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Showing posts from January, 2026

What local SEO metrics actually matter once rankings plateau?

I’ve been working on local SEO accounts where rankings stopped being the bottleneck, but outcomes still varied massively between businesses. What stood out was how little attention we were paying to Google Business Profile behaviour compared to rankings. Over the last few months, I changed how I prioritise local SEO work and reporting using LocalHQ: Profile completeness treated as a core KPI Daily views tracked alongside interactions, not monthly rollups Direction requests weighted more heavily than website clicks for physical locations Posts measured by downstream actions, not impressions On a Soho hospitality listing, rankings barely moved, but we still saw: 26% increase in profile views over 30 days Direction requests consistently outperform website clicks Engagement spikes tied more to profile hygiene than new content Curious how others here approach this: Do you still lead reporting with rankings? Which GBP actions correlate best with real-world conversions? A...

Early success signals

Just wanted to say I've been publishing 3 blog articles a week about the pain problems for the kind of consulting my business does and search console is showing some top 10 rankings and even a few clicks so I'm pretty stoked and will try to use this data to help steer my content as I grow it! submitted by /u/Glass-Tomorrow-2442 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/Vqmw8xQ

Anyone recovered from the Dec 2025 Update?

One of our major client sites had been ranking consistently in the top 10 across its main keyword clusters and niche for the past 2–3 years. It was very stable. Over the last few weeks, impressions dropped hard, from 1.4M down by roughly 50%. What’s more concerning is that our top-performing content pages aren’t even showing in the top 10 anymore. Litterally most of our blogs, money pages got nuked to obvilion. No major site changes, migrations, or obvious technical issues on our end. Trying to figure out whether this looks more like an algorithmic shift, SERP intent change, or something else we might be missing. submitted by /u/Papa40 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/1rniFgZ

did I get shadowbanned from google?

I run an ecom brand that heavily relies on blog content for organic traffic and customer growth. For months, my site averaged around 8,000 impressions/day and 2 00 clicks/day, and I was using a service called Junia to AI assist with some articles, and had success for several months. But starting December 11, my performance suddenly dropped to roughly 1,000 impressions/day and 10 clicks/day and has not recovered. The only change I made that day was trying an AI-assisted keyword research tool junia offered once (I have not used it since), and the next day my impressions and clicks tanked. I received no warnings or messages from Google, so I’m unsure if this is related or if something else happened (manual action, algorithm punishment, indexing problem, etc.). This drop is severely hurting my business, and I’m posting to hopefully get a better understanding of what’s going on and what steps I need to take to fix it. submitted by /u/Over-Brain7954 [link] [comments] from Search...

I've found where the technical SEO BS comes from

I had to share this - its mind boggling but Web Devs are convincing themselves that Technical SEO isn't jsut making sure your site publishes ok - its now more important than: Content Link Building "Vital" to AEO How many people out there on WP or Wix or Webflow are building sites that cannot be crawled? Is the most common post here - "Indexed but cannot be crawled"? - how did this happen? submitted by /u/WebLinkr [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/Ah84n5t

Local SEO issue in my very first website

Hi everyone, I’m dealing with an interesting local SEO situation and would love to hear your thoughts. I run a service website in a small town in Poland (around 15k population), but the competition is very high because companies from a 50 km radius are targeting the same main city in the region. Here’s the situation: - For the query: “service name + city”, my page ranks Top 3 (was Top 2 for a long time). - I also rank Top 1 for several smaller surrounding towns using dedicated location pages. - My Google Business Profile is Top 1 in the Map Pack with strong reviews, and the website is linked from the profile. - Competitors have older domains and many of them clearly use PBNs. - I built dedicated blog-style location pages for each town and city. - I continuously improve UX, internal structure, and build my own supporting sites. The problem is this: When someone types only “service name” and Google automatically detects their location (the same city where I rank Top 3 for “se...

How can I improve the SEO of my website having launched 3 months ago?

So I launched this website (argentinacitizenships.com) 3 months ago... my goal is for it to rank on the 1st page for key words like Argentina Citizenship by Investment. Right now I'm ranking on the 6th page (*not 6th spot). My idea behind the domain was buying one related to the keyword, and I also created 9 articles linking back to the main keyword as well as homepage with the goal of having internal cluster pushing my homepage. But for some reason my website hasn't been able to jump spots via SEO on the Google pages. And at the same time, other domains ranking on the 1st google page for the same mentioned keyword, just have very basic content about the topic... I don't understand what I'm currently doing wrong. Based on my website, what are the best measures/low hanging fruits you recommend implementing to improve my SEO? submitted by /u/mountaintruffle [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/h7np21u

Site-wide traffic drop after December core update – niche tech blog (smart home / homelab)

Hi everyone, I’m running a German niche tech blog ( https://prokrastinerd.de ) focused on: Smart Home (Shelly, Zigbee, local setups, Home Assistant) Homelab / Proxmox some general nerd / tech history topics After the December core update, my site had a strong site-wide drop in impressions and clicks. Details: Type: informational blog + some affiliate links Drop timing: directly after the December core update Scope: affects almost all pages, not just a few URLs GSC metrics (3 months view): impressions dropped ~90% clicks dropped accordingly Average position didn’t collapse completely, but visibility did No manual actions, no security issues What I already tried (4 weeks ago): clarified topical focus (more smart home + homelab, less mixed topics) improved internal linking using cornerstone / hub pages updated important articles reduced thin/experimental content improved category structure So far: no recovery yet . Questions: Does this look like a typical...

Where to find SEO Agency for Our Specific Needs

Our site was redesigned and relaunched about 4 months ago. Since then, we’ve built out a full hub-and-spoke content cluster for a niche we want to go after. I’ve talked with Authority Builders and Siege Media, and neither really feels like a fit for what we’re trying to do. Siege’s recommendation was to collect unique data (surveys, original research, etc.) and then build articles around that data that publishers would want to link to. As an example, we’re in the liquor store POS space, so the idea would be content like “X% of liquor store owners use a POS system,” “Most popular POS by store size,” that kind of thing. I get the logic, but I’m struggling to see how that actually helps us beyond boosting DR, which I honestly don’t care much about. Maybe I’m wrong, but it feels like DR gets way more credit than it deserves compared to relevance and whether links actually support the pages that matter. So I’m trying to figure out where to find link-building partners or approaches that...

DR stuck at 2 after 2+ year old domain, Vite meta issues and Google still showing 10k+ old 404 URLs

Hey everyone, I’ve been struggling with SEO and could really use some advice. My domain is 2 plus years old, but my DR is still a 2. My goal is to get it into the 20 to 40 range. Previously I had about 180k property pages submitted to Google and roughly 100k of them were indexed. I migrated to a new platform and changed my URL format, so the old URLs are no longer valid. I created a new sitemap, started returning a 410 for the old pages, and I also submitted removal requests in Google Search Console more than 4 months ago. The part that’s driving me crazy is Search Console still surfacing the old URLs. I’m seeing 10k plus pages showing “Not found 404” under failed indexing, even though those URLs were intentionally retired and this is months after I submitted removals and pushed the fixes. I also tried redirecting some of them to the home page, but the reports still look messy. On the new URLs, I’ve submitted around 170k pages and only about 50k are indexed so far. The second is...

Website is getting spammed with porn

Hoping someone here has seen this before. A client's Webflow site is suddenly getting spammed in Google Search Console with a bunch of random, short URLs like /xbe , /PGF , etc. (See screenshot for examples). The problem is that these "pages" don't exist in the Webflow designer or sitemap, but Google is indexing them and they're ranking for straight-up porn keywords. The client runs an agricultural fencing business, so this is obviously a massive problem. Since it's Webflow and not WordPress, traditional malware scans aren't an option. I've checked staging settings and the search query parameters, but no luck so far. Has anyone else dealt with this specific type of spam injection on a Webflow site? How did you fight back and get those phantom URLs de-indexed? Any advice would be amazing! Thanks! submitted by /u/blazonstudio [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/b4igCBx

Hit in the Aug-Sep 2025 update and need some advice

Our site has been ranking well on google for decades. We've always ranked within top 4 on google for our primary commercial terms .. "alaska backpacking trips", etc. Usually #1 or 2. On Sep 22 that changed. Dropped like a rock (due the anti-spam update I presume). I have no idea why, and we're now down to page 2 (middle or so). Sites that we should easily outrank are consistently ahead of us. It's pretty much site wide. We're almost invisible. Very specific pages (primary pages we need to rank well) have dropped, and other, "shouldn't-rank-at-all" type pages (like our guide bio page or whatever) are still fine, if not even better. It's bizarre. I have no idea what has caused this drop in rankings. Our content is great, we've a long history of ranking really well, and we have excellent GBP and reviews, and so on and on. Like I said, we’ve been a top ranking website for decades. We don't have any PBN or spammy blackhat stuff. O...

Almost instant traffic from ChatGPT

I'm going to be a little vague, and I apologize for that, but I have an NDA. This is also not a show off post, but more of a sanity check. I built some landing pages for a client that we set live last week(1/13). I tried some new hunches on AI optimization on them. Starting this Wednesday(1/21) the client is already getting leads that show the referrer was ChatGPT. I'm sorry, but this seems crazy fast. Unexpectedly so. Niche and area are competitive. I've double checked the tagging and it's correct. Lead info is also accurate and qualified. So not spam submissions. Anybody else seeing results this fast from AI optimization? submitted by /u/NovaForceElite [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/qaJBH1C

Exchanging backlinks

Whatabout if you exchange with someone backlinks on social media forums like Facebook group or Fb post or Reddit , mentioning something like ‘ this service is the best i tried …and adding a link to their website’. And you do same favour for them . Would that work? submitted by /u/Parking_Departure705 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/gLQfCOk

Google Image Indexing for Reused Photos – Best Practices?

I run a self-hosted WordPress + WooCommerce photography site and often reuse the same image across blog posts and product pages. For example, I might post a few images in a blog post and later use one of the same images in my gallery or on a product page. I’m noticing that in Google Image Search, an image sometimes appears linked to the “wrong” post. Often, it’s displayed with the label “Blog – mysitedotcom” instead of linking to the actual article. I assume this happens because Google indexes the first image it sees, which on my blog page displays 10 posts per page with featured images. I’m using Yoast, and some guides suggest turning on “Enable media pages,” but I don’t think that would help. Some sources also suggest giving each image a unique filename, but with thousands of images, that isn’t practical. My goal: I’m not running a full-time business - I’m a hobbyist photographer and I want my images to be discovered organically through Google search, without relying on social me...

Ever grown a free tool using SEO ?!

I recently launched a free tool ., which is super useful one but the search terms for that if really not predictable. Partly because its an understated problem. of you ever really grown a saas or free tool that has a decent keyword competition ., that how u did !? can u lay it down in 4-5 step playbook ?! im experimenting different things right now ., and some seems to work. will drop mine here if one truly works out submitted by /u/Candid_Committee4240 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/0YE1Kb6

Did I shoot myself in the foot?

I’m an elopement photographer in the Pacific Northwest. When I first started out, I created a ton of “how to elope” guides on random places like Italy, Bali, Norway, etc. However, I have absolutely no desire or plan to photograph elopements outside of the Pacific Northwest. These guides brought in some traffic to my site, with some of them even ranking on page 1. I was told to delete this content in order for Google to see me more as an authority in the Pacific Northwest. I only had 1 blog post that had a backlink so I redirected it. Otherwise, I deleted the guides with a 410. It’s been a few days and now my rankings have plummeted. Part of me wants to stick it out, as I think in the long run it may help Google see me as more of an authority and rank my PNW posts better. Part of me wants to reinstate these guides. Did I shoot myself in the foot by doing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated! submitted by /u/briannaparksphoto [link] [comments] from Search Engine...

Prompt tracking is overrated. Prove me wrong.

Prompt tracking seems like a necessity in theory, but in practice, it seems to be directional at best and soon to be obsolete at worst once personalization enters the AI vis chat. It just seems like a panic button task to feel like we’re doing something for AI search visibility. Topics, facts, share of voice, heck, even ai referral traffic and conversion make more sense to me. What do you think? Has prompt tracking been actionable in any way or just a feel-good task that’s a weak leading indicator? submitted by /u/renee_nicole_ [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/C3RIOFV

OpenAI Search Crawler Passes 55% Coverage In Hostinger Study via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Hostinger analyzed 66.7B bot requests across 5M+ hosted sites and found AI training crawlers are blocked more often, while OpenAI’s search bot expands. The post OpenAI Search Crawler Passes 55% Coverage In Hostinger Study appeared first on Search Engine Journal . from Search Engine Journal https://ift.tt/H0zkjvY

SEO is extremely overrated

I've been making websites for many, many years. I'm 37 and doing my thing since 2009. I never, ever, have considered SEO as a pilar that cannot be "automated" with dynamic data entries. Not in all of these years. And all of my clients are doing fine. This is a quantity thing. If you have 1000s of products, blogs or whatever you want to target, yes, I understand why you somehow want to have a unique approach per product, items or whatever. Other than that I really think this entire thing is just a bullshit job in general. Whenever you're a SEO expert or whatever it is called in the company you work for, you're just doing a bullshit job. Like "Internal Communication Officer: Sending internal f*cking emails". It's just not a thing, it's just meta data judged by a bunch of systems that don't really make any actual real world difference in sales/views/whatever. And they can change at any moment. It just doesn't make real life sense. C...

Google SERP still showing wrong logo

In November, our website was hit by a malware attack. To resolve it, we completely deleted the old website (files and database), cleaned the backend, and rebuilt a new website from scratch on the same domain and server. Before cleanup, more than 100,000 spam/malicious pages were indexed. After rebuilding: The site is clean (no malware warnings in Google Search Console) No security issues or manual actions are reported Malicious URLs were removed The new site is indexed normally However, in Google search results, our brand logo/fav icon preview is showing a completely different logo , which appears to be from the hacked/malware version of the site. Our actual logo is correctly: Implemented on the website Defined as favicon Visible correctly in browsers and on the site itself This incorrect logo has been showing in Google SERPs for around 2.5 months and has not updated. My questions: Why would Google still show an unrelated or hacked logo even after a full rebuild? Is...

19 WordPress Alternatives: From Simple Builders To Enterprise CMS via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

WordPress no longer your default choice? Get a clear breakdown of when Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Shopify, Ghost, Drupal, and others are the smarter move. The post 19 WordPress Alternatives: From Simple Builders To Enterprise CMS appeared first on Search Engine Journal . from Search Engine Journal https://ift.tt/tBbXVkl

Schema in Local SEO

specifically regarding service area businesses that do not have products, what kind of schema are you placing on the site? In addition, which rich snippets are you hoping to show on SERPs? submitted by /u/JakeHundley [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/v5h37dn

I’m new to SEO, how do people build backlinks properly these days?

Hi everyone, I’m still learning SEO, and I’m honestly confused about link building. When I search online, I see completely different advice everywhere. Some people say guest posting works, others say it’s dead. Some recommend buying links, others say it will destroy your site. Since many of you here are more experienced, I wanted to ask: As a beginner, what link-building methods should I focus on first? What is considered “safe” link building today? Are there any simple strategies that actually work for small websites? I’m not selling anything, and I’m not an SEO expert, just trying to understand how this really works in practice. Thanks a lot for sharing your experience. submitted by /u/nazmunsakib [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/RKC7vQb

Help request: posts not indexed

Hi all. I'm a local journalist with pretty basic SEO knowledge and can't seem to find a solution to my problem. I run a website that is properly indexed on Google (landing page + post categories) but I'm unable to index the individual news stories. I run the website on Wix and made sure the "allow search engines to index this post" is always activated. GSC says it can't index the posts because URL is unknown to Google, although I can access the URL properly myself. There are no no-index tags on any of the posts. I assume it has something to do with my sitemaps, as GSC is able to access /sitemap.xml but gives an "unable to fetch" error message with /blog-posts-sitemap.xml. I don't know how to proceed further. Thank you so much in advance! submitted by /u/Open-Record914 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/8EcOWM3

Google stopped showing site logos in search (WordPress + Elementor + Yoast)

Hi guys, Quick question. On several websites built with WordPress + Elementor + Yoast SEO, Google stopped showing the site logo in search results. It was there before. I reindexed the homepage, everything is indexed fine, but the logo hasn’t returned for ~1.5 months. This seems to have started around Nov–Dec 2025. Anyone else seeing this? Google change or Yoast issue? Thanks. submitted by /u/stackedgrowth [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/uDzbNjB

I lost 70% of my impressions because of 2026

Hey there ! I’m looking for some advices as I recently went from 50k impressions to just about 15000 overnight. And it happened because I changed the titles of my blog articles from « 2025 leaderboard » to « 2026 leaderboard ». It appears that people are still querying with the 2025 keyword rather than 2026. My question is the following ; was it an expected behavior and will I get back to 50000 impressions a day if I change it back to 2026 ? Thanks a lot for your help, Florent submitted by /u/Real-Turnover9685 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/9BiA5Iu

Google Search Console showing “Excluded by noindex tag” but noindex already removed – pages not indexing & multiple sitemaps issue

Hi everyone, I’m facing a confusing indexing issue with my website Tycoon Guards and would really appreciate some expert guidance. Problem details: Google Search Console shows: “Page is not indexed: Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag” It also says: No: ‘noindex’ detected in ‘robots’ meta tag However, I have already removed the noindex tag from: Page <meta name="robots"> robots.txt Crawl status is successful Crawl allowed: Yes Page fetch: Successful Googlebot: Smartphone Other issues: Google Search Console is showing many sitemaps , even though I only want to use one main sitemap ( /sitemap.xml ) My service inner pages (for example: https://tycoonguards.com/services/live-video-monitoring/ ) are not getting indexed Referring pages include homepage and blog tag pages Canonical is not user-declared (Google-selected canonical = inspected URL) What I’ve already checked: No noindex tag in page source No X-Robots-Tag: noindex intentionally added Robots.tx...

Is this a valid observation? Desktop avg position dropping vs mobile

I'm summarizing some data for the last quarter of 2025 for a few customers/domains. And although I wasn't tracking it routinely, I thought to include it in the summary. So, I looked at the usual search console performance metrics by device for this period. Notice a bigger gap than I had remembered between desktop and mobile. Went back and looked at a few earlier quarters and didn't find as much of a difference. Is this a known artifact of some kind with Google updates, or is it more of an anomaly? submitted by /u/Tech4EasyLife [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/SutnMJb

What's it mean when get a ton of direct traffic from overseas?

Hey everyone! I have a site that was hit hard in recent update. I'm noticing that from November on my site has been getting a ton of direct traffic, and 90% of it is coming from overseas. And of the overseas traffic, 90% of the visits are going to old or dead or non existent pages. And it's not just from one country. But from many. For instance today we have 132 direct visits so far. 112 are from overseas from over 32 countries that are not the US. We only operate in the US. This site was targeted with negative SEO before. Is that what this is? submitted by /u/Express-Amoeba-8556 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/5eSvtAg

Clicks are all-time low! Tried everything but nothing's working

At first, I thought this was due to the recent &num=100 update. But now I’m not sure what’s wrong. I don’t see any technical SEO issues. The reasons I’m currently suspicious of are: Uncategorized programmatic pages My CMS is Strapi. I’ve heard it’s not as SEO friendly as WordPress The AI Mode update Wrt AI Mode, I’m aware it has impacted most websites across the board. However, I’ve seen several sites where clicks dropped initially but are now recovering. How do you actually improve CTR at this stage? I’m at a point where I’ve tried most of the common CTR optimization tactics, but none seem to be working for me. Any insight would be a big help. submitted by /u/Siddhesh900 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/h1wvc3q

What would happen if I redirect an old domain to a page on a new website?

Hello, I currently have a website that is very old (about 4 pages each with a few paragraphs) and needs updating but has very good SEO likely due to being around a long time doing what it does. The site is for a side project to my main business, and so I'd ideally like to redirect it to a page on my main website, which would be fairly similar in content just all on one page. My concern is the SEO implications, if I make the domain into a redirect will that kill the rankings it's built up over the years and I'm also unsure in general of how google handles domains that are just redirects to other websites and what metadata the crawler would see. I'd love some advice if anyone knows how this works and what the best way to go about things would be. submitted by /u/jackboy900 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/EgMxIZG

Fake traffic??

So I recently relaunched my site and have been seeing a lot of what I’m assuming is fake traffic. My traffic will randomly shoot up every couple days, with a lot of a2c, and checkouts started. When they leave info in checkout it is always in Seattle with a name and email that don’t match. Anyone seen something like this?? Tried to upload images but it won’t let me. submitted by /u/Despainer92 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/bGPY60d

Why so little "seo optimized" websites actually have a score of 100 on google pagespeed, core web vitals?

Almost every time I see an SEO "expert" or "agency" claiming to know what they are doing, I am usually going to their website (or their clients) and find scores between 50-80 (sometimes even lower) and never 100 points (in pagespeed categories: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, SEO). Especially in the "performance" category, I often see scores below 50. For me (webdev for 16 years now, also NOW doing proper SEO, prior only technical SEO), this shows a lack of professionalism, since those are the technical foundations to run successful SEO. Why is that so, and does it actually matter? submitted by /u/blondewalker [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/FU2JWz0

Meta Ads are crushing it, but our SEO is non-existent. Best YouTube courses for Shopify SEO?

Hey everyone, ​I’m looking for some solid recommendations for Shopify-specific SEO courses or channels on YouTube. ​The Situation: Our store is currently doing really well with Meta Ads (scaling nicely!), but we are almost entirely dependent on paid traffic. Our organic Google ranking is pretty much non-existent, and I want to start building that long-term "free" traffic to balance things out. ​What I'm looking for: ​Platform Specific: Since we’re on Shopify, I need advice that covers the technical side of Shopify (apps, liquid code tweaks, schema) as well as general keyword strategy. ​Up-to-Date: SEO changes so fast with AI and Google updates; I’d prefer creators who have posted relevant content in the last 6–12 months. ​Actionable: Less "theory" and more "click here to fix this" style tutorials. ​Current Shortlist: I’ve seen a few videos from Nathan Gotch and Income School, but I’m wondering if there are any "hidden gems" specifically for ...

From SEO theory to practice, How should a beginner start getting hands-on experience?

I’ve been learning the basics of SEO recently. I understand the core concepts like keyword research, on-page optimization, and the importance of backlinks. However, I’m finding it difficult to start practicing these skills in the real world. ​As a beginner, where should I start my practical journey? Should I create a WordPress blog to experiment with, or are there platforms where I can practice technical SEO audits? I’m looking for a roadmap that helps me move from just "knowing" SEO to actually "doing" it. ​What were the first practical steps you took when you started out? Any advice on free tools or projects for beginners would be greatly appreciated! submitted by /u/Illustrious_Run_3596 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/qdnx6fV

Stop the hype - SEO, GEO < 👑 SEO

LLMs don’t rank websites they reference authority LLMs don’t crawl the web in real time like Google, but they pull answers from sources they’ve learned to trust. If your site has no authority, mentions, citations, or expertise signals, the model has no reason to surface you. Authority is still the core signal only the output layer has changed. Without SEO fundamentals, AEO has nothing to work with No topical authority → no trust. No trust → no citations. No citations → no LLM visibility. AEO amplifies what SEO builds. It cannot replace it. Here is an analogy... SEO = getting your book into the library. AEO = being the book the librarian quotes when someone asks a question. If your book isn’t credible, it never gets quoted. So, The real shift is from “ranking” to “referencing” Old goal: Appear on page one. New goal: Be the source the model learns from and cites. Different mechanics. Same foundation: authority + relevance + trust. submitted by /u/bhushanverma [link] [com...

How to get backlinks for my local directory?

I run a local directory for my city and I’m trying to build backlinks to improve SEO. I’ve reached out to magazines and local media, but so far I haven’t received any replies. Does anyone have practical tips or strategies for getting backlinks for a local project like this? I’d love to hear what has worked for you. Thanks! submitted by /u/Workeep [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/bUT6KMD

High AIO or Organic - which is better?

Seeing many of my pages rank low 1 st page or 2 nd page on Google, yet they show up many times in the top 1 or 2 AI overview? On the flip side, I have some pages that rank great - #1 or #2 organic, but aren’t even listed in the referring link list for the AI overview. What is your take? Would you rather have high AOI or Organic ranking? Obviously both would be best, but I’m thinking if I had to choose one, the higher AI overview link seems to be better. Seems more and more people are just staying within the AI overview these days, that will surly be even more as time goes. submitted by /u/G-man2026 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/GYvhC3F

Navigating SEO with limited technical experience?

Hey guys, I’ve been in marketing for 12 years now. Started off doing link building for a content marketing agency. I had no prior experience and was trained up from scratch. Since then, I’ve held various marketing roles and then decided to focus on SEO only 5 years ago. My role is very content heavy - keyword research and strategy , gap analysis, competitive analysis, content strategy and basic reporting i.e: keywords and organic entries. I spend a lot of time pitching my work as well (very political and skeptical business). I have some knowledge and understanding of technical SEO and can do basic things like run audits and interpret reports, spot and fix missing/duplicate tags, high level canonicalisation. Other than that, I’ve not had much exposure as technical SEO has just never been a priority in my company. Would you say this is a limitation or am I not giving myself enough credit? For those of you who do technical SEO what sort of things do you typically work on? Thanks al...

Hot Take: You shouldn't add EEAT to make EEAT in your content

There's been plenty of fun and informative debates about EEAT on here, other subs, X and LinkedIn. And even at the Google Search Team level And I wanted to hone in to what I think is the worst part of EEAT - not just the people parroting LLMS with "EEAT signals" or "EEAT algorithms" - esp in AI Slop GEO content - is that EEAT is inferred, it already exists. We need to stop writing every document with claims of expertise and experience - why even make people think? Expertise and Experience is subjective to every person - who has enough of either depends on a huge scale - especially if you are an expert. I see people giving terrible SEO advice - like XML sitemaps will make your crawled, not indexed content get indexed (not it frigging won't) - and then people are like "Well I have 8 years SEO experience" - clearly its pretty narrow. Mentioning EEAT actually isn't natural Stop being overly Literal Injecting actual claims of experience is s...

Anyone noticed in GSC crawled not indexed report lots of css, js and sitemal files being crawled in last 3 weeks?

Hi community did you notice these files being crawled not indexed, before I would see very rarely that any files would be crawled and not indexed, I mean they are files. Seems like there is a glitch in Google submitted by /u/baboothebest [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/PFvJQEo

AI-Written Content vs Human Rewrites: Why Do Rankings Drop?

I’ve noticed that AI-generated content tends to perform much better in Google’s AI Overview. But when these texts are rewritten by a human writer, their rankings quickly drop. What are your thoughts on this? For context, I create content using DeepSeek and then paraphrase it with EduWriter. After that, I check it in Gemini and ChatGPT to assess the quality and AI level of the text. submitted by /u/Greedy-Entrance2792 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/S62TgvP

Should i create two separate blog posts for similar keywords?

I have a blog post titled “ How to become a freelance copywriter” that’s currently ranking #3 on Google and brings in ~300 visits/month. I’m debating whether I should create a separate post targeting “how to become a copywriter” (much higher search volume), but I’m worried about keyword cannibalization. My thought was to keep the two posts very distinct: “How to become a copywriter” → what copywriting is, freelance vs in-house, career paths, skills, etc. “How to become a freelance copywriter” → assumes the person already wants to freelance and focuses on getting clients, pricing, portfolio, etc. The alternative would be to optimize the existing freelance post for both keywords, but that would mean starting with a section about freelance vs in-house, which feels like it wouldn’t match the intent of someone who already knows they want to freelance. Curious what you’d do here — separate posts for separate intent or one post optimized for both? submitted by /u/Lustwander...

How do I actually display the Json LD in the html page?

I made an FAQ in structured data and added it to my header inside a script tag. But how do I actually display it on the webpage? I read several guides on how to make the Json LD but there's no mention how I actually display it… so I now have an HTML version of the FAQ and a JSON version in the same webpage. This seems a bit redundant. This probably sounds really stupid but I couldn't find the answer 😆 submitted by /u/WeaselButt [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/QgNG8o7

The Guardian: Google AI Overviews Gave Misleading Health Advice via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

A Guardian investigation says health experts found misleading information in Google's AI Overviews for some medical searches. Google disputes the findings. The post The Guardian: Google AI Overviews Gave Misleading Health Advice appeared first on Search Engine Journal . from Search Engine Journal https://ift.tt/rZqOlSA

Are monthly SEO packages actually worth it?

Posting for u/ Charming_Instance : I’ve been seeing more and more SEO providers push monthly SEO packages lately, and I’m honestly curious how people here decide if they’re actually worth paying for or just another ongoing retainer. From what I gather, monthly SEO services usually cover things like keyword research, on page optimization, backlinks, content updates, and tracking performance, since SEO rarely moves the needle from a single tweak. The idea seems to be that steady work over time is what leads to real ranking and traffic improvements. Conceptually, the monthly approach makes sense to me, because SEO is slow and competitive. What I’m less clear on is where the real value shows up. Some providers offer very structured, subscription style packages with fixed deliverables and pricing, while others seem to adjust what they do each month based on results and competition. For anyone who has hired or managed monthly SEO packages, what actually mattered most in your experience...

Test How Google Bot Renders Your Page

I’ve just released a live demo to help test how Google actually renders your pages versus how they’re delivered through a pre-rendering pipeline. This can help identify SEO and indexing issues caused by client-side rendering, async data, or missing metadata. I’d really appreciate any feedback—especially around accuracy, usefulness, or edge cases you’ve run into with Google rendering. submitted by /u/nirvanist [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/x6woAnm

Question about Facebook Business Fanpages appearing prominently alongside well-optimized business websites for certain commercial keywords

I would like to better understand Google’s ranking and selection logic in cases where Facebook Business Fanpages appear prominently in organic search results for certain specific commercial or industry-related keywords. In some industry or service-oriented queries (for example, manufacturing or OEM-type keywords), I observe the following pattern: Multiple business websites are competing for the same keyword These websites are properly structured and well-optimized in terms of content completeness, site structure, user experience, and search intent coverage Yet a Facebook Business Fanpage appears in a prominent organic position alongside these websites What I find confusing is that: Facebook Business Fanpages offer very limited SEO-controllable elements (primarily the page name, short business description, and basic post content) Within the same business category, there are often many Facebook Fanpages available, yet Google selects only one or a small number of specific pag...

Writing blog posts is burning all my mana

My friend and I are in the conversion rate optimization space, he's the full stack dev and I'm the UX and UI designer. We decided to make a SaaS and we need to produce the content to gain some authority and traffic, but there's a problem. We both SUCK at writing blog posts... Not only do we not know how to write it, but it burns all of our mental energy (for gamers it's mana)... So we might be looking for some SEO savvy fella who either needs a conversion rate optimization for their blogs and websites, or a fella who wants to offer CRO to their clients as a way to maximize SEO efforts. Let's work on what we actually love fellas submitted by /u/Rizzlock [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/rsYhG2u

Indexing Issues after Google's Core Update

After Google’s recent Core Update, I’ve noticed a significant issue in Google Search Console related to indexed pages. Pages that were previously indexed and performing well are now either deindexed, marked as “Crawled – currently not indexed,” or showing unexpected drops without any changes on the site. anyone facing the same issue? and how to fix it? submitted by /u/Aromatic-Berry7523 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/7CjA2kW

A short story of an AI Overview victim OR How Google kicked my balls

I’ve spent years in e-commerce, but I wanted to try something different. I put months of effort into a new "Quotes & Messages" project. Custom architecture, clean UI, hand-picked content, own image wish-cards. The timeline was brutal: Early May 2025: Launched the site. Mid-May: Impressions started skyrocketing. I was hyped, building scaling plans. End May: Google rolled out the AI Overview. And it hit me hard, right in the balls))) My site was basically "executed" before it even had its first full month of life. Why would anyone click my links when Gemini answers the prompt right in the search results? Traffic collapsed instantly. I’m moving back to hardcore e-com technical audits now — it’s the only place where Google can't easily replace you with a snippet. I have no choice but to remember all of this with a smile))) A smile, full of pain))) Anyone else had a project die before its first birthday?)) submitted by /u/SEOporn [link] [commen...

has any customer ever removed you from GSC ?

I have 13 years experience in SEO and recently stumbled upon that nobody has ever revoked my access to their search console. Not a single customer ever. I'm wondering if that's a standard, or have i just been lucky. What's your experience ? submitted by /u/Similar_Run_7493 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/ZhIUoud

EIN Press Wire vs eReleases vs Businesswire vs others?

It's been an ongoing struggle for me to identify the best news release service to announce major updates and milestones. The goal is obviously to get QUALITY press links from it, not just a bunch of duplicate syndicated links. Which PR service have you had success with? Cheers submitted by /u/ironmonk33 [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/C3XEAkt

Is SEO still worth learning in 2026 for freelancing

I’ve studied SEO before during college, so I’m familiar with the basics and think refreshing my knowledge wouldn’t take too long (around a month). My question is, is it really worth to learn seo again for freelancing as a collage student Not much my goal is 5-10k inr (60-120 usd)a month Should I go for it? And if yes, how do I even find my first client I mean so much competition everywhere. submitted by /u/teen_Vegetable [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/bxsPM4L

Love this subreddit

I've been lurking around here daily for a couple weeks, and the amount of knowledge i've been gaining is insane. Thanks everyone who writes genuinely helpful advice, and not some AI slop. Hope to keep on increasing my seo knowledge even more. submitted by /u/ysf_khn [link] [comments] from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://ift.tt/x1IF5oH

does domain name ccTLD matter for rankings?

I was using isearchfrom[dot]com to see how my website was ranking for a a target keyword in several countries. I managed to climb from 8th page all the way up to first in less than a week after adding the site to Google Search Console. I was pretty happy but iffy, so I decided to use a VPN to search the same keyword. I was actually at the bottom of 17th page on the United States. ChatGPT says its because the TLD of my domain name is specific to a country and not something like .com or .io, so when I search from my normal IP address it will show that really high. Which kind of checks out when doing very obvious tests. When searching without a VPN Im ranking 2nd or 3rd on the first page, with any other IP Im ranking at least on 17th page. I know almost nothing about SEO so this might be a dumb question. I have added absolutely everything I found could help with ranking higher in english speaking countries or in general but it only improved a little bit, ranking at the top of the same ...