Though still <1% of total traffic, it’s now our highest converting channel at 10%+ CVR (going by our new custom event tracking in Web Analytics). I wanted to see if other sites were experiencing any AI traffic growth–especially now that zero-click search has taken hold. We decided to update the findings of our March AI traffic…
Branding wasn’t something SEOs traditionally thought much about. The real wins were in non-branded keywords, where the traffic and conversions lived. However, that changed when Google and OpenAI turned most of these queries into zero-click searches. For the remaining queries, search platforms directly reward authoritative and popular brands, so branding can no longer be ignored…
When I was writing documentation for Drupal CMS’s SEO Tools recommended add-on (aka “recipe”), I realized that not all Drupal site users may be up-to-date on the essentials of SEO and how Drupal can help you make your site discoverable by your target audiences. While Drupal has long been a solid foundation for building search-friendly…
SEO is a playground for creative, scrappy problem-solvers. But today, it’s often reduced to a formula: plug keywords into an AI tool. Run a cookie-cutter checklist to create content. Build links. Hope traffic rolls in. That used to work. But with AI-powered search on the rise, the era of SEOs as technicians is fading, and the…
Search is moving from traditional search engines to generative engines, but traffic from many of these sites isn’t being tracked properly in analytics. It’s their fault, not yours. I was looking at our LLM filter in Ahrefs Web Analytics and noticed some common generative engines missing from the list. They’re in our filters, but we aren’t…
According to our upcoming study, 87% of marketers use AI for content. I’m one of them. AI helped me build a career around writing. It’s part of nearly everything I do. Honestly, I can’t even remember how I worked without it—and I don’t want to. It gives me a “second brain” and superhuman speed, and takes care…
AI bots power some of the most advanced technologies we use today, from search engines to AI assistants. However, their increasing presence has led to a growing number of websites blocking them. There’s a cost to bots crawling your websites and there’s a social contract between search engines and website owners, where search engines add…
AI is reshaping search optimization—it’s no longer just about ranking in search results, but about earning visibility in AI-generated answers. We’re moving from chasing traffic, to competing for brand visibility. We’re thinking about how AI crawlers view our site–not just search engine bots. We’re trying to follow the breadcrumb trail through an entirely new kind…
New to all things domain management? We’ll take you under our wing with our beginners’ guide to why it matters, plus some handy tips. Hey there, curious about domain management? You’ve come to the right place. In this beginner’s guide, we’ll dive into what domain management is all about and why it matters for your…
Managing PPC campaigns means juggling more than just keywords and budgets. From creative production and landing page optimization to fraud detection and competitor research, the marketer’s toolbox needs to be practical and scalable. To help you with that, I looked at some of the best PPC tools and picked nine that stand out for their…
PPC keyword research is the process of finding the exact words or phrases people type into Google when they’re looking for something related to your product or service. It helps you target the right audience, avoid wasting money on irrelevant clicks, and attract people who are actually ready to buy. When I asked experts for their…
Semantic SEO sounds complicated, but it simply boils down to doing SEO without cutting corners. If you do SEO properly, you’re automatically doing semantic SEO. It’s just that most people aren’t doing it properly… It’s not a different type of SEO. You don’t need to do wildly different things. Rather, it’s a mental model that…
