SEO articles
Technical SEO, content and rankings, from real projects.
Google Ads articles
Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns that pay for themselves.
Emailing articles
Cold email, deliverability and sequences that get replies.
GEO articles
Generative engine optimization: what is proven, what is not.
-
Keyword Research in 2026: How to Find the Words Your Customers Actually Use
Read the article: Keyword Research in 2026: How to Find the Words Your Customers Actually UseEvery piece of content you publish, every page you create, every product description you write begins with the same question: what are people actually searching for? Keyword research is the…
-
SEO in 2026: The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Getting Found on Google
Read the article: SEO in 2026: The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Getting Found on GoogleYou have a website. Maybe you even have a great product or service behind it. But when you search for what you offer on Google, your site is nowhere to…
-
Link Building Strategies That Actually Work in 2026
Read the article: Link Building Strategies That Actually Work in 2026Link building remains one of Google’s top three ranking factors in 2026, yet most SEO teams still treat it like a commodity activity: spray and pray with hundreds of irrelevant…
-
Digital PR for SEO: How to Earn Links from Journalists and Publications
Read the article: Digital PR for SEO: How to Earn Links from Journalists and PublicationsWhen people talk about link building, the conversation usually drifts to tactics: directory submissions, broken-link outreach, guest-posting blitzes. The most scalable path to high-authority backlinks is not tactical cleverness, it…
-
Toxic Backlinks: The Myth SEO Tools Sell You
Read the article: Toxic Backlinks: The Myth SEO Tools Sell YouIf you have spent more than ten minutes reading SEO blogs, you have been warned about toxic backlinks destroying your rankings. The narrative is simple and terrifying: bad links point…
-
Competitor Backlink Analysis: Find and Replicate Wins
Read the article: Competitor Backlink Analysis: Find and Replicate WinsEvery link your competitor earns is a signal that a specific outreach strategy, content format, or relationship works in your industry. Competitor backlink analysis is not about copying links blindly.…
-
Anchor Text Optimization for Natural Link Profiles
Read the article: Anchor Text Optimization for Natural Link ProfilesAnchor text is the clickable text inside a hyperlink, and it remains one of Google’s most important signals for understanding what a page is about. But anchor text optimization in…
-
Local SEO: The Complete Guide for Small Businesses
Read the article: Local SEO: The Complete Guide for Small BusinessesLocal SEO determines whether your business appears when nearby customers search for your services. BrightLocal’s annual Local Consumer Review Survey has consistently shown that the vast majority of consumers use…
-
Google Business Profile: Complete Optimization Guide
Read the article: Google Business Profile: Complete Optimization GuideYour Google Business Profile is the most important piece of digital real estate your local business owns. It appears in local pack results, on Google Maps, and increasingly inside AI-generated…
-
Online Reviews and SEO: How Reputation Affects Rankings
Read the article: Online Reviews and SEO: How Reputation Affects RankingsOnline reviews are no longer just social proof for potential customers. They are a direct ranking factor that influences where your business appears in local search results. The Whitespark Local…
-
Local Citations: What They Are and How to Build Them
Read the article: Local Citations: What They Are and How to Build ThemLocal citations are online mentions of your business name, address, and phone number on websites other than your own. They serve as trust signals that help Google verify your business…
-
International SEO: How to Rank in Multiple Countries and Languages
Read the article: International SEO: How to Rank in Multiple Countries and LanguagesInternational SEO is the process of optimizing a website so search engines can identify which countries it targets and which languages it serves. It sits at the intersection of technical…
-
Google Merchant Center Next: Account Setup and Store Connection
Read the article: Google Merchant Center Next: Account Setup and Store ConnectionGoogle Merchant Center Next finished its forced migration in September 2024, and by 2026 it is the only interface retailers use to push product data into Google Shopping, Performance Max,…
-
Optimizing Your Merchant Center Product Feed: Titles, Descriptions and Attributes
Read the article: Optimizing Your Merchant Center Product Feed: Titles, Descriptions and AttributesIntroduction: the feed is the campaign In Shopping and Performance Max, the campaign settings barely matter. The bid strategy moves the needle a little. The audience signals nudge the algorithm…
-
Fixing Merchant Center Errors: Diagnosis and Solutions
Read the article: Fixing Merchant Center Errors: Diagnosis and SolutionsFixing Merchant Center errors: diagnosis and solutions A Google Ads account can be perfectly architected, well-funded, and aimed at the right audience, and still produce zero impressions on Shopping or…
-
Product Studio: AI-Powered Image, Video and 3D Creation in Google Merchant Center
Read the article: Product Studio: AI-Powered Image, Video and 3D Creation in Google Merchant CenterIntroduction: when the catalogue becomes the bottleneck Every Performance Max account hits the same wall after a few weeks of operation. The bids are fine, the feed is clean, the…
-
Schema.org Product Structured Data: Rich Results and AI Overviews
Read the article: Schema.org Product Structured Data: Rich Results and AI OverviewsLede: structured data is the only language Google reads without ambiguity A product page that does not emit clean schema.org Product markup is a page that asks Google to guess.…
-
Multi-Country Merchant Center: Currencies, Shipping, Taxes and Returns
Read the article: Multi-Country Merchant Center: Currencies, Shipping, Taxes and ReturnsMulti-country Merchant Center: currencies, shipping, taxes and returns Going from one country to two in Google Merchant Center is the moment most catalogs break. Domestic feeds with rounded prices, a…
-
Google Ads Keyword Research: Tools, Intent and Strategy
Read the article: Google Ads Keyword Research: Tools, Intent and StrategyKeyword research is the foundation of every profitable Google Ads campaign. Without it, you are flying blind: paying for searches nobody makes, ignoring high-intent queries that convert, and watching competitors…
-
Google Ads Keyword Match Types: Broad, Phrase, Exact and 2026 AI-Powered Strategy
Read the article: Google Ads Keyword Match Types: Broad, Phrase, Exact and 2026 AI-Powered StrategyThe keyword match type debate looks settled from the outside. Google’s product marketing tells a clean story: broad match plus Smart Bidding wins, exact match is for brand defense, phrase…
-
Google Ads Negative Keywords: Lists, Levels, Scripts and Account Hygiene
Read the article: Google Ads Negative Keywords: Lists, Levels, Scripts and Account HygieneIntroduction: negatives are the highest-ROI hygiene work in any account Most Google Ads accounts leak budget through the same hole: search queries that should never have triggered an ad. WordStream’s…
-
Writing High-Performing Search Ads: RSA, Pinning, Ad Strength and Testing
Read the article: Writing High-Performing Search Ads: RSA, Pinning, Ad Strength and TestingWriting high-performing Search Ads: RSA, pinning, Ad Strength and testing Responsive Search Ads are the only Search format Google Ads accepts in 2026. Expanded Text Ads were sunset on June…
-
Dynamic Search Ads: Setup, Page Indexing and Use Cases
Read the article: Dynamic Search Ads: Setup, Page Indexing and Use CasesDynamic Search Ads (DSA) sit in an awkward place in the 2026 Google Ads stack. Performance Max is the campaign Google promotes on every onboarding screen. Responsive Search Ads (RSA)…
-
AI Max for Search: Keywordless Search, Text Customization and URL Expansion
Read the article: AI Max for Search: Keywordless Search, Text Customization and URL ExpansionAI Max for Search is the feature Google has been pushing to almost every Search advertiser since the global rollout finished in late 2025. The pitch is simple: turn it…
-
One-click unsubscribe is a protocol, not a button
Read the article: One-click unsubscribe is a protocol, not a buttonGoogle requires it of bulk senders. So does Yahoo. Everyone calls it “one-click unsubscribe”, and almost everyone believes it means a link to put in the message. It is a…
-
Your DKIM key may be fifteen years old
Read the article: Your DKIM key may be fifteen years oldDKIM signs your messages. It is the only one of the three authentications that survives a forward, the only one Yahoo requires before telling you who complained, and the only…
-
SPF: ten DNS lookups, not eleven
Read the article: SPF: ten DNS lookups, not elevenYour SPF record fits on one line. It declares who is allowed to send mail in your name, and it looks like this: v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:sendgrid.net include:servers.mcsv.net include:_spf.salesforce.com ~all Four…
-
DMARC changed status in May 2026
Read the article: DMARC changed status in May 2026For eleven years DMARC was an informational document. Published in March 2015 as RFC 7489, it had not even gone through the IETF’s standards process: it arrived through the independent…
-
Microsoft backed down six days before the deadline
Read the article: Microsoft backed down six days before the deadlineOn 2 April 2025, Microsoft announced that domains sending more than five thousand messages a day to Outlook.com and Hotmail would have to authenticate their mail. SPF, DKIM, DMARC at…
-
Yahoo refuses to publish its threshold, and that is information
Read the article: Yahoo refuses to publish its threshold, and that is informationGoogle publishes a threshold: five thousand messages a day. Microsoft publishes the same. Yahoo, asked about its own, answers this: “A ‘bulk’ sender is classified as an email sender sending…
-
The only number that decides: 0.30 percent
Read the article: The only number that decides: 0.30 percentOf the dozens of measurements a campaign produces, exactly one decides your future at Gmail. It is not the open, nor the click, nor the bounce. It is the proportion…
-
Five thousand messages a day, and you change worlds
Read the article: Five thousand messages a day, and you change worldsThere is an invisible border in email. On one side, an ordinary sender nobody looks at. On the other, a bulk sender, subject to rules that are written down, measured,…
-
An ad in the inbox is direct marketing
Read the article: An ad in the inbox is direct marketingFifty million euros for Orange. Three hundred and twenty-five million for Google. Two decisions, two operators, one shared reasoning. And a consequence the market has not yet measured: advertising displayed…
-
One hundred and sixty million records, and three breaches
Read the article: One hundred and sixty million records, and three breachesA browser extension. You visit a LinkedIn profile, you click, and the personal phone number appears, along with the work address. One hundred and sixty million records built that way.…
-
Nine hundred thousand euros for a missing proof
Read the article: Nine hundred thousand euros for a missing proofOn 15 May 2025 the French data protection authority issued two sanctions on the same day, against two players in the same chain. Nine hundred thousand euros for one, eighty…
-
Double opt-in is written in no legal text
Read the article: Double opt-in is written in no legal textA rule has been circulating for twenty years: the GDPR supposedly requires double opt-in, that confirmation message sent after a signup, which you must click to be truly subscribed. We…
-
Meta Ads Not Performing? A Real Diagnostic Method
Read the article: Meta Ads Not Performing? A Real Diagnostic MethodYour Meta ads are not performing and you have no idea why. So you do what everyone does. You change the audience. Then you change the budget. Then you pause…
-
Meta Ad Policies and Account Bans: Avoid and Recover
Read the article: Meta Ad Policies and Account Bans: Avoid and RecoverFew emails ruin a morning faster than «Your ad account has been disabled». One moment your campaigns are spending, the next your access is gone and the dashboard shows a…
-
Meta Lead Generation for B2B: The Honest Guide
Read the article: Meta Lead Generation for B2B: The Honest GuideThere is a persistent story in B2B marketing that Facebook and Instagram are where you sell shoes and supplements, not enterprise software or industrial equipment. The story is wrong, and…
-
Advantage+ Shopping (ASC): The E-commerce Guide
Read the article: Advantage+ Shopping (ASC): The E-commerce GuideAdvantage+ Shopping Campaigns, ASC for short, stopped being an experiment a long time ago. On Meta s Q4 2024 earnings call, CFO Susan Li said the product had passed a…
-
Scaling Meta Ads Without Breaking Performance
Read the article: Scaling Meta Ads Without Breaking PerformanceYou found a campaign that works. The cost per result is where you want it, the return holds, and the obvious next move is to pour more money in. Then…
-
Meta Learning Phase: How It Really Works
Read the article: Meta Learning Phase: How It Really WorksThe learning phase is the most misunderstood mechanic in Meta advertising, and that misunderstanding costs real money. Half of what circulates about it on forums and agency blogs is folklore:…
-
Meta Bid Strategies: Lowest Cost vs Cost Cap vs ROAS
Read the article: Meta Bid Strategies: Lowest Cost vs Cost Cap vs ROASMost advertisers pick a bid strategy the way they pick a Netflix show: by guessing, then second guessing. The folklore around Meta bidding is thick and mostly wrong. Bid cap…
-
CBO vs ABO on Meta: Which Budget Wins
Read the article: CBO vs ABO on Meta: Which Budget WinsOpen any Meta ads forum and you will read the same verdict, repeated like a law of physics: CBO is better, ABO is dead, let the algorithm decide. That verdict…
-
Meta Ad Copywriting: What Actually Converts
Read the article: Meta Ad Copywriting: What Actually ConvertsMost advice about Meta ad copy is recycled folklore. People repeat that short copy always wins, that nobody reads, that the algorithm now writes everything for you. None of it…
-
Meta Creative Testing: Find Winning Ads
Read the article: Meta Creative Testing: Find Winning AdsCreative is now the lever that decides whether you win or lose on Meta. The targeting moved into the machine, the auction sorts itself out, and what is left in…
-
UGC for Meta Ads: Why It Works and How to Produce It
Read the article: UGC for Meta Ads: Why It Works and How to Produce ItUser-generated content has become the default creative format for performance advertisers on Meta, and for good reason. Ads that look like a real person filmed them on a phone consistently…
-
Meta Ad Formats: Which One, When, and Why
Read the article: Meta Ad Formats: Which One, When, and WhyMost advertisers pick a Meta ad format out of habit, not strategy. They run single images because they always have, or they chase Reels because someone said video is the…
-
GEO: the five studies that could prove us wrong
Read the article: GEO: the five studies that could prove us wrongWe argue that most of what the market calls GEO is unproven. Here are the five strongest published works that say the opposite, and the conditions that would change our…
-
Test GEO on your own site in 30 days: our protocol
Read the article: Test GEO on your own site in 30 days: our protocolNobody can tell you whether GEO works in the abstract. You can measure it on your own site, in thirty days, with a control group and repeated measurements.
-
What GEO really costs, and what we refuse to sell
Read the article: What GEO really costs, and what we refuse to sell55 percent of marketers now have a GEO budget line. Not one practitioner surveyed disclosed an amount. Here are our prices, and the list of what we refuse to bill…
-
Are the publisher apocalypse numbers honest?
Read the article: Are the publisher apocalypse numbers honest?Minus 58 percent, minus 70 percent, or minus 10 percent? Each camp measures a different thing and uses the same word. How to read the numbers on traffic decline.
-
Sixteen percent of the sources AI cites are themselves written by AI
Read the article: Sixteen percent of the sources AI cites are themselves written by AIAn audit of 712 real queries across four engines measures that roughly one cited source in six is generated content. GEO mechanically rewards what degrades the corpus.
-
Manipulating AI answers: what works in the lab, what holds up in production
Read the article: Manipulating AI answers: what works in the lab, what holds up in productionInjection attacks work on isolated systems. In production, a testbed of 1,000 black-hat sites measures 99.78 percent neutralization. The real weakness is somewhere else entirely.
-
The sources AI prefers are not yours
Read the article: The sources AI prefers are not yoursGenerative engines systematically favor third-party sources over the content you publish on your own site. Your GEO budget is therefore aimed at the wrong place.
-
Global brands 73 percent, niche brands 11 percent: GEO democratizes nothing
Read the article: Global brands 73 percent, niche brands 11 percent: GEO democratizes nothingAcross 100,000 answers and 100 brands, three visibility tiers appear from the very first query. A small player does not start at zero. It starts at 11 percent.
-
Position bias: your content is not losing on substance, it is losing in the middle
Read the article: Position bias: your content is not losing on substance, it is losing in the middleA model's performance on a piece of information follows a U-shaped curve depending on where it sits in the context. Part of generative visibility is a placement artifact.
-
Your GEO tracking tool is measuring noise
Read the article: Your GEO tracking tool is measuring noiseVisibility in generative search is a distribution, not a point. A single measurement, which is exactly what your monthly report contains, demonstrates nothing.
-
30.6 percent of AI citations misrepresent their source: the real risk is not absence, it is error
Read the article: 30.6 percent of AI citations misrepresent their source: the real risk is not absence, it is error761,495 citation pairs analyzed: close to a third misrepresent the source they point at. What that means when the misrepresented source is you.
-
The GEO market is booming, usage is flat: the gap nobody looks at
Read the article: The GEO market is booming, usage is flat: the gap nobody looks atThe Reuters Institute measures zero growth in chatbot use for news across the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, while 55 percent of marketers open a GEO budget…
