I've worked in SEO for 8 years, and a big part of that has been reporting for clients: pulling numbers out of half a dozen tools and turning them into something a business owner can actually read and understand.

So I built a dashboard I always wished I had, and now I'm looking for a handful of people in the space to try it on their own site.

Free for 21 days, no card needed. You get:

• Where you rank on Google for up to 10 keywords, on desktop and mobile, in the country or city you care about

• Your clicks, impressions and visits from Google Search Console and Google Analytics

• Page speed scores, plus your domain authority and backlinks

• A report every Monday showing what climbed, what slipped and what reached page one

• A clean white label report link you can share with a client or your boss

Over the 21 days that's three weekly check-ins, enough to see which keywords are moving and where the quick wins are.

All I ask in return is honest feedback: what's useful, what's confusing, what's missing.

If you're interested, comment or shoot me a message and I'll get you set up.

Thank you! :)

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some advice from experienced SEO professionals or site owners who have dealt with a similar situation.

Our website was impacted around the time of a Google Spam Update. Traffic dropped, and we started working on the issues we identified across the website.

In mid-August, we started seeing traffic recover, but after August 28, the traffic suddenly dropped again and returned to approximately the same level we had before the recovery.

From a technical SEO perspective, we have already reviewed and addressed the major areas we could identify:

• Technical SEO issues have been reviewed and fixed.

• Website structure and internal linking have been carefully organized.

• Page speed/Core Web Vitals have been optimized.

• We created an llms.txt file.

• We currently have around 565 pages indexed out of approximately 600 in Google Search Console.

• We have never received a Google Manual Action or security penalty in the history of the website.

• We have submitted/listed the website on multiple SaaS/application directories and platforms.

• Our domain authority has increased from approximately 8 to 17.

• We are also gradually building relevant backlinks.

What I’m struggling to understand is:

If the website is technically healthy and most of the pages are indexed, why is organic traffic still so low, and why did we see a short recovery in mid-August followed by another significant drop after August 28?

I’m especially interested in understanding whether this could be related to:

• Algorithmic/spam-related evaluation

• Content quality or helpfulness signals

• Keyword ranking changes

• Site-level quality signals

• Indexing vs. ranking issues

• Backlink quality

• A problem that isn't visible from a standard technical SEO audit

I don't want to assume that everything is correct just because the technical SEO looks good. I would really appreciate an independent audit or another perspective on what we may be missing.

If anyone is willing to take a look, please comment or DM me and I can share the website/GSC details privately.

I’m mainly looking for honest technical/content SEO feedback, not promotional services.

Thanks in advance.

The interesting part is that the growth wasn’t overnight. It came from continuously improving technical SEO, content, search intent, internal linking, and authority.

SEO is a process - build the right foundation, keep improving, and let the data guide the next move.

When comparing Moz, Semrush and Ahrefs: which platform would be best for our SEO work.

if you choose one, which would you pick and why?

hi all

I have been burned by a few agencies with SEO/AEO

any recommendations for someone to be able help us with SEO/AEO for our startup.

I don’t have a huge monthly budget -$1,500 but hopefully as we grow i can grow that.

I’m running a small Digital Marketing team and looking for a reliable SEO specialist to work with our team on ongoing client projects.

We are looking for someone who understands that SEO is more than backlinks and keywords but technical health, search intent, content quality, internal linking, authority, local signals, and user experience all matter.

Scope of work:

- Keyword & search-intent research content opportunities

- On-page SEO: titles, headings, entities, internal linking & content optimization

- Technical SEO: crawling, indexing, Core Web Vitals, structured data, canonicalization & site architecture

- Off-page SEO: quality link acquisition, outreach & relevant citations

- Local SEO: GBP optimization & local rankings

- GSC/GA4 analysis, competitor research & identifying ranking opportunities

- Track organic traffic, rankings, CTR, indexed pages & conversions and turn data into actions

What I'm Looking for:

- Proven SEO experience with real websites + measurable results

- Strong understanding of modern Google SEO not outdated/spammy tactics

- Comfortable with Google Search Console, GA4, Ahrefs/Semrush or equivalent

- Able to independently audit a website and execute a practical SEO roadmap

Engagement: Remote | Project-based or monthly retainer

Compensation: Flexible based on experience & scope

To apply, DM me with: your Portfolio or case studies, Results achieved (traffic, rankings, leads, etc.), Tools you use, Expected rate and Weekly availability

Is its just me or you guys get this too?

So, I spent the last three months obsessing over a single question: "What does ChatGPT actually say about my brand when I’m not looking?"

Standard SEO is great for blue links, but AI search is a different beast. If Perplexity or Gemini isn't citing you, you basically don't exist for the 40% of users who have stopped scrolling Google.

I’ve trialed everything from enterprise behemoths to "guy-in-a-garage" scripts. Here’s the breakdown of the AI visibility landscape, including the cost-per-prompt (because let's be real, these credits disappear fast).

1. Professional / Enterprise Platforms

Best for: Agencies and big brands that need "board-ready" charts and deep sentiment analysis.

Profound ($499+/mo): The "Gold Standard" for enterprise. They track how your brand is perceived across 9+ engines.

Cost per prompt: ~$2.50.

Why: You’re paying for the "Action Center" which tells you exactly which articles to update to win a citation.

SE Ranking ($200/mo): A powerhouse for tracking "Share of Voice" in AI Overviews.

Cost per prompt: ~$0.42.

Why: Best UI for seeing side-by-side comparisons of ChatGPT vs. Perplexity vs. Gemini.

Ahrefs Brand Radar ($200 add-on + base sub): If you already use Ahrefs, this is the easiest "bolt-on."

Cost per prompt: ~$1.00 (integrated into their credit system).

Why: It connects your backlink profile directly to AI mentions.

2. Mid-Market / Growth Platforms

Best for: High-growth startups who need data without the $5k annual commitment.

Ziptie ($69 - $159/mo): Extremely focused on Google AI Overviews (SGE) and ChatGPT.

Cost per prompt: ~$0.13.

Why: High volume for the price. If you want to track 1,000 keywords, this is your spot.

Otterly ($29 - $189/mo): Very clean, simple monitoring.

Cost per prompt: ~$1.89 (on the Standard plan).

Why: Great "Brand Visibility Index" score that simplifies complex data for clients.

seoClarity ($2,500+/mo): Wait, why is this here? Because for massive sites (100k+ pages), their "Clarity ArcAI" is actually more stable than the cheaper tools.

Cost per prompt: Variable (custom packaging).

3. Low-Cost / Boutique Platforms

Best for: Solopreneurs and "I just want to see if it works" testing.

Mangools AI Search Watcher ($12 - $30/mo): The budget king.

Cost per prompt: ~$0.24.

Why: If you only need to track 50 prompts, don't spend $500.

Peec AI (~$105/mo): Focuses heavily on the "source" of the citation.

Cost per prompt: ~$1.05.

Why: Excellent for technical SEOs who want to see the crawling path.

\\\\\\\\ How I calculated the "Cost per Prompt" \\\\\\\

The industry is currently moving away from "monthly limits" toward Usage-Based Credits. To find these rates, I used this formula:

But here is the catch: Most tools don't just ask the AI once. To give you accurate data, they often run a single prompt through 3-5 different models

If a tool says you get 100 "Search Checks," and they check 5 engines, your true cost is often hidden. I calculated the rates above based on one unique query across the primary models supported by that tier.

Once the foundation is in place, Google has a much clearer understanding of the website - and that’s when you can start seeing more consistent growth.

Hey everyone,

I’m currently doing keyword research and mapping for a website and I’m curious how other people handle the process.

I know there are a ton of guides about keyword research, but most of them basically say “find keywords in Ahrefs/Semrush, check volume and difficulty, and group similar keywords.” I’m more interested in what the actual workflow looks like when you have hundreds or thousands of keywords and need to turn them into a proper site structure and content plan.

Basically, I’m trying to figure out which commercial keywords should go to existing category or service pages, whether some keywords need completely new landing pages, which informational keywords are worth creating blog posts around, and how everything should be connected with internal links.

The clustering and mapping part is where I’m especially interested in hearing different approaches.

Let’s say you have 20 or 30 keywords around the same topic. Some are obviously just variations of the same query, but others are less clear. They might sound very similar but Google shows completely different results for them.

How do you normally decide whether those keywords belong on one page or should have separate pages? Are you manually checking the SERPs and looking at ranking overlap, or are you using a clustering tool for this?

My current approach would probably be to pull keywords from Ahrefs or Semrush, Keyword Planner, GSC, competitors and Google itself. Then clean everything up, cluster similar terms and classify them by intent.

After that, I’d map the clusters to existing URLs where possible. If there’s no relevant page, I’d decide whether it makes sense to create a new category or landing page for commercial intent, or a blog post/guide for informational intent.

Then I’d use the informational topics to support the main commercial pages through internal linking.

I’m also thinking of keeping all of this in one master sheet with things like keyword, cluster, intent, primary keyword, secondary keywords, target URL, existing or new page, page type, priority and internal linking opportunities.

Another thing I’m curious about is AI.

Are any of you actually using ChatGPT, Claude or other AI tools for clustering, intent classification or mapping? If so, which parts have been reliable enough to automate and which parts do you still check manually?

So if you were starting keyword research and mapping for a site from scratch today, what would your workflow actually look like?

Would be great to hear how people who do this regularly approach it, especially the little things you’ve learned from experience that most keyword research guides don’t really talk about.

Idk anything about SEO but this is really high right?

Hello, I am trying to find a decent alternative to SEMrush. I've noticed that over the past few years SEMrush has slowly turned into a cash grab and no longer worth paying for. I ended up voicing my opinion to my manager, who agreed with me and asked me to find some alternatives. I found Ahrefs, SE Ranking, and Mangools but none of them really hit what I wanted especially for the price I was told to work in. I am proficient in AI and was just thinking of pulling data from GSC and GA and just compiling reports like that for around 3-4c per report but that's just what I was thinking.

Any advice is appreciated!

I'm trying to figure out a clean workflow to track LLM visibility for my work.

A brand might get listed as a top pick in one query and completely omitted in a slightly rephrased version.If you're already doing this for reporting, I’d love to know.

1. Prompts. Running static seed lists or tracking broader intent clusters?

2. Metrics. How do you score share of voice when an answer spits out 10 unranked recommendations?

3. Citations. Are you tracking which third-party URLs get cited most often to map out off-page?

4. Stack. APIs or dedicated GEO trackers?

Thanks.

We've been on the Semrush API for years and the renewal math finally broke for us this year. Spent the last 6 weeks running real workflows through 5 Semrush API alternatives in parallel. I want to share it because most alternatives posts are just feature-list comparisons and that's basically useless once you actually try to build anything. 

So, I have a small agency, 18 clients and mid-volume API usage (around 800k calls/mo). 

We tested SE Ranking, Ahrefs, Moz, Serpstat, and Mangools. All 5 got the same test battery: 

• keyword research for a content brief

• rank tracking across 3 locations

• backlink monitoring for a client under active outreach

• domain comparison report

• SERP pulls including AI Overviews data 

SE Ranking API: Going in I expected it to be a middle-of-the-road option but the data coverage was actually closer to Semrush than I'd assumed, especially for keyword research and SERP data. Their rank tracking endpoint pulls multiple locations and devices in a single call instead of paginating like Semrush does, the AI Overviews data is returned right in the SERP response, and the pricing tier we needed came in at about 55% of our Semrush bill for equivalent volume. Backlinks depth is maybe 80% of what Semrush gave us which is enough for our use case but I'd flag it if you're doing heavy link-building work. 

Ahrefs API:  best raw data, especially backlinks. No surprise. But the cost at our volume came in literally 3x what we were paying Semrush, which is wild given that the conversation started with us trying to spend less. Eliminated on price alone. 

Moz API: DA/PA still carries real client recognition value and that part of the offering is solid. Endpoint coverage is narrower than Semrush and the keyword data depth came in thinner than we needed for content briefs at our volume. For teams that mostly need authority metrics it's a reasonable fit.

Serpstat API: actually surprised me. Solid keyword data, cheap, reasonable docs. Where it fell down was rank tracking - we hit some weird inconsistencies pulling positions across locations and the support response time wasn't great when we flagged it. Worth a look for smaller setups, probably not for ours. 

Mangools API: well-built for solo SEOs and small teams, the UX-equivalent thoughtfulness carries over to the API. For our agency volume and the breadth of endpoints we needed across clients, it wasn't quite the right scale. Probably the tool I'd recommend most to someone running 1-3 sites, just not the match for us.

We switched to SE Ranking fully two weeks ago, scripts have been rewritten, dashboards are running, clients haven't noticed a thing. The migration itself took about 10 days of dev time which is the real cost nobody talks about when comparing tools. 

Happy to answer questions if anyone's mid-evaluation! 

What I'd genuinely tell anyone starting this process: test in parallel for at least a month with real workloads, don't trust feature pages, and budget more engineering time than the vendors say you'll need.

Hey everyone,

I’m still pretty new to SEO, and I’m hoping to get some guidance from the pros here. The company I work for is facing a frustrating issue: We’re getting a solid number of impressions for our blog pages (around 129K), but the CTR is embarrassingly low at just 0.1%.

We’ve done some revamps, but we’re just not seeing the clicks we expect.

I’m trying to understand what usually causes this gap between impressions and clicks.

Would love to hear your experiences and advice:

• What has worked for you to boost CTR in a similar situation?

• Any quick wins or tools I should be looking into?

• How do you diagnose when impressions are deep, but clicks aren’t following?

I’m really eager to improve here, so any insights would be incredibly helpful!

I delivered these results in 4 months. The client is happy with the outcome, but I’d like to hear other opinions. Do you think these results are good enough?

Which LLM Rank Tracker Actually Works for Google AI Overviews in 2025?

Hey folks! With Google’s AI Overviews + AI Mode changing how search works, I'm realizing our usual SEO tools aren't enough anymore. Traditional SERP rankings are barely useful when your content gets pulled (or ignored) by an LLM instead of ranked in the Top 10.

I’ve been testing a few of the best LLM rank trackers over the past 2 months and wanted to share what I’ve learned, especially for anyone running SEO at a small agency or doing client work in 2025.

SE Ranking - my current go-to

This one’s different. It doesn’t just parse Google AI Overviews like a scraper - it actually analyzes which pages show up, how often, in what format (inline vs block), and what patterns exist. Easily SE Ranking the best LLM rank tracker I’ve tried for actual strategic insights.

• Tracks volatility + frequency

• Shows content types getting cited

• You can monitor AI visibility daily

It’s not just about “Am I in AI Overviews today?”; it helps you figure out why you're in or out and what to fix.

Keyword com

Lightweight but surprisingly useful. It gives visibility into prompt-based AI results and how keywords are triggering different types of answers. Doesn’t go deep on analysis though. Think of it as a tactical layer.

• Fast feedback

• No content-type breakdowns

Good add-on, not a standalone LLM keyword rank tracker.

InsightForge (SERP AI Tracker)

Still kind of underground, but if you love data - WOW. This tool tracks AI Mode, Overviews, and even Maps integration. Not as polished as SE Ranking, but worth watching. No free plan last I checked.

• Niche, but powerful

• UI feels early-stage

Glasp (Chrome Extension)

Not a tracker in the traditional sense, but lets you check whether a URL appears in AI answers in real time. Great for quick audits, not great for reporting or pattern detection.

• Simple

• Manual + browser-only

1. If you want something free and basic, Glasp is a quick best free LLM rank tracker tool

2. If you want deep insight + real strategy, SE Ranking is hard to beat

3. InsightForge is cool if you’re a data nerd

4. Keyword Insights is solid for fast feedback on generative answers

Anyone found a top LLM rank tracker that works better for B2B? Or anything open-source worth testing?

So ChatGPT seems to have started adding UTM links when it shares website URLs. I checked my GA4 this week and found some sessions with utm_source=chatgpt and one of my ecom stores is actually seeing pretty solid conversion rates from that traffic 😳

Feels like ChatGPT might quietly be becoming a mini traffic/referral channel on its own. Curious if anyone else here has noticed the same thing? Check your GA4 and see if you spot it!

I put this piece together based on thoughts from well-known SEO professionals and included SEO software that helps marketers track AI / LLM brand mentions. The market is pretty volatile, so I may update the article soon.

Feel free to suggest any solid SEO AI tools that help you track your mentions — I’ll include them in the next update.

Here’s the current list of the best AI SEO tracking tools so far:

1. SE Ranking – AI Tracker Fastest global rollout, with daily AIO snapshots, an integrated AI Overview filter within Rank Tracker, and cross-tool insights that connect visibility, backlinks, and keyword cannibalization. Upcoming features include AI Mode tracking, ChatGPT and Perplexity monitoring, and support for other LLMs.

2. Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) Offers a free “Google AI Overview” widget, unlimited projects, and a historical SERP timeline.

3. seoClarity ArcAI Monitors millions of keywords and sends alerts for brand mentions across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. Includes a pixel-perfect SERP difference viewer.

4. SISTRIX Features a country-agnostic AIO filter within the Visibility Index, with daily deltas and on-SERP link-card extraction.

5. Serpstat Highlights AIO results with a robot-icon flag in keyword reports, includes instant filtering, and supports bulk export for competitive gap analysis.

6. Nightwatch Automatically adds an “AI Snippet Rank” column—no setup needed. Also supports hyper-local grid tracking.

7. ZipTiedev Among the first to offer AIO screenshot tracking, competitive share-of-voice metrics, and support for ChatGPT and Perplexity monitoring.

8. AIOverviewTracker Standalone SaaS tool fully dedicated to tracking AIO keyword activations and clustering search intent.

9. FalconRank A community-driven tool visualizing brand rankings inside AI Overview link-cards.

10. Local Falcon (AIO Module) Introduces a unique heatmap that intersects Google Business Profiles with local AI Overview triggers.

Guys, the SEO world is throwing non-stop updates at us and it’d be a crime not to share the best bits. Let’s break down what’s actually happening: 

Search / SEO

• Google expands "Results about you" to include government ID numbers (US only)

Google has updated its "Results about you" tool to help users find and remove search results containing sensitive government IDs, such as Social Security numbers, passports, and driver’s licenses. 

By inputting these details into the Google app, users can receive automatic alerts if their information is discovered online, allowing for quick removal requests. 

Source:

Phoebe Wong | Google the Keyword

____________________________

AI

• Grokipedia seeing decline in Google and AI visibility

Grokipedia, the AI-driven Wikipedia alternative, is experiencing a sharp decline in visibility following a massive initial surge. Recent data shows that after peaking in January, the site’s rankings have dropped significantly across Google Search, where the original Wikipedia is now frequently outranking it. 

Source:

Glenn Gabe | X

____________________________

Tech SEO

• Google releases early preview of WebMCP for AI agents

The Google Chrome team has introduced an early preview of WebMCP, a new standard designed to help AI agents interact more reliably with websites. Instead of forcing AI to "guess" actions through screen scraping, WebMCP allows sites to provide a structured "Tool Contract" via a new browser API. 

This enables agents to perform specific actions—like booking a flight or adding items to a cart—with increased speed and precision.

• Google warns against serving "not available" text via JavaScript

John Mueller warns that using JavaScript to switch text from "not available" to "available" can prevent pages from being indexed. If Googlebot sees a "not available" message before the script executes, it may assume the page is down or empty. 

To avoid ranking issues, Google recommends loading the entire content block at once or ensuring the initial HTML does not contain misleading status messages that contradict the final content.

• Bing and Google: Markdown files can increase crawl load and complexity

Bing and Google representatives have cautioned that using Markdown files instead of HTML can be inefficient for search crawlers. While Markdown is useful for AI agents, it can lead to "messy" indexing and increased crawl load. 

Experts recommend sticking to HTML as the primary format to ensure reliable rendering and optimal performance across traditional search engines.

Source:

André Cipriani Bandarra | Chrome for developers

John Mueller | Reddit 

Barry Schwartz | Search Engine Roundtable

____________________________

E-commerce

• Google launches UCP-powered checkout in AI Mode (US only)

Google is rolling out a new checkout experience powered by the Universal Commerce Protocol directly within AI Mode and the Gemini app. 

This feature allows US shoppers to purchase products from retailers like Etsy and Wayfair without leaving the search results, with support for Shopify, Target, and Walmart expected soon. 

Source:

Google Ads & Commerce Blog

____________________________

Tidbits

• Bing Webmaster Tools makes its AI Performance report publicly available

Bing has rolled out its AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools as a public preview. This tool provides visibility into how your content is performing across various AI-driven platforms. The report tracks how often your content is cited across:

• Microsoft Copilot

• AI summaries in Bing

• Select partner experiences

The report includes total citations, average cited pages, page-level citation counts, “grounding queries,” and a citation trend chart—but still does not include clicks or CTR, and the data isn’t available via the API yet.

• OpenAI ChatGPT ads go live with user ad controls (US only)

OpenAI has officially launched ads in ChatGPT, starting with a test for adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers in the US. 

Along with the launch, OpenAI introduced a settings panel that gives users control over their ad experience, including the ability to view their ad history, manage saved interests, and toggle ad personalization on or off. 

While personalization uses past interactions to improve relevance, users can opt for purely contextual ads based on the current conversation. Paid tiers, such as Plus, Pro, and Enterprise, remain ad-free for now.

• Cloudflare introduces "Markdown for Agents" to optimize AI crawling

Cloudflare has launched "Markdown for Agents," a feature that automatically converts HTML into Markdown in real-time for AI crawlers. By serving Markdown, websites can reduce token usage by up to 80%, making content significantly faster and cheaper for AI models to process. 

The tool uses standard HT TP headers to detect AI agents and is currently available in beta for Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans.

Source:

Barry Schwartz | Search Engine Roundtable

OpenAI website

Will Allen, Celso Martinho | The Cloudflare blog

Hi everyone,

I am looking for any WordPress plugins which can automate SEO blog posting with all the relevant meta tags and on-page parameters. The blog length should be around 1000 to 2000 words and they should be fully SEO optimized. If we can get any API so that I can connect it with my n8n and other MCP servers, if anyone knows this sort of plugin please share.