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Tips For Avoiding Misinformation In SEO Resources & Conversations

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Tips For Avoiding Misinformation In SEO Resources & Conversations

There are many contradictory ideas about the best way to approach SEO.

For every idea proposed, there are others in the SEO industry who disagree.

Turning to Google for help isn’t always helpful because Google ranks information about SEO that Googlers themselves are on record saying is wrong.

There is a way to cut through the noise and figure out which information is likely valid and which information is smoke and mirrors.

Googlers Statements On SEO Information

What Googlers say about SEO is generally limited to four topics:

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  1. Actions to avoid a negative outcome.
  2. How to increase indexing.
  3. How to help Google better understand your webpages.
  4. Confirmation that site promotion is important.

Googlers don’t offer loopholes for how to influence rankings, of course. But the information they do provide is useful and consistent.

For example, a Googler can’t necessarily say that Google has an algorithm that’s specifically for hunting down and killing guest posts for SEO links.

But they can advise that guest posting for SEO is done and that publishers should stick a fork in it.

By doing that, the Googler is helping publishers avoid a possible penalty or spending money on a service that won’t produce the desired results.

It makes sense to seek out what Googlers say. What Googlers say is literally the most authoritative statement about how Google works.

Why Google Has A Webmaster Outreach

The whole reason why there is a Webmaster outreach is that former Googler Matt Cutts sees value in communicating with the search community to help them avoid mistakes and misinformation.

So, he began communicating with publishers at various SEO forums under the nickname, GoogleGuy.

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Here’s a post from 2004 where GoogleGuy introduced himself and explained the origin of Google’s outreach and his motivation:

“About three years ago, I was waiting for a program to finish compiling, and I was reading what people online were saying about Google.

I remember seeing a question from a site owner about how to structure his site for better crawling, and thinking it would be great if a Googler could just pop by to answer technical questions like that.

And then I thought, I’m a Google engineer. I can answer technical questions like that. So, I did.

Since then, I’ve managed to post around 2,000 messages in various web forums, setting the record straight whenever possible.”

Are Googlers Inconsistent?

It’s common to hear people complain that Google is contradictory. If that’s true, how can you trust what Googlers say is not SEO misinformation?

But, the reason for the contradictions is usually not the Googler’s fault. It’s consistently the fault of the person who is writing about what the Googler said.

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In my experience of several years of listening to the Google office-hours hangouts, Googlers are very consistent about what they say, even when you backtrack 10 or more years to previous statements, what they advise is consistent and not contradictory.

Paying attention to what Googlers say has always been a good practice. And if what a publication reports seem to contradict a previous statement, listen to the statement itself.

For example, there are some sites that post about ranking factors based on what an ex-Googler says in a video.

But when you listen to the video, the ex-Googler never said what people say that he said.

Even so, the erroneous statement about a false ranking factor keeps proliferating on the internet because no one stops to listen to the video.

Don’t take what someone writes for granted.

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Always check the video, blog post, or podcast for yourself.

Google Search Engine Is A Source Of  SEO Misinformation?

While Googlers are a trusted source of SEO information, Google itself can be an unreliable source of SEO information.

Here’s an example of Google’s John Mueller debunking LSI Keywords in a tweet:

Screenshot from Twitter, May 2022

Searching Google for SEO information yields inconsistent search results.

For example:

  • Searching for LSI keywords (which Mueller above says doesn’t exist) shows several websites that say that LSI keywords do exist.
  • Searching PBN links (links on blogs) yields a top-ranked page that sells PBN links.
  • Searches for “Link Wheels” (building blogs and linking to your own content) yields results that recommend the practice.

In general, the top search results about SEO topics tend to be fairly reliable nowadays.

Google tends to show search results that promote risky strategies if you search for risky strategies (like link wheels or PBN links).

Sometimes it might be more helpful to find an SEO forum or Facebook Group and ask a real person (instead of an algorithm) for information about SEO.

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Should You Ignore What Googlers Say?

Googlers are on their side of the search engine and publishers/SEOs are on the other side. We both experience search differently.

So, it makes sense that there are differences in opinions about some topics, particularly about what is fair and what is relevant.

However, there are some areas of the internet where it is commonly held that it’s best to not listen to what Googlers say.

Some consistently advise others to literally do the opposite of what Googlers say.

Others appear to have a grudge and offer consistently negative opinions on the topic of Google.

Then, there are news stories about Google AI researchers who were fired after raising ethical concerns.

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Should Google Be Believed?

It’s helpful to focus on the Googlers who liaison with the search marketing community.

Googlers like Gary Illyes and John Mueller have a long history of sharing high-quality information with the search marketing community.

The record of all the information they shared is on YouTube, Twitter, and on Google blog posts.

When John Mueller is uncertain about an answer to a question, he says so. When he is certain, his answer is unambiguous.

Danny Sullivan used to be a search marketing reporter before joining Google.

He is on our side, and he, too, has a solid track record of answering questions, passing along concerns, and responding to concerns in the search community, like publishing an article about Core Algorithm Updates in response to questions about what they are and how publishers should deal with them.

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In general, be wary of anyone who consistently advises people to ignore what Google says.

Discern Between Opinion And Fact-Based Insight

It’s important to verify if the writer is citing and linking to an authoritative source or is simply offering an opinion.

When someone writes about Google and then links to supporting evidence like a Googler statement, a patent, or research paper, their statement becomes better than an opinion because now it’s a fact-based insight with supporting evidence.

What they write might still not be true about Google, but at least there is supporting evidence that it could be true.

Unless a Googler says something is true, we can’t really know.

So, the best anyone can do is to point to a Googler statement, a research paper, or a patent as supporting evidence that something might be true.

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For centuries, common sense dictated that the earth was at the center of the universe. Common sense is not a substitute for evidence and data.

Opinions without supporting evidence, regardless of how much “sense” it makes, are unreliable.

Googler Statements Must Be In Context

Some people have agendas. When that happens, they tend to cite Googler statements out of context in order to push their agendas.

The typical agenda consists of sowing fear and uncertainty for the purpose of creating more business.

It’s not uncommon for search marketers to say that Googlers contradict themselves.

I find that Googlers are remarkably consistent, especially John Mueller.

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What is inconsistent is how some people interpret what he says.

Google’s John Mueller lamented in a podcast that “two-thirds of what he is quoted as saying is misquoted or quoted out of context.

Correlation Studies Are Not Reliable

Articles featuring correlation data tend to attract a lot of attention, which makes them useful for clickbait.

Data obtained from studying any number of search results, even millions of search results, will always show patterns.

But the patterns are meaningless because… correlation does not imply causation.

Correlation studies often look at one or a handful of factors in isolation, ignoring all the other more than 200 ranking factors that influence search rankings.

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Correlation studies also tend to ignore non-ranking factors that influence the search results such as:

  • Prior searches.
  • Geolocation.
  • Query reformulation.
  • User intent.
  • Multiple intents in the search results.

The above are just factors that can muddy up any attempt to correlate what ranks in the search results with any one particular quality of a webpage.

If you want to avoid SEO misinformation, consider avoiding most, if not all, correlation-based SEO research.

Can You Trust What’s In A Patent?

The problem with articles written about patents is that some people don’t know how to interpret them – and that can result in SEO misinformation.

The way a patent can result in misinformation is that the person making claims about it uses just one section of a patent, in isolation, pulled out of the context of the rest of the patent.

If you read an article about a patent and the author does not discuss the context of the entire patent and is only using one passage from the patent, it’s highly likely that the conclusions drawn from the patent are misinformed.

A patent or research paper should always be discussed within the context of the entire patent.

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It’s a common mistake to pull one section of the patent and derive conclusions from that section taken out of context.

SEO Misinformation

It can be tough discerning between good SEO information, outright lies, and pure misinformation.

Some misinformation happens because the information was not double-checked, and it ends up spreading across the internet.

Some misinformation happens because some people put too much trust in common sense (which is unreliable).

Ultimately, we can’t know for certain what’s in Google’s algorithm.

The best we can do is understand that SEO information has tiers of validity, beginning at the top with publications from Google that offer confirmation about what’s in Google’s algorithm, then statements from Googlers. This is information that can be trusted.

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After that, we get into a sort of gray zone with patents and research papers that are unconfirmed by Google whether or not they’re being used.

The least trustworthy tier of information is the one based on correlation studies and pure opinions.

When I am in doubt, what I do is seek a reality check from people I trust.

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?

In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.

Price: Free

Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.

Most common reporting use case

GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.

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As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:

  • Total Impressions
  • Average CTR
  • Average Position
gsc-performance-overviewgsc-performance-overview

Tip

If you’ve signed up for AWT using Google Search Console, you can view your GSC performance data in Ahrefs by clicking “GSC Performance” from the main dashboard.

But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.

organic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-yearorganic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-year

Favorite feature

One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.

google-search-console-indexed-pages-reportgoogle-search-console-indexed-pages-report

If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.

Price: Free

Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.

Most common reporting use case

Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.

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Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.

Such as:

  • Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
  • Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
  • Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
  • Social media platformsFacebook, Reddit, and Twitter
  • Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage

Sidenote.

If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks

google-looker-studio-partner-connectorsgoogle-looker-studio-partner-connectors

Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:

ahrefs-seo-audit-dashboardahrefs-seo-audit-dashboard
Ahrefs Google Looker Studio integration

With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.

Favorite feature

The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.

Price: Free for 500 URLs

Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.

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Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.

screaming-frog-user-interface-screenshotscreaming-frog-user-interface-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.

Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.

Favorite feature

Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs. 

If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.

screaming-frog-api-accessscreaming-frog-api-access

Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.

Price: Free

Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.

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when-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustrationwhen-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustration

For example, you could use our:

Most common reporting use case

One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.

With AWT, you can:

  • Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
  • See the performance of your website
  • Check all known backlinks for your website
ahrefs-overviewahrefs-overview

Favorite feature

Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.

If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).

Price: Free

Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.

Most common reporting use case

For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.

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ahrefs-seo-toolbar-overviewahrefs-seo-toolbar-overview

With the free version, you get the following features:

  • On-page SEO report
  • Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
  • Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
  • SERP positions
  • Country changer for SERP

The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.

If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.

severity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbarseverity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Favorite feature

The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.

indexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbarindexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.

Price: Free

Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.

google-analytics-screenshotgoogle-analytics-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.

Favorite feature

You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.

Price: Free

Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.

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Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.

google-slides-screenshotgoogle-slides-screenshot

Most common reporting use cases

The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.

Favorite feature

One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.

share-video-chat-google-slidesshare-video-chat-google-slides

This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.

Price: Free

Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.

Most common reporting use cases

Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.

Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.

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Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.

bbq-google-trends-graphbbq-google-trends-graph

Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.

Favorite feature

Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.

google-trends-comparison-examplegoogle-trends-comparison-example

Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.

You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.

regional-trends-via-google-trendsregional-trends-via-google-trends

Final thoughts

These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.

The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.

Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.

These findings include:

  • When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
  • 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
  • Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.

Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.

As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.

High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects

The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.

The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.

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The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.

This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.

The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.

Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results

With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.

When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.

Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.

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New Competition From Unexpected Sources

The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.

On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.

An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.

Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search

The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.

Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:

“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”

Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.

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Methodology & Limitations

To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.

The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.

While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.

Why We Care

The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.

Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.

SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.

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As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.

How This Could Help You

While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.

Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:

  • As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
  • Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
  • Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
  • Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
  • Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.

Looking Ahead

While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.

By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.


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