updated regulations and new releases of codebases or frameworks. Enhancements and improvements are tough.
Technical work is a lot more like insurance or public health. You only realize how important it was when it stops working. What we’re doing with technical SEO is often disaster prevention, not building new cities. We can’t write an invoice for an earthquake that didn’t happen.
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The control group was never there
Another reality of technical changes, SEO-led or not, is that most of them are sitewide and, by necessity, have to be sitewide. There’s no control group. Render pipeline, crawl budget, site speed. It touches everything at once, so there’s no untouched slice left to act as the control.
Two examples to consider:
Sunsetting 301 redirects more than a year old: The server stops reading every redirect line on every page load. The benefit is crawl and resource efficiency, which is invisible in analytics.
A migration done right: The win condition is “we didn’t lose traffic.” A flat line, maybe a slight uptick. Migration work only becomes visible when it fails.
Your only comparison becomes the past, which existed under different external conditions. Time itself is now the trick. The only things to compare are relative, over time, and incremental, and the results shift depending on which metrics you use to measure success and which assumptions you and your leadership bring to the conversation.
When possible, we do want to run a proof of concept. SEO A/B testing, essentially. Pick a segment, make the change there and nowhere else. Measure and decide. But that isn’t always possible, and it requires a different kind of buy-in.
We’re also at a point where LLMs make everything probabilistic. Every answer is personalized, and many of the measurements we rely on have become less deterministic.
How we prioritize the work helps determine the impact we want to make.
My approach to prioritizing technical work is to look at impact first. How much of the website does this issue affect, and how much of that impact lands on priority sections or pages? After that, it’s standard scoping and grooming discussions led by the development teams.
But for me, impact is what matters.
Now, when it comes to measurement and reporting, much of the SEO industry, myself included, is talking about how we actually measure everything now, not just technical work. We’re in a bit of a weird limbo because of everything LLMs have accelerated.
We don’t have the “what would’ve happened if…” for our own websites, but we do have our competitors. Observing how competitors’ websites respond to global events, such as Google updates, is probably the closest we’ll get to answering that question in technical SEO work. It’s an ROI-by-proxy adjacent to share of voice.
And the funding
Technical SEO is infrastructure. Insurance. If you’re having trouble getting it done or getting it funded, look at your framing.
At its core, technical SEO is insurance against the shocks of an open system. Treat it that way. It’s not a revenue driver.
Yes, it can deliver meaningful improvements and help that line go up and to the right, but the workhorse, the 80%, the majority of technical SEO, is keeping the engine running. The work doesn’t promise upside. It lowers the odds and the cost of getting tanked. The core update that didn’t sink you is the claim that paid out.
So do what I’ve recommended before and talk to finance. Learn how they quantify, value, and evaluate insurance, security, and infrastructure.
Start looking at your technical SEO that way. Start talking about it that way.
Technical SEO is growth resilience your flywheel can’t move without, not an investment you can’t justify.
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