Marketing Glossary
Is Google Finally Cracking Down On Self-Promotional Listicles? [Answered]
Search Engine Journal contributor Lily Ray has published an article answering the question, ‘Is Google Finally Cracking Down On Self-Promotional Listicles?’.
She says, “Over the past year, one of the most common tactics for gaining visibility in AI search has been for companies to publish “listicle” content on their own blogs – ranking the best companies or products in their niche and placing themselves in the No. 1 spot.
There are variations of this approach – the listicle might contain a list of the best companies, or it could also list the best products in a specific industry. The common thread is that the company publishing the blog post ranks itself, and/or its own products, in the top position.
It has also become increasingly common for companies using this tactic to collaborate with others in the same industry, mutually promoting one another in their respective listicles – a modern twist on reciprocal linking: you mention me, and I’ll mention you.”
Is Your Internal Linking Helping Or Hurting Topical Authority? [Answered]
Internal linking strengthens topical authority by clearly showing search engines how your content is connected and which pages matter most. A well-structured internal link network improves crawlability, user experience, and long-term search visibility.
In the Ask An SEO series, Search Engine Journal contributor Helen Pollitt has answered the question, ‘Is Your Internal Linking Helping Or Hurting Topical Authority?’.
She says, “In essence, topical authority is the concept of how a search engine may view a website’s ability to provide an authoritative answer for a topic, inferred from how consistently it covers that topic and how signals reinforce that coverage.
Although there is no single standard defined metric for topical authority, it is, in essence, a measure of a page or a whole website’s relevance to a specific knowledge area, and trustworthiness as a source of information.
How Is It Affected By Internal Links
Internal links are crucial in shaping topical authority. They influence how authority, relevance, and intent signals are distributed across a website or folder. If we think of backlinks as bringing topical authority into a website, internal linking then helps to disperse it across the site. Internal linking determines where that authority accumulates and aids search engines in interpreting a page’s topical focus.”
Is Your Internal Linking Helping Or Hurting Topical Authority? Ask An SEO
I Outsourced our Digital Marketing to AI. Here’s What Happened [Video]
The Ahrefs team says, “In this video I take a real B2B Digital Marketing workflow and hand it to AI to see if we can get 80 percent publish ready with minimal human touch. The challenge came straight from our CMO, with real stakes. I fed a year of product update blog posts into ChatGPT, built a custom project, wrote instructions, iterated on tone and style, then tested the system on three deliverables that actually ship at Ahrefs, a product updates blog post, a YouTube script, and a newsletter that goes to tens of thousands of people. Along the way you will see where AI content shines for speed, where it breaks without context, and what happens when brand voice, formatting, and real product knowledge collide with generative outputs.”
It’s time for AI to join your workflows [Video]
MarTech has published a new video, ‘It’s time for AI to join your workflows’.
It answers the following questions:
- What gets marketers excited and frustrated with AI?
- What can AI do for campaign creation workflows?
- How will Typeface differentiate its AI capabilities from competitors?
- What will be the hot topics around AI one year from now?
Image SEO for multimodal AI [Guide]
Search Engine Land has published a new guide, ‘Image SEO for multimodal AI’.
Myriam Jessier says, “Images are now parsed like language. OCR, visual context and pixel-level quality shape how AI systems interpret and surface content.
For the past decade, image SEO was largely a matter of technical hygiene:
- Compressing JPEGs to appease impatient visitors.
- Writing alt text for accessibility.
- Implementing lazy loading to keep LCP scores in the green.
While these practices remain foundational to a healthy site, the rise of large, multimodal models such as ChatGPT and Gemini has introduced new possibilities and challenges.
Multimodal search embeds content types into a shared vector space.
We are now optimizing for the “machine gaze.”
Generative search makes most content machine-readable by segmenting media into chunks and extracting text from visuals through optical character recognition (OCR).”
Inside Media Planning in MENA [Podcast]
Digital Marketing Institute has published a new episode of the DMI podcast titled ‘Inside Media Planning in MENA’.
The DMD team says, “How do you build a media plan for a region where social usage is among the highest in the world? In this episode of the DMI podcast, host Will Francis speaks with Ibrahim Jabri, Client Solutions at Meta and host of the Below the Fold podcast, about what makes media planning across MENA so distinct right now. Ibrahim breaks down how the region has vastly increased its digital budget allocations, which platforms dominate, and why Out of Home still delivers serious impact in Saudi Arabia. He also shares the biggest performance killer he sees in paid media: running the wrong creative in the wrong placement: like static, text-heavy direct response ads in video placement and what he expects to surge in 2026.”
Improving search intent alignment with AI
Search Engine Land contributor Claire Brain has published an article featuring strategies to to use AI to diagnose and improve search intent alignment.
She says, “AI can act as a second set of eyes for content, helping evaluate intent signals, compare top results, and refocus underperforming pages.
Pages on your website can be well written, well laid out, supported by backlinks, and even meet E-E-A-T expectations – yet still fail to rank.
While there are many possible explanations, one common issue is a misalignment with search intent, and it’s often harder to spot than it sounds.
When the focus is on content, optimization, and usability, intent can easily be missed or misjudged.
This is where AI can become a useful review tool, helping guide things back in the right direction.
Get back to basics
Whether you’re starting work on a new page or updating something older, beginning with the basics of search intent can help set you up for success.”
How to use AI to diagnose and improve search intent alignment
Intro to Using AI for UX Design [Video]
Using AI for UX design enables teams to analyze user behavior, predict needs, and personalize interfaces at scale. By automating testing and insights, AI helps designers create more intuitive, accessible, and user-centric experiences faster.
Google Career Certificates has published a new video, ‘Intro to Using AI for UX Design’.
The Google team says, “Looking to work smarter and faster in UX Design? AI can help UX professionals shorten to-do lists and speed up daily tasks. Learn how to use generative AI to help iterate on design ideas, develop copy for a portfolio website, and much more in this tutorial from a Google director of UX.”
Intent-based marketing: How to target ready buyers [Guide]
Intent-based marketing focuses on understanding what customers want at the exact moment they search, browse, or engage online. By targeting real-time signals and motivations, brands deliver highly relevant messages that drive faster conversions and stronger customer alignment.
HubSpot contributor Erica Santiago has published a new guide, ‘Intent-based marketing: How to target ready buyers’.
She says, “Intent-based marketing (IBM) is a strategy that focuses on delivering targeted messages to consumers based on their online behavior and preferences.
Intent-based marketing differs from account-based marketing (ABM) in that ABM targets specific high-value accounts while IBM targets accounts that are actively searching for solutions.
For intent-based marketing, you’ll want a Smart CRM like HubSpot that utilizes AI automation to identify prospects who are actively showing interest and exhibiting buying signals, allowing you to prioritize and engage at the perfect time.
Furthermore, you‘ll need a CRM that unifies and enriches your data, with key features such as custom reporting, which will turn data insights into manageable reports that track everything from the start of the buyer’s journey to revenue attribution.”
Is An XML Or HTML Sitemap Better For SEO? [Answered]
XML and HTML sitemaps help search engines and users navigate a website efficiently, improving crawlability and user experience. While XML sitemaps are designed for search engines, HTML sitemaps focus on guiding visitors through site structure.
Search Engine Journal has answered the question, ‘Is An XML Or HTML Sitemap Better For SEO?’ as part of its Ask an SEO series.
Helen Pollitt says, “The purpose of the XML sitemap is to help search bots understand which pages on your website should be crawled, as well as giving them extra information about those pages.
The XML sitemap can help bots identify pages on the site that would otherwise be difficult to find. This can be orphaned pages, those with low internal links, or even pages that have changed recently that you may want to encourage the bots to recrawl.
Best Practices For XML Sitemaps
Most search bots will understand XML sitemaps that follow the sitemaps.org protocol. This protocol defines the necessary location of the XML sitemap on a site, schema it needs to use to be understood by bots, and how to prove ownership of domains in the instance of cross-domain references.”
